SPLICE Institute 2025 Concert 3 Program
featuring
Ted Moore and Guests
Wednesday June 25, 2025
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
Ted Moore : it teaches us that it doesn't exist
Ted Moore, feedback cymbal
Ted Moore : still motion b
Ted Moore, mouth & live video processing
Ted Moore : apsis ii
Keith Kirchoff, piano
Ted Moore : nand
SPLICE Ensemble
Ted Moore + Anne La Berge : improv
Notes
Ted Moore : it teaches us that it doesn't exist
it teaches us that it doesn’t exist creates an audio feedback loop by attaching a transducer to a suspended cymbal. The transducer agitates the cymbal with whatever audio signal is coming in through the microphone, which, when placed over the cymbal amplifies the sounds of the cymbal, agitating it further, creating a positive feedback loop. Moving the microphone over different parts of the cymbal and at different distances and angles creates different feedback tones and dynamics. While it is difficult to reproduce exact pitches with this instrument, the score directs patterns of repetition, variation, timing, dynamics, gesture, and texture.
“Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.” -Umberto Eco from Foucault’s Pendulum
commissioned by percussionist Jeremy Johnston
Ted Moore : still motion b
still motion b uses live audio and video sampling of the performer’s mouth, the projection of which creates a counterpoint to the live performance. All of the sampling is done with an openFrameworks program coded in C++.
Ted Moore : apsis ii
Commissioned by HOCKET for #What2020SoundsLike
Ted Moore : nand
nand is an audio-visual composition based on the timbre and rhythmic gating of the NAND-gate feedback circuit described by Nick Collins in “Handmade Electronic Music”. Even though the system is quite simple (producing repeating phrases consisting of square waves, filtered noise, and silence), each gesture has microvariations that increase the entropy and attract my attention endlessly. My favorite timbres from this circuit are while control parameters are being changed–when capacitors are firing at surprising times, before they can settle into a stasis.
Datasets of audio analyses derived from the tape part are sent to machine learning algorithms to find patterns and then visualize and sonify what is found. A plethora of variations on visual themes are created by the combinatorics of stochastically triggered visual synthesis modules and processing effects. Computer vision analysis adds layers to our visual and aural perception–tightly binding together the visual and auditory elements.
Bios
Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to the fringes of storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. She performs as a multimedia soloist and in projects both live and online and is one of the composer/performers in the Amsterdam based ensemble MAZE.
She can be heard on the Largo, Artifact, Etcetera, Hat Art, Frog Peak, Einstein, X-OR, Unsounds, Canal Street, Rambo, esc.rec., Intackt, Data, verz, Real Music House, Relative Pitch, Carrier and Splendor Amsterdam labels. Her music is published by Frog Peak Music and Alry Publications; and her Max-patch based compositions are available from her privately.
She is a founding artist of the Splendor Amsterdam collective of musicians who have transformed an old bathhouse in Amsterdam into a cultural mecca, where she regularly produces and shares small scale concerts with international guests.
La Berge is a precursor of some of the important things contemporary composition has now come to mean. The Wire
In 1999, together Steve Heather and Cor Fuhler, she founded Kraakgeluiden, a improvisation series based in Amsterdam, exploring combinations of acoustic and electronic instruments using real-time interactive performance systems. Many of the resulting musical collaborations have have taken on a life beyond the Kraakgeluiden series, which ceased in 2006. La Berge’s own music has evolved in parallel, and the flute has become only one element in a sound world that includes computer samples, the use of spoken text and electronic processing.
The miracle of her sound technique is supported by, among other things, different lip-positions, attacks, ways of breathing, distance from the microphone – everything has been foreseen and elaborated. . . Her textures are often two-voiced. It is all so complicated that it defies description and yet it sounds very natural, like a bird’s song. Muusika, Tallin
Her music is published by Frog Peak Music, Alry Publications, Donemus and many of her Max patch based compositions are available from her privately. She is the Managing Director of the Volsap Foundation that produces innovative music projects. She works as an improvisation and live electronics coach worldwide and is currently teaching and coaching at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.
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.
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.
Ted Moore (he / him) is a composer, improviser, and intermedia artist whose work fuses sonic, visual, physical, and acoustic elements, often incorporating technology to create immersive, multidimensional experiences.
Ted’s music has been presented by leading cultural institutions such as MassMoCA, South by Southwest, Lucerne Forward Festival, The Walker Art Center, and National Sawdust and presented by ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, the [Switch~ Ensemble], and the JACK Quartet. Ted has held artist residences with the Phonos Foundation in Barcelona, the Arts, Sciences, & Culture Initiative at the University of Chicago, and the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam. His sound art installations combine DIY electronics, embedded technologies, and spatial sound have been featured around the world including at the American Academy in Rome and New York University.
Computational thinking and digital tools enrich all aspects of Ted’s work, which has been described as “an impressive achievement both artistically and technically” (VitaMN). Creative coding spans the aural, visual, and procedural aspects of his practice revealing musicality in data and computation. Using tools such as SuperCollider, Max, C++, openFrameworks, Python, and computer vision and machine learning algorithms, Ted codes custom software for generative composition and live performance that intimately connect gesture and form across various media.
Ranging from concert stages to dirty basements, Ted is a frequent improviser on electronics and has appeared with dozens of instrumental collaborators across Europe and North America including on releases for Carrier Records, Mother Brain Records, Noise Pelican Records, and Avid Sound Records. Described as “frankly unsafe” by icareifyoulisten.com, performances on his custom, large-scale software instrument for live sound processing and synthesis, enables an improvisational voice rooted in free jazz, noise music, and musique concrète.
Interdisciplinarity catalyzes the diversity of Ted’s own practice by bringing him into collaboration with creative thinkers of differing backgrounds, such as theater-makers, choreographers, dancers, and software engineers. Ted has worked with independent theater companies, creating collaboratively devised intermedia works notably with Skewed Visions and Umbrella Collective in Minneapolis, creating original music, sound design, and video art.
After completing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of Chicago, Ted served as a postdoctoral Research Fellow in Creative Coding at the University of Huddersfield as part of the ERC-funded FluCoMa project, where he investigated the creative potential of machine learning algorithms and taught workshops on how artists can use machine learning in their creative music practice. Ted has continued offering workshops around the world on machine learning and creativity including at the University of Pennsylvania, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, and Music Hackspace in London.
Ted currently lives near New Haven, Connecticut, but might also be found hiking in nearby West Rock State Park or on the side of a mountain in Summit County, Colorado.