Thursday, November 11, 2010
Consumed
In the end we are very happy that we were able to perform all the music on the program at such a high level. Our community is so lucky to have musicians and technicians dedicated to high level performance of pretty tricky music!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
- UK electric -
6pm May 3rd
Blackbox Auditorium, Atkinson Hall - on the campus of UCSD
- UK electric -
This program is curated by Adam Stansbie and features a collection of award winning compositions by UK composers.
program:
Diana Simpson – Papyrus (2008) – 8’25”
Erik Nyström – Elemental Chemistry (2009) - 13’38”
Lee Fraser – Narrows (2009) – 5’12”
Nikos Stavropoulos – Nyctinasty (2009) – 10’09”
-Interval-
Adam Stansbie – Escapade (2010) – 9’44”
Graeme Truslove - Divergent Dialogues (2006) – 8’31”
Ambrose Seddon – The Nowness of Everything (2009) – 13’32”
Aki Pasoulas – Arborescences (2008) – 11’24”
Notes about the composers and pieces:
Much of the material for Papyrus was recorded for the creation of a soundtrack for a theatre production of The Yellow Wallpaper, based on the novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A site- specific production of the theatre adaptation was directed by Rob Drummer and performed at the Manchester Museum in May 2008. The source recordings are almost exclusively of paper, from notepaper to large sheets of wallpaper. While composing this theatre soundtrack I was attracted to the intricate sonic details present in the closely recorded paper and was keen to explore their potential further in a standalone acousmatic concert work.
Papyrus explores the wide variety of spatial motions, trajectories and perspectives which can be created through the manipulation of this seemingly simple and lifeless material. The piece is an abstract exploration of these behaviours. There are four sections within the work, each one in turn metaphorically ‘torn’ to reveal a new section or layer.
Papyrus was awarded the Prix Destellos 2009.
Diana Simpson initially studied composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with Alistair MacDonald, where she was awarded a BA, PGDipMus, and MMus with distinction. She recently completed a PhD in composition at the University of Manchester (UK), where she was supervised by David Berezan and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a Dewar Arts Award. She is currently a lecturer in music technology at Kingston University, London.
Her works have been performed throughout the UK and internationally, in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Costa Rica and the USA. Work has also been broadcast on Swedish National Radio, Radio France, and BBC Radio 3.
She has been a prizewinner in a number of international competitions including Insulae Electronicae International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (2nd prize, 2004), CIMESP (International Electroacoustic Contest of São Paulo, Public Prize 2005, Honourable Mention 2007), the Bourges Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Residence Prize 2006), SCRIME (Prix SCRIME 2007), L’Espace du Son Diffusion Competition (2nd Prize, 2008), the Pauline Oliveros Prize (Honourable Mention, 2009), Música Viva (Prizewinner, 2009) and Prix Destellos (2009). Residencies include CEMI (Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia) at the University of North Texas, Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, the Institute for Electroacoustic Music in Sweden and Orford Center for the Arts, Montreal.
----
One of the curiosities that guided the creation of Elemental Chemistry was a concern with sound environments. Recognising the textural similarities between acoustic and synthesised environments, I was intrigued to explore the aesthetic possibilities of going beyond a dualistic attitude, towards an integral sound universe which is more than a combination of contrasting source materials.
The piece is developed from nature recordings, which are obscured and suffused with synthesized morphologies, in the pursuit of a plasmic amalgamation of spaces, united by elemental structures. In a coalescence of the elements of sound and the elements of nature, a more abstract sound world is created, where a higher logic of behaviours, textures and gestures almost refutes the duality between real and imaginary. Here, the whole and the parts are simultaneously present; elemental sonorities and abstract forms coincide with a continuously warping nature of complex textures and spaces. As in nature, one process ignites another and equilibrium is only relative and momentary; as a new environment has emerged, another is always in the making.
Erik Nyström is an electroacoustic composer born in Sweden and based in London. His educational background includes a BA (Hons.) in Audio Engineering from SAE in London and courses in Computer Music at CCMIX in Paris, with Gerard Pape and others. In 2008 he completed an MA in electroacoustic composition at City University, supervised by Denis Smalley and awarded with distinction. Currently, Erik Nyström is undertaking a PhD research concerning spatial texture in electroacoustic music at City University, also supervised by Smalley. Further preoccupations include acousmatic music in the context of choreography, which has led him to write works for contemporary dance performances and video. His works have been performed and broadcast in Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and the UK.
----
The chief component of Narrows consists in a steadily shifting spectral form, which absorbs and recasts a range of less prominent but none less significant articles, rather like some transparent adhesive substance coursing through the debris of a recent devastation, churning up once intact, now nebulous materials and forging unique configurations from their bounty in its train. At once neutral and tenacious, this fluid form plays host to a series of molecular interventions, such as the volatile iterations which interrupt its deep molten flow, or the glacial drape that hangs off, or spills from under its accumulative mass.
Narrows, refers to the streams of nebular activity, whose composite fibres describe serpentine routes and trace irregular trajectories through and around the transparent primordial substance, decorating and animating its otherwise featureless façade. In isolation, this fundamental property becomes an unconsummated body of potential, comparable to the sculpture's stone before it is distinguished. As such, it relies of the influence of its environment, and the memory of its encounters, to develop some kind of identity.
Lee Fraser (UK, 1981) began his formative musical education studying composition with Frank Denyer and David Prior at Dartington College of Arts, Devon. In 2006 he received a Bachelor’s degree in Sonic Arts from Middlesex University and, in 2009, completed an MA in electroacoustic composition under the supervision of Denis Smalley at City University, London.
Lee is also member of the London-based improvisation group Uteffekt and has reworked material for the sound artist and composer Mikhail Karikis, released on the Sub Rosa imprint in 2009. His music have been presented in concert and broadcast throughout Europe and North America.
----
Nyctinasty is concerned with organic movement, growth or reduction, as reaction to stimulus. Stimuli are either present in the sonic world of the work or implied. The title, borrowed from botany, refers to nastic (non-directional responses to stimuli) movement in the dark. The events portrayed in this piece are fictitious, and any resemblance to real events, past, present, or future, is entirely coincidental but highly probable. The work was realised at the composer’s home studio in the summer of 2009. Nyctinasty was awarded the first prize at the Punto de Encuentro Canarias International Electroacoustic Composition Competition 2009.
Nikos Stavropoulos was born in Athens in 1975. He studied Piano, harmony and counterpoint at the National School of Music and Nakas conservatoire in Greece. In 2000 he graduated from the Music Department of the University of Wales, Bangor where the next year he was awarded an MMus in electroacoustic composition studying with Dr. Andrew Lewis. He is currently working towards a PhD at the University of Sheffield Sound Studios with Dr. Adrian Moore. His works range from instrumental to tape and mixed media. He has composed music for video and dance and his works have been awarded mentions and prizes at international competitions (Bourges, 2000,2002, Metamorphose, Brussels 2002, 2008, SCRIME, Bordeaux 2003, Musica Miso, Potrugal2004).
----
Escapade was composed using tiny fragments of sound. At the start of the piece, the individual fragments are not perceived. Instead, they are so densely packed that they (perceptually) fuse into much larger structures; one hears the source recordings, which are largely, but not entirely, orchestral. As the piece progresses, the individual fragments become increasingly prominent; they no longer fuse into larger structures and are subsequently perceived as discrete units or entities. In this respect, Escapade was inspired by pointillistic painting – a technique in which small, distinct points of colour are used to form a larger image.
Escapade was composed in the studios at Musique & Recherchés, Belgium. I am extremely grateful to Annette Vande Gorne for her hospitality and support.
Adam Stansbie (1981) is a sound artist involved in the creation and performance of electroacoustic music. He has presented works at festivals and concerts throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australasia and has won awards at the Bourges International Competition, France (2006) and the International Acousmatic Competition ‘Metamorphosis’, Belgium (2006). Adam has worked in various prestigious European studios (including the IMEB, France (2007, 2008), Musique et Recherché, Belgium (2009) and VICC, Sweden (2010)), has taught at several HE institutions and is currently Lecturer in Music, Sound and Performance at Leeds Metropolitan University.
----
Divergent Dialogues exploits the fact that, in the studio under close microphone conditions, no two articulations of the same source sound are identical - there are always minute variations in timbre. This piece attempts to use these subtle differences as a vehicle for musical expression. The source recordings used to create the work were: two stones colliding, a rubber string being plucked, a piece of cardboard being creased and a sheet of plastic being twisted. An instrument was designed using MAX/MSP to create gestures from these recorded impulses, allowing them to be intuitively distributed throughout virtual space.
Graeme Truslove is a composer and performer based in Glasgow, Scotland. His output includes: Electroacoustic and Instrumental Composition, Live Sound Design for Theatre, Sound-Art Installations, Audio-Visual Art, and Improvisation - performing on guitar and laptop in a variety of small ensembles. His work is largely concerned with conflicts between intuitive performance and the fixed-medium, often exploring how fixed-medium expressive and structural possibilities can be integrated into improvised performance and vice versa. His approach integrates multiple strata of musical time, ranging from macrostructure down to the formation of timbre itself, conceived in terms of the sonic grain.
He has held a compositional residency at L'Institut Universitari de l'Audiovisual, Barcelona. His music has won awards from: The Dewar Arts Awards, The Scottish Arts Council, The Performing Rights Society Foundation, The Phonos Foundation, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (S.G.A.E), The Prince’s Trust and others. His work has been performed both in the UK and internationally. Recent performances include the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Montreal 2009, and the Zeppelin sound art festival Barcelona 2009. Graeme has a PhD in composition from the University of Glasgow, where he studied with Nick Fells.
----
The Nowness of Everything
“As much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can’t, it’s in us but we can’t actually, it’s not there in front of us…The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid to me that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I’m almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.
Below my window in Ross, when I’m working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now…it’s a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it, instead of saying ‘Oh that’s nice blossom’…last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever could be, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous.”
Acclaimed television dramatist Dennis Potter speaking in an interview in March 1994, knowing that he has a few weeks to live.
This music celebrates the details and qualities of the ‘everyday’: in this case, everyday sounds, generated by everyday objects and events. By expanding those moments, captured when making the source recordings, this piece is made of new ‘present tenses’ that are inspired by both the obvious and more hidden qualities of those everyday experiences.
It was made in 2009.
Ambrose Seddon has a background in rock and electronic pop music. After graduating with a degree in music from Goldsmiths College, University of London, he spent a number of years teaching, while writing, producing and performing in various bands, with releases through a number of independent record labels. He completed a Masters degree in electroacoustic composition at City University in 2004, and now continues his studies at City University as a PhD student, supervised by Denis Smalley. His acousmatic works have been performed internationally in concert and on radio. The piece Fouram (2005) received 1st prize in the 2006 Visiones Sonoras Electroacoustic Music Compostion Competition, Mexico, and was awarded the European Composition Prize at the International Computer Music Conference, Copenhagen, 2007.
----
Arborescences is a stereo acousmatic composition. The sound material derives from particular resonances and timbres produced by striking, rubbing and scraping an assortment of gamelan instruments. Most of the sonic images in the piece are not recognisable as instrumental sounds because of the extended processing, which focuses on developing particular gestures and textures based on micro elements and groups of partials extracted from the recorded events. The composition explores temporal syntax based on my research on timescales. Timescales at various points in the piece move at different paces, so that arborescent structures move apart and then meet again. Periodicities turn into erratic behaviour and the opposite, undergoing a number of processes of change at the same time. Arborescences received a special mention in the Métamorphoses 2008 international acousmatic composition competition, and was selected for the ICMC 2009 in Montreal, Canada, the SMC 2009 in Porto, Portugal, the Sonoimágenes 2009 international acousmatic and multimedia festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the 2010 ISCM World New Music Days festival in Sydney, Australia.
Aki Pasoulas teaches at the Universities of City London, Middlesex, and the Arts London, and he finalises his PhD under the supervision of Denis Smalley. His research project, funded by the AHRC, investigates the listener’s experience and interpretation of time passing, and the interrelationships among timescales in electroacoustic music. Further research interests include psychoacoustics, microsound and spatialisation. Aki has composed for various combinations of instruments, found objects, voice, recorded and electronic sound. He is a SPNM shortlisted composer, took part in many concerts worldwide, composed music for the theatre and for short films, and organised and performed with various ensembles.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
concert 4
Our fourth concert in our series is titled:
- Synthesis -
Wednesday, April 21st
12:00-1:00pm with discussion and reception to follow
Black Box Theater Atkinson Hall, UCSD campus
Program:
Premiers traces du Choucras (2008) Francis Dhomont
Study on Japanese themes (2009) Bruno Ruviaro
Three Fictions (Northern Mix) (2001) Natasha Barrett
Thingsfallapart (2010) Barry Threw
Parenthesis (2008) Adam Stansbie
This is the fourth concert in a year long series presenting music conceived with a special relationship to computers.
Notes about the program:
Premières traces du Choucas (First Traces of the Jackdaw) is a second preliminary work for Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character. “Kavka” is the Czech word for “jackdaw” (“choucas” in French), a kind of crow whose image adorned the storefront of Hermann Kafka, Franz's father. The title came from the strong animal symbolics found in the works of Kafka: a deep, solitary, never-empathic, often-muted cry one can hear in each one of his novels and tales, even in the slightest fragmentary story. As for the capital C attributed to “Choucas” in my title, it confirms the presence of a proper noun.
Francis Dhomont was born in Paris, 1926. Convinced of the originality of acousmatic art, his production is, since 1960, exclusively made of tape works. Doc Honoris causa at University of Montreal where he was teaching Electroacoustic Composition from 1980 to 1996. During 26 years, he shared his activity between France and Quebec. In 1997 he was a guest of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Berlin. Prix "Ars electronica 1992", "Magisterium" Bourges 1988, 1st Prize, Bourges 1981. Many works selected for the "World Music Days", and ICMC. He is now living in Avignon, France, and pursues an international career.
Study on Japanese Themes is a concatenative synthesis study based on tiny fragments borrowed from Japanese composers Ryoji Ikeda and Keiichiro Shibuya. Its composition was prompted by a combination of three things, present or absent: Paris’ autumn, California’s sun, and Tokyo’s fish market.
Bruno Ruviaro, composer and pianist from São Paulo, Brazil, was born in 1976, and has lived in 21 different places: Rua Theodureto Souto, Rua Cajati, Casa do Seu Demétrio, Rua São Borja, Rua James Adam, Alameda dos Uirapurus, Avenida Modesto Fernandes, Avenida Santa Izabel, Rua Nuno Álvares Pereira, Rua Prof. Djalma Bento, Rua Dr. Nestor Esteves Natividade, Rua Major Diogo, North Park Street, Jericho Street, Olmsted Road, Thoburn Court, Comstock Circle, Via Parma, Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, Greenoaks Drive, Miramar Street.
Three Fictions was comissioned by the Institut Internatinal de Musique Electroacoustic Bourges/IMEB. Rather than presenting a monumental approach to musical structure, these three miniatures each present fictional moments, each blown up into a few minutes of sound and metaphor:
1. In the rain -The burning in my head subsides as I lie in the grass in the rain. Fat droplets falling. Vegetation flickers-Freshness returns. The structure of this setting is based around the statistical computation of rain drops falling onto a 2-dimensional surface. Drops fall in a uniform distribution on the time line independently from other drops (called a Poisson process). The X co-ordinate is translated into left-right space, the Y co-ordinate as front-back space and pitch shift. Score files were created for use in Csound, and then many sound materials were gradually slotted into the mix. The 'rain' is sculpted to increase and decrease in intensity.
2. Midday moon - Cool midnight sun. Dream awake..Midday moon.. - North of the Arctic Circle there are periods of the year when the sun never rises, and periods when it never sets. Experience of the midnight sun can embody the calming feeling of subdued activity, while continual darkness can evoke mad delusions. During the summer months, the path of the northernly sun is approximately sinusoidal. This path has been divided into units of equal altitude, giving varying time segments. These time segments were then used as an event framework for the sound materials.
3. Outside snow falls - White crystals slowly fall. A gate slowly sways. Inside it is warm - The location of events are calculated in a similar way to the rain in the first setting, but in this instance the sound materials are all placed by hand from a time-space listing, and have a lighter, icier character.
Natasha Barrett (1972) works fore-mostly with composition and creative uses of sound. Performed and commissioned throughout the world Barrett has collaborated with well known ensembles - such as the London Sinfonietta, Oslo Sinfonietta, Cikada and Ars Nova, scientists and designers, electronic performance groups and festivals. Her output spans concert composition through to sound-art, sound-architecture, installations, interactive works, often incorporates latest technologies and includes a major work for the Norwegian state commission for art in public spaces. Whether writing for instrumental performers or electronic media her compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues focusing on the aural perception of detail, structure and potential meaning, and an interest in techniques that reveal detail the ear will normally miss. The composition and manipulation of space is a central element in much of this work. As a performer she works with electronics, improvisation and the interpretation of acousmstic works. Barrett studied in England with Jonty Harrison and Denis Smalley for masters and doctoral degrees in composition. Both degrees were funded by the humanities section of the British Academy. Since 1999 Norway has been her compositional and research base for an international platform.
Barry Threw is a technologist working to enable digital media artwork. He develops systems and tools for rich immersive and interactive media experience; combining sound, video, network, and audience interactions. His education was spent studying the intersection of music and media technology. He holds dual majors in Music Engineering and Music Synthesis from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA; and an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media from Mills College in Oakland, CA.
Barry Threw works with a variety of organizations stationed at the crossroads of art and technology — as the Software Director for Keith McMillen Instruments, a Berkeley CA based company developing advanced technology to bridge traditional musical instruments with the computer; as technician and software designer with Recombinant Media Labs, an organization presenting multichannel surround cinema at installations and festivals around the world; on the Board of Directors for the Beam Foundation, a Berkeley, CA non-profit foundation seeking to spark a new Western classical music movement based on the technologies and aesthetics of the 21st century; and as a technical advisor with the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a San Francisco non-profit and digital arts gallery dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. He also does freelance consulting for institutions and artists exploring digital mediums through installation or performance, and has worked on pieces shown internationally.
About Parenthesis Adam Stansbie writes: I have always struggled o work with noise-based sounds, finding it difficult to create tension or suspense without using pitched materials. In this short piece I have attempted to articulate energy and speed through the accumulation and dispersal of noise based phrases; this brief digression from my usual compositional style inspired my choice of the title, Parenthesis. This piece was partially composed in studio Circé, at the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustic de Bourges (IMEB), France.
Adam Stansbie is a composer and sonic artist from the north of England where he is currently lecturing in Music, Sound and Performance Technologies at Leeds Metropolitan University. He received his undergraduate degree from Leeds University, where he was presented with an award for outstanding achievement in music production, and is currently working towards a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition at City University, under the supervision of Professor Denis Smalley. His works have been performed and broadcast both nationally and internationally and have won awards at the Bourges International Competition 2006 and the international acousmatic competition ‘Metamorphosis’ 2006. He recently completed a residency at the IMEB, Bourges and looks forward to visiting the electroacoustic studios at Musique et Recherché, Belgium in 2009.
- Synthesis -
Wednesday, April 21st
12:00-1:00pm with discussion and reception to follow
Black Box Theater Atkinson Hall, UCSD campus
Program:
Premiers traces du Choucras (2008) Francis Dhomont
Study on Japanese themes (2009) Bruno Ruviaro
Three Fictions (Northern Mix) (2001) Natasha Barrett
Thingsfallapart (2010) Barry Threw
Parenthesis (2008) Adam Stansbie
This is the fourth concert in a year long series presenting music conceived with a special relationship to computers.
Notes about the program:
Premières traces du Choucas (First Traces of the Jackdaw) is a second preliminary work for Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character. “Kavka” is the Czech word for “jackdaw” (“choucas” in French), a kind of crow whose image adorned the storefront of Hermann Kafka, Franz's father. The title came from the strong animal symbolics found in the works of Kafka: a deep, solitary, never-empathic, often-muted cry one can hear in each one of his novels and tales, even in the slightest fragmentary story. As for the capital C attributed to “Choucas” in my title, it confirms the presence of a proper noun.
Francis Dhomont was born in Paris, 1926. Convinced of the originality of acousmatic art, his production is, since 1960, exclusively made of tape works. Doc Honoris causa at University of Montreal where he was teaching Electroacoustic Composition from 1980 to 1996. During 26 years, he shared his activity between France and Quebec. In 1997 he was a guest of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Berlin. Prix "Ars electronica 1992", "Magisterium" Bourges 1988, 1st Prize, Bourges 1981. Many works selected for the "World Music Days", and ICMC. He is now living in Avignon, France, and pursues an international career.
Study on Japanese Themes is a concatenative synthesis study based on tiny fragments borrowed from Japanese composers Ryoji Ikeda and Keiichiro Shibuya. Its composition was prompted by a combination of three things, present or absent: Paris’ autumn, California’s sun, and Tokyo’s fish market.
Bruno Ruviaro, composer and pianist from São Paulo, Brazil, was born in 1976, and has lived in 21 different places: Rua Theodureto Souto, Rua Cajati, Casa do Seu Demétrio, Rua São Borja, Rua James Adam, Alameda dos Uirapurus, Avenida Modesto Fernandes, Avenida Santa Izabel, Rua Nuno Álvares Pereira, Rua Prof. Djalma Bento, Rua Dr. Nestor Esteves Natividade, Rua Major Diogo, North Park Street, Jericho Street, Olmsted Road, Thoburn Court, Comstock Circle, Via Parma, Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, Greenoaks Drive, Miramar Street.
Three Fictions was comissioned by the Institut Internatinal de Musique Electroacoustic Bourges/IMEB. Rather than presenting a monumental approach to musical structure, these three miniatures each present fictional moments, each blown up into a few minutes of sound and metaphor:
1. In the rain -The burning in my head subsides as I lie in the grass in the rain. Fat droplets falling. Vegetation flickers-Freshness returns. The structure of this setting is based around the statistical computation of rain drops falling onto a 2-dimensional surface. Drops fall in a uniform distribution on the time line independently from other drops (called a Poisson process). The X co-ordinate is translated into left-right space, the Y co-ordinate as front-back space and pitch shift. Score files were created for use in Csound, and then many sound materials were gradually slotted into the mix. The 'rain' is sculpted to increase and decrease in intensity.
2. Midday moon - Cool midnight sun. Dream awake..Midday moon.. - North of the Arctic Circle there are periods of the year when the sun never rises, and periods when it never sets. Experience of the midnight sun can embody the calming feeling of subdued activity, while continual darkness can evoke mad delusions. During the summer months, the path of the northernly sun is approximately sinusoidal. This path has been divided into units of equal altitude, giving varying time segments. These time segments were then used as an event framework for the sound materials.
3. Outside snow falls - White crystals slowly fall. A gate slowly sways. Inside it is warm - The location of events are calculated in a similar way to the rain in the first setting, but in this instance the sound materials are all placed by hand from a time-space listing, and have a lighter, icier character.
Natasha Barrett (1972) works fore-mostly with composition and creative uses of sound. Performed and commissioned throughout the world Barrett has collaborated with well known ensembles - such as the London Sinfonietta, Oslo Sinfonietta, Cikada and Ars Nova, scientists and designers, electronic performance groups and festivals. Her output spans concert composition through to sound-art, sound-architecture, installations, interactive works, often incorporates latest technologies and includes a major work for the Norwegian state commission for art in public spaces. Whether writing for instrumental performers or electronic media her compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues focusing on the aural perception of detail, structure and potential meaning, and an interest in techniques that reveal detail the ear will normally miss. The composition and manipulation of space is a central element in much of this work. As a performer she works with electronics, improvisation and the interpretation of acousmstic works. Barrett studied in England with Jonty Harrison and Denis Smalley for masters and doctoral degrees in composition. Both degrees were funded by the humanities section of the British Academy. Since 1999 Norway has been her compositional and research base for an international platform.
Barry Threw is a technologist working to enable digital media artwork. He develops systems and tools for rich immersive and interactive media experience; combining sound, video, network, and audience interactions. His education was spent studying the intersection of music and media technology. He holds dual majors in Music Engineering and Music Synthesis from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA; and an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media from Mills College in Oakland, CA.
Barry Threw works with a variety of organizations stationed at the crossroads of art and technology — as the Software Director for Keith McMillen Instruments, a Berkeley CA based company developing advanced technology to bridge traditional musical instruments with the computer; as technician and software designer with Recombinant Media Labs, an organization presenting multichannel surround cinema at installations and festivals around the world; on the Board of Directors for the Beam Foundation, a Berkeley, CA non-profit foundation seeking to spark a new Western classical music movement based on the technologies and aesthetics of the 21st century; and as a technical advisor with the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a San Francisco non-profit and digital arts gallery dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. He also does freelance consulting for institutions and artists exploring digital mediums through installation or performance, and has worked on pieces shown internationally.
About Parenthesis Adam Stansbie writes: I have always struggled o work with noise-based sounds, finding it difficult to create tension or suspense without using pitched materials. In this short piece I have attempted to articulate energy and speed through the accumulation and dispersal of noise based phrases; this brief digression from my usual compositional style inspired my choice of the title, Parenthesis. This piece was partially composed in studio Circé, at the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustic de Bourges (IMEB), France.
Adam Stansbie is a composer and sonic artist from the north of England where he is currently lecturing in Music, Sound and Performance Technologies at Leeds Metropolitan University. He received his undergraduate degree from Leeds University, where he was presented with an award for outstanding achievement in music production, and is currently working towards a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition at City University, under the supervision of Professor Denis Smalley. His works have been performed and broadcast both nationally and internationally and have won awards at the Bourges International Competition 2006 and the international acousmatic competition ‘Metamorphosis’ 2006. He recently completed a residency at the IMEB, Bourges and looks forward to visiting the electroacoustic studios at Musique et Recherché, Belgium in 2009.
concert 3
(updating a little late)
The third concert in our series was titled:
- Concrète -
Tuesday, February 16th
12:00-1:00pm with discussion to follow
Black Box Theater Atkinson Hall, UCSD campus
Program:
Eskers (2009) Fred Szymanksi
[Pjanistik] (2008) Thierry Gauthier
L'instant en Vain (2008) Dominic Thibauld
Termites (2008) The Convolution Brothers
Artifact (I) (2008) Nick Storring
This is the third concert in a year long series presenting music conceived with a special relationship to computers.
Notes about the program:
Fred Szymanski writes:
"Eskers" is a multi-channel piece that utilizes sounds produced by percussive gestures using the strings and soundboard of the piano. Through the application of granular synthesis routines, these sounds are transformed iteratively to articulate certain particle-based behaviors, resulting in the creation of multiple streams of statistical noise and other effects. The asynchronous fluctuation of the microstates that make up the work produces an environment of intermittent, constantly changing textures and the development of certain dense sections resembles the process of esker formation, whereby disintegrating or eroding matter moves slowly beneath a faster-flowing current of subglacial strata.
[www.fredszymanski.com]
Thierry Gauthier writes:
This expressionist acousmatic piece is entirely made from prepared piano and sine waves. The development is guided by the piano fragments, which were played and recorded directly on the soundboard of the instrument.
Dominic Thibault writes about L'instant en vain:
Time is dust. A handful of sand that runs out of my grip. That grain that falls is already part of our memory. The present moment instantly becoming past. Why are we obsessed by time?
Nick Storring writes:
Artifacts (I) is drawn from a (projected) series of works based entirely on sounds from a near-broken violin. The violin, despite being full-size was given to me by my grandmother when I was too young to remember, a hint to my parents that I should get violin lessons. I ended up getting cello lessons instead and the violin collected dust, and endured several seasons of humidity and lack thereof, leading to the collapsed of its soundpost.
This piece explores memory and the (mis)representation of events in time through documentation and recording.
This violin seemed like an apt sound-source for such a piece. I used the strings - bowed, plucked, struck, scraped, bent from the other side of the bridge, but also the body of the instrument -- the sound of the paint and varnish being scraped off by the microphone, the body being struck, the soundpost being shaken around inside of it.
The processing of the materials was inspired by various recording media - everything from sound of old 78 RPM to corrupt MP3 files. Compositionally I also was interested by suggesting certain stylistic markers.
There was also an awareness on my part of evocations and manipulations of time on the level of a recording in and of itself, the perception of historical time, and time in the personal/ nostalgic domain, and how these temporal lines intersect.
The third concert in our series was titled:
- Concrète -
Tuesday, February 16th
12:00-1:00pm with discussion to follow
Black Box Theater Atkinson Hall, UCSD campus
Program:
Eskers (2009) Fred Szymanksi
[Pjanistik] (2008) Thierry Gauthier
L'instant en Vain (2008) Dominic Thibauld
Termites (2008) The Convolution Brothers
Artifact (I) (2008) Nick Storring
This is the third concert in a year long series presenting music conceived with a special relationship to computers.
Notes about the program:
Fred Szymanski writes:
"Eskers" is a multi-channel piece that utilizes sounds produced by percussive gestures using the strings and soundboard of the piano. Through the application of granular synthesis routines, these sounds are transformed iteratively to articulate certain particle-based behaviors, resulting in the creation of multiple streams of statistical noise and other effects. The asynchronous fluctuation of the microstates that make up the work produces an environment of intermittent, constantly changing textures and the development of certain dense sections resembles the process of esker formation, whereby disintegrating or eroding matter moves slowly beneath a faster-flowing current of subglacial strata.
[www.fredszymanski.com]
Thierry Gauthier writes:
This expressionist acousmatic piece is entirely made from prepared piano and sine waves. The development is guided by the piano fragments, which were played and recorded directly on the soundboard of the instrument.
Dominic Thibault writes about L'instant en vain:
Time is dust. A handful of sand that runs out of my grip. That grain that falls is already part of our memory. The present moment instantly becoming past. Why are we obsessed by time?
Nick Storring writes:
Artifacts (I) is drawn from a (projected) series of works based entirely on sounds from a near-broken violin. The violin, despite being full-size was given to me by my grandmother when I was too young to remember, a hint to my parents that I should get violin lessons. I ended up getting cello lessons instead and the violin collected dust, and endured several seasons of humidity and lack thereof, leading to the collapsed of its soundpost.
This piece explores memory and the (mis)representation of events in time through documentation and recording.
This violin seemed like an apt sound-source for such a piece. I used the strings - bowed, plucked, struck, scraped, bent from the other side of the bridge, but also the body of the instrument -- the sound of the paint and varnish being scraped off by the microphone, the body being struck, the soundpost being shaken around inside of it.
The processing of the materials was inspired by various recording media - everything from sound of old 78 RPM to corrupt MP3 files. Compositionally I also was interested by suggesting certain stylistic markers.
There was also an awareness on my part of evocations and manipulations of time on the level of a recording in and of itself, the perception of historical time, and time in the personal/ nostalgic domain, and how these temporal lines intersect.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Die Klavierübung
Our concert series continues Wednesday January 20th at noon with:
Steven Takasugi's
- Die Klavierübung -
notes about the program:
Steven Takasugi's large scale computer playback work Die Klavierübung is, at its core, a grand meditation on the recorded piano. It is a piece of music created from thousands of recorded samples. From these samples a virtual music is created wherein the basic tension of the piece is derived from the music's varying awareness of its own virtual/illusory state. From another perspective the piece presents the listener with a dizzying array of textures from the brutish to the highly refined. These textures are composed of snapshots along a continuum of possible pianos - from the almost sacred, privileged status of the Steinway concert grand to the humorous and sometimes profane honkey-tonk upright.
About Die Klavierübung Takasugi writes:
Die Klavierübung might be subtitled A Journey Through Falsehoods. There is no piano after all, there is no pianist, there is no practicing.
Perhaps it is about the recorded piano samples, digitalized manifestations, that still believe they are a “real piano,” disembodied as they are, attempting to create for themselves some fiction in which they can believe they are still live, even beautiful.
They gather themselves as if the pianist were still present and imagine he is sitting at the keyboard—“on the bench”—or leaning precariously forward, head under the top-lid, plucking and striking the strings in a variety of manners, bringing them to life. Nonetheless, he always cannot help but notice that the ear, unlike the eyes, perceives not a resonant chamber with a fixed and solid soundboard, but rather an endless abyss of eternal resonance and echoes. For the ear, then, the danger is to fall inside the piano—into a chasm of its own imagination.
The creation of any fiction, as a hallucination, is inevitably subject to other unintended, unforeseen forces. The piano samples find themselves in contexts they never wished to be: as references, they turn up as a player piano accompanying a silent movie, a concert grand in a neoclassical concerto, even peering at themselves as midi-piano samples, falsehoods gazing at their still falser reflections.
They flee from this piano-nightmare, from coerced roles of alienation, but from one falsehood to another, to find their own sonic bodies distorted beyond recognition. They seem strange: internally detuned, though notes are coherent, intact, each key no longer the tre corde in tune with themselves, rather many strings detuned within a quarter-tone interval: a note has become more a microtonal wobble. “What’s wrong with me?” This line of questioning has its consequences.
By traversing through, not around, the falsehoods of their nature, their medium, their culture, these samples hoped to reclaim the “real” and “true”for themselves, though the arena for this was far more remote and the source of its energies far more extreme than what they ever imagined them to be.
Steven Takasugi's
- Die Klavierübung -
notes about the program:
Steven Takasugi's large scale computer playback work Die Klavierübung is, at its core, a grand meditation on the recorded piano. It is a piece of music created from thousands of recorded samples. From these samples a virtual music is created wherein the basic tension of the piece is derived from the music's varying awareness of its own virtual/illusory state. From another perspective the piece presents the listener with a dizzying array of textures from the brutish to the highly refined. These textures are composed of snapshots along a continuum of possible pianos - from the almost sacred, privileged status of the Steinway concert grand to the humorous and sometimes profane honkey-tonk upright.
About Die Klavierübung Takasugi writes:
Die Klavierübung might be subtitled A Journey Through Falsehoods. There is no piano after all, there is no pianist, there is no practicing.
Perhaps it is about the recorded piano samples, digitalized manifestations, that still believe they are a “real piano,” disembodied as they are, attempting to create for themselves some fiction in which they can believe they are still live, even beautiful.
They gather themselves as if the pianist were still present and imagine he is sitting at the keyboard—“on the bench”—or leaning precariously forward, head under the top-lid, plucking and striking the strings in a variety of manners, bringing them to life. Nonetheless, he always cannot help but notice that the ear, unlike the eyes, perceives not a resonant chamber with a fixed and solid soundboard, but rather an endless abyss of eternal resonance and echoes. For the ear, then, the danger is to fall inside the piano—into a chasm of its own imagination.
The creation of any fiction, as a hallucination, is inevitably subject to other unintended, unforeseen forces. The piano samples find themselves in contexts they never wished to be: as references, they turn up as a player piano accompanying a silent movie, a concert grand in a neoclassical concerto, even peering at themselves as midi-piano samples, falsehoods gazing at their still falser reflections.
They flee from this piano-nightmare, from coerced roles of alienation, but from one falsehood to another, to find their own sonic bodies distorted beyond recognition. They seem strange: internally detuned, though notes are coherent, intact, each key no longer the tre corde in tune with themselves, rather many strings detuned within a quarter-tone interval: a note has become more a microtonal wobble. “What’s wrong with me?” This line of questioning has its consequences.
By traversing through, not around, the falsehoods of their nature, their medium, their culture, these samples hoped to reclaim the “real” and “true”for themselves, though the arena for this was far more remote and the source of its energies far more extreme than what they ever imagined them to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)