Shows
Decipher This!5. Howie Kenty, Enter the HwargosphereHowie Kenty is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer, occasionally known by his musical alter-ego, Hwarg. His music, called “remarkable” with “astonishing poetic power” by the International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica, is stylistically diverse, encompassing ideas from contemporary classical, electronic, rock, ambient, sound art, and everything in between. His works are often politically oriented, and occasionally incorporate visual and theatrical elements. Howie is half of the electronic operatic duo Ju-eh+Hwarg and plays guitar in the progressive rock band The Benzene Ring. He recently earned his PhD in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, and is on the faculty of the Kauf...2021-04-2353 min
Hwargmusik!What We're Missing (with Kathleen Supové)You can help separated families here: https://www.raicestexas.org/
Kathleen Supové: Piano and voice
Howie Kenty: Electronics
Recorded at the Queens New Music Festival and at Badbox Studios, NYC, May 2019.
"What We’re Missing" is part of a set of works exploring the political situation under the 45th president of the United States, examining him and the people affected by his policies. It takes as its subject the separation of children from their families, primarily seeking asylum, at the Mexican/US border. The piece focuses on interactions within a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Texas in Jun...2019-06-2710 min
Hwargmusik!Horrorscene (Live, with F-PLUS at Tetractys)Music and text by Howie Kenty. Performed by F-PLUS at Tetractys Presents, Austin, TX, February 2, 2019.
- Andrew Hudson: bass clarinet, vocals
- Josh Graham: vibraphone, vocals
- Kate Dreyfuss: violin, vocals
This piece was partially composed while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with funding assistance from the New York State and Graduate Student Employees Union Professional Development Program; great thanks goes to all institutions. The amazing F-PLUS gamely challenged and vanquished this beast, slashing their way triumphantly through dark and stormy rhythms, screeching lead lines, ominous arpeggios, and even sinister vocal harmonies, and really made...2019-06-2611 min
Hwargmusik!I Don't Like Your Face (What's Strange in the World)(Live, with ~Nois)Performed live by the ~Nois saxophone quartet at Stony Brook University, March 4, 2019.
- Brandon Quarles: Soprano Sax
- Hunter Bockes: Alto Sax
- Jordan Lulloff: Tenor Sax
- János Csontos: Baritone Sax
"I Don't Like Your Face" explores aspects of the fear that seems innate to all humans, to greater or lesser degrees in each of us. It's a fear of what we don't understand, and crucially, who we don't understand. When the way humans treat other humans is governed by this fear, the consequences can be devastating. Whether we succumb to it, and how we handle others who h...2019-04-2510 min
Hwargmusik!A Choir Of Sirens“A Choir of Sirens” explores and decomposes salient sonic features common to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg, refashioning them into something recognizable but intriguingly altered. The piece asks the listener to re-experience the cities' sonic environments, revealing familiar elements in a new light as surprisingly harmonious, discordant, or somewhere in between. Birds and people transform into strange wild creatures, rain attacks in spatters, passing drones boil into an encompassing swarm, and the traffic and sirens of both cities eventually meld into an uneasily beautiful and overwhelming HORN-GASM (!!!). Of course, sirens also act as warning signals of impending danger, and we fail...2018-06-2214 min
Hwargmusik!Clattering In The Wind (Live, with Argento New Music Project)Performed by the Argento New Music Project at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 19, 2011.
- David Fulmer: Conductor
- Roberta Michel: Flute
- Arthur Sato: Oboe
- Vasko Dukovski: Clarinet
- William De Vos: Horn
- Gili Sharett: Bassoon
Lyrics:
I remember... we were we were together we were alone together were we alone?
I remember I remember thinking thinking... something wonderful had happened.
I can't remember, but I know... I know something I know something terrible happened.
My heart beats faster these days... I hear the signs clattering in the wind...
And I know something terrible has happened.
Notes:
Against...2018-06-1812 min
Hwargmusik!Everybody Loves Me (Live, with Daniel Pate)Watch the full video of the New Music Gathering performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyaXX76rjM
Howie Kenty: Vocals and electronics
Daniel Pate: Percussion
Recorded at the 2018 New Music Gathering, Boston, MA.
Let us use his own words to reveal a path that begins with deep insecurity, an insatiable need for validation, and an extreme sense of entitlement. Let us follow it through to the fear, intolerance, and violence that the speaker stokes in many of his followers. If we allow this division to continue, where does this narrative ultimately end?
The salient question for me is...2018-06-0811 min
Hwargmusik!When Were You Silent? (with Ensemble Decipher)Recorded with Ensemble Decipher: Joseph Bohigian, Chris Hadley, Nathan Hudson, Howie Kenty, Chelsea Loew, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Ben Ramey
The hum of immediate concerns. Dinner. When? Hopes and plans. Something you’re awaiting. Loans. The future. Childhood. Traffic. Really? Strange memories. Appliances. How the toy broke. Fears and failings. Your arms. Persistent low-grade worries. Consideration of self. Dinner. Why? Consideration of others. The people of Mali. Who is a part of you? When you were silenced. Something you hope will never happen. The people of Iceland. Their lungs. Treatment of others. When were you true? When were you silent? When were yo...2018-05-0108 min
Hwargmusik!Horrorscene (Live, with F-PLUS at Stony Brook)Music and text by Howie Kenty. Performed by F-PLUS at Stony Brook University, April 3, 2018.
- Andrew Hudson: bass clarinet, vocals
- Josh Graham: vibraphone, vocals
- Kate Dreyfuss: violin, vocals
This piece was partially composed while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with funding assistance from the New York State and Graduate Student Employees Union Professional Development Program; great thanks goes to all institutions. The amazing F-PLUS gamely challenged and vanquished this beast, slashing their way triumphantly through dark and stormy rhythms, screeching lead lines, ominous arpeggios, and even sinister vocal harmonies, and really made the...2018-04-1911 min
Hwargmusik!A Dark Train in a Dead Station (Live)SAT and chamber ensemble. Recorded at Stony Brook University, April 18, 2017.
Howie Kenty: music, lyrics, and conductor
Alison Rowe: soprano
Flannery Cunningham: alto
Joseph Sferra: tenor
Eric Schultz: clarinet
Raissa Fahlman: bass clarinet
Eric Lemmon: viola
Phuc Phan Do: cello
Gilberto Guajardo: bass
A Dark Train in a Dead Station portrays an elderly woman looking back on her life, thinking about things she regrets having done, and more tragically, regretting things she never did. But the question, now, is what to do with a late, unexpected opportunity...
LYRICS:
Two more weeks is a long time to wait.
Two more weeks is...2017-04-2707 min
Hwargmusik!Uninhabited (Live, with Emily John)Performed at LeFrak Concert Hall at the Aaron Copland School of Music on November 15th, 2012, by Emily John (harp).
Here's an odd little miniature. The wonderful Emily John was a real pleasure to work with on this exploration in which I tried to get as chromatic on the harp as one can with few pedal changes. (Non-music-nerds, beware...) Using static pedal positions, this piece begins with two chromatic areas: A#, B, C, Db, and E, F, Gb, resulting in a pitch set (0123678) that seems to me almost blues-y, but functioning here in an entirely different manner.
Score:
http://hwarg.com...2017-04-0201 min
Hwargmusik!Fun; real fun!Filmmaker Mike Hannon asked me to score a video installation of his in which he shopped in simultaneous quintuplicate down five aisles of his local supermegagrocerymart. The garish colors and focus on consumption inspired me to create this soundscape collage from bits of old public domain audio and video soundtracks, my own field recordings, snippets of radio dialogue, instrumental recordings, and more. You can track certain sonic events that coordinate with the various iterations of each Mike's entrance, turnabout, and exit down the aisle, but it's also fun to just let the whole chaotic mélange wash over you.2017-03-2619 min
Hwargmusik!Something Stable On Which To Keep A Steady Gaze (with Rilke, as read by Patrick Scheid)For his strange and hypnotic theatrical piece "Malte's Masks," my good friend Patrick Scheid asked me to create a soundscape to accompany him reading a section of Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" concerning a neighbor's struggles with the nature of Time.
Patrick is one of my very favorite readers; genuine, humorous, excited, clever, and carefully-paced, he brings texts alive in ways that make a listener hearken closely, like a skilled storyteller of yore. In creating the soundscape, I asked him to give me a demo recording of himself reading the Rilke passage. Because the reading was...2017-03-0213 min
Hwargmusik!He Liked That Sort Of Dreamy, Dreaming Music That Had the Rhythm of Long Things SwingingRecorded live at the Firehouse Space, September 9th, 2016, with Unheard-of//Ensemble (http://www.unheard-ofproject.com/):
Ford Fourqurean, clarinet
Lauren Posey, cello
Daniel Anastasio, piano
This piece originated with a sentence from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that has long captivated me, evoking huge pendulums tracing slow arcs, as well as dim, smoky lounges suffused with a languid, surreal, beautiful jazz. I find the sentence particularly musical, in the formal sense of its interesting syllabic rhythm and well-placed almost-rhymes, and in the evocative imagery and musical description. I decided to use this sentence as the piece's title, an inspiration for the...2017-03-0106 min
Hwargmusik!The Ways We Each Tumbled From The Precipice (Live, with Lykos)Recorded live at the Park Church Co-op, January 8th, 2017, with Lykos:
Kristin Leitterman, oboe/English horn (http://www.kristinleitterman.com/)
Mara Mayer, clarinet/bass clarinet (http://maramayermusic.com/)
Marilu Donovan, harp (http://www.mariludonovan.com/)
Maya Bennardo, violin (http://andplayduo.com/about/)
The causes of separation. The manners in which we fell. The directions we each took afterward. The Ways We Each Tumbled From The Precipice explores the concept of coming together versus moving apart. The instruments generally revolve around a central pitch point, sometimes reaching it and sometimes moving away from it, or reaching it, but not simultaneously. Rhythmically...2017-01-1114 min
Hwargmusik!Something Stable on Which to Keep A Steady Gaze (Instrumental)This is the instrumental version of a soundscape created for Patrick Scheid's 2015 theatrical piece "Malte's Masks," performed September 25th, 2015, at Dixon Place Theater, New York.
The narrative + soundscape version (highly recommended!) can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/hwarg/something-stable-on-which-to-keep-a-steady-gaze-with-rilke-as-read-by-patrick-scheid
"Malte's Masks" is based on Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge," and concerns the nature of Time. This accompanying musical work blends new material, re-imaginings of some of my old material, and additional samples into a dreamy atmospheric meditation.2016-02-0613 min
Hwargmusik!The Halls Within The Mirror (Live, with Rebekah Norris)THE HALLS WITHIN THE MIRROR
A solo mini-opera of internal struggle, childhood memories, and a tragic incident.
i. Present: Awakening
ii. Driving: First Memory
iii. Childhood: First Memory
iv. Driving: Second Memory
v. Childhood: Second Memory
vi. Present: Despair
vii. Driving: Third Memory
viii. Present: Waiting
Music and text composed by Howie Kenty.
For soprano Rebekah Norris.
Commissioned by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music’s International Electronic Music Week, 2015.
Footage courtesy of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
For more music, video, and information, visit http://hwarg.com.
- Shanghai Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDjXAQDbgvc
- Full Ly...2016-01-0415 min