Tornado Project

As a ferocious wind storm spins up all things in its path, The Tornado Project, conceived by composers Ricardo Climent and Paul Wilson, cuts a path through the repertoire of 21st-century electroacoustic music, presenting a collection of works for flute, clarinet, and computer-generated sound that explore the chaotic beauty of this trio. With performances by two American wind virtuosi – clarinetist Esther Lamneck and flutist Elizabeth McNutt – these works showcase the skills of the musicians, their dynamic relationships with the computer, and the composers’ innovative, colorful, and resourceful styles.

The result of an eight-year integrated process of collaborations and performances, this self-titled release on Ravello Records showcases six works from a diverse group of contemporary composers on either side of the Atlantic, including Ricardo Climent, Paul Wilson, Robert Rowe, Andrew May, Eric Lyon, and Russell Pinkston. These composers create mysterious and turbulent sonic worlds by incorporating extended techniques, primal and ethereal computer-generated sounds, and improvisation. The combination of the crystalline and airy timbres of the flute weighed with the earthy tones of the clarinet create stark and eerie tones, while the computer adds chaotic gestures, effects processing, atmosphere, and foil material to the instruments’ phrases. McNutt and Lamneck collaborated with the Tornado composers to create a coherent sound that brings these works together into an idealized “virtual performance” of this project’s repertoire.