SPLICE Institute 2024 Concert 3 Program

featuring

SPLICE Faculty and Guests

Wednesday June 26, 2024
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)

Joo Won Park : Singaporean Crosswalk
  Electronic Ensemble

Kyong Mee Choi : Slight Uncertainty is Very Attractive
  Robin Meiksins, flute

Gabriel Bolaños : los minisculos
  Dana Jessen, bassoon

Becky Brown : Etude
  Becky Brown, mixer

Joo Won Park : Large Intestine
  Joo Won Park, no input mixer

Kyong Mee Choi : too bright to see
  Drew Whiting, saxophone

Sam Pluta and Dana Jessen : Improv
  Dana Jessen, bassoon
  Sam Pluta, electronics

Joo Won Park: Singaporean Crosswalk
Singaporean Crosswalk was inspired by my trip to Singapore in 2010. The sound of the traffic light in the city was quite different from that of the United States and Korea. It was fun, effective, and musically intriguing. During the day, this sound was a theme song for the people in a metropolis. During the night, it became part of the flora and fauna surrounding the city.
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Kyong Mee Choi : Slight Uncertainty is Very Attractive
The attractiveness of somewhat unfocused images in photography served as the inspiration for this piece. The flute and electronics are blended in such a way that it is not always clear which is sounding. Pitch bend, airy sounds, whistle tones, and other extended techniques enhance this “fuzzy” effect.
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Gabriel Bolaños : los minisculos
Los Minúsculos​ is an homage to the over 300 victims who have been killed by the Nicaraguan government since April 2018, and to all my fellow Nicaraguans who have suffered under Daniel Ortega’s regime. The first lady and vice president disparagingly calls protesters "minúsculos grupos alentadores del odio” (miniscule groups inciting hatred). As a reaction, hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed minúsculos have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest, demanding justice for the victims of oppression. This piece, for bassoon and electronics, was written in close collaboration with Dana Jessen and performed at SPLICE institute. It is an examination of collective movement and growth, a study on how multiple small things can converge, grow and develop into a larger, cohesive, even uncontrollable whole. Many thanks to Dana for the brilliant performance and a fruitful collaboration, and to SPLICE institute.
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Becky Brown: Etude
As per the title, this piece is meant to be performed by its engineer, and to a lesser degree by anyone else who may happen to be in the space concurrently. Maintain attention on everything you can: the room, its walls, the speakers, the cables, the stage, your neighbors, your body, the air. You may find this difficult, as many parts of "everything" will attempt to become forgettable.
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Joo Won Park: Large Intestine
In no-input mixing, a performer controls an audio mixer by creating and manipulating a feedback loop without an external sound source. With proper patching and some practice, a no-input mixer becomes a powerful and expressive electronic instrument. Large Intestine uses the said instrument to narrate the following story: I am a taco on a journey in a man’s digestive system, and this is what I heard inside the bowel.
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Kyong Mee Choi : too bright to see
too bright to see is based on theme of Gustav Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" whose poem was written by Friedrich Rückert.

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song.
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Bios

Gabriel José Bolaños (b. 1984 Bogotá, Colombia) is a Nicaraguan-American composer of solo, chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic music. He frequently collaborates closely with performers, and enjoys writing music that explores unusual structures and timbres. He is interested in computer-assisted-composition, auditory perception, linguistics, and modular synthesizers. He enjoys listening to music by Saariaho, Romitelli, Grisey, Gubaidulina, Harvey, León, Os Mutantes, Ciani, Wishart, Simon Diaz, Yupanqui and Sabicas.

Recent projects include a grant from the AZ Commission on the Arts to deveop computer-assisted-composition tools for the creation and realization of polytemporal music, a residency at CIRM with a commission for ensemble C. Barré for festival MANCA in Nice, France, a collection of audiovisual vignettes titled The Grand Transparents, a collaboration with Bassoonist Dana Jessen for solo bassoon and electronics called Los Minúsculos, and Charity and Love, an album with jazz pianist Frank Carlberg inspired by the music and voice of Mary Lou Williams.

Bolaños received a BA in Music from Columbia University and a PhD in Music Theory and Composition from UC Davis. His principal composition teachers include Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Laurie San Martin, Fabien Lévy and Sebastian Currier, and he studied orchestration with Tristan Murail. He also attended the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau (France), SICPP (Boston), Atlantic Music Festival (Maine), New Music on the Point (Vermont), Festival Mixtur (Barcelona) and SPLICE Institute (Michigan).

Bolaños is Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where he teaches courses in composition, music technology, analysis, and acoustics. Bolaños serves as the coordinator of the ASU electronic music studios, and is co-director of annual the PRISMS contemporary music festival. Before coming to ASU, he was visiting lecturer at Bates College for the 2018-2019 academic year and taught courses in music theory and music technology. As a 2016-17 Fulbright Visiting Scholar in Nicaragua, he was composer-in-residence and visiting conductor for the UPOLI Conservatory Orchestra, and visiting professor at the UPOLI Conservatory of Music. He was co-founder and artistic director of Proyecto Eco, Nicaragua’s first new-music ensemble. He has also helped organize artistic and cultural exchanges between US and Nicaraguan musicians. Beyond his work as a teacher and composer of concert music, he has also written music for film, theater and dance, and has experience performing as a flamenco dance accompanist.
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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. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia, and is an audio engineer at NPR.
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Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, poet, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, John Donald Robb Musical Trust Fund Commission, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo among others. Her music was published at Ablaze, CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). She is the Program Director of Music Composition, Music and Computing at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. Samples of her works are available at http://www.kyongmeechoi.com.
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Hailed as a “bassoon virtuoso” (Chicago Reader) and 2023 Cleveland Arts Prize winner, Dana Jessen tirelessly seeks to expand the boundaries of her instrument through original compositions, improvisations, and collaborative work with innovative artists. Over the past decade, she has presented dozens of world premiere performances throughout North America and Europe while maintaining equal footing in the creative music community as an improviser. Her solo performances are almost entirely grounded in electroacoustic composition that highlight her distinct musical language. As a chamber musician, Dana is the co-founder of the contemporary reed quintet Splinter Reeds, and has performed with Alarm Will Sound, Amsterdam’s DOEK Collective, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Tri-Centric Ensemble, among many others. A dedicated educator, Dana teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has presented masterclasses and workshops to a range of students from across the globe. More at: www.danajessen.com
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Robin Meiksins is a flutist and improviser focused on collaboration with living composers and music performance through the internet. Chicago-based, she uses online media to support and create collaboration, as well as more traditional means of performance. Robin’s biggest creative platform is YouTube. On her channel she is most known for her long term collaborative projects, the first being 365 Days of Flute in 2016-2017. Robin has since completed 5 more long term Youtube projects. Most recently, Robin completed two projects highlighting improvisation and Chicago beer and breweries. Robin has premiered over 200 works written by living composers. In September 2022, she premiered two works for woodwind trio for Arc Project’s “Three Winds” project. She has performed at the SEAMUS national conference, EMM, SPLICE Institute and Festival, and Oh My Ears festival, among others.

Robin holds a masters degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where she studied with Kate Lukas and Thomas Robertello. Robin received a Bachelors of Music with Distinction from University of Toronto, having studied with Leslie Newman.
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Joo Won Park (joowonpark.net) makes music with electronics, toys, and other sources that he can record or synthesize. He is the recipient of the Knight Arts Challenge Detroit (2019) and the Kresge Arts Fellowship (2020). His music and writings are available on ICMC DVD, Spectrum Press, MIT Press, PARMA, Visceral Media, MCSD, SEAMUS, and No Remixes labels. He currently teaches Music Technology at Wayne State University.
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Sam Pluta is a Baltimore-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer, and sound artist. Though his work has a wide breadth, his central focus is on using the laptop as a performance instrument capable of sharing the stage with groups ranging from new music ensembles to world-class improvisers. By creating unique interactions of electronics, instruments, and sonic spaces, Pluta's vibrant musical universe fuses the traditionally separate sound worlds of acoustic instruments and electronics, creating sonic spaces which envelop the audience and resulting in a music focused on visceral interaction of instrumental performers with reactive computerized sound worlds.

As a composer of instrumental music, Sam has written works for Wet Ink Ensemble, the New York Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Yarn/Wire, Timetable Percussion, Mivos Quartet, Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Mantra Percussion, TAK, Rage Thormbones, and Prism Saxophone Quartet. His compositions range from solo instrumental works to pieces for ensemble with electronics to compositions for large ensemble and orchestra. In addition to acoustic and electro-acoustic works, Pluta has written extensive solo electronic repertoire ranging from multi-channel acousmatic compositions to solo laptop works with video to laptop ensemble compositions for up to 15 players.

Sam is the Technical Director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group for whom he is a member composer as well as principal electronics performer. As a performer of chamber music with Wet Ink and other groups, in addition to his own works, Sam has performed and premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Katharina Rosenberger, George Lewis, Ben Hackbarth, Alvin Lucier, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels among others.

As an improviser, Sam has collaborated with some of the finest creative musicians in the world, including Peter Evans, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Anne La Berge, and George Lewis. Sam is a member of multiple improvisation-based ensembles, the jazz influenced Peter Evans Ensemble, the free improvisation-based Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Peter Evans), the analog synth and laptop duo exclusiveOr (with Jeff Snyder), and his longstanding duo with Peter Evans. Sam has also performed with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. With these various groups he has toured Europe and America and performed at major festivals and venues, such as the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Moers and Donaueshingen Festivals in Germany, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and The Vortex in London.

Dr Pluta studied composition and electronic music at Columbia University, where he received his DMA in 2012. He received Masters degrees from the University of Birmingham in the UK and the University of Texas at Austin, and completed his undergraduate work at Santa Clara University. His principal teachers include George Lewis, Brad Garton, Tristan Murail, Fabien Levy, Scott Wilson, Jonty Harrison, Russell Pinkston, Lynn Shurtleff, and Bruce Pennycook.

Sam is Associate Professor of Computer Music and Music Engineering Technology at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he directs the Peabody Computer Music Studios. From 2011-15 he directed the Electronic Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music and from 2015-2020 he directed the CHIME Studio at the University of Chicago. For 16 years he taught composition, musicianship, electronic music, and an assortment of specialty courses at the Walden School, where he also served as Director of Electronic Music and Academic Dean. He now teaches at the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat, a summer program for adult sonic artists.
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Saxophonist Drew Whiting has established himself as a champion of new and experimental music, specializing in performing works of the 20th and 21st centuries in solo, chamber, and electroacoustic settings. Drew is described as having “superb musicianship” (The Saxophonist), “remarkable versatility” (Computer Music Journal), and is a “superb advocate of the music he champions” (Fanfare Magazine).

Drew currently serves as Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He received his Bachelors and Masters of Music degrees from the Michigan State University College of Music and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Drew is a proud Yamaha Performing Artist and Vandoren Artist-Clinician, performing exclusively on Yamaha saxophones and Vandoren woodwind products.
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SPLICE Institute 2024 Concert 2 Program

featuring

SPLICE Faculty and Guests

Tuesday June 25, 2024
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)

Kyong Mee Choi : Du §
  Keith Kirchoff, piano

Elainie Lillios : Immeasurable Distance
  Scott Deal, percussion

Sam Pluta : points against fields
  Dana Jessen, bassoon

Christopher Biggs : We All Fall In
  Scott Deal, percussion

Per Bloland : Los murmullos §
  Keith Kirchoff, piano

§ Commissioned by Keith Kirchoff

Notes

Kyong Mee Choi : Du
Du (you) is written for the composer's husband, celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. The electronic part of the piece involves water sounds that are associated with the composer's name and the plainsong that she wrote for her husband. The piece attempts to reflect the balance between lighthearted nature and the depth of connection, which the couple appreciates throughout their life together. "Du" also has a special meaning to the composer in that Du is the word that her parents who were German literature scholars used to call each other.
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Elainie Lillios : Immeasurable Distance
Immeasurable Distance was composed in memory of my percussion colleague Roger Schupp. Roger asked me to write a piece for him but passed away before the piece could be brought to fruition. My sincere appreciation and thanks to Scott Deal, who agreed to join me to imagine and complete the journey of this piece. While Immeasurable Distance was initially composed as a tribute to Roger, I think it has become a piece about the immeasurable distance that can exist between any of us.
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Sam Pluta : points against fields
Points Against Fields (tombeau de Bernard Parmegiani) is a collaboration in the truest sense of the word, and is based on improvisations with Dana Jessen. The electronics part is comprised mostly of components created in our improvisations. The bassoon part embraces Dana's skills as both a performer of notated works and as an improviser. Points Against Fields is dedicated to Bernard Parmegiani, one of the great composers of the twentieth century, who died at the end of 2013. The end of the piece is a direct quote of the end of Parmegiani's 1974 masterwork de natura sonorum.
- Sam Pluta
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Christopher Biggs : We All Fall In
we will all fall in was written for and is dedicated to Scott Deal. The work draws on imagery from Jeff Lemire and Scott Snyder’s graphic novel “A.D. After Death.” A scene in the graphic novel paints a picture of a family playing on a frozen lake and the juxtaposition between the family’s experience of joy and freezing water below the ice. “...part of you refuses to ignore what’s beneath, to ignore the fact that at some point...the ice will give way to the cold, black water below it. And, one by one, your friends, your family, and you, will all fall in.”

For me, this scene evoked the feeling that I often have right now: all the joy and beauty created by humans is at risk because of climate stability. That feeling and dread for humanity’s future colors all the creative, beautiful, and empathetic acts I witness. Without rapid and dramatic action we will all fall in.
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Per Bloland: Los murmullos
Los murmullos is based on a highly influential yet little known (at least in the US) novel from the 1950s: Pedro Páramo, by the Mexican author Juan Rulfo. It is the surreal tale of a man’s return to the town in which his parents lived, long after that town has fallen into decay. Comala is now more heavily populated by the dead than the living, and exists in a blurred twilight realm in which such distinctions are meaningless. The descriptions of the environment are exceptionally vivid, often invoking the four elements to transition between the past and the present, and between the living and the dead. Sound is particularly important to the narrative. The original title of the novel was in fact Los murmullos, a reflection of the murmuring and whispering of the dead heard at various points throughout. Contrary to the gentle implications of the word, it is the intensity of these murmurs that overwhelms and suffocates the protagonist just over half way through the narrative.

My composition, for piano and electronics, shifts between four recurring material types, each inspired by one of the above-mentioned elements as described in the book. The electronics for this piece were generated using a physical model of the Electro-Magnetically Prepared Piano – a device consisting of a rack of twelve electromagnets that can be installed on the frame of any grand piano. The EMPP is somewhat like an EBow in that the electromagnets cause the strings to vibrate. However, because the electromagnets receive audio signals from a computer, there is a much higher degree sonic variability. The physical model of this device, called the Induction Connection, was developed during an Artistic Research Residency at IRCAM in Paris. The Induction Connection is currently built into IRCAM’s software Modalys.

The short version of this piece, Los murmullitos, has been around for a while, and performed many times by Keith Kirchoff, for whom it was written. I’m thrilled to finally get the full version out there, and even more so to hear Keith work his magic on it. I believe this confirms that he is indeed an alien. At the outset he’d asked for something with a bit of noise – hopefully this does the trick.

Los murmullos is dedicated to Keith Kirchoff (obviously).
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Bios

Christopher Biggs is a composer, electronic music performer, and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on developing and performing a live electronic music system for both in-person and networked performances. Biggs is the Director of SPLICE Institute.
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Per Bloland is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music whose works have been praised by the New York Times as “lush, caustic,” and “irresistible.” His compositions range from solo pieces to works for large orchestra, and incorporate video, dance, and custom-built electronics. His opera, Pedr Solis, was premiered by Guerilla Opera in 2015. He has also received commissions from Unheard-of//Ensemble, loadbang, Keith Kirchoff, Wild Rumpus, the Ecce Ensemble, the Callithumpian Consort, Stanford’s CCRMA, SEAMUS/ASCAP, and Patti Cudd. His music can be heard on the TauKay (Italy), Capstone, Spektral, and SEAMUS labels, and through the MIT Press. A portrait CD of his work, performed by Ecce Ensemble, is available on Tzadik.

Bloland is the co-creator of the Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano. In 2013 he completed a five-month Musical Research Residency at IRCAM in Paris, and is currently in a second multi-segment residency there. He is an Associate Professor of Composition and Technology, and coordinator of the Composition area at Miami University, Ohio. He is also a founding board member of the SPLICE Institute. He received his D.M.A. in composition from Stanford University and his M.M. from the University of Texas.

Scores may be purchased at www.babelscores.com/perbloland
For more information visit: www.perbloland.com
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Scott Deal has performed throughout the world premiering solo, chamber and mixed media works, and can be heard on the Albany, Centaur, Cold Blue, SCI, and Neuma record labels. His recordings have been described as “soaring, shimmering explorations of resplendent mood and incredible scale”….”sublimely performed”. His recent recording of John Luther Adams’ Four Thousand Holes, for piano, percussion, and electronics was listed in New Yorker Magazine’s 2011 Top Ten Classical Picks.

Described as a “riveting performer” who plays with “phenomenal virtuosity”, Deal has built his work at the nexus of music performance and emerging artistic technologies. He is the founder of the Telematic Collective, an Internet performance group comprised of artists and computer specialists, and was the founder for the computer-acoustic trio Big Robot (2008-2018). In 2011, Deal and composer Matthew Burtner won the coveted Internet2 IDEA Award for their co-creation of Auksalaq, a telematic opera called “an important realization of meaningful opera for today’s world”. In 2020 he launched Earth Day Art Model Festival, a transmedia event highlighting telematic and media-enriched musical performances from around the world. Earth Day Art Model has reached audiences in over 100 countries.

Deal has received funding from organizations that include Meet the Composer, Lilly Foundation New Frontiers, Indiana Arts Council, Clowes Foundation, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, ConocoPhillips, and the University of Alaska. In 2023 he was named an Indiana University President’s Arts and Humanities Fellow. He resides in Indianapolis, Indiana where he is a Professor of Music and Director of the Donald Louis Tavel Arts and Technology Research Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Deal was a Professor of Music at the University of Alaska Fairbanks from 1995 to 2007, where he founded the percussion and technology programs and served as Principal Percussionist of the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra. He served on the faculty of the New England Conservatory Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (Sick Puppy) from 2006 to 2022.

Early in his career he was the Timpanist/Principal Percussionist of the Miami Symphony, and taught at the New World School of the Arts, where in 1994 he was voted Teacher of the Year. As a student he was winner in the Music Teacher’s National Association Collegiate Artist Competition, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Concerto Competition, and was a finalist in the Percussive Arts Society International Marimba Competition and the McMahon Competition. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of Miami, a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cameron University. Deal is a Yamaha and Black Swamp Percussion Artist.
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Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, poet, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, John Donald Robb Musical Trust Fund Commission, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo among others. Her music was published at Ablaze, CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). She is the Program Director of Music Composition, Music and Computing at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. Samples of her works are available at http://www.kyongmeechoi.com.
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Hailed as a “bassoon virtuoso” (Chicago Reader) and 2023 Cleveland Arts Prize winner, Dana Jessen tirelessly seeks to expand the boundaries of her instrument through original compositions, improvisations, and collaborative work with innovative artists. Over the past decade, she has presented dozens of world premiere performances throughout North America and Europe while maintaining equal footing in the creative music community as an improviser. Her solo performances are almost entirely grounded in electroacoustic composition that highlight her distinct musical language. As a chamber musician, Dana is the co-founder of the contemporary reed quintet Splinter Reeds, and has performed with Alarm Will Sound, Amsterdam’s DOEK Collective, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Tri-Centric Ensemble, among many others. A dedicated educator, Dana teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has presented masterclasses and workshops to a range of students from across the globe. More at: www.danajessen.com
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Described as a “virtuosic tour de force” whose playing is “energetic, precise, (and) sensitive,” pianist and composer Keith Kirchoff has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Pacific Southwest. A strong advocate for living composers, Kirchoff is committed to fostering new audiences for contemporary music and giving a voice to emerging composers, and to that end has commissioned several dozen compositions and premiered hundreds of new works. He is the co-founder and President of SPLICE Music: one of the United States’ largest programs dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics. Kirchoff is active as both a soloist and chamber musician, and is a member of both Hinge Quartet and SPLICE Ensemble. Kirchoff has won awards from the Steinway Society, MetLife Meet the Composer, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chamber Music America, and was named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association. He has recorded on the New World, Kairos, New Focus, Tantara, Ravello, Thinking outLOUD, Zerx, and SEAMUS labels.

You can follow Kirchoff on Instagram @8e8keys and learn more at his website: keithkirchoff.com
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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. She also performs live electronics with ESC Trio collaborators Chris Biggs and Scott Deal and with Origami Sound Society collaborator Mark Nagy.

Elainie’s work has been recognized internationally and nationally through awards, grants, and commissions, including a 2020 Johnston Foundation commission, 2018 Fromm Foundation Commission, 2016 Barlow Endowment Commission, a 2013 Fulbright Scholar Award and many others. Her music is regularly performed at conferences, festivals, and concerts throughout the United States and abroad by amazing virtuoso performers who give their time and talent bringing her music to life in vibrant, engaging ways. Elainie’s work can be accessed on compact disc through many publishers including Emprientes DIGITALes (electrocd.com), as well as on SoundCloud, and YouTube.

Elainie serves as Director of Composition Activities for SPLICE and as Professor of Creative Arts Excellence at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

elillios.com
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Sam Pluta is a Baltimore-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer, and sound artist. Though his work has a wide breadth, his central focus is on using the laptop as a performance instrument capable of sharing the stage with groups ranging from new music ensembles to world-class improvisers. By creating unique interactions of electronics, instruments, and sonic spaces, Pluta's vibrant musical universe fuses the traditionally separate sound worlds of acoustic instruments and electronics, creating sonic spaces which envelop the audience and resulting in a music focused on visceral interaction of instrumental performers with reactive computerized sound worlds.

As a composer of instrumental music, Sam has written works for Wet Ink Ensemble, the New York Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Yarn/Wire, Timetable Percussion, Mivos Quartet, Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Mantra Percussion, TAK, Rage Thormbones, and Prism Saxophone Quartet. His compositions range from solo instrumental works to pieces for ensemble with electronics to compositions for large ensemble and orchestra. In addition to acoustic and electro-acoustic works, Pluta has written extensive solo electronic repertoire ranging from multi-channel acousmatic compositions to solo laptop works with video to laptop ensemble compositions for up to 15 players.

Sam is the Technical Director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group for whom he is a member composer as well as principal electronics performer. As a performer of chamber music with Wet Ink and other groups, in addition to his own works, Sam has performed and premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Katharina Rosenberger, George Lewis, Ben Hackbarth, Alvin Lucier, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels among others.

As an improviser, Sam has collaborated with some of the finest creative musicians in the world, including Peter Evans, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Anne La Berge, and George Lewis. Sam is a member of multiple improvisation-based ensembles, the jazz influenced Peter Evans Ensemble, the free improvisation-based Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Peter Evans), the analog synth and laptop duo exclusiveOr (with Jeff Snyder), and his longstanding duo with Peter Evans. Sam has also performed with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. With these various groups he has toured Europe and America and performed at major festivals and venues, such as the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Moers and Donaueshingen Festivals in Germany, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, and The Vortex in London.

Dr Pluta studied composition and electronic music at Columbia University, where he received his DMA in 2012. He received Masters degrees from the University of Birmingham in the UK and the University of Texas at Austin, and completed his undergraduate work at Santa Clara University. His principal teachers include George Lewis, Brad Garton, Tristan Murail, Fabien Levy, Scott Wilson, Jonty Harrison, Russell Pinkston, Lynn Shurtleff, and Bruce Pennycook.

Sam is Associate Professor of Computer Music and Music Engineering Technology at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he directs the Peabody Computer Music Studios. From 2011-15 he directed the Electronic Music Studio at Manhattan School of Music and from 2015-2020 he directed the CHIME Studio at the University of Chicago. For 16 years he taught composition, musicianship, electronic music, and an assortment of specialty courses at the Walden School, where he also served as Director of Electronic Music and Academic Dean. He now teaches at the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat, a summer program for adult sonic artists.
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SPLICE Institute 2024 Concert 1 Program

featuring

SPLICE Ensemble + Guests

  Sam Wells, trumpet
  Keith Kirchoff, piano
  Adam Vidiksis, percussion
  with Jennifer Beattie, voice

Monday June 24, 2024
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)

Dan VanHassel : Camouflage (2011)

Scott L. Miller : Katabasis III (2018)

Caroline Miller : Antiphony (2019, rev. 2022) §‡

Christopher Biggs : Decoherence (2014)

    intermission

Paula Matthusen : Performing Artifacts (2020)
  with Jennifer Beattie, voice

§ Commissioned by Keith Kirchoff

‡ This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Notes

Dan VanHassel : Camouflage
Camouflage is a work for piano with interactive live electronics. All of the electronics are built from sounds sampled in real-time from the piano. In the first section of the work, the computer responds to the sharp attacks of the piano with colorful rhythmic patterns built from the very sound that triggered the pattern. In this way the music has a regular pulsing rhythm, without resorting to continuous sequenced patterns. The electronics act as an extension of the instrument, creating a hybrid entity in which both elements are necessary for the music to make sense. As the piece progresses, the underlying harmonic progression gradually becomes more prominent, enhanced by sustaining electronics, creating blurry impressionistic washes of color. As the piano moves increasingly towards an ecstatic outburst of romanticism the electronics respond by becoming increasingly noisy and aggressive.
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Scott L. Miller : Katabasis III
In my electroacoustic music, I am fond of manipulating recordings using granular synthesis in a way not originally intended. The original concept of granular synthesis involves "clouds" of sound "grains," each grain only milliseconds in duration. I use grains of tens of seconds in duration, reading through samples of acoustic instruments performing melodic lines. Multiple streams of grains overlap and can be thought of as windows slowly moving along a melodic line, the musical material in each window looping back on itself, gradually progressing along the melodic path. The speed and size and direction of each window is different, producing a unique kind of polyphony based on a single melodic line. These studies work out a purely instrumental realization of this synthesis approach, without computer processing.
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Caroline Miller : Antiphony
Antiphony is a revision of the first movement of Ansible which was composed for the SPLICE Ensemble and is dedicated to the memory of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Ursula K. Le Guin coined the term “Ansible” in her 1966 science fiction novel Rocannon’s world. The Ansible is a device that enables instantaneous interstellar communication, alleviating the significant time lag between the transmission and receipt of messages that could previously only travel at the speed of light. In Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, a loosely connected group of sci-fi novels that take part within the same universe, the Ansible is sometimes present and sometimes absent – for a variety of reasons, economic, political, or because it hasn’t been invented yet. In circumstances where the Ansible is absent, communication between entities is often frustrated or inflected by vast distances of time and space, causing interstellar political troubles as messages received 50 or 100 years later lose their relevance. The Ansible, an open-source, open-science communications device invented by an Anarchist physicist, is conceived by Le Guin as having utopian potentials, enabling a peaceful interstellar coalition called the Ekumen. In spite of its Utopian potential, its presence produces conflict as well, a rich metaphor for globalization. Struggles are waged for control of the Ansible technology itself, by entities who wish to capitalize on exclusive rights to its use. The rapid exchange of information across galaxies also interacts in unpredictable ways with different societies, in the very worst circumstances causing a technocracy (see The Telling).

Antiphony is a meditation on pre-ansible communication, as messages from almost a century ago (conveyed by classical music recordings from the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s) finally are received in a not-so-distant future. Keith responds by playing extrapolations on these old tunes on a decaying piano. These old recordings, first heard in Antiphony, are carried throughout the other three movements; snippets placed in a variety of contexts – borne on the wind from a distant house maybe, or heard broadcast over the radio. The theme of embedding the same information in a multitude of spatial and temporal contexts carries throughout the rest of the piece.
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Christopher Biggs : Decoherence
Decoherence is dedicated to Samuel Wells and was commissioned by a consortium consisting of Samuel Wells, Aaron Hodgson, Scott Thornburg, and the UMKC Trumpet Studio. The work abstractly reflects on a phenomenon in quantum physics and a possible explanation for the phenomenon.

Decoherence is a phenomenon whereby particles that have probable locations always take on a specific location when observed by a human. This is represented through the presentations of hundreds of possible ways to a play a single pitch on the trumpet followed by the performer’s decision to play the pitch in a specific manner. Also, when the performer is making a decision about what to play, he or she becomes part of the video. One possible explanation for how probable locations collapse into a specific location is that all probable locations come to exist in their own parallel universe upon observation. As the work progresses the trumpet player has less and less freedom as the specific universe he or she inhabits is increasingly defined by past decisions.
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Paula Matthusen : Performing Artifacts
The woven together fragments presented here represent a small selection of an extended project which is the outgrowth of over a decade long period of research and conversation with Mammoth Cave, its history, and the many people connected to it. This specific set of compositions marks the return of the SPLICE Ensemble (Keith Kirchoff, Adam Vidiksis, Sam Wells) and Jennifer Beattie to Mammoth Cave following a recording session originally completed in 2019. Hopefully this will be followed by yet other opportunities to interact with the cave and its numerous complexities.

We have conducted this creative research through the gracious support of Mammoth Cave National Park, and owe special gratitude to Rick Toomey, Brice Leech, Janet Bass Smith, and Jerry Bransford, whose hands, conversations, and research (if not literally their voices) make appearances in this collection. The collection will continue to be updated and revised. This serves as an initial gathering of materials and ideas that will be revised as they become enacted and engaged with.

Many thanks to Wesleyan University and their GiSOS Distinctive Project Grant, which provided invaluable support for this creative research.
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Bios

SPLICE Ensemble is a trumpet, piano, and percussion trio focused on cultivating a canon of electroacoustic chamber music. Called a “sonic foodfight” by Jazz Weekly, SPLICE Ensemble works with composers and performers on performance practice techniques for collaboration and integrating electronics into a traditional performance space. The resident ensemble of both SPLICE Institute and SPLICE Festival, SPLICE Ensemble has been a featured ensemble at M Woods in Beijing, SEAMUS, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, SCI National, Electronic Music Midwest, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music 10. They have recorded on both the SEAMUS and Parma Labels.
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Sam Wells is a musician and artist based in Philadelphia, whose work often invokes a heightened sense of the entanglements of space, air, breath, and body. Manifesting as music composition, performance, and improvisation, as well as multimedia performance and installation, his work is experientially substantial. It is rooted in the humanity of breath and highlights our interrelations with the cosmic, terrestrial, social, and internal spaces that surround us.

Sam is a trumpeter and improviser who has performed around the world and is a member of SPLICE Ensemble, Aeroidio, and the Miller/Vidiksis/Wells trio. He has also performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, Nate Wooley, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Sam has recorded on the Scarp Records, New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, New Focus Records, SEAMUS, and Ravello Recordings labels.

As a composer, Sam creates acoustic, electroacoustic, and electronic works, often incorporating multimedia elements. His works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award, and his work “stringstrung” is the winner of the 2016 Miami International Guitar Festival Composition Competition. As an avid collaborator, Sam has written for theater and dance productions, as well as for many notable performers of contemporary music such as HOCKET, SPLICE Ensemble, Maya Bennardo, Dana Jessen, Vicki Ray, Lin Faulk, Kenken Gorder, and Will Yager.

Technology is a deep through line of Sam’s practice, and he is active as a music technologist. Sam is a Cycling ’74 Max Certified Trainer and organizes the Max Meetup Philadelphia event series. He runs Scarp Records, a record label dedicated to highlighting the experimental and improvisational practices of performer/composers.

Sam currently serves as the Member At Large for the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), as well as a board member for SPLICE Music, the parent organization of SPLICE Institute, Festival, and Ensemble, dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics.

Sam holds degrees in both performance and composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduate degrees in Trumpet Performance and Computer Music Composition from Indiana University, and a doctoral degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Sam is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Temple University.
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Pianist and composer Keith Kirchoff has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Pacific Southwest. A strong advocate for modern music, Kirchoff is committed to fostering new audiences for contemporary music and giving a voice to emerging composers, and to that end has premiered over 100 new works and commissioned over two dozen compositions. Specializing on works which combine interactive electro-acoustics with solo piano, Kirchoff's Electroacoustic Piano Tour has been presented in ten countries, and has spawned three solo albums. Kirchoff is the co-founder and a director of SPLICE and the founder and Artistic Director of Original Gravity Inc. Kirchoff has won awards from the Steinway Society, MetLife Meet the Composer, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association. He has recorded on the New World, Kairos, New Focus, Tantara, Ravello, Thinking outLOUD, Zerx, and SEAMUS labels.

You can follow Kirchoff on Twitter @keithkirchoff and learn more at his website: keithkirchoff.com.
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Adam Vidiksis is a drummer and composer based in Philadelphia who explores social structures, science, and the intersection of humankind with the machines we build. His music examines technological systems as artifacts of human culture, acutely revealed in the slippery area where these spaces meet and overlap—a place of friction, growth, and decay. Vidiksis is a sought-after champion of new works for percussion and electronics, performing as a featured artist in venues around the world. Vidiksis’s music has won numerous awards and grants, including recognition from the Society of Composers, Incorporated, the American Composers Forum, New Music USA, National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and ASCAP. His works are available through HoneyRock Publishing, EMPiRE, New Focus, PARMA, and SEAMUS Records. Vidiksis recently served as composer in residence for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and was selected by the NEA and Japan-US Friendship Commission, serving as Director of Arts Technology for a performance of a new work during the 2020 Olympics in Japan. Vidiksis is Assistant Professor of music technology at Temple University and President of SPLICE Music. He performs in SPLICE Ensemble and the Transonic Orchestra, conducts Ensemble N_JP, and directs the Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project (BEEP). [www.vidiksis.com]
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The music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Dan VanHassel has been described as “energizing” (Wall Street Journal), “a refreshing direction” (I Care If You Listen), and “an imaginative and rewarding soundscape” (San Francisco Classical Voice). His works create a uniquely evocative sound world drawing from a background in rock and heavy metal, Indonesian gamelan, free improvisation, and classical music.

VanHassel’s compositions have been featured at top national and international contemporary music festivals, including the MATA Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, International Computer Music Conference, Bowling Green New Music Festival, UnCaged Toy Piano Festival, Shanghai Conservatory Electronic Music Week, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. His music is played regularly all over the world by ensembles and performers such as the Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, pianist Jihye Chang, Verdant Vibes, Keuris Saxophone Quartet, Transient Canvas, pianist Gloria Cheng, Symphony Number One, Red Fish Blue Fish, Empyrean Ensemble, Hotel Elefant, the Boston Percussion Group, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble. Recordings of his works are featured on albums by the Now Hear Ensemble and Ignition Duo, as well as releases on the New Focus, Soundset, and Thinking OutLoud labels.

VanHassel was awarded a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, as well as commissions from Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, and the Johnstone Fund for New Music. As an electric guitarist, VanHassel has performed with leading contemporary ensembles including the Callithumpian Consort, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Eco Ensemble, and Kadence Arts. He was a founding member and artistic director of contemporary chamber ensemble Wild Rumpus in San Francisco until 2016, and is the founder and executive director of the Boston-based Hinge Quartet.

VanHassel received degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, New England Conservatory, and Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught composition and electronic music at: MIT, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Clark University, and Connecticut College and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
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Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to composing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Recent areas of creative inquiry include extensive field recording, which has led to compositions and sound projects in aqueducts, caves, and sites of historic infrastructure.

Her music has been performed by Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Brooklyn Rider, Metropolis Ensemble, Loadbang, New York New Music Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, the Scharoun Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the Estonian National Ballet, GAHLMM, James Moore, Terri Hron, Dana Jessen, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster, Anna Svensdotter, Nina De Heney, and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Caramoor Festival, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Other Minds, the MATA Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, International Computer Music Conference and Dither’s Invisible Dog Extravaganza.

Matthusen performs frequently on live-electronics as well, and has been a featured composer and performer at Experimental Intermedia Festival (NYC), 9 Evenings +50 at Fridman Gallery (NYC), SPLICE Festival (Kalamazoo), BEASt FEaST (Birmingham, UK), Ultrasons (Montreal), and Salon Bruit (Berlin). She also performs frequently with Object Collection, and is involved in interdisciplinary collaborations such as the project between systems and grounds with visual artist Olivia Valentine for live-textile generation and live-electronics, and Kite Choir with artist Firat Erdim.

Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellowship at Roulette Intermedium, the “New Genre Prize” from the IAWM Search for New Music, and the 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hambidge, ACRE, create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, VCCA, CMMAS, Konstepidemin, Copland House, Composers NOW Residency at Pocantico, the Hambidge Center, and Loghaven. Matthusen completed her Ph.D. at New York University – GSAS and has taught at Columbia University, the TU-Berlin as the Edgard Varèse Guest Professor (through DAAD), the Slee Visiting Professor at University at Buffalo, and Florida International University.

Matthusen is currently Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology, and founded the Toneburst Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble.
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Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie, called a “smashing success” (San Francisco Examiner) and praised for her “warmth” (New York Times) and “exuberant voice and personality” (Opera News), revels in performing everything from traditional to brand-new classical repertoire, as well as engaging in ongoing collaborations with performance, visual, jazz, folk, and theater artists. Her projects this season include singing the role of Anna in the world premiere of Lembit Beecher’s opera Sophia’s Forest, written for chamber orchestra and electronically-controlled sound sculptures; championing art song written by women & performing with drag queen Cookie DiOrio on her series “The Art of the Heel”; and developing the co-created historical-discovery/ storytelling/electronic, classical and Slovakian-folk-music-based tale of The Black Queen with composer Juraj Kojs, pianist Adam Marks, and collaborators from four countries, which premieres in Miami in the Fall of 2018.

Jennifer has been a featured soloist with organizations including The National Opera Orchestra at the Kennedy Center; The Philadelphia Orchestra; Opera Philadelphia; the Columbus Symphony Orchestra; Symphony in C; Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia; the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Brooklyn Art Song Society; the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago; Malibu’s Stotsenberg Recital Series w/ John Musto at the piano; the National Arts Club NYC; Argento Chamber Ensemble at the Park Avenue Armory; JACK Quartet; Aizuri Quartet; Argus Quartet; Lake George Music Festival; and as vocalist-in-residence at the New Music on the Point Festival. Jennifer is a member of two chamber music duos: Albatross, with pianist Adam Marks (artists-in-residence with the Yale college composers); and So Much Hot Air, with oboe/ English horn player Zachary Pulse. She also serves as co-director of Artists at Albatross Reach, a retreat for the development of weird, wonderful new work and artistic collaborations in northern California.
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Scott L. Miller is an American composer 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:.

Miller’s ecosystemic works model the behavior of objects from the natural world in electronic sound, creating interactive sonic ecosystems. Ecosystemic pieces are the result of autonomous sounds competing with each other for sonic space. Individual sounds tend to find a balance, which can be upset by changes to the sonic landscape, such as the introduction of new sounds. Because of this, sonic ecosystems are intimately tied to the space they are presented in. With or without humans, repeat performances produce unique results each time—sometimes subtle, sometimes drastic—while maintaining a recognizable identity. Recordings of his music are available on New Focus Recordings, Innova, Ein Klang, and other labels; many of these recordings feature his long-time collaborators, the new music ensemble Zeitgeist (whose albums he also produces). His music is published by the American Composers Edition, Tetractys, and Jeanné. His most recent albums include COINCIDENT (FCR337), Havona (#SR002), Lab Rat (ekr 070).

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. He holds degrees from The University of Minnesota, The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and the State University of New York at Oneonta, and studied composition at the Czech-American Summer Music Institute and the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis.

Miller has been named a McKnight Composer Fellow three times (2001, 2013, 2018), a Fulbright Scholar (2014—15), and his work has been recognized by numerous state, national, and international arts organizations. He has been the featured artist at several festivals, including the Chicago Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, the Lipa Festival, and the Estonian Academy of Music’s Autumn Festival, Sügisfest.
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Caroline Louise Miller (they/them) is a US composer based in Portland, Oregon. Their work broadly explores affect, ecology, labor politics, tactility, and digital materiality, often addressing contemporary issues within dreamlike musical spaces that thread field recordings, shimmering textures, and romantic melodic lines through harsh noise and clattering dissonances. They have most recently received grants, fellowships, and commissions through Alarm Will Sound, SPLICE Ensemble with funding from Chamber Music America, Guerilla Opera, Transient Canvas, and Ensemble Adapter. In 2018 they won the ISB/David Walter Composition Competition for Hydra Nightingale, created with improvisor and bassist Kyle Motl. Recent projects include Superlunary, a collection of acousmatic soundscapes for improvisation, with George Colligan; and Here-There, a multimedia installation with Alarm Will Sound and digital media artist Stefani Byrd that explores layered histories of labor at abandoned and active California railroad sites. C.L.M.'s music appears across the U.S. and internationally. Caroline is Assistant Professor of Music in Sonic Arts at Portland State University, and holds a Ph.D in Music from UC San Diego.
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Christopher Biggs is a composer, electronic music performer, and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on developing and performing a live electronic music system for both in-person and networked performances. Biggs is the Director of SPLICE Institute.
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