Selected Compositions
Cassia writes music for unique situations and for special places. Her work is often composed for friends and colleagues in order to highlight aspects of their musicality that she admires.
All Rivers Flow to the Sea
Performed by William Roper, Joseph Mitchell, and Cassia Streb
November 23, 2024, Automata, Los Angeles, CA
This electro-acoustic piece was composed for the avant garde tuba and percussion duo; Judicanti Responsura, an audio collage of field recordings, and live and pre-recorded viola.
The piece loosely maps the path of 3 separate streams that operate independently from one another but then, at times, intersect and cross paths. The recordings were taken in the San Gabriel Mountains, the 110 Freeway in Highland Park, an electric tea kettle, and the South Pasadena Metro station. The collection of recordings and live music knit together a fabric of sound that highlights and then obscure sounds and in this way, each performance of the piece is unique.
A Gently Tilting Planet–Fall Equinox
Video by Jennifer Bewerse
Sound by Cassia Streb and Tim Feeney
A Gently Tilting Planet is an hour-long video and sound composition tracing the slow, continuous movements of light over a year—the shifting ocean tides, cacti acting as sundials, shadows stretching and retreating in a valley, and weather altering visibility. Over the course of an hour, we see and hear the effects of a single day’s changing light within a shifting environment, presented simultaneously in separate aural and visual tracks.
Drishti–the Hiatus Edition
Text by Stephen Osborne
Percussion by Tim Feeney
Audio mixing by Colbert Davis
This piece was put together over the course of a few months in the spring and summer of 2020, while much of the world was experiencing a hiatus of sorts
Game Time–version for Autoduplicity
These booklet pieces, all titled Game Time, are intended to be performed by 12 or more performers with no rehearsal. They have been performed by The Dog Star Orchestra, The Ghost Ensemble, and other gatherings of folks. In this video, you can see a clip of Autoduplicity bringing the piece for the audience of their event in 2019.
For Hans-commissioned by Patty Osborne
This piece was commissioned as a part of the Little Chamber Music Series during the 2020 pandemic in memory of Vancouver violist and educator, Hans Karl Piltz. The text is taken from various letters and emails between the Hans and Patty, longtime artist friends.
The sound you hear is the one you replace
This piece was premiered at the Dog Star festival in Los Angeles in 2018. The performers are listening to the speakers that are embedded in the moving walls and reproducing the sounds they hear as they approach the ultrasonic sensors. The speakers are getting quieter as the performers grow louder. Two non-instrument performers are organising the walls according to a blueprint for a house that is under construction.
Modular Tree; A String Quartet
This recording is from a live performance by the Isaura String Quartet in 2017. Each quartet member is responsible for one of the coloured branches on the tree depicted. They have small exciters mounted to the backs of their instruments that are playing the sounds of popcorn kernels falling into a teacup. The number of “pings” guides them through the score.