SPLICE Institute 2025 Concert 1 Program
featuring
SPLICE Ensemble
Sam Wells, trumpet
Keith Kirchoff, piano
Adam Vidiksis, percussion
Monday June 23, 2025
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Dan VanHassel : DYSTOPIA (2024)
Commissioned by SPLICE Ensemble
I. i do not belong here
II. Extricate
III. DEMONS
IV. ...against the machine
Anthony Donofrio : Fractures/Webs (2024)
Written for SPLICE Ensemble
Chloe Liuyan Liu : Suffocating Convenience (2024)
Written for SPLICE Ensemble
Hannah Selin : Pieces of Place: Rockies (2025)
Commissioned by SPLICE Ensemble
Dan Tramte : 🤖💕🌝(pronounced “NIKA, a novel”) (2025)
Commissioned by SPLICE Ensemble
Notes
Dan VanHassel : DYSTOPIA
DYSTOPIA (2024) for trumpet, drum set, piano, and electronics was commissioned by and dedicated to the SPLICE Ensemble and was composed mostly in the summer of 2023 and completed in early 2024. I am very grateful for their amazing support, musicianship, and friendship which have been integral in bringing this piece to life.
Following the pandemic I found it extremely difficult to write music for several years. Apart from one short piano piece completed in early 2021, DYSTOPIA is my first completed composition since early 2020. It is my longest piece to date (about 30 minutes), and perhaps also my most personal. I realize looking at it now that the work is a sort of emotional retrospective of the past few years, almost as if I needed to purge these feelings from my system in order to start composing again.
The form of the piece is inspired by Haydn’s Symphony #49 in F Minor “The Passion” which I first heard in the depths of the pandemic and at that moment struck me as the most beautiful and deeply affecting music I had ever heard. This symphony was part of Haydn’s “sturm und drang” period, known for its turbulent and dramatic emotions, and was composed in the archaic “sonata de chiesa” format. Rather than the typical fast, upbeat Allegro movement, it starts with a devastating and intense Adagio. The 2nd movement then suddenly shifts to a blistering and intense Allegro. The 3rd movement is a minuet (still in F minor) and the 4th a relentlessly driving Presto. This ordering of the movements creates a powerful emotional trajectory; beginning in a place of intense and drawn out emotion, followed by an incredible release of pent-up energy that only builds in intensity as the piece progresses.
DYSTOPIA’s 1st movement “i do not belong here” begins in a place of utter despair, with moody, sustained piano harmonies sharply contrasting with blunt and strangled air sounds and split-tones from the trumpet. The 2nd movement “Extricate” strikes a suddenly more upbeat and optimistic mood that slowly spirals into frantic madness. This movement’s attempt at sonata form is thwarted by the sudden return of material from the 1st movement, a relapse rather than a recapitulation. In place of the minuet, I thought of the 3rd movement as the “metal” movement. In the Classical era this was the place where a symphony became more streamlined and direct in its musical language, using a popular dance form that listeners at the time would have intuitively understood. For me, rock and metal music fills that role. This movement is titled “DEMONS” after the novel by Dostoevsky that I was reading while writing the piece. Although set in late 19th century Russia, this novel struck me as eerily prophetic of present day America, depicting a society slowly driven mad by destructive, nihilistic ideas. The final movement, “...against the machine,” is a fast-paced presto whose relentless pace is increasingly driven by the electronics.
A subtext throughout the piece is the sinister and growing influence of technology, represented by both live and fixed electronics. DYSTOPIA begins totally acoustically, with just the trumpet amplified; one small element of dissent from its surroundings. At the end of the 1st movement, live electronic processing is introduced, enhancing and extending the instruments. The 3rd movement features more elaborate processing and fixed electronic elements also begin to creep in. In the final movement, the musicians must play to a fixed electronic track created from a multi-genre collage of music sampled from various recordings. The musicians alternately try to fight or conform to the electronic track as it gradually takes over.
Anthony Donofrio : Fractures/Webs
In 2016, I wrote an evening-length piece that applied my observations of water droplets on a block of unfired porcelain. That piece's structure and content was based on the changes in the block up to the point of fracture.
In Fractures/Webs, the structure on content shifts to a series of interpretations and tiny meditations on the actual point of fracture in the block.
Chloe Liuyan Liu : Suffocating Convenience
My dear friend Danning Lu has dedicated her research to environmental sustainability, particularly focusing on the environmental and social harms that single-use items bring. Because of her, I have also started paying more attention to the plastics present in my daily life. While plastics make our lives more convenient and seemingly cleaner, do we ever consider where all the plastics go once we discard them after a single use?
As I composed this piece, I couldn't help but think of the famous photo of a sea turtle trapped in a plastic bag. I saw this picture many years ago, and I remember feeling a deep sadness. To escape this overwhelming sadness and guilt, I forced it out of my mind, just as I did with many other stories and photos of animals falling victim to human pollution. However, Danning’s work in environmental sustainability has given me the courage to confront these harsh realities. Facing the truth is the first step toward making meaningful changes.
The sea turtle was freely swimming in the ocean until it got caught in the plastic bag and suffocated. One day, we could all find ourselves in the position of that sea turtle. The convenience we tirelessly pursue is suffocating us.
Hannah Selin : Pieces of Place: Rockies
Dan Tramte : 🤖💕🌝 Pronounced “NIKA, a novel”
— 13-minute techno micro-opera | 2020-2025
Just a few robots trying to emerge from the post-apocalyptic AI-slop—much like how humans once evolved out of their primordial soup — only this time, love and procreation isn't so simple :(
Provenance & “AI-slop”
Every line of dialogue you hear tonight was produced in January 2021—long before anyone had uttered the word “ChatGPT”—on an OpenAI playground I’d snuck into with beta credentials. The model was amazing... until it face-planted every third line, fell into infinite “Accessing…Accessing…” loops. Perfect, I thought. My plot already involved two deprecated robots trying to date on Jupiter’s Io, so the clumsy syntax felt like method acting.
Then ChatGPT dropped. Overnight, mocking AI prose became a national pastime; citing an AI co-author was cringe. I let the script sit in Google Drive for a couple of years, watching newer models get smoother, funnier, and too articulate, tbh. Every time I tried updating the script, it just sounded too polished. What I needed was that pre-ChatGPT “natural-sounding yet unnatural AI slop.”
So the libretto stayed frozen until I finally had to write this piece. In late 2023 I met up with the Splice guys and recorded them as they lovingly embraced every glitch:
Indigo GPT-714 forgets the name of the love of his life, and the title of his own novel, calling NIKA “Nikita,” which is perhaps close enough to count as a pet name. Sam sticks to the script.
Adam randomly becomes the narrator halfway through, for one line. Adam is supposed to be Nika, but we didn’t stop him from saying the line anyway.
Adam (as NIKA) and Indigo GPT-170 (Keith) get stuck in an infinite LLM loop while literally commiserating about getting stuck in loops: “A loop is a loop, and once you’re in it, you’re in it.”
Lines like “the human dance” and “go to Jupiter” arrive mysteriously pre-quoted. We staged them with full air quotes, just to make them feel extra suspicious, insinuating something unholy was going on between the two robots.
So what you’ll hear tonight is exactly what that early model coughed out.
Other fun facts about the music decisions in the piece:
Fast talk → giant words: As Ingigo GPT-714 speaks faster, the subtitles balloon from full sentences → to words → to fragmented tokens, just like the LLMs must see every day.
Battery-pull slowdown: Near the end, the tempo slows down à la The Office scene where Michael’s battery falls out: “I was just learning to looooooovvvve…”—only ours happens over a techno kick.
Emoji provenance: Those title emojis are vintage 2020. They’ve been waiting longer than the script itself. I had asked the Splice guys for them to seed this entire thing. It was supposed to be one of those COVID pieces!
Maybe this makes me a naive AI-positivist. Maybe it makes me a nostalgic hipster. Maybe it’s an excuse for why it took five years to stage a 13-min broken love story between two robots on a volcanic moon. But if there ever is an apocalypse, I’d honestly hope some LLMs make it through. I think of that abandoned Slack server I stumbled into once, years after everyone had left. The bots were still firing, the reminders still looping. It had a pulse, still clicking on. Maybe that’s what this is too.
Either way, I hope they carry the torch, and keep dancing to techno.
Bios
The music of composer/performer Anthony Donofrio questions ideas of linearity, subjectivity, and formal structure. Fascinated with how music intersects with all fields of creativity – especially literature, film, and painting – Anthony’s music is introspective, patient, fragile, and conflicted.
Their work has been featured on numerous festivals, conferences, and symposiums, including the Darmstadt Summer Courses, the Prague Quiet Music Festival, the World Saxophone Congress, SEAMUS National Conference, the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival, the Deep Listening Institute Conference, and others.
Anthony has received commissions from the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Western Illinois New Music Festival, Music Teachers National Association, and from soloists and ensembles such as soprano Liz Pearse, pianists Ashlee Mack, Amy O’Dell, and Stacey Barelos, percussionist Aaron Michael Butler, harpist Ben Melsky, double bassist James Ilgenfritz, and clarinet/piano duo Duo Per Se. National and international performances include the International Contemporary Ensemble, the S.E.M. Ensemble, Longleash Piano Trio, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and Duo Harpwerk, among others.
Specializing in concert-length works, Anthony’s catalog includes chamber pieces, works for instruments with electronics (both live and fixed media), and large ensemble works for orchestra and concert band. These works can be heard on Edition Wandelweiser Records, Sawyer Editions, Centaur Records, and August Two Editions.
As an educator, Anthony teaches composition, theory, and directs the new music ensemble at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. In addition, Anthony is also the director of the UNK New Music Series and Festival, which brings specialists in contemporary music to central Nebraska to present recitals, master classes, and lectures.
Anthony holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Iowa; past teachers include Frank Wiley, David Gompper, Paul Schoenfield, and John Eaton. When spare time exists, Anthony enjoys book collecting, studying occultism, and cooking.
Pianist and composer Keith Kirchoff has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Pacific Southwest. A strong advocate for modern music, Kirchoff is committed to fostering new audiences for contemporary music and giving a voice to emerging composers, and to that end has premiered over 100 new works and commissioned over two dozen compositions. Specializing on works which combine interactive electro-acoustics with solo piano, Kirchoff's Electroacoustic Piano Tour has been presented in ten countries, and has spawned three solo albums. Kirchoff is the co-founder and a director of SPLICE and the founder and Artistic Director of Original Gravity Inc. Kirchoff has won awards from the Steinway Society, MetLife Meet the Composer, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association. He has recorded on the New World, Kairos, New Focus, Tantara, Ravello, Thinking outLOUD, Zerx, and SEAMUS labels.
You can follow Kirchoff on Twitter @keithkirchoff and learn more at his website: keithkirchoff.com.
Chloe Liuyan Liu is a composer who earned her Master of Music in Music Composition from Indiana University in May 2023, following her Bachelor of Music in Composition at Wheaton College in 2021. She achieved recognition by winning the special prize at the 4th Ise-Shima International Composition Competition, the Global Music Award, the Schultheis Composition Competition Award, and the Josephine Halvorsen Memorial Composition Prize. She also received third place in the 2024 American Prize (Vocal Chamber Division). Liu has studied composition under mentors such as Shawn Okpebeholo, Xavier Beteta, David Dzubay, Annie Gosfield, and Han Lash. She also pursued a minor in computer music under the direction of John Gibson and Chi Wang. During her time at Indiana University, she focused on interactive music with data-driven instruments for her computer music compositions. Outside of academia, she composes Chinese pop music and soundtracks for short films and games.
SPLICE Ensemble is a trumpet, piano, and percussion trio focused on cultivating a canon of electroacoustic chamber music. Called a “sonic foodfight” by Jazz Weekly, SPLICE Ensemble works with composers and performers on performance practice techniques for collaboration and integrating electronics into a traditional performance space. The resident ensemble of both SPLICE Institute and SPLICE Festival, SPLICE Ensemble has been a featured ensemble at M Woods in Beijing, SEAMUS, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, SCI National, Electronic Music Midwest, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music 10. They have recorded on both the SEAMUS and Parma Labels.
Dan Tramte (b. 1985) is the founder of Score Follower, a project that has redefined contemporary music engagement. With upwards of 5M monthly views across the platforms TikTok, YouTube, etc., Score Follower has been described by musicologist Tim Rutherford-Johnson as “one of the most valuable new music resources on the net, indeed anywhere.” As the product lead for scorefol.io, Tramte has expanded this mission into a thriving platform over the last two years, with 10k+ compositions uploaded by 6k+ users, including institutional subscribers like Stanford, Harvard, and UC San Diego.
Tramte is also a Product Manager at Prompt.io, a leading text messaging platform, where he writes product specifications, prototypes interactive mockups, and works with engineers to build features that meet customer needs.
Before transitioning to the tech industry, Tramte taught music technology, composition, music theory & aural skills, and media studies at institutions such as Harvard University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Virginia Tech.
The music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Dan VanHassel has been described as “energizing” (Wall Street Journal), “a refreshing direction” (I Care If You Listen), and “an imaginative and rewarding soundscape” (San Francisco Classical Voice). His works create a uniquely evocative sound world drawing from a background in rock and heavy metal, Indonesian gamelan, free improvisation, and classical music.
VanHassel’s compositions have been featured at top national and international contemporary music festivals, including the MATA Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, International Computer Music Conference, Bowling Green New Music Festival, UnCaged Toy Piano Festival, Shanghai Conservatory Electronic Music Week, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. His music is played regularly all over the world by ensembles and performers such as the Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, pianist Jihye Chang, Verdant Vibes, Keuris Saxophone Quartet, Transient Canvas, pianist Gloria Cheng, Symphony Number One, Red Fish Blue Fish, Empyrean Ensemble, Hotel Elefant, the Boston Percussion Group, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble. Recordings of his works are featured on albums by the Now Hear Ensemble and Ignition Duo, as well as releases on the New Focus, Soundset, and Thinking OutLoud labels.
VanHassel was awarded a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, as well as commissions from Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music. As an electric guitarist, VanHassel has performed with leading contemporary ensembles including the Callithumpian Consort, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Eco Ensemble, and Kadence Arts. He was a founding member and artistic director of contemporary chamber ensemble Wild Rumpus in San Francisco until 2016, and is the founder and executive director of the Boston-based Hinge Quartet.
VanHassel received degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught composition and electronic music at: MIT, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Clark University, and Connecticut College and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Adam Vidiksis is a drummer and composer based in Philadelphia who explores social structures, science, and the intersection of humankind with the machines we build. His music examines technological systems as artifacts of human culture, acutely revealed in the slippery area where these spaces meet and overlap—a place of friction, growth, and decay. Vidiksis is a sought-after champion of new works for percussion and electronics, performing as a featured artist in venues around the world. 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, serving as Director of Arts Technology for a performance of a new work during the 2020 Olympics in Japan. Vidiksis is Assistant Professor of music technology at Temple University and President of SPLICE Music. He performs in SPLICE Ensemble and the Transonic Orchestra, conducts Ensemble N_JP, and directs the Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project (BEEP).
www.vidiksis.com
Sam Wells is a musician and artist based in Philadelphia, whose work often invokes a heightened sense of the entanglements of space, air, breath, and body. Manifesting as music composition, performance, and improvisation, as well as multimedia performance and installation, his work is experientially substantial. It is rooted in the humanity of breath and highlights our interrelations with the cosmic, terrestrial, social, and internal spaces that surround us.
Sam is a trumpeter and improviser who has performed around the world and is a member of SPLICE Ensemble, Aeroidio, and the Miller/Vidiksis/Wells trio. He has also performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, Nate Wooley, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Sam has recorded on the Scarp Records, New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, New Focus Records, SEAMUS, and Ravello Recordings labels.
As a composer, Sam creates acoustic, electroacoustic, and electronic works, often incorporating multimedia elements. His works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award, and his work “stringstrung” is the winner of the 2016 Miami International Guitar Festival Composition Competition. As an avid collaborator, Sam has written for theater and dance productions, as well as for many notable performers of contemporary music such as HOCKET, SPLICE Ensemble, Maya Bennardo, Dana Jessen, Vicki Ray, Lin Faulk, Kenken Gorder, and Will Yager.
Technology is a deep through line of Sam’s practice, and he is active as a music technologist. Sam is a Cycling ’74 Max Certified Trainer and organizes the Max Meetup Philadelphia event series. He runs Scarp Records, a record label dedicated to highlighting the experimental and improvisational practices of performer/composers.
Sam currently serves as the Member At Large for the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), as well as a board member for SPLICE Music, the parent organization of SPLICE Institute, Festival, and Ensemble, dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics.
Sam holds degrees in both performance and composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduate degrees in Trumpet Performance and Computer Music Composition from Indiana University, and a doctoral degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Sam is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Temple University.