Sur la Plaque

What does it mean? Among bike racers, the phrase signifies going big at a crucial moment. It’s a metaphor for both racing and life. Sur la Plaque is an attempt to make poetic the cruel but beautiful world of bicycle racing.

Mobtown Modern


I’m the Co-Founder and Curator of the Baltimore’s Mobtown Modern Music Series. Mobtown Modern was introduced in January 2008 to fill a void in Baltimore’s vibrant music scene and to serve as a catalyst for musical innovation and the creation and presentation of the new music of our times. Through the presentation of today’s most relevant, innovative, and engaging new music and reimagining the total concert experience, Mobtown Modern fosters meaningful encounters with music, musicians, and composers and actively engages a diverse audience in experiences of contemporary music that are unexpected, challenging, and inspiring. Mobtown Modern seeks to be the region’s leading voice for musical innovation and to be instrumental in establishing Baltimore as a vital center for contemporary music.

Hybrid Groove Project


A unique non-traditional chamber ensemble, Hybrid Groove Project is a collaboration between myself and composer/turntablist DJ Dubble8 (a.k.a. Erik Spangler). Synthesizing elements from traditions as diverse as modern classical music, free jazz, funk, and break-beat electronica, the project emphasizes affinities between these various influences in a union of groove and sonic experimentation. Sacawa and Dubble8 first teamed up in 2004 for a multimedia concert at the University of Michigan with internationally acclaimed video artist Johnny DeKam. Since then, Hybrid Groove Project has evolved to become a cutting-edge performance model for new music, embracing the idea of live remix in the presentation of both original and borrowed compositions.

Listen to Scattered Glass, HGP’s remix of Philip Glass’s Piece in the Shape of a Square:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Zodiacrobatic


Zodiacrobatic is an evening-length remix/arrangement of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis (Melodies of the Zodiac) created by Hybrid Groove Project. These melodies were first composed for Stockhausen’s work Music Im Bauch (1975) in which the melodies are played by 6 percussionists or by music boxes contained in the belly of a birdman. Stockhausen also made a score of the music box melodies available to be arranged for any instrument or group of instruments. For years I have wanted to make an arrangement of these pieces but the timing and situations never worked out quite right. Stockhausen has always both fascinated and frightened me. Yet I was in awe that he could turn these qualities of exactness, precision, and scrupulousness—a type of control in music composition usually leading to negligible sonic results—into meaningful and emotional pieces of music. Stockhausen was also not very interested in beat-based or repetitive music, famously referring to Aphex Twin’s work as “dancing bar music.” So the idea of creating a version, or “remix,” of his Zodiac melodies, which will certainly contain some beat-based and repetitive elements, seemed fun in the way that playing a joke on someone who doesn’t like jokes is sometimes fun. Zodiacrobatic was premiered on January 20, 2010 at the Metro Gallery in Baltimore as part of the Mobtown Modern Music Series.