Digitalis

2019-04-29 (Creation date: 2019-04-29)

McIntire Department of Music

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.

McIntire Department of Music

University of Virginia Concert Recordings

Music Library

InC - http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en


Performers grant the University of Virginia permission to use, reproduce, exhibit or distribute in any medium the recorded performance for non-commercial educational, documentary, and promotional purposes.

Contents
AUDIO:
01:10 - AUTODIVA'S ROOM / Susan Grochmal
08:20 - Vestigial wings / Eli Stine
15:30 - The gate is open / Aiman Khan
22:20 - Integration / Daniel Arvelo-Perez
32:22 - Rain shadow No. 2 / Ben Luca Robertson
42:25 - Quotation d0419: "Franco, Christian. "Victor Huerta", México 2009" / Omar Fraire
46:20 - Complicated / Kaiming Cheng
52:50 - Icarus / Ryan Kann
57:45 - godtrash / Becky Brown
1:02:05 - Squash / 3LB
Venue/Event Date
Recorded 29 April 2019 in Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia.

Local Identifier: CR1260