- Travis Garrison • New Directions in Automobile Repair and Demolition • 7
- the Higgs whatever • Kerry Hagan and Miller Puckette • The Clarion Call of the Slughorn • 10
- Zeynep Özcan • Juggling for Beginners • Live electronics • 10
- Alan Wenger • From Here • for trumpet and electronics • 8
- Yao Hsiao • Daiyu • voice, iPad, and live electronics • 5
- Ben Fuhrman • Spiraling • live improviser, computer, and generative video • 9
- Cecilia Suhr • Human vs. Transhuman: Act one • Voice and Live Electronics • 9
- Total: 58 mins
************************
New Directions in Automobile Repair and Demolition
Travis Garrison
************************
The Clarion Call of the Slughorn
the Higgs whatever
A rich vein of epic English-language poetry celebrates the slughorn, to blasts of which various armies once marched into battle. Through meticulous archival and archaeological research of the armchair variety, the Higgs whatever have contrived to recreate the slughorn and its plaintive – yet fulsome – cry. The concert audience will thrill to the call of the once-and-future slughorm.
Long-time friends, Puckette and Hagan began focused collaborations on academic and musical projects in 2014. Together their duo has performed in North America and Europe. They have introduced novel synthesis algorithms through new performances. Their work explores timbre, spatialization, real-time computer processes, algorithms, interaction design, performance practice, and performance systems.
************************
Juggling for Beginners
Live electronics
Zeynep Özcan
Juggling for Beginners is a NIME research practice that incorporates juggling to explore the themes of failure and playfulness in musical performance. This practice evolves alongside the performer’s juggling skills, creating a dynamic interplay between designing a musical interface and learning to use it proficiently. During the theatrical performance, the performer will take the stage with three juggling balls and begin improvising. When I first started this project, I chose juggling due to its inherently playful nature and my lack of prior experience with it. This inexperience provided a unique opportunity to center failure as a fundamental aspect of both the design approach and the performance practice. As the project progressed, I began to learn how to juggle, necessitating a shift in perspective on failure—from a natural byproduct of inexperience to a deliberate and expressive tool.
Learning to juggle parallels learning to play a musical instrument; the more you practice, the better you become. Throughout this process, making mistakes is not only inevitable but also informative. You learn through failure. With time, failures occur less frequently as techniques are mastered. This creates an intriguing conflict between the instrument designed and the performer’s ability to play it. As my juggling skills improve, the performance starts to lose some of the musical artifacts of failure, such as sounds resulting from dropped balls, collisions, or uneven throws. This has led to reworking the sound engine to make it musically expressive even when the performer doesn’t fail and feigning mistakes to retain some of the sonic affordances of failure.
In this performance, you will witness an improvised act where I embrace and deliberately fabricate moments of failure, turning them into an essential element of musical expression and searching for new ways to fail.
Dr. Zeynep Özcan is an experimental and electronic music composer, sound artist and performer. She explores biologically inspired musical creativity, interactive and immersive environments, and generative systems. Her works have been performed and presented throughout the world in concerts, exhibitions, and conferences, such as AES, ICAD, ICMC, ISEA, NIME, NYCEMF, WAC and ZKM. She is an Assistant Professor and a faculty director of Girls in Music and Technology (GiMaT), Summer Institute at the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance. She specializes in the implementation of software systems for music-making, audio programming, sonification, sensors and microcontrollers, novel interfaces for musical expression, and large-scale interactive installations. Her research interests are exploring bio-inspired creativity, artistic sonification, playfulness and failure in performance, and sonic cyberfeminisms. She is passionate about community building and creating multicultural and collaborative learning experiences for students through technology-driven creativity.
************************
From Here
for trumpet and electronics
Alan Wenger
Composed by Anthony D’Onofrio as part of a 2022 consortium headed by trumpeter Louie Eckhardt. (more program notes to be submitted later)
Alan Wenger is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Central Missouri, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2003. A native of Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Wenger’s education includes a BM degree in Trumpet Performance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, graduate studies at Boston University, and MM and DMA degrees in Trumpet Performance from the University of North Texas. In 2014 he was the recipient of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Outstanding Alumnus Award in Music from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
His extensive and diverse performance career includes serving as Principal Solo Cornet of the Fountain City Brass Band and performing with them as both member and soloist in numerous concerts across the United States and in the U.K. He is a frequent sub with the Kansas City Symphony and has previously been a member of the Amarillo Symphony and Opera orchestras, the Lincoln Symphony, and Nebraska Chamber Orchestra. He has toured as a chamber musician with the Empire Brass, Bluebonnet Brass, Nebraska Brass and Kansas Brass Quintet. Jazz and commercial experiences include performances with the Four Tops, Manheim Steamroller, Lou Rawls, Temptations, Tommy Tune and the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra, and the Moonlight Serenade Orchestra, with whom he presently plays lead trumpet. He has a keen interest in contemporary music and has been a featured performer at the College Music Society National Convention, Electronic Music Midwest, and as soloist in the premiere performance of Randall Snyder’s Six Tableaux for Trumpet and Orchestra with Orchestra Omaha. He is a member of the International Trumpet Guild, appearing as a performer, clinician, or adjudicator at ten different conferences in five countries, as is a contributor to the Book Reviews and Recording Reviews columns of the ITG Journal.
************************
Daiyu
voice, iPad, and live electronics
Yao Hsiao
This composition draws inspiration from the traditional Chinese Yue opera, “The Dream of the Red Chamber,” unfolding a tragic love story within a family facing financial decline. Due to familial interests, Baoyu Jia was deceived into marrying another girl on the wedding day, deeply hurting his beloved Daiyu, who was already gravely ill. In response, Daiyu burns all memories of their relationship, including jointly created poems, manuscripts, and a scarf gifted by Baoyu. The destruction of each memory prompts reflections on their shared moments, culminating in her sorrowful demise.
Daiyu, a renowned character in Chinese literature, is characterized by her sensitivity, virtuous demeanor, and fragile health, coupled with literary talent. In this composition, I express the elegance of traditional Chinese culture and Daiyu’s charm through the delicate presentation of Yue opera. Also, I integrate the dialect and performance style of Yue opera with computer music techniques, relating the hand performative actions on iPad to Daiyu’s connection with drafts and books. The piece is divided into three sections: the first explores Lin Daiyu’s memories, incorporating dialogues and melodies from the Yue opera; the second employs the traditional Yue opera performance with singing and theatrical posture moves portraying the role of Daiyu; in the third, Daiyu revisits her memories, symbolically burning them along with her body, granting her soul freedom to reunite with the moments in the garden where she and Baoyu once shared.
The white scarf covering Daiyu’s face symbolizes her resentment and sorrow for being unable to marry her love. In her hand, it serves as a token to wipe away countless tears. When thrown away, it signifies the tragic end of the protagonist, taking away all memories and grievances, leaving nothing for her love.
Yao Hsiao is a composer, a singer, and a pianist from Taiwan. She received her Masters of Music degree in Composition from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with David Dzubay, Aaron Travers and Chi Wang.
, and she is currently pursuing a A Doctor of Philosophy in Data-driven Music Performance and Composition at University of Oregon, where she studies with Jeffrey Stolet.
She has been inspired by literature, ranging from western poems to ancient Chinese poetry and Japanese haikus. Also, she was drawn to traditional Chinese culture. “Chant of Languor” and “Dreamy Chant” are inspired by Chinese poems, “Consort Yu” for voice and electronics is another piece of her combining Peking opera gestures, singing skills that she performed by herself. She was invited to perform this piece in conferences such as NIME 2024, 2024 SEAMUS, 2024 EMM, 2024 MOXsonic, 2024 NYCEMF, ICMC 2024, and SPLICE Festival VI. The piece is also selected as one of the finalist in 2024 Sweetwater/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition.
************************
Spiraling
live improviser, computer, and generative video
Ben Fuhrman
I’m fascinated with naturally occurring structures in things like plants, seashells, water turbulence, rock formations, and more. One of the commonly occurring structures in all of these is the spiral: the nautilus shell, fiddlehead ferns, pinecones, even in galaxies and DNA. It’s a commonly occurring motive within nature. And since I’m also fascinated with audio diffusion and spatialization, it seemed like a natural shape to adapt as the basis of a piece.
“Spiraling” is created through two improvisations: the first was created using in studio using a combination of FM and concatenative synthesis techniques. This was then edited and chopped into discreet events positioned around the listener in a clockwise spiral, gradually moving inwards and downwards towards the center of the audience over the course of the piece. On top of this, the live performer is improvising and reacting to the existing material in real time, with pre-determined spatialization that moves counterclockwise to the existing material, creating a large-scale form of two opposite spirals, effectively forming a double helix structure that gradually moves inwards.
As this is occurring, video is being generated in real time by the computer using a collection of related video loops, live camera input, and video effects, all of which are controlled by the pre-rendered and live sounds. The result is the creation of organic forms on the screen, reflecting the sounds spatialized around the hall.
Ben Fuhrman, is a composer, musician, programmer, and coffee aficionado. As a result, he writes music with a focus on technology, including acousmatic, interactive, and improvisatory works. His degrees are from Michigan State University (D.M.A and M.M in composition), and Hope College (B.Mus in violin performance). His teachers include Ricardo Lorenz, Mark Sullivan, Steve Talaga, Rob Lunn, and Mihai Craioveanu.
He has had works commissioned from a number of performers, including Keith Kirchoff, Drake Dantzler, Violet, Jeffrey Loeffert, Nathan Boggert, the H2 Quartet, the East Lansing High School Orchestra, REACH Studio Art, and the MSU National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and has been performed throughout the world. He was also the recipient of a billboard dedicated to his music from the Arts Council of Greater Lansing – possibly the first composer in the US to receive one. His solo albums “Concrete Oasis” and “Synthesizer and Computer Works” are available online, among others on the Albany Records, Argali Records, Blue Griffin, Elmstreet, and SEAMUS labels.
He maintains an active role as a performer and as assistant professor of music technology at Montana State University, and has previously taught at Oakland University and Mott Community College. For more information, check out www.benfuhrman.com
************************
Human vs. Transhuman: Act one
Voice and Live Electronics
Cecilia Suhr
Human vs. Transhumanism: Act One is a multimedia performance that delves into the ethical and spiritual dimensions of transhumanism, utilizing live voice improvisation alongside live electronics and fixed media. This performance seamlessly merges real-time audio and visual interactivity, intertwining the sounds of live human voices with electronics. This piece features images generated by the A.I. chatgpt, alongside visuals of robots and transhumans that embody the central theme. In act one, the performance opens with a concise audio-visual introduction to the concept of transhumanism, created with the assistance of AI, followed by an engaging sequence of voice improvisations and singing. At the end of this piece, the absence of the human voice, along with the overpowering cacophony of machine voices, heightens the representation of “singularity.”
Cecilia Suhr is an award-winning intermedia/interdisciplinary artist and researcher, multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, voice, piano, bamboo flute), multimedia composer, painter, author, and improviser. She has won numerous awards in the fields of music, art, interactive media, and academic research, including the American Prize (Honorable Mention), MacArthur Foundation, Digital Media and Learning Research Grant Award, Pauline Oliveros Award from the IAWM, Silver Medal Award from the Cambridge Music Competition, Bronze Medal Winner from the Global Music Awards, and Best of Competition Winner in Interactive Media and Emerging Technologies from the Broadcast Education Association, to name a few. Her music has been performed and featured worldwide in professional organizations, including the ICMC, SEAMUS, EMM, SCI, NYCEMF, ACMC, Tenor, Convergence, Mise-En Music Festival, NoiseFloor, New Music Gathering, Splice Festival, New Music on the Bayou, Performing Media Art Festival, Mantis Festival, VU Symposium, Turn Up Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Moxonic Festival, Beast Feast, ISSTA, Klint Gut, and many more. She is the author of “Social Media and Music” (Peter Lang Press, 2012) and “Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities” (MIT Press, 2014). She is a full professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Arts at Miami University Regionals.