Hitchcock Études (2010), scored for piano and glitch, centres around Nicole Lizée’s preoccupation with the fallibility of media. Technology has the potential to fail and can fail in spectacular ways, creating fascinating sounds and visuals and she looks to capture and replicate those beautiful mistakes. The Hitchcock source material is deconstructed, spliced and otherwise “damaged,” resulting in layers of disjunct, erratic rhythmic material, twisted melodic lines and harmonies woven together to create a new sonic landscape over which the accompanying acoustic material is performed live. The glitched sound material is precisely notated to enable the live piano to synchronize and interweave in tandem with the “malfunctioning” track and video. This work was selected by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) to be featured at the 2014 World Music Days.
