Revenant (Glitchscape)
Eric Honour, composer/performer
My older work, Phantasm, for alto saxophone and computer, was rooted in an even earlier work of mine for solo saxophone. I was struck by the idea of a revenant – a sort of fragmentary remnant of a ghost – and the somewhat tenuous connections between an existing recording and a new, granularly processed version of the same recording. The materials of Phantasm are exactly these sorts of ghostly fragments: the live saxophone part is derived throughout from the earlier work, but with the materials twisted and bent into new, haunting shapes, distorted through extended saxophone performance techniques. Tonight’s work takes the idea a step farther into the world of the undead, disintegrating the lines of Phantasm in an acid of saxophone air noises, glitchy, granulated percussion, and spectral processing.
Devoted to exploring and furthering the intersections of music and technology, Eric Honour’s work as a composer and saxophonist has been featured in numerous international conferences and festivals like ICMC, SEAMUS, MUSLAB, Sonorities, EMM, NYCEMF, and others. A member of the Athens Saxophone Quartet, he performs regularly in Europe and the United States, and has presented lectures and masterclasses at many leading institutions.
Honour’s music has been described as “fast, frenetic, and fiendishly difficult” and performed around the world by such notable artists as Quintet Attacca, Shanna Gutierrez, Stephan Vermeersch, Elisabeth Stimpert, the Thelema Trio, and Quartetto Musicattuale. His work as a composer has been recognized in many competitions, published by Roncorp, and recorded on the Capstone, Ravello, and Innova labels. Professor of music, Chair of the School of Visual and Performing Arts, and director of the Center for Music Technology at the University of Central Missouri, his work as an audio engineer and producer appears on the Innova, Centaur, Ravello, Irritable Hedgehog, Weighter, Orpheus Classical Music, Everview, North Star Appli, and E.M.E. Action labels, as well as on numerous independent releases.
Coloratura: Visual Soundscapes
Camry Ivory, Audiovisual Artist/Musician
Coloratura is a transmedia project combining visual art and music by using paint brushes as MIDI controllers that can create and manipulate live music.
The polyphonic interface is composed of 12 paintbrushes (each assigned to a unique color and musical note) and a pedal board that facilitates octave shifts, looping, and channel navigation. By touching a paintbrush to the canvas, color and sound emerge simultaneously, providing the user and the audience with a multi-sensory, synaesthetic experience. Every performance generates a unique piece of recorded music and a unique piece of physically tangible art as the end result.
Camry Ivory is an audiovisual artist & musician who harnesses technology to explore the synergistic relationship between color, form & sound. Camry is the inventor of Coloratura, an innovative interface that uses paintbrushes as electronic instruments. Each paintbrush is assigned to a different paint color and musical note, enabling her to create original paintings and music compositions simultaneously.
Camry blends artistic and musical techniques seamlessly, building ambient audiovisual soundscapes in evolving, synaesthetic layers: brushstroke by brushstroke, note by note.
Each painting Camry creates is accompanied by a video recording of the piece being developed, which allows viewers to experience a multi-sensory symphony of music and art. Learn more at http://www.coloratura-art.com
Improvisation for Woodwinds and Computer
Clay Chaplin, laptop
Vinny Golia, woodwinds
Clay Chaplin is a computer musician, improviser, and audio engineer from Los Angeles who explores the realms of audio-visual improvisation, sound synthesis, field recording, electronics, and computer processing for creative sonic expression. Throughout his career he has worked on many projects involving experimental music, video, audio recording, and interactive computer systems. Chaplin studied composition and computer music with Morton Subotnick, Tom Erbe, Mark Trayle, Ichiro Fujinaga and Gary Nelson. He studied audio engineering with Tom Erbe, Ron Streicher and Jurgen Wahl.
Clay’s works have been performed internationally including performances at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Bent Festival, the Busan International Computer Music Festival, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektroakustiche Musik (DEGEM) studios, the Ear Zoom Sonic Arts festival, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conferences, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (CCM), the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, the Korean Electro-Acoustic Society Festival, the Sonic Circuits Festivals, the Santa Fe Electronic Music Festival and many others. Clay has been composer in residence at STEIM and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.
Clay has given talks about experimental sound practices for the American Composer’s Forum, the Machine Project gallery, the Sea and Space Explorations gallery, the Telic gallery, Otis College, and the Center for Research in the Computing Arts (CRCA) at UCSD. Clay is currently the Director of the Computer Music and Experimental Media studios at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and is Co-director of the Experimental Sound Practices program.
A multi-woodwind performer, Vinny Golia’s recordings have been consistently picked by critics and readers of music journals for their yearly “ten best” lists. In 1990 he was the winner of the Jazz Times TDWR award for Bass Saxophone. In 1998 he ranked 1st in the Cadence Magazine Writers & Readers Poll and has continually placed in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll for Baritone & Soprano Saxophone. In 1999 Vinny won the LA Weekly’s Award for “Best Jazz Musician”. Jazziz Magazine has also named him as one of the 100 people who have influenced the course of Jazz in our Century. In 2006 The Jazz Journalists Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. 2013 Vinny won the Downbeat Critic’s Poll in the “New Star” category for Baritone Saxophone.
Golia has also contributed original compositions and scores to Ballet and Modern Dance works, video, theatrical productions, and film. As an educator Vinny has lectured on music & painting composition, improvisation, Jazz History, The History of Music in Film, CD & record manufacturing and self-production throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, New Zealand and Canada. He currently teaches at California Institute of the Arts. In 1998 Golia was appointed Regent’s Lecturer at the University of California at San Diego. In 2009 Vinny Golia was appointed the first holder of the Michel Colombier Performer Composer Chair at Cal Arts.
Vinny has been a featured performer with Anthony Braxton, Henry Grimes, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Joelle Leandre, Leo Smith, Horace Tapscott, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Bertram Turetzky, George Lewis, Barre Phillips, The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Patti Smith, Harry “the Hipster” Gibson, Eugene Chadburne, Kevin Ayers, Peter Kowald, John Bergamo, George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennick, Lydia Lunch, Harry Sparrney and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra amongst many others.
Duo for Tamtam and Computer
Cort Lippe, composer
Doug Nottingham, percussionist (tamtam)
Duo for Tamtam and Computer (2019) was commissioned by and written for Douglas Nottingham, and funded by the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction for the final performance of the Drums Along the Pacific for the New Millennium Project. The instrument and computer relationship moves on a continuum from an extended solo to a duo. Musically, the computer part is at times not separate from the tamtam part, serving to amplify the tamtam in multiple dimensions and directions; while at the other extreme of the continuum, the computer part has its own independent voice. These solo/duo relationships exist simultaneously and much like chamber music playing, in which individual expressivity is sometimes meant to contribute to the whole while at other times has a fundamental individual influence on the entire ensemble, these musical relationships between the performer and computer are integral to the musical goals of the work. The composition is dedicated to Larry Austin, who passed away on December 30, 2018.
The computer part was created at the Hiller Computer Music Studios of the University at Buffalo, New York, using the software Max/MSP. The digital synthesis algorithms focus on a variety of FFT-based techniques, including analysis/resynthesis, filtering, reordering, delay, feedback, and spatialization all controlled by LFOs, along with various types of synthesis, sample playback, and other time-domain techniques. Technically, the computer tracks parameters of the performance using Miller Puckette’s sigmund~ and bonk~ objects, which analyze the incoming tamtam signal and give information as to when the tamtam is struck, how loud it is struck, and the timbre of each strike. All this information, from larger scale rhythmic and phrase tracking of sounds and attacks, down to micro-level frequency band information, is used to continuously influence and manipulate the computer sound output by directly affecting digital synthesis and compositional algorithms in real-time, giving the performer an active role in shaping the computer part. The intent is to create a certain degree of intimacy and interactivity between the performer and the computer, in which the performer has the potential to influence the computer output based on aspects of the musical expressivity of their interpretation of the score.
Cort Lippe studied composition and computer music with Larry Austin; followed seminars with various composers including Boulez, Donatoni, K. Huber, Messiaen, Penderecki, Stockhausen, and Xenakis; spent three years at the Institute of Sonology working with G.M. Koenig and Paul Berg, three years at Xenakis’ studio CEMAMu; and nine years at IRCAM. From 1994-2019 he taught composition in the Department of Music, University at Buffalo and directed the Lejaren Hiller Computer Music Studios. His research includes more than 35 peer-reviewed publications on interactive music, granular sampling, score following, spectral processing, FFT-based spatial distribution/delay, acoustic instrument parameter mapping, and instrument design. His compositions have received numerous international prizes, are performed at major festivals worldwide, and recorded on more than 30 CDs. He has been a visiting professor at institutions in Japan, Denmark, Austria, and Greece. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo.
Douglas Nottingham has been active throughout the U.S. as a percussionist, multi-media performance artist/technologist, composer, music educator, recording artist and producer. As a solo percussionist and as a member of the New Mexico-based Links Ensemble and Phoenix’s Crossing 32nd Street. This pursuit has led to numerous projects with significant composers as well as interdisciplinary collaborations. He has commissioned and premiered many new works and has performed on music festivals, dance series and symposia throughout North America. Additionally, he has performed as featured soloist at the conventions of Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the Society for American Music, the American Composer’s Alliance and the Society of Composers (SCI). His recordings include Stradivarius, Wergo, Nonsequitor, Neuma and the Big n’Schwartz label, etc.
Jamshid Jam
Ramin Roshandel, setār
Jean-François Charles, live electronics
How do you imagine taking part in a dialogue with the sound of an ancient tradition that has always been on the verge of disappearance? The sonic dust of a country that has been burned to the ground several times over the centuries and yet has formed some of the most elaborate and highly sophisticated musical structures to have ever existed. How does one find a language to communicate with such a phenomenon? How would one penetrate the many ephemeral layers of such a sound world?
Last October, the duo released an album titled ‘Jamshid Jam’, which received Global Music Awards’ Silver Medal for Outstanding Achievement. It also got long-listed under Crossover Productions and World Music categories for Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award).
Last Spring, the duo performed at the Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit in New York City; this year, after MOXSonic, they are going to perform at the TurnUp Multimedia Festival in Tucson, AZ and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) festival in New York City”.
Ramin Roshandel‘s compositional work is based around incorporating ‘experience’ as a fundamental concept through a non-experimental approach in performance. Considering phenomena such as instability, cultural identity, and communicational language on one hand, and being inspired by Persian music microtones as a setār (a Persian instrument) player on the other, has led him to consider indeterminate, improvisatory, and abstract structures in his music to contrast or converge with post- or non-tonal forms.
Ramin has been awarded The University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and is a SICPP (Summer Institute for Contemporary Music Practice) and New Music On the Point alumnus. His pieces have been performed by Anna Elder, Will Fried, Daniel Schreiner, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Kamratōn Ensemble, and LIGAMENT duo, as well as in precept.concept.percept Composition Workshop, Dancinema Festival, Opine Dance Film Festival, Charlotte New Music Festival, the Society of Composers’ Summer Student Mixtape (featuring a group of selected BIPOC composers), and Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Summer Sounds. He was the setār soloist of Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris in its premiere.
He is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of Iowa, where he studied under Josh Levine and Sivan Cohen-Elias and currently is working with David Gompper. His papers on Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues have been published in Persian journals. www.ramin-roshandel.com
Jean-François Charles is Associate Professor of Composition and Digital Media at the University of Iowa. He creates at the crossroads of music and technology, as in the soundtrack to Dziga Vertov’s movie Kino-Pravda No. 5 and No. 6, with Nicolas Sidoroff & Krystian Sarrau, or in his musical chemistry work Aqua ignis, with scientific glassblower Benj Revis. His opera Grant Wood in Paris was commissioned by the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre and premiered April 12-14, 2019.
As a clarinetist, he has performed improvised music with many art- ists, from Maurice Merle to Doug- las Ewart and Gozo Yoshimasu. He worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen for the world premiere of Rechter Augenbrauentanz. www.jeanfrancoischarles.com