In her piece, “Disordered Orbits,” Naama Perel uses live music, movement, and electronics to express galactic behavior. The piece is written for two electric guitars: one in regular tuning and the other in 17EDO tuning. Based on Perel’s meetings with Professor Evan Schneider and her students, each guitar represents a different kind of galaxy, with its unique characters and parameters: shape, density, mass, luminosity, and color. As they get closer in space, they will start to influence and be influenced by each other’s gravity. Audiences will start hearing the electronic interference—as closer they get, the sound will get brighter and distorted, until, in the end, they merge into one galaxy. Perel is using both data sonification as well as the abstraction of long-term processes of galaxies formation, movement, and mergence.
Naama Perel is a PhD student in composition and theory in the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. Being inspired by many sources such as nature, current events, plastic art, science, and more, she is searching and expanding borders of musical styles and traditions, especially her musical roots in Yemenite and Tunisian music. Perel splits her time among her studies, writing new music for diverse media, performing, and giving lectures about her music and research in diverse countries. Recently, she published her master’s thesis composition “Memory Traces”: a song cycle built from Yemenite women’s music together with other original instrumental pieces.
17EDO Guitar: Dr. Aaron Myers-Brooks | Electric Guitar: Naama Perel | Electronics: Brian Riordan
Faculty researcher: Evan Schneider
Artistic Advisor: Eric Moe
Performance Recording