Cantata For A Loop Trail is a 45-minute music theater work for singers and instrumentalists along a forest trail, composed for the group Rhymes With Opera. Small groups of audience members (no more than 20 at a time) will be escorted by a guide musician/narrator to different stations along the path, blending intimate proximity to performers along with the experience of voices and instruments heard from a distance. Texts by Wendell Berry, the Roman Code of Justinian, along with adaptations of several Appalachian folk songs and a few of my own lyrics, frame the work as a type of secular ecological Mass.
This work is intended to connect audiences with a natural environment close to home, and with memories of older generations regarding changes that the land has undergone. Each performance will have site-specific audio components, derived from recorded interviews with local people and samples of environmental sounds found in the area of the performance. In each location where the work is performed, I interview local people to record the spoken accounts of their elders in the community, relating to changes in the landscape, local sounds, and what their
home area means to them. I integrate these audio contributions, which are played back mixed with other sounds, and broadcast to small radios along the loop trail.

"From The Mountains: Hazel Dickens in Baltimore" is an audiovisual collaboration between Erik Spangler, Elizabeth LaPrelle, and Anna Roberts-Gevalt, based on the life and music of country/bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens. Performed live on Anna & Elizabeth's Crankie Fest at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore on April 12, 2014. Video documentation and editing by Kevin Gift. From The Mountains: Hazel Dickens in Baltimore was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from the Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

"Ancient & Modern Musical Synthesis For Catholic Liturgy" is a collection of liturgical pieces that I have written since 2016 while singing bass with the Mount Calvary Choir. Motets and Masses were commissioned by choirmasters Dr. Allen Buskirk and Andrew Johnson, including works for unaccompanied SATB choir and works for individual voices and organ. These motets bring together influences from Late Medieval and Renaissance polyphony to Islamic adhan and Sufi chant, composers such as Moondog, Merideth Monk, modern post-minimalist textures, and drone music.

Step-A-Tune Soundweb features amplified percussive dance triggering a wide range of sounds from a customized modular synthesizer, in collaboration with dancer Becky Hill. Moving between and mixing different audio regions including analog electronic sounds, harmonic resonators modeled on different physical materials, granular synthesis based on found sounds, and direct filtering of input from a contact microphone on the dance board, the interaction between the dancer and the machine creates a generative sonic space which can produce its own variations within a broad palette. The synthesizer player shapes the direction of the sounds through modification of voltage signals within the system, leading to a variety of soundscapes while maintaining a close connection with the action of the dancer’s feet. The progression of the piece explores a spectrum of connection between movement and sound, between sonic abstraction and specific sound associations connected with a particular landscape and musical tradition (Appalachian folk music and dance).

"The space between (us)" is an interdisciplinary performance work inspired by the physical, social, and emotional barriers created by the architecture of public spaces. Inspired by shopping mall seating areas and modern architecture, large-scale sculptures fill the gallery. When filled with dancers, the sculptures become enlivened spaces, illustrating conditioned behaviors of public spaces and separating bodies in motion. Beneath the surface, however, lives the possibility for creativity, freedom, self-expression, and intimate human connection. Choreography: Nicole A. Martinell Sculptures: Lisa Dillin Featured dancers are Deep Vision members Deontay Gray, Samantha Hopkins, Melissa Lloyd, Sofie Massa, Rachel Moore, Sarah Smith, and Ann Zickefoose. Additional collaborators include an original score by Erik Spangler (DJ Dubble8) and PJ Dorsey (Tarotplane), and costumes by Kendra Shapanus with video production support by Erik Dillinger and 3D fabrication support by Chip Banister, Wilder Childs, and Pete Karis.

Devonian Geometry is an interdisciplinary composition orignially designed to be performed at night in the Devonian fossil gorge at the Coralville Reservoir, near Iowa City, Iowa. The performance incorporates electronically processed voice, clarinet, and percussion with video projected on the rocks of the fossil bed. The 15-minute composition moves between different moments in geological time, evoking Iowa’s underwater landscape in the Devonian era alongside a perspective from the present moment, exploring our genetic connection with the creatures imprinted on this ancient seabed that has been exposed to modern-day humans through flooding erosion. Devonian Geometry is presented as musical ritual to attune our sense to the continuum of time and evolution in a specific physical place. How does our sense of place, or our connection with the land, change when considering past ages of the Earth?

The text of Devonian Geometry combines poetry written by the composer, scientific names of ancient fish, spoken narration of selections from the short story Trilobytes by Breece Pancake, and inclusion of texts written by local elementary school students. 
 

The premiere of Devonian Geometry took place on the evening of Friday, June 16, 2017, alongside a selection of other works by Erik Spangler and others, curated for this specific physical setting. 

Erik Spangler - composer

Megan Ihnen - mezzo-soprano

Greg Oakes - clarinet

Adam Groh - percussion

Sound design and flexible musical score for site-specific virtual reality app for iPhone, in collaboration with Lisa Moren and Jaimes Mayhew, exploring the site of the demolished McKeldin Fountain at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and its meaning to residents.

Music for choreography by Nicole Martinell, using different synthesizers (modular and Ableton instruments) along with found sounds.
"Beneath our feet exists the mycelium, a web-like network of fungal threads, pulsing, communicating, bearing fruit, and orchestrating the ecosystem."

This project explores an adaptation of Baltimore Boom Bap Society’s approach to group improvisation in hip hop, through the conditions of social distancing during quarantine in 2020-21. I created initial electronic parts that I sent to musician friends, to which they recorded their own improvised parts and sent these back to me. I mixed in each person's remotely recorded part and sent it on to the next person. A few artists were able to come to my studio in person to record. The process of creating these collaborative tracks became a way to maintain a feeling of connection to my musical community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

released July 22, 2021

Eze Jackson - vocals
Neru Thee Fourth Fugee - vocals
Shodekeh - breath art
Chuck The Madd Ox - beatbox
Matt Muirhead - homemade kalimbas
Yoshi Horiguchi - double bass
Jeron White - upright bass
Blake Cramer - vibraphone
Danyell Perkins - electric guitar
Patrick McMinn - modular synth
Loren Ludwig - bass viol
Rufus Roundtree - trombone
Chris Pumphrey - piano
Tony Bonta - banjo
Erik Spangler - samplers, synths, turntable, banjo, percussion
Mount Calvary Choir - choral samples