Concert 5
Oct
24
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 5

(photo credit: José Pita Juárez)

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Concert 5 Program

SPLICE Ensemble

Douglas Osmun : stasis patterns (2018)

Jeff Herriott : eyes, sewn, await the sun (2008, rev. 2018)

Brittany Green : ...to experience life. (2019)

SPLICE Ensemble with guest Christopher Biggs: improvisation

Valeria Jonard : Deep Down (2018)

Lauren McCall : Markov Miniatures (SPLICE Festival IV Commission)

Elliott Lupp : []\6][]\][2][]\][][4\] (SPLICE Festival IV Commission)

Video credit for all works, Christopher Biggs

world premiere

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Bios

SPLICE Ensemble is a trumpet, piano, and percussion trio focussed 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, and they were recently awarded a Chamber Music America grant for a commission of a new 25-minute work with composer Caroline Miller. 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.
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Douglas Osmun is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, and whose acoustic works are informed by electroacoustic aesthetic frameworks. Osmun was the recipient of the 2014 Ron Nelson Composition Award for Restful Music and the 2016 Sinquefield Composition Prize. His music has been heard at the BGSU Graduate Conference in Music, the SEAMUS National Conference, the SCI National Conference, NYCEMF, and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. He has recently written works for Alarm Will Sound, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and SPLICE Ensemble, in addition to a performance of soliloquy with Timepoint Ensemble and an upcoming performance of that same work with Verdant Vibes. Osmun holds degrees from Western Michigan University (B.M. in Music Composition) where he was named a Beulah and Harold McKee Scholar, and the University of Missouri (M.M. in Composition). Former private teachers of his include Lisa Renée Coons, Christopher Biggs, Stefan Freund, and Carolina Heredia. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Composition at UC San Diego. back to program


Jeff Herriott is particularly attracted to sounds that shift and bend at the edges of perception, creating unhurried music, using slow-moving shapes and a free sense of time. His compositions have been described as “colorful…darkly atmospheric” (New York Times), “hypnotic” (mainlypiano.com), and “incredibly soft, beautiful, and delicate” (Computer Music Journal). He is active as a collaborator in a range of musical styles, including with his sleepy rock/ ambient project Bell Monks; with the heavy metal band Realmbuilder; with synth-duo Binary Reptile; as a laptop composer/ improviser with Skewed and Such and Sonict; and most recently as co–composer with S. Craig Zahler for the music and songs in his films, Bone Tomahawk, Brawl In Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. He is a Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, where he isthe coordinator of the Media Arts and Game Development Program and teaches courses in music composition, audio, multimedia, and music technology. back to program


Brittany J. Green (b. 1991) is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Described as “cinematic in the best sense” and “searing” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music is centered around facilitating collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. Her research and creative interests include mapping aural gestures to gestural recognition technology and exploring virtual reality platforms as a tool for experiencing immersive, intimate musical moments. Her music has been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the Society of Composers National Conference, New York City Electronic Music Festival, SPLICE Institute, the West Fork New Music Festival, Music by Women Festival, and Electroacoustic Barn Dance Festival. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week, Darkwater Women in Music Festival, and the Intersection@ Art and Science Symposium. Brittany holds a BM in Music Education from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a MM in Music Composition and Theory from East Carolina University. She is currently in residence at Duke University, pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition as a Deans Graduate Fellow. back to program


A native of Michoacán, Mexico, Valeria Jonard is a composer, sound artist, and educator. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition in 2009 from the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Mexico. She continued her studies abroad with Christopher Biggs at Western Michigan University where she earned her Master of Music in Composition in 2012. During this time, she was awarded the Ron Nelson Award for her composition ‘The Whales’ Lethargy.’ In 2013, she was accepted into the graduate Sound Art program at Columbia University in New York City where she studied under the guidance of Douglas Repetto. Her music has been performed around the world by ensembles such as the FonemaConsort, Liminar, Birds on a Wire, SPLICE Ensemble, and Supercluster, among others. She has also participated in music festivals such as the Foro de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez, Internationale Ferienkuse für Neue Musik, Visiones Sonoras, SPLICE, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and Punto Ciego. In 2019, Valeria was a recipient of the prestigious FONCA grant, one of Mexico’s highest recognitions in the arts. She is presently a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas where she also directs Ramificaciones, a festival dedicated to music and multimedia. back to program


Lauren McCall is a composer, musician, and educator from Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her bachelor’s degree in music education at the University of Georgia and for her master’s degree in music composition at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has had compositions performed around North America and in Europe. This includes her piece for piano, Shake the Earth, which was performed in Morehead, Kentucky at Morehead State University’s Contemporary Piano Festival, along with being performed in Eugene, Oregon at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium. Recently Lauren was a music theory and composition teaching artist for the Atlanta Music Project, and she is currently an educational research assistant in music technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Along with composing Lauren enjoys playing clarinet and piano, along with spending time in nature, and spending time with family and friends. back to program


Elliott Lupp is a composer, improvisor, visual artist, and sound designer whose work often invokes images of the distorted, chaotic, visceral, and absurd. This aesthetic approach as it relates to both acoustic and electroacoustic composition has led to a body of work that, at the root of its construction, focuses on the manipulation of noise, extreme gesture, shifting timbre, and performer/computer improvisation as core elements. Elliott has received a number of awards and honors for his work, including a 2019 SEAMUS/ASCAP Commission, the 2019 Franklin G. Fisk Composition Award for Chamber Music, and Departmental and All-University awards in Graduate Research and Creative Scholarship. He completed his BM at Columbia College Chicago, his MM at Western Michigan University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in composition and music technology at Northwestern University. back to program


[]\6][]\][2][]\][][4\] (six-two-four) is the musical product of a year that brought with it a number of good, bad, but simultaneously fast psychological, physical, and artistic changes to my both my personal and professional life. Throughout the creation of the piece, I developed a case of anxiety and a severe case of excoriation disorder, a disorder that is characterized by incessantly and compulsively picking at one's own skin which results in drawing blood, scarring, and significant disruption in one's life. In my case, it is my scalp and face. This was most likely a result of a failed attempt to quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey, combined with a number of personal and world events that 2020 has brought with it.

Musically speaking, the piece is a combination of overlapping acoustic and electroacoustic material inspired by watching, listening to, and learning from the SPLICE ensemble over the last few years, combined with other sonic material inspired by the subjects discussed above. The result is a virtuosic piece that, in a way, attempts to sonically mirror my recent experiences with anxiety and excoriation disorder.

The number 624 is not meant to have any literal correlation to the structure/materials of the composition. Rather, the number is simply the street address for a childhood home that brings with it strong and oftentimes conflicting emotions/formative memories that pertain to harsh change, comforting stability, but in most ways, simpler times. back to program

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Talks 2
Oct
24
4:30 PM16:30

Talks 2

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Talks 2

4:30-4:50pm
Dan VanHassel
Best Practices for Combining Acoustic Instruments and Electronics

4:50-5:10pm
Robin Meiksins
Long Form YouTube Projects

5:10-5:30pm
Kaitlin Pet
Interactive Score-Following with the Informatics Philharmonic

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Best Practices for Combining Acoustic Instruments and Electronics A discussion of best practices for the diffusion for works with live acoustic instruments and electronic sound in a concert setting, including technical, psychological, and artistic concerns. back to program


Long Form YouTube Projects
Flutist Robin Meiksins discusses her long form YouTube projects including 52 Weeks of Flute. How does one go about formulating the concept of these projects, why YouTube, how do you create engagement, and why do these types of projects.


Interactive Score-Following with the Informatics Philharmonic
The Informatics Philharmonic is a music performance system developed by Chris Raphael at Indiana University that uses interactive score-following to make pre-recorded audio follow a live player. Using this system, performers can speed up and slow down as they please, bringing the composition to life in a spontaneous and personal way. Info Phil has the potential to serve as a basis for works for live acoustic instrument and interactive electronica that could record, process, harmonize, mix, and distort the soloist’s audio in real time. We will discuss the Informatics Philharmonic’s potential applications in electroacoustic music and will do a live demo if circumstances allow. back to program


Bios

The music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Dan VanHassel has been described as “energizing” (Wall Street Journal), “an imaginative and rewarding soundscape” (SF Classical Voice) and “funky machine music” (SF Chronicle). Recent performances include the Gaudeamus Festival, MATA Festival, Shanghai Electronic Music Week, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. He has received grants from Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, the Boston Foundation, and New Music USA. Dan is artistic director and electric guitarist with the Hinge Ensemble, and was a founding member of Wild Rumpus. Currently living in Boston, Dan has degrees from UC Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. back to program


Robin Meiksins is a freelance contemporary flutist focused on collaboration with living composers. Chicago-based, she uses the Internet and online media to support and create collaboration. In 2017, Robin completed her first year-long collaborative project, 365 Days of Flute. Each day featured a different work; each video was recorded and posted the same day. In 2018, Robin launched the 52 Weeks of Flute Project. Each week features different living composer to workshop a submitted work, culminating in a performance on YouTube. Robin has premiered over 100 works and has performed at SPLICE Institute, the SEAMUS national conference, and Oh My Ears New Music Festival 2018, she was a guest artist at University of Illinois for their first annual ’24-Hour Compose-a-thon.’ Robin holds a masters degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where she studied with Kate Lukas and Thomas Robertello. back to program


Kaitlin Pet is an Informatics PhD student at the Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computer Science and Engineering. She holds a BA in Biology and Computer Science from Columbia University and a GPD from the Hartt School in Oboe Performance, where she concentrated on chamber performance. Kaitlin is passionate about new music and has performed in multiple venues with the Hartt’s Foot in the Door contemporary ensemble, including the 2019 CBDNA conference at Arizona State University. back to program


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Workshop 2: A Crash Course in 3D Audio
Oct
24
3:00 PM15:00

Workshop 2: A Crash Course in 3D Audio

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Workshop 2: 3:00pm

Peter Van Zandt Lane
A Crash Course in 3D Audio

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

A Crash Course in 3D Audio User-friendly tools for mixing in Ambisonics formats have rapidly developed in recent years, largely due to their practical use in 360° video and VR applications and the embracing of Ambisonics audio formats for 360° video streaming by companies like Facebook and YouTube. These tools allow musicians to mix audio for 3D immersive audio environments or interactive media, and have significant creative potential for live performance and unique ways of disseminating recordings. This workshop is recommended for those with some experience mixing multi-channel projects in DAWs; no prior experience or familiarity with Ambisonics is necessary.


Participants should have the following: "Reaper: https://www.reaper.fm/download.php

IEM Plug-in Suite: https://plugins.iem.at/

(optional*) FB360 Spatial Workstation: https://facebook360.fb.com/spatial-workstation/

*FB360 Plugins will be briefly discussed, but not used in the workshop." back to program


Bios

Peter Van Zandt Lane is an American composer of instrumental and electroacoustic concert music. A recipient of the 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Peter has received fellowships from Copland House, Composers Now, Yaddo, and MacDowell Colony. Recent works include Radix Tyrannis, a concerto for Joseph Alessi commissioned by American Chamber Winds, Piano Quartet: The Longitude Problem commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players, and Chamber Symphony commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for EQ Ensemble (Boston). His electroacoustic ballet, HackPolitik, was a New York Times Critic’s Pick, was praised for " exploring anarchy and activism in a refreshingly relevant way” (New York Times) and is available on Innova Recordings. Peter holds degrees from Brandeis University and the University of Miami, and is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgia. back to program


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Concert 4
Oct
24
1:00 PM13:00

Concert 4

photo credit: Omar Costa Hamido/Alex Lough

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Concert 4 Program

Nick Vasallo : The Doorway
Duo Charango:
Ciyadh Wells, guitar
Jamie Monck, guitar

Ralph Lewis : Can't Take You Anywhere
Stephen Marotto, cello
Splice Institute, recording and videography

Ashley Floyd : Totems
Andrew Stephens, bassoon

Alex Lough : Assemblage #4 (flicker)
Alex Lough, electronics
Omar Costa Hamido, video
Alex Lough, recording and engineering

Andrew Noseworthy : Pull Up
Nicholas Suosso, soprano saxophone

Megan Elks : Woman Set Free I. Woman Set Free II. The Love You Deserve
Megan Elks, saxophone and vocals

Leo Chang : Solo for VOCALNORI
Leo Chang, VOCALNORI

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Nick Vasallo : The Doorway
Composed in 2013 and 2015. "There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." -Aldous Huxley back to program


Ralph Lewis : Can't Take You Anywhere
Can’t Take You Anywhere is written for (amplified) cello and triggered fixed media. It is inspired by traveling around with a particularly noisy crackle box. Its light sensors responded in particularly cantankerous ways when we were riding elevators in my building. Often engaged by curious elevator passengers, I found myself having to explain the goings on as if I were an embarrassed pet owner. The cello and electronics embody different moments, patternings, and realizations found throughout this process. back to program


Ashley Floyd : Totems Orchestration textbooks often remark that the bassoon is the most versatile of instruments, proficient in both technical and lyrical styles and possessing a tone which blends with almost any other instrument. Totems takes advantage of all of these characteristics but makes a special point to emphasize the bassoon's ability to blend. The electronic part often mimics the live bassoon, growing from a small, nervous echo of the live bassoon into an aggressive choir of bassoon-ish sound which grapples with and eventually swallows up the live performer. Throughout the piece, the live bassoon struggles to maintain its independence. As part of these struggles the bassoon clutches to its opening sixteenth note motive as a totem while the electronics swirl and evolve around it. Totems was completed in the studios of the Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgia. Bassoon samples are courtesy of Cayla Bellamy. back to program


Alex Lough : Assemblage #4 (flicker) The 'Assemblage' series is an ongoing experiment in composing for improvisers. Rather than provide a "score" that prescribes sonic material temporally, the composer instead provides a custom collection of technology and found objects with a specific performer in mind. The form and content of the work is embedded in the limitations and affordances of each technological matrix. The performer realizes the work through improvisational play and discovery, developing and cultivating an intimate relationship with the system.

In Assemblage #4 (flicker) the performer explores the sonic architecture of resonant glass vessels with a custom feedback matrix and audio-reactive LEDs attached to speakers. All sound comes directly from the small speakers and is shaped by the resonant characteristics of the glass vessels; no external amplification is used. back to program


Andrew Noseworthy : Pull Up Pull Up is about the meaning behind vernacular language, specifically slang terms. Many words over time have lost their original meanings or taken on new ones, especially when transmitted orally. When language is manipulated or removed far enough from its original source, it may even take on the form of purely sound to a listener. At what stage does a word become recognized simply by its sound parameters? At a point of complete contextual disconnect or distortion, does language still retain its meaning?. back to program


Megan Elks : Woman Set Free I. Woman Set Free II. The Love You Deserve Woman Set Free is a collection of two songs written for a saxophonist/singer and loop station. The texture is produced by the saxophonist looping material to build chords, establish rhythmic pulse, or offer additional effects. The saxophonist is not required to double as the vocalist, though the piece is written with that intention.

Woman Set Free was largely inspired by my affection for genre-bending artists and indie classical music. My early introductions to music were through church choirs and jam sessions, but I slowly drifted away from singing publicly as I pursued saxophone. I composed woman set free as an opportunity to present some of my favorite styles, and re-approach singing for others. The set contains three songs, with relatively static harmonic progressions and emotionally dense lyrics. It also serves as an exercise in patience, in that the performer must move slowly for the desired feeling to be achieved. The lyrics are comprised from a variety of poems by r.h. Sin. back to program


Leo Chang : Solo for VOCALNORI VOCALNORI is a live performance and improvisation system that amplifies vocal sounds through Korean and Chinese gongs via electronic instruments. VOCALNORI is my attempt at learning about Korean and Chinese gongs in an improper way: through singing. With VOCALNORI, I am seeking a way of connecting with cultural artefacts without touching them; exploring my desire to understand an Asianness and Koreanness that complicates “tradition.”

I am interested in finding varying degrees resonances from VOCALNORI, within and among the limitations the instruments involved impose on one another: My vocal sounds are filtered through, and limited by, the physical properties of the gongs. The gongs are in turn never struck percussively, but electronically stimulated by my voice, as well as being dampened by the transducer that connects my voice to the gongs. The electronic instruments are limited by the capacity of the transducers, which influences their size, shape, volume and frequency range, and determines how much it dampens the gong. back to program

Bios

Bay Area native Dr. Nicholas Vasallo picked up the electric guitar while in high school and formed Antagony, later credited as birthing a popular subgenre of metal music called “deathcore”. A graduate of California State University, East Bay, Vasallo completed his doctorate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where in 2010 he was given the President’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship Award – the first arts student to receive that honor. Other honors include the American Prize, International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition, MACRO composition award, and the San Francisco Choral Artists New Voices award. He has helped make Diablo Valley College “California’s finest community college for music” and a top 10 Music Industry School in California. Dr. Vasallo created the music composition programs at Diablo Valley College and Cal Poly Pomona. He has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, CSU East Bay, and Gavilan College. His students have went on to have successful careers as media composers, concert music composers, and graduate students at prestigious composition programs throughout the Unites States. Dr. Vasallo is the recipient of the San Francisco Classical Voice Music Educator Award 2013. His music is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishers and available on Innova Recordings and Unique Leader. Vasallo is also a passionate martial artist, he practices Jiu Jitsu and teaches Muay Thai Kickboxing at Danville Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling, and Kickboxing. He is a CMAT (Certified Martial Arts Teacher), creator, and head instructor of the Muay Thai program at Global Martial Arts University. He lives in Danville, CA with his wife, Denise, and their two children: Madison and Lucas. back to program


Duo Charango, half Ciyadh Wells, half Jamie Monck, is a guitar duo aimed at challenging the notion of what a “classical” guitar duo can be. Ciyadh and Jamie unofficially formed while the pair was studying at the University of Louisville, where they received coachings from Dr. Fred Speck. They officially became Duo Charango in 2018, and gave their first performances in the summer of 2019.

The repertoire Duo Charango explores is part music written for the classical guitar by composers such as Clarice Assad and Eduardo Angulo, part transcriptions of works by Arvo Pärt and Julius Eastman and part works for two electric guitars. One of Duo Charango’s most exciting ventures is their Neoteric Guitar Project, a commissioning project intending to expand the repertoire of the electric guitar duo. The project will be premiered as soon as Coronavirus allows. back to program


Ralph Lewis is a composer whose works seek meeting points between sonorous music and arresting noise, alternative tunings and timbre, and the roles of performer and audience. Lewis’s music has been selected for and presented at festivals and conferences including Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), SCI National Conference, International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), Boston Microtonal Society, College Music Society, SCI National Student Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, MOXsonic, N_SEME, Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp, CHIME Festival, New Music on the Point, Thirsty Ears Festival, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Etchings Festival, and the Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival, as well as on radio broadcasts throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Currently a doctoral candidate at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he also works with All Score Urbana, a community engagement composition workshop.
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A native of Norwalk, Connecticut, Stephen Marotto has received a Bachelors degree with honors from the University of Connecticut, and Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from Boston University. Stephen’s formative teachers include Michael Reynolds, Kangho Lee, Marc Johnson, and Rhonda Rider. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Stephen plays regularly with groups such as Sound Icon, Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and also performs on various new music concert series in the Boston area and beyond. Stephen has attended music festivals at the Banff Centre, Cortona Sessions for New Music and SoundSCAPE festival in Italy, and the and the Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany. Stephen has a wide range of musical interest that include contemporary chamber music, improvisatory music, and electroacoustic music. As a soloist, Stephen has commissioned several new works for the instrument, and is concerned with expanding and augmenting the tonal pallet of his instrument both with and without technology. Stephen can be heard as a featured artist on Mode Records. In his spare time, Stephen is an avid hiker and outdoorsman. back to program


Ashley Floyd (b.1982) is a Georgia based composer and music educator. His works have been performed across the United States and Europe, by musicians and ensembles such as the Lydian String Quartet, Bent Frequency, flutist Angela Jones-Reus, and the East Coast Composers Ensemble. Recent notable performances of his music occurred at the World Saxophone Congress, the Charlotte New Music Festival, and the SoundNOW Atlanta Festival. In 2019, his concerto for alto sax and wind band was named a finalist for the American Prize. He has received additional awards and commissions from the Southeastern Composers League, Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity, as well as school and community bands and ensembles. Floyd earned his DMA in music education at the University of Georgia where he was awarded the John Corina Scholarship in Composition. He holds degrees in composition from Brandeis University (MFA) and the University of Georgia (BMus). His instructors have included such composers as Leonard V. Ball, Adrian Childs, David Rakowski, Eric Chasalow, and Yu-Hui Chang. back to program


Andrew Stephens is in his second year at the University of Georgia pursuing a doctoral degree in bassoon performance. He enjoys a wide range of music (from jazz to progressive metal) and spent a large portion of his masters at the University of Kansas studying the work of Radiohead. Andrew is a huge proponent of new music and is excited for any opportunities to perform new pieces for small chamber ensembles and is always active in expanding the bassoon repertoire. back to program


Alex Lough is a composer, performer, and sound artist. His work focuses on implementing experimental technology in order to discover new performance contexts with particular attention given to the body and the physicality of sound. His research is primarily concerned with the new taxonomic distinction of "performed electronics" and embodied performance practices as an electronicist. He is currently a PhD candidate at UC Irvine in the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program where he studies with Mari Kimura, Nicole Mitchell, Simon Penny, and Chris Dobrian. back to program


The work of composer-guitarist-arranger Andrew Noseworthy (he/him/his) reflects upon the acceptance/rejection of “locality,” drawing from experiences while living in Labrador West, St John's(Newfoundland) and New York City. His music aims to address the contextual space and dissemination for underrepresented musical voices. With composer/guitarist Aeryn Santillan, he is the co-founder of experimental hardcore duo this place is actually the worst and DIY label people | place | records, both projects that connect communities existing on the fringes of “new music” and “hardcore/electronic” realms. Andrew’s multifaceted work also includes collaborations with performers/organizations such as Contact (Toronto), Evan Ziporyn, Tim Brady/Bradyworks, Andrea Lodge and Din of Shadows, choreographers/dancers/filmmakers Angie Moon, Abraham Texidor and Norberto Collazo, and composers Yaz Lancaster, Saman Shahi and Bekah Simms. Andrew's previous mentors include Michael Gordon and Andrew Staniland. He is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Western University, studying with Paul Frehner. back to program


Saxophonist Nick Suosso enjoys a career as a performer, educator, and clinician in Northern Colorado. A dedicated performer, Nick has presented solo and chamber recitals at the Mostly Modern Festival, Penn State Single Reed Summit, Music by Women Festival at the Mississippi University for Women, and the New England Saxophone Festival. An advocate for new music, Mr. Suosso has premiered works by Guggenheim Fellow Felipe Salles and Christine Delphine Hedden and been a commissioning member of works by Gillian Rae Perry, Shelley Washington, and Andrew Noseworthy. As a clinician he has led clinics across New England and Colorado. His mentors include Jonathan Hulting-Cohen and Nathan Jorgensen. back to program


Megan Elks is a saxophonist and composer currently based in Austin, Texas. She is pursuing a MM Performance at the University of Texas at Austin, with a certificate in Arts and Cultural Management and Entrepreneurship. Megan is an avid performer, and was recently featured in the world premiere of Roger Briggs’s Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Wind Ensemble with the University of Texas Wind Ensemble. She has performed at conferences including the 2017 and 2020 US Navy Band Symposiums, the 2020 Society of Composers Inc. Conference, (Region VI) the 2017 North American Saxophone Alliance Region VI Conference, and the 2018 NASA Biennial Conference. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia, where she completed a BM Performance in the spring of 2019. Her teachers include Taimur Sullivan, Dr. Connie Frigo, and Dr. Stephen Page. back to program


Leo Chang is a composer, improviser, and performer currently living in New York. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and ultimately, Shanghai during his formative years. The tensions between assimilation, rootlessness, and constructing decolonial identity inform his artistic practice and research. Leo’s work currently emphasizes graphic and text-based scores, free and structured improvisation, electroacoustic composition and instrument-building, ritualized group performances, and cross-media installations. Leo strives to make music with people with disparate trainings and backgrounds: from ensembles, other experimental musicians and artists, to students, friends, children, or anyone who is curious enough to work with him in a creative capacity. Leo has presented his music and research at various conferences and festivals: notably the Ostrava Days New Music Festival, International Computer Music Conference, the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States National Conference, and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. back to program

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Concert 3
Oct
23
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 3

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Concert 3 Program

Alexandra Gardner : Cypress
Kyle Jones, baritone saxophone
Francis Favis, mastering
Nathan Nokes, recording engineer

Mary Lou Williams : Roll 'Em
Mark Micchelli, piano and toy piano

Christopher Poovey : Hypoxia
Robin Meiksins, flute
Robin Meiksins, editing and mastering

Caroline Louise Miller : Spelunking
Sam Wells, trumpet
Caroline Louise Miller, electronics

Michael Flynn : Smells Like Green Noa Even, saxophone

Schuette<>Sommerfeldt Duo : Improvisation
Schuette<>Sommerfeldt Duo:
Paul Schuette, synthesizer
Jerod Sommerfeldt, synthesizer
Schuette<>Sommerfeldt Duo, production

Jean-François Charles : Petrified
Will Yager, double bass
Jean-François Charles, live electronics
James Edel and Chris Jensen, videography and audio recording/editing/mastering

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Alexandra Gardner : Cypress
Cypress for baritone saxophone and soundtrack is the 13th work in my series of compositions for solo instrument with electronics. As is my habit with these pieces, the two parts are woven together into an aural landscape of shifting rhythms and textures based upon the sonic material of the acoustic instrument. The electronic part of Cypress is comprised entirely of acoustic saxophone sounds, some of which are easily identifiable, and others of which have been processed into completely different forms using a variety of software tools.

The cypress tree is considered a symbol of both mourning and immortality in many cultures and makes appearances in legends from Greek mythology to Christianity. It has often been planted to mark graveyards, with the idea that its straight, tall stature helps guide departed souls towards heaven.

This work is also part of my saxophone quartet Tides. I wanted a complete movement of that work dedicated exclusively to the instrument's capacity for warmth, strength, and agility. back to program


Mary Lou Williams : Roll 'Em
Roll ‘Em is a boogie-woogie standard that Williams originally wrote for the Benny Goodman Orchestra, though she also recorded the tune a number of times with piano trio. My somewhat maximalist take on the tune is also inspired by the player piano music of Conlon Nancarrow, relating the I-V-IV foundation of the blues progression to the 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 tempo relationships that frequently characterize his works. back to program


Christopher Poovey : Hypoxia
Hypoxia originally came about as a flute study I created as an attempt to use timbrel descriptors to drive processing in an interesting and intuitive fashion for a performer. Often in music with live electronics, pieces are guilty of using a high number of either pre-baked tracks or carefully manipulated automation which feign true interaction and often, as an unintended result, make performing electronic music very difficult for a performer. I, being quite guilty of the latter, often found my piece having an obscene rate of cues driving the live processing in my patches. Using tumbrel descriptors gets rid of a number of these issues as they can be used to create classifiers for different types of sound which can then either trigger events and manipulate effects. Originally the flute study was intended to be a compositional etude, but I enjoyed the sonic world it created, so I re-wrote the score and revised the electronic to create Hypoxia.

Note: despite the performance centric model of the electronics, the title Hypoxia refers to the sensation the flute player may or may not be experiencing while performing this piece. back to program


Caroline Louise Miller : Spelunking The soundscapes and improvisation in Spelunking are inspired by spaces found in caves: a bottomless pit, strange geological and crystal formations, underground lakes, beams of light from the surface, and ancient electrical infrastructure. back to program


Schuette<>Sommerfeldt Duo : Improvisation We believe in making freely improvised music with modular synthesizers because as instruments they are dependent upon interconnected yet entropic networks which magnify the idea that . . . “Improvisation is a game that the mind plays with itself, in which an idea is allowed to enter the playing field, in order to be kicked around in pleasing patterns for a moment before being substituted by another idea. The first idea is unintentional, an error, a wrong note, a fumble in which the ball is momentarily lost, a momentary surfacing of an unconscious impulse normally kept under cover. The play to which it is subjected is the graceful recovery of the fumbled ball, a second ‘wrong’ note that makes the first one seem right, the justification for allowing the idea to be expressed in the first place.” “Improvisation tells us: Anything is possible - anything can be change - now.” -Frederic Rzewski And we need this reminder more than ever. back to program

Jean-François Charles : Petrified Petrified is a reflection on the plastic nature of stones and rocks. The different states of the piece include Explosion, Ebullition, Expansion, Erosion, Effusion and Eruption.


Bios

Praised as "highly lyrical and provocative of thought" (San Francisco Classical Voice) and "mesmerizing" (The New York Times), the music of composer Alexandra Gardner mixes acoustic instruments with electronics, blending lyricism, rhythmic exploration, textural constructions, and a love of sonic storytelling.

Alexandra's compositions are performed around the world, including at the Aspen Music Festival, Beijing Modern Festival, Centro de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Festival Cervantino, Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Her music has been commissioned and performed by acclaimed ensembles and musicians such as cellist Joshua Roman, Percussions de Barcelona, pianist Jenny Lin, and the Seattle Symphony.

Among Alexandra's awards are recognitions from American Composers Forum, ASCAP, Maryland State Arts Council, The Netherland-America Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. She has held residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Harvestworks, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, The MacDowell Colony, and the Institut Universitari de l'Audiovisual in Barcelona, Spain. back to program


Kyle Jones, saxophonist, is a performer, teacher, and new music advocate whose natural curiosity towards music leads him to challenge the parameters of his craft. Kyle is continuously working to make his art more approachable by seeking out unusual performance venues, collaborating with artists in other mediums, and dismantling long-standing barriers between performers and audience-members.

Recently, he has been involved in a commissioning project with Dr. Nathan Mertens, centered around Queer identity with composers Anthony R. Green and Michael Gilbertson. Kyle was also chosen as the winner of the 2018 Sarah and Ernest Butler Winds, Brass, and Percussion Concerto Competition, held at the University of Texas-Austin. In addition to his performing activities, Kyle serves as a Co-Director for Fast Forward Austin and publicist/core member of Less Than <10. data-preserve-html-node="true" He holds degrees from The University of Texas-Austin, Peabody Conservatory, and East Tennessee State University back to program


Mark Micchelli is a pianist, composer, technologist, and scholar whose work bounces between the jazz and new music worlds. Recent projects include developing software applications for a wearable motion sensor, arranging a set of jazz standards for piano and electronics, and compiling a detailed analysis of Cecil Taylor’s solo piano music. Mark is currently pursing his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where he splits his time between the Jazz Studies and Composition/Theory departments. back to program


Christopher Poovey (b. 1993) is a composer and creative coder based in Dallas Texas who creates music and software which produce rich and colorful sound and encourages interactive structures. Christopher’s music has been played by members of Ensemble Mise-en, the University of North Texas Nova Ensemble, Indiana University's New Music Ensemble, and Indiana University Brass Choir. Christopher’s pieces have been presented at conferences such as the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, the International Computer Music Association, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, the Soul International Computer Music Festival, Inner SoundScapes, and the National Student Electronic Music Event. In addition to his reconditions, Christopher he has taken courses at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, at Princeton University in the Só Percussion Summer Institute, and has attended a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Christopher currently holds a master’s degree in music composition from University of North Texas as has a bachelor of music in composition at Indiana University. He is currently perusing a PhD in music composition from University of North Texas with a focus in computer music.
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Robin Meiksins is a freelance contemporary flutist focused on collaboration with living composers. Chicago-based, she uses the Internet and online media to support and create collaboration. In 2017, Robin completed her first year-long collaborative project, 365 Days of Flute. Each day featured a different work; each video was recorded and posted the same day. In 2018, Robin launched the 52 Weeks of Flute Project. Each week features different living composer to workshop a submitted work, culminating in a performance on YouTube. Robin has premiered over 100 works and has performed at SPLICE Institute, the SEAMUS national conference, and Oh My Ears New Music Festival 2018, she was a guest artist at University of Illinois for their first annual ’24-Hour Compose-a-thon.’ Robin holds a masters degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where she studied with Kate Lukas and Thomas Robertello. back to program


Caroline Louise Miller’s practice explores affect, tactility, biomusic, and the materiality of digital production. She often works with electronics, theatrical elements, and sonic worlds that bridge genres. Her most current project is a concert-installation with Alarm Will Sound and video artist Stefani Byrd that explores intersections of movement, stasis, and desire with abandoned industrial structures. Caroline’s music appears across the U.S. and internationally, and she has most recently been honored with grants and awards from Chamber Music America, the Matt Marks Impact Fund, Transient Canvas, and Guerilla Opera. In 2018 she won the ISB/David Walter composition competition for Hydra Nightingale, created with improvisor/bassist Kyle Motl. Caroline also works as a curator, and organized multimedia concerts at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography between 2012–2017. In 2019 she launched concerts focused on science-fiction and post-humanist themes. She holds a Ph.D in Music from UC San Diego, and will be Assistant Professor of Sonic Arts at Portland State University beginning in winter 2021. back to program


Sam Wells is a Los Angeles-based trumpeter, composer, and improvisor who creates evocative and narrative multimedia performances. Sam has performed throughout North America and Europe, as well as in China. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award. He has performed electroacoustic works for trumpet and presented his own music at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, N_SEME, and SEAMUS festivals. Sam is a member of Arcus Collective, Kludge, and SPLICE Ensemble. Sam has performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Sam has recorded on the SEAMUS and Ravello Recordings labels. Sam is on faculty at SPLICE Institute, Molloy College, and the California Institute of the Arts. back to program


Michael Flynn is a composer of acoustic and electronic music whose works present familiar musical ideas in inventive sonic and structural contexts. To this end, his music juxtaposes timbral exploration and metric complexity with pop-music-inflected harmony and beat-driven groove. Drawn towards bright, sparkling timbres, Michael strives to create works that feature vividly colored, dreamlike sound worlds. Michael’s music has been featured at events such as SPLICE Institute, the CHIME Festival, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), the National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME), and SPLICE Festival. Michael has written for performers and ensembles including the Chicago Composer's Orchestra, Sonic Hedgehog, the Found Sound New Music Ensemble, the Vital Organ Project, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, HINGE, and the MOD[ular] Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, among others. Michael graduated magna cum laude from Columbia College Chicago in 2016 with a bachelor of music in composition. While at Columbia, he received the William Russo Endowed Scholarship for Excellence in Music, presented to one student per year in Columbia College's music department. His teachers at Columbia included Kenn Kumpf, Eliza Brown, and Francisco Castillo-Trigueros. In the spring of 2018, Michael earned a master's degree in composition from Western Michigan University, studying under Christopher Biggs and Lisa Coons. During the 2018-19 school year, Michael held a part-time faculty position at Western Michigan, teaching courses in music theory and electronic music. Currently, he is pursuing a DMA in composition at the University of Georgia, studying under Emily Koh and Andrew McManus. back to program


Noa Even is a versatile saxophonist dedicated to the arts of today. In addition to creating new music through commissioning and close collaboration with composers, she interprets traditional classical repertoire and improvises.

Atomic, Noa’s solo commissioning project, features works with interactive electronics and video that explore themes of human connection, such as support for the transgender community, fluctuating immigration laws, and feelings of regret. Since the premiere in September 2019, she’s been touring Atomic across the country.

Noa’s saxophone duo, Ogni Suono, has performed throughout Asia, Europe, and North America, and released two albums since their formation in 2009. Most recently, they traveled to Taiwan and China to tour commissioned works and teach as guest clinicians. Patchwork, Noa’s saxophone and drum set duo, has been building an eclectic body of work for their unique instrumentation since 2013. Their self-titled debut album will be released in May 2020 on New Focus Recordings. When touring college campuses, both duos teach master classes, offer student composers readings, and lead discussions on entrepreneurship in the arts. Noa has also performed with Alia Musica Pittsburgh, Cleveland-based No Exit New Music Ensemble, and organist Karel Paukert.

In 2017, Noa co-founded Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, a non-profit organization that champions new and experimental music by presenting an annual festival, a year-round concert series, and organizing professional opportunities for young composers. She recently helped establish the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) within the North American Saxophone Alliance and co-organized a mentorship program for female saxophonists. She serves as an advisor of the CSW and on the editorial board for the Saxophone Symposium Journal.

Noa has been appointed as Lecturer and Head of Woodwinds at Rowan University and will begin her new position in September 2020. She has been teaching at Kent State University since 2013 and was a sabbatical replacement at the University of Oregon in the spring of 2017. She holds a DMA in contemporary music from Bowling Green State University, a master’s degree in performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a bachelor’s in performance and music education from Northwestern University. Additional studies include the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt outside of Paris, where she studied with Jean-Michel Goury. Her other primary instructors include John Sampen, Debra Richtmeyer, and Fred Hemke.

Noa is a Conn-Selmer Artist-Clinician and on the Vandoren Artist Roster. back to program


Schuette<>Sommerfeldt Duo Jerod Sommerfeldt teaches electronic music at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, NY. His music and sounds explore glitch, microsound, and algorithmic design. jerodsommerfeldt.com

Paul Schuette teaches experimental and electronic music at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He curates a concert series, ‘Out of the Box’, which showcases visiting artists working in experimental, electronic, and improvised mediums. Paul is an active composer, sound artist, and improviser. paulschuette.com back to program


Jean-François Charles is a composer, clarinetist, and live electronics designer. After obtaining a MSc in Electrical Engineering at the National Institute for Applied Sciences in Lyon, he studied in Strasbourg with the Italian composer Ivan Fedele. He has collaborated with musicians for creations in the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, and China. As a clarinetist, he worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen for the world première and recording of Rechter Augenbrauentanz. He earned his Ph.D. in music/composition at Harvard, where he studied with Hans Tutschku, Chaya Czernowin, Julian Anderson, Michael Gandolfi, Helmut Lachenmann, and Gunther Schuller. He joined in 2016 the School of Music at the University of Iowa as Assistant Professor in Composition and Digital Arts. His recent works include the album Electroclarinet, the opera Grant Wood in Paris premiered in 2019 by the Cedar Rapids Opera Theater, and a Scientific Concert presenting new pieces created in collaboration with scientists. back to program


Will Yager is a versatile bassist/improviser committed to experimental music, improvisation, and collaborating with composers in the creation of new solo and chamber repertoire for the double bass. He is a founding member of both LIGAMENT, a duo with soprano Anika Kildegaard, and the experimental trio Wombat, with Justin Comer and Carlos Cotallo Solares. Recent appearances include performances at the Oh My Ears Festival, MOXsonic, Big Ears Festival, Feed Me Weird Things, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, New Music on the Point, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, where he was a Robert Black Double Bass Fellow. back to program

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Talks 1
Oct
23
4:30 PM16:30

Talks 1

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Talks 1

4:30-4:50pm Caroline Miller
"At least I can go outside!": Perspectives on the Studio in Quarantimes

4:50-5:10pm Duo Charango: Jaimie Monck & Ciyadh Wells
Neoteric Guitar Project

5:10-5:30pm Mark Micchelli
Electroacoustic Jazz: Introducing Improvisation into the EA Paradigm

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

"At least I can go outside!": Perspectives on the Studio in Quarantimes I’ll be discussing my incorporation of field recordings in recent works for SPLICE Ensemble and Alarm Will Sound, as well as how the pandemic has reshaped this practice. back to program


Neoteric Guitar Project
Duo Charango will be discussing lessons learned from our crowdsourced commissioning project, the "Neoteric Guitar Project." We'll also be sharing small tips about writing for electric guitar duo and the guitar in general. back to program


Electroacoustic Jazz: Introducing Improvisation into the EA Paradigm
Most electroacoustic music is fully notated, and for good reason. Between programming the software, running live sound, and mastering the notated material, composers and performers have enough to worry about without introducing improvisation into the mix. Nevertheless, improvisation is a deeply expressive creative tool that can unlock new and exciting ways a performer can interact with electronics. This presentation details strategies for easily and successfully incorporating improvisation into electroacoustic settings, drawing on my experience arranging jazz standards for piano and electronics. Topics discussed will include performer control versus computer independence, best practices for designing interactive Max patches, and the joys and challenges of bridging the jazz and electroacoustic idioms. back to program


Bios

Caroline Louise Miller’s practice explores affect, tactility, biomusic, and the materiality of digital production. She often works with electronics, theatrical elements, and sonic worlds that bridge genres. Her most current project is a concert-installation with Alarm Will Sound and video artist Stefani Byrd that explores intersections of movement, stasis, and desire with abandoned industrial structures. Caroline’s music appears across the U.S. and internationally, and she has most recently been honored with grants and awards from Chamber Music America, the Matt Marks Impact Fund, Transient Canvas, and Guerilla Opera. In 2018 she won the ISB/David Walter composition competition for Hydra Nightingale, created with improvisor/bassist Kyle Motl. Caroline also works as a curator, and organized multimedia concerts at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography between 2012–2017. In 2019 she launched concerts focused on science-fiction and post-humanist themes. She holds a Ph.D in Music from UC San Diego, and will be Assistant Professor of Sonic Arts at Portland State University beginning in winter 2021. back to program


Duo Charango, half Ciyadh Wells, half Jamie Monck, is a guitar duo aimed at challenging the notion of what a “classical” guitar duo can be. Ciyadh and Jamie unofficially formed while the pair was studying at the University of Louisville, where they received coachings from Dr. Fred Speck. They officially became Duo Charango in 2018, and gave their first performances in the summer of 2019. The repertoire Duo Charango explores is part music written for the classical guitar by composers such as Clarice Assad and Eduardo Angulo, part transcriptions of works by Arvo Pärt and Julius Eastman and part works for two electric guitars. One of Duo Charango’s most exciting ventures is their Neoteric Guitar Project, a commissioning project intending to expand the repertoire of the electric guitar duo. The project will be premiered as soon as Coronavirus allows. back to program


Mark Micchelli is a pianist, composer, technologist, and scholar whose work bounces between the jazz and new music worlds. Recent projects include developing software applications for a wearable motion sensor, arranging a set of jazz standards for piano and electronics, and compiling a detailed analysis of Cecil Taylor’s solo piano music. Mark is currently pursing his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where he splits his time between the Jazz Studies and Composition/Theory departments. back to program


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Workshop 1: Creating a Re-usable, Robust Live Electronics Toolkit in Max
Oct
23
3:00 PM15:00

Workshop 1: Creating a Re-usable, Robust Live Electronics Toolkit in Max

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Workshop 1: 3:00pm

Elainie Lillios
Creating a Re-usable, Robust Live Electronics Toolkit in Max

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Creating a Re-usable, Robust Live Electronics Toolkit in Max This workshop will guide participants though the process of creating a versatile and expandable signal processing toolbox in Max that can be used for composing, improvisation, and performance.


Participants should have a computer with Max 8 installed. back to program


Bios

Acclaimed as one of the “contemporary masters of the medium” by MIT Press’s Computer Music Journal, Elainie Lillios creates works that reflect her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion, and anecdote. Her compositions include stereo, multi-channel, and Ambisonic fixed media works, instrument(s) with live electronics, collaborative experimental audio/visual animations, and installations. Elainie serves as Director of Composition Activities for SPLICE (www.splicemusic.org) and as Professor of Creative Arts Excellence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. elillios.com back to program


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Concert 2
Oct
23
1:00 PM13:00

Concert 2

photo credit: Harold Li

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Concert 2 Program

Cecilia Suhr : AI (artificial intelligence) vs. Human Consciousness
Cecilia Suhr, violin
Federico Foderaro, patch programming

Yuqian Yang : Dream Yuqian Yang, piano

Eric Lyon : The Man with the Golden Arm
Alan Weinstein, cello

Dan VanHassel : Fracture
Joseph VanHassel, percussion

Theocharis Papatrechas : Grit
Dimitris Paganos Koukakis, piano
Theocharis Papatrechas, video and binaural mixing

Brett Masteller Warren : Feedbacz
Drew Whiting, saxophone
Brett Masteller Warren, electronics
Sensory Advisory: This video contains flashing lights

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Cecilia Suhr : AI (artificial intelligence) vs. Human Consciousness
AI vs. Human Consciousness imagines the sonic environment and visual representation of AI conversing with the human consciousness. Using musical improvisation as a way of tapping into streams of consciousness, this interactive audiovisual performance expresses the blurred boundaries between several sets of dichotomies, including machine vs. human, analog vs. digital, spirit vs. matter, old vs. new, past vs. future. In doing so, this work carefully reflects on AI’s potential as well as limitations and risks pertaining to certain areas.
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Yuqian Yang : Dream
Dream was inspired by a series painting of my artist friend. The artist's original intention was to express that everyone is unique and has her own unique beauty. Women rate other women who beautiful as more dominant. In this piece, the main character thought if she can make herself beautiful, she will have power. In the dream, she made up what she wanted to be, but in the end she lost herself. I am seeking some unique timbre to express the dream, abstract, and Ink painting color in this work. The Chinese instruments Zheng and Dulcimer can provide some tension and mysterious sound. back to program


Eric Lyon : The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a computer-driven, computer-processed improvisation for cello, with automated, autonomous, interactive computer processing. A computer program generates a new structure for each performance, randomizing structure, length of sections, parametric configuration of processors, and performer guidance. The performer is presented with evolving performance suggestions that are both specific and open to interpretation. Once started, the interactive computer program is entirely autonomous, requiring no further intervention.

Each performance records the solo part, which is added to a library of sounds that may recur on subsequent performances, as well as during the current performance. As the piece receives more performances, its surface becomes richer and less predictable. On occasion, the soloist improvises against grooves constructed from pieces of previous performances.

Despite ongoing, intense, unpredictable processing, the expressive contour of the piece is predominantly architected by the musical choices made by the cellist during the performance. back to program


Dan VanHassel : Fracture Fracture is a two-part counterpoint between noise and pitch. The vibraphone notes form a calm, floating, underlying melody that continually expands and contracts, yet is always emotionally stable and consistent. Meanwhile, the percussion part is sharp, rhythmic, incisive; over time becoming ever more frenetic and anxious. These two layers weave in and out of each other, each developing in parallel with the other, yet never forming any kind of synthesis or unity.

The electronics act as an extension of both parts. The pitched part is extended through rhythmically irregular loops, building from the pulsing of the vibraphone motor. The percussive part is extended through a diverse array of samples consisting of short snippets of various rock and pop songs, with each sample corresponding to a specific pattern or rhythm.

Fracture was commissioned by and dedicated to my brother, Joseph VanHassel and supported by a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation. back to program


Theocharis Papatrechas : Grit Grit explores the nature and capabilities of the granular synthesis technique and applies its principles to construct the various levels of the composition (i.e. gestural character, phrasal momentum, form, fixed media, live signal processing, interaction between piano and electronics, and spatialization). The outcome is a wide, dense, and complex sonicscape, in which the electronically processed sounds along with the sounds of the instrument mix and contrast, contributing equally to the experience. back to program


Brett Masteller Warren : Feedbacz Feedbacz is a structured improvisation for saxophone and computer inspired by, and dedicated to, Steve Baczkowski. I enjoy dense textures. When I used to live in Buffalo, NY I would visit the Albright Knox museum on Saturday mornings. It was free before 1pm. I was drawn to the paintings of Clyfford Still because of the thick, heavy textures in his work. In the past, a lot of my fixed-media works explored this idea of density, but surprisingly my instrumental music did not. Before I left Buffalo, I engineered a two-day recording session with a free jazz octet. During one session Steve and I recorded some solo bari sax improvisations. Being drawn to one specific recording, I used it to create a 6-channel fixed-media piece. A couple of years later, while living in Chicago, I turned that piece into this live performance piece. That’s when Feedbacz became my first, dense instrumental work.

The performer is given a series of time frames within which to improvise based on a changing set of parameters. As the performer progresses a variety of processing techniques are employed to alter the sounds of the instrument. One of the techniques involves what I call a spectral freezer. As the performer is playing, the audio is transformed into the frequency domain and snapshots of overtone information are recorded into a series of buffers. The information stored in the buffers is then fed through feedback loops before being transformed back into the time domain. The results of this process produces resonating (i.e. frozen) overtones. The fundamental pitch and amplitude of the instrument are also tracked by the computer and used to control parameters of cross-synthesis, ring modulation, and spatialization. Last, the performer has control over a a set of wavetables (small buffers containing a variety of digitally generated samples). Based on the pitch and amplitude of the performance, the artist is able to control the sound and rate of change of the buffers… generating an accompaniment. back to program

Bios

Cecilia Suhr (www.ceciliasuhr.com) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and researcher, multi-instrumentalist (violin/cello/voice/piano), improviser and author, who is working at the intersection between art, music performance and interactive media. Crossing the boundaries between analog and digital, vision and sound, her creative work has been exhibited and performed across the U.S. and overseas in U.K., Australia, Greece, France, Russia, Portugal, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, etc. through galleries, biennials, museums, conferences, and festivals. She is an author of Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural Production (2012, Peter Lang Press) and Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities (MIT Press, 2014). She also served as an editor and contributing author to Online Evaluation of Creative Arts (Routledge Press, 2014). She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Arts (an affiliate professor of art) in Miami University, OH. back to program


Yuqian Yang is a composer, pianist, and video artist. Her work, which range from solo pieces to large-scale works for orchestra, earned her third prize in the New Generation Contest in (2010, 2011). Her works have been performed internationally at festivals and concert such as: Beijing Music Festival, Splice, EMM, TURN UP, the Composition Concert in the University of Arizona. She received commission for large ensemble by the University of Arizona 2017. She Invited for membership on project 21 2012-14. Third Prize in New Generation Competition 2010. Third Prize in New Generation Competition 2008. Important previous performances include the orchestra piece White Sands and White Snow (2019), commissioned piece Tornado (2017), 忆(2015), 思绪 (2015), the Symphony No. 1 (2014), the Peking opera “Farewell My Concubine” (2013). Yuqian received her D.M.A. at the University of Arizona in Composition. She previously received a M.M. from the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, where she was a member of Project 21 and a B.A. from the China Conservatory of Music. Her teachers have included Jia Guoping, Quan Jihao, Edward Knight, Daniel Asia, Craig Walsh, Kay He and Lendell Black. back to program


Eric Lyon is a composer and audio researcher. His software includes FFTease and LyonPotpourri, written for Max/MSP and Pd. He authored the book “Designing Audio Objects for Max/MSP and Pd.” Lyon was guest editor of the Computer Music Journal, editing two issues dedicated to the subject of high-density loudspeaker arrays. Lyon also curated the 2016 Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, which was the first binaural anthology published by the CMJ. Lyon’s creative work has been recognized with a ZKM Giga-Hertz prize, MUSLAB award, the League ISCM World Music Days competition, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lyon currently works at Virginia Tech. back to program


Alan Weinstein, cellist, performs across a wide spectrum of disciplines. He is a founding member of the Kandinsky Trio, winner of the Chamber Music America Residency Award, the NEA American Masterpieces Grant and a NEA Meet the Composers Award. He has performed in venues including Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, Spivey Hall and the Kennedy Center. As an electric cellist he has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, soloed with the Virginia Tech Wind Ensemble at Carnegie Hall and is a member of the improv trio Nagging Mother.

His dedication to new music has led him to premiere compositions by artists such as Mike Reid (“Tales of Appalachia” performed in over 150 cities), Richard Danielpour, and Hilary Tan. His jazz collaborations have included performances with Larry Coryell, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Dave Samuels, John D’earth and as a harmonica player with Ray Charles.

Virginia Tech has awarded Mr. Weinstein, an Associate Professor, the Alumni Teaching Award, the Certificate of Teaching Excellence Award and the Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence in the Creative Arts. He has recorded for Arabesque Records, Brioso and OmniTone labels. back to program


The music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Dan VanHassel has been described as “energizing” (Wall Street Journal), “an imaginative and rewarding soundscape” (SF Classical Voice) and “funky machine music” (SF Chronicle). Recent performances include the Gaudeamus Festival, MATA Festival, Shanghai Electronic Music Week, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. He has received grants from Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, the Boston Foundation, and New Music USA. Dan is artistic director and electric guitarist with the Hinge Ensemble, and was a founding member of Wild Rumpus. Currently living in Boston, Dan has degrees from UC Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. back to program


Joseph Van Hassel is a North Carolina-based percussionist specializing in orchestral and chamber music. Performance highlights include Carnegie Hall, the Cincinnati MusicNow Festival, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and the Hindemith Center in Switzerland. Active in the performance of new repertoire, Joseph has individually commissioned and premiered works by many composers, and can be heard on recordings for the Innova, Mode, Equilibrium, nobrow.sounds, Ohio Percussion, and Soundset record labels. He is published in Percussive Notes, and his compositions are published by Media Press and PerMus. He is on the percussion faculty at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and previously taught at Ohio University and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Joseph earned degrees from the Hartt School, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Ohio University. He also spent time studying music and dance in Ghana, West Africa. back to program


Originally from Athens, Greece, Theocharis is a composer of acoustic, electroacoustic, and acousmatic music, currently based in San Diego, CA. The focus of his work is centered around the ideas of duality, fragility, and fragmentation when considering the dimensions of materiality, form, electronics, and spatialization.

Theocharis holds a PhD in Composition from the University of California, San Diego. He also holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Sibelius Academy, and Ionian University.

Theocharis’s works have been performed by renowned ensembles in important new music contexts, such as, Ircam’s Manifeste Academy with ensemble Intercontemporain, SEAMUS at the Berklee College of Music, Mixtur Festival with Proxima Centauri, VIPA with the [Switch~ Ensemble], Workshop for Young Composers in Tchaikovsky City, FORUM with Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Shanghai New Music Week with Mivos Quartet.

Since 2016, Theocharis is running the artistic direction of the ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, a summer composition academy, which takes place annually in Città di Castello, Italy. Since the summer of 2020, he is the composer-in-residence at the Paxos Festival in Greece. He has also given master-classes at the Ionian University as well as talks at Stanford University and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC).

His music has been released by ArsPublica. His scores are published by Babel Scores. www.theocharis-papatrechas.com
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Dimitris's been practicing the art of music and dance since a very young age. For so long, these two played a different role in his career as an artist. Recently, he's started to focus on the combination and interplay of body movement through music performance. He plays the piano, I dance, move, improvise, teach, learn. He's currently doing his Doctorate in Contemporary Music Performance and holds the positions of Teaching Assistant and Associate Instructor at UC San Diego. He's fortunate to be collaborating with composers and bring new works into life. His research is focused on the music for piano and electronics, improvisation and the coexistance of a dancer and a musician through performance practice. His life is shared between Europe and the USA, having a very active performing career. back to program


Brett Masteller Warren is a sonic artist. Additional monikers include: composer, audio engineer, sound designer, performer, programmer, hacker, builder, appropriator. The use of technology plays a vital role in his work. Algorithmic process, chance procedure, and structured improvisations inform the sonic results. back to program


Saxophonist Drew Whiting has established himself as a virtuosic musician performing new and experimental music performing in solo, chamber, and electroacoustic settings. He is described as having “remarkable versatility” (Computer Music Journal), “superb musicianship” (The Saxophonist), and is a “superb advocate of the music he champions” (Fanfare Magazine). Drew was recently the featured performer at the Electronic Music Midwest Festival in 2019, where his performances where described as “exquisite and emotive… manag[ing] everything with aplomb” (diakcritical.com). He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Drew is a proud Yamaha Performing Artist and Vandoren Artist-Clinician. back to program


View Event →
Concert 1
Oct
22
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 1

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Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Concert 1 Program

Angus Lee : Apophisian Scriptures. Terzo fragmento: testimonianza di un avvenimento immaginario
[Lapsus memoriae IX]

Subaerial Collective

Leslie Lang : [Transits]
Maggie Snyder, viola

Garrison Gerard : Riant
Mod[ular] Ensemble

Peter Van Zandt Lane : Composite and Parallax
Bent Frequency Duo
Jan Berry Baker, saxophone
Stuart Gerber, percussion

Brian Ellis : Wild Things
Subaerial Collective

João Pedro Oliveira : Rust
Maggie Snyder, viola

George Lewis : [North Star Boogaloo]
Bryan Wysocki, percussion

Mod[ular] Ensemble is:
Heather Gozdan-Bynum, clarinets
Connie Frigo, saxophones
Joshua L. Bynum, trombone
Greg Hankins, piano
Andrew Blair, percussion

Subaerial Collective is:
Peter Van Zandt Lane, bassoon/contrabassoon
Emily Koh, contrabass
Adrian Childs, piano

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Angus Lee : Apophisian Scriptures. Terzo fragmento: testimonianza di un avvenimento immaginario [Lapsus memoriae IX] This work combines two primary fields of interest in my recent works: the use of field recording, as well as a new mode of notation that allows for sufficient freedom of interpretation for interpreters between each performance.

This work is a companion piece to my earlier Aeolian Scriptures. Both works are dedicated to my home city of Hong Kong. back to program


Garrison Gerard : Riant Riant is a non-linear composition built around collaborative improvisation. The work incorporates a conductor with a motion control that is used to control the live processing of the ensemble. Speed, orientation, and trajectory all control different elements of the electronic processing, subverting the usual power balance between the conductor and the resulting sound. This is also balanced in the composition itself with the individual performers being given considerable freedom to shape the realized piece. back to program


Peter Van Zandt Lane : Composite and Parallax Composite and Parallax is a work for saxophone, percussion, and immersive audio composed for Bent Frequency Duo. The electronic elements of the work rely heavily on sampling of SoundField recordings of various percussive sounds recorded in 3-dimensional configurations, and phase in and out of the live instrumentalist's parts both rhythmically and spatially.
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Brian Ellis : Wild Things "Wild Things" explores non-traditional musical expressions and forms of interaction thrust upon us by COVID-19 social distancing requirements. The work is in three movements and explores separation, isolation, and attempts made to connect, to varying degrees of success. back to program


João Pedro Oliveira : Rust Rust belongs to a group of four works that are inspired by nature's elements: Magma for Violin and electronics; Titanium for piano 4 hands, 2 toy pianos and electronics; Burning Silver for flute, guitar and electronics; Rust for viola and electronics. Each of these pieces is related to the characteristics of the element in which it is inspired. In Rust, the idea of a fragile object, which can break at any time, but whose appearance can be confused with the iron, reflects in a piece of music where melodic elements are broken, disperse and are reunited through several gestures and musical phrases. At the same time the hardness of the attacks and the way they are extended by the electronics, try to create the opposition between the weakness of the instrument, and the power of the electronic part.


Bios

Born in then British-Hong Kong, Angus Lee (b. 1992) is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. Named Young Music Maker 2012 by the RTHK, Lee has, in his various capacities as flautist, composer and conductor, performed at music festivals internationally, including Beijing Music Festival (CN), ACL Asian Music Festival (JP), Ciclo de Música Contemporánea de Oviedo (ES), CYCLE Music and Art Festival (IS), Festival Musica Strasbourg (FR), Seoul International Computer Music Festival (KR), Shanghai New Music Week (CN), St. Magnus Festival (UK), Ticino Musica Festival (CH), Tongyeong International Music Festival (KR), Vienna International SaxFest (AT), and Lucerne Festival (CH).

Raised in the last years of Hong Kong’s colonial period, Lee was exposed to a diverse range of cultural influences at an early age. He recognised that respect for different traditions and openness to dialogue are central to co-existence in a time of diversity. It is in the spirit of diversity that he co-founded the PRISM Chamber Music Festival in 2018 with violinist Sean Lai. The Hong Kong-based Festival is an initiative to bring together and showcase some of the city’s leading young musicians and independent ensembles, from specialising in period instrument performance, vocal music to contemporary music and beyond.

In the little spare time he has, Lee is an avid reader of history and philosophy. He is also rediscovering his interest in mathematics and physics, subjects he fervently regrets not having properly mastered as a middle-school student. His favourite artist is the painter Francis Bacon, and is, in real life, occasionally OCD for workplace orderliness. back to program


Leslie Lang is a composer of experimental electronic and chamber music. Her primary musical interest is in developing sounds, techniques, and compositions that speak directly to the subconscious, the body and the emotions. Using a sonic palette including immersive fixed media textures, live sound processing and synthesis, and prepared electric guitar, she explores improvisational forms and performance practices to carefully examine the subtle but profound links that sound creates between mind and body.

Originally from Atlanta, Leslie earned her BM in Technology in Music and Related Arts from Oberlin Conservatory, and is currently living and working out of Los Angeles. back to program


Violist Maggie Snyder is Professor of Viola at the University of Georgia, Principal Violist of the Chamber Orchestra of New York, with whom she records for Naxos, and is on the Artist-Faculty of the Brevard Music Festival. She has performed solo recitals, chamber music, concertos and as an orchestral musician throughout the United States and abroad in such halls as the Kennedy and Kauffman Centers, all three halls at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Spivey Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center, and in Greece, Korea, and Russia. She has performed under the batons of Yuri Temirkanov, David Zinman, Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, James dePriest, Julius Rudel, James Conlon, Keith Lockhart, and Michael Tilson Thomas, and at such festivals as the Brevard Music Festival, the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival where she was a Time Warner Fellow. In 2001, Ms. Snyder was a semi-finalist at the 8th Primrose International Viola Competition, and made her recital debut in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall with her sister duo, Allemagnetti in 2009. The group was called a "winning pair" with a "highly promising debut" by the New York Concert Review. She has performed chamber music with members of the Cleveland and Tokyo Quartets, Jonathan Carney, the Aspen String Trio, Jon Manassee, Ivo Van der Werff, Itamar Zorman, and Norman Kreiger, among others. Her solo recordings, "Modern American Viola Music" and "Allemagnetti – Music for Viola and Harpsichord" are represented exclusively through Arabesque Recordings and available through iTunes and amazon.com. Her latest solo recording, titled “Viola Alone: Old New and Borrowed,” was released on Arabesque Records in January 2018 and features the premiere of a new piece commissioned by Ms. Snyder by Libby Larsen. She was the 2018 recipient of the University of Georgia’s Creative Research Medal in the Arts and Humanities for her project commissioning and recording new works for viola. Ms. Snyder has given master classes, clinics, and recitals at universities and music schools throughout the country, including The Universities of Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan State, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, Interlochen, Hartt, and Converse College, among others. Ms. Snyder earned graduate degrees from The Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she was the teaching assistant for Victoria Chiang. Her Bachelor's degree is from the University of Memphis, where not only she was born and raised, but where she was a Pressar Scholar. back to program


Garrison Gerard is a Doctoral student at the University of North Texas; he earned a Master’s from UNT and graduated from Harding University with a Bachelor of Arts in Music. He has earned the educator prize from the Abundant Silence Music Group and won the Hal Leonard/Carol Klose Composition Competition. Natural influences feature heavily in his work; his music explores environmental issues as well as the influences of raw data on the compositional process and often incorporates elements of spectralism and eclecticism. He is also active as a conductor of new music and serves as the conductor of the NOVA New Music Ensemble at UNT. He currently studies under Dr. Joseph Klein. back to program


Brian Ellis is a composer, coder, and multi-instrumentalist. His musical drive lies in using code to realize his larger compositional vision: that technology should be used toward divesting musical agency from the composer to the environment, the performer, and ultimately, the listener. He believes strongly in the value of collaboration, having premiered pieces with numerous chamber groups, video projection artists, technologists, photographers, and dancers. Brian currently studies composition with David Coll, and has recently completed his undergraduate studies in Music and Computer Science Honors at the University of Texas at Austin where he worked with Nina Young, Celil Refik Kaya, Howard Ochman, and Russell Pinkston, among others.

Brian greatly values collaboration with performers who breath life into his work. He has worked with Apply Triangle, the Subaerial Collective, and members of the zFestival and SōSI. He additionally has had works selected for presentation in numerous events, including ICMC, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, ROCC, the Ears Eyes and Feet Collaborative Concert, the Good House Collective's "Time Warp", along with many house concerts. He has produced works in collaboration with dancers, including the Agenda(s) project and with Unset 2.0, an improvisation and audience co-collaborative dance company. As a performer, Brian is committed to diversifying the repertoire of the Classical Guitar, and performs with Saxophonist Jonathan Hostottle in SANS; duo. back to program


Composer João Pedro Oliveira holds the Corwin Endowed Chair in Composition for the University of California at Santa Barbara. He studied organ performance, composition and architecture in Lisbon. He completed a PhD in Music at the University of New York at Stony Brook. His music includes opera, orchestral compositions, chamber music, electroacoustic music and experimental video. He has received over 50 international prizes and awards for his works, including three Prizes at Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition, the prestigious Magisterium Prize and Giga-Hertz Special Award, 1st Prize in Metamorphoses competition, 1st Prize in Yamaha-Visiones Sonoras Competition, 1st Prize in Musica Nova competition. He taught at Aveiro University (Portugal) and Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil). His publications include several articles in journals and a book on 20th century music theory. www.jpoliveira.com back to program


Peter Van Zandt Lane is Associate Professor of Composition and Director of the Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgia Hodgson School of Music. He holds a BM in music theory and composition from the University of Miami Frost School of Music and MA and PhD degrees from Brandeis University. His composition studies include work with Melinda Wagner, Eric Chasalow, David Rakowski, and Lansing McLoskey. Prior to arriving in Athens, Dr. Lane taught at the University of Florida, Brandeis, Wellesley College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard.

A recipient of the 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dr. Lane has received commissions from the Atlanta Chamber Players, Barlow Endowment, the Composers Conference, American Chamber Winds, Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony, Emory University Wind Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, and the SUNY Purchase Percussion Ensemble among others. His full length ballet composed in collaboration with Juventas New Music Ensemble (Boston) and The People Movers contemporary dance company (Brooklyn), HackPolitik, explores the unique topic of cyber-dissidence through live music, dance, and electronics. Bringing contemporary music and dance into the cross-section of art, technology, and politics, HackPolitik was the subject of features on BBC radio, Forbes, CNet, and Boston Magazine, praised by critics as "angular, jarring, and sophisticated . . . very compelling . . . Ballet needs live music, and this one offered it at the highest level." (Boston Musical Intelligencer). The NYC run of the ballet was a New York Times Critic's Pick, hailed as "refreshingly relevant." (New York Times).

Composing primarily for chamber ensembles, wind ensembles, and orchestras, Dr. Lane often integrates electronics into works alongside traditional instruments. He has been composer-in-residence at Copland House, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Composers Now at the Pocantico Center. His music has been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Lydian String Quartet, Ensemble Signal, Triton Brass, East Coast Composers Ensemble, Xanthos Ensemble, quux collective, Freon Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and a number of college and university ensembles.

Festivals and conferences that have programmed Dr. Lane's compositions include the Sound and Music Computing Conference (Copenhagen), Festival of Contemporary Music in San Francisco, June in Buffalo, the Wellesley Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center, Festival Miami, SEAMUS, New Gallery Concert Series, Third Practice, Forecast Music, the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts, Boston Cyber-Arts, and 12-Nights Music and Art (Miami). An avid advocate for new music, Dr. Lane has performed as a bassoonist in a number of contemporary music ensembles, participating in the commissioning and premiering of several new chamber and electroacoustic works. Recordings of his music are available on Parma/Navona Records, New Dynamic Records, and Innova Records. back to program


Percussionist Stuart Gerber and saxophonist Jan Berry Baker are The Bent Frequency Duo Project. Stuart and Jan have commissioned over 20 new works for their duo and have given countless performances of this new repertoire across the US, Mexico, and Europe since 2014. back to program


George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, where he serves as Area Chair in Composition and Faculty in Historical Musicology. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis’s other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 150 recordings. His work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Mivos Quartet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, London Sinfonietta, Spektral Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, Studio Dan, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others. Lewis’s music is published by Edition Peters.

Lewis has served as Fromm Visiting Professor of Music, Harvard University; Ernest Bloch Visiting Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley; Paul Fromm Composer in Residence, American Academy in Rome; Resident Scholar, Center for Disciplinary Innovation, University of Chicago; and CAC Fitt Artist in Residence, Brown University. Lewis received the 2012 SEAMUS Award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and his book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award; Lewis was elected to Honorary Membership in the Society in 2016. Lewis is the co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016), and his opera Afterword (2015), commissioned by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, has been performed in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.

In 2015, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music (DMus, honoris causa)from the University of Edinburgh. In 2017, Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (PhD, honoris causa) from New College of Florida. In 2017 Lewis received the degree of Doctor of Music from Harvard University.

Professor Lewis came to Columbia in 2004, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Koninklijke Conservatorium Den Haag, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institut back to program


Bryan Michael Wysocki (b. 1995) is an Atlanta-based composer and percussionist. As a composer, I like to make music that involves non-traditional elements, such as spoken word storytelling, small light shows, and guided meditations. I’ve been very fortunate to work with groups like the FLUX Quartet, Terminus Ensemble, Pique Collective, and soloists like Michael Fahrner, Anthony DeMartinis, and Clare Longendyke.

As a percussionist, my passion is playing music written by composers from historically marginalized backgrounds. A lot of this viewpoint has been influenced by working with composers like Christian Wolff, Caroline Shaw, George Lewis, and Sarah Hennies on their music. I’m also one-half of the newly formed saxophone and percussion duo, Duoctane. Curtis and I formed this group at GSU to commission and perform works from composers in our generation.

Previous festival experience as a percussionist includes Music on the Point ’17, Yarn/Wire Summer Institute ’17, Nancy Zeltsman Marimba Festival ’17, as well as the soundSCAPE New Music Exchange ’19, and would have attended New Music on the Point in ’20, but it was cancelled due to COVID19.

Bryan is a DMA student in Music Composition at The University of Georgia with an assistantship from Ideas for Creative Exploration. Previous degrees include MMus degrees in Composition and Percussion from Georgia State University, and a BS in Composition from Hofstra University. back to program


Heather Gozdan-Bynum is a freelance clarinetist and teacher in the Athens, Ga. area. She is an active teacher and performer, balancing roles as soloist, chamber musician and private instructor. A graduate of the University of Iowa, the University of North Texas and Bowling Green State University, she also performs with the University of Georgia Mod[ular] Ensemble and is a founding member of Trio do Risata who recently performed at the 2020 TMEA Convention in San Antonio. back to program


Connie Frigo is Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Georgia. In addition to her international performing and teaching credentials, she is a sought-after presenter on professional development, creativity and women in music. She is a steadfast organizer of interdisciplinary events that focus on the creative process, human connection and engaging new audiences. Connie is the inaugural Chair of the NASA's Committee on the Status of Women. She served six years with the premiere U.S. Navy Band, Washington, D.C.; seven years as the baritone saxophonist with the New Century Saxophone Quartet; and taught at the Universities of Tennessee and Maryland, and Ithaca College. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Artist/Clinician with Henri Selmer Paris and D’Addario. Recently, Connie traveled to Italy, Russia, Brazil, Panama and Croatia to perform and teach, and has taught at American Saxophone Academy (Eastman), the Great Plains Saxophone Workshop, and the Dakota Chamber Music Festival.
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Since 2010, Dr. Joshua Bynum has served as Professor of Trombone at the University of Georgia and trombonist with the Georgia Brass Quintet, and the MOD[ular] Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. He is a founding member of Resonant Projection, a professional trombone quartet committed to expanding the repertoire and advocating for chamber music as an essential ingredient in school curriculum. In the summers, Josh serves as trombone artist/faculty for the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. He has also been on summer faculty for the Festival of Vale Veneto, in the Rio Grande de Sul region of Brazil. He is the 2020 recipient of the Creative Research Medal in Humanities & Arts.

Josh performs regularly as first-call substitute with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, including the entire 2015-16 season. He has recorded two releases with the ASO (Christopher Theofanidis: Creation/Creator and Jonathan Leshnoff: Zohar). He is a member of the IRIS Orchestra, and also regularly performs with numerous orchestras across the region, including the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of Augusta, and the Savannah Philharmonic.

Josh has given clinics and performances at the American Trombone Workshop, International Trombone Festival, Georgia Music Educators Association Conference, JanFest & MidFest Band Festivals, as well as for various workshops and universities across the country. He was a participant at the 2007 Alessi Seminar, and has been an invited performer for the Washington Trombone Ensemble, ITF Cramer Professor’s Choir, as well as the Professor’s Choir for the Southeast Trombone Symposium. He was a featured solo artist for the 2017 International Trombone Festival – at the University of Iowa.

Josh’s solo appearances with the various UGA Bands includes state premiere performances for John Mackey's Harvest: Trombone Concerto (2010), as well as Dana Wilson's Trombone Concerto (2017), both with the UGA Wind Ensemble. He has also appeared as featured soloist with the UGA Wind Symphony - performing Anthony Barfield's Red Sky. Other recent solo highlights include George Walker’s Trombone Concerto with the UGA Symphony Orchestra and Launy Grøndahl’s Concerto for Trombone at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival.

His solo CD Catalyst features previously unrecorded works for trombone, and is available through Potenza Music, iTunes, and Amazon. The MOD[ular] Ensemble is featured on the commercial release New Cartography, with a performance of /ping/ by Peter Van Zandt Lane. Josh is a graduate of Temple University, the University of Iowa, and Jacksonville State University. He currently serves as the Journal Advertising Manager for the International Trombone Association, and is the editor for the ITA Journal Pedagogy Corner column. Josh is an Artist & Clinician for the Edwards Instrument Company. back to program


Pianist Greg Hankins is a collaborator at the University of Georgia where he is on staff for the UGA Opera Theatre. His recital partners have included members of the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, The Canadian Brass, Metropolitan Opera, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Symphony, Boston Symphony, Sao Paulo Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Sydney Symphony, as well as solo artists and faculty of universities and conservatories around the world. He has accompanied the masterclasses of artists including Emmanuel Pahud and Renée Fleming. Greg leads the Whitehall Jazz Collective, an 8-piece ensemble specializing in contemporary jazz. Since 2012, he has served on the faculty of the New York State Summer School for the Arts School of Choral and Vocal Studies. back to program


Andrew Blair is a conductor, percussionist, and composer from Charlotte, NC. Andrew graduated with honors as a NC Teaching Fellow, Sudler Trophy winner, and Instrumental Performer of the Year from Western Carolina University in 2010 with a BSEd in music education.

As a passionate educator, Andrew taught on the middle, high school, and collegiate levels for 8 years in the greater Charlotte, NC area, with his ensembles earning consistent superior ratings in grades 1-6 in concert, marching, and solo/small ensemble performance assessments across the Southeast. Andrew has also been fortunate to put that passion to work as a dual-masters student in conducting and percussion at the University of Georgia. Andrew was named a 2016 recipient of the ASBDA Encore Award for Young Band Directors, and was recognized by multiple Citations of Excellence in music education from Cabarrus County Schools. He has also presented clinics at multiple state and district in-service conferences, and maintains an active schedule of adjudication, clinics, masterclasses, and symposiums. Andrew has proudly served as an Innovative Percussion educational artist and clinician since 2010.

As a conductor and percussionist, Andrew has joyfully led a diverse musical life, having been blessed with opportunities to perform in a wide variety of musical settings ranging from band and orchestra to jazz, chamber, theatre, worship, and electroacoustic music. Andrew has most recently held positions as a section percussionist in the Union Symphony Orchestra (NC), as well as principal percussionist of the Carolinas Wind Orchestra (SC). While in Athens, Andrew has had incredible experiences leading and performing with the Hodgson Wind Ensemble, Wind Symphony, Symphonic Band, Percussion Ensemble, Rote Hund Muzik, and multiple jazz and chamber settings in the area.

As a composer, arranger, and sound designer, Andrew’s music has been performed across the United States. Andrew has been fortunate to recently design for SC and TX State marching finalists, NCAA Division I and II athletic bands, and has published concert works with C. Alan Publications.

Andrew holds professional memberships in NAfME, CBDNA, PAS, and ASCAP, and was awarded honorary membership in Kappa Kappa Psi by UGA's Kappa Mu chapter in 2019. back to program


Emily Koh is Assistant Professor of Composition at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia. Dr. Koh holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from Brandeis University, MM degrees in Music Composition and Music Theory Pedagogy from the Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and a BMus(hons) in Composition from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. Prior to moving to Athens, Dr. Koh taught at Harvard, MIT, Brandeis, Longy School of Music (Bard College) and Walnut Hill School for the Arts.

Dr. Koh is a Singaporean composer whose music reimagines everyday experiences by sonically expounding tiny oft-forgotten details. In addition to writing acoustic and electronic concert music, she enjoys collaborating with other creatives in projects where sound plays an important role. Described as ‘the future of composing’ (The Straits Times, Singapore), she is the recipient of awards such as the Copland House Residency Award, National Arts Council Young Artist Award, Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Prix D’Ete, and PARMA competitions; commissions from the Opera America, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Composers Conference at Wellesley College, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble; and grants from New Music USA, Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy and Paul Abisheganaden Grant for Artistic Excellence. She has been a fellow at the American Composers' Orchestra Earshot Program, MacDowell Colony and Avaloch Farm Music Institute.

Dr. Koh's works have been described as “beautifully eerie” (New York Times), and “subtley spicy” (Baltimore Sun), and have been performed at various venues around the world in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States by acclaimed ensembles and performers such as Talea Ensemble (USA), Ensemble Dal Niente (USA), New York New Music Ensemble (USA), Signal Ensemble (USA), Boston New Music Initiative (USA), New Thread Quartet (USA), Acoustic Uproar (USA), LUNAR Ensemble (USA), East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (USA/Europe), Avanti! (Finland), Israel Contemporary Players (Israel), Sentieri Selvaggi (Italy), the Next Mushroom Promotion (Japan), Chroma Ensemble (UK), The Philharmonic Orchestra (Singapore), Dingyi Music Company (Singapore) and Chamber Sounds (Singapore) among others. Her works can be heard on the Ravello, New Focus and XAS record labels, and is published by Babel Scores (Europe) and Poco Piu Publishing (USA).

Dr. Koh is also an active double bassist and arts administrator. She is a core member, composer fellowship mentor and double bassist of ensemble vim (Atlanta GA) and is a member of the artistic advisory boards of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble and the Indictus Project. She is a member of ASCAP.


Dr. Adrian P. Childs joined the UGA School of Music faculty in 2001. He holds bachelor's degrees in both mathematics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and master's and doctoral degrees in music (composition and theory) from the University of Chicago. His composition studies include work with Peter Child, John Eaton, John Harbison, Andrew Imbrie, Marta Ptaszynska, Shulamit Ran, and George Tsontakis. Prior to his arrival in Athens, Dr. Childs taught on the faculties of the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois.

Dr. Childs was a finalist in the 1999 Rome Prize competition. Among his other awards and honors in composition are an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Award and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. His music has been performed extensively in North America and Europe and can be heard on the ACA Digital label.

Dr. Childs' theory work includes research in the area of transformational theory and interests in issues of post-tonal music and referential collections. His scholarship appears in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Online. He is a founding member of the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematics and Music.

Dr. Childs is also active as a pianist and conductor, specializing in contemporary music.

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Pre-Festival Lecture: Nina C. Young
Oct
22
3:00 PM15:00

Pre-Festival Lecture: Nina C. Young

Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/

Lecture: 3:00pm

Nina C Young
Creativity and Play to Start New Compositions

SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

Notes

Creativity and Play to Start New Compositions This 50-minute artist talk will look at how I use play, experimentation, and improvisation as the creative impetus for getting projects started.


Bios

Composer Nina C. Young writes music characterized by an acute sensitivity to tone color, manifested in aural images of vibrant, arresting immediacy. Her experience in the electronic studio informs her acoustic work, which takes as its given not melody and harmony, but sound itself. Young’s music has garnered international acclaim through performances by the New York Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Orkest de ereprijs, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Argento, Divertimento, Either/Or, JACK Quartet, Metropolis, Scharoun, Sixtrum, wild Up, and Yarn/Wire. Winner of the 2015-16 Rome Prize in Musical Composition, Nina has received awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Civitella-Ranieri, the Copland Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, and BMI. Recent commissions include "Tread softly" for the NYPhil's Project 19, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a multimedia work for the American Brass Quintet and EMPAC’s wavefield synthesis system. Her debut album "Traced Upon Cinders", a collaboration with Ensemble Échappé and Benjamin Grow will be out later this year on Innova. A graduate of McGill and MIT, Nina completed her DMA at Columbia University where she was an active participant at the Columbia Computer Music Center. Young is an Assistant Professor of Composition at USC's Thornton School of Music. She serves as Co-Artistic Director of NY-based new music sinfonietta Ensemble Échappé. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical. www.ninacyoung.com back to program


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Panel 2: Collaborative Relationships in Creating Mixed-Media Projects
Jun
26
7:00 PM19:00

Panel 2: Collaborative Relationships in Creating Mixed-Media Projects

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Host: Elainie Lillios, Director of Composition Activities

Panelists:
Brittany J. Green, guest panelist
Dana Jessen, 2018 featured guest performer
José Martínez, guest panelist
Bahar Royaee, guest panelist


Panelists:

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Brittany J. Green is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Described as “cinematic in the best sense” and “searing” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music is centered around facilitating collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. The intersection between sound, movement, and text serves as the focal point of these musical spaces, often questioning and redefining the relationships between these three elements.

Her research and creative interests include mapping aural gestures to gestural recognition technology and exploring virtual reality platforms as a tool for experiencing immersive, intimate musical moments. Her music has been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the SCI National Conference, NYCEMF, SPLICE Institute, West Fork New Music Festival, and EABD Festival. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week and the Intersection@ Art and Science Symposium on gestural technology and K-12 electronic music education. From 2018-2019, Brittany served as composer-in-residence for the PCS/ECU Young Composers Project. Brittany is currently pursing a PhD in composition at Duke University. http://www.brittanyjgreen.com

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Praised for her diverse talents, bassoonist Dana Jessen is active as a soloist, chamber musician, improviser and new music specialist. Dana is the co-founder of Splinter Reeds and has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Dal Niente, Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Orchestra, and the Rushes Ensemble among others. Her tireless commitment to expand the modern bassoon repertoire through collaborations with composers has led to dozens of new solo, chamber and electroacoustic works. In 2009, Dana spearheaded the consortium commission for Rushes, an hour-long composition for seven bassoons by composer and Bang On a Can co-founder, Michael Gordon. Her solo program, Carve, features pieces for bassoon and electronics that blur the lines between composition, interpretation, and improvisation with works by George Lewis, Paula Matthusen, Sam Pluta, Peter V. Swendsen, and Kyle Bruckmann. Her debut album, of the same title, was released in January 2017 through Innova Recordings. She can also be heard on Cantaloupe Records, RIOJA, Oberlin Music, Evil Rabbit and New World Records. https://www.danajessen.com

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José Martínez’s music incorporates a wide range of influences from Colombian folk tunes to contemporary composition techniques, while borrowing from Latin music, heavy metal and audio sampling techniques. His works range from solo pieces with electronics to orchestral works, passing through chamber ensembles, electroacoustic pieces, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Among others, his music has been performed by groups such as Alarm Will Sound, Wild Up, Grammy award-winning quartet Third Coast Percussion. An alumnus in percussion and composition of the National University of Colombia, he studied composition at the University of Missouri and UT Austin. José was Visiting Professor at East Carolina University, and recently was appointed Visiting Professor at the New College of Florida. 

His music has also been presented by Spanish ensemble Taller Sonoro, LA based Piano duo Hockett Duo, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s from New York City, Grupo de Cámara de Bogotá, and Austin based percussion ensemble Line Upon Line, among others. He has participated in institutes and festivals such as Banff Ensemble Evolution program, DeGaetano, Splice , SEAMUS, Missouri International Composer Festival, Line Upon Line Winter Composer Festival, ClarinetFest, and VIPA. 

He is a recipient of the 2008 National Composition Prize for Young Composers, the 2011 “Ciudad de Bogotá” Composition Award, and the 2013 National Cultural Prize. In the US has received the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize and the 2019 Rain Water Grant for Innovation. He is part of the C3 Collective and also artistic director of the concert series Stack Overflow that creates opportunities for composers interested in electronics. https://josegmartinez.com

Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a composer of concert and incidental music. The Boston Arts Review praised Bahar's "haunting sound design" in her work with live theater. In 2017, Bahar was awarded a prize at the Krourian Electroacoustic Competition in Iran, and the Roger Sessions Memorial Composition Award from the Boston Conservatory. https://soundcloud.com/bahar-royaee

 

Host:

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Acclaimed as one of the “contemporary masters of the medium” by MIT Press’s Computer Music Journal, electroacoustic composer Elainie Lillios creates works that reflect her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion and anecdote. Her compositions include stereo, multi channel, and Ambisonic fixed media works, instrument(s) with live interactive electronics, collaborative experimental audio/visual animations, and installations.

Her work has been recognized internationally and nationally through awards including a 2013-14 Fulbright Award, First Prize in the Concours Internationale de Bourges, Areon Flutes International Composition Competition, Electroacoustic Piano International Competition, and Medea Electronique “Saxotronics” Competition, and Second Prize in the Destellos International Electroacoustic Competition. She has also received awards from the Concurso Internacional de Música Electroacústica de São Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, and La Muse en Circuit. She has received grants/commissions from INA/GRM, Rèseaux, International Computer Music Association, La Muse en Circuit, NAISA, ASCAP/SEAMUS, LSU’s Center for Computation and Technology, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Ohio Arts Council, and National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. She has been a special guest at the Groupe de Recherche Musicales, Rien à Voir, festival l’espace du son, June in Buffalo, and at other locations in the United States and abroad.  http://elillios.com

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Concert 3: Four Winds - Sam Wells, trumpet
Jun
25
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 3: Four Winds - Sam Wells, trumpet

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SPLICE Institute will present the online video world premiere of Four Winds, performed and composed by Sam Wells. A concert length work for improvising trumpeter and interactive audiovisual electronics, Four Winds is a narrative exploration of spaces, internal and external, defined by air and breath. The visual imagery is derived from time-lapse photos and videos taken in June 2020 by Wells in the Gothic Valley of Gunnison County, CO.

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Panel 1: Electroacoustic Music Tools
Jun
24
7:00 PM19:00

Panel 1: Electroacoustic Music Tools

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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:

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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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]

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Concert 2: part&lt;-&gt;link&lt;-&gt;bond – Adam Vidiksis, percussion
Jun
23
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 2: part<->link<->bond – Adam Vidiksis, percussion

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Adam Vidiksis presents part<->link<->bond
Music for percussion and electronics with friends

Featuring music performed live and remotely by Vidiksis and special guests:
Stephanie Lamprea, soprano; Taylor Brook, electronics; Scott L. Miller, electronics; Sam Wells, trumpet; Joo Won Park, electronics; and Rajeev Maddela (a.k.a Currency), electronic drum kit


Program:

Excerpt from The Altering Shores
Video and percussion with real-time processing

Music by Adam Vidiksis
Video & Direction by Rod Coover
Poetry by Nick Montfort

Interweaving sound, language and image, The Altering Shores is a video performance with live music. Set in the marshlands and industrial wastelands of our local Delaware River watershed and others worldwide, the experience presents a kaleidoscope of climate futures through fragmented language and multi-layered sounds and images. 


Improvisation with Stephanie Lamprea, soprano
AI-Generated Electronics (“Scuffed Computer Improviser”) by Taylor Brook


Long – Short
By Scott L. Miller

Performed by 
Sam Wells, trumpet
Adam Vidiksis, drum set
Scott L. Miller, electronics


Improvisation with Joo Won Park, electronics


Circadia & Currency
Improvisation with Raj Maddela (a.k.a Currency), electronic drum kit
Adam Vidiksis (a.k.a Circadia), electronics


Bios:

Vidiksis.Headshot.2017.jpg

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]


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Roderick Coover is an internationally-recognized artist, whose practice spans documentary film and ethnographic visual research, interactive and emergent cinema, virtual reality and digital narrative and poetry. Coover's most recent work investigates both imagined and actual implications of climate change, and explores how places are perceived, encountered and consumed.

Coover is a professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University, where he is also a founding Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Documentary Arts and Ethnographic Practice. His work is internationally exhibited in art venues and public spaces such as the Venice Biennale, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and Documenta Madrid and he has received Fulbright, Mellon, Whiting, Spire and LEF awards, as well as recognition from the Electronic Literature Organization and the SEA(s) Arts International Art Exhibition, among others.


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 Nick Montfort‘s computer-generated books of poetry include #!, Autopia, The Truelist, and Hard West Turn. He has collaborated on digital projects The Deletionist, Sea and Spar Between, and Renderings. He performs and exhibits his work internationally, in contexts ranging from the demoscene and livecoding concerts to art galleries and poetry readings. Six of his books, collaborative and individual, have been published by the MIT Press, most recently The Future. He is professor of digital media at MIT, where he directs The Trope Tank. He is also Professor II at the University of Bergen and a teacher at the School for Poetic Computation. Montfort lives in New York City.


Photo credit: Luke Marantz

Photo credit: Luke Marantz

 Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator and improviser, specializing in contemporary classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (composer Jason Eckardt). Her work has been described as “mercurial” by I Care If You Listen, and she “sings so expressively and slowly with ever louder and higher-pitched voice, that the inclined listener [has] shivers down their back and tension flows into the last row." (Halberstadt.de) She has received awards from St. Botolph Club Foundation, John Cage Orgel Stiftung and Puffin Foundation. Stephanie was a featured TEDx Speaker in TEDxWaltham: Going Places.

Stephanie devours mammoth works of virtuosity and extended techniques with ease and creative insight, singing with an entire spectrum of vocal colors (including operatic style, straight tone, sputters and throat noises). She has performed as a soloist at Roulette, National Sawdust, Shapeshifter Lab, Miller Theater at Columbia University, the Slipper Room, Park Avenue Armory, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Re:Sound Festival. She has worked with Wavefield Ensemble, Ekmeles, Guerrilla Opera, Boston Art Song Society, Verdant Vibes and the Original Gravity Concert Series. In 2020-21, Stephanie will collaborate with the New Gallery Concert Series (Boston), perform as Artist-In-Residence at University of California - Davis, perform in residency at Mana Contemporary, and present a solo recital at Roulette.


Photo credit: David Bird

Photo credit: David Bird

 Taylor Brook is a Canadian composer who has been based in New York since 2011. Brook writes music for the concert stage, electronic music, music for robotic instruments, as well as music for video, theatre, and dance.

Described as “gripping” and “engrossing” by the New York Times, Brook’s compositions have been performed around the world by ensembles and soloists such as the Ensemble Ascolta, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Quatuor Bozzini, Talea Ensemble, and others. He has won numerous SOCAN Young Composers awards, including two first-place prizes and the grand prize in 2016 for Song, for solo cello.

Brook studied composition with Brian Cherney in Montreal, with Luc Brewaeys in Brussels, and with George Lewis and Georg Haas in New York. In 2008, he studied Hindustani music and performance with Debashish Bhattacharya in Kolkata. His music is often concerned with finely tuned microtonal sonorities, combining his interest in exploring the perceptual qualities of sound with a unique sense of beauty and form. Current projects include a new work for bassoon and electronics for Dana Jesson and a concert-length new work for TAK Ensemble.

In 2018 Brook completed a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in music composition at Columbia University with Fred Lerdahl. He holds a master’s degree in music composition from McGill University. Currently Brook is a Core Lecturer at Columbia University. He is also the technical director of TAK Ensemble.


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Scott L. Miller is an American composer described as ‘a true force on the avant-ambient scene’ of ‘high adventure avant garde music of the best sort’ (Classical-Modern Music Review). Best known for his electroacoustic chamber music and ecosystemic performance pieces, his music is characterized by collaborative approaches to composition and the use of electronics, exploring performer/computer improvisation and re-imagining ancient compositional processes through the lens of 21st century technology. Inspired by the inner-workings of sound and the microscopic in the natural and mechanical worlds, his music is the product of hands-on experimentation and collaboration with musicians and performers from across the spectrum of styles. His recent work experiments with VR applications in live concerts, first realized in his composition Raba, created for Tallinn-based Ensemble U:.

Three time McKnight Composer Fellow, his work is frequently performed by soloists, ensembles, and at festivals throughout North America and Europe. Recordings of his music are available on New Focus Recordings, Innova, and other labels, many featuring his long-time collaborators, the new music ensemble Zeitgeist (and whose albums he produces). His music is published by the American Composers Alliance, Tetractys, and Jeanné. Raba (NFR198) is his most recent album, a collection of audio-visual music drawn from collaborations with six film and video artists. Miller is a Professor of Music at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, where he teaches composition, electroacoustic music and theory. He is Past-President (2014—18) of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S. (SEAMUS) and presently Director of SEAMUS Records.


Photo credit: Jane Kozhevnikova

Photo credit: Jane Kozhevnikova

Sam Wells is a trumpeter, composer, improvisor, and technologist based in Los Angeles. As an advocate for new and exciting music, he actively commissions and performs contemporary works. 

Sam has performed throughout North America and Europe, as well as in China. 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. He has performed electroacoustic works for trumpet and presented his own music at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, N_SEME, and SEAMUS festivals. Sam and his music have also been featured by the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) and Fulcrum Point Discoveries. He has also been a guest artist/composer at universities throughout North America. 

Sam is a member of Arcus Collective, Kludge, and SPLICE Ensemble. Sam has performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Sam has recorded on the SEAMUS and Ravello Recordings labels.

Sam is currently enrolled in the Performer-Composer DMA program at the California Institute of the Arts. He has degrees in both performance and composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and graduate degrees in Trumpet Performance and Computer Music Composition at Indiana University. He is on faculty at SPLICE Institute, Molloy College, and the California Institute of the Arts.


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Joo Won Park (b.1980) wants to make everyday sound beautiful and strange so that everyday becomes beautiful and strange. He performs live with toys, consumer electronics, kitchenware, vegetables, and other non-musical objects by digitally processing their sounds. He also makes pieces with field recordings, sine waves, and any other sources that he can record or synthesize. Joo Won draws inspirations from Florida swamps, Philadelphia skyscrapers, his two sons, and other soundscapes surrounding him. He has studied at Berklee College of Music and the University of Florida and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Wayne State University. Joo Won’s music and writings are available on ICMC DVD, Spectrum Press, MIT Press, PARMA, Visceral Media, MCSD, SEAMUS CD Series, and No Remixes labels.


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 Rajeev Maddela is a drum set artist, electronic music composer, computer programmer, and rudimental percussion instructor based in Brooklyn, NY. Maddela specializes in applying the unique rhythmic phrasing found in bass-forward electronic music (e.g. golden era jungle, drum and bass, UK garage, dubstep, and house). He has performed with Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar, Tim Lefebvre, Jonathan Maron, Max ZT, Chris Buono, and many others from the world and live electronic music scenes.

Under the name Maddela, he has released a host of singles and albums on labels such as Noisy Meditation (BM), High Chai Recordings (NY), and Reminiscence Audio (Serbia). His production work spans the genres of experimental drum and bass, future bass, and UK garage, with a focus on live performance elements and wide sonic palettes.

Maddela holds a degree in computer science from New York University. His career as a computer programmer spans nearly two decades, with expertise in enterprise level billing solutions, performance optimization, and generic design patterns. He is a dedicated music pedagogue, serving as an instructor at Msgr. Farrell High School’s award winning Marching Percussion program since 1998. He continues in this role, specializing in developing students’ technique, expression, and clarity.

IG: @currencyaudio

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Concert 1: Emergence - Keith Kirchoff, piano
Jun
22
7:00 PM19:00

Concert 1: Emergence - Keith Kirchoff, piano

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Program

Scott L. Miller : Katabasis #2 (arr. Keith Kirchoff)
special thanks to Alex Christie for supplying the lighting materials

Sam Wells : Leander's Swim
Charcoal scroll-theater by Sally B. Moore

Evan Williams : Pralaya

John Luther Adams : Red Arc/Blue Veil
with Matt Sharrock, percussion

Chen-Hui Jen : onto the silent peaks

Notes

Scott L. Miller : Katabasis #2
"Katabasis," an ancient Greek word meaning a descent, has been used throughout mythology to refer to descending to the underworld. Miller's original composition is for four unspecified instruments. For this performance, I am playing the work with two EBows and two transducers placed directly on the piano strings. I begin my arrangement with 8:46 minutes of silence in honor of George Floyd, and I have added a lighting component that gives a visual representation of the sounds' emergence. Special thanks to Alex Christie who supplied the lighting system. (Notes by Keith Kirchoff) back to program


Sam Wells : Leander's Swim
Leander’s Swim, for piano and live electronics, is inspired by Cy Twombly’s 1984 painting Hero and Leandro (A Painting in Four Parts), Part I. The Greek myth of Hero and Leander recounts the story of two lovers: a priestess of Aphrodite named Hero, and a young man named Leander. Nightly, Leander would swim across the Hellespont to be with Hero, whose lantern would safely guide his way. One night, Leander attempted the passage in a storm. The strong winds extinguished Hero’s light, and Leander perished at sea. Upon discovering Leander’s body, Hero jumped to her death to be with Leander. (Notes by Sam Wells)
Additional Notes: Continuing the theme of Greek mythology, I wanted this piece to further emerge out of darkness, and charcoal felt like the best medium with which to do so. Wells's piece is full of imagery that reminded me of Sally Moore's artwork, and she graciously agreed to draw the accompanying charcoal scroll theater. Furthermore, I wanted the first two pieces to flow right into each other, but I was limited by the need to un-prepare the piano after the first piece. With silence very much a theme of this program, I chose to open with silent scrolling visuals, affording me time to ready the instrument. (Notes by Keith Kirchoff) back to program


Evan Williams : Pralaya
“Pralaya” is a Hindu term meaning a period of dissolution or melting away. Although sometimes understood as “the end of the world,” pralaya actually describes one phase of the repeating cycles of life and destruction. Through music and video, Pralaya explores the destruction of life by humans. The work is divided into four continuous movements:

I. Introduction – “Now I am Become Death”
In a 1965 interview about the creation and use of the atomic bomb, a clearly-emotional Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer reflects on his thoughts following a successful test in 1945. He quotes Vishnu saying, “ ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

Footage of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is seen alongside this interview.

II. Naimittika – Destruction
Scenes of human destruction — warfare, violence, and pollution — are accompanied by a violent melody based on the Hindustani Todi raga.

III. Passacaglia for the Dissolution of All Things
The aftermaths of various destructions, including Hiroshima and the Gulf of Mexico, are accompanied by a mournful passacaglia.

IV. Hymn to the World Without End
A hopeful chaconne (based on the opening bars of Gustav Mahler’s “Urlicht” [“Primal Light”]) accompanies beautiful scenes of nature and the aurora borealis. While this movement expresses hope for the Earth, it is a reflection on a quote by celebrated astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who said of climate change “Earth will survive this. People say ‘Save the earth.’ No, don’t worry about earth. Earth will be here long after we render ourselves extinct.”

Pralaya employs stock video footage, along with archival and news videos and images used under fair use. The work also employs audio from freesound.org (attribution: xserra) (Notes by Evan Williams)

Additional Notes: Pralaya marks the turning point of the program: beginning in darkness, we gradually begin to emerge into the light. (Notes by Keith Kirchoff) back to program


John Luther Adams : Red Arc/Blue Veil
Red Arc/Blue Veil was the first of my “color field” pieces, exploring the geometry of what Kandinsky called “those inner sounds that are the life of the colors”. (John Luther Adams)

Additional Notes: Though this work is not explicitly about the Alaskan wilderness, so much of Adams's music is centered on the earth, nature, and climate justice. Red Arc/Blue Veil has always felt like a mountain to me, rising from the depths to the highest peaks, and back down to earth. This felt immediately relevant to the final imagery of Pralaya (a mountain image which I use as a backdrop for the Adams), and perfectly bridges to the final piece, which similarly focuses on the rise and fall of peaks. (Notes by Keith Kirchoff) back to program


Chen-Hui Jen : onto the silent peaks
This is the newest piece on the program; Jen only just posted a recording of her performance of this piece on Soundcloud in April, calling it a "Quarantine Demo." The work was immediately impactful to me, as it seemed to speak to the uniqueness of that moment, as we were all bound to our homes, yearning to emerge. (And, as in evidenced by our online experience at SPLICE Institute this summer, to a large extent remain bound!) The piece has a meditative quality and a repetitive nature that in some ways reminded me of the monotony of quarantine. Yet there is tremendous variety and shape to every gesture, with immense subtlety in every sound. The work asks us to hear, to focus, and to listen deeply. And unlike the Adams before, by this work's end, we have collectively reached the summit, changed, the shadows left behind. (Notes by Keith Kirchoff) back to program

Bios

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 in 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 a 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.

Follow Kirchoff on Twitter (@keithkirchoff) and Instagram (@8e8keys), and learn more at his website: keithkirchoff.com back to program


A composer described as “a true force on the avant-ambient scene” of ”high adventure avant garde music of the best sort” (Classical-Modern Music Review), Scott Miller is best known for his electroacoustic chamber music and ecosystemic performance pieces. His music is characterized by collaborative approaches to composition and the use of electronics, exploring performer/computer improvisation, and re-imagining ancient compositional processes through the lens of 21st century technology. Inspired by the inner workings of sound and the microscopic in the natural and mechanical worlds, his music is the product of hands-on experimentation and collaboration with musicians and performers from across the spectrum of styles. His recent work experiments with virtual reality applications in live concerts, first realized in his composition Raba, created for Tallinn-based Ensemble U:. Three time McKnight Composer Fellow, his work is frequently performed by soloists, ensembles, and at festivals throughout North America and Europe. Recordings of his music are available on New Focus Recordings, Innova, and other labels, many featuring his long-time collaborators, the new music ensemble Zeitgeist (whose albums he produces). His music is published by the American Composers Alliance, Tetractys, and Jeanné. Raba (NFR198) is his most recent album, a collection of audio-visual music drawn from collaborations with six film and video artists. Miller is a Professor of Music at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, where he teaches composition, electroacoustic music, and theory. He is Past-President (2014-18) of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S. (SEAMUS) and presently Director of SEAMUS Records. back to program


Sam Wells is a trumpeter, composer, improvisor, and technologist based in Los Angeles. As an advocate for new and exciting music, he actively commissions and performs contemporary works. Sam has performed throughout North America and Europe, as well as in China. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award. He has performed electroacoustic works for trumpet and presented his own music at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, N_SEME, and SEAMUS festivals. Sam is a member of Arcus Collective, Kludge, and SPLICE Ensemble. Sam has recorded on the SEAMUS and Ravello Recordings labels. Sam is on faculty at SPLICE Institute, Molloy College, and the California Institute of the Arts. back to program


The music of Evan Williams has been performed across the country and internationally by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, and at festivals such as SEAMUS, the New Music Gathering, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and the New York City Electronic Music Festival. He has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra. His work can be found on recordings by The Namaste Ensemble’s “No Borders Quartet” and Levels. Williams has received a number of awards and honors, including serving as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural Classical Roots Composer-in-Residence in 2018. Williams holds a DMA in Composition with a cognate in Orchestral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where he also served as a teaching assistant in electronic music. He also holds degrees from Bowling Green State University and Lawrence University. Williams serves as Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Instrumental Activities at Rhodes College, where he teaches composition, music technology, and leads the Rhodes Orchestra. He previously held teaching positions at Lawrence University, Bennington College, and at the Walden School. back to program


For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth. Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and into the ’80s, he worked full time as an environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since that time, he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors. A deep concern for the state of the earth and the future of humanity drives Adams to continue composing. As he puts it: “If we can imagine a culture and a society in which we each feel more deeply responsible for our own place in the world, then we just may be able to bring that culture and that society into being.” back to program


Chen-Hui Jen is a composer, poet, and pianist, whose music presents an imaginative, spiritual, and poetic space with subtlety and sophistication. She writes music for orchestra, chorus, and chamber music for western and Asian instruments, with and without electronics. Chen-Hui Jen’s music reflects an angle of contemporary art music that integrates time, sound, color, and poetry. She earned a Ph.D. degree in music at the University of California, San Diego, and currently serves part time at the Florida International University as an instructor and as the pianist in the NODUS New Music Ensemble. Chen-Hui Jen’s musical works have been performed at multiple prestigious new music festivals and concerts, including the ISCM World Music Days, SEAMUS, ICMC, Acanthes Music Festival, ACL Music Festival, EarShot San Diego, ISCM New Music Miami Season, People Inside Electronics series, Taipei International New Music Festival, WOCMAT, and Taiwan Contemporary Sizhu Music Festival. She has also received commissions by multiple ensembles including the League of American Orchestras Women Composers’ Reading and Commission Project, Ensemble 20° dans le Noir, Aurora Borealis Duo, Accordant Commons, Astralis Duo, The Living Earth Show, Palimpsest Ensemble, Ensemble ISCM-Taiwan, Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, Taipei Chamber Singers, Müller Chamber Choir, Ching-Yun Chorus, and Kaohsiung Chamber Choir, as well as multiple grants from the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Taiwan National and Arts Foundation. back to program

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Workshop 4 - Building Mini Synthesizers
Feb
22
4:30 PM16:30

Workshop 4 - Building Mini Synthesizers

  • Center for Performing Arts, Room 114 (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

By Doug Geers

In this workshop, attendees will build their own square wave analog oscillators. The mini synth circuits will squawk and glissando, and will be housed in toy-sized boxes, controlled by knobs and a light sensor.  All participants will be able to take home their finished creations.  $14 fee for project parts.

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Workshop 3 - Modular Synthesizer Workshop
Feb
22
1:30 PM13:30

Workshop 3 - Modular Synthesizer Workshop

  • Center for Performing Arts, Room 114 (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

By Paul Schuette and Jerod Sommerfeldt 

The modular synthesizer is receiving a remarkable rebirth in the world of electronic music. In this hands-on workshop, composer/performers Paul Schuette and Jerod Sommerfeldt will introduce participants to the world of modular, providing everyone with the opportunity to begin patching, testing ideas, and creating their own unique sound worlds. 

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Workshop 1 - Creating Rhythm Games Using Max for Live
Feb
21
1:30 PM13:30

Workshop 1 - Creating Rhythm Games Using Max for Live

By Isaac Schankler

This will be a hands-on workshop for creating video games -- yes, video games -- in Ableton Live and Max for Live. The time syntax and visual programming capabilities of Live and Max together make an excellent environment for quickly prototyping rhythm games, where timing and sound quality is crucial. We'll create and experiment with a set of Max for Live devices that accept and interpret player input in various ways, and briefly delve into visualization possibilities with Jitter. Workshop assumes some previous experience with Max.

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Pre-Festival Miami University Humanities Lecture
Feb
20
10:05 AM10:05

Pre-Festival Miami University Humanities Lecture

  • Souers Recital Hall, Center for Performing Arts (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Ansible: the creation of an electroacoustic composition based on the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin

The three members of SPLICE Ensemble, Keith Kirchoff (piano), Adam Vidiksis (percussion), and Sam Wells (trumpet), will discuss the commissioning of composer Caroline Louise Miller and the process of her piece’s realization. Miller describes this process, which resulted in her composition Ansible, as “a year-long, extremely rewarding collaboration with SPLICE Ensemble.” The ensemble will also delve into the literary inspirations for the work, and how Miller uses various literary devices from Le Guin’s writing to inform her own manipulation of musical materials - both acoustic and electronic.

This event is generously sponsored by the Miami University Humanities Center.

No registration is required.

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