Exit Points grew out of a period developing new methods of using improvisation to examine musical material. It extends and notates techniques used in the improvisational work offRamp [2002] created for my group HEDKIKR's tour of the US freeway system. At the heart of Exit Points is a short musical kernel that provides a platform from which the players 'exit' at particular points into freer periods of exploration of the same material.
The nine beat melodic cycle contains every beat subdivision from a single beat to a quintuplet (five notes in the time of one). The tempi implied by the tuplets provide 'exit points' into different tempi for the exploratory sections. The players both exit and return to a different beat of the melodic cycle in each of the nine tempi/sections, so that the same material is viewed each time from a different perspective. Exit Points was written for and is dedicated to Topology.
A live record from the legendary Diamanda Galás finds the artist exploring the outer fringes of pop with only her voice and a piano. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2024