Summer 2017 Member News
Jon Appleton composed his first Synclavier piece in 30 years thanks to the wonderful help from the composers at the University of Virginia. He was also Composer-in-Residence at Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, Sweden) August, 2017.
Brian Belet and Stephen Ruppenthal premiered A Strange Diversion, co-composed in 2017 for Buchla synthesizer and Kyma system (from their ‘BuchKyma Sequence’), at the Don Buchla Memorial Concerts, San Francisco, CA, on April 23, 2017. The composition was also performed, in fixed media format, at the VU 2 festival, Park City, Utah, on July 18, 2017.
They performed their co-composed Tessellation Rag (from their ‘Disconcerting Speech’ series, for two voices and Kyma processing; 2012, revised 2017) at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF 2017), New York, NY, June 25, 2017.
Belet’s CD Sufficient Trouble was released on PARMA Recordings’ Ravello label in July 2017 (RR7969). The album contains ten of Belet’s computer-music compositions spanning the past twenty years, and it features solo instrumental performances by Patricia Strange, Stephen Ruppenthal, Keith Kirchoff, and Janis Mercer.
See: www.BeletMusic.com for details.
Julius Bucsis’ composition In the Interest of Time (fixed media) has been selected for inclusion in the Ablaze Records Electronic Masters Volume 6 CD, scheduled for release in the autumn. The Message (fixed media) has been selected for inclusion in an RMN Classical CD, also scheduled for release in the autumn. The CD is not yet titled. Some Writings of Spring (fixed media) has been included in the Beneficence CD METropolis Volume 2, which was released in May. The Dawn of Memory – Awakening of the Ancients (fixed media) was included in the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival held in June. Portraits of Nine Revolving Celestial Spheres (fixed media) was included in the International Conference of Auditory Display concert held in State College, Pennsylvania in June. Blue (fixed media) was included in the VU 2 Symposium held in Park City, Utah in July. He will perform a set of original music for electric guitar and computer processing at the Northeastern Electro-Music 2017 festival in Huguenot, New York. The festival will take place from September 8 – 10. Performance time is yet to be determined.
Ryan Carter just released version 2.0 of iMonkeypants on the App Store. It’s an iOS app of motion-controlled algorithmically generated music. Here’s the link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imonkeypants/id547532522?mt=8
Ryan Carter
From June 2017 to January 2018, Seth Cluett will maintain a studio as full-time artist-in-residence at Nokia Bell Labs on their Murray Hill, New Jersey campus. He’ll be working with researchers on haptic and acoustic communication technology as well as developing a series of chamber music works to be performed in their anechoic chamber and presented and processed in realtime to an adjoined wavefield synthesis/hoa listening space designed by Arup acoustics. He’ll be updating my website with news regularly at http://www.onelonelypixel.org
Nokia Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey
Frank Ekeberg, in collaboration with visual artist Krista Caballero, has been awarded the 2017 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. They will be working with scholars at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to conduct research for their ongoing intermedia installation Birding the Future. Iterations of Birding the Future have previously been presented in Australia, Dubai, Norway and the US. Exhibits in 2017 include at the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City, UT, Kunsthall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway, and the Peale Museum in Baltimore, MD. Ekeberg was commissioned by the Electric Audio Unit, Norway to compose an acousmatic work for the 100th anniversary of the Norwegian Society of Composers. The work was first performed at the Skien Art Festival “Greenlightdistrict” in May, and again at the Risør Chamber Music Festival in June. More performances in Norway are scheduled for the fall of 2017.
Frank Ekeberg
Ashkan Fakhrtabatabaie’s multi-channel, fixed media work Metamorphosis was presented at NYCEMF 2017 following its presentation at Utah Crosstalk earlier this year.
Ashkan Fakhrtabatabaie
Three of Robert Fleisher’s early musique concrète works (c. 1970) were heard in the USA and abroad in recent months. Dans le piano was heard in March during Audiograft 2017 (Oxford Brookes University, UK) and again in July on the final concert of the NYCEMF (National Sawdust, Brooklyn NY); Altro Alfresco was heard in June during the Forum Wallis Swiss Contemporary Music Festival/Ars Electronica (Leuk, Switzerland); Loretto Alfresco was heard in July during the VU Symposium (Park City, UT).
Lauren Sarah Hayes has been invited to participate in Ableton Loop 2017, where she will speak about haptic research and education in live electronic music.
https://loop.ableton.com/2017/participants/lauren-hayes/
On August 1st, Keith Kirchoff released the second volume in his ongoing Electroacoustic Piano album series. The album includes Scott Miller’s Every Problem is a Nail, Peter Van Zandt Lane’s Studies in Momentum, Butch Rovan’s Desire with Digressions (an extended and remixed version from what originally appeared on Music from SEAMUS vol. 23), and Christopher Biggs’ The BFG. On September 1st, Kirchoff will also be releasing The Electroacoustic Piano, Volume 3: Off the Cuff, an album with works that feature improvisatory aspects. Included on this album are Elainie Lillios’s Nostalgic Visions, Dan VanHassel’s Poised to Make Gains, Jacob Sudol’s …wash yourself of yourself, and a collaborative piece co-composed by Christopher Jette and Keith Kirchoff, iteration two. Both albums are released by Thinking outLOUD Records, and are available on all major online music retailers and streaming services.
Composer Ralph Lewis has received the Theodore Presser Graduate Music Award from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which will fund an upcoming Illinois-wide music composition outreach program called All Score Illinois and an upcoming collaboration with New York-based dance company The Moving Architects. His paper “Pauline Oliveros: Epitaphs of Technological and Embodied Liberations” was selected for the Pacific Northwest Music Graduate Student Conference and Midwest Graduate Music Conference. “Fearless Reception,” a radio collaboration with the Florence Project and Rogue Trio was recently broadcast on WEFT 90.1-FM and WGXC 90.7-FM.
Ralph Lewis
Scott Miller wrapped up the second season of Ars Electroacoustica, a series with composer/improviser Ted Moore featuring different guest improvisers each concert in an electro-acoustic avant improv setting. This summer, Miller is working with Ensemble U: and the VR film director Rein Zobel on a concert VR setting of “Raba,” for alto flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, tam-tam, and electronics. The music is inspired by the Marimetsa Raba (bog) in Estonia, and the finished work will allow audience members to visually explore the bog while listening to a live performance or a studio recording.
Marimetsa Raba (bog) in Estonia
In August, Miller will perform with guitarist Mart Soo as Three Free Radicals, at the Kukemuru Ambient 2017 festival (https://kukemuru.ee/en/). This concert will launch the pre-release of their second CD, “Travelogue,” on the Improtest label (the CD has a September 22 street date).
Charles Nichols’ Eulogy (Risset), for computer music and processed video, a collaboration with video artist Jay Bruns (aka NoJay) was presented at The Echofluxx Festival of New Media, Music, and Art, at Paralelní Polis, in Prague, Czech Republic, May 5. Nichols performed Anselmo, for electric violin, interactive computer music, electronics, and processed video, and What Bends, for electric violin, interactive computer music, and processed video, with fixed media by Jay Bruns and Zach Duer, and presented a workshop “3D Audio for Artists and Musicians” and a panel “The Study and Applications of Spatial Audio”, with Eric Lyon, Michael Roan, and Tanner Upthegrove, at Moogfest, in American Tobacco Campus Bay 7, in Durham, NC, May 19-20. At the Charlotte New Music Festival, Nichols taught a workshop on Max programming, with Ronald Parks, at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where loadbang premiered his piece In the waiting room of America, for baritone voice, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet, with lyrics by poet Ericka Meitner, at Rowe Recital Hall. Also at the festival, clarinetist Jessica Lindsey performed his Pendulum for clarinet and computer at the Lenny Boy Brewing Co., and he presented his lecture “Expanding Expressive Potential with Digital Technology,” June 19-July 1.
Charles Nichols performing Anselmo, for electric violin, interactive computer music, electronics, and processed video, with beats and video by Jay Bruns, in a 25-channel immersive spatial audio system, at Moogfest, in Durham, NC
Josh Oxford won First Place in Tennesse Tech’s Electrobrass Composition Competition and reports the following about his experience:
“Having written a few different pieces for brass and electronics, I submitted some. They picked A Small Donation: for trombone and looping pedal, which won First Place. I initially wrote a few miniatures for a trombonist I met, Jake Elkin , to familiarize him with the looping pedal and its various operations (Record, Play, Dub, etc.). I also was experimenting with changing time signatures by switching tracks and redistributing sixteenth notes. A Small Donation is a significantly
more advanced piece than my original miniatures, both technically and technologically. The loop FX, unique to the Boss RC-30 pedal, are utilized in the middle (15vb) and end (delay) of the piece. A SILENT brass system is used, instead of a microphone, to ensure maximum acoustic isolation—imperative when multiple tracks are required.”
Steve Ricks presented an evening concert with Christian Asplund as RICKSPLUND (electronic improvisation duo) at Casper College in Wyoming on May 3. They were joined by their host, percussionist Ron Coulter, for a final number–audio available here. Ricks and Asplund also presented a workshop/lecture to students on composition, improvisation, and Max/MSP.
The Matrixsynth interview with Barry Schraeder is finally complete, after two years:
An Interview with Barry Schrader Questions 6F: The Barnum Museum & 7 Current State of Synths
Barry discusses what may be his magnum opus, The Barnum Museum, followed by his take on the current state of synthesizers. There are some tie-ins to his previous work on Atlantis as well as Louis and Bebe Barron. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
“If someone were to ask me what I considered to be my best work, there’s no question in my mind that I would respond that it’s The Barnum Museum. Taken as a whole, this is my longest and most ambitious composition, and one that took me four years to compose. At this time, it remains my last completed work. The idea for The Barnum Museum came from a short story by one of my favorite living authors, Steven Millhauser. Millhauser is a unique writer, and, so, difficult to classify. He’s been compared to such authors as Calvino and Borges, as well as other writers classified as ‘magical realists,’ but I think he’s in a class by himself. ‘The Barnum Museum’ is a short story in a collection with the same title. I was fortunate to get permission from Millhauser and his agents to base the work on his story. I was especially lucky that Millhauser agreed to a years-long email correspondence about the work: I would send each movement to him as I finished it and he would comment on the work and my ideas behind it. This was invaluable help in my completing the piece. P. T. Barnum established two museums in New York City in the nineteenth century. Barnum’s American Museum was on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street from January 1, 1842 to July 13, 1865 when it burned to the ground. Barnum built a second museum soon after, but it was also destroyed by fire in 1868. The attractions made the venue a combination of a zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theatre, and freak show. At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as fifteen thousand visitors daily.”
Schraeder’s soundtrack from Galaxy of Terror will be released in September on Pure Destructive Records, in two editions:
http://puredestructiverecords.bigcartel.com/product/galaxy-of-terror-original-soundtrack
Brian Sears recently completed an exciting residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, studying with composer John Gibson, where he completed a new piece: REKT, for found objects and live electronics. This piece captures his fascination with the collage and augmentation of found sounds, and the performance of unconventional instruments. This upcoming Spring, he also will be co-organizing and co-hosting the 2017 BEAMS Marathon Weekend Festival at Brandeis University. This festival will be 3 days of performances, workshops, panels, and discussions about working with electronics and video in live performance. It will feature performances and collaborations with Yarn/Wire, the SPLICE Ensemble, and Transient Canvas, as well as presentations and workshops by Pamela Z, Elainie Lillios, and Christopher Biggs. There is also a call for submissions of contributions by current students working with electronics or video in New England. More information, and the call for submissions can be found on the BEAMS section of the Brandeis Music Department website(https://www.brandeis.edu/departments/music/beams/index.html), or the New Music Brandeis Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/New-Music-Brandeis-171792066237677/).
During the special exhibition Tomb Treasures at San Francisco Asian Art Museum this April, Sophia Shen premiered her new composition Yayun. Written for pipa and Han Dynasty bronze bells, Yayun is inspired by Chinese classical court music and dance (yayue) and its tuning system, but it’s a modern interpretation of an ancient art form that explores unconventional pipa playing techniques.
A composer, pipa performer/ improviser and sound artist from China, Sophia has incorporated pipa in many of her compositions, both acoustically and electronically. Three of her pipa compositions, including Yayun, have recently won the Silver Prizeand the Bronze Prize during the 2017 Dunhuang National Pipa Composition Competition in China. “Pipa is like the fourth language I speak with artists from all over the world,” she said. She improvises on pipa with dancers, vocalists, instrumentalists from different cultures and experimental instrument builders. Also in this April, She made her debut as a pipa soloist with Gamelan Encinal, a gamelan ensemble directed by Stephen Parris, at the Lou Harrison Centenary Concert at Mills College.
Full video of Yayun here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xferSRe-zhA
Jorge Variego just finished the production of an international collaborative CD exclusively dedicated to electroacoustic music. There’s a post in his site with some information about it here: http://jorgevariego.com/?p=1740
Adam Vidiksis traveled to China for concerts, lectures, and the premiere of two new electroacoustic works in Beijing and Shanghai. He lectured there on composing for data-driven instruments at the Miraphone Summer Festival as the featured guest composer. Other recent performances include the Rutgers Camden Electric Café, Cybersounds, the SCI National Conference, the SEAMUS National Conference, The Fire, New Music Gathering, and the National Opera Center. Vidiksis was commissioned to compose original music for Diageo’s Les Diners de Dali, an evening dinner party and theatrical experience at the renowned Le Cheri, based on Dali’s surrealist cookbook. As a performance and composition faculty of the SPLICE Institute, Vidiksis taught classes this summer at Western Michigan University in beginning and advanced SuperCollider, as well as performing three concerts of electroacoustic music with his fellow members in Splice Ensemble. Vidiksis is currently completing an electroacoustic work for allendance company based on the teachings of Alan Watts for Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival this fall.
Adam Vidiksis joins SPLICE Institute Guest Faculty, Paula Matthusen and Mari Kimura, along with fellow Splice Ensemble members and faculty, Keith Kirchoff and Sam Wells, after one of the concerts at Western Michigan University this summer.