Format: Moving Image / Collection: University of Virginia Concert Recordings

Start Over Format Moving Image Collection University of Virginia Concert Recordings

1. Coastal Futures & Arctic Bridging Concert featuring Eight Blackbird (1:37:45)

Date:: 2019-10-09
Main contributors:: McIntire Department of Music
Summary:: Blue Desert (video installation presented in the OCH Lobby) Peter Swendsen, music; Rian Brown Orso and Geoff Pingree, video Migration Patterns (part 1) Leah Barclay Eroding Fjóla Evans, composer Eighth Blackbird >19980 Lemon Guo and Mengtai Zhang Festival of Whispers - Matthew Burtner, composer Eighth Blackbird ~Intermission~ Migration Patterns (part 2) Leah Barclay The Clarity of Cold Air Jonathan Bailey Holland, composer Eighth Blackbird Migration Patterns (part 3) Leah Barclay Under the Sea Ice Christopher Luna, composer Rivanna String Quartet Inlets John Cage, composer group performance Program Notes Blue Desert (2012) Peter Swendsen, music; Rian Brown Orso, and Geoff Pingree video A multi-channel video installation (seen here in triptych) shot with high- resolution cameras, BLUE DESERT was created during a two-week expedition to Antarctica in November of 2009 aboard the National Geographic Explorer by Geoff Pingree and Rian Brown-Orso. The team worked with Peter Swendsen to create the installation’s soundscape using field recordings from Antarctica as well as Swendsen’s library of sounds from Arctic Norway. The three first installed the work, for three-channel video and four-channel sound, at the Laconia Gallery in Boston in November of 2011. Antarctica is a uniquely vast and haunting panorama of ice, water, and sky. To visit this place is to glimpse a world without human beings, to observe a planet in its most primitive and elemental state, to witness the mysteriously beautiful and fearsome power of the earth. Although any attempt to represent the Antarctic is, in some sense, futile – an exercise in framing the unframeable—BLUE DESERT provides a provisional window onto a wondrous landscape that embodies, paradoxically, the ancient permanence and never-ending flux of our physical environment. Migration Patterns: Saltwater (Queensland Coastline) (2019) Leah Barclay Aquatic ecosystems are complex acoustic environments, where species are reliant on sound to communicate and survive. Sound propagates underwater at different speeds, affected by temperature, pressure, and salinity. The impacts of climate change are often visible in terrestrial environments, yet dramatic changes in aquatic ecosystems go unnoticed simply due to visibility. Increased anthropogenic noise and rising temperatures cause ecological disruptions that are dramatically transforming the acoustic ecologies of our oceans, rivers, and wetlands. This work explores the fragility and complexity of life in a world of sound and vibration. Drawing on a large database of hydrophone recordings from the Queensland coastline, this work traces sonic migration patterns and shifting ecologies from the smallest micro crustaceans to the largest marine mammals on the planet. The recordings focus around the Great Barrier Reef and K’Gari (Fraser Island), a major transitory point for humpbacks. The whale song adapts in response to changing environments and the recordings contribute to ongoing scientific research on the value of aquatic acoustic ecology in climate action. This sound work immerses listeners in the depths of aquatic ecosystems alongside the coastline of Queensland and transposes infrasonic and ultrasonic recordings into perceptible ranges for humans. >19980 - Into Silence They Appear (2017-2019) Lemon Guo, music; Mengtai Zhang, video “Ten thousand things are heard when born, But the highest heaven’s always still. Yet everything must begin in silence, And into silence it vanishes.” -Wei Yingwu, On Sound In Taoist macroscopic ideology, the richest sound cannot be heard, but felt. Human hearing is limited to a narrow frequency range between 20Hz and 20kHz, which split the sound not only from the maker but also from its nature. The sound exceeding this range would not be heard by the ear, but felt by the body. In this universe, infinite things are producing ultrasonic and subsonic waves around us all the time. While it has been an ancient source of poetic inspiration, the inaudible world is far from being innocent, having been exploited for its physical potential as weaponry and for surveillance since World War I. Then, what is this inaudible world really like? Driven by this question, “>19980” is an ongoing series of audiovisual exploration following the idea of the inaudible soundscape. As the first piece that started this project, “Into Silence They Appear” explores the inaudible world underwater through the call of the orca, while incorporating computer-generated imagery as an imagination of such sound world. During the EcoSono Institute in Alaska in 2013, we collectively recorded the orca vocalization, which is much wider than the human hearing range, with hydrophones and portable recorders. While listening to bird calls in New York one day in 2017, out of curiosity, I time-stretched the inaudible frequencies from the orca recording. Incredible things happened quickly. Chords and melodies emerged. I felt like I had stumbled into an entire sound world in those perceived silence. So I simply layered the sounds, hoping to convey the sense of wonder that struck me at that moment. The visual projection employs algorithmically generated imagery, utilizing techniques such as fractal noise, geometric distortion, and particle systems. The work extends the Taoist ideas on music, reimagining sound unheard, that transcends the human experience, transforming with time and space. Fjóla Evans: Eroding (2017) Over thousands of years the glacial river Hvítá in Iceland has carved a deep gorge into the surrounding landscape. At one particular twist in the river, the erosion has left several huge pillars of hyaloclastite rock, which look as they were flung haphazardly into the riverbed. In fact they were revealed slowly over time from the process of the river carving away their surroundings. In Eroding, the players create a dense mass that gets worn down over time in order to reveal the spiky formations beneath the surface. Festival of Whispers (2017) Matthew Burtner, composer performed by Eighth Blackbird Festival of Whispers was commissioned by the Athenaeum Library of Art and Music in La Jolla, CA as a sound installation for the SoundON Festival of Modern Music. The piece is about coastal erosion as cultural erosion. It includes a chamber ensemble work (expanded in 2019), a multichannel sound installation, and a series of headphone listening stations, any part of which can be presented independently. Listeners hear the sound of the coast through the walls and floor, as if the ocean is pushing up under the building, pulling it out into the sea stone by stone. Whispered texts drawn from the music library stacks (the writings of composers) wash off the shelves and drift out to sea. As the ocean erodes the performance space, the musicians and audience members spread whisper chains around the hall, creating a festival of whispers. The ensemble music, while evoking the collapse of culture through coastal erosion, also develops its own musical content and community, contributing to that culture even as it too is washed away. Festival of Whispers explores the quiet loss of rare cultural artifacts, an outcome of climate change often overlooked in the face of the humanitarian and economic devastation global warming brings. Note to the audience: The musicians will cue you to whisper to your neighbor, according to the individual audience-member scores included in your program. The audience will create “whisper chains” that they pass around the hall by whispering to their neighbors. These whispers mix with the oceanic sounds projected through the speakers, a sea of water and whispers. The Clarity of Cold Air (2013) Jonathan Bailey Holland, composer performed by Eighth Blackbird Jonathan Bailey Holland’s works have been commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, and Philadelphia Symphony Orchestras, as well as numerous chamber groups and soloists. A recipient of a 2015 Fromm Foundation Commission, he has received honors from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, American Music Center, ASCAP, the Presser Foundation, and more. He has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota, Ritz Chamber Players, Detroit and South Bend Symphony Orchestras, and the Radius Ensemble. Recent highlights include the premiere of Equality for narrator and orchestra for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the premiere of Forged Sanctuaries by Curtis on Tour, commissioned to commemorate the centennial of National Park Service. Holland is Chair of Composition, Theory and History at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Faculty Chair of the Music Composition Low Residency MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Previously he served as Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music. About The Clarity of Cold Air, Jonathan writes: Inspired by many a cold, Northern Midwest or New England day, this work is primarily atmospheric, focusing on the sonorities achieved by blending the instruments of the ensemble in various ways. There are many stark sounds - high, glassy harmonics from the strings, bowed metallic percussion instruments, harsh multi-phonics from the winds, airy cymbal rolls. Under the Sea Ice (2015) Christopher Luna-Mega, composer performed by Rivanna String Quartet Few sounds I have found to be as fascinating as those of the bearded seals from the Chukchi sea in the Arctic Ocean. My first encounter with them was a recording by Ray, Watkins and Burns. It came to me that the sounds of the bearded seals would be ideal material for strings – the constant glissandi and the high resolution microtonal nuances characteristic of seal songs can be performed by no other acoustic instruments as idiomatically. All the music performed by the string quartet derives from transcriptions of several bearded seal songs, which were generously provided to me by Joshua Jones, researcher at the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab, University of California, San Diego. Variations of the transcriptions (mainly in pitch and duration) were based on statistics of the bearded seal repertoire from 2008-2009, included in the Jones et al. article: Ringed, Bearded, and Ribbon Seal Vocalizations North of Barrow, Alaska: Seasonal Presence and Relationship with Sea Ice. The electronics for this piece consist of a hydrophone recording of sea ice from the Chuckhi sea, also a contribution of the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab. John Cage, Inlets (1977) John Cage’s Inlets for water-filled conch shells is a listening meditation to consider your personal relationship with your environment. Cage instructs that the sound of burning pine cones be played as an interlude, a sound with renewed meaning in the context of our climate crisis. Notes on Ensembles The Rivanna String Quartet brings vibrant concerts to Central Virginia on the grounds of the historic University of Virginia. Quartet members are dedicated to promoting collaboration, quality performances, and education throughout the community. The Rivanna String Quartet looks to find the balance between the old and new, bringing a fresh look to the string quartet’s robust and varied repertoire through collaborations with living composers and guest artists. Rivanna is the resident quartet for the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia, where the members serve as faculty and as principal musicians of the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia. Individually each musician maintains an active teaching and performing schedule within the community collaborating with such organizations such as the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Ash Lawn Opera, Monticello, Charlottesville and Albemarle school systems, and the Richmond Symphony. Members of the quartet include Daniel Sender (violin), David Sariti (violin), Ayn Balija (viola), Adam Carter (cello). Eighth Blackbird’s mission is to move music forward through innovative performance, advocate for new music by living composers, and create a legacy of guiding an emerging generation of musicians. Eighth Blackbird, hailed as “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly became “a brand-name defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality” (Detroit Free Press). Over the course of more than two decades, Eighth Blackbird has continually pushed at the edges of what it means to be a contemporary chamber ensemble, presenting distinct programs in Chicago, nationally, and internationally, reaching audiences totaling tens of thousands. The sextet has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by composers both established and emerging, and have perpetuated the creation of music with profound impact, such as Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, which went on to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The ensemble’s extensive recording history, primarily with Chicago’s Cedille Records, has produced more than a dozen acclaimed albums and four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance, most recently in 2016 for Filament. Longstanding collaborative relationships have led to performances with some of the most well- regarded classical artists of today from heralded performers like Dawn Upshaw and Jeremy Denk, to seminal composers including Philip Glass and Nico Muhly. In recent projects, Eighth Blackbird has joined forces with genre-fluid composers and performers including The National’s Bryce Dessner, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Perry, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Brightest Diamond frontwoman Shara Nova, Will Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Iarla Ó Lionáird of The Gloaming, among others. Eighth Blackbird’s most recent album, When We Are Inhuman, a collaboration with Oldham and Dessner, was released on August 30, 2019 on 37d03d/Secretly Canadian. Singing in the Dead of Night, written for the ensemble by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, will be released on Cedille Records in spring, 2020. Eighth Blackbird first gained wide recognition in 1998 as winners of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Since 2000, the ensemble has called Chicago home, and has been committed to serving as both importer and exporter of world class artistic experiences to and from Chicago. A year- long pioneering residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago in 2016, during which the ensemble served as a living installation with open rehearsals, performances, guest artists, and public talks, exemplified their stature as community influencers. Receiving the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award, and being named Musical America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year have supported Eighth Blackbird’s position as a catalyst for innovation in the new music ecosystem of Chicago and beyond. Eighth Blackbird’s impact extends beyond recording and touring to curation and education. The ensemble served as Music Director of the 2009 Ojai Music Festival, has held residencies at the Curtis Institute of Music and at the University of Chicago, and holds an ongoing Ensemble-in-Residence position at the University of Richmond. In 2017, Eighth Blackbird launched its boldest initiative yet with the creation of Blackbird Creative Laboratory, an inclusive, two-week summer workshop and performance festival for performers and composers in Ojai, CA. The name Eighth Blackbird derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” Nathalie Joachim is a Burkart Flutes & Piccolos artist. Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist. Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives.

2. Digitalis (2:01:18)

Date:: 2019-04-29
Main contributors:: McIntire Department of Music
Summary:: AUTODIVA’S ROOM - Susan Grochmal Vestigial Wings - Eli Stine The Gate is Open - Aiman Khan Integration - Daniel Arvelo-Perez Rain Shadow No. 2 - Ben Luca Robertson Quotation d0419: “Franco, Christian. “Victor Huerta”, Mexico 2009” - Omar Fraire Complicated - Kaiming Cheng Icarus - Ryan Kann godtrash - Becky Brown Squash - 3 LB Program Notes AUTODIVA’S ROOM Hey what’s up welcome to my room have a good time —Susan Grochmal AUTODIVA is currently working on her second album, DIVA PARTY, scheduled for release this summer, a followup to her first album DUAL- ITY. She explores important topics such as the Internet and Computers and are we Real. Vestigial Wings “At the boundary of the desert Beneath the telescopic sky I stopped to take the world in As it went on rushing by I thought ten hundred futures Of what could and would become As the dark of night got closer Slipping disk of orange sun I thought of all I’d loved and lost: Of dropped, forgotten things Of books with unread pages Broken roots, vestigial wings I thought of names gone unremembered, And of places never seen, Of the last of every species, Silent forests, noiseless seas And as dusk made way to nightfall Black sky pricked with yellow light I had not moved a single muscle And so doing lost my life Because in thinking and not doing All I did was just compare What could and would become of Rather than what was really there” —Eli Stine Eli Stine is a composer, programmer, and educator. Stine is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies as a Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia, and is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory with degrees in Technology In Music And Related Arts and Computer Science. Stine’s work explores electroacoustic sound, multimedia technologies (often custom-built software, video projection, and multi-channel speaker systems), and collaboration between disciplines (artistic and otherwise). Festivals and conferences that have programmed Stine’s work include ICMC, SEAMUS, NIME, CMMR, NYCEMF, the Third Practice Festival, CubeFest, the Muestra Internacional de Música Electroacústica, the International Sound Art Festival Berlin, the Workshop on Intelligent Music Interfaces for Listening and Creation, and the International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and De- sign. Currently, his sound design for the virtual reality installation MetamorphosisVR, a virtual reality adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, is touring around the world, with installation locations including Prague, Berlin, Madrid, Cairo, Oslo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. The Gate Is Open With the guidance of Professor Leah Reid, I wrote this piece this semester. It reflects my recent experience of finding unprecedented happiness and depth in my life and learning to become familiar with joy without worrying about the future. I hadn’t previously composed music with a specific personal event or feeling in mind, so this has been a fun change. The piece begins with just horn alone, and several layers of sound periodically enter and leave throughout, interacting both with each other and with the solo horn. —Aiman Khan Aiman Khan is in her fourth year at the University of Virginia, studying Music and Economics. She is in the Performance Concentration within the Music Department, and she is a member of the horn section of the Charlottesville Symphony. In the summer of 2018, she spent five weeks in Greensboro, NC at the Eastern Music Festival, and this coming sum- mer she will participate the in National Music Festival in Maryland. Aiman is also a composer, primarily of electro-acoustic music. In November 2018, her piece Fluid Awareness was performed at the UVA Fall Dance Concert, and she performed her piece Ragged Call at the 2019 National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME) in February. Integration Integration is a piece that brings together and takes apart harmony, form, and texture of acoustic and electronic sound. Its inspiration has come from UVA faculty guidance and “integration” of self-inspired ideas and synthesis. Rojo also wants to thank Kevin Davis, Heather Mease, Akin Odeleye, Robert Kaufman, Karidan Mavericks, and Leah Reid for their time and patience in the completion of Integration. —Daniel Arvelo-Perez Daniel “Rojo” Arvelo-Perez is a non-traditional 2nd year who was accepted into the music department last semester. He has been working with DAWS for over the past ten years and has a deep appreciation for the opportunities UVA has brought to him this current semester. His hobbies outside the music department include juggling, martial arts, and blacksmithing. Rain Shadow No. 2 Rain Shadow No. 2 is part of a continued exploration of textural and spectral topologies. This iteration focuses on tonal flux as a property of intersecting overtone (“Otonal”) and undertone (“Utonal”) structures afforded by 7-limit just intonation. Using a pair of hand-held transduc- ers and amplified strings, the performer probes different surfaces to capture minute impulse signals. These impulses are transformed using a variation of Karplus-Strong synthesis, with all synthesis parameters controlled via a secondary tactile interface. The resultant sonorities retain the textural quality of each surface encountered, while imbuing a microtonal ‘haze’ across the spectrum. -Ben Luca Robertson Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-found- er of Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems—often supplant- ing narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scab- lands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biologists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chinook Salmon in the Snake River watershed. Quotation d0419: “Franco, Christian. “Víctor Huerta”, México 2009” -No, we are against any kind of pedagogic device, we have no message to convey, we are artist, we make artwork, not propaganda. On our use of quotes we expect to be close what _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ wrote: “A quote must be like a bandit who assaults passersby.” —FdC Omar Fraire Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher - Fraire’s work is inserted into reality by transducing it, and functions as an act of resistance. Fraire enjoys collaborative work, and his energies oscillate across disciplines. After having deserted from two universities in México, Fraire has gone on to specialize in Sonology (Koninklijk Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art as auditor (Aguascalientes). He is the creator of Punto Ciego Festival, and artist of the Guggenheim Aguascalientes. Fraire is mostly self-taught, though he holds an M.A. from Wesleyan, having studied under R. Kuivila, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at UVA. Complicated Complicated is a future bass electronic music piece written for MelodyPainter, a virtual reality-based composition software that transforms the user’s motion into corresponded MIDI notes. Future Bass is a genre that heavily applies modulated synthesized sounds in its composition. With MelodyPainter, one can fully utilize the capacity of different synthesizers. Complicated has a strong rhymic feeling accompanied by beautiful vo- cal lines. In this piece, I hope to explore the potential of blending MelodyPainter into somewhat mainstream music and see how it goes. -Kaiming Cheng Kaiming Cheng is a musician, programmer, and instrument designer. Cheng is currently a fourth year student pursuing a B.A. in Music and Computer Science as a J.Sanford Miller Arts Scholar at the University of Virginia. At a very young age, Cheng began to play drum and was actively involved in different music groups and bands in both China and America. After also developing a keen interest in technology, he tried to combine his two best interests - music and computer science together. Icarus “This is my final project for MUSI 4547 - Composing with Electronics. The goal was to make something Lofi-inspired. Although that’s how it started, it branched off into something much more dynamic.” -Ryan Kann Ryan Kann “I have been composing primarily orchestral and piano music as a hob- by for a few years; however, MUSI 4547 was my first formal composition course. I am really excited to show off everything that I’ve learned, and I feel I have expanded a lot as a musician over the course of this past semester.” godtrash You really screwed up this time, huh? Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.” She is a 2nd year graduate student in composition at UVA. Squash Squash is an exercise in exercising (exorcising?) for the sake of body, mind, spirit, and art. Object impact reveals the (un)evenness of space as compositional process questions our (im)perception of time. -3LB 3LB was formed in Charlottesville, VA on April 1st, 2019 at 2:11 PM.

3. Digitalis 2018 (1:07:10)

Date:: 2018-05-15
Main contributors:: McIntire Department of Music
Summary:: Program Notes (Ritual music), for viola, oboe, and percussion - David Joo This piece experiments with the trio’s ability to imitate the sounds of Korean folk music, in particular the incidental timbres from the improvisatory music of shaman rituals. The pitch content is derived from a spectral analysis of the large gong, while the rhythms are loosely based on traditional long-short motifs. David Joo is a 4th year arts & science student studying chemistry and music with a fascination for paper science and experimental music. Improvisations on a Painting by Jules Olitski (2018) - Luc Cianfarani Improvisations on a Painting by Jules Olitski (2018) is a work for piano and live electronics based off of studies in color perception. Each section is based on a color from the painting “Untitled” by Jules Olitski. Much of the work is improvised, and at times the pianist must improvise against an interactive audio-visual screen which changes colors based off of the sounds the piano makes. Luc Cianfarani is a composer and pianist from Saratoga Springs, NY. His work is informed by a wide-variety of sources including jazz, spectralism, postmodernism and visual art. He will continue his compositional studies next years while pursuing a master’s degree at Boston University. SALTSCRUB - Heather Mease tall and tan and tall and lovely the girl from Ipanema goes walking and while she’s walking she stops and passes, says “ah” hm ‘lil corncob’ mease is a composer, multimedia artist, schemer, community arts organizer, and aggressive consumer of internet media. mease has a Bachelor’s of Music from Temple University and currently studies Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia and manages operations at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative in Charlottesville. Zebra Crossings - Aaqil Abdullah A spectralist piece that explores the landscape of percussion. This piece utilizes many types of instruments in conjunction with electronics to help fill the atmosphere. Let the sound of this crossing envelop you, as it comes to a climax. Aaqil Abdullah has been composing since he was 16 years old starting off with chiptune music for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then he has moved into many different styles of music for many different instruments, such as saxophone quartets, choral arrangements, and even self-producing popular music. After UVA he plans to keep on composing and doing music theory at every opportunity, and hopes to compose new atmospheres for video game soundtracks. Deep in the Heart of Virginia - Peter Pairo The construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, fracked-gas pipeline, has recently started in Virginia going through over 300 miles of people’s property, national parks, & waterways! It also happens to pass through Buckingham, the geographical center [heart] of Virginia putting thousands of Virginians in danger. This piece aims to utilize electronic music, acoustic instruments, and various forms of visual aid to better depict this imminent environmental catastrophe. This Piece is composed of two main movements each intentionally different. The piece tells the story of the James River, one of the major waterways on the path of the pipeline. The first movement gives more emphasis on the initial peaceful state of James as the sound of clean water starts dripping from a bag into a glass. The ambience of synthesized sound, guiro, and marimba along with soft oboe emphasize are used to depict the sound of nature. Without rest, the second movement starts with the sound of slowly dripping dark colored water [visual pollution]. In the meantime, oboe and viola gradually increase tension by a long crescendo to depict the struggle and the discruption caused by construction. At the end, slapstick [trees falling] breaks this pattern followed by pizzicato in viola and grace notes in oboe leaving the sound of water to solely resonate in the space. Variance - Connor Watkinson In this piece I am exploring the relationship between digital music and nature, combining elements of both live instrumental recordings, immitation, and foley with unique textures meant to represent each space. The three soundscapes being explored here are a spring field, a snow- bound cabin, and a thunderstorm by the sea. Connor Watkinson is a graduating 4th year Music and Cognitive Science double major. EXTENSION OF MYSELF - Susan Grochmal submit too the chaos Susan Grochmal is an undergrad at UVA studying poetry. She explores a personal/human relationship to technology through sound and direct interaction. In addition to building physical entities, she is also a video artist and musician. She plans to release her upcoming album, DUALITY, this spring, under her latest project, AUTODIVA. Rosebud--Excerpt #1 - Ben Robertson This piece & the creation of the instrument itself, originate in a desire to develop a re-embodied mode of synthesis in which the composer/ performer physically engages with sound spectra. To this end, ‘Rosebud’ utilizes electro-magnetic actuators to bring six, metal strings into varying states of sympathetic resonance. This resonance is as much a property of the vibrating string, as it is a product of the software which drives the system. Here sound is not a facsimile of its source. Instead the materials are allowed to speak, translating an imagined world though the artifacts of a very real, physical object. Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes and biological systems—often by supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Illustrating the complex interactions and materials of our surroundings is an essential component of Ben’s work and his compositions often reflect themes associated with his upbringing in the Inland Pacific Northwest. As such, recent projects have included collaboration with the University of Idaho Water Resources Department to sonify the migratory patterns of Chinook Salmon. Another important component of this practice includes the construction of new instruments that utilize re-purposed objects, electro-magnetism, and sympathetic resonance as a means for actualizing the complex tuning systems he envisions for his pieces. Ben holds a B.A. from the Evergreen State College and a M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University. His work has been featured throughout the region and abroad, including performances at the Sound and Music Computing Conference in Ireland and a guest research appointment with the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interaction in Finland. Painting Music in Virtual Reality - Kaimeng Chang What if you can play any instrument just by waving around? Will the virtual surrounding inspire artists’ innovation? In this piece, Kaiming is going to explore the infinite possibility of virtual reality and its application in music. He will perform an ambient electronic music while totally immersed in a virtual outer space. Kaiming Cheng is a musician, programmer, and instrument designer. Cheng is currently a third-year student pursuing B.A. in Music and Computer Science as a J.Sanford Miller Arts Scholar at the University of Virginia. At a very young age, Cheng began to play drum and was actively involved in different music groups and bands in both China and America. After also developing a keen interest in technology, he tried to combine his two best interests - music and computer science together. No Where - Eli Stine This work explores the idea of non place, of a designed electroacoustic environment that is inexpressible, undefined, that ultimately has no sense of where. To accomplish this task both a multitude of ambience tropes (for example, filmic tropes of what archetypal spaces (restaurants, carnivals, offices) sound like) and impossible deformations of recorded and virtual spaces (pushing the ceiling beneath the floor, for example) are juxtaposed and interposed to dis- and un-place the listener. Eli Stine is a composer, programmer, and media designer. Stine is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies as a Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia. Stine is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory with degrees in Technology In Music And Related Arts and Computer Science. Stine’s work ranges from acoustic to electronic composition, and frequently incorporates multimedia technologies and collaboration, seeking to explore the intersections between performed and computer-generated art. Festivals and conferences that have programmed Stine’s work include the International Computer Music Conference, Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States conferences, International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, New York City Electroacoustic Music, Third Practice, Studio 300, and Threshold festivals, the Muestra Internacional de Música Electroacústica, the Spatial Music Workshop, and the International Sound Art Festival Berlin. Most recently Stine created sound design for a VR adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis that is touring the world. More information and work may be found at www. elistine.com. The Horizon, Mine - Rebecca Brown Program notes: Twenty seconds is two minutes is four hours is five days is three weeks. There is some new-old thing I’ve never seen before around every bend, over every hill, along every forest. I never know where I’m going, just that I’m going, just that I’m not where I was anymore or ever again. Performer: Becky Brown, found objects (or percussion, depends on what makes more sense) Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in composition at the University of Virginia, studying with Dr. Matthew Burtner. She is the Technical Director of the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and recently worked as a Music Technology Specialist at the University of Richmond. Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, SCI National/Regional, Third Practice New Music Festival, Ball State New Music Festival, and in Beijing, China. Hold Still, her work for live art and electronics, was released on the SEAMUS label in 2017. Previously, she studied electroacoustic composition with Dr. Mark Snyder, and harp performance with Dr. Grace Bauson. Suburban Summers - Caroline Kinsella Growing up, summer in suburbia always left a certain taste in my mouth. It was, and still is, mostly undefinable: somewhere in between exigent and sublime. This composition aims to evoke these feelings—the slow, dreamy heat and inconsistent passage of time—how the weeks blend together and all too soon it’s as if you were living in a memory the whole time. To build this atmosphere, I collaged sounds I associate with warm weather at home—cars rolling by, birds chirping in the yard, the neighbor’s lawnmower starting up—with raw moments of my own summer journals. This soundscape attempts capture the very surreal and nostalgic feelings I have long associated with summers spent in suburbia. Caroline Kinsella is a multimedia artist with a penchant for dreamy soundscapes and collage-based artwork. Her all-around artistic influences include Petra Collins, Richard Siken, Sofia Coppola, Ta-Ku, and In Love With a Ghost. With Bells On - Alex Christie These are things that bubble to the surface during long periods of sleep deprivation. Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant,” “interesting, I guess,” and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day.” He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the ways in which acoustic and electronic sound worlds intersect. Performer Bios I-Jen Fang, percussion Described as an “intrepid percussionist” by Fanfare Magazine, I-Jen Fang has a career as a solo performer, chamber musician, orchestral player, and teacher. She joined the faculty of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia in 2005 and as the Principal Timpanist and Percus- sionist of the Charlottesville Symphony. She received her B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University, M.M. from Northwestern University and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of North Texas. I-Jen has performed or recorded with artists such as Keiko Abe, William Cahn, Christopher Deane, Mark Ford, Mike Mainieri, Ed Smith, Michael Spiro, Nanik Wenton, Nyoman Wenton, Attacca Percussion Group, EcoSono Ensemble, and Da Capo Chamber Players. She has performed as marim- ba soloist in Taiwan, U.S., Austria, France, Hungary, Romania, and South Africa. She has also appeared as a featured performer at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, PAS Day of Percussion, Staunton Music Festival, and Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. I-Jen Fang is an Innovative Percussion Artist. Kelly Peral, oboe Kelly Peterson Peral is University of Virginia’s Lecturer in Oboe and Principal Oboe with the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia. Her current performance work also includes engagements with the Roanoke Symphony, Williamsburg Symphony, Richmond Symphony, and Virginia Symphony in Norfolk. Interested in supporting new music projects, Ms. Peral has worked with American Composers Orchestra, NYC Opera’s VOX Festival, Philadelphia’s Network for New Music, and Miami’s Subtropics Festival. Peral has served on the faculties of the Cleveland Music School Settle- ment, Miami’s New World School of the Arts and Florida International University as well as The Juilliard School Pre-College Division. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School (MM), Cleveland Institute of Music (BM), and Interlochen Arts Academy (HSD). Her major teachers include Elaine Douvas, John Mack, Daniel Stolper, and David Goza. Ayn Balija, viola Violist Ayn Balija leads a musically rich life performing and teach- ing throughout the country. She joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 2007 and serves as the principal violist of the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia and is the violist of the Rivanna String Quartet. Ms. Balija performs and teaches around the country including the Richmond Symphony, Tennessee Governors School for the Arts, Yachats Summer Music Festival, North Carolina Chamber Music Festival, Charlottesville Opera, West Virginia University, and the Uni- versity of Tennessee Knoxville. She performs and commissions a wide variety of music including new works from Libby Larsen, Kenji Bunch, Jorge Variejo, Matthew Burtner, and Judith Shatin. She holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, The Cleveland Institute of Mu- sic and James Madison University. She has studied with Peter Slowik, James Dunham, Jeffrey Irvine, Karen Tuttle, Victoria Chiang, and Amadi Azikiwe. Her principal mentors have been Peter Slowik, Jeffrey Irvine, and Karen Tuttle.

4. Fred Frith Trio - Old Cabell Hall 10.04.19 (54:10)

Date:: 2019-10-04
Main contributors:: McIntire Department of Music
Summary:: Fred Frith Trio: Fred Frith, guitar Jason Hoopes, bass Jordan Glenn, drums Special Guests: Susana Santos Silva, trumpet Heike Liss, video Friday, October 4, 2019 8:00 pm Old Cabell Hall Auditorium University of Virginia The Fred Frith Trio began life almost by accident in 2013. A couple of low key local gigs gave rise to a European tour, a debut record on Intakt, and then another tour a couple of years later. By now the group has created an identity that seems to revolve around memories of a bygone psychedelic era filtered through the lens of razor-sharp improvisation. Whether this will remain the prevalent focus remains to be seen. Their last Intakt CD, Closer to the Ground, has been described as “a gripping piece of spontaneous timelessness,” “a vital statement from a singular artist and his inventive crew,” and “a magical, transcendent world.” The trio regularly cooperates with musical guests such as trumpeter Susana Santos Silva or saxophonist Lotte Anker, and visual artist Heike Liss. Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. He learned his craft as both improviser and composer playing in rock bands, notably Henry Cow, and creating music in the recording studio. Much of his compositional output has been commissioned by choreographers and filmmakers, but his work has also been performed by Ensemble Modern, Hieronymus Firebrain, Arditti Quartet, Robert Wyatt, Bang on a Can All Stars, Concerto Köln, and Rova Sax Quartet, among quite a few others. Fred enthusiastically records and performs all over the place with icons of contemporary music, younger players you may never have heard of, and everyone in between. He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s award-winning documentary film Step Across the Border. Jordan Glenn, drums, spent his formative years in Oregon drawing cartoons, taking dance classes from his aunt, and putting on plays with his sisters. As he got older, he began making movies with his friends and studying lots of jazz, classical, and rock music. In 2006, he relocated to the Bay Area where he has since worked closely with Fred Frith, William Winant, Zeena Parkins, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Dominique Leone, Lisa Mezzacappa, Karl Evangelista, Michael Coleman, and the bands Jack O’ The Clock, Arts & Sciences, Beep!, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. Jordan leads and conducts the long-standing trio Wiener Kids—and its ten piece expansion, The Wiener Kids Family Band—and directs the conduction ensemble Beak. Jason Hoopes, bass, was born and raised in the mountains of Northern California. He began teaching himself to play guitar and bass in high school after discovering thrash-metal, and eventually found himself at Mills College where he met Jordan Glenn and studied with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, and Joëlle Léandre. Since graduating from Mills, Jason has become a highly sought after bassist in the Bay Area’s diverse and explosive music scene. Primarily recognized for his work with the critically acclaimed avant- rock band Jack O’ The Clock, as well as with Annie Lewandowski’s powerdove and Dominique Leone, he also improvises in a wide range of contexts. Susana Santos Silva is a Portuguese trumpet player, improviser, and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden. In the last years, she has been considered by the international press as one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvised music, “one of the most exciting improvisers in the world” (Downbeat). With a singular approach/voice that comes out of a comprehensive spectrum of influences, from classical and contemporary music to jazz and textural sound art, she is interested in stretching the boundaries of the instrument and exploring new ways of expression within music. Her music has been described as “startling, intoxicating, ecstatic, stoically intense, beautiful, overwhelming, mesmerizing, innovative, bold and creative.” She leads her projects Impermanence and Life and Other Transient Storms and co-leads duos with Kaja Draksler and Torbjörn Zetterberg—also in trio with Hampus Lindwall, Child of Illusion and Hearth. In 2018, she released her first solo album, All the Rivers, on Clean Feed Records. Much in demand, she has played, among many others, with Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Paul Lovens, Mats Gustafsson, and Hamid Drake. Heike Liss has been developing and refining tools that allow her to mix and digitally draw over personal video footage in response to and in dialogue with improvised live music. Drawing Sound is a collaboration with her partner and traveling companion Fred Frith. Together they have performed with musical improvisers such as Lotte Anker, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Chris Cutler, Susana Santos Silva, and Shelley Hirsch among others. Heike also performs live visuals with skratchklang, her duo with violinist/composer Thea Farhadian. Heike takes her cues from the people and the world around her and works in a variety of media, including video, photography, drawing, sculpture, site specific installation, and public intervention. Her award-winning work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and at film and music festivals. She has collaborated with choreographers Sonsherée Giles and François Verret; musicians Ellen Fullman, GAW, Marcus Weiss, Caroline Penwarden, and Theresa Wong; multi-media artists Ellen Lake, Nomi Talisman, and Michael Trigilio; painter Soffia Saemundsdottir; and poet Lyn Hejinian, to name a few. She lives and works in Oakland and Basel and teaches Transdisciplinary Art at the Universidad Austral de Chile.

5. Science Ficta: Works by UVa Graduate Composers - Old Cabell Hall (1:24:50)

Date:: 2020-02-29
Summary:: The Ten of Swords Becky Brown the house of the mother of the Heather Mease Artemisia Ben Luca Robertson The Mirrors of Uqbar Juan Carlos Vasquez ~ Intermission ~ nothing but nothing Alex Christie A mexican intervention Ernesto Guzmán to be performed once and never more, on very traditional old european devices, at any usonian educational entity. I. La escritura|bordes|huellas de un cuerpo. II. Anthem/end of the line. III. (Go to I) Masking Songs Daniel Fishkin Science Ficta An ensemble of viola da gamba virtuosi (Doug Balliett, Kivie Cahn- Lipman, Loren Ludwig, and Zoe Weiss), Science Ficta tackles the thorniest polyphonic challenges, old and new. Longtime collaborators and friends, in 2016 the four were inspired to form an ensemble dedicated to music at least as difficult to play as it is to listen to (and hopefully more so!). Science Ficta's arcane but rewarding repertory is comprised both of new commissions and a wealth of little-known sixteenth century works that have been unjustly neglected by modern performers and listeners. Science Ficta's performances seek points of contact between contemporary music and the diverse experimental musical traditions of the late Renaissance pioneered by composers including Christopher Tye, Ferdinando de las Infantas, John Baldwin, and Johann Walter. Science Ficta has premiered new works by Molly Herron, Doug Balliett, and Cleek Schrey and members of the ensemble have performed and collaborated with composers including Donnacha Dennehy, Nico Mulhy, George Benjamin, Ted Coffey, and numerous others. Recent residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Cornell and Princeton Universities have allowed Science Ficta to work closely with student performers and composers. Program Notes & Biographies The Ten of Swords The Ten of Swords is a card in the Minor Tarot. It depicts a prone man, ten swords buried in his back, a swath of red draped over his lower body (which could be interpreted as a robe, or his blood, or both). He faces away from the viewer, looking out over a dark lake, towards a distant sunrise. Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. the house of the mother of the The House of the Suicide and The House of the Mother of the Suicide are a pair of architectural structures by John Hejduk erected in tribute to the 1969 self-immolation of the Czech dissident Jan Palach whose death was in protest of the 1968 Soviet invasion. Heather Mease makes sound and video! Heather Mease is often both dry and greasy at the same time! What a nightmare!! Artemisia In Artemisia, the composer employs an extended system of 11-Limit just intonation to model the phenomenon of “stretched” octaves and other spectral non-linearities. Contrasting with the simple, harmonic proportions exhibited by most stringed instruments (including the Viol da Gamba), we generally associate such inharmonicity with bells, gongs, and various metallic percussion. However, through the inclusion of high-order just intervals, one may construct ‘hybrid’ sonorities which embody traits of both harmonic and inharmonic timbres. Here, stretched octaves exhibit intervallic displacement equivalent to at least three forms of just commas (81/80, 45/44, 33/32). The cumulative effect for this mode of inharmonic distortion suggests the perception of an altered or otherwise ambiguous fundamental frequency—thus eliciting a sense of movement analogous to ‘Tonal Flux.’ So as to afford the precise transformations in pitch and spectra necessary in generating these phenomena, performers use custom software to process the signals from two electric instruments within the consort. Commensurate to electronic processing, the ensemble also alters the positions of frets on their instruments to accommodate new tuning schemes. From these procedures emerge a continually evolving set of 28 distinct sonorities, which constitute the structure of the piece. Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co- founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems—often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning structures, and microtonality. Ben’s current research focuses upon the intersection between actuated string instrument design and just tuning practices. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scablands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay continually haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biologists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chinook Salmon in the Snake River watershed. Ben’s work has been featured at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Sound-Music Computing Conference (SMC), Northwest Public Broadcasting, MOXsonic, New York Re- embodied Sound Symposium, Third Practice, Magma-fest, and Olympia Experimental Music Festivals. The Mirrors of Uqbar The Mirrors of Uqbar is a piece based on the metaphor of mirrors found in the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges. In this story, Uqbar was a fictional society where mirrors were feared in an allegory to hyperrealism, aka a simulation that takes over reality. In the piece “The Mirrors of Uqbar”, the electronics reflect and modify the melodic acoustic materials, creating a progressively independent world. Juan Carlos Vasquez is an award-winning composer, sound artist, and researcher. His electroacoustic music works are performed constantly around the world and to date have premiered in 28 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Vasquez has received grants and commissions by numerous institutions, including the ZKM, the International Computer Music Association, the Nokia Research Center, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland, the Finnish National Gallery, and CW+ in partnership with the Royal College of Music in London, UK. As a researcher, Vasquez’s writings can be found in the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press), Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), and the proceedings of all the standard conferences of the field (ICMC, CHI, SMC, and NIME). Vasquez received his education at the Sibelius Academy (FI), Aalto University (FI), and the University of Virginia (US). He has taken workshops with Robert Normandeau, Miller Puckette, Marco Stroppa, Steven Stucky, William Mival, Jonty Harrison and the Eighth Blackbird Ensemble, among others. Vasquez’s music is available in the catalog of Naxos, MIT Press (US), Important Records (US) and Phasma Music (Poland). nothing but nothing I prefer the space of uncommonly occupied hours. Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference, absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition. Recently, Alex’s work has explored the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, light, and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through which the audience can experience the work. Alex has performed and presented at a variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell nicedinsaucesfeeeemmmmmmnortfogascabsplot. Alex serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, Director of Composers Forums, and Academic Dean at the Walden School of Music Young Musicians Program. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia. A mexican intervention In the second Trattado de Glosas by the composer and music theorist Diego Ortiz (Rome 1553 ca.) probably discovered later by the African- American songwriter J. Alan Bland, an ancient practice of appropriation is depicted as being common for the Viol Consort repertoire. It is a compositional strategy consisting of taking the melody of an anthem and imposing different lyrics. Such technique has been practiced in many of the regional anthems and state songs throughout The Country. A former president of Avon Products removed the lyrics from a traditional song — where a Canadian declares his love to the daughter of the Oneida Chief Shenandoah — replacing them to make the Virginia Regional Anthem. In later apocryphal studies, it is known that in this anthem–as in the one using the phrase Sic Semper Tyrannis–some verses have been lost or omitted. Following this implanting tradition, these forgotten or forbidden verses are used here to create and add a piece to the body of composed anthems for Viola Da Gamba. Ernesto Guzmán is an award loser composer. Strangely and recently intrigued about borders. As if they sculpted the political topographies of objects. Like a form resulting from many exclusions whose objectives do not correspond with the function of the object in question. Masking Songs Contrary to the masking of external sounds, it is possible to abolish the perception of tinnitus sounds by pure tones of a similar intensity regardless of their frequency (Feldmann, 1971). This proves that “masking” of tinnitus does not involve a mechanical interaction of basilar membrane movements, does not depend on the critical band principle and, therefore, has to occur at a higher level within the auditory pathways. Consequently, the elimination of the perception of tinnitus by another sound should be labeled suppression rather than “masking,” as is commonly used. Unfortunately, Feldmann’s fundamental discovery has been widely disregarded, resulting in focusing attention on masking rather than suppression and in producing tinnitus instruments tuned to the dominant perceived pitch of tinnitus. Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, Pawel Jastreboff, 2004 Daniel Fishkin: I build instruments because I want to live in sounds, with music—I don’t want the music to stop at the end of the concert. I daydream of new machines as if they were melodies crossing my mind's ear. I don’t often sell my instruments, though I do share them with my trusted collaborators. I live with my instruments; I am responsible for my creations, and I am always thinking about how much space they take up in my life, as I carry them with me to and fro. I hear their songs ringing in my ears, even as they rest silently across the room.

6. Splinter Reeds - A concert of new works by graduate students in Composition & Computer Technologies (1:04:40)

Date:: 2019-02-01
Summary:: Program 5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines - Omar Fraire Triac - Ben Luca Robertson Musings - Aaron Stepp Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez Centrifuge - Alex Christie in the event of my - Becky Brown Night Music - Christopher Luna-Mega About the Ensemble Splinter Reeds is the West Coast’s first reed quintet, comprising five innovative musicians with a shared passion for new mu- sic. The ensemble is committed to presenting top tier performances of today’s best contemporary composition, showcasing the vast possibilities of the reed quintet, commissioning new works, and collaborating with fellow musicians and artists. As a relatively new chamber music genre, the reed quintet is an evolutionary detour from the traditional woodwind quintet with the advantages of a more closely related instrument family. With approximately 20 professional reed quintets worldwide, Splinter Reeds is explicitly dedicated to cutting edge com- position and expanding the existing reed quintet repertoire through the development of new works by emerging and established composers. Splinter Reeds formed in 2013 with the coming together of five col- leagues highly active in multiple facets of the Bay Area’s vibrant music scene: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Bill Kalinkos (clarinet), David Wegehaupt (saxophone), Jeff Anderle (bass clarinet), and Dana Jessen (bassoon). The sum of their wide ranges of experience – in settings including free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, pop, punk and metal as well as classical – has enabled them to rapidly zero in on a distinct aesthetic identity. Recent concert engagements have included performances at Chicago’s Constellation, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Switchboard Music Festival, FeNAM (Sacramento), April in San- ta Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and the Presidio Sessions series. Additionally, they have held residencies at Stanford, Chapman, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, UC- Davis and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The ensemble has received grant awards from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University, the Zellerbach Fam- ily Foundation, and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. Splinter Reeds is fiscally sponsored through the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. www.splinterreeds.com Program Notes 5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines – Omar Fraire “ It is truly no feat to blow a tube, and therefore no one would think to gather an audience for the purpose of entertaining them with tube blowing. But if he should do so, and if he should succeed in his aim, then it cannot be a matter of mere tube blowing. Or alternatively, it is a matter of tube blow- ing, but as it turns out we have overlooked the art of tube blowing because we were so proficient at it that it is this new tube blower who is the first to demonstrate what it actually entails, whereby it could be even more effective if he were less expert in tube blowing than the majority of us. “ FDC oegf. Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher, performer. After having deserted from two universities in México, he specializes in Sonology (Koninklijk Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master’s de- gree in Contemporary Art as auditor (Aguascalientes). His work is inserted into reality by transducing it and functions as an act of resistance. Enjoys collaborative work and his energies oscillate across fields of knowledges/arts. Creator of Punto Ciego Festival and artist of the Gug- genheim Aguascalientes, mostly self-taught although he holds an M.A. with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan and studies Ph.D. at UVA. Triac – Ben Luca Robertson “Triac” investigates self-regulating sonorities and the intersection between tuning and timbre. Through a recursive process of real-time analysis, re- synthesis, and intuitive mapping, the combinatory spectral attributes of the wind quintet and accompanying electronics guide both the tuning and temporal structure of the piece. Applying a mathematical model developed by Pantelis Vassilakis, the composer defines cumulative roughness between harmonic partials—an important feature in how we perceive consonance/ dissonance—as a deterministic function for designing a microtonal tuning system that is sympathetic to the most indelible qualities of each instrument. Guided by software programmed by the composer, the ensemble manipulates the intensity of individual partials, thereby minimizing or maximizing the listener’s perception of roughness as the piece unfolds. Akin to a “spectral thermostat,” this self-regulating system continually analyzes current conditions (e.g. cumulative spectral roughness), defines new roughness thresholds, calculates what conditions must change to match these thresholds, and directs performers to adjust pitch and dynamics accordingly. Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems— often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scablands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay continue to haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biolo- gists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chi- nook Salmon. Ben’s work has been featured at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Sound & Music Computing (SMC) Conference (Ireland), New York Re-embodied Sound Symposium, Third Practice, Magma, and Olympia Experimental Music Festival. Musings – Aaron Stepp “Musings” is an exploration of a piece of music that I love deeply, the Bach’s WTC, Book I, C Major prelude. It is an elegant, clean, and beautiful piece of music that I have a deep connection with. Witold Lutosławski describes listening to music as a composer being “schizophrenic,” listen- ing to and exploring the piece at the same time. I try to bring you along for that journey in my head (through the lovely performers on stage), and compose using the materials of the Bach. Think of the piece as a theme and variations, except the theme is a piece, and the variations occur as the piece unfolds. Aaron Stepp is a composer from Kentucky. He has completed commissions for TrioArsenal, Orchestra Enigmatic, Merrilee Elliott, KMEA 7th District Honors Band, Eva Legene, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Second/Cycle, and Duo Passionato. He has received performances at SEAMUS, the KMEA Conference, and in Berlin, New York City, Chicago, Riverside, Washington D.C., Quito, and at various universities across the country. He recently finished a significant song cycle for Soprano and Flute named Stone Walls, based on the poetry of Charlottes- ville native Rebecca Morgan Frank. Upcoming projects include a collaboration with poet Annie Kim, a piece for American Trombone Quartet, a documentary score about women in India, and another collaboration with Rebecca Morgan Frank. Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez “Convection” is a piece for ensemble and electronics that features a transference of spectral energy from one state of white noise into a final state featuring a single sustained pitch, in a way that resembles bulk displace- ment of sonic elements. This composition was written specially for the Splinter Reeds ensemble. Juan Carlos Vasquez is an award-winning composer, sound artist, and researcher from Colombia. His electroacoustic music works are per- formed constantly around the world and have been premiered in 28 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Vasquez has received creation grants and/or commissions by numerous institutions, including the Nokia Research Center, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, AVEK (Promotion Center for Audiovisual Culture in Finland), the Finnish National Gallery, the University of Virginia, the Sibelius Birth Town Foundation, Aalto University, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland and the CW+ in partnership with the Royal College of Music in London, UK, among others. Vasquez received his education at the Sibel- ius Academy (FI), Aalto University (FI), the University of Virginia (USA), and has taken courses with Andy Farnell, Miller Puckette, Marco Stroppa, Steven Stucky and Jonty Harrison, among others. As a researcher, Vasquez’ writings can be found at the Computer Music Journal and the proceedings of conferences such as the International Computer Music Conference, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the International Sound and Music Computing Conference, and the International Conference on New Inter- faces for Musical Expression. Official website: www.jcvasquez.com Centrifuge – Alex Christie “Centrifuge” is about mass and gravity. The instruments exert force and pull on each other. Some exert more force than others, continually pulling the rest of the ensemble back to a center. This gravity creates an internal motion within the ensemble that in turn produces the slow, heavy motion of the full group. We simultaneously feel the weight of stasis and force of motion. Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference, absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition. He is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Recently, Alex’s work has explored the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, light, video, and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through which the audience can experience the work. Alex has performed and presented at a variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell nicedinsaucesfeemmmmmogscabsplot. Alex serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, Director of Composers Forums, and Academic Dean at the Walden School of Music Young Musicians Program. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia. Other interests include baseball and geometric shapes. in the event of my – Becky Brown When I was in high school, there was a block near me that had a Chinese restaurant, a big craft store, and a shoddy movie theater. When the Chinese place shut down, I realized none of the kids in the area after us would share the memory of trying to bring too many people to sit at one table, ordering the wrong thing off the menu, and then stressing about getting to a movie on time. That’s when I realized what aging felt like. The craft store and the movie theater shut down not long after. Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.” Brown has been the Technical Director of the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and Assistant Technical Director for Third Practice and SPLICE Institute. Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, SCI National/Regional, Third Practice New Music Festival, Ball State New Music Festival, and in Beijing, China. Hold Still, her work for live art and electronics, was released on the New Focus Recordings label in 2017. Night Music – Christopher Luna-Mega All the musical materials performed by Splinter Reeds are derived from direct transcriptions and arrangements of recordings of the summer dusk and night sounds of insects and other creatures in a Virginia forest. Every movement in the piece is a fragment taken from the 40-minute original recording. The striking increase in density and loudness as dusk becomes night is the guiding formal principle of the piece. The recordings, featured in the electronics, were made with five simultaneous microphones in a pentagonal formation, at a distance of ~30 meters between each mic. Each of the five microphone analyses and transcriptions was assigned to an instrument (mic 1 to ob.; mic 2 to cl., etc.), rotating the pairings in each movement. The multi-channel recording sought an expanded listen- ing field resulting from the different microphone responses and placings. Among the various features of the night sounds, one particularly caught my ears: constantly microtonally morphing triads and their aggregates resulting from the superimposition of the multitude of crickets. Christopher Luna-Mega is a composer and improviser from Mexico City. He studied Composition at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México –UNAM (B.M.) and Mills College (M.A.), as well as Film/Com- munication Theory at the Universidad Iberoamericana –UIA, Mexico City (B.A.). His work analyzes sounds from natural and urban environments and translates them into notated music for performers and electronics. His music has been performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, New Thread Quartet, Arditti String Quartet and JACK Quartet, among others. His music has been featured in festivals such as the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Gwanju), AgelicA (Bologna), Tectonics (Reykjavik), Tectonics (Glasgow), L’Off (Montreal), Avant X (Toronto), Mills Music Now (Oakland, CA), and the International Forum for New Music “Manuel Enriquez” (Mexico City). Luna-Mega is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia.

7. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 1 (1:36:10)

Date:: 2018-09-21
Summary:: Phonē (1981) John Chowning The Precession of Simulacra Juan Carlos Vasquez Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) Ted Coffey Assessment Postponement Nexus No. 1 Luke Dahl Rotunda Judith Shatin INTERMISSION You Sink Into the Singing Snow Matthew Burtner Lisa Edwards-Burrs, voice Kevin Davis, cello I-Jen Fang, percussion Sk(etch) Leah Reid Maybe Metaphors Are Easier A.D. Carson / Ryan Maguire Warp Study Michele Zaccagnini Voices (2011) John & Maureen Chowning for Soprano and Interactive Computer v.3 Maureen Chowning, soprano Program Notes Phonē (1981) - John Chowning The sounds in Phonē (from the Greek, meaning “sound” or “voice”) were produced using a special configuration of the frequency modulation (FM) synthesis technique that allows the composer to simulate a wide range of timbres including the singing voice and other strongly resonant sounds. The synthesis programs are designed to permit exploration of and control over the ambiguities that can arise in the perception and identification of sound sources. The interpolation between timbres and extension of “real” vocal timbres into registers that could not exist in the real world — such as a basso “profondissimo” — and the micro-structural control of sound that determines the perceptual fusion and segregation of spectral components are important points in this composition. The composer developed this technique of FM synthesis of the singing voice at IRCAM, Paris in 1979 using a DEC PDP-10 and realized the piece at CCRMA in 1980–81, using the “Samson Box,” a real-time digital synthesizer designed by Peter Samson. The work was premiered at IRCAM in Paris in February 1981. The Precession of Simulacra - Juan Carlos Vasquez The Precession of Simulacra, for piano and electronics, applies in music the concept of “hyperreality” coined by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, where a simulated reality (in this case, computer sounds) is progressively indistinguishable from the actual reality (acoustic sounds). This piece was composed thanks to the support of Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Arts Promotion Center in Finland). Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) - Ted Coffey Blue Cycle: Noise (2008) belongs to a cycle of electroacoustic text-sound works dedicated to teachers and mentors. My texts address a related set of aesthetic and social topics including noise, production value, coherence, the open work, and transcendence. The project offers an excuse to soak in text-sound classics by Dodge, Lansky, Stockhausen, Westerkamp, and Wishart (to name a few). While FFT-based, wavelet and other “current” techniques of audio analysis and resynthesis are used to generate materials, I also explore the more venerable methods—vocoding, LPC, FOF, VOSIM, &c.—implementing idiosyncratic real-time instruments and improvising with them. The music plays with the wealth of meaning that spills out when [non-] sense, affect, and “quality-of-sound” are parameterized, and more generally develops syntaxes and structures appropriate to the texts. Often with wicked self-referentiality, Noise offers descriptions of randomness and pattern from human perspectives, and imagines how the matter might look differently from a divine one. Assessment Postponement Nexus No. 1 - Luke Dahl This piece utilizes a custom spatialized 8-channel feedback delay network (FDN) which is parameterized to afford morphing between discrete echos and more “washed out” reverberations. In this performance I use an SH-101 analog synthesizer as sound source, and explore various textural and gestural potentialities of this system. Rotunda - Judith Shatin While sitting in her office, facing the Rotunda and Lawn at the University of Virginia, composer Judith Shatin suddenly saw the scene spring to life as if in a movie that combined the majesty of the place with the daily hum of life. Filmmaker Robert Arnold, whose work often focuses on temporal elements, agreed to collaborate on the project. They re-purposed a computer/camera surveillance system, with the camera located for an entire year on the upper story of Old Cabell Hall, and collected over 300,000 images. During that period Shatin also collected a multitude of sounds, both in and around the Rotunda, and conducted unscripted interviews about its meaning to a wide variety of people. She created two sound tracks from these recordings, often using extensive processing. One includes interview extracts (heard this evening), and the other includes only sonic transformations and ambient sounds, such as rain, the stacking of chairs, the sound of lawn mowers and more. They structured the flow as one day unfolding over the course of a year, moving from dawn to dusk as the year moves through the seasons. The film is available on DVD, including both stereo and 5.1 audio of both ver- sions, available at judithshatin.com. You Sink Into the Singing Snow - Matthew Burtner “You Sink Into the Snow” (2012) is an electroacoustic song from the telemat- ic climate change opera, “Auksalaq,” co-created by Matthew Burtner (music/text) and Scott Deal (visual media) with imaging, video, animation and photography by Miho Aoki, Jordan Munson, Ryota Kadjita and Maya Salganek and data by Hajo Eicken. The song has been extracted from the opera as this independent vocal piece with video and electronics, and as an acapella choral work. The piece features snow as voiced sound and subject. Sk(etch) - Leah Reid Sk(etch) is an acousmatic work that explores sounds, gestures, textures, and timbres associated with the creative process of sketching, drawing, writing, and composing. Maybe Metaphors Are Easier - A.D. Carson / Ryan Maguire When violence is enacted against certain bodies, language breaks down. Perhaps language does not provide enough distance from such subjects to articulate them clearly. Maybe Metaphors Are Easier explores what it means to create distance, by way of metaphor and sound, to make some conversation, any articulation, possible. Voices (2011) - John & Maureen Chowning Voices is a play of imagination evoking the Pythia of Delphi and the mystifying effects of her oracular utterances. A soprano engages a computer- simulated illusory space with her voice, which allows us to project sounds at distances beyond the walls of the actual space in which we listen. Her utterances launch synthesized sounds within this space, sounds that conjure up bronze cauldrons, caverns, and their animate inhabitants, sounds of the world of the Pythia modulated by our fantasy and technology and but rooted in a past even more distant than her own - the Pythia’s voice becomes the voice of Apollo and Mother Earth, Gaea. Selected pitches of the soprano’s voice line are tracked by the computer running a program written by the composer in MaxMSP. The soprano’s voice is transmitted from a microphone to the computer where it is spatialized. At each captured “target pitch” the program synthesizes accompanying sounds using FM synthesis that is mixed with the voice and sent to the sound system in the auditorium. The spectra of the synthesized sounds are inharmonic derived from the Golden Ratio and ‘structured’ to function in the domains of pitch and harmony as well as timbre. The pitch scale is also based on divi- sion of powers of the Golden Ratio rather than powers of 2, as in the common tempered scale, an idea used in Stria (1977) and Phoné (1981).

8. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 2 (1:09:28)

Date:: 2018-09-22
Summary:: Ouroboros Becky Brown mouthfeel Alex Christie weaving broken threads Heather Frasch Intermission Coluber sono Heather Mease & Ben Luca Robertson Códigos Obsesos v1.7 Omar Fraire Dulcimer Flight Dan Joseph Program Notes Ouroboros - Becky Brown walk circles round the morning and choke down again tomorrow, too I would like to introduce the days all crawling out of you yawn those teeth a little wide next year’s last week’s burnt anew yesterday’s stuck on your tongue you’ll try today, but then forget to mouthfeel - Alex Christie mouthfeel uses the performer’s human, fleshy mouth as a component in a greater circuit of noise. The mouth both actuates sound and acts as filter, moving the system through states of stability and chaos. weaving broken threads - Heather Frasch “How can secret rooms, rooms that have disappeared, become abodes for an unforgettable past?” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, pg. xxxvi. weaving broken threads is the realization of an open text-score, Housed memories, that was inspired by the writings of Gaston Bachelard who uses the memory of “houses as a tool for analysis of the human soul” (The Poetics of Space, Bachelard pg. xxxvi). Both the score and the realization explore the memory of past spaces by using objects (sonic, text, physical) as source material. In the performance it weaves varied aspects of the distinctive places together (e.g. chronologically, most secretive, longest duration etc.). The digital instrument intentionally hides actions to emphasize the notion of interiority and how exterior physical places that no longer exist have become personalized inner notions of self. The digital boxes are a versatile digital instrument constructed from cigar boxes. With microphones, sensors and objects hidden inside, the instrument serves as a vessel for hiding/revealing material during the pieces that it interprets. Coluber sono - Heather Mease (video) & Ben Luca Robertson (sound) This collaboration between Heather and Ben has been realized through in- tense dedication to detailed processes and a love of snakes. Heather’s video combines the physical, time-intensive processes of scraping away at and applying India ink to a 16mm education film titled “Snake’s Alive.” Snakes make up both the content and the medium—as piles of colored film look quite serpentine! The aural component of the piece consists of sonorities generated through electro-magnetic actuation of six strings tuned in 7-limit just intonation. This instrument (‘Rosebud’)—designed and constructed by Ben—responds to electronic signals, whose frequencies correspond to the first seven harmonics of each string. Resultant resonances from the six strings comprise two overtone series’ (Otonalities) and a single undertone series (Utonality). A simple program analyses RGB data from the video, assigns a color value to each overtone/undertone series, and activates sym- pathetic string vibrations according to the average intensity of a given color. The resulting system combines movement, color, and physicality in sound. _Códigos Obsesos v1.7 - Omar Fraire Collaborative piece with the composer Jorge David, inspired by a Samuel Beckett poem. The material is generated by the composer and uploaded in score and audio fragments to be scrambled or manipulated by the collabora- tor: http://codigos-obsesos.hotglue.me Fin fond du néant au bout de quelle guette l’oeil crut entrevoir remuer faiblement la tête le calma disant ce ne fut que dans ta tête. Dulcimer Flight - Dan Joseph In his solo and collaborative works for electroacoustic hammer dulcimer, Dan constructs contemplative soundscapes that slowly unfold over the course of 30-minutes to one-hour. With roots in early minimalism, ambient music and acoustic ecology, these long-form “journeys” combine composed elements, often in the form of a fixed melodic pattern, with extensive improvisation and field recordings while exploring the dulcimer’s rich harmonic properties. Us- ing both traditional and experimental (extended) performance techniques in combination with his self-designed computer-based processing system, Dan gives this ancient instrument and entirely new and contemporary identity.

9. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 3 WAI and EcoSono Ensemble (1:05:44)

Date:: 2018-09-23
Summary:: WAI from New Zealand with the EcoSono Ensemble: a collaboration across cultures, histories and ecosystems Toi tu te whenua, Ngaro atu te tangata People come and go but the land remains WAI features Mina Ripia, Maaka Phat, Uta Te Whanga and Tuari Dawson. EcoSono Ensemble features Matthew Burtner, Glen Whitehead, Kevin Davis, Christopher Luna-Mega, and I-Jen Fang Punga Shores WAI Hine Te Iwaiwa WAI Sands that Move Glen Whitehead Ki A Korua WAI Festival of Whispers Matthew Burtner Ko Te Rerenga WAI Windrose Matthew Burtner Kāore Hoki WAI Improvisation Tirama WAI The Speed of Sound in an Ice Rain Matthew Burtner Mike Gassman, electric guitar Hine Te Ihorangi WAI This concert and the WAI residency are generously sponsored by the Gassmann Fund for Innovation In Music and the Coastal Futures Conservatory. Concert III - Program Notes WAI and EcoSono explore intercultural histories through the exchange of musical invention in collaboration with the environment. Combining the ancient “Punga” (anchor) and the “Poi” technologies with contemporary computer music and ecoacoustic approaches, WAI and EcoSono engage in interactive improvisations through sound, song, movement and ecology. Punga Shores The concert opens with Punga Shores, a field recording of the place where Maaka discovered the Punga anchor which became the basis and metaphor for our collaboration. Hine Te Iwaiwa - WAI Hine Te Iwaiwa was written by a family member Nuki Tākao and local weavers, when they were preparing to begin their craft. Hine Te Iwaiwa is the principal goddess of Te Whare Pora – The House of Weaving. Hine Te Iwaiwa represents the arts pursued by women. Along with this, she is a guardian over childbirth. For us this song is our connection to the Poi. Hine Te Iwaiwa is also the head of the Aho Tapairu, an aristocratic female line of descent. Sometimes this goddess is referred to as Hina, the female personification of the moon. Sands That Move - Glen Whitehead Sands That Move is based on the Great Sand Dunes National Monument highlighting the long history of this site and the people who, from age-to- age, have stood in awe and wonder of this geographical phenomenon at the northern edge of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. These constant shifting sands have gone by many names from the earliest people to the Navajo who called it Saa waap maa nache,“sand that moves,” and the Apaches who settled in New Mexico who called it Sei-anyedi, “it goes up and down.” This fixed media piece was created out of many interacting, free- flowing evolving actions including rapidly moving college students from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs taking great effort to conjure the dunes as a sonic membrane. The trumpet-based computer accompaniment emulates these efforts and starts gathering its own momentum much like a dune fueling its own energy once it is engaged. Ki A Korua - WAI “Mina’s father wrote this song for his parents (Mina’s grandparents) when they passed on. It speaks of the tears that flow for them; we remember the love and joy that they shared with us.” Festival of Whispers - Matthew Burtner Whispers from people and instruments past and present interact as the sea erodes the foundation of the building. The piece was commissioned by the Athenaeum Library in La Jolla, CA. Ko Te Rerenga - WAI “Mina is of Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Whātua decent on her father’s side and Ngāti Kahungunu decent on her mother’s side. This song is a history lesson that talks of the time when Māori of Ngā Puhi decent were populating the northern part of Aotearoa/NZ. Traditionally we have many songs like this that talk of history, passed down through the ages, so that we never forget people, places and experiences of the past. Gifts for the future generations.” Windrose - Matthew Burtner A windrose is a measure of the winds’ directions in a specific location across a period of time. The piece uses original software that allows the performer to play the windrose of the concert location. Kāore Hoki - WAI Kāore Hoki speaks of a passionate expression of grief and sorrow for ancestors whom have passed. Never ending is the love and never ending is the heartache. Improvisation with the sounds of Australian birds, Tasmanian Devils and cedar trees. Tirama - WAI Tirama was written by Maaka’s first cousin Hēmi Te Peeti. Matariki is the Māori name given to the Pleiades star system. When it comes into view it is commonly agreed as the start of the Māori New Year, generally around May or June, and signals a time to prepare the land for the year ahead, to prepare and store food and to meet and discuss issues that affect the families and sub tribes. Tirama names some of the stars and also the actions taken at the time of the Māori New Year. The Speed of Sound in an Ice Rain - Matthew Burtner An ice rain crackles on the leaves of a magnolia tree. Musicians perform changing density, temperature and humidity, altering the speed of the sound. Hine Te Ihorangi - WAI Hine Te Ihorangi is the goddess and personification of rain. This was written by Keri Tākao and it talks of what happens when you are blessed with life. It speaks of the heavens, water and it’s life-giving properties. This connects us to what we as humans are mostly made up of, and what the world is mostly covered by, Water.

10. Technosonics XV Found Sound (1:22:04)

Date:: 2014-11-06
Main contributors:: Park, Joo Won, 1980-, Bellona, Jon, Tfirn, Max, Kim, Seung-Hye, DeLuca, Erik, Fang, I-Jen, Trapp, Rachek Devorah, Warren, Kristina, Stine, Eli, Maguire, Ryand
Summary:: Toccata by Joo Won Park is a solo live electroacoustic piece for found objects and the SuperCollider program. Joo Won performs this piece by scratching, rubbing, tapping, and pushing the objects in different ways on a board with a contact microphone. What you hear is the sound of those objects being digitally processed. Every time you see him clicking on a laptop, you hear different effect combinations. In the pre-performance ritual, he mentally prepares himself to create a wide range of sounds in a nervous and hectic mood. The performance guide and the SuperCollider patch for Toccata can be found at www.joowonpark.net/Toccata.pdf smooth is piece written for the KYMA signal processing system and Wacom Tablet interface. Limited Aggregation, by Max Tfirn and Seung-Hye Kim, is a collaborative piece for percussion and computer that explores sounds that are found by hitting different percussion instruments and modified by live processing. Each composer in the collaboration composes new material and edits each other’s material on the fly. This blends the composers’ compositional styles. Each sound from the percussion and computer interacts with every other, creating larger sounds and richer textures. There are also moments where the component sounds are zoomed in on that creates a contest between the larger built sounds and the microscopic natural sounds. These microscopic zoomed sounds are products of analyzing the spectrum and taking certain characteristics of the sound and filtering out others. The changing length of the processed sounds also reinforces the small/microscopic and zoomed aspects. Within a Sand Dune, by Erik Deluca, scored for amplified percussion quartet with one player, involved a compositional system inspired by time listening to the breath of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. The percussion quartet transduces the sounds of the dunes, and the composer’s experience listening to them. 37720, by Rachel Trapp, is a construction of found sound shaped through a process of unfolding telematic communication. Acoustic and inductive recordings of the composers’ simultaneous transit rituals are transformed and positioned in the performance space according to the composers’ shared sensibilities, creating an audible landscape of movement across time, space, and subjectivity. Look the Other Way, by Kristina Warren: “I explore what I call “found text.” First I compiled texts from several sources, including novels, poems, and newsreels. Then I digitally recorded myself singing- speaking them, and next used various means to obscure the words (e.g., recording to and from tape, intensive layering, etc). This serves to emphasize the sonic and de-emphasize the semantic qualities of the source texts. In performance, I modulate the resulting texture by way of live, semi-semantic vocal input. All this aims to re-consider both signification and authorship.” Touching, by Eli Stine, is an exploration of surface: surface sounds of different objects and the surface layer of musical structure. Sonic materials come exclusively from recordings of touching, leading to friction, leading to striking of surfaces and objects and their resultant resonances. The sounds of these objects meet and interact, but no interaction is more than skin deep. Hyperions, by Paul Turowski, is software that presents an interactive context for musical improvisation. While the performer is free to make specific choices about pitch, timing and activity level, their choices are recognized by the computer via microphone input and significantly affect the dynamic physics-based system. Chance- based factors, including the gradual advance of destructive agents, make the piece akin to a tower defense game and allow unique visual and sonic textures to emerge with each performance. Trans, by Ryan Maguire, is a real-time sonification of a computer transcription of a transalpine scene. The original auditory moment, amidst a herd of cows along a Swiss mountain pass awaiting an approaching thunderstorm, is transformed via machine/human listening and digital transmission. Through repeated transmutation the transience of this particular “found sound” is transpired. In general, all signals are transmodified, and transparency is only relative. The transitory can never be truly transfixed because, first, we have only its trace and, second, communication necessitates transduction wherein its substance is transmuted. Nevertheless, might transpersonal knowledge of such ephemerality facilitate transcendent experience and/or esthesic trance?

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1. Coastal Futures & Arctic Bridging Concert featuring Eight Blackbird (1:37:45)

2. Digitalis (2:01:18)

3. Digitalis 2018 (1:07:10)

4. Fred Frith Trio - Old Cabell Hall 10.04.19 (54:10)

5. Science Ficta: Works by UVa Graduate Composers - Old Cabell Hall (1:24:50)

6. Splinter Reeds - A concert of new works by graduate students in Composition & Computer Technologies (1:04:40)

7. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 1 (1:36:10)

8. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 2 (1:09:28)

9. TechnoSonics XIX: Voices Concert 3 WAI and EcoSono Ensemble (1:05:44)

10. Technosonics XV Found Sound (1:22:04)