Host:
Adam Vidiksis, SPLICE president & faculty member
Panelists:
Nina C. Young, 2020 Guest Composer
Becky Brown, Faculty member
Flannery Cunningham, Program Coordinator
Joo Won Park, Faculty member
Panelists:
New York-based composer Nina C. Young (b.1984) writes music characterized by an acute sensitivity to tone color, manifested in aural images of vibrant, arresting immediacy. Her experience in the electronic music studio informs her acoustic work, which takes as its given not melody and harmony, but sound itself, continuously metamorphosing from one state to another. Her unique musical voice draws equally from elements of the classical canon, modernism, spectralism, American experimentalism, minimalism, electronic music, and popular idioms. Her projects strive to create unique sonic environments that can be appreciated by a wide variety of audiences while challenging stylistic boundaries, auditory perception, and notions of temporality. http://www.ninacyoung.com
Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.”
Brown has been the Technical Director of the Electroacoustic Barn Dance and the Assistant Technical Director for Third Practice. Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, SCI National/Regional, Third Practice New Music Festival, Ball State New Music Festival, and in Beijing, China. Hold Still, her work for live art and electronics, was released on the New Focus Recordings label in 2017. Brown has studied electroacoustic composition with Dr. Matthew Burtner and Dr. Mark Snyder, and harp performance with Dr. Grace Bauson. https://becky-brown.org
Flannery Cunningham is a composer and musicologist fascinated by vocal expression, text, and auditory perception. She aims to write music that surprises and delights. Her work has been performed at festivals such as Aspen, June in Buffalo, TCML, SPLICE, and Copland House’s CULTIVATE and by performers such as International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK, and Music from Copland House. Her current projects include commissions for National Sawdust as a winner of the Hildegard Competition, PRISM Quartet, Musiqa Houston, and a new quartet with electronics for Sō Percussion. Flannery is attracted the very old and very new; she has presented at the International Medieval Congress and performed at the International Computer Music Conference. In addition to acoustic ensembles she writes for players and singers (sometimes including herself) with interactive electronics, always striving to foreground the musicality of human performers. Flannery holds a BA from Princeton University, an MA from University College Cork, an MA from Stony Brook University, and is a PhD candidate in composition and musicology at the University of Pennsylvania. http://flannerycunningham.com
Dr. Joo Won Park is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Wayne State University. He studied at Berklee College of Music (B.M.) and University of Florida (M.M. and Ph.D.) and has previously taught in Oberlin Conservatory, Temple University, Rutgers University Camden, and Community College of Philadelphia. Dr. Park's music and writings are available on MIT Press, Parma Recordings, ICMC, Spectrum Press, Visceral Media, SEAMUS, and No Remixes labels. New Music USA and Knight Foundation have supported his Electronic Music Ensemble of Wayne State (EMEWS) and other recent projects. https://joowonpark.net
Host:
Adam Vidiksis is a composer, conductor, percussionist, improviser, and technologist based in Philadelphia whose music often explores social structures, science, and the intersection of humankind with the machines we build. Critics have called his music “mesmerizing”, “dramatic”, “striking” (Philadelphia Weekly), “notable”, “catchy” (WQHS), “magical” (Local Arts Live), and “special” (Percussive Notes), and have noted that Vidiksis provides “an electronically produced frame giving each sound such a deep-colored radiance you could miss the piece's shape for being caught up in each moment” (Philadelphia Inquirer). His work is frequently commissioned and performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia in recitals, festivals, and major academic conferences. Vidiksis’s music has won numerous awards and grants, including recognition from the Society of Composers, Incorporated, the American Composers Forum, New Music USA, National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and ASCAP. His works are available through HoneyRock Publishing, EMPiRE, New Focus, PARMA, and SEAMUS Records. Vidiksis recently served as composer in residence for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and was selected by the NEA and Japan-US Friendship Commission to serve as Director of Arts Technology for a performance of a new work by Gene Coleman during the 2020 Olympics in Japan. Vidiksis is Assistant Professor of music technology at Temple University, President and founding member of SPLICE Music, which includes the annual Institute, Academy, and Festival, a Resident Artist at the Renegade Theater company, and a founding member of the Impermanent Society of Philadelphia, a group dedicated to promoting improvisation in the performing arts. He performs in SPLICE Ensemble and the Transonic Orchestra, conducts Ensemble N_JP, and directs the Temple Composers Orchestra and the Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project (BEEP). He produces real-time generative improvised electronic music (Circadia) alongside his longtime friend and collaborator Rajeev Maddela (Currency). [www.vidiksis.com]