The McLean Mix (composer/performers Priscilla and Barton McLean) are featured in Philippe Petit’s Modulisme Session 111 in September 2024.
The Modulisme series focuses on the alliance of acoustics and electronics, born of the desire to present music composed of artificially created sounds enriched by natural sounds (field recordings/voices) or acoustic material (instruments).
Modulisme Session 111 presents a retrospective of Bart and Priscilla’s work from their earliest analog electronics performances in the 1970s through their newest pieces composed in Kyma.
…the continued development of modular systems without MIDI forced composers to think in terms of pure sound, gesture, and texture was a reason for us both adopting the Kyma system in 2014. —Barton McLean
Priscilla McLean (née Taylor) is an American composer, performer, video artist, writer, and music reviewer. In 1969, at Indiana University, Bloomington (MM), she was greatly influenced by the music of Xenakis, who was teaching there. She sings with extended vocal techniques and plays the piano, synthesizer, violin, percussion, and Amerindian wooden flutes, as well as newly created instruments.
Barton McLean graduated from State University of New York (SUNY) Potsdam (BS 1960), Eastman School of Music (MM 1965), where he was a student of Henry Cowell. In 1967, he married fellow composer Priscilla Taylor. From 1969–76 he directed the Electronic Music Center at the University of Texas at Austin where he pioneered the first large-scale commercially-available in the States Synthi 100 from EMS and sampler (Fairlight CMI).
In Kyma, there are so many more parameters to work with in the Timeline keyframe field that this produces an alternative range of gestural and timbral possibilities when compared to modular approaches. The goal here is not to mimic the analog, but rather to offer so many new possibilities through multiple parameter controls that one forgets the difference. —Barton McLean
For the full interview, including sound examples and more photos, see Modulisme Session 111.