Feel Something (1999) ~9'12"
The title of this “train fantasy” is a too-literal translation from the French for “railroad” (chemin de fer), and refers back 50 years, to the very beginnings of composition with recorded sound: Pierre Schaeffer’s 1948 trip to the train station.

Two railroad lines crisscross Charlottesville, Virginia, marking the town with a huge X. Several times each day, trains rumbled through the valley near our house and continued on, passing right through the center of town. Besides these slower Charlottesville trains, where I lived before returning sourth. The train announcement was recorded in New York City’s Penn Station; the two conversational voices are those of myself and John Gibson.

The piece was completed in the Summer of 1999 in the composer’s home studio and at the Virginia Center for Computer Music, on a PII machine running linux, with Rtcmix software.
-aw

Alicyn Warren (Michigan, USA)
Alicyn Warren is a composer who also writes about electronic and film music. She is a graduate of Columbia University and Princeton University, where she earned a doctorate in composition. She has received grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the american Musicological Society, the Mellon Foundation, and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (two prizes, 1991 and 1999). Her works have been performed and broadcast in the US, UK, Canada, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and are recorded on the Centaur and Le Chant due Monde labels.

Alicyn Warren has taught computer music, composition, and film music at Columbia University and at the University of Virginia. In Fall 2001 she joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, with a joint appointment in the School of Music and the School of Art and Design.