- Marcin Pączkowski
Into the Lucid Chamber
(10 mins) (17) - Anthony T. Marasco
Migration Script
(10 mins) (4) - Half and Half (Tony Lewis, Will bright, Jaylon Ugwuh, and Gabe Smith)
Sensational
(5 mins) (2) - Mark Phillips
Deep Blue
(7 mins) (2) - Henry Samra
circular resoning
(8 mins) (2) - Jake Sentgeorge
Wait what
(7 mins) (4) - Keith Arthur Wecker
Heavy Gestures
(7 mins) (8) - Paulo C. Chagas
The Skin of the Earth: Fragments
(10 mins) (2)
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Marcin Pączkowski
Into the Lucid Chamber
for interactive electronics
“Into the Lucid Chamber” was composed to be first performed at the Georgetown Steam Plant in Seattle, which has unique acoustic character—rich reverberation, resonant frequencies, and the surprising musicality of its materials when awakened. This piece treats the space not merely as a venue, but as a collaborator. Field recordings made in and around the Steam Plant form the basis of an electroacoustic composition projected throughout the building via a multichannel distributed speaker system. The sounds are transformed in real-time using an accelerometer-based control system, drawing both performer and listener into a shared sonic field. In a sense, the space begins to “play itself”: its resonances processing the very sounds it once generated. The machine dreams on, and we eavesdrop—just for a moment—on the echoes of its past. The concert version of the piece recreates the reverberation of the steam plan using a multichannel speaker system.
Marcin Pączkowski (pronounced `marr-cheen pawnch-`koav-skee) is a composer, conductor, digital artist, and performer, working with both traditional and electronic media. As a composer, he is focused on developing new ways of creating and performing computer music. His pieces involving real-time gestural control using accelerometers have been performed worldwide, including International Computer Music Conference in Daegu, Korea, Music of Today concert series in Seattle, Washington, Northwest Percussion Festival in Ashland, Oregon, Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium in Toronto, Canada, SEAMUS conference in Lafayette, Indiana, and the Audio Art festival in Kraków, Poland.
As the Music Director of Evergreen Community Orchestra, he presents concerts of diverse repertoire to local communities. He is also involved in performing new music and has led premieres of numerous works in Poland and the United States. His conducting performances with Inverted Space ensemble include Anahit by Giacinto Scelsi, featuring Luke Fitzpatrick on violin, Flurries by Brian Ferneyhough, and Hermetic Definition by Joël-François Durand. With an affinity for playing music with others, Marcin actively participates in the Seattle-area improvised music community, performing on various instruments.
He received grants and commissions from the Seattle Symphony, eScience Institute, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and from Polish Institute of Music and Dance. He received his Ph.D. in Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He also holds Masters’ degrees from the Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland, and from the University of Washington.
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Anthony T. Marasco
Migration Script
computers (laptop, two Monome Norns) and grid controllers
“Migration Script” centers on the unrelenting forces of nature that push creatures to live their lives as molded through centuries-old patterns without question. Using Mark Wheeler’s ‘Overwintering’ script and Zach Scholl’s ‘granchild’ script for the Monome Norns, the performer reacts to and shapes the slowly evolving harmonic content generated in real-time from bird migration patterns captured across Europe. Building new polyphonic and rhythmic overlays from bird song field recordings and the aforementioned sonified data, the performer uses granular engines and digital sample reduction processing to impart their fleeting influence on an unrelenting force. In this manner, the musician gains an improvisation partner out of one of their own instruments, another source of stochastic drive they must attempt to sculpt and decide how to react to in each performance.
Anthony T. Marasco is a composer, sound artist, and instrument designer who takes influence from the aesthetics of today’s Digimodernist culture. An internationally recognized artist, Marasco’s works have been featured at SEAMUS, the SPLICE Festival, the Networked Music Festival, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Mise-En Festival, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, NIME, and more. He’s received commissions from andPlay, WIRED Magazine, the Elm Trio, smol ensemble, Phyllis Chen, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Toy Piano Composers, and Maureen Batt. He is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Technology and Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Michigan State University.
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Tony Lewis, Will bright, Jaylon Ugwuh, and Gabe Smith
Half and Half
Sensational
Bass guitar, Drumset, electronics
doing performance
Hello, We are half and half ! a music technology group out of UCM ! we compose, mix, master, and edited all of our songs/videos ! we like to make fun, funky, relevant type music using interesting technology such as drum triggers, ableton push and more ! we also like to include cool samples ! we were all put into a tech ensemble when we got to college and then we figured, why not just keep going with it and so here we are ! hope you guys enjoy !
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Mark Phillips
Deep Blue
EWI and Kyma
Sometimes a mood, an opening sound or gesture, simply takes over and derails the original plan for a composition. As I get older, I seem to find myself more willing to just get out of the way of this sort of derailment and simple document it. The title refers to the color and mood conjured up. It has nothing to do with the chess-playing IBM computer, but the live processing of the soloist does make heavy demands of the computational resources available on my Kyma system. The accompaniment for my performance is generated live, with no prerecorded audio flies.
Mark Phillips (Ohio University Distinguished Professor Emeritus) won the 1988 Barlow International Competition for Orchestral Music, leading to collaborations with conductor Leonard Slatkin. His Violin Power appears on the SEAMUS 2015 conference CD. The World Saxophone Congress commissioned and premiered his What If for 101 saxophones. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Wigmore Hall, the Festival Internacional de Música de Bogotá, the Blossom Music Festival, and numerous other festivals and conferences around the world. Commissioned for a Memphis premiere, his Dreams Interrupted has received performances across the country. He has received orchestra performances by groups such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the NHK Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra — and has been recorded by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lark Quartet, and several solo artists. More information is available at www.coolvillemusic.com.
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Henry Samra
circular resoning
accordion and live electronics
circular resoning explores the cycle of love and romance and the electric feeling that comes from it, as well as the wistfulness that follows. It is a piece about yearning, grief, joy and sadness, expressed through the powerful sound of the accordion, which is a sound that never fails to hold immense beauty.
Henry Samra is a keyboardist, percussionist, and composer based in Chicago who specializes in live processing of instruments and guided improvisation. He enjoys harnessing the beauty of the human voice and the natural world, as well as exploring the intersection of performance, electronics, and collaborative creation across disciplines. His works have been premiered by Oberlin Percussion Group, the Musikos Collective, and the Hidden Valley Institute for the Arts. Outside of the musical world, Henry is an avid cyclist and an advocate for sustainable transportation infrastructure. He currently resides in the TIMARA department at Oberlin Conservatory.
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Jake Sentgeorge
Wait what
Jake Sentgeorge, voice and electronics/laptop
Live processing of voice with MAX/MSP
“Perhaps you are tired of the sound of your own voice. Perhaps you have been wounded by something someone else has said. Perhaps you are tired of the derision of others/not being embraced by others. Perhaps you are tired of the company of others.
Perhaps you want to purify the world by eradicating the self. Perhaps your reasons for wanting to be known or seen have been satiated. Perhaps your reasons for wanting to be known or seen have gone away. Perhaps the one you were hoping to please with your performance has died. Perhaps you have finally capitulated to your disappointment.”
“Wait, what” uses text written by Kyle Minor from his book “How to Disappear and Why” (2026). It refers to the moment perceptions dissolve into something new because we are momentarily surprised. It refers to the lazy screenwriting trope experienced by many viewers when exposition is required and a character simply says, ”wait, what?”
Jake Sentgeorge, tenor, performs with voice and electronics with a variety of collaborators including Brian Riordan, Jeff Kaiser, and Liz Pearse. This performance features the use of Spacecraft, a 2-channel iOS granular synth app. He serves as Professor of Voice at UCM and has taught there since 2008.
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Keith Arthur Wecker
Heavy Gestures
Laptop and Push 3
This piece was written during my residency at Lobe Studios in Vancouver, BC, Canada, an immersive sound studio operated in partnership with 4DSOUND. Inspired by nonlinear compositional formats while studying the long-form works of Morton Feldman and Éliane Radigue, Heavy Gestures was the first in a series of three works that utilize the spatialized sound system to realize these compositional techniques in an immersive sound field.
The foundation for the composition began with a generated sound patch created on a Monome Norns. The generated sounds were then arranged, sampled, and written (and subsequently rewritten as MIDI data), and subsequently recomposed using Logic Pro, Ableton, and a Moog System 55 to sit between melodic interludes and sound design elements. Once I had established the electronic elements, the piano and saxophone were added through a structured improvisation session.
V.Vecker (b. Keith Wecker, 1983) is a composer, improvisor, and multi-instrumentalist using technology to explore his interest in the timbral and temporal possibilities that exist within electronic-based music. Utilizing sound design techniques to focus on the in-between sounds produced through a process developed around the act of layering, creating rich sonic textures that evoke a meditative sonic environment for the listener to immerse themselves in.
His personal approach is highlighted by the diversity of the acts he has shared showbills with (Tim Hecker, Clark, Sumac, Thundercat, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance, Goblin, Lori Goldston, and Sun Araw) as well as participating in projects of Anthony Braxton and Glenn Branca. Keith has had his music featured across North America, including multiple appearances at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, MOXSonic, ICMC, New Forms Festival, VU Symposium, and Improvisors Summit PDX.
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Paulo C. Chagas
The Skin of the Earth: Fragments
for soprano, live-electronics, and AI visuals
Paulo C. Chagas – Composer
Natalia Merlano-Gómez – Soprano
Paulo C. Chagas is an internationally renowned composer and Professor of Composition at the University of California, Riverside. With an impressive catalog of over 220 works spanning orchestral, chamber, electroacoustic, audiovisual, multimedia, and telematic music, Chagas’ innovative approach integrates advanced technology in composition and performance. A survivor of torture by the Brazilian military, his music powerfully embodies themes of healing and resistance. Chagas studied at the University of São Paulo (Brazil), the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège (Belgium), and the Cologne Academy of Music (Germany), earning his PhD in Musicology from the Université de Liège. In the 1990s, he served as the sound director and composer-in-residence at the WDR Electronic Studio in Cologne. His works, including large-scale audiovisual and telematic music projects, highlight his commitment to technological innovation and its expressive potential in the arts.
A member of the board of directors of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), Chagas’ compositions have been widely performed at international festivals, conferences, and concerts across the United States, Europe, Asia, and beyond. These performances underscore his global influence and showcase his unique ability to blend traditional musical elements with electronic and digital innovations, pushing the boundaries of musical expression. Chagas is also an accomplished author, having published extensively, including the books Unsayable Music (2014) and Sounds from Within (2021). His work has garnered numerous international awards, including the prestigious Fulbright Research Award for his residency in Berlin (2022-23).
Natalia Merlano Gomez is a vocal artist and improviser who specializes in experimental practices. Her work explores the voice from different perspectives, incorporating a wide range of vocal experiences, from folk music to experimental approaches, and everyday vocal expressions that can be transformed into artistic practice. She uses pedal effects and loopers, which add layers of sound, texture, meaning, and transformation. In the last few years, she has also engaged in analog synthesizers. As a creator, she focuses on developing and experimenting with graphical notation, improvisational pieces, and electroacoustic music.
She has led various projects, including the album “Resonancias Entrelazadas” (2021), which features ten pieces by women composers from different countries and five improvisations performed in collaboration with female improvisers. In 2022, she premiered the “CINCO” project, showcasing works by Latin American composers created for the album. In 2024, in collaboration with David Aguila on their project, Duo Lingua, they released the album “Unrestricted Lanes” under the Bogotana Records label. This album featured works by UCSD composers and performances by label members.
She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of California, San Diego.