Written for Splinter Reeds and part of a larger project. The live ensemble plays along with fixed media. The audio for each piece is a collage compiled from different recordings of the same song—focusing on moments where the lyrics have colors in them. Colours’ visual use of language Is influenced by artists like Ed Ruscha, Glen Ligon, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer. The music embraces the concept of palimpsest on many levels. The audio collages play with memory and earworms in a minimalist theme and variations, akin to Steve Reich’s work involving pre-recorded audio (Different Trains, It’s Gonna Rain, etc.). The live musicians and singers layer meaning on top of this collaged audio minimalism, focusing the process-driven dispersion of meaning into a coherent dramatic arc. There is also a large influence of experimental film on Colours. In particular, Philip Greenaway’s 70s films Vertical Features Remake and Windows—which adhere to and humorously critique the tenets of structural film and conceptual art.
Piece Format: Electroacoustic
Two of Pentacles
Two of Pentacles is a solo performance for Lou Harrison National Resonator guitar and 7 of my 20 Eikosany chimes. I play the JI guitar, and the chimes will be played through robotic triggers. The 7 notes are the pitches that overlap between the Lou Harrison’s guitar tuning at the Eikosany chimes I built last year. For this juggling of systems and for this period in my own career and life, Two of Pentacles is a very appropriate symbol.
Two of Pentacles was created with support from a City of Los Angeles Master Artist Project Grant.
Eikosany Study
Eikosany Study at UCSD’s Experimental Theater
Performed by Palimpsest Ensemble (cond. Steven Schick) on April 20, 2022
A harmony study of a 1-3-5-7-9-11 Eikosany composed for the Palimpsest Ensemble.
Incomplete Open Hexany
Written for the Now Hear Ensemble, Incomplete Open Hexany is a harmony study of a 6-note JI scale.
It was premiered on April 6, 2022 at the Riverside Art Museum
Neuston
Neuston played by Mark Dresser’s UCSD Bass Quartet
Recorded at Conrad Prebys Music Center
Split screen video is Myra Hinrichs playing Hodad at Trestles BeachLink to video on YouTube site
Neuston was written for Mark Dresser’s UCSD bass quartet, who premiered it on April 9. It is mean to be played simultaneously with Hodad.
Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage
A collaboration with performer/director Alexander Gedeon, Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage combines live music and theatrical performance to reframe the cultural significance of the “worst album in rock and roll history.”
“Having Fun with Elvis on Stage” is a 1973 album collaged entirely from Elvis speaking on stage between songs at live concerts – no music. AllMusic’s Mark Deming declared “hearing it is like witnessing a car wreck, leaving onlookers too horrified and too baffled to turn away.” Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage reimagines this vilified recording as the libretto for a sort of ghost opera, combining pop art nostalgia with new technology and classical instruments to create a memetic hologram of the endless purgatory of celebrity afterlife.
My live musical score is performed along with the original LP as if they were the pit orchestra for opera or musical theater – sometimes harmonizing with the words, painting emotions in the spaces between, or reacting theatrically. Meanwhile, Gedeon’s “Elvis” persona becomes a vehicle to explore all things banal and absurd in pop idolatry, as well as the performative aspects of ‘stage presence.’
2020 press for Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage
Sequenza 21: “…carried off with exemplary production values and extraordinary performances, making the case that new music concerts can be experienced online at a high level.”
LA Times Cultural Pick: “Theater artist Alexander Gedeon and composer Daniel Corral deconstruct the myth of pop stardom in this musical fable with live accompaniment by the Now Hear Ensemble.”
LA Weekly: Arts Calendar Highlight
Refractions
Refractions album
Released May 5, 2017 on Populist Records
Refractions expands on my ten years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes. Composed for string quartet, electric guitar, and electronically processed music box, Refractions combines ethereal ambient electronics with contemplative acoustic timbres. Featuring performances from prog rock/metal guitarist Jeremy Kerner, the Isaura String Quartet, and Daniel Corral on music box and laptop, the music is a spacious continuum of composed structures, improvisation, and overlapping textures.
2017 press for Refractions
Christian Carey: “this slowly evolving piece of music is spellbinding in its execution. Rather than foregrounding the incremental shifts of material, the listener is encouraged to bask in a wash of sounds, varied and lovely timbres that are deployed with enough independence to seem to have minds of their own.”
Sequenza 21: “The cool ambient tranquility of Refractions is a much needed antidote to the raucous confusion that infests our daily lives; this music works to elegantly recharge us in a moment of restorative calm.”
National Sawdust Log Journal: “A sublime study in anxious stasis and fleeting repose for string quartet, electric guitar, music box, and digital treatments…”
Textura: “The music blossoms in the most peaceful of manners… the piece… presents an ever-mutating weave of softly glimmering electronics and fluttering acoustic timbres, and as it advances the impression forms of a spacious, ambient-styled composition that’s rooted in both pre-formed structures and improvisation.”
MetalJazz: “Open-aired, shivery…”
Avant Music News: Pick of the week
The Rest is Noise: Nightafternight playlist of “New and recent releases of interest”
24700: “Refractions is a 45-minute electro-acoustic chamber piece that expands on Corral’s 10 years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes”
Talk Classical: “Experimental yet attractive new music”
Chicago Reader: Today’s Playlist
Best of 2017 Lists: Bandcamp Daily, Avant Music News (Honorable Mention)National Sawdust, a fool in the forest, Asociacion Intonarumori, Steve Hoffman
Space-Time
Space-Time, live at Automata
Premiere on May 7, 2016 by Accordant Commons
Based on text from Christine Wertheim’s book +|’me’S-pace, Space-Time uses a tuning system derived from La Monte Young’s Well-Tuned Piano.
It was commissioned by Accordant Commons and premiered at Automata, Los Angeles on May 7, 2016 as part of MicroFest.
2016 press for Space-Time
New Classic LA: “The mood set for meditation and rhythmic swaying and shifting, the singers clapped and recited and sang and slurred and whooped. The words philosophize about reading and comprehending, and shift tiny elements to change entire meanings, … atomizing the language and investigating the relationships of its components… The result reframes consonance and dissonance, making the audience rethink on the fly what they think is pleasant and what clashes. What is usually instinctive to our ears here required conscious thought, fitting the space journey of +|’me’S-pace. The beat was constant but the meter shifts, making the steady time feel like it was swaying in the wind. Between the sonority and the flux of time, it is all the listener can do to hang on and enjoy the ride. “
Meditation
For any number of voices and optional electronics. Duration is variable, to be pre-determined by the performers.
2015 press for Meditation
LA Times: “Corral’s wordless, a cappella “Meditation” enters into Ligeti territory with four singers treated to electronic feedback and mimicking what might be mistaken for an airplane in perpetual lift off. The performers looked terrified yet sounded amazing.”
