Seth Josel: The solo e. guitar in new art music: effects and interactivity

In this introductory presentation, I will summarize the processing domain with which most guitarists - and most anyone working in electronic music - are familiar. Effects will be outlined and grouped, hoping to create some sort of workable overview. I will focus on a few works ranging from a sparse use of processing and live-electronics to those with a more sophisticated, complex use. Thereafter the main focus of the presentation will involve works for solo electric guitar and computer interactive systems, specifically works written for Max/MSP. A brief survey followed by some demoing of select works is envisioned. The goal thereby is to see how a select group of composers are currently using "Max" to extended the guitar's expressive range.   Featured will be works by Richard Barrett, Tristan Murail, hans w. koch, Eric Lyon, Seth Cluett and Karlheinz Essl - among others.

Seth Josel has become one of the leading instrumental pioneers of his generation. After acquiring his Bachelor of Music degree at the Manhattan School of Music Seth Josel enrolled at Yale University and earned the Master of Music, the Master of Musical Arts and the Doctor of Musical Art degrees. His teachers included Manuel Barrueco and Eliot Fisk. He is recipient of numerous awards and prizes including a Fulbright-Hays grant from the United States government and the Artists Stipend from the Akademie Schloß Solitude, Stuttgart. As ensemble player and soloist he has been involved in the first performances of more than one hundred works. He has collaborated and consulted closely with such composers as Mauricio Kagel, Helmut Lachenmann, Tristan Murail, Phill Niblock and James Tenney. In addition, he has been highly committed to working with several of the leading young composers of our time, including Peter Ablinger, Richard Barrett, Sidney Corbett, Chaya Czernowin, Keeril Makan and Manfred Stahnke, all of whom have written works featuring his talents.

He has concertized throughout Europe as well as the US, Canada, Israel and Japan, and he has been a guest performer with leading orchestras and ensembles, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest German Radio Orchestra, the South German Radio Choir, the DSO Berlin and the Schönberg/ASKO Ensemble of Amsterdam. From 1991 till 2000 he was a permanent member of the Ensemble Musikfabrik NRW, a State-subsidized ensemble devoted to the performance of contemporary music. In recent seasons he has been guesting regularly with KNM Berlin, Ensemble SurPlus of Freiburg as well as with the Basel Sinfonietta. He is a member of the Amsterdam-based electric guitar quartet, Catch. During the period 2002-2005 Josel appeared as a soloist at several major European festivals including Salzburger Festpiele, Donaueschingen, Huddersfield and MaerzMusik, musikprotokoll Graz. In addition to his 3 solo CDs featuring American music (New World Records, CRI, O.O. Discs), he has recorded with Ensemble Musikfabrik NRW, the DSO Berlin, Rundfunksinfonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam and Champ d'Action Antwerpen. He also recorded Berio’s “Sequenza XI” for the complete “Sequenza” cycle released on Mode Records in 2006. He is the co-founder of www.sheerpluck.de, a website database dedicated to the contemporary guitar literature and currently working on a performance technique handbook for Bärenreiter.

This lecture is sponsored by the New Spectrum Foundation.