The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford
University and the the Center for Computer Music at Brooklyn College present
a joint concert of new electronic music.
| Fibo-Round
No. 9
Mark Priest |
|
Fibo-Round no. 9 (2002)
The Fibonacci number series and the ratio of a Golden Section were
used to determine the timing of the majority of the sound events in this
construction. The Max/MSP patch used in producing the original sounds
employs an additive mix of eight sine-wave frequencies organized in “drawbar
fashion”, but tuned to a Fibonacci series harmonic relationship.
These raw sounds were exported to sequencing software for temporal organization
and processing. Some inverse-phasing was also applied to duplicate
tracks of certain sounds, oppositely panned, in order to produce a modest
and atmospheric spacialization effect. WARNING: The Fauna Communications
Research Institute (N. Carolina) reports that the infrasonic growls in
the roar of a tiger can affect a momentary paralysis of its prey.
Mark Priest is presently a graduate student in musicology at the
City University of New York, Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.
In addition to his international performing activities in the popular franco-Caribbean
jazz scene, he often serves as an adjunct lecturer in the Conservatory;
ethnomusicology is more than a passing interest. Mr. Priest also
holds a BS degree in music education, New York University (1998).
|
|
| Mañana
Davíð Brynjar Franzson |
|
Mañana (2000, 2002)
In recent years, plans for controversial Hydro Electric power plants have
caused stir in the Icelandic national spirit. Although being one f the
cleanest forms of energy, they cause irreversible damage to their location
as well as their placement often being in parts of the Icelandic highlands,
Europe's last big wilderness. This has led to increasing conflicts over
the ownership and the rights for usage of the vast highlands. In the year
2000, when the first version of Mañana was composed, the largest
Icelandic energy company had gotten license for flooding 30% of the Nordic
Moor Goose breading ground to increase the energy production of Thjorsa,
which already has at least three immense power plants in its path. This
piece is based on a short sample of such a Goose, crossed with fragments
of the saxophone piece Sick Puppy, Sad Puppy, (bad puppy, dead puppy),
which constitutes the rewritten second half of the piece. The Minister
of Environmental-Issues has now ordered a new approach, which will leave
most of the disputed territory untouched, saving this small oasis, but
although this fight seems over, other are just starting.
Davíð Brynjar Franzson was born in Akureyri, Iceland
in 1978. He majored in music and biology from the Akureyri Junior College
in 1999, and received a Diploma in composition and theory from Reykjavik
College of Music in 2001, where his principal teachers were Mist Þorkellsdóttir
and Atli Heimir Sveinsson. He has a Master of Arts degree and is pursuing
a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at Stanford University with
Brian Ferneyhough and Mark Applebaum.
Davíð's chamber and electronic music has been performed,
recorded and broadcast in Iceland, Norway, Finland, USA as well as both
Greenland and the Faeroes. |
|
| Q-Express
Ben Bierman |
|
Q-Express
The original sounds for Q Express were collected during a recent subway
ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The sounds were transformed through
digital manipulation, most beyond recognition. However, without initially
intending to, I somehow managed to re-coalesce the material into a new
version of the very same subway ride that I took on that day. Having
worked closely with the sounds, I wound up with a more detailed perspective
of the ride (as a metaphor?), and, perhaps, a bit more insight.
Ben Bierman has a very wide range of experiences and an eclectic
sensibility to match. As a composer, his works have been performed
both nationally and internationally, and he is currently Composer-In-Residence
with the New York based Goliard Ensemble. As a trumpet player he
has performed and recorded with such diverse artists as B.B. King,
Archie Shepp, Machito, Ray Barretto, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Butch
Morris, Henry Threadgill, Johnny Copeland, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Ben has studied composition with John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, and
Tania Leon, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D at the City University of
New York Graduate Center. He is the Graduate Fellow at the Center
for Computer Music at Brooklyn College, where he is also currently teaching.
Mr. Bierman was the recipient of the Institute for Studies in American
Music Award in Composition in 2000, as well as the Rosa Riegelman Award
for Music Scholarship. |
|
| Hero
and Leander
Chris Burns |
Hero and Leander is dedicated to Charles Boone and Josefa Vaughan. |
| Chase
Miguel Macias Gomez-Estern |
|
Chase is an attempt to play with delays and the possibilities that
come out of this technique. A combination of improvisation and talking
with a computer, as the computer gives back what you feed to it, in a different
shape, to the point where it becomes a performer itself. You no longer
control the computer and must follow it, with the hope of not falling into
a musical chaos.
Miguel Macias Gomez-Estern is a radio producer, graduate student
and a Radio Teaching Assistant at the department of Television and Radio
at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Miguel earned
his BA (licenciatura) in Audiovisual Communications in year 2000 from the
Universidad Hispalense de Sevilla (Spain). He has experience in radio
documentary production, radio drama production as well as live radio production.
He produces the weekly radio show “The Search for Intelligent Life.”
Miguel also has a long background in pop-rock music performance and composition.
In the last year Miguel decided to use his skills as a radio producer and
guitar player to explore the computer music environment. |
|
| Dancing
in Your Used Clothes
Martin Simon |
The title Dancing in Your Used Clothes was originally conceived as
a working title of the piece to convey, in a poetic way, a method of its
assembly. While chasing through a bank of sounds on a nearby studio
keyboard synthesizer, I recorded into a computer various unconnected sound
gestures as a result of a certain abrupt need for momentary self-contentment.
On the keyboard, I quickly singled out timbres that most attracted me to
begin immediately improvising around them. Then I recorded short,
first-take improvisatory fragments with each sound, nourished by the instant
of a hunch. Afterward, I referred to these separate fragments of
music as “piece of clothes” which I later displaced and rearranged in twisted
relationships.
“Prelude” can be simply perceived as a linear order of individual “clothes”
habitually detached from one another – occasionally matched or hurriedly
scattered – an order frequently experienced in our living rooms.
The subtitle “Visit from Distant Lands” depicts external emotional association
to an overall sound context, which could recall a dialogue between somewhat
natural (yet not quite human) lively creatures.
“Return of Spring”, cheerfully discloses the camouflaged identities
of previously noticed “live beings” and reconnects some of the earlier
linear gestures in novel relationships. What comes out is a soundscape
evoking outdoor bird talks – unmistakable signals of arriving springtime.
Martin Simon, originally from Slovakia, now residing in New
York City, has been formally trained in music composition by Tania Leon,
Bernadette Speech, Douglas Cohen and Skip Brunner. He has been influenced
in many ways by the work and social concepts of electronic composer Noah
Creshevsky. He has formerly studied classical guitar with Peter Grof
and Daniela Kukumbergova, jazz performance and arranging with Matus Jakabcic,
Fernando Correa, and Stano Pocaji.. Currently, Martin is finishing
his Masters degree in composition at Brooklyn College. He has served as
an assistant to the director of Performance and Interactive Media Arts
(PIMA) Program at Television and Radio Department at Brooklyn College.
He has been extensively involved in a variety of multimedia productions
including digital and fine arts, video and interactive installations. He
has studied interactive arts with Miroslaw Rogala, Ronaldo Kiel and Lori
Scarlatos Martin’s other credentials include formal training and
degrees in economic informatics and accounting. He is deliberately
becoming an interdisciplinary admirer and perhaps a little bit of a lunatic
philosopher. Martin’s music has been heard in Europe, Asia, South America
and USA. |
| Saxl
Sven-Ingo Koch |
Saxl is a ”window composition”: a musical relief appears in ever-changing
perspectives which – as though dissected – form creations rich in contrast.
The tonal material of this relief consist of the permutations of three
saxophone samples, a single crescendo d´-tone, a key sound-texture
and a small, moving group of tones. Techniques like granular synthesis,
phasevocoding etc. render numerous continuous passages between these various
sound formations. A static tone becomes a fluctuating area, a moving group
develops into a still sound. However, these processes do not take place
in a linear mode, but, as is implicit in the terminus ”window composition”,
dissected into unequal phases. If one defines e.g. x as initial moment,
x to the power y as intermediate stage and y as
final moment contrasting with x, then the setting of the piece looks
as follows: x -› y -› x to the power y. A contrast is followed by a reflexive
synthesis. This is how in the form of a ”structural tree” the articulation
of the genesis of the piece is structured both on a small and a large scale.
Saxl appears on 2 different CD-series with contemporary electroacoustic
music: Ex machina 05 and Degem 07 (both issued by cybele).
An analysis of saxl by Ludger Bruemmer can be found in the book "Konzert
- Klangkunst - Computer". (Veroeffentlichungen des Instituts fuer Neue
Musik und Musikerziehung, Darmstadt, Band 42, Schott 2002, p.284-293)
Sven-Ingo Koch was born in Dortmund, Germany, 1974. He studied
in Paris, Essen, San Diego and Stanford. Sven-Ingo Koch’s main composition
teachers were Nicolaus A. Huber, Roger Reynolds and Brian Ferneyhough.
He received - among others - the Folkwang prize 1999, the
Bach prize 2000, the BDI award 2001 and the cynet art honorary mention
2001, as well as scholarships of the Fondation Royaumont (1997), from the
German Government (DAAD) (1999-2000) and of the Academy of Arts Berlin
(in 2000 and 2002).
Koch’s music has been performed widely at numerous festivals
and venues and been broadcasted by many German radio stations such as the
WDR, DR, SR, BR, SWR. Collaborations include projects with the Ensemble
Modern, the Nouvelle Ensemble Modern, the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin,
the musikFabrik NRW, the Schlagquartett Cologne, Trio Surplus and the Stuttgart
Vokalsolisten. CD releases on cybele, ars and edition zeitklang.
Sven-Ingo Koch loves the beaches of California (and – sometimes
- the beastie boys). |
| Thuroarapyawdah
Sandra Htyte |
Thuroarapyawdah (2002)
Thuroarapyawdah is a Burmese saying which means, “Is that what they
say?” This piece tries to represent the challenges of a non-English
speaking culture to describe how they feel to an English speaking culture.
In English, the slang terms that are made up of a word or two usually simplify
a complex feeling. It is hard to explain how one feels because of
lack of understanding; especially, if one does not even know how to express
it in her own language and while borrowing from another. In this
case, the medium of electronic music becomes another language that helps
translate the meanings of one culture to another. This work has text,
sampling and sound generation. When text alone cannot communicate
a situation, the involvement of the music helps explain further. This piece
is generated using both Max/MSP and Digital Performer. Max’s groove
patches and note patches are key elements, as well as the editing power
of Digital Performer, to produce an emotional environment out of a technical
origin.
Sandra Htyte is a junior at Brooklyn College, CUNY, studying for
her Bachelor of Arts in Television and Radio. She also has a keen
interest in computer programming. Sandra hopes to pursue a career
in producing original television programs, editing and/or information technology
related. |
