Brian Belet‘s Loose Canon, for any three instruments and Kyma real-time processing (composed 2016), was performed by The SPLICE Ensemble (Samuel Wells, Keith Kirchoff, & Adam Vidiksis), with Mark Zaki controlling Kyma in performance real time, at the International Computer Music Conference (held in conjunction with the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival), on June 17, 2019, in New York City, New York.
Kyong Mee Choi reports the following news items:
* Train of Thoughts Train of Thoughts has been published on the Music from SEAMUS CD volume 28. SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) releases its 28th volume of works by its member composers, representing the newest trends and ideas in electroacoustic music.
* To Unformed To Unformed for piano and electronics was performed by Ricardo Martín Descalzo at the Festival Sierra Musical at the Teatro Municipal Villa de Collado in Madrid, Spain on August 2, 2019.
* Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University hosted the Summer Composition Institute on July 15-26, 2019. Coordinated with Dr. Stephanie Salerno, Drs. Kyong Mee Choi and Stuart Folse taught a two-week dynamic program including lectures, private lessons, seminars and the student concert at the end of the program. Dr. Winston Choi (piano) and MingHuan Xu (violin) joined the Intitute to coach and premier student pieces.
* Kyong Mee Choi was a featured guest artist at the SPLICE INSTITUTE 2019 at Western Michigan University School of Music in Kalamaoo, MI on June 23-29, 2019. She taught various workshops, gave a featured lecture on her music and compositional process, gave private lessons. Three of her works were programmed. Vanished for harp and electronics was performed by Ben Melsky (harp) from Dal Niente, and Sublimation Sublimation for marimba and electronics, and To Unformed To Unformed for piano and electornics were performed by the SPICE Ensemble members; Adam Vidiksis (percussion), and Keith Kirchoff (piano).
* Freed Freed for bass flute and electronics was performed by Shanna Gutierrez at the Festival at Centre for Present-Day Music at Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig, Germany on June 22, 2019.
* Pendulum for oboe, english horn, and electronics was performed by Oboe Duo Agosto (Ling-Fei Kang and Charles Huang) at the 2019 ICMC/NYCEMF Conference and Festival at Hebrew Union College, New York, NY on June 18, 2019.
* Vanished for harp and electronics was premiered by Ben Melsky at the Dal Niente’s Party at The Revival, Hyde Park, Chicago, IL on June 16, 2019.
* Train of Thoughts Train of Thoughts was chosen for the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2019. The participating composers are James Andean, JP Lempke, Emma Margetson, Robert McClure, Joao Pedro Oliveira, Paolo Pastorino, Ermir Bejo, Kyong Mee Choi, Epa Fassianos, Dave Gedosh, Ivonne Hernandez, Dimitris Savva, Chatori Shimizu, Nadir Vassena, Yiqing Zhu.
Robert Fleisher‘s musique concrète composition, Loretto Alfresco (in SEAMUS’s Electroacoustic Miniatures 2012: Re-Caged) was included in the ”Magic Bus” program during NWEAMO’s Electronic Music Festival at San Diego State University on April 25. Another of his fixed media works, Dans le piano, was heard during the VU3 Symposium (Park City, UT) on July 12.
In June, Charles Nichols taught the Max Computer Music Workshop at the Charlotte New Music Festival in Charlotte, NC, where Transient Canvas premiered his composition It does not shy away from the sword, for bass clarinet and marimba, at Bryant Hall. In July, Tanner Upthegrove presented the paper “The Art and Science of Soundscape Auralization for High Density Loudspeaker Arrays”, cowritten with Nichols and Mike Roan, at the International Congress on Sound and Vibration in Montréal, Canada.
Steven Ricks attended his first Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2019) in Busan, South Korea, August 29 – September 1. The Symposium included the premiere of his piece After the Storm for live percussion and Kyma by Glenn Webb. Ricks was assisted in preparing and performing the live electronics by Austin Lopez.
Summer for Neil Rolnick started out on June 29 with the premiere of a dance version of his recent solo laptop piece, Messages. The choreographer was Julia Bengtsson, who was joined by Mauricio Vera at the Higher Ground Festival in upper Manhattan in New York City. A link to the performance is here https://vimeo.com/346743672
In the performance Rolnick is playing the laptop live, and responding to the dancers, though off camera in the video.
In mid July Rolnick spent a week at the Crested Butte Music Festival in Colorado, where the VOXARE Quartet performed his Oceans Eat Cities on July 13. Over the next few days Rolnick and the group recorded the quartet for an upcoming CD on the Albany Records label, as well as recording his solo piano & computer piece Mirages for inclusion on the same CD. In Mirages Rolnick plays both the piano and computer parts. The CD has an expected release of April or May 2020.
VOXARE Quartet recording Oceans Eat Cities at Colorado Western University in Gunnison
Dr. Adam Vidiksis has been appointed by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission as a Director of Arts Technology for a performance during the 2020 Olympics in Japan celebrating the first inclusion of karate in the games. He will be working with composer Gene Coleman to lead a team of American and Japanese artists and musicians to capture movement using sensors and generate original music and visuals. Later this fall, Vidiksis will be exploring the Mammoth Cave National Park with his electroacoustic trio, SPLICE Ensemble, and composer Paula Matthusen of Wesleyan University. With special permission of the National Park Service, they will hike instruments and gear over two miles into the caves for a recording session that captures the cave’s unique sonic characteristics through a technique of recursive processing. This research will culminate in a new work composed by Matthusen to be premiered by SPLICE. In early September, Vidiksis’s work will be seen in Philadelphia in a series of interdisciplinary performances, workshops, and an art installation. This project, entitled kNots & Nests, is directed by choreographer Marion Ramirez in close collaboration with Vidiksis and glass artist Kris Rumman.
This summer, Vidiksis recorded percussion and electronics music by Anne Neikirk for release on an upcoming album with Parma Records. The SPLICE Ensemble was a featured performer at the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival and International Computer Music Conference, where they played multiple concerts. He taught at the SPLICE Institute at Western Michigan University, where the trio performed a number of concerts, including a premiere by composer Brittany Green. Vidiksis also volunteered to teach at the Young Woman Composers Camp (in its second year), as well as directed and taught at the inaugural SPLICE Academy, a week-long music technology program for high school students hosted at Temple University. In June, composer Steve Ricks of Brigham Young University and SPLICE Ensemble were endowed a Barlow Commissioning Award to collaborate on a new work.
Vidiksis is currently completing the score for two short films, one with director Tetsuki Ijichi, as well as a VR film with filmmaker Rod Coover. Coover and Vidiksis’s work, Tidal Impacts, will be presented in a series of VR installations on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus in November, as well as in a live music performance with the film at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
A new theatrical work by Vidiksis and director Mike Durkin of the Renegade Company, called That Time We Talked About Spaceships While Recreating Matisse’s ‘Le Bonheur De Vivre’, will premiere this fall at the Barnes Foundation.
Quanta, Vidiksis’s recent new work for voice and electronics, will be performed this fall by bass baritone Nicholas Isherwood at Warsaw Autumn, Amsterdam’s STEIM, and the University of Birmingham, UK.
Vidiksis’s music technology ensemble, BEEP, was invited by the American Composers Forum and Mural Arts Philadelphia to perform three concerts this fall on their upcoming music festival celebrating the opening of Philadelphia’s new Rail Park, which will showcase newly commissioned sound art installations at sites throughout the park. Also, BEEP will premiere a new work based on commuter data released by SEPTA by composer Andrew Litts in two public performances in Philadelphia’s Suburban Station this fall.
Most importantly, Vidiksis is pleased to announce the upcoming addition of a baby boy to his family. His wife, Patty, is due in early December. His daughter, Olivia, is excited to be a big sister.
SPLICE Academy faculty and participants at Temple University (left to right: Elainie Lillios, Megan Zhong, Samantha Farace, Sophia Solomon, Othello Gamboa, Mara Zaki, Adam Vidiksis, Jules Keenan, Chris Biggs, Sam Wells, and Keith Kirchoff)
Silen Wellington presented their first full-length solo show, 09/14-09/16 in Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins.
Weaving together electroacoustic music, spoken word, and ritual, Wellington shares their transgender journey, exploring themes of legibility/illegibility, coherence/incoherence, survival/resistance, and the sacred/profane.
