Igor Korneitchouk's latest CD Sonic Habitats defines a new genre of art-ambient sound

SAN DIEGO, California -- July 19, 1999 -- Old King Cole Productions is proud to announce the release of a new CD by San Diego experimental composer Igor Korneitchouk. The CD Sonic Habitats is an ambient album which creates a wholly unique sonic environment. Inspired by sound recordings of natural phenomena, Korneitchouk aspires to and retains the ebb and flow, the constancy and vastness of such phenomena. From his wholly imagined sonic environments the composer wants you to feel the gentle breeze or see the clear starry night. The result, though sensual, also has a kinship to the intellectual concepts of John Cage.

The entire 73 minute CD contains only two pieces.

In the first piece, "Chime Time," sound effects form the basis of Korneitchouk's musical palette. Wind chimes made of glass, metal, and natural sounding bamboo alongside plucked piano strings, mimic the play of the wind, while underneath, sound the occasional bird call and train whistle.

In the second piece, "Plucked Moments," sparse wide-open space carries the listener to a place of calm. The solo piano is played for its sound quality, plucked and strummed as sound effects, rather than in a traditional melodic way.

This music has been beautifully recorded inside the studio from the composer's experiments with different levels of audible, semi-audible and semi-conscious sounds. These sounds were carefully processed to enhance their acoustic nature. Korneitchouk ultimately combined these sounds in dynamically graded foreground and background layers creating a hyper-real reflection of his backyard's blissful ambience.

Visit the Old King Cole Productions Web site at http://www.oldkingcole.biz/okcd/ to order the CD.

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IGOR KORNEITCHOUK was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1956, and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of three. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds, Bernard Rands, and Joji Yuasa. In 1980, his Six Frames for String Quartet was selected as part of the syndicated Young Audiences Program. Splinters of a Shattered Space, for Cello and Piano, was selected by competition to be performed at the Cal Arts Festival of 1983. He has been awarded grants from the UC Regents and the American Music Center for the performance of his Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, "Desert Flowers," in 1987. Korneitchouk has had his orchestral works Everything That Rises Must Converge recorded by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz, and Viola Concerto, "Coaxing the Shadows to Move of Their Own Volition," recorded by the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra of Prague with violist Karen Dreyfus.