2001 Winter CCRMA Concert  

Oranged (lima-limon) are colors with bright spectrum outliners of geometric segments and shapes over gray scale pictures. In this music they synthesize several combinations contrasting over a variety of shades of noise...

Oranged (lima-limon) is also a fragrance and personality: An orange jacket on a bright day and a yellowish lime jacket at night. The spirit of freshness and love for dogs.

This piece was composed using Frequency Modulation and only Common Lisp Music on Linux at CCRMA.

Born in Barranquilla Colombia, Juan Reyes holds degrees in Mathematics and Music Composition. Since 1989 he has co-organized the International Contemporary Music Festival and periodic electro-acoustic cycles in Bogota. He was also professor of art, music and a research associate at La Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota. Currently at CCRMA, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics of Stanford University, his research topics include physical modeling, and spectral modeling of musical instruments, algorithmic composition and their use for expression modeling. Among his works are Equus & Resonancias, a collection of computer music works for the stage and also several compositions based upon instrumental sound subjects like Boca de Barra, for trombone, and Sygfrydo for cello. In the context of sound installations his works ppP and Los Vientos de Los Santos Apostoles have been presented in museums and galleries of Colombia. His writings have appeared on several international publications and his music has been performed around the world as part of contemporary music radio broadcasts and festivals.

Fabrication begins with a series of fragments: isolated elements of trumpet technique, like breathing and tonguing, are presented divorced from ordinary playing. The acoustic study of the trumpet continues with other splinters of material. Natural harmonics are used to produce distortions of pitch and timbre, and the performer creates further acoustic disruptions with mutes, and by singing into the instrument while playing. Eventually a more normal trumpet technique emerges from the shards, and a kind of calm is achieved. If the piece begins by metaphorically constructing the trumpet from the components of technique, it ends with a more literal disassembly.

While Fabrication is obsessed with trumpet acoustics, it is entirely dependent upon electronics. Many of the sounds used in the piece are too quiet to be heard in performance. And so the microphone serves as a microscope, revealing otherwise inaudible sounds. The electronics gradually take on an active role as well - transforming and extending the sound of the trumpet beyond its acoustic limits.

Christopher Burns is a composer influenced by the diverse worlds of computer music and traditional Indonesian music. His interest in electronics dates from an early stint as a rock musician; he first encountered Balinese music while a student at Yale University, where he was a founding member of the gong kebyar ensemble Gamelan Jagat Anyar. Christopher is currently a doctoral student at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University, where he studies composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, and Jonathan Berger.

Music for Hi-Hat and Computer (1998) was commissioned by the American percussionist J. Landy Cosgrove, and premiered in Denmark in March of 1998. The electronic part was crated at the Hiller Computer Music Studios of the State University at Buffalo, New York using the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation (a real-time digital signal processor), and the program Max, which was developed by Miller Puckette and whose technical support helped make this piece possible.

Technically, the computer tracks parameters of the hi-hat, such as pitch, amplitude, spectrum, density, rests, articulation, tempi, etc, and uses this information to trigger specific electronic events, and to continuously control all the computer sound output by directly controlling the digital synthesis algorithms. Thus, the performer is expected to interact with the computer triggering and continuously shaping all of the computer output. Some of the sounds in the electronic part come directly from the composed hi-hat part, so that certain aspects of the musical and sound material for the instrumental and electronic parts are one and the same.

Sound material other than the hi-hat is also manipulated in the time domain, via time-stretching and granular sampling. Frequency domain FFT-based cross-synthesis and analysis/resynthesis using an oscillator bank, as well as more standard signal processing such as harmonizing, frequency shifting, phasing, spatialization, etc. are all employed. The instrument/machine relationship moves constantly on a continuum between the poles of an extended solo and a duo. Musically, the computer part is, at times, not separate from the hi-hat part, but serves rather to amplify the hi-hat in many dimensions and directions, while at the other extreme of the continuum, the computer part has its own independent voice.

Cort Lippe has been active in the field of interactive computer music for over 20 years. He studied composition with Larry Austin in the USA, spent a year in Italy studying Renaissance music and three years in the Netherlands at the Institute for Sonology working with Gottfried Michael Koenig and Paul Berg in the fields of computer and formalized music. He also worked for eleven years in France, first at the Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales, while following Xenakis' courses at the Universite de Paris, then at IRCAM, where he developed real-time musical applications and gave courses on new technology in composition.

His works have received numerous awards, including the Irino Prize, first prizes at Bourges, the El Callejon del Ruido Competition, and the Leonie Rothschild Competition. His music has been premiered at major festivals around the world and is recorded by ALM, ADDA, Apollon, CBS-Sony, Centaur, EMF, SEAMUS, MIT Press, Hungaroton Classic, Harmonia Mundi, ICMC2000, and Neuma. Presently, he is an assistant professor of composition and director of the Hiller Computer Music Studios at the University at Buffalo, New York.

Andrew Schloss has been involved as a percussionist, composer and researcher in a wide variety of musical and artistic pursuits. He has a deep interest in Latin music, and has performed with such legendary figures as Chucho Valdes and Tito Puente.

At the age of 19, Schloss received an invitation to go on an international tour with British director Peter Brook in Brook's Conference of the Birds. It was on this tour that he became fascinated by the music of Africa and the Middle East. Returning to New York, he continued to perform in theater works. Later, he studied computer music at CCRMA and received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1985. Since receiving a Fulbright grant to do research at IRCAM in 1986, he has been performing with and developing the capabilities of the Radio Drum.

In 1994, and again in 1996, he was Artistic Director of the acclaimed Afrocubanismo! festival at the Banff Centre for the Arts, at which many of Cuba's top artists participated. Schloss has taught at Brown University, the University of California at San Diego and, since 1990, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. In 2001, Schloss will be coordinating the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Havana.

Crossings was composed in April-May, 2000, as a follow-up to an earlier piece for solo guitar with live electronics, Ripples (recently featured on the Stanford Alumni Association's new CD audio magazine, "Hear at Stanford"). Like Ripples, Crossings uses a rhythmically timed electronic echo effect, which enhances the textural density of a solo melodic line. Unlike Ripples, Crossings also uses a live sampling technique -- in which a series of patterns are captured into a recorded loop and repeated back -- allowing the soloist to play an additional melodic layer while the sampled pattern continues.

Aside from the crossing of harmonic and melodic lines existing on the musical level, the title is also inspired by a book I had recently read, "Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America", by Walt Harrington. The book describes one man's sadness and occasional hope concerning the condition of race relations in contemporary America as he travels through a number of states meeting a variety of black people. While my own research has not been nearly so extensive, I nevertheless share many of the author's feelings, and the subject was on my mind while creating this piece.

Also intersecting with the work on this piece was the very sad news of the sudden and completely unexpected passing of my father in Scotland. Only a few days before I had been discussing the composition with him over the phone, as I wondered about some additional material with a distinctive mood and whether or not to incorporate it. This additional material (now the coda section) later seemed like a musical premonition of my sadness over this untimely loss. And with its incorporation came the realization that the title, "Crossings", would take on an additional meaning: a crossing over from life into death.

Crossings is dedicated to my father, a pianist and composer himself - Mr. Gerald Hind.

Born in 1962, Nicky Hind emerged as a composer in 1987 with the release of the recording "Hindsight" - a collection of compositions which combine atmospheric textures with (jazz) improvisation. Following this, while based in Glasgow, Scotland, he received commissions to write music for acoustic and electro-acoustic media and conjunction with Dance, Theatre and Video. An interest in computer music subsequently led to advanced studies at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University, California, where he received his doctoral degree in 1997. Currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nicky Hind has recently developed a software system which enables live performance of electronic music using the Radio Baton (a three-dimensional MIDI controller) and computer keyboard. An ongoing series of performances of his own compositions using this system is now envisaged.

"A player of passion and intensity" raved John Holmquist - one of the many accolades Mr. Duruöz has received from performer and critic alike.

Cem Duruöz began studying guitar at the age of eleven and won the first prize in the Turkish National Guitar Competition at the age of seventeen. He subsequently performed in every major concert hall in Turkey. Acknowledging his talent, the Italian and English governments awarded scholarships to enable him to participate in the master-classes of John Duarte, Oscar Ghiglia, Eliot Fisk, and later Norbert Kraft and David Russell. In 1990, Mr. Duruöz moved to the United States and matriculated at Stanford University where he won the Stanford Soloist award. Since his United States debut, he has performed in Argentina, Turkey, Japan, New York, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado and major cities throughout California. In 1996, he was invited to compete in the prestigious Naumburg competition held in New York City. In addition to his concert performances, he has been a guest in various radio and TV programs in the US, Turkey and Argentina.

His interest in all musical periods is exemplified by his guitar transcriptions of compositions from the baroque period, as well as performance of works from every musical genre. An enthusiast of 20th century music, several composers have written pieces for him, including Tiffany Sevilla, H. H. Yoon, Jody Rockmaker, Robert Strizich, David Hahn, Nicky Hind and Bujor Hoinic.

His recording of Ripples by Nicky Hind is featured on the CD "New Music at CCRMA Vol.1" issued by Stanford University. His solo CD, which consists of his own transcriptions of gamba music by Marin Marais is issued by Centaur Records.

Cem Duruöz received a Master's degree in classical guitar at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with David Tanenbaum. He also studied at the Aspen School of Music with Sharon Isbin and completed another Master's degree in composition at Stanford.

S-Trance-S (2001) explores instrumental transduction between "real" and physically modelled instruments. The metasaxophone controls the transformation between three instruments: the acoustic saxophone, a string physical model created by Stefania Serafin and here played by the metasaxophone controllers, and acoustic bowed string timbres played by the computer. Two aspects of extended techniques for physical models are explored -- haptic transmutation of the instrumental controller, and signal transmutation as a result of instrumental cross synthesis.

In trance, a medium passes under the control of some external force. In S-Trance-S this takes the form of the saxophone acting as a controller for the string physical model. As if in a dream or hallucination, different morphological forms are generated as the energy of the controller is transfused into the medium. These hybrid forms then act as the ghostlike extension of their archetypes, exploring states of metamorphoses, and generating polyphonic "ensembles" of the sax-string. S-Trance-S is dedicated to Stefania Serafin.

Matthew Burtner's compositional work is guided by an interest in natural acoustic processes, and a focus on music as the synthesis of imagination and environment. A native of Alaska, he studied philosophy at St. Johns College, music composition at Tulane University (BFA 1993), computer music at Iannis Xenakis's Center for the Study of Mathematics and Automation in Music (CEMAMu), and computer music at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (MM 1997). He is currently a doctoral composer at Stanford University and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Burtner's music has been performed throughout North America and Europe, as well as in Japan, Australia, China, Korea, Russia, Uruguay and Brazil at festivals such as ICMC, ISCM, Gaudeamus, SEAMUS, Darmstadt, Bourges, Autunnale, ILIOS, Musica Nova Sofia, Luigi Russolo, and others. Commercial recordings of his music include "Incantations" (DACO 102, Germany), "Portals of Distortion" (Innova 526, USA), and "Arctic Contrasts" (EUCD 012, Norway).

UNI is a new piece created by the performers that integrates realtime performance of both sound and images in a structured improvisation. It has only recently become possible to "play" images in realtime, and we are excited by the possibilities. The source sounds and images in UNI provide a jumping-off point for a synaesthetic dialogue in which meaning is developed.

The original video material was collected by Randall Jones near his home in Seattle. Short clips of bamboo, gravel, and other things found in a waterfront park are manipulated live using Onadime Composer. Sound material is gathered from these clips and other sources, and processed using Max/MSP.

The name UNI is suggested by a kind of sushi that is best when it is very fresh. UNI was first performed in March, 2000 at the International Electroacoustic Festival "Primavera en la Havana" in Havana, Cuba.

Andrew Schloss has been involved as a percussionist, composer and researcher in a wide variety of musical and artistic pursuits. He has a deep interest in Latin music, and has performed with such legendary figures as Chucho Valdes and Tito Puente.

At the age of 19, Schloss received an invitation to go on an international tour with British director Peter Brook in Brook's Conference of the Birds. It was on this tour that he became fascinated by the music of Africa and the Middle East. Returning to New York, he continued to perform in theater works. Later, he studied computer music at CCRMA and received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1985. Since receiving a Fulbright grant to do research at IRCAM in 1986, he has been performing with and developing the capabilities of the Radio Drum.

In 1994, and again in 1996, he was Artistic Director of the acclaimed Afrocubanismo! festival at the Banff Centre for the Arts, at which many of Cuba's top artists participated. Schloss has taught at Brown University, the University of California at San Diego and, since 1990, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. In 2001, Schloss will be coordinating the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Havana.

Randall Jones is a composer and systems designer working on the mutual organization of sounds and visuals, especially for live performance. He received a joint B.A. in Studio Art and Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin/Madison in 1992. After graduating, he attended the Computed Art Intensive at Simon Fraser University.

Since 1993, Jones has been living in Seattle, playing both solo and as part of electronic music trio "star-polar". In 1998 he began collaborating with Andrew Schloss on audio-visual compositions. The duo has performed their most recent work, UNI, at the LEAPS Festival in Vancouver, Seattle's Experience Music Project, and the International Electroacoustic Festival in Havana, Cuba.