Sam Alvarez - things as passing (for saxophone, live electronics, and video)

things as passing (2025) by Sam Alvarez Sam Alvarez: alto saxophone, live electronics, video Recorded live on May 3, 2025, in Geneva, Switzerland. Program note: The late poet Saskia Hamilton wrote: ‘as’ means ‘like’ but also ‘while.’ ‘things as passing’ thinks about the perception of things passing, and, specifically, about artifacts produced by various perceptual “rolling shutters.” In most digital cameras, a frame isn’t captured all at once: rather, information is captured and recorded pixel by pixel, grain by grain, from the top of the frame to the bottom, or from left to right. A frame isn’t captured all at once, yet, when we play it back, each frame appears to be a snapshot of something still. If something moves too quickly in the frame, or if the camera moves too quickly for the sensor to keep up, the image captured is warped, the pixels unable to portray the motion that really occurred. The video element of ‘things as passing’ was captured entirely on my family’s old camcorder—each shot filmed while quickly moving (or filming something quickly moving), always trying to capture different artifacts of the camcorder's rolling shutter, developing a visual language of warped motion. The music is structured as a sprawling additive canon, born from live granular processing and delays, gathering grains piece by piece, but hearing them all at once, always on top of what came before. Counterpoint and harmony emerge from a palette of delicate, unstable saxophone sounds, images and musical material constantly passing by, small forms constructing, coalescing, and releasing—always as things pass. For more information, visit: samalvarezmusic.com Recording credits: Audio Production, Video Editing: Sam Alvarez Visual Production: Guillermo de la Jara Cardenas (assisted by Florencia Novoa, Joshua Hyde, and Sam Alvarez)