Born seven days after the premiere of Le Grand Macabre, and armed with his version of synesthesia, Kevin Mendoza was provided a unique impetus to write strangely colorful music, inspired by the processes of memory and perception, all of which inform his musical aesthetic in disparate and inventive ways. Often visually stimulated by architectural models, Kevin’s music is influenced by the simplicity of fractals and cellular automata; their essence (idea), to him, are of a neuter quality, capable of being utilized as a kind of temporal glue without the stigmata of “form”. The sonic result is an intense primeval battery of, precise yet, jagged hits and attacks with an almost paradoxical sensitivity to color, which demands to be experienced, because of its incessant focus on disconcerting change and frightening non-change. These surface level symptoms, however, only obliquely suggest the causes.
Kevin began to experiment in the arts at an early age. At age eight, Kevin’s insatiable creativity led him to raise hogs, but his heart was in rearing music. He played a number of instruments, including piano, guitar, cello and accordion, to name a few. His creativity funneled itself into composition at age thirteen, composing pieces that were eerily bright. Near the end of high school, he was optimistic about a college career in physics, more specifically aeronautics, but thought that music was more difficult, which led him to the New England Conservatory of Music, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Composition. By twenty-one, he finally realized that he had synesthesia, which tends to affect his music in strange ways. Currently, he is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Composition at Mills College. In his sparse time, Kevin is an amateur neuroscientist, specializing in cognition and somatosensory plasticity, and optimistic about a career in the service industry, where he hopes to write combinatorial twelve-tone rows for spare change. When he turns thirty-four he hopes to stop doing that.
Organelle
For Two Pianos
Five distinct questions occupied my thoughts about music during the composition of Organelle. First, what is the role that acculturation, or socio-evolution, performs with respect to selective attention? Second, what is the “thing” or “object” that draws us in about music—where and what is its significance; is it more phenomenological and perceptual? Third, what is the distinction, made by Morton Feldman, between form and scale? Is it that one is necessarily a narrative? Fourth, how do conflicting notations affect the performers’ judgments about temporality, “flow”, and coherence—more precisely, what kinds of things does notation accomplish, regardless of acculturated philosophies? Finally, what is cognitively “plastic” in musics?
This piece is dedicated to Joseph and Shen Johnson, both friends and pianists of the highest caliber.