Mike Gao is by all means a part of the beat movement in LA. He produces beats, performs them live, and interacts within one of the most prolific electronic music communities in the world today. But Gao takes it a step further. He has an arguably deeper understanding of his equipment than any other producer on the scene. A programmer with a PhD in Music Technology, he sees the shortcomings of his world’s ubiquitous music-making equipment and fills in the blanks.  More...

ABOUT THIS EVENT
Helsinki-based pianist/composer Robert Fleitz comes to Stanford University as artist-in-residence to workshop and premiere five new works with Stanford graduate composers.

WORKS BY
Brian Brown, Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi, Anna Golubkova, Simon Frisch, and Mohammad H. Javaheri

We live in a fragmented world, where algorithms both shape and narrow notions of genre and style, yet paradoxically grant us unprecedented access to a vast multiplicity of musical forms. In Western Classical music, however, there is often a deliberate ignorance of these dynamics—a problematic attachment to an idealized 'purity' of form.

My research focuses on the semiotics of musical hybridity: What opportunities and challenges arise in a quest of meaning-creation for listeners, performers, and composers when a single work encompasses multiple musical styles?

The relationship between composer, performer, audience, and score is a delicate and malleable web—not only in these agents' realities, but in the perceptions that are placed on each of them by the other. These imagines versions, shaped by tradition and context, blur the boundaries between intention and interpretation. In this recital, the solo piano becomes a focal point for exploring how composers and performers negotiate control over musical materials. The scores on this program move from improvisation, to control, and back again; questioning what it means to have "freedom" in a work of composed music, and inviting the listener to examine their own role in the process of meaning- and memory-making.

The program features works by Camila Agosto, Manaka Kataoka, Linda Leimane, Rytis Mažulis, Jeffrey Mumford, Lou Sheppard, Julie Zhu and Raimonda Žiūkaitė