Program

(listed alphabetically by composer last name)

Michael Baldwin – Composition with the Sound of Its Own Découpage – toy piano, video

Performed by Eric Gottlieb and Alex Lough

• Drawing from the methodological principals of Robert Morris’s similarly titledBox with the sound of Its Own Making (1961) – a wooden cube accompanied by a recording of the sounds produced during its construction – Composition with the Sound of Its Own Découpage explores the possibilities of deriving and structuring a musical composition based on the characteristic qualities of scissors.
  Composition with the Sound of Its Own Découpage was written specifically for the 2015 Rock, Paper Scissors concert series organized by the Miami-based Inlets Foundation for Experimental Practices and is dedicated to pianist Eric Gottlieb.

• bio: Michael Baldwin is an American composer and performer currently based in Manchester, England. Emerging out of an interest in the physicality of performance, his work explores ways of activating and directing musical performance and attention through bespoke and collaboratively produced videos, sounds, choreographies, and oral traditions.

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Nicolas Chuaqui – Desert Presence – guitar and electronics

Performed by Jacques Le Sante

• Desert Presence reminisces on the landscape of the American West, dwelling on how the vast, open spaces of the region are both “quiet” and “loud:” silent and empty, but also overwhelming because of that very emptiness in such large space. The performer interacts in dialogue with an unseen presence. As this back-and-forth develops, the two voices begin to come together as echoes of one another, creating a fleeting sense of union between the known and unknown. The piece is performed through Max/MSP, using both recorded sounds and live processing of the guitar and electronics during the performance.

• bio: Nicolas Chuaqui (b. 1990) has recently had his music performed at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, The Deer Valley Festival, and Dartmouth College’s Festival of Contemporary American Music. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College (2012), and will graduate with an MM from Indiana University in 2016. He has studied with a diverse group of composers, including Aaron Travers, Don Freund, Jeffrey Hass, John Gibson, Morris Rosenzweig, Kui Dong, Spencer Topel, and Charles Dodge. In 2016, New Voices Opera will premiere The Forest of Dreams, which tells the story of the lost Roanoke Colony of the 16th Century.

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Brian Connolly – Maeple – fixed media

• Maeple spotlights the creative potential of the non-linearities of the listening system relating to the basilar membrane of the inner ear and the connecting auditory nerve. Furthermore, Maeple is a new work from Brian Connolly’s groundbreaking research portfolio investigating the ear as an instrument. This piece employs a variety of psychoacoustic phenomena as a means of extending the role of the audience’s ears to becoming active participants in the work itself. In this relatively rare and experimental listening experience otoacoustic emissions (audible tones being emitted from inside the ear) as well as perceptual beating, spectral masking and phasing techniques result in the listener’s ears physically performing in this piece.

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Dylan Findley –  Improvisations IV: An Appeal to the [SOUND] Masses – open instrumentation

Performed by Diana Ramirez, violin

• This work provides structure to a free improvisation.  The solo performer works with the program Pd Extended to create sound mass spaces in different registers.  The masses are punctuated by solo moments that provide the improviser the opportunity to create counterpoint against its own ring modulation.

• bio: Dylan Findley composes music intended to inspire, energize, and search for intangible truths.  In seeking for truth, his music is inspired by religion, nature, culture, and life experience.  He currently studies with Lansing McLoskey and has previously studied with Michael Hicks, Christian Asplund, and Neil Thornock.  He received his BM in Music Composition at Brigham Young University and is receiving his Masters in Music Theory and Composition at University of Miami.

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Akiko Hatakeyama – Soak – custom electronics

• Soak is a live interactive audio-visual piece composed for a custom-made instrument called “afterglow – ざんぞう”. A performer (myself) plays music by creating black and white drawing using grains of salt. The 27 photocells of the instrument distributed onto the analog TV screen react to various light intensities emitted from the TV screen, which is the contrast created with salt on a black background. The performer creates a live-interactive loop of visual and aural outcomes by using her perceptions. Salt has been used in rituals and ceremonies in many cultures with beliefs of power in cleansing. My belief in this power is neutral, but I have experienced tranquilizing feelings interacting with sea salt with my bear hands.

• bio: Akiko is a composer, singer, and audio-visual artist who also builds instruments/controllers. She is interested in crossing boundaries between traditionally written music, improvisation, electronics, computer based live interactivity, and visual components. Storytelling, memories, and nature often play an important role in Akiko’s work, and she most often finds beauty in simplicity. Akiko obtained her B.A. in music from Mills College and M.A. in Experimental Music/Composition from Wesleyan University. Akiko is currently engaged in PhD study in the MEME program at Brown University. Her instructors include Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, Ronald Kuivila, Maggi Payne, Chris Brown,Todd Winkler and Butch Rovan.

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Kay HE – On the Fringe of a Whale’s Tail – piano, electronics, video

Performed by Laura Arevalo and Asami Takeyama

• On the Fringe of a Whale’s Tail attempts to describe an artist’s world. It is sentimental, unreal, and full of adventures, creativities and conflicts. As artists, it is our responsibility to show our powerful emotion of our beautiful mind and imagination to the world, and also fight with the harsh and uninspiring reality. Imagination is the most powerful weapon.The pianist is on the stage alone, creating much fascinating sound on piano. The electronics, based on pre-recorded sounds of the piano, is the little universe he/she created by his/her imagination. It is deep, dramatic, inspiring, exciting and colorful, like the ocean.

• bio: Yuanyuan (Kay) HE played piano from age 5 and studied composition from age 15. As an undergraduate, she studied Composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and Electronic Music at the Center for Electroacoustic Music of China(CEMC). The winner of a Snow Scholarship, Kay He earned her Master’s degree in composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, studying under Drs. Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Paul Rudy and James Mobberley. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in composition at the University of Texas at Austin, studying under Drs. Dan Welcher, Russell Pinkston, Donald Grantham and Yevgeniy Sharlat.

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Dana Kaufman – Solaris Keskus – fixed media, video by Markus Robam

• Dana Kaufman’s Solaris Keskus is inspired by sounds of and experiences in Solaris Keskus, a major shopping center in Tallinn, Estonia. The piece incorporates ambient sounds from the center—including dialogue in Russian and Estonian, recordings of the Solaris Keskus “jingle” heard over the center’s loudspeakers every few minutes, and shoppers’ foot traffic—which the presence of clarinet and piano serve, in part, to imitate. Ms. Kaufman, the recipient of a 2012-2013 United States Fulbright Student Research Grant to Estonia, recorded, composed and created the tape during her time as a Fulbright Student Research Fellow in Tallinn. Solaris Keskus features Marten Altrov (Estonia), clarinet, and Nicoletta Favari (Italy), piano. Estonian audiovisual artist Markus Robam is creator of the video that accompanies the music composition in the audiovisual version.

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H. M. Mease – wouldn – video

• The visual component of wouldn consists of 3,178 frames at 16fps in two categories: frames that began as photographs and frames that began as paintings. The photos of Philadelphia, Camden, and Trenton were snapped quickly in a series on a cellphone camera, digitally painted over and manipulated, then converted into raw data for glitching. Each frame was treated individually. The paintings and collages were created with the cheapest and most easily accessible materials. The visual portion took about a year to complete. The audio consists of a few field recordings, a few electronic sounds, and a few sounds trash-picked from the internet.

• bio: H.M. Mease (b. 1994) composes a variety of things including shape-note hymns, performance art, visual pieces, and an American-sacred-political music lovingly named “Toilet Americana.” Other interests include riding the bus, drinking water, applying moisturizer, and trying to achieve metaphysical consolation through music and sandwich cookies. Mease studies composition with Matthew Greenbaum at Temple University in Philadelphia.

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Raven Reynolds and Kyle De Varona – Like a densely woven cobweb – percussion, electronics

• Like a densely woven cobweb is inspired by György Ligeti’s compositional technique micro-polyphony, where the polyphonic lines build into large vertical and horizontal clusters of pitches giving importance to the tone cluster rather than individual melodic lines. Slowly and at indeterminate rates, the percussionists and electronics create polyphonic lines out of which a sound mass emerges; a wall of sound made up of simple contrapuntally moving lines that build upon one another until the melodic importance gives way to textures of varying pitch clusters.Granular synthesis, ring modulation, and looping of performed material are used by the electronics while the percussionists employ a wide range of traditional and extended performance techniques like bowing, scraping, pedaling, and dampening. Some of the elements are left to chance and performer discretion, namely the form and duration. The harmonic and rhythmic aspects have been explored prior to the performance but not through-composed to add another element of chance to the piece.

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Monte Taylor – Consus: An Exploration of Planet and Identity – saxophone, fixed media, video

Performed by Matthew Taylor

• Consus: An Exploration of Planet and Identity was originally created as a collaboration between painter/sculptor/video artist Elisabeth Howe and myself as the closing performance of the 2013-2014 season of Kansas City Art Institute’sArtSounds concert series.  The piece is a retro-stylized, surrealist science fiction story about two space explorers learning to survive after being marooned on an uncharted planet.  “Arrival: Overture” takes place in the abyss of outer space en route to the planet Consus, while “Caves: Anger” takes place in a cave that is also the physical manifestation of one explorer’s anger.

• bio: Monte Taylor (b. 1991) has been featured as a composer on Kansas City Art Institute’s ArtSounds concert series (2011, 2014) and as a performer on teleconcerts for International Workshop Struer (2013) and the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (2014).  As well as a staunch advocate of free improvisation, he is a rabid fan of extreme metal and progressive rock, and likes to combine elements of these styles with modernist devices.  Monte holds a B.M. in Composition from UMKC, and is working on a M.M. in Composition at the University of Miami Frost School of Music.

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Catalina Von Wrangell – Charcoal Dreamers – sound installation

• Charcoal Dreamers is part one of a larger body of work titled Designed Impulses for Clarinet, Live Electronics, and Other. The different parts may be listened to separately, sequentially, or even in tandem. Charcoal Dreamers is an amalgamation of rhythmic pulses, melodic fragments, and vocal utterances.
• bio: Catalina von Wrangell molds music to facilitate a reconnection of the individual with their emotions. She has written music for soloist, chamber, and large ensemble settings. Her work delves across disciplines and her projects stand at points of convergence between cultures, times, and even aesthetics.Ms. v. Wrangell holds degrees in Composition from Lewis & Clark College and Florida International University. She is current pursuing a degree in Digital Arts and Sound Design from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where she was selected for a fellowship from the Center for Computational Sciences to support the creation of a new instillation titled “Com’ and shift: a sound play”. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

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Other sound installations by Travis Sadbury and Jacques Le Sante

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