“You’re building chords in relation to other chords. Which is actually why I’m so interested in [alternate tunings]: because the harmony itself is so relational, the dynamic of performing and listening has to become equally relational.”
Jack Herscowitz
Jack Herscowitz is a composer, improviser, and sound artist based in Los Angeles, California. Jack’s practice explores music as a multi-sensory art form, spanning interactive sound installations, glitchy electroacoustic improvisations, theatrical performance, and communal spaces for sound-making. His work has been featured at festivals such as IRCAM ManiFeste, Barcelona Modern Festival, Composers Conference, Neofonía Ensenada, and Norcal NoiseFest, by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Syntagma Piano Duo, among others; Jack also performs live electronics in improvisation duo Mystic Elevator with vocalist Abigail Whitman, and in improv trio Castle Anthrax. Jack received an MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from CalArts, where his teachers have included Michael Pisaro-Liu, Steve Lehman, Carolyn Chen, Micaela Tobin, and Tim Feeney.
Following the premiere of Jack’s chamber orchestral work ‘i miss the wonder in infinity’ at the 2023 Composers Conference at Avaloch Farm, New Hampshire, we caught up with Jack over Zoom, talking about rational intonation, electronic music, subjectivities in improvisation, ownership, “anti-innovation”, and more…
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Hi Jack! I discovered your work this summer at Avaloch Farm, New Hampshire, where I heard your stunning chamber orchestra piece ‘i miss the wonder in infinity’. Tell me a bit about the compositional process and concept behind the piece…
Lately, I’ve been extremely interested in music where the changes happen in slow ways over time — where the material “is what it is”. The material itself doesn’t feel a need to develop, or change in the ways that we think of development in sonata form, for example; just one idea can be everything. I go back to a conversation we had during the Composers Conference about sine tones — I asked Victoria Cheah why they like sine tones — but I realise actually [that] I have a very strong opinion on why I like sine tones! The reason why I love sine tones is that they’re a beautiful thing, they’re the most simple thing in electronic music, but I don’t think they need anything else: to be developed, processed, or whatever. The sine tone sort of resists this urge for innovation.
I hadn’t really done [this] before, to write a piece where there was really just one “idea” the entire time. That’s what the piece was about — how can we make one idea sustainable for the duration of the piece, how can we live in this for twenty minutes?
There’s a lot of patience involved with sitting in an idea like that, foregoing conventional development. Were there any key influences on that approach for you?
I’ve been influenced by a lot of music that is about [a] type of repetition like this. Someone I think about a lot is Kali Malone — a composer, organ player, [and] electronic musician who sometimes works with these very simple, looped progressions; Ellen Arkbro [is] also somebody who does this. The last person who was super important for this piece is William Basinski — in working with loops, which is something that I do also. I had the idea of working with a larger loop — the most famous [Basinski] album, The Disintegration Loops, works with very short loops. I looped this eight-bar chord progression, about the size of something Kali Malone or Ellen Arkbro would do — about 30-ish seconds — and then applied Basinski’s ideas of disintegration, which is something I’ve always been interested in. I’ve always loved the idea of music that melts off the page. That’s something I’ve been doing since I started composing, without even realising it.
I applied many processes to the progression to allow it to disintegrate. First was the detuning, through just intonation — there was a gradual tuning that was happening through the process of these [JI] relationships which ultimately become more aleatoric tunings. Then there was a gradual slowing of tempo; there was also a gradual reorchestration throughout, starting with the instruments I thought would stick out a little more… so brass and double reeds. -laughs- There’s also these glitches, which come in about halfway through the piece, and then literally “disintegrate” the material. And finally, there’s cellophane — which is this noise floor.
Yes — I loved your use of the cellophane! How did that come about?
I love old recordings, I love lo-fi recordings. It’s hard to call your iPhone “lo-fi”, but it’s kind of a contemporary touchstone for a lot of people. I’m sure an old head [might] be like “what the heck is this kid talking about…” -laughs- But the noise hiss [of] an iPhone recording, a vinyl crackle, or [a] tape hiss — I think they add so much to music. That’s essentially what that is; it’s this little noise hiss that grows louder and louder, and ultimately consumes the music. This happens for twenty minutes, until it’s entirely noise. Within that noise, I included [a] bass flute solo — which reflects the final aleatoric tuning of the piece: equal temperament but each note can be up to 50 cents sharp or flat. And the goal is for the audience to not perceive this as “out of tune,” just another possibility.
How effective did you find the use of all of these techniques in tandem — particularly your use of just intonation?
I learned a lot. I’m still very new to the whole JI world; I’ve been using it a lot in music lately. I don’t know if I should call it JI, because I don’t like that word of “just” — “just” being “good” — so I’ll borrow what Catherine Lamb uses, and call it rational intonation; which still has similar connotations, but I like it a little bit better. I’m still figuring out the best ways to talk about it and apply it. I’ve learned a lot of it on my own, and from talking with friends.
For me, this type of music-making is about relationships: the harmonies themselves are defined by these lattices of relationships. You’re building chords in relation to other chords. Which is actually why I’m so interested in [alternate tunings]: because the harmony itself is so relational, the dynamic of performing and listening has to become equally relational. [But] when I use those harmonies, the music is never about those harmonies; they always serve some sort of larger musical intention. They’re just a tool for me, in the same way that equal temperament is a tool.
The thing that I realised [with this piece] is that to me, maybe chamber music is the best place to do [JI]. There’s something about having a conductor in the large ensemble context that — at least in my opinion — adds this level of both hierarchy and efficiency to the whole situation, that reduces the ability [for] the true JI-listening to emerge. That’s just a hunch — but it’s hard. What I’m realising is that maybe I should have done a more pragmatic tuning strategy for this large ensemble piece, and keep the JI for the smaller-group stuff.
That being said — Catherine Lamb did pull off a large ensemble JI/rational intonation piece this year at the Proms…
So the answer is, I need to study with Cat Lamb. -laughs- So I’m figuring it out, is really what it comes down to.
Let’s talk a bit more about your compositional process. You’ve talked about rational intonation and sine tones — how do you work with electronics, sound manipulation, and sampling, and how does that relate to your interest in sine tones?
I’ve only started doing electronic music in the past two years. That desire mostly came from growing up with pop music, dance music, and different types of experimental electronic music; I don’t think I can attribute that to anything else. If you grow up listening to all those things, you’re gonna have an inclination to make electronic music — at least for me. Two years later, I looked back on what I did and [thought] about it, realised what happened — and realised I cared a lot about simple materials, and doing a lot with very little. Which relates to this “sine tone philosophy”; the sine tone as an anti-capitalist thing… -laughs- It’s not totally true, but I like to think it is!
Sometimes, I have a hard time calling myself an “electronic musician”, because [of] what I understand the cultural connotation of that is: big, loud, complicated. The IRCAM model. -laughs- How people are taught to engage with electronic music, in a lot of contexts — not all of them, but a lot — that the more channels, the more effects, the more processing, the more the sound is “moving”, the bigger, louder, stronger it is… That’s what makes “good” electronic music, and what “electronic musicians” are “supposed” to do. They “should” be interested in developing whatever the next Max for Live device [is], which allows us to control spatialisation better than SPAT can… There’s something totally capitalist about that. It’s totally related to that innovative push. But I like working with simple materials.
That word, innovation, came up during the Conference about your practice as well. Tell me a bit about what you mean by that term…
I talk about innovation in a capitalist way. I’m talking about innovation as a bad thing. It’s a very modernist idea, that the world is moving forward — that development of any kind is considered progress — and that, related to the sine tone, would be that the more complicated waveform is therefore “better”. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
So [there’s] the idea of being an electronic musician as about this “mastery of craft”. But a lot of the music I’ve made is with more simple materials; working with sine tones, white noise, with really unprocessed field recordings. I’m doing a piece right now with contact mics [and] cellophane, run through very simple distortion. Another one was just ring modulation on vibrators. -laughs- Even my electronic music practice is just a looper; I’m just sampling the other person and pitch-shifting them. If I’m fancy, I’ll filter them and throw some distortion on.
I think besides where that comes from — the ethos of working with very little as an “anti-innovation” thing — I also am a very pragmatic composer. I really want to write for my situation. I think that’s just the best way of making music — music for what the situation is. The situation for me is that I’m very grateful to have my laptop with MaxMSP, and so I’m gonna make music with the materials that I know. I don’t want to buy a lot of gear; partially because the gear-buying is related to this whole electronic music thing [of] — “to be an electronic music is to have all these fancy pedals and software, and this and that” — and that’s not sustainable for me right now. Of course I understand the need for analogue technology, and wanting the physical “thing” — maybe one day that’ll happen, I do have some ideas. But for now, I’m just working with the program that I have, my knowledge of it, and making interesting art with what I can do that’s really important to me.
There’s something wonderfully equitable and accessible about that approach. It’s certainly similar to how I’ve felt about certain schools of electronic composition at times.
Everyone can do that. You can make work with whatever you have; you don’t need these fancy controllers, pedals, synths, whatever. I will never get into modular, probably — unless I have access to somebody else’s rack — because of this. It’s expensive. I’m not overlooking the importance and inequities of access to resources, but anyone can still make great work with the tools that they have.
So I’m doing that with a lot of digital technology. I began by working in Max, and I’ve started doing stuff in Ableton too. I used to work in a bootlegged version of Logic, that I got from somebody off of a flash drive… It crashed one day and wouldn’t reopen. -laughs- I think the next step, for me, is to then get into the analogue stuff via DIY electronics; hacking, circuit-bending. That feels like a logical next step to explore, as far repurposing old technologies and rejecting the need for new gear goes.
It feels like there’s a lot of freedom in the way you talk about exploring electronics. I feel like limitations can be a good thing, sometimes.
It similarly goes back to the idea of sustaining a chord progression; the simple material. It’s the same thing. Can a sine tone be interesting the whole time? That’s what people like Sachiko M, and Alvin Lucier, were kind of about: do we need more than just the white noise or the 10khz tone? I’m not there yet. I still write a lot of music in sonata form. -laughs- So I can’t really fully take on this truly minimalist identity. But it’s something that I think I’m getting closer towards, in finding what it is that I have to do or say within this trajectory. My work has many trajectories, and this is just one of them.
You also have a strong background in laptop performance and improvisation — what kind of freedoms have you felt working with this technology in those settings, as opposed to as a composer?
I actually feel much more free in a composed setting, in a lot of ways. -laughs- To make creative choices, at least. I remember I had a composition lesson with Michael Pisaro, my Master’s teacher, after my graduate recital; the main point was [that] he said that I’m a lot bolder in my composed music than my improvised music. And I think I agree.
You’re dealing with multiple subjectivities, always — but in music where I am writing the score, by myself, and showing that score to other people, my subjectivities are there in the score in a very strong way. Their [performers’] interpretation, and the things they give me feedback on, are still a part of the process — it’s not “just me”, it’s not ultimately as hierarchical as I think it’s made out to be — but it’s fair to say that it’s my piece. I wouldn’t be able to do it without my collaborators, but I still in some ways can take ownership over something like the form. I can’t take ownership in an improvisation. You add [more] people, and you have to then negotiate what everybody is interested in; the way that everybody is shaping the piece. To be a good improviser, you have to be a good composer — there’s no distinction there, for me — it’s about shaping form in the moment, listening in the moment.
Form is just such an important part of improvising. When you have multiple people, doing that at the same time, it’s hard to feel “free”. But you’re able to access something else — because you have all these people, and all these subjectivities, intermingling and co-creating in the moment. There’s moments of conflict sometimes, but that can be really great. You always have to be respectful, but especially in that type of music — what I would call improvised music. You still have to be bold and I’m working on that; it’s social, in a really intense way. The intensity and the intersubjectivity in improvised music is just so strong.
Speaking of collaboration: you have a very strong collaborative practice with composer-performer Abigail Whitman, making a variety of interdisciplinary work — if that’s what you’d call it?
The interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary question… I think of interdisciplinary work as truly integrated — in a way that the composer’s not thinking “we’re gonna make dance, and light, and music, and it’s all gonna be together” — [but] “I’m gonna make this, because this is how it needs to be made.” There needs to be movement for this idea, there needs to be video for this idea — this idea would not work without it. It’s never about the disciplines; the person has the idea, and there needs to be these things that aren’t directly associated with sound.
Whereas multidisciplinary work is the coexistence of the other discipline(s) next to the music: the dance happening “to” the music, but [not] necessarily co-composed. I generally find this less interesting. I’ve started to call it “Mozart with lights” — I think a friend called it that, but I don’t want to shit talk too much. -laughs- And it’s not necessarily coexisting the Cage/Cunningham kind of way — I quite like that: John Cage is doing his thing, and Merce Cunningham is doing his thing, they’re not interacting on the surface but they still totally are, and that was an extremely intentional choice. In my own practice, I try to be more [in] the interdisciplinary mindset. My piece for Abigail Whitman, ‘Television Dream Star’, has staging, lighting, set design, costume design, movement… It was thought of as an integrated piece.
At the same time, I still feel weird calling myself an interdisciplinary artist; because what I do comes too strongly from music. I had a lecture with a Wandelweiser composer who came to CalArts — Manfred Werder — he does all these things with text, poetry, performance. The way he talked about it was: everything I do is music, because that’s where I come from. It’s always going to be informed by that. That’s a similar way to how I feel — I’m doing these things that someone might call “interdisciplinary”, but everything I’m doing is coming so strongly from music. I went to music school, I had a background in jazz before [this], I’m often working with a score. Culturally, I think there’s too many things calling this “music” to ignore; but it’s not creatively limiting. For me, it doesn’t really matter what you call it, it matters what it is.
Tell me about the collaborative process of ‘Television Dream Star’; how did yourself and Abigail navigate the issues you mentioned?
Usually, when working with a score, there’s varied levels of collaboration. Sometimes, I do the “composer” thing — I’m gonna write this piece, we have some conversations and I’m getting feedback throughout the process, but I’m working on the score, by myself, for the most of it. For ‘Television Dream Star’, there was an element of that, for sure — I wrote the score for that by myself — but what made this piece collaborative was how open the score was. Most of [the score] is just timestamps with text instructions. I think specific notation takes a lot away from a performative piece like this; it steals a lot. If you’re trying to have a piece with movement, and you’re focusing on the score — executing these things perfectly — it creates a specific type of movement. That’s not what I was interested in doing here.
I trust zir [Abigail] a lot. I know the things that ze does, I have improvised with zir a lot; so I think I’m actually going to get zir to do these things better if I don’t write them down in a very specific way. Personally, I think that worked. Because of that, I create openness which allows us to shape the piece in the rehearsals. Compared to devised theatre — which is about totally doing that — [and] compared to how most chamber music works —which is highly efficient in rehearsals — it falls somewhere in the middle. So there’s an element of co-composition. It was a hard piece to write and perform; I learned a lot, and there were things I could have done better, for sure. But I was still happy with trying out this method of working.
In a piece such as with ‘Television Dream Star’ — where does the element of ownership fit in for you?
There’s still an element of ownership that I think is still there. Even though it’s Abigail’s piece as well, in a lot of ways, I don’t think it’s as much of a shared piece as when we perform together. That’s our piece. Whatever we do, when we improvise, or it becomes a solidified thing — that’s ours. Whereas this, in some ways, there’s still a bit of hierarchy there; I recognise that, but if we both enter the situation being aware of that, it’s okay. But this was done for zir. It was written so specifically for the things that ze can do. It was also personal, in a lot of ways. I don’t want other people doing it, and ze doesn’t either.
Tell me about some of your upcoming projects, both in composition and performance — how are you looking to explore and develop your ideas in the future?
I’m working on a piece for string quartet, video, and fixed electronics — [for] sometime in 2024, with the Del Sol Quartet. [It] is deeply inspired by this Viennese video artist that Bernhard Lang showed me in a masterclass — Martin Arnold — who works with these sampled four seconds of footage from old television [shows] and movies. The loops are moving forwards and backwards, they’re changing size, shifting over the course of the duration of the full clip. There’s this amazing one of To Kill a Mockingbird, and it brings out this familial violence in this seemingly trivial interaction. It’s deeply disturbing — a lot of his work is deeply disturbing. I think ‘i miss the wonder in infinity’ was nice and beautiful, but I do make a lot of disturbing art… -laughs- My roommate and collaborator, Matt LeVeque, pointed that out to me recently, and I think he’s kind of right. Although disturbing art can be beautiful…
So I’m working in a similar-ish way. I found this sample of an old, 10-minute video of this educational video introducing the string quartet. I’m working with a few snippets from that; I’m definitely doing things that are inspired by Martin Arnold, but I’m not doing the same thing. I’m drawing from multiple sections [of] the video, and making my own narrative from it — which is how I worked for ‘Television Dream Star’. This kind of surrealist, not super-linear, but symbolic narrative, related to the logic of dreams — it’s very Lynchian. That type of storytelling [is something] I really resonate with. There’s an element of that influence in this, as well.
How are you combining all of the different elements for this piece — the electronics, the film, the quartet?
The electronics are working with the sounds of the video. You just speed them up, or slow them down — you slow down these static sounds, you get these crazy wind noises. It’s musically interesting, I think it sounds good. There’s the interplay between this fixed thing, and then this live mimicry [onstage]; the projected quartet on the screen, and the physical quartet in real life. It feels like there are a lot of things that are coming together in this piece — narrative, working with video, the loops which are manipulated in a very similar way to my electronic performance practice. [And] this campy horror, which I love. It feels very exciting.
Finally: are there any recent pieces you’ve done that you’re particularly proud of?
There’s a piece I’ve performed at a noise music festival, Norcal Noisefest. It’s a piece for teddy bear with contact mics on the arms. His name is Jimmy. I got him from Goodwill for $2…
That is so cute, oh my god.
The piece is extremely not cute, unfortunately. -laughs- It’s not violent, but it’s definitely not cute. I’m putting contact mics on the arms, and I have it running up to a Max patch; but all the Max patch is doing is distorting it, and increasing the distortions over the course of the piece. It’s a really simple process. All I’m doing is going up on stage, picking up the teddy bear, slowly wrapping it in cellophane, hugging it for the duration of the piece — and then dropping it on the ground at the end. I try to do this in a very loving way. It’s very much about death; the image of a body being wrapped in plastic.
We’re working with simple materials — which is related to everything we’re talking about before — but now, there’s an emotional reason why. [It’s] a very loving, desperate hug. That loving thing and the austerity of this harsh, harsh noise happening behind it… There’s a kind of emotional emptiness that I really resonate with, that is directly related to the material itself. So besides a political reason for the simple materials, there’s now also an emotional reason.
As a performer, I know your practice has very much been centred around electronics — is this the first time you’re performing outside of that context?
This is the first thing I’ve ever performed where I’m not behind a laptop. There’s an importance of continuing to branch out what it is that I do. I think that keeps things fun, for me. -laughs- That’s what it comes down to — that’s why I started improvising — if I am just working on one type of music making, I’m gonna be miserable. I’m not gonna have fun, I get burned out, and I’m gonna hate it. I have other interests, so I need to keep expanding what my artistic practice can be. Which is also really vulnerable, for me; I haven’t done something this performative with my own body ever.
It’s almost like the piece becomes autobiographical in that sense — and it lends into the aesthetic and concept of what you’re doing.
I think a lot of my work is autobiographical, because it is constantly changing. I like to think that everything that I do is pretty different; I think there’s increasingly strong strains of things, but it’s changing. Each element, each piece, marks a certain point in time. I can’t imagine making work in any other way. I want my practice to always be chimeric: expanding outwards and therefore always based in the joy of learning and trying new things. I’m sure that my interests will change in a few years, but will remain informed by everything we’ve talked about today.
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Learn more about Jack Herscowitz and his practice at the following links:
- https://www.jackherscowitz.com/
- https://soundcloud.com/jack-herscowitz
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkycPpt5kswZOeYicjwvxpA/
Learn more about Jack’s collaborations with Abigail Whitman as Mystic Elevator:
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