Thomas Ankersmit / Figueroa Terrace
Thomas Ankersmit and Valerio Tricoli / Zwerm Voor Tithonus
Runtime 54:49
Part I begins 6:05
Figueroa Terrace is a 37-minute composition by Dutch artist and composer, and former Villa Aurora resident, Thomas Ankersmit. Ankersmit is one of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the Serge Modular Synthesizer, an instrument originally designed at CalArts in the early 1970s by Serge Tcherepnin as a democratic alternative to the costly modular systems of its era — a “people’s synthesizer” intended for communal experimentation and education.
In the winter of 2011–2012, Ankersmit was invited to CalArts to record new music with the school’s restored Black Sergesystem, a unique instrument built and continually modified by generations of students. The sessions took place both at CalArts in Valencia and in Los Angeles, culminating in a premiere at REDCAT, downtown.
In Figueroa Terrace, the city’s presence is abstract yet tangible: expansive, unstable, bathed in voltage and heat. The piece drifts between near-silence and roaring density, mirroring Los Angeles’ vastness and volatility, its electric hum, its distant horizons, and its layered history of art and invention.
Part II begins 42:00
Zwerm Voor Tithonus is a track from Thomas Ankersmit and Valerio Tripoli’s collaborative album Forma II. Their compositions on this album feature layers of static, hum and dissonance, as well as electroacoustic field recordings that range from metal foil floating on ultrasonic sound-beams to mechanical clickers recorded in abandoned radar domes at a Teufelsberg, Germany site that once housed a Cold War spy station.
Thomas Ankersmit and Valerio Tricoli / Zwerm Voor Tithonus
Runtime 54:49
Part I begins 6:05
Figueroa Terrace is a 37-minute composition by Dutch artist and composer, and former Villa Aurora resident, Thomas Ankersmit. Ankersmit is one of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the Serge Modular Synthesizer, an instrument originally designed at CalArts in the early 1970s by Serge Tcherepnin as a democratic alternative to the costly modular systems of its era — a “people’s synthesizer” intended for communal experimentation and education.
In the winter of 2011–2012, Ankersmit was invited to CalArts to record new music with the school’s restored Black Sergesystem, a unique instrument built and continually modified by generations of students. The sessions took place both at CalArts in Valencia and in Los Angeles, culminating in a premiere at REDCAT, downtown.
In Figueroa Terrace, the city’s presence is abstract yet tangible: expansive, unstable, bathed in voltage and heat. The piece drifts between near-silence and roaring density, mirroring Los Angeles’ vastness and volatility, its electric hum, its distant horizons, and its layered history of art and invention.
Part II begins 42:00
Zwerm Voor Tithonus is a track from Thomas Ankersmit and Valerio Tripoli’s collaborative album Forma II. Their compositions on this album feature layers of static, hum and dissonance, as well as electroacoustic field recordings that range from metal foil floating on ultrasonic sound-beams to mechanical clickers recorded in abandoned radar domes at a Teufelsberg, Germany site that once housed a Cold War spy station.
Listen to the Thomas Ankersmit program