John R. Akins piece Cymbalindrome II (2018) received its premiere hearing at the SCI Region VI conference in April at Texas A&M University—Commerce, in Commerce, TX. The program notes paragraph is attached, if you want to dig out further info.
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.
Julius Bucsis’ composition Sentinels Along the River of Time (fixed media) was selected for ICMC-NYCEMF 2019 held in New York City in June and DIFFRAZIONI Multimedia Festival 2019 held in Florence, Italy in March. Some Writings of Spring (fixed media) was selected for DIFFRAZIONI Multimedia Festival 2019 held in Florence, Italy in March and for the SCI Invitational 2018 held in Morgantown, West Virginia in October. The Message (fixed media) was selected for Sound Thought 2018 held in Glasgow, Scotland in November and for the West Fork New Music Festival 2018 held in Fairmont, West Virginia in September. Blue (Fixed media) was selected for WOCMAT 2018 held in Hsinchu City, Taiwan in December. I Am Who Am I (fixed media) was selected for EABD 2018 held in Jacksonville, Florida in November. Portraits of Nine Revolving Celestial Spheres (fixed media) was selected for ICMC 2018 held in Daegu, South Korea in August. The Dawn of Memory – Awakening of the Ancients (fixed media) was selected for the SCI Student National Conference 2018 held in Bloomington, Indiana in September. In the Interest of Time (fixed media) was selected for the SCI Invitational 2019 held in Morgantown, West Virginia in March and included on the Americana playlist of HRT Radio in Zagreb, Croatia on October 15, 2018. An 18.4 multi-channel version of A Glimpse Beyond the Event Horizon (fixed media) was presented at the EM 4 concert at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana in April 2019. He performed a set of original compositions for electric guitar and computer processing at NEEMFEST held in Homer, New York on September 9, 2018 and at NSEME held in Charlottesville, Virginia on February 8, 2019.
Karl F. Gerber enjoyed playing his violin automaton installation at SEAMUS 2019. For more information about the violin, check out this video. More information is available at his website: http://www.karlfgerber.de/
Pictures of Karl F. Gerber’s Violin Automaton installation at SEAMUS 2019
>19980, an audiovisual installation with sound by Lemon Guo and visual by Mengtai Zhang was exhibited at the Fridman Gallery in New York City in April 2019.
Gallery shots of multimedia installation >19980 by Lemon Guo and Mengtai Zhang
Jeffrey Hass retires this month from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music after serving thirty-seven years as Director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music. He is pleased to report that John Gibson will succeed him as Director, and that Chi Iris Wang, who specializes in data-driven performance, will be joining the Center’s faculty in the Fall. While he will undoubtedly miss teaching and his students, Jeff plans to continue his passion for creating multimedia works with motion graphics, improve and expand his online electronic music text, and lecture as guest composer when possible.
Joungmin Lee’s electroacoustic piece 3 sounds was featured at SEAMUS 2019 in Boston and has been released on the album Electronic Masters Vol. 7 on the Ablaze Records label.
Ralph Lewis presented Losing Constellations at Electronic Music Midwest, at University of Illinois’s Experimental Music Studios’ 60th anniversary Festival, and SEAMUS National Conference. His interactive youtube piece DuoTube (made in collaboration with flutist Robin Meiksins) was presented at Sonic Illinois and MOXSonic, and was recently selected for the International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation at Monash University in Australia. His work Drive to the Edge received a concert hall performance at Electroacoustic Barn Dance and a curated broadcast performance at N_SEME that allowed the audience to hear the radio piece be manipulated in real time while driving in a shuttle. Additionally, Lewis received a Phi Kappa Phi Research Travel Grant to pursue his dissertation research about the music of Aaron Cassidy at the University of Huddersfield in the UK and an Urbana Arts and Culture Grant to support Fall sessions of his community composition program All Score Urbana.
ADJ•ective New Music’s Lexical Tones Podcast hosted by Robert McClure released a 3-part series of podcasts featuring interviews and recordings of compositions featured at SEAMUS2019. The SEAMUS members interviewed were Elainie Lillios, Per Bloland, Jacob Sudol (Episode 101), Carter John Rice, Jon Fielder, Leah Reid (Episode 102), Aurie Hsu, Silen Wellington, and Nicole Caroll (Episode 103). The podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. Many other past and present SEAMUS members and members of the electroacoustic community have been featured in previous episodes. More information can be found at www.adjectivenewmusic.com.
Scott Miller has been teaching Environmental Sound Art workshop at University Palacky in Olomouc, CZ, an intensive two weeks examining the history, repertoire, and philosophies behind soundwalks, sound sculpture, acoustic ecology, and more. Three Free Radicals third album is released on May 17, titled Atlas of the Heavens. In addition to Mart Soo (guitar, electronics) and Scott Miller (Kyma), is Liis Viira, performing harp and singing. Three Free Radicals perform CD release concerts in Tartu (May 7) and Tallinn (May 11), and in between will record album number 4. Miller is performing a solo set at the Wakushoppe in Prague on May 16, exploring in public the results of his ecosystemic and realtime programming efforts this spring.
In February, Earplay premiered Flutter, Pulse, and Flight, three movements for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and computer, by Charles Nichols, who performed the computer music part, in the Meyer Constellation system at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco, CA. In March, Nichols performed on electric violin and computer, for his chart Upstream, with the Virginia Tech Jazz Ensemble, at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, VA, and for a telematic concert with his band Modality, streamed between Virginia Tech and the Missoula Art Museum in Missoula, MT. For three days in April, his Shakespeare’s Garden, for immersive processed environmental sounds and recorded acting, accompanying projected graphic design, a collaboration with directors Amanda Nelson and Natasha Staley, graphic designer Meaghan Dee, and media engineer Tanner Upthegrove, was installed at the ACCelerate Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Also in April, trombonist William Lang premiered Nichols’ Meadows of Dan, for trombone and computer, and in May, violinist Darragh Morgan performed his Pistons, for violin and computer, with Nichols performing the computer music parts, in the 134.2 channel spatial audio system in the Cube of Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA.
Earplay performing Charles Nichols’ Flutter, Pulse, and Flight, three movements for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and computer
RICKSPLUND, improvising duo consisting of Steven Ricks (trombone, electronics) and Christian Asplund (viola, piano, electronics) had several performances in Winter 2019, including their new work, Woven, inspired by and presented in combination with the Windswept sculpture by Patrick Dougherty in the BYU Museum of Art on a program they curated called Nature Transformed. They also performed on the Avant Vespers series at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Provo along with visiting guitarist Sandy Ewen and other guests. A recent grant from the Laycock Center at the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications will allow them to host several improvisers to campus in the coming two years. To hear excerpts or complete RICKSPLUND tracks, visit the web HERE.
RICKSPLUND performing Woven in front of Dougherty’s Windswept sculpture
Ricks also enjoyed a performance of his piece Young American Inventions for amplified piano and fixed-media electronics by Keith Kirchoff at SEAMUS 2019 in Boston.
There is much afoot with the SPLICE folks! The SPLICE Institute, our flagship workshop held every summer at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, will celebrate its fifth year this summer! At some point during those festivities we will also achieve our 100th premiere. We look forward to seeing some of you there! The SPLICE Ensemble has been busy as well: this summer they will premiere Ansible, a new work by Caroline Louise Miller. This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This is in addition to a recent commission supported by the Fromm Foundation for a new piece by composition faculty Elainie Lillios! And finally, this summer will see the launch of our SPLICE Academy at Temple University, designed to support intensive work on music technology for high-school students.
The SPLICE Ensemble rehearsing Ansible with Caroline Louise Miller
Sugar Vendil shared her work in progress—Antonym—for flute, violin, piano, and electronics at Mabou Mines in the East Village, NYC in May. Information here: https://www.maboumines.org/production/antonym-sugar-vendil/
Sam Wells presented several performances and lectures this concert season. In September, Sam was on tour with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra. In November, his work Strange Pilgrims: Light is Like Water received 2nd prize in the 2018 Electrobrass Composition Competition. Sam presented his music and work at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in February. Sam will begin in the DMA Performer-Composer program at the California Institute of the Arts this fall.