By Dianne Ballon

A highlight at this summer’s Audio Theater Workshop was the performance of Dwight Frizzel and Michael Henry’s powerful and moving audio art piece, Sonic Force: Thunderbolt Threnody. Sonic Force is based on the recordings of two A-10 Warthog attack planes, an Air Evac Helicopter, sound effects and a live musical ensemble.
I spoke with co-creator Dwight Frizzel, a few days before the performance while in the background composer Michael Henry played bursts of jet engine sound combined with musical segments that fought to be synched with a click track. Frizzel explains: “We’re adjusting the click track right now, and so there are all these technical things that need to be done as we get the click lined up with the Warthogs. Everything is very closely timed. So it’s really composing with time.”

The A-10 jet maneuvers were recorded over a period of two years at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Frizzel recalls the decision to record the A-10′s for the piece. “We listened to all the jets and this is the one. It has a very unusual sound. It’s different than every other jet in the sense that it has a complexity. They’re very gestural and very musical. The noise is sound inside sound.”

I sat in on the musical ensemble rehearsal where members of the band, the local community and participants from the workshop all took their places and waited for the cues. What moved me about the piece was how the music connects, matches, and then takes off from the sound of the jets, and how we normally wouldn’t think of a war plane as “musical”.

I asked Frizzel to describe the musical elements of the piece. “It’s really the brilliance of Michael Henry’s score and his orchestration”, he said. “The Warthogs are really the focus. The role of the instruments is partially to mix and meld with the sound. And certainly start playing with it during the fly over sequences. So the piece is sensitive to the A-10, the sound signature of it.”

“And certain kinds of things will happen when you meld with sounds. They locate in a place between you. It’s almost as if they reach inside you or you’re reaching inside them. So there’s an experience perhaps the musicians are feeling with this, when it’s right and things are mixing. And then the audience will experience it in terms of how that sound projects, moves or hovers between the players. It’s part of the spatiality of it.”

Added to the mix were unusual sound effects that were performed live. During a rehearsal break, sound effects artist David Shinn described the bowed cymbal: a cymbal partially submerged in water, played with a violin bow. David Shinn: “I am running a bow over the edge of the cymbal while lowering and raising it in and out of the water. The water is changing the sound of the cymbal. And there’s a microphone that’s underwater and a microphone above water to catch both aspects of the sound.” The result: a drawn out sound that resembles the haunting call of a whale.

Next, was the wind wand: a short handle with a long dowel that was spun by the wrist. David Shinn: “And we also have some wind wands. It’s a rubber band that’s stretched along a dowel. And it has a spreader, and you can move the spreader up and down the dowel to change the tune. And we have two of them that we’re playing, harmonizing at different pitches. We should be able to harmonize with the helicopters that are flying over in this surround sound experience.”

With rehearsals, sound levels and timing in place, all were ready for the performance. Frizzel calls it a “celebration of the Soundscape”, a “blending of the machine and the human.”

He adds: “When I was imbedded with them, it was our intersection which allowed this whole thing to happen. So in a sense it’s also an experiment in bridging communities. Will we transform the entire military to make art all the time rather than war? I’m not so sure. But we did make art for at least Sonic Force.”