Miller/ Zeitgeist - Tipping Point

Scott Miller's Tipping Point chronicles a long collaborative relationship between him and Minneapolis based new music ensemble, Zeitgeist. The members of Zeitgeist have regularly acted as a musical proving ground for Miller's explorations, particularly those combining acoustic instruments with interactive-electronic effects. From the opening measures of the title track, Miller's approach to integrating acoustic instruments into an electroacoustic environment is apparent. The tipping point Miller refers to may well be the edge at which we can no longer identify where the acoustic instruments end and the electronics begin. Funhouse dives immediately into this ambiguity, as snarling bass clarinet multiphonics mimic and later become absorbed into the carefully crafted noise world of the electronics. Pure Pleasure's percussive rhythms are manipulated timbrally as well as sent swirling around the stereo field in passages of spatialized virtuosity. Featuring soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, Forth and Back's haunting minimalism suggests the slow evolution of a mind at work as it gains understanding over a puzzling paradigm: none other than time itself and our ability to transcend it through union with another. Mr. Miller is currently the President of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS).