Electro-Acoustic

CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Music Instruments, New York, Performers, Recordings

Various Artists: the language of

Various Artists – the language of

QUIET DESIGN RECORDS


the language of is a compilation CD of ten pieces by eight emerging composers in NYC, many of whom are associated with the Wet Ink Ensemble.  Released by Quiet Design Records in Austin, TX, this compilation is a forward-thinking treatise on a constantly evolving new music scene.  The production, recording, and design chores were undertaken by the composers and their colleagues, thus comprising a very personalized aesthetic. the language of is an essential purchase, not only for its DIY approach, but because it contains a variety of exciting, well executed compositions.  And due to the wobbly legs of the music industry, resourceful composers could do well by using this CD as a business model.

There is an immediacy and yearning to the music featured on this CD.  The emotional content (which, of course, varies from piece to piece) is enhanced by the recording techniques used to create the myriad sound-worlds, an approach that is both startling and engaging.  There is not one ounce of sonic sterility that one might find on pristinely recorded chamber music CDs.  Many of the recording techniques used are in-your-face, close mic’d, compressed, and manipulated to each pieces’ ambient requirements.  Some of the pieces that most represent traditional chamber music are ambient mic’d, a representation that provides a bird’s-ear-view (sorry about that one) for the listener, or an aural realism, if you will.   The variety of production from piece to piece is therefore more akin to the world of rock, jazz, and experimental music.  The packaging, designed by composer Clara Latham, is an attractive and environmentally friendly cardboard cover that features nothing in the form of liner notes (this may be one of my only complaints, but it definitely adds a veil of mystery to the release).

A brief overview of each piece follows after the break: (more…)

by Jeremy Podgursky
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York, Opera

Interpretations Season #20: Artist Blog #5 — Robert Ashley

Robert AshleyInterpretations continues its twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City. Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. Produced in tandem with La Mama ETC and Performing Artservices, the centerpiece of the series this year is a two-week, three opera, 10 performance, mini-retrospective of the recent works of Robert Ashley: Dust, Celestial Excursions, and Made out of Concrete.

Robert Ashley’s operas will be at La Mama ETC from 15-25 January 2009.
For more information:
S21 Calendar
Interpretations

Mr. Ashley has been kind enough to take some time from his busy rehearsing schedule to write about the ensemble he’s gathered over the past thirty years or so, as a sort of self-interview:

WHO ARE THE ENSEMBLE MEMBERS?

The ensemble now is (alphabetical order in singers / in slight order of importance in technical)

ROBERT ASHLEY: voice
SAM ASHLEY: voice
THOMAS BUCKNER: voice
JACQUELINE HUMBERT: voice
JOAN LA BARBARA: voice

TOM HAMILTON does audio engineering in all stages of the opera, assists me in realizing the composition in the electronic studio prior to performance; he’s the mixing engineer and advisor in rehearsals; he does performance sound processing and mixing of the performance; he’s in charge of recording of the performance and mixing the sounds from the performance for the CD recording.

CAS BOUMANS is the performance sound designer (audience loudspeaker placement and sound monitor arrangements for the performers. Microphone placement.)

DAVID MOODEY does stage and light design.

MELANIE LIPKA is the production stage manager (off-stage timing of what goes into the performance.)

“BLUE” GENE TYRANNY is the synthesizer performer in Dust and Celestial Excursions

JOAN JONAS is the dancer/performance artist in Celestial Excursions

WHEN DID YOU START WORKING WITH THEM?
It’s various, but compared to the life of most ensembles I’ve been working with all of them for a long time, not only in their jobs now with the ensemble, but as musicians and designers.

(more…)

by Robert
Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music

The Long Tail of the Avant Garde

Check this out. (Be patient, it doesn’t really get good until 1:10)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfHHLfbjNQ[/youtube]

This is a remix of Radiohead’s song “Nude” from their recent album “In Rainbows.” Radiohead held a remix contest, selling the individual tracks of the song on iTunes, and this was one of the results. Here’s the instrumentation, as listed by remixer James Houston on the YouTube description:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array – Act as a collection of bad speakers – Vocals & FX

And as you can see in the video, these aren’t samples he manipulated, they’re the actual hardware hacked together to play the music live. I’m reminded of the early days of electroacoustic music when the composers were coaxing music out of supercomputers and telephone equipment. Houston is a 21 year old recent graduate of the Glasgow School of Art in the UK. As of right now this video has gotten 152,952 views.

[Update 6-12-08: fixed video embed.  Current view count: 161,629]

by Galen H. Brown
Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals

Just Because It’s June in Buffalo

For the past couple of hundred years, David Felder has been running June in Buffalo, the venerable annual music festival that traces its history back to Morton Feldman. Having recently suffered through ‘Savages,’ a small but brutally great film about old people with Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman set in Buffalo, I have to think that the festival is only justifiable reason to ever set foot there.

This year’s festival is set for June 2-7 and this is one of those year’s when the festival departs from its usual format and explores an overarching theme. This is “Music and Computers” year, drawing in some of the world’s most illustrious and innovative composers, researchers, and teachers of algorithmic, interactive, multimedia, acousmatic, and electroacoustic computer music. Headlining the conference are senior faculty Charles Dodge, Cort Lippe, Roberto Morales, Miller Puckette, Morton Subotnick, Ben Thigpen, and Hans Tutschku, a diverse and international group of composers and pedagogues.

David Felder, currently Birge-Cary Professor of Composition at University of Buffalo, and Director of the Center for 21st Century Music, as well as Founder and Artistic Director of the Slee Sinfonietta, has actually presided as artistic director of June in Buffalo since 1985 (you didn’t really think it was a couple of hundred years, did you), when he resurrected the festival after a five-year hiatus. He has since reshaped the festival, emphasizing the importance of meaningful interaction between the senior composers and students.

This summer’s resident ensembles and soloists include some of the world’s leading performers of contemporary and computer music: the Ensemble for Intuitive Music, a German ensemble founded in 1980 in what was then East Germany for the performance of music considered taboo by the Communist government; members of Germany’s acclaimed experimental chamber music group Ensemble SurPlus; members of the widely-renowned New York New Music Ensemble; and UB’s own professional chamber orchestra-in-residence, the Slee Sinfonietta. Other distinguished performers will include bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood, the Paris-based early music and new music specialist, and the Swedish classical guitarist and new music pioneer Magnus Andersson.

Joining the faculty and performers will be composition students from around the world, who must first pass through JiB’s fiercely competitive application process (last year there were 100 applicants for 20 spots.) June in Buffalo offers these students the rare opportunity to work and mix with top musicians and world-class faculty in an intimate and casual environment. Under the direction of Felder, more emphasis is now placed on providing opportunities for these emerging composers. For example, each gets to rehearse one of his or her pieces with world-class musicians in a professional setting, resulting in a public performance.

The round-the-clock festival schedule consists of daily seminars, lectures, master classes, panel discussions, and open rehearsals-capped by first-rate afternoon and evening concerts that are open to the public. Every seminar and concert since the Feldman days of ’75 has been recorded, and remains in the UB library’s extensive archives.

If you’re in the neighborhood, pounce. Send me a postcard if you go.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Improv

Steve’s click picks #32

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Let’s go a little further east, via a couple netlabels (online labels that offer freely downloadable, full-length MP3 “CD”s, usually with accompanying notes and cover artwork) 

Nexsound (Ukraine) 

logoThey’ll tell you: Nexsound has been dedicated to the unusual and experimental music, both acoustic and electronic, that could be of any style and trend released on CDs and MP3 files. The term that describes music released by Nexsound best is probably “environmental music”, and it is often like “indocile ambient”. Nexsound music envelops you, listening to it feels like immersing into the very special atmosphere that this music creates, and thus it is intended rather for private listening. We pay the very special attention to the package of CDs released, so they look and feel very nice.

From the year of 2003 we’re also responsible for organizing concerts in Ukraine. From May, 2005 Nexsound hosts international festival for electronic music and visual arts – Detali Zvuku. Founded in 2000 by Andrey Kiritchenko in 2000 in Kharkiv city, Ukraine, Nexsound is currently being operated by Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra) as well.

Besides traditional “for-sale” CDs, there’s a whole section of MP3-only releases; for the modern classical folks I’d especially recommend To Escape, To Breathe, To Keep Silence, by the young composer Alla Zagaykevych.

Musica Excentrica (Moscow) logo

Like they say: Musica Excentrica is a netlabel, based in Moscow, Russia, producing selected avantgarde post-music in non-entertainment genres (acoustic as well as electronic). In general, we are making music distribution in the internet as online label.

Mainly electro and improv, this label also carries a compilation of pieces composed as tributes to the memory of Iannis Xenakis, as well as Polina Voronova’s Luxurious, awarded an “Honorary Mention” in the digital music category at the Prix Ars Electronica / International Competition for CyberArts 2007.

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Music Events, S21 Concert

Sequenza21 Concert: Lawrence Dillon’s “Singing silver”

Third installment of a series of Composer Perspectives previewing the November 20th Sequenza21 Concert.

First of all, many thanks to all the people doing the behind-the-scenes work to make the upcoming Sequenza21 concert happen. It’s a daunting task, bringing all of these disparate voices together. I wonder if concertgoers don’t routinely underestimate the headaches that are hidden behind any successful performance.

I’m very curious to hear the music on this concert, having come to know all of the composers a bit online and not at all in person. But I’m uncertain which pieces I will actually be sitting in the audience for. At some point in the evening, I will be on the stage, performing in the premiere of Singing silver with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

Scored for narrator, soprano, horn, cello and guitar, Singing silver is my latest attempt to combine words and music in a way that fully satisfies the needs of each. The narrator (me) speaks most of the text, with phrases spinning freely off of specific beats in the score. The soprano (Tony Arnold) echoes some of the text, but more often blends wordlessly with the instruments, acting as a connective sinew between the muscle of poetry and the bone of music.

Similarly, the words of Singing silver are the tissue that connects the person I’ve become with the child I once was. We all have rites of passage; mine took place in an autumn dusk, walking home from school, stepping into a busy street for God knows what reason.

Here is the text:

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a spark in the pavement caught my eye,
sun low in the sky.
I dropped to the ground on one red knee and peered into the black and gold,
as the day grew old.

Sixteen thousand jewels I found shattering the autumn light,
while the air prepared to greet the night.
Sixteen thousand diamonds calling colors to the sky
Sixteen thousand stars and crowns astounding to the eye

But I knew the ones you’d love.

I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a lonely tone caught my ear,
a careful keening, strangely near.
I stopped and listened to the sky, sun angled to my right,
clutching at the night.

Sixteen thousand sounds I found shattering the autumn air,
as the day rolled over in bewildered prayer.
Sixteen thousand fragments tumbling through the atmosphere
Sixteen thousand jangled dreams rebounding in the ear

But I knew the ones you’d love.

I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a flash of metal spun me round,
and up off the ground.
I thrust my arms out left and right, sun darting under me,
fleeing westerly.

And then I saw him, sitting near, laughing gently at the blurring cars
Singing silver in my ear, like sixteen thousand dangled stars.
Sixteen thousand silent smiles shining in the mist
Sixteen thousand aspirations dancing in his fist.

And I knew that he would love you.

Come home with me, I have someone to show you.
Come home with me, I have someone to give you
Come home.

by Lawrence Dillon
Electro-Acoustic, Festivals

NWEAMO Festival Comes to Soho October 6-7

Some exciting news via e-mail today from our old virtual pal Joseph Waters, godfather of NWEAMO (the New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization).  The NWEAMO Festival is coming to New York on Friday, October 6 and Saturday, October 7 with a program called Pulse: the Influence of Africa — NWEAMO-SoHo 2006 International Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, which will feature cross-genre works that investigate the influence of Africa on classical music. 

The NWEAMO Festival began in Portland, Oregon eight years ago and has since spread to San Diego, Mexico City, Venice (Italy) and now New York.

Each year NWEAMO proposes a theme to composers around the world, and invites them to submit their take on it.  The NWEAMO board takes this as a starting point, and the original theme grows and evolves to become a unique event, that could not have been predicted at the onset. 

“This is what makes the festival so fun, despite the months of hard work it takes to bring it off — we really do not know what we will end up with and it is this sense of adventure that keeps us coming back to do this again each year,” Waters says.

The influence of Africa on the development of classical music is the core topic of this year’s cross-genre, cross-continent, cross-equatorial celebration.  Each night has a different feature and each is unique.
Both New York performances will be at The Apple Store in SoHo at 103 Prince Street.  The October 6 program, which begins at 7 pm, features works by Luke Dubois, Dennis Miller, Centrozoon, Brian Knoth and Lukas Ligeti with guest artist Mai Lingani.  This year’s festival is dedicated to Lukas’ father.

The October 7 program begins at 6 pm and includes works by Noah Keesecker, Paula Mathusen, Brad Decker, Meg Schedel/Alison Rootberg, Greg Beyer, Michael Theodore/ Tim Eriksen and SWARMIUS.

NWEAMO says its mission is to forge connections between the composers, performers and lovers of avant garde classical music and the DJs, MCs, guitar-gods, troubadours and gourmets of experimental popular music.  

“When there is no connection, both suffer,” Waters says.  “When classical music does not connect with popular culture, it becomes a music of experts, unable to reflect and contribute meaningfully in the broad marketplace of developing ideas and cultural experimentation. When popular music has no connection and communication with the classical it becomes naive and superficial, untethered to its historical roots and broad cultural underpinnings. A healthy cultural milieu celebrates both.”  

Sounds suspiciously like one of those perfect made-up quotes that you see in press releases.  Better than most, though. 

by Jerry Bowles