SPLICE Institute 2025 Participant Concert 1 Program
Friday June 27, 2025
1:00m EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Gonzalo Alonso : Límbico
Gonzalo Alonso, Toy Harp + Modular Synth
Riche Arndorfer : Tinker
Riche Arndorfer, Oboe
Adrian Montufar : It Will End (after John Berger)
Adrian Montufar, Flute + Gear
Mikayla Frank-Martin : I Heard A Fly Buzz
Mikayla Frank-Martin, Trombone
Ayla Cosnett : Preemptive Notion
Ayla Cosnett, Synth + MIDI Controller
Brandon Lincoln Woo Snyder : Forty Million Ears of Corn
Brandon Lincoln Woo Snyder, 3 MIDI Controllers + Found Objects
Rosalie Safford : **
Rosalie Safford, Voice
Jack Hamill : pulse/rhythm II
Jack Hamill, Fetal Monitor + Projection
Notes
Gonzalo Alonso : Límbico
Límbico explores a complex feedback system operating across digital, analog, and mechano-acoustic dimensions, exploring the principle of transduction as a form of physical gesture to a computational abstraction. The piece does not follow a linear path, instead it becomes a process of perpetual transformation, folding back on itself in recursive, unpredictable ways. The result is a living sonic ecosystem in which each layer affects the others, continuously reshaping the musical narrative. Here, the instrument is not simply a tool, but a site of exploration where the organic and the artificial intertwine.
The title refers to the limbic system, a part of the brain associated with memory, emotion, and sensory regulation. This reference draws a parallel between biological feedback mechanisms and the sonic circuitry of the system, raising questions on the transmission, transformation, and reintegration of sound.
Riche Arndorfer : Tinker
Tinker is partly inspired by the book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard: in particular, the sentence that ends “it will shear, loose, launch, winnow, grind.” Each of these words—shear, loose, launch, winnow, and grind—is represented by a different kind of music in the piece and corresponds with its own formal section. The electronic sounds in the piece are produced entirely from nature samples that were altered to sound synthesized, mechanical, and unrecognizable, and from audio samples taken from various public domain films and speeches (yes Orson Welles narrated a public domain nature documentary!). The music was also written so that it could be played precisely and more-or-less agreeably alongside the song “I Want to Be Well” by Sufjan Stevens.
Adrian Montufar : It Will End (after John Berger)
It Will End grows out of my ongoing exploration of the relationship between improvisation and the design of new digital musical instruments. I am performing with a T-Stick, a digital musical instrument created by Joseph Malloch and D. Andrew Stewart at IDMIL, McGill University (idmil.org/project/the-t-stick/). I am thinking about how the feedback loop of instrumental improvisation—taking action, listening, deciding on a response or continuation, taking action, listening, and so on—echoes design practices in its focus on physical exploration and iteration.
The title comes from John Berger’s And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, an understated quote from a very quotable book. Suffice it to say that in context it is about the diverging timescales of political repression and hope.
It Will End was created to premiere at SPLICE Institute.
Mikayla Frank-Martin : I Heard A Fly Buzz
This piece features text from the Emily Dickinson poem, " I heard a Fly buzz - when I died." The contrast between the fixed media, live electronics, and the solo instrument serve as a reflection of the relationship between life, death, and the in-between.
Ayla Cosnett : Preemptive Notion
A semi-improvised piece for BugBrand Board Chirper synthesizer and electronics realized in Max/MSP, exploring direct interaction with feedback systems via the synthesizer's array of touchplates.
Brandon Lincoln Woo Snyder : Forty Million Ears of Corn
This piece is an exploration in performing visual granular synthesis. Granular synthesis of audio samples plays a strong role in my improvisation work. I've always been curious to see how a video sample could be musical in a granular synthesis context, and SPLICE has been a wonderful opportunity for me to take a risk and try it out. This piece samples images and sounds from one unedited video, playing around with how the identity of a sound (and image) source can be concealed, transformed, and heard anew, when handled in a digital context.
Rosalie Safford : **
Jack Hamill : pulse/rhythm II
In this piece, I make use of five sensors on my right hand: a pulse sensor on my index finger, two bend sensors on my index and middle fingers, a distance sensor on my palm, and a muscle sensor on my arm. These sensors affect the sound coming from my computer, which includes input from the fetal doppler I hold up to my chest to monitor my heartbeat. What rhythms is my heart making? Is it a stable pulse, or something else?
Bios
Gonzalo Alonso
Composer and sound artist. He holds a degree in composition from the Escuela Superior de Música at CENART. His work has been presented at: Festival Ecos Urbanos (Mexico), Festival Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez (Mexico), Asimtria Festival (Peru), and New Music on the Point (USA). He has participated in the MIXTUR composition workshop (Spain) and Prácticas de Vuelo (Mexico).
His practice focuses on exploring the spaces between improvisation, composition, and technology, and how these intersections affect the perception of time, space, and the body.
Since 2022, he has been in charge of the Audio Lab at the Multimedia Center of CENART, where he leads workshops focused on sound creation and organizes activities aimed at promoting experimental sound art.
Richie Arndorfer is a composer, performer, and educator. His music draws from diverse influences and varies widely in sound, scope, and style, taking cues from artists as disparate as Grisey and Beach House, and drawing on his experiences performing as an oboist, as a jazz saxophonist, and as a singer-songwriter. Despite this eclecticism, his music retains a signature sound characterized by a subtle dramaticism, often fluid textures and off-kilter phrasing, gradual transformation, and an ever-present (if sometimes masked) playful energy. Richie’s music also regularly draws inspiration from extra-musical sources such as the Northern Lights, Dracula, sleep cycles, civic history, and dancing, even drawing inspiration from the musicians themselves, infusing characteristics of the performers and ensembles into his music, noting their quirks and history, even the phonemic quality of their names, and using these idiosyncrasies as a catalyst for expression.
Ayla Cosnett (b. 1999, Easton, MD, USA) is an electroacoustic composer and improviser based in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work extensively employs analog electronics and draws on cybernetics, post-internet aesthetics, Situationist theory, and her experiences as a bisexual trans woman. A graduate of Baltimore's Peabody Institute, she is currently pursuing a master's degree in electronic composition at the University of Louisville under Krzysztof Wołek.
Mikayla Frank-Martin is a Boston based trombonist who specializes in contemporary/new music, pop music, chamber music, classical, klezmer, and solo work. She combines both music and psychology through her research in managing music performance anxiety and normalizing it as a natural part of music creation. In addition to her research in music performance anxiety, she has led initiatives to increase awareness of diversity and inclusivity in the brass world, as well as helped put together a database for under celebrated composers. Mikayla hopes to use her music to promote social justice and emotional confidence among fellow musicians. Currently, she is pursuing her masters in contemporary classical music performance at Boston Conservatory at Berklee under the tutelage of Norman Bolter.
Jack Hamill (b. 1999) is a multimedia artist primarily focused on sound. His creative practice ranges across a variety of art forms, spanning electro-acoustic music, noise, experimental film, digital visual art, and more. He has worked with a broad variety of aesthetic media, such as computer-generated scores, voice-imitating Disklaviers, homemade eye-tracking devices, video projections, and acoustic ensembles. His recent work tends to focus on disparate modes of expressive intensity: seriousness and irreverence, deliberation and intuition, jibberish nonsense and vigorous manifestos. He is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at Northwestern university.
Adrian Montufar’s artistic practice unfolds in the worlds of free improvisation, contemporary concert music, and sound art.
He is a PhD Candidate in the music composition program at UC Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. Adrian’s dissertation blends instrument design and physical computing with voice and movement improvisation. His teachers include Ed Campion, Myra Melford and Carmine Cella.
Adrian was born in the U.S., grew up in Ecuador, and moved to New York at age 17. He has presented his work in Canada, Ecuador, and across the United States and Europe.
Brandon Woo Snyder (he/him) is a composer and educator based out of New York City. His music has been performed by the SWR Vokalensemble, Line Upon Line, and Ensemble Aventure, at institutions including IRCAM, impuls, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center. He worked as a research assistant at the music informatics institute at Karlsruhe Conservatory, and has most recently presented at the 2024 Web Audio Conference. He holds a masters in composition from the Stuttgart Conservatory, and a bachelors in music from Harvard University. He is the founding director of Browser Sound, a festival for web-based sound art, and he currently teaches media technology for the New York Public Library. In the Fall he will begin a PhD in integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology at the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts.