Annette Brosin: fantasiae for flute and electronics by Mark Takeshi McGregor

fantasiae was originally conceptualized to incorporate multiple layers of performative space, time and bodies - involving live performance, electronic processing, and a 16 speaker sound system. It was later presented as an installation, exhibiting the distinct types of musical performance played back through 16 speakers. This stereo version aims to express similar categories of spatiality, temporality and physicality.
fantasiae's materials are twofold: with pastel pencil and blank score paper (onion skin), the performer (Mark McGregor) transcribes the first movement (Grave) of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Fantasia for Flute in a-minor (TWV 40:3). The transcription is performed with musical expression. The sound of the pastel pencil on the paper becomes musical and simultaneously triggers and shapes the playback of McGregor’s previously recorded flute performance of the Telemann fantasia.
The other material consists of yet another transcription of that same transcription, now adapted for alto flute. Just as the swishing and at times percussive sounds of the pastel pencil, the sound of the flute rushes and explodes through the space, similarly affecting the playback of the Telemann recording.
McGregor's various readings of Telemann's piece take place within composition and performance of this work – both with regards to human and digital performance. In fantasiae, the acts of transcription and reading both become similarly reproductive in terms of re-performing the writing, interpreting and recording of a piece, and generative/productive in terms of sounding out. - A. Brosin