CCRMA@HOME
Works and Performances by:
Constantin Basica & line upon line percussion
Christopher Jette & Nathan Krueger
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano & Michiko Theurer
Alkimiya Transfer (Barbara Nerness and Stephanie Sherriff)
Vaim
Constantin Basica is a Romanian composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose current work focuses on symbiotic interrelations between music, video, and performers. His works have been performed in Europe, North America, and Asia by artists such as Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Liminar, ELISION Ensemble, Distractfold, Mocrep, JACK Quartet, Spektral Quartet, kallisti, RAGE Thormbones, line upon line, Retro Disco, Fresh Squeezed Opera, Séverine Ballon, Tony Arnold, Olga Berar, and Karen Bentley Pollick. Among the festivals and conferences that have featured his works are the MATA Festival (NY, US), Currents New Media Festival (NM, US), Aveiro Síntese Biennale for Electroacoustic Music (PT), International Festival for Video Art and Visual Music in Mexico City (MX), International Week of New Music (RO), InnerSound New Arts Festival (RO), Blurred Edges Festival in Hamburg (DE), next_generation Festival at ZKM in Karlsruhe (DE), Eureka! Musical Minds of California (CA, US), 2018 and 2017 International Computer Music Conference (KR and CN) and the 2016 Sound and Music Computing Conference (DE). His opera Knot an Opera! was premiered at UCSD (CA) and Stanford (CA) in 2016, then staged a second time in 2018 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center (NY, US). He received the ICMA Award for Best Submission from Europe at the 2017 ICMC in Shanghai (CN). Currently, Constantin is a postdoctoral scholar and the concert coordinator at CCRMA.
Formed in 2009, line upon line is considered “a riveting, always-surprising and delightful trio” by the Austin American-Statesman. The Austin-based group has premiered nearly 50 new works for percussion by composers such as Aaron Cassidy, Laurent Durupt, Andrew Greenwald, Michelle Lou, Jessie Marino, Claudia Molitor and Mauricio Pauly and has worked with composers at Stanford University, the University of Huddersfield, University of Liverpool, City University of London and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). In Texas, the group has taught at UT Austin (Spring 2018), performed at the 2013 and 2017 Fusebox Festivals, Menil Collection (Houston), Victoria Bach Festival, International Festival-Institute at Round Top and is currently a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster. Nationally, line upon line has performed and taught in twenty-two different states, at two Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, at the 2017 Festival of New American Music (Sacramento) and The Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT). Internationally, the group has performed at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Open Circuit Festival (Liverpool), in Basel (Hochschule für Musik), Berlin (Unerhörte Musik), Cologne (Loft Köln), Freiburg (Hochschule für Musik) and London (City, University of London) and has taught at the Conservatoriums in Melbourne and Sydney, London (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Manchester (Royal Northern College of Music) and Tours (Le pôle Aliénor). line upon line consists of its three original members, Adam Bedell, Cullen Faulk and Matthew Teodori.
Christopher Jette is a curator of lovely sounds, creating work as a composer and new media artist. His creative work explores the artistic possibilities at the intersection of human performers/creators and creative tools. Christopher’s research details his technical and aesthetic investigations and explores technology as a physical manifestation of formalized human constructs. A highly collaborative artist, Jette has created works that involve dance, theater, websites, electronics, food, toys, typewriters, cell phones, instrument design and good ol’ fashioned wood and steel instruments. Christopher lives in Palo Alto and can be seen sailing on the bay in his ketch and working on his Victory Garden.Dr. Nathan Krueger is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh where he is coordinator of the voice area and teaches voice and opera. He is an active performer in a variety of genres with upcoming projects featuring new commissions of electro-acoustic music. He sings regularly with the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee and the Madison Choral Project and made his solo Carnegie Hall debut in the spring of 2018. He has also performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago Chorus, Santa Fe Opera, Madison Bach Musicians, Milwaukee Opera Theatre, Arizona Opera, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Tucson Chamber Artists, and Opera Southwest. In addition to his busy performance and teaching schedule, Dr. Krueger is an active proponent for arts integration. He was a teaching artist in the Tucson Unified School District's Opening Minds through the Arts program for five years and the UW Oshkosh ArtsCore project since 2016.
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano enjoys imagining and building things, fixing them when they don't work, and improving them even if they seem to work just fine. The scope of the word "things" is very wide, and includes computer hardware and software, controllers, music composition, performance and sound. His music blurs the line between technology and art, and is as much about form and sound processing, synthesis and spatialization, as about algorithms and custom software he writes for each piece. He has been working in multichannel sound and diffusion techniques for a long time, and can hack Linux for a living. At CCRMA, Stanford University since 1993, he combines his backgrounds in music (piano and composition), electronic engineering and programming with his love of teaching and music composition and performance. He discovered the intimate workings of sound while building his own analog synthesizers a very very long time ago, and even after more than 30 years, "El Dinosaurio" is still being used in live performances. He was the Edgar Varese Guest Professor at TU Berlin during the Summer of 2008. In 2014 he received the Marsh O'Neill Award For Exceptional and Enduring Support of Stanford University's Research Enterprise.
Michiko Theurer is a multimedia performing artist and conversation-weaver dedicated to creating spaces for shared experience and exchange. As a violinist, she has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Meredith Monk, Mazz Swift, Eighth Blackbird, and members of the Takács and Pacifica Quartets. She is a founding member of the fffensemble, a Bay-area-based interdisciplinary feminist improv group, and Treebird, a trio of performer-composer-movers, with Marie Finch and Julie Herndon. As a PhD candidate in musicology at Stanford, Michiko explores intersections between performance, research, and creative collaboration. Her visual and intermedia art, including paintings and video for her multimedia musical conversation Circling the Waves, frequently reflects her scholarly and performative engagement with music. She also loves hosting salon-style sharing parties and watching ink bloom on wet paper. Michiko has served on the faculty of the Colorado Chamber Orchestra Academy and presented master classes and educational events through the Boulder Bach Festival, Amherst College, University of Montana, and East Carolina University. Michiko graduated from Amherst College with majors in English and music and received her MM in violin performance from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. She holds a DMA in violin performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied with Harumi Rhodes and Edward Dusinberre.
Alkimiya Transfer (Barbara Nerness and Stephanie Sherriff) is an ambient noise duo that formed out of shared interests in policed systems and surveillance in January 2019. Their compositions incorporate live police scanner audio, security monitors, found objects, custom interfaces, multichannel speaker systems, and acoustic instruments in order to cultivate dialogue and critical analysis of law enforcement and incarceration within the United States.
Barbara Nerness is an artist, researcher, and composer currently working toward a PhD at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. She holds a Masters in Music, Science, and Technology from Stanford and a BA in Mathematics from UC Berkeley. Her research lies at the intersection of neuroscience, improvisation, and interface design. Recent performances and exhibitions have taken place at BAM in NY, ZKM in Karlsruhe, and The Lab in San Francisco, among others.
Stephanie Sherriff is an interdisciplinary artist and performer currently based in San Francisco, California. Their work with sound, video, and plants is ephemeral in nature and culminates as time-based installations and performances that deconstruct fragments of daily life through experimental processes. They received a BA from San Francisco State University in 2014 and an MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University in 2019. Their work has been featured at numerous cultural centers, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, the Sfendoni Theater in Athens, Greece, and a range of art and music spaces within California including Gray Area, The Lab, Artists Television Access, and the Center for New Music.
Vaim is a caretaker of damaged places. Their music is an offering to the wastelands and to their own body. They seek safety and dissolution through sound. Vaim can be found at vaim.net or in your nearest wetland or data centre.
