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New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit
Presented by the Entertainment Technology department of the New York City College of Technology (CUNY City Tech)
2020 Program2020 Call for Works2019 Program2018 Program2017 Program2016 Program
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Artists and Works - 2020
CONCERT 1: Friday, February 28, 2020, 7:00 PM
Arto Artinian, Jeff Kaiser, Killick Hinds, and Adam James Wilson of Goosemotor +2 (augmented trumpet, fretless electric guitars by Rick Toone, Haken Continuum, and Skronkbot, a semi-autonomous software improvisation agent)
Gordon Beeferman and Dafna Naphtali of the Gordon Beeferman / Dafna Naphtali Duo (smartphone-controlled audio manipulation of voice, organ, toy piano, and other acoustic devices)
Hans Tammen : Sonic Flotsam (resonant objects and live interactive processing)
Léa Boudreau : this performance is no longer available due to [...] (circuit-bent electronic sounds composed with Pure Data)
Artist panel discussion, moderated by Kevin Patton
CONCERT 2: Saturday, February 29, 2020, 7:00 PM
Juan Parra Cancino and Jonathan Impett : Three states of wax (guitar and trumpet interacting with/through the authors' Timbre Networks and Artificial Life for music software)
Aaron Campbell and Christopher Diaz : Opiyelguabirán (cello-accented real-time vocal processing)
Nikki D'Agostino and Kevin Patton : Cast Down Thither (tenor saxophone, processed through BrundleFly modular DSP software)
Eric Lyon and Alan Weinstein : The Man with the Golden Arm (cello and computer-structured improvisation)
Riccardo Marogna and Darina Žurková : DINGEN (live analysis and stochastic processing of small percussion instruments)
Artist panel discussion, moderated by Adam James Wilson
Concerts will be held at New York City College of Technology's Voorhees Theater, 186 Jay Street in Brooklyn (Google map).
Concerts are free and open to the public, with a suggested donation of $10 to the City Tech Foundation.
Program Notes - 2020
Goosemotor +2 Goosemotor duo Adam James Wilson (fretless guitar, electronics) and Arto Artinian (Haken Continuum) are joined by the inimitable fretless guitarist Killick Hinds and trumpet & electronics virtuoso Jeff Kaiser.
Overlapping nexuses connect these musicians.
Killick, Adam, and Arto have made microtonality an omnipresent feature in their music (and have performed together on several occasions as "microtonal supergroup" Pitch Prefect), while Jeff and Adam have both developed real-time software with which they interact in live performance: Adam's Skronkbot is a semi-autonomous software agent that apprehends and elaborates the musical styles of its human collborators, and Jeff's KaiGen software creates music stochastically in interaction with its human counterparts.
Collectively, the quartet represents nearly 100 years of experience in electroacoustic improvisation.
Sonic Flotsam Taking off from Pauline Oliveros' Apple Box approach, a resonant object (to be found in the streets, usually a suitcase) will act as an instrument. Together with its contact microphones it functions as a filter and amplifier for the sounds coaxed from its resonant body, to then altered and processed. The software is interactive, in that its processing reacts in flexible ways to the audio input. The software was developed originally from the year 2000 on for the "Endangered Guitar," but has been used in recent years in other improvisatory projects, too. Whether it is the live sound processing of other instrumentalists, or found objects such as in "Sonic Flotsam," the parameters of the processing are determined by the analysis of the incoming audio.
this performance is no longer available due to [...] this performance is no longer available due to [...] is a live electronics performance based on circuit bending. It uses primarily old toys circuits in order to create sounds that are composed and modified with the help of open source coding program Pure Data. The main idea of this project is to reuse second-hand material and to embrace the DIY ideology while keeping a ludic approach to experimental music creation, using every glitch as valid material.
The title of the project is inspired by the unpredictable aspect of the circuit bends which are prone to surprises. It present the fact that each representation will be different from the last one as it is a project that calls for improvisation both in the play with the toys and in their (sometimes chaotic) response to this play.
Gordon Beeferman and Dafna Naphtali have been performing together since 2015 in duet pieces and improvisations with kinetic sound processing, fractal rhythms, and general polyphonic/kaleidophonic disturbances. On organ and toy piano, Beeferman fleshes out protean fragments into visceral structures and landscapes that take the instruments to their limits, and Naphtali augments her high-energy live processing of the keyboards with extended vocal techniques/sounds/multi-modal singing and her custom take on hand- and voice-activated and real-time electronics.
Three states of wax This performance aims to merge Parra's work on "Timbre Networks" with Impett's research on the use of A-Life to design interactive environments for electronic music performance.
We aim to address the terms and definitions of complex systems as a metaphor for structuring improvisation. We are looking at the notion of complex systems from two perspectives:
From the perspective of network architecture, where actors and acting agencies are articulated as nodes and threads. In this approach, particular structures determine the connections and interdependences between nodes and the potential affordances of connecting multiple nodes, and,
As A-Life, where we focus on the inner nature and behavior of the actor-nodes themselves: Phenomena such as recursivity, decay and acceleration are then embodied as primary musical behaviours.
In this view, network architecture becomes an emergent (musical) structure. The interaction and affect/effect of the resulting friction between these simultaneous perspectives unfolds itself as the network, and the performance.
Opiyelguabirán Beginning as an exploration of the cultural heritage and socio-economic realities of the Puerto Rican identity, Opiyelguabirán, the brainchild of C. Diaz, is an ever-evolving and amorphous exercise of composition through improvisation. Utilizing expressive sonics through a vast implementation of instruments and synthesizers, Opiyelguabirán begins in a live setting.
For this performance, cellist Aaron Campbell has been invited to provide his dissonant and distorted stylings to the improvisational soundscapes generated by the processed vocals of Chris Diaz. This arrangement has been performed only once before, entirely unrehearsed, resulting in an organic progression of ambient space into structured execution seemingly predetermined by virtue of the clear and shared emotional intent of the artists.
Cast Down Thither Cast Down Thither is a series of improvisations with different musicians improvising with the BrundleFly Framework. The BrundleFly Framework is a series of DSP modules built in Max/MSP/Jitter that use a real-time analysis of performance parameters to control the operation of the different modules. The modules also operate independently through various levels of controlled randomness to challenge performers with anomaly, the unexpected, the disruptive, and the contradictory.
The Man with the Golden Arm The Man with the Golden Arm is an articulated noise composition for improvising cellist, commissioned by Alan Weinstein. Noise builds temporal structures of improvisatory guidance, and assembles DSP configurations for the live processing of the cellist. In addition to the live performer, a multi-layered "ghost" performer is assembled from cello improvisations performed by Weinstein during the development of the piece, and is then sent through further random DSP processing. The highly contingent and immediate nature of the software interface prevents the performer from comprehending the large-scale form, but could inspire the performer's playing through the intensity of the computer-improvised enhancements, creating a sense of surprise and apprehension.
DINGEN DINGEN (from Dutch 'things, from pronunciation 'the sound which most of our tools produce') is an improvised electroacoustic performance which makes use of concrete sounds of various amplified objects and their live electronic manipulations.
DINGEN adapted different types of objects into the percussive palette of sounds as a blank canvas for performers' improvisation. The main focus is to discover diverse musical gestures and structures by creating the relationships in between three entities - sounding objects themselves, the processed sound and performers, who - as architects of the sound scenes - are also influenced by the processing system itself (and vice versa) within a real-time improvisation.
The live electronics environment, programmed in Max/MSP, interacts in different ways with the performers. The acoustic sound is captured by a number of microphones and sensors, and processed through a set of algorithms. The audio input is analysed in order to extract some perceptually-relevant features (e.g. onsets, spectral flux, centroid...). These parameters are then mapped in the processing logic, triggering/activating different processes/manipulations, according to the kind of sonic material. The system implements also some stochastic behaviour, resulting in unexpected responses to the performers' sonic gestures. This behaviour challenges the improviser and contributes to a kind of dialectic confrontation between the human performers and the machine.
Artist Bios - 2020
Arto Artinian Originally from Bulgaria, Arto Artinian began his formal music training as a child in Plovdiv at the prestigious Dobrin Petkov National School of Music and Dance. He later studied music composition at the Eastman School of Music and computer and experimental music at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he met long-time collaborator and close friend Adam James Wilson. He plays the flute, and more recently, the Haken Continuum Fingerboard. His playing is influenced by Bulgarian folk music, the Sun Ra Arkestra, 1970s Miles Davis, and '90s punk and grunge music. Dr. Artinian currently resides in New York City, where he teaches political philosophy at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Gordon Beeferman Gordon Beeferman is a composer, pianist/organist, and improviser based in New York City, "a wide-eyed polymath who masterfully toes the lines of myriad genres" (Brooklyn Rail). He has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and numerous collaborations with choreographers, writers, and video artists. His varied projects include bands that perform his compositions: an Organ Trio; Other Life Forms, a quartet; and Music for an Imaginary Band, a septet—"a commanding avant-jazz ensemble" (Time Out New York). "Four Parts Five," an extended work for quintet, was released on Innova Recordings in 2015—"Packed with humour, mischief, and an urge to dance" (The Wire). Beeferman has composed two operas with librettist Charlotte Jackson: "The Rat Land," praised as "complex and daringly modern" by The New York Times, and "The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera," scenes of which have been performed to sold-out theater and nightclub audiences in downtown Manhattan. Notable commissions and/or performances of his compositions have come from the New York City Opera orchestra, Momenta Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, California EAR Unit, St. Urban Concerts, Talea Ensemble, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, and others. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the BMI Foundation, and Concert Artists Guild, three BMI Student Composer Awards, a Tanglewood fellowship, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Copland House, and Ucross, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. An active member of the New York music scene for over twenty years, he has performed and recorded with musicians including Chris Cochrane, Michael Evans, James Ilgenfritz, Dafna Naphtali, Kevin Shea, and others. He has performed at Roulette, Performance Space New York, Judson Church, National Sawdust, on the MATA and Vision Festivals, and on tour in Germany and the Netherlands. He has also toured as a pianist/keyboardist in Philip Glass's "Einstein on the Beach" and Taylor Mac's "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music," and has co-curated concerts of the AIDS Quilt Songbook in New York City and Philadelphia. Beeferman's recordings are available on Minor Amusements, Different Track, Clang, Innova, OutNow, Generate, Genuin, and Summit Records.
Léa Boudreau Léa Boudreau is a composer and musician based in Montréal. She has nourished a passionate relationship with sound since her teenage years, a time when she would spend days on end as a hermit, listening and creating... oh, how little things have changed!
Nowadays, she continues to create in the realms of performance and composition, driven by a desire to explore the infinite sonic possibilities of everyday objects and to express the multitude of musical ideas keeping her awake at night.
She has received several awards in recent years: the 3rd prize in JTTP 2019 from the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC), the 3rd place in SIME competition (Lille University), the Marcelle Prize (Faculté de Musique de l'Université de Montréal) in 2019 and the 3rd Hugh Le Caine Prize (SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers) in 2017.
Aaron Campbell Aaron Campbell has been designing and building in New York City for the last two decades. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, he has been involved with the design and construction of many notable installations and exhibitions as well as new buildings and renovations.
In his very spare time he enjoys cooking, reading, and making ears bleed with his cello, Lucy.
Juan Parra Cancino Juan Parra Cancino (b. Chile, 1979) studied Composition at the Catholic University of Chile and Sonology at The Royal Conservatoire The Hague (NL), where he obtained his Masters degree with a focus on composition and performance of electronic music. In 2014, Juan obtained his Ph.D degree from Leiden University with his thesis "Multiple Paths: Towards a Performance practice in Computer Music."
His compositions have been performed in Europe, Japan, North and South America in festivals such as ICMC, "Sonorities," "Synthese," and "November Music," among many others.
His acousmatic piece Serenata a Bruno obtained a special mention at the Bourges electroacoustic music competition of 2003 and in 2004, his piece Tellura was awarded with the residence prize at the same competition.
Founder of The Electronic Hammer a Computer and Percussion trio and Wiregriot (voice & electronics), he collaborates regularly with Ensemble KLANG (NL) and Hermes (BE), among many others.
His work in the field of live electronic music has made him recipient of numerous grants such as NFPK, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the International Music Council.
Since 2009 Parra is a fellow researcher at the Orpheus Institute (Ghent, BE), focused on performance practice in Computer Music.
Nikki D'Agostino An award-winning "wildly creative" composer, musician, conductor, educator, and multi-disciplinary artist, Nikki D'Agostino has both performed and had her works performed nationally and internationally. She received her B.A. from The University of North Texas in 2004 after studying with Joseph Klein, Phil Winsor, and Joseph "Butch" Rovan, before pursuing her M.M. in Music Composition (2008) at CUNY Brooklyn College to study with Amnon Wolman and George Brunner. Currently, Ms. D'Agostino is focused on publishing a book of scores and recording an album of works using a notation system she developed to allow both performer and composer/conductor creative control. As a "beautifully brash" saxophonist, synthesizer enthusiast, and sound artist, Ms. D'Agostino performs actively in the NYC music scene in several groups ranging in style from indie pop to harsh noise.
Christopher Diaz A New York native, C. Diaz (known for previous and ongoing works with Queen Elephantine, Alkahest, Scowl, ISF, Floods), is a multi-instrumentalist spawned from almost two decades of trudging the depths of the New York City music underground.
Currently finishing his Bachelor's in Entertainment Technology at CUNY City Tech, with a focus in sound system design and show systems control, C. Diaz can be found performing up and down the east coast as Opiyelguabirán, providing drums and vocals for Brooklyn black metal outfit Floods, and providing vocals for a blackened sludge outfit with a very non-print-friendly name.
His hobbies include urban exploration, craft beers, shirts with no sleeves, and building sound and performance systems literally no one asked for.
Killick Hinds Killick Hinds lives in Athens, Georgia. His music is Appalachian Trance Metal, with an emphasis on unquantifiable rhythms, intuitive intonation, and shamanistic ROYGBIV. He plays a variety of unusual stringed instruments (bowed H'arpeggione; Big Red harp guitar; 3rd bridge Harmonic Isolator; infinite sustain Vo-96; fretless guitar; quarter tone fretted guitar; banjo; 3-string one-holer; 6- & 7-string guitar) with a comprehensive approach to genres known and as-yet-unlabeled. Specific focus includes sympathetic string activity; microtonality; pantonality; natural harmonic fretting; playing between the fretting hand and nut; and emerging technologies to facilitate new musical pathways. Reinvention has been the constant throughout his creative output. He has toured extensively as a performer and is an active organizer and promoter of lesser-heard music. He founded record label Solponticello in 2001, and now runs H(i)nds(i)ght Studio for his musical and written word pursuits. Pop-culture mashups and ancient and obscure forms infuse his music; his song titles are integral to the works they embody: they result from free association without censorship, refined until they capture the tenor of a given piece of music.
The primary sonic influences on Killick are animals, wind, water, fire, electrical hum, and silence. He has deeply rooted classical technique as a player, but broadens his music by stretching and contracting phrases temporally, conceptually, dynamically, and stylistically. The effect more closely resembles speech patterns and emotionally-drawn architecture than it does conventional Western music. Despite its eclectic nature, the music is surprisingly familiar and accessible to audiences of all ages and levels of musical involvement.
Killick has been married since 2003, has two dogs, loves to hike, and is an advocate for healthy and local food, meditation, and solar power. He eats gluten-free (silly Celiac disease), every meal. https://killick.bandcamp.com
Jonathan Impett Jonathan Impett studied at the University of London, City University, Royal Academy of Music, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and University of Cambridge, where his Ph.D work investigated computational models for interactive composition systems.
He is Director of Research at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent and Associate Professor at Middlesex University, London.
His compositions explore the spaces between score and improvisation, most recently using prepared acoustics and wave phenomena as a way of integrating symbolic-compositional, sound processing and improvisational materials. Early work with the computer-extended metatrumpet has led to a continuing engagement with interactive technologies and the acts and contexts of performance.
As a trumpet player he has given premieres of solo works by composers including Berio, Harvey and Scelsi, as well as performing with ensembles such as London Sinfonietta and Apartment House and in various improvisational contexts. He is also a long-standing member of The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
His research is concerned with the discourses and practices of contemporary musical creativity, particularly the nature of the contemporary technologically-situated musical artefact: 'The work without content.'
His monograph on the musical thought of Luigi Nono was published recently.
He leads a research group at the Orpheus Institute, 'Music, Thought and Technology,' that looks critically at the nature of musical practice in our technologised world.
Jeff Kaiser Jeff Kaiser is a trumpet player, composer, conductor, music technologist and scholar living in Warrensburg, Missouri. Classically trained as a trumpet player, Kaiser now views his traditional instrument as hybrid with new technology (in the form of software and hardware interfaces) that he creates for his dynamic and adventurous performances and recordings. He gains inspiration and ideas from the intersections of experimental composition and improvisation and the timbral and formal affordances provided by combining traditional instruments with emerging technologies. The roots of his music are firmly in the experimental traditions within jazz, improvised and Western art music practices. Kaiser considers his art audio-centric, but he also works with live video, tracking and interactive technologies. He is Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition at the University of Central Missouri (UCM), and has taught an incredibly wide variety of classes: including ethnomusicology, interactive arts technology and digital audio composition, among others at UCM, University of San Diego, University of California San Diego, University of California Irvine and Mira Costa College. Kaiser has a strong interest in digital humanities and was in the working group for digital humanities at University of San Diego and an original member of the NEH sponsored group for digital humanities pedagogy in San Diego. Kaiser worked to develop the arts entrepreneurship minor at the University of San Diego. He is the former Director of Development for the Center for World Music.
Riccardo Marogna Riccardo Marogna is a musician, improviser, composer, sound artist born in Verona (Italy), currently based in The Hague (NL). His research is focused on developing an improvisational language in the electro-acoustic scenario, where the electronic manipulations and the acoustic sounds merge seamlessly in the continuum of the sonic gesture. He is active in many projects, playing a range of reed instruments (bass clarinet, clarinet, tenor saxophone) combined with live electronics. He toured in Italy, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Poland, United States. He played and collaborated with - among others - Mats Gustafsson, Elliott Sharp, Nick Collins, Richard Barrett, Leila Bordreuil, Aurelie Nyrabikali Lierman. His works have been presented at NIME Conference 2018 (Blacksburg, VA), MusLab 2016 Muestra Internacional de Música Electroacústica (Mexico 2016), Matera Intermedia Festival (Italy, 2017), Colloqui di Informatica Musicale (Biennale Musica, Venice, 2008). He holds a Master from the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, a BD in Jazz Music and Improvisation by the Conservatoire in Ferrara (IT), a MD in Electronic Engineering by University of Padua (IT) and he specialized in Computer Music at IRCAM (Paris). He is the author and co-author of a number of papers, published by international journals and conferences such as JASA, IEEE, NIME, Biennale Musica, DAFX. He is currently a Research Associate at the Institute of Sonology. https://riccardomarogna.com
Eric Lyon Eric Lyon is a composer and computer music researcher. Lyon's publicly available software includes FFTease and LyonPotpourri, collections of audio objects written for Max/MSP and Pd. He is the author of "Designing Audio Objects for Max/MSP and Pd" (A-R Editions, 2012), which explicates the process of designing and implementing audio DSP externals. In 2016, Lyon was guest editor of the Computer Music Journal, editing two issues (CMJ 40:4 and 41:1) dedicated to the subject of high-density loudspeaker arrays (HDLAs). Lyon also curated the 2016 Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, which was the first binaural anthology published by the CMJ. Lyon's creative work has been recognized with a ZKM Giga-Hertz prize, MUSLAB award, the League ISCM World Music Days competition, and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Lyon is currently Associate Professor of Practice in Music at Virginia Tech.
Dafna Naphtali Dafna Naphtali is a singer, electronic musician, sound artist/improviser/composer of experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music using her custom Max/MSP programming for live sound processing of voice and other instruments. She also created works for multi-channel audio, musical robots, and interactive soundwalks. She draws on her eclectic musical background to interpret Cage, Stockhausen and contemporary composers, and work with experimental musicians and video artists in the US, Israel and Europe. Projects and recordings include "Landmine," an interactive work for pianist Kathleen Supové on Disklavier piano with live processing recently released on "Ear to Ivory" (Starkland 2019), as well as "What is it Like to be a Bat?" digital punk trio w/Kitty Brazelton (Tzadik), "Pulsing Dot" duo with Gordon Beeferman (Clang), and Chatter Blip with Chuck Bettis (upcoming release on Contour Editions). Her audio-augmented reality soundwalks (free iOS/Android apps for U-GRUVE AR and running continuously), include Walkie Talkie Dream Garden (http://walkietalkiedreams.org) at the Williamsburg Waterfront (Brooklyn, NY) and Walkie Talkie Dream Angles at Washington Square Park (NYC). She's authored two book chapters on her work and articles on "Live Sound Processing and Improvisation" for New Music Box. Dafna was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts for her multichannel work "Audio Chandelier" which be presented on Governor's Island in May through July 2020. http://www.dafna.info
Kevin Patton Kevin Patton is a musician and designer whose primary mode of making is through creating interactive systems. He is active in the fields of experimental music, collaborative design, and interactive art. Kevin is also a frequent collaborator in installation, network art, and performance art projects. Kevin's scholarship includes presentations and writing about the contemporary practice of music and art forms that are deeply mediated by technology attempting to flesh out the theoretical implications towards agency, subjectivity, improvisation, and even circuit design where the interface is viewed as a temporal convergence of technology and agency, spirit and expression. A moment-of-now, if you will, that can be used to posit questions of not only automation and design but also ability and ethics. Kevin is an Assistant Professor of Interaction Design at the Corcoran School of the Arts at the George Washington University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Brown University in electronic music and multimedia composition. He also holds a Master of Music degree in jazz studies from the University of North Texas. He was an Invited Researcher at the Sorbonne, University of Paris IV, for the Spring of 2009.
Hans Tammen Hans Tammen likes to set sounds in motion, and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. Whether richly processed guitar sounds from his hybrid interactive guitar/software instrument Endangered Guitar, traditionally notated material for his Third Eye Chamber Orchestra, or graphically notated elements for the all-electronic Dark Circuits Orchestra, his music flows like clockwork, "transforming a sequence of instrumental gestures into a wide territory of semi-hostile discontinuity; percussive, droning, intricately colorful, or simply blowing your socks off" (Touching Extremes).
His works have been presented on festivals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, the Middle East and all over Europe. He has recorded on labels such as Clang, Innova, ESP-DISK, Nur/Nicht/Nur, Gold Bolus, Nachtstück, Creative Sources, Leo Records, Potlatch and Outnow. Hans Tammen received grants and composer commissions from NewMusicUSA, Chamber Music America, MAPFund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, American Music Center, Lucas Artists Residencies Montalvo, New York State Council On The Arts (NYSCA), New York Foundation For The Arts (NYFA), American Composers Forum w/ Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Funds, New York State Music Fund, Goethe Institute w/Foreign Affairs Office, among others. http://www.tammen.org
Alan Weinstein Alan Weinstein, cellist, performs across a wide spectrum of disciplines. He is a founding member of the Kandinsky Trio, winner of the Chamber Music America Residency Award, the NEA American Masterpieces Grant and a NEA Meet the Composers Award. He has performed in venues including Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, Spivey Hall and the Kennedy Center. As an electric cellist he has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, soloed with the Virginia Tech Wind Ensemble at Carnegie Hall and is a member of the improv trio Nagging Mother.
His dedication to new music has led him to premiere compositions by artists such as Mike Reid ("Tales of Appalachia" performed in over 150 cities), Richard Danielpour, and Hilary Tan. His jazz collaborations have included performances with Larry Coryell, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Dave Samuels, John D'earth and as a harmonica player with Ray Charles. Virginia Tech has awarded Mr. Weinstein an Associate Professorship, the Alumni Teaching Award, the Certificate of Teaching Excellence Award and the Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence in the Creative Arts. He has recorded for Arabesque Records, Brioso and OmniTone labels.
Adam James Wilson Adam James Wilson is a composer, guitarist, and software developer who programs computers to improvise with human musicians. His work incorporates music information retrieval, algorithmic music composition, and data sonification. Wilson performs with his software experiments on the fretless electric guitar, an instrument that caters to his penchant for microtonality. He has performed/presented his work in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Montreal, San Diego, Washington D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Belfast, Palo Alto, and elsewhere. Wilson co-founded and serves as director of the New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, an annual concert series featuring music by artists focused on the integration of music improvisation and real-time interactive computer systems. He is currently an Associate Professor of Emerging Media Technology, specializing in Music Technology and Media Computation, at New York City College of Technology (CUNY City Tech).
Darina Žurková Darina Žurková is a composer, audiovisual artist and performer born in Czechoslovakia, currently based in the Netherlands. Her research on timbre as a phenomenon and the process of granulation brought her to explore the core of the material and ways of its transformation. Those ideas are bound to the concept of 'de/re(con)structure' within her work in sound art, experimental music, happenings and interdisciplinary projects. In her solo projects the elements of live electronics, installations, sculptural objects and eco-activism intertwine with performance art. She is involved in several projects, often collaborating with dancers and artists across different genres and fields. Her compositions have been performed by ensembles as PKF - Prague Philharmonia (CZ), Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc (CZ), Scordatura Ensemble (NL), Ensemble I&D (PT), ISHA Trio (CZ), et al. and have been presented at various concerts and festivals in Europe and USA. Darina holds her master's degree in Composition from Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (CZ), she completed an internship at Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo (Porto, PT), a DMA internship within the Composer-Performer Program at CalArts (Los Angeles, USA) and a Ph.D internship at the Institute of Sonology (The Hague, NL). She continues her Ph.D studies at JAMU Brno, currently also as a Research Associate at the Institute of Sonology. http://www.darinazurkova.com
Administrators - 2020
Kerry Hagan, Ph.D — submission evaluator, University of Limerick, Ireland
Kevin Patton, Ph.D — submission evaluator & NYC EIS co-founder, George Washington University
Adam James Wilson, Ph.D — submission evaluator, NYC EIS co-founder & director, New York City College of Technology
About NYC EIS
The New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit is a concert series featuring music by artists focused on the integration of music improvisation and real-time interactive computer systems.
Read Eric Lyon's review of the inaugural NYC Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit (2016) in the 2017 issue of Array, the journal of the International Computer Music Association.
NYC EIS is made possible by faculty, staff, and students in the Emerging Media Technology and Entertainment Technology programs at CUNY's New York City College of Technology.
Sofy Yuditskaya, Margaret Schedel, and Jess Rowland : Markov Magic Circles (Markov process-mediated performance and projection)
Kalun Leung : Spatial Granulator for Solo Augmented Trombone ("MuBone" extended trombone-driven granular synthesis)
Kevin Patton and Joe Hertenstein : Cast Down Thither (percussion, processed through "BrundleFly" modular DSP software)
Erich Barganier and Esther Lamneck : Light Shards (tárogató-driven granular synthesis)
Scott Barton : Experiment in Augmentation 1 (robotic zither—Cyther—and modular percussion robots)
Nicolas Collins : !trumpet (2018) (for software-propelled trumpet)
Kerry Hagan and John Bowers of The Bowers Hagan Duo (various synthesis algorithms driven with multiple game controllers)
Seth Thorn : Windowless (violin, with "alto.glove" controller-driven processing of live samples)
Arto Artinian, Killick Hinds, and Adam James Wilson of Pitch Prefect (fretless electric guitars by Rick Toone, Haken Continuum Fingerboard, and a semi-autonomous software improvisation agent)
Markov Magic Circles Three Magic Circles are arranged on the stage. Inside them a dawn chorus of LED sings the song of probability through the electromagnetic ether. The magic circle represents a border condition between the chaos of the outside world and the safe space within. A magic circle usually protects the person in it by keeping bad energies out, or it summons an entity using its codified energies. This section of the performance does not have a body in it. The magic circles are animated by Markov chains, deterministic probability structures generated by an algorithm to sound like there is someone there.
Perhaps the performance will summon a ghost from the machine. Markov postulated his ideas on probability as a rebuttal to a theologian, Nekrasov, who believed so fervently in the concept of free will he extended it to inanimate objects. Today Markov chains are used in statistical analysis, neural networks, and AI. If an AI makes an independent decision perhaps it has free will—and so Markov would be proving Nekrasov correct despite proving him wrong.
Spatial Granulator for Solo Augmented Trombone MuBone is a traditional trombone outfitted with electronic orientation sensors and controls. The project consists of custom hardware and software created by instrument designer Travis West, and the development of a new performance practice based on movement, space, and time with the goal of fostering oblique compositional strategies through spatial improvisation. It takes advantage of the trombone's directionality/physicality and incorporates movement/space as expressive inputs. The orientation sensors enable the trombone to act as a virtual XYZ cursor, in other words, as a gestural controller that operates in 3D space. The trombonist's sound is captured using a piezoelectric pick-up on the mouthpiece and the recorded sound is simultaneously granulated and distributed in the virtual 3D space around the performer.
Light Shards Light Shards is an improvisatory work between Dr. Esther Lamneck (tárogató) and Erich Barganier (live electronics) that emerges through Lamneck's energized tárogató passages filtered through and processed by Supercollider with live controls that Barganier manipulates in real time. The individual components build over an increasingly frantic series of sound samples modified with granular synthesis. The effect is a swelling sonic landscape that intensifies to the last possible second.
Experiment in Augmentation 1 Here, a human performer, Cyther (a human-playable robotic zither) and modular percussion robots improvise with each other. The robotic system distinguishes auditory events, creates groupings and finds patterns in order to mimic, transform and generate material. It stores information about past events, and thus has memory, which shapes the expressive choices that it makes. The design of Cyther allows the human performer and the machine to fluidly move between the roles of impulse and filter in the context of a shared medium, inspiring questions about agency. The improvisations illuminate gestures and interactions that are only possible through such technologies, which inspire the exploration of new expressive territory.
!trumpet (2018) I retired rev. 3.0 of my trombone-propelled electronics around 10 years ago, bored with the vocabulary of live signal processing (see http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/TrombonePropelledElectronicsReduced.pdf). But the urge to improvise recently pushed me back into the hybrid instrument fray: a trumpet with a built-in speaker, Hall-effect sensors reading valve positions, a breath control and an infrared-equipped toilet plunger (valving and mute movement acoustically filters the built-in speaker). For 40 years I had chosen technologies according to guidelines that, while perhaps seeming somewhat arbitrary, were based on direct experience: homemade circuitry for touch and instability; software for accurate control and autonomous decisions; musicians for distributed intelligence. With this new instrument I gave myself the challenge of confounding these assumptions: programming a computer to behave and sound like a glitching circuit, and to scramble the interface sufficiently that playing has to be learned afresh on each re-boot. Now I'm in a position of not only improvising with other players, but improvising with the instrument itself.
In a nod to David Tudor's legendary composition Bandoneon! I've dubbed my instrument !trumpet. But where Tudor employed the "!" to indicate "factorial," I use the sign for its logical property of negation: this is definitely not a trumpet.
The Bowers Hagan Duo With as many interfaces as can be brought on the plane, Bowers & Hagan will stick their dirty hands into the very midst of unruly behaviour and non-obvious interaction design. Using synthesis algorithms with extreme sensitivity to gesture, they steer rather than control a complex solfège of pulses, noises, crackles and drones, negotiating a link between chaotic dynamics and improvisation. All relationships are tricky, especially the love polyhedron between Bowers, Hagan, their interfaces, their algorithms and their many noises. But we hope for the best.
Windowless Windowless is a hybrid computational system for improvised violin performance. The system utilizes a custom data glove, the alto.glove, designed by the performer to capture salient features of violin playing. Rapid machining dynamics are blended with slower textural accompaniment via live-recorded sound. Computational dynamics are loose, allowing for unanticipated input magnitudes that thicken the system and make it performatively rich. A custom shoulder rest with haptic feedback coupled to the total sonic output of the system is also used by the performer to symmetrize the action-perception feedback loop.
Pitch Prefect Pitch Prefect is a microtonal supergroup consisting of fretless guitarists Adam James Wilson and Killick Hinds, with Arto Artinian on the Haken Continuum Fingerboard.
From Killick Hinds, on Pitch Prefect's recent recording, The Eagle's Greatest Hiss (released August 28, 2018): "My partners in this no-bumps-in-the-road ensemble are Arto Artinian, a deeply humble, nimble, and philosophical fellow with boundless creative flow, and Adam James Wilson, a stunningly stunning guitarist and highly original thinker building innovative structures with equal measures technology and soul. We have easy rapport in conversation and kinship, a facile exchange that translates readily into these sonic high-tension wires. Superficially, this is impenetrably dense, but there are smooth, slow, and steady pulses circulating throughout. Once you find the calm place herein, it's at the fore each subsequent listen. Thanks to Rick Toone for getting this ball rolling. And thanks as always for listening."
Erich Barganier Erich Barganier (b. 1991) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. He writes chamber, orchestral, film, solo instrumental and electronic music that explores microtonality, extended techniques, melodic interplay, generative processes, and algorithmic phrasing.
His compositions have been performed live or as installations across the world in cities as diverse as New York City, London, Minsk, Sydney, and Kuala Lumpur, and have been recorded on several labels, including Nebularosa Records and Janus Music & Sound.
His music has been featured at The Mostly Modern Festival, The New Music Gathering, Spectra Malaysia, New Music New College, New York University, Spectrum NYC, The University of Georgia, and the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, among others.
He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 and taught English at the Belarus State University of Culture and Arts in Minsk while collecting regional folk songs and performing traditional American music across Eastern Europe.
Erich currently resides in New York City.
Scott Barton Scott Barton composes, performs, and produces (electro)(acoustic) music and develops music technologies. He founded and directs the Music, Perception and Robotics lab at WPI, which develops robotic musical instruments and software that enables human-robot musical interaction. He co-founded EMMI, a collective that designs, builds and performs with robotic musical instruments. As a researcher, programmer, and author, his work in rhythm perception and production has been published in journals such as Music Perception and Acta Psychologica. He is also active in the world of audio production as a recordist, mixer and producer. These varied interests, particularly in rhythm, inspire his compositional efforts, which have been performed throughout the world including at SMC; ICMC; SEAMUS; CMMR and NIME and have been released on a number of record labels (most recently Stylistic Alchemies was released on Ravello Records). He is an Associate Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. http://scottbarton.info
John Bowers John Bowers (UK) works with modular synthesisers, home-brew electronics, reconstructions of antique image and sound-making devices, self-made software, field recordings and esoteric sensor systems. He makes performance environments which mix sound, image and gesture at a fundamental material level, sometimes accompanied by spoken text. His practice often combines improvised performance with walking, urban exploration and the investigation of selected sites to conduct research in an imagined discipline he calls 'mythogeosonics.' He has performed at festivals including the collateral programme of the Venice Biennale, Transmediale/CTM Vorspiel Berlin, Piksel Bergen, Electropixel Nantes, BEAM Uxbridge and Spill Ipswich, and toured with the Rambert Dance Company performing David Tudor's music to Merce Cunningham's Rainforest. He contributed to the design of The Prayer Companion—a piece exhibited twice at the Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and acquired for their permanent collection. Amongst many musical collaborations, he works with Sten-Olof Hellström, Tim Shaw, Kerry Hagan and in the noise drone band Tonesucker. He helps coordinate the label Onoma Research and works in Culture Lab and Fine Art, Newcastle University.
Nicolas Collins New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins spent most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. An early adopter of microcomputers for live performance, Collins also makes use of homemade electronic circuitry and conventional acoustic instruments. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Leonardo Music Journal from 1997 - 2017, and since 1999 has been a Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His book, Handmade Electronic Music - The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge), has influenced emerging electronic music worldwide. http://www.nicolascollins.com
Kerry Hagan Kerry Hagan is a composer and researcher working in both acoustic and computer media. She develops real-time methods for spatialization and stochastic algorithms for musical practice. Her work endeavours to achieve aesthetic and philosophical aims while taking inspiration from mathematical and natural processes. In this way, each work combines art with science and technology from various domains. Her works have been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Kerry also collaborates regularly with Miller Puckette and John Bowers. In 2010, Kerry led a group of practitioners to form the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association, where she served as President until 2015. Currently, she is a Lecturer at the University of Limerick in the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre and Principal Investigator of the Spatialization and Auditory Display Environment (SpADE).
Joe Hertenstein Joe Hertenstein was raised in Germany as the son of a Black Forest lumber jack and boar hunter, spending his childhood carving woods and horns into drumsticks and assembling his first drum set of pots 'n' pans 'n' boar heads on the back of a dis-functioned pick-up truck that served as his childhood-refuge. By age 16 he had hit the timpani on all nine Beethoven symphonies and grew bored of all the 'tacet.' Looking for more involvement, making his ways through cover-, punk-, and doom-core bands, at age 19 a Charlie Parker bootleg cassette left him so confused that he dropped everything to study freedom and ultimate creativity in music. His mission remains to learn from and explore music with (m)any master musician(s), some of which he calls friends and colleagues by now. He hopes to encourage and experience the dialogue with all cultures through music, through the abstract, through friendship and inspiration. Joe is a thalassophile and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Esther Lamneck The New York Times calls Esther Lamneck "an astonishing virtuoso." She has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, with renowned chamber music artists and an international roster of musicians from the new music improvisation scene. A versatile performer and an advocate of contemporary music, she is known for her work with electronic media including interactive arts, movement, dance and improvisation. Ms. Lamneck makes frequent solo appearances on clarinet and the tárogató at music festivals worldwide including ICMC, (International Computer Music Conference), SEAMUS, (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) NYCEMF, (New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival), Il Corpo, La luce, Il Suono, and the Diffrazioni Festival. Many of her solo and Duo CDs feature improvisation and electronic music and include "Cigar Smoke," "Tárogató," "Winds of the Heart," "Genoa Sound Cards," "Stato Liquido," etc. Numerous performances have been selected for the SEAMUS CD Series. Computer Music Journal calls her "the consummate improvisor." Dr. Lamneck is a full professor at New York University's Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions and is artistic director of the NYU New Music Ensemble, an improvising flexible group that works in electronic settings using both fixed media and real-time sound and video processing. http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty/Esther_Lamneck
Kalun Leung Kalun Leung is a trombonist, improvisor, composer and creative technologist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work as an instrumentalist is motivated by the exploration of new and unexpected contexts in which the trombone can thrive. This ongoing research-based approach has manifested in travels to the Guča, the capital of Serbian brass band music, audiovisual performances of Keith Haring's unpublished computer art, a Fluxus-inspired trombone sound sculpture, ecoacoustic improvisations on what was the largest landfill in the world, and the creation of MuBone, a custom electronically-augmented trombone. https://kalunleung.ca
Jess Rowland Jess Rowland is a sound artist, musician, and composer, and a 2018-20 Princeton Arts Fellow. Much of her work explores the relationship between technologies and popular culture, continually aiming to reconcile the world of art and the world of science. At UC Berkeley, she developed techniques for embedded sound and flexible speaker arrays. Her research includes music perception, auditory neurosciences, and music technologies. In addition to an active art practice, she has taught Sound Art at The School of Visual Arts in New York and continues to present her work internationally. Recent installations and performances include the New York Electronic Arts Festival, Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Berkeley Art Museum, and Spectrum NYC.
Margaret Schedel Margaret Anne Schedel is a composer and cellist specializing in the creation and performance of ferociously interactive media. Her works have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. She is a joint author of Cambridge Press's Electronic Music and recently edited on an issue of Organised Sound on sonification. Her research focuses on gesture in music, and the sustainability of technology in art. As an Associate Professor of Music at Stony Brook University, she serves as Co-Director of Computer Music and is a core faculty member of cDACT, the consortium for digital art, culture and technology.
Seth Thorn Seth Thorn is a composer-performer and hardware developer who builds rich computational systems for live violin improvisation. He has presented work at ICMC, SEAMUS, NIME, NYCEMF, and the Guthman Competition, has published with NIME, and has forthcoming publications with TEI and Leonardo Music Journal. Seth earned a Ph.D from Brown University in 2018 and currently teaches in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University.
Sofy Yuditskaya Sofy (@horusVacui) is a site-specific media artist and educator working with video, interactivity, projections, code, paper, and salvaged material. Her work focuses on techno-occult rituals, street performance, and participatory art. Sofy's performances enact and reframe hegemonies. She works with materials that exemplify our deep entanglement with petro-culture and technology's affect on consciousness. She has worked on projects at Eyebeam, 3LD, the Rubin Museum, the Netherlands Institute voor Media Kunst, ARS Electronica, Games for Learning Institute, The Guggenheim (NYC), The National Mall, and has taught workshops at GAFFTA and MoMA. She is a Ph.D Candidate in Audio-Visual Composition at NYU GSAS.
Jen Baker, Sarah Lawrence College, Brooklyn Conservatory — submission evaluator
Cort Lippe and Esther Lamneck : Duo Improvisation for Tárogató and Computer
Kris Force : Diamond Body (transducer-activated cello)
Kevin Patton and Erin Rogers : Cast Down Thither (laptop, tenor saxophone)
Joe Cantrell : Blackbox Loops (feedback system for broken audio equipment)
Douglas Geers, Maja Cerar, and Esther Lamneck, : Oracle (laptop, violin, tárogató)
Kristina Warren : Stochast ("Exoskeleton" controller, voice, computer)
Adam James Wilson : Plectrodon (fretless electric guitar and automatic improvisation system)
Lyn Goeringer and Chris Peck : flipper (theremin, flute, various software controllers)
Jeff Kaiser and David Borgo : KaiBorg performance (trumpet, saxophone, electronics)
Duo Improvisation for Tárogató and Computer The New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, with its focus on works for improvisational performers using interactive computer systems, is the ideal venue for Esther Lamneck and Cort Lippe to present their work. They have collaborated on interactive improvisatory works for a number of years, and have had the opportunity to present concerts of their collaborative efforts in multiple venues around the world. Esther performs on tárogató, while Cort performs on an interactive system developed during many years of working in the field of interactive music. The system tracks aspects of Esther's performance, including pitch, amplitude, timbre, articulation, tempi, etc., and makes use of this information to influence the electronic part during the performance. Musically, since there is a feedback loop between three agents—Esther, Cort, and the computer—perhaps the title should be Trio for... instead of Duo for...
Diamond Body Diamond Body is a scalable electroacoustic composition employing custom (Max/MSP) granular synthesis performed through transducer activated cello body with live performed string accompaniment. The transduced sounds and the performed sounds from the cello are combined and re-amplified with additional processing. A recording of Diamond Body appears on Tulpamancers: A Collection of Sonic Thoughtforms, Silent Records, USA, 2017.
Blackbox Loops Blackbox Loops is an audio performance that creates evolving soundscapes using only obsolete, broken and discarded electronic equipment. The main engine of the piece originates from low-quality digital multi effects processors put into audio feedback. In this state, they generate wildly different sounds than they were initially designed to produce. The resulting sounds range from soothing drones to frenetic pulses. Being in a state of feedback also ensures that their actions are at least partially unpredictable. In his sense the performer must share agency with the objects involved with the performance, and compels a form of audio production that is cooperative with the material history of the devices and their actions.
Oracle Oracle is a trio for tárogató, violin, and computer, in which the three performers improvise within a predetermined general structure. As the piece proceeds, the computer passes through a series of states of behavior, and the performers interact with it and one another in evolving relationships and goals. The computer's output is created solely from the audio signals of the acoustic instruments.
Stochast Stochast is for vocal body & Exoskeleton, a hybrid analog-digital controller I designed and built. This piece is an exploration of the unique physical affordances of the Exoskeleton and how these may find complementary or conflicting expression in extended vocal techniques. The Exoskeleton functions by forming different bodily connections, for instance wrist to wrist, each of which closes a unique circuit, in turn varying both analog audio and digital control output. The MaxMSP patch is, obviously, largely stochastic, an attempt toward parity within the human-computer interaction. Stochast seeks new ways of understanding the timbre and temporality of the vocal body as mediated by rhythm and noise.
Plectrodon Plectrodon is the latest version of my evolving real-time human-computer improvisation system. The system incorporates a novel software component enabling the computer to improvise in the musical styles of its human collaborators. It also generates formal structures for independent musical accompaniment from the aggregate data supplied by the human performers. All of this is achieved with an adaptation of the online factor oracle algorithm, which is used to build and update automata representing all substrings of notes from the human performance—in the smallest number of states—and perform rapid pattern matching on the results to generate more or less stylistically coherent musical responses. In this instance, the system receives input from a fretless electric guitar player in real-time.
flipper Interaction with computers is at the center of this collaboration, as each of us focus on different, yet compatible, approaches to improvising with computers. In this new collaboration, we explore noise, silence, and the full continuum between supportive and antagonistic (or humorous) musical interactivity. In this performance, Chris Peck will be using computer, flute, and assorted sundries; and Lyn Goeringer on computer using alternative controllers and various sounding objects.
KaiBorg KaiBorg explores the intersections of cutting-edge computer music and contemporary improvisation. Employing custom signal processing techniques and hardware mapping strategies, the musicians perform on hybrid instruments (woodwinds and brass with electronics) that extend their acoustic sonic palettes, all without sacrificing the sense of intimacy and speed of interaction required in improvised settings. In our co-authored text, "Configurin(g) KaiBorg: Interactivity, ideology, and agency in electro-acoustic improvised music," we explore how technology is a part of our improvisations, that the computer plays a crucial role: "Configurin(g) allows us to extend this theoretical orientation further into the domain of improvised music and to shed additional light on the embodied and performative aspects that define, enable and constrain our mutually constituted relationships between bodies and machines, and between sonic, material, and social space...one does not configure something; rather, one configures and is configured in some way."
David Borgo David Borgo is a saxophonist, ethnomusicologist (Ph.D., UCLA 1999), and Professor and Chair of Music at UC San Diego, where he teaches in the Integrative Studies and Jazz and Music of the African Diaspora programs. David has published widely on the social, cultural, historical and cognitive dimensions of music-making, including a book titled Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age, which won the Alan P. Merriam Prize in 2006 from the Society for Ethnomusicology. As a saxophonist, David has performed and/or studied with many jazz luminaries, including Herbie Hancock, David Liebman, Billy Higgins, Kenny Burrell, Gerald Wilson, Harold Land, David Baker, Snooky Young, George Lewis, Evan Parker, Sam Rivers, John Tchicai, Anthony Davis, and Mark Dresser. With his own ensembles David has toured in the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, and he has released ten albums of original music. In addition to performing electro-acoustic improvisation with KaiBorg (http://kaiborg.com), David co-leads Kronomorfic (http://kronomorfic.com), an ensemble of forward-thinking musicians that creates "complex, unorthodox, and unpredictable" music full of layered meters and polyrhythms that is "cutting-edge yet wildly accessible."
Joe Cantrell Joe Cantrell is a digital artist and researcher specializing in sound art, installations, and performances inspired by the implications of technological objects and practices, investigating the incessant acceleration of technological production, ownership, and obsolescence. He has presented, performed, and installed his work in numerous venues in the US and abroad, and has been honored with grants by New Music USA, the Creative Capital foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Qualcomm Institute Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences, among others. Joe holds a BFA in music technology from Cal Arts, an MFA in digital arts and new media from UC Santa Cruz, and a PhD in music from UC San Diego.
Maja Cerar Violinist Maja Cerar's repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the present, and her stage experience includes performances with live electronics as well as theater and dance.
Since her debut in the Zürich Tonhalle in 1991, she has performed internationally as a soloist with orchestras and given recitals with distinguished artists. She has played at festivals such as the Davos "Young Artist in Concert," Gidon Kremer's Lockenhaus Festival, the ISCM World Music Days in Ljubljana, the ICMC (Singapore, Barcelona, New York, Texas), SEAMUS (Texas, Arizona, Florida), the "Viva Vivaldi" festival in Mexico City, and numerous others. In 2016, she was the featured performer at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, an event of the New York Philharmonic Biennial.
Her collaborative works have been featured at the "Re:New Frontiers of Creativity" symposium celebrating the 250th anniversary of Columbia University and "LITSK" festival at Princeton University. In 2007 she was an invited performer at the SIGGRAPH multimedia conference/festival in San Diego. Since 2014 she has also created her own works, fostered by The Tribeca Film Institute's "Tribeca Hacks" and by the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival, involving robotics and wearable motion sensors.
Maja Cerar has premiered and recorded numerous works written for and dedicated to her. She has worked with many composers, including Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Sebastian Currier, R. Luke DuBois, Beat Furrer, Elizabeth Hoffman, György Kurtág, Alvin Lucier, Katharine Norman, Yoshiaki Onishi, Morton Subotnick, and John Zorn.
She graduated with honors from the Zürich-Winterthur Conservatory, and earned a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from Columbia University, where she is currently a member of the Music performance faculty. http://www.majacerar.com
Kris Force Kris Force is a composer, improviser and performer of electroacoustic music, and a new media artist living and working in the San Francisco bay area. Kris works as a solo artist and collaborator with select groups and individuals. She is an award-winning sound designer for all types of media. Her work utilizes forms including sound, installation, drawing, painting, performance, video art and new media. In her practice, the transformation of media characteristics through processes of decay, duplication, juxtaposition, materiality, signal and transmission, and the possibility of capturing the liminal moment of transformation, is an ongoing pursuit. Kris is interested in the medium taking on its own intelligence, apart from her creation, thereby employing data streams, living signals, sympathetic resonances, generative algorithms and self-realizing systems.
Douglas Geers Douglas Geers is an Associate Professor of Music at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, where he is Director of the Center for Computer Music and Director of the MFA program in Sonic Arts. As a composer, Geers uses technology in all of his works, including concert music, installations, and large multimedia theater works. He also performs as an improviser, playing laptop and homemade electronic instruments. Geer' music has been performed and installations exhibited in a wide range of venues across the world and on a wide range of concerts and festivals. Groups that have performed Geer' music include Ensemble Fa, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble Pi, the NODUS Ensemble, The Radio-Television Orchestra of Slovenia, the Princeton University Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), the Verge Ensemble, the NEXt Ens, Miolina, Zeitgeist, The New York University New Music Ensemble, Choral Chameleon, and the Dessoff Choirs. Performers include Esther Lamneck, Blair McMillen, Madeleine Shapiro, Keith Kirchoff, Maja Cerar, Jinsoo Lim, Lisa Bahn, Saul Bitran, Jed Distler, Kamala Sankaram, Shiau-uen Ding, Darryn Zimmer, Matthew Polashek, and Greg Beyer. For more information, please see http://www.dgeers.com.
Lyn Goeringer Lyn Goeringer is a sound artist who works with video, sound, and light. She creates video art for gallery installation, improvised live performance, and dance. Her work is often playful but complex, engaging with everyday objects towards abstract results. Her academic research interests engage with sound, power, infrastructure, space, place, and the everyday. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music and the Film Studies Program in the English Department at Michigan State University.
Cort Lippe Cort Lippe studied composition and computer music with Larry Austin; followed composition seminars with various composers including Boulez, Donatoni, K. Huber, Messiaen, Penderecki, Stockhausen, and Xenakis; spent three years at the Institute of Sonology, working with G.M. Koenig and Paul Berg; worked three years at Xenakis' studio CEMAMu, while following Xenakis' courses on acoustics and formalized music at the University of Paris; and was employed for nine years at IRCAM, where he gave courses on new technology in composition, developed real-time computer music applications, and was part of the original development team for the software Max. His research includes more than 35 peer-reviewed publications on interactive music, granular sampling, score following, spectral processing, FFT-based spatial distribution/delay, acoustic instrument parameter mapping, and instrument design. His compositions, recorded on more than 30 CDs, have received numerous international prizes, been performed at major festivals worldwide, and written for many internationally acclaimed new music soloists and ensembles. He has been a regular visiting professor at universities/conservatories in Japan, Denmark, Greece, Mexico and the USA. In 2009 he was a recipient of a Fulbright Award, and spent six months at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Since 1994 he has taught in the Department of Music of the University at Buffalo, where he is an associate professor of composition and director of the Lejaren Hiller Computer Music Studios. https://www.cortlippe.com
Chris Peck Chris Peck is a composer, computer musician, and improviser who often collaborates with artists in contemporary dance and theater. Current projects include music for LA-based choreographer Milka Djordjevich's Anthem, which will have its New York premiere at the Chocolate Factory Theater in May, and New Joy, a new music-theater work with choreographer Eleanor Bauer, which will premiere at Schauspielhaus Bochum in 2019. Peck also performs as an improviser with Jon Moniaci and Stephen Rush under the name Crystal Mooncone. The trio's fifth album, Listening Beam Five, is now available from Innova Recordings.
Erin Rogers Erin Rogers is a saxophonist, composer, and performance artist based in New York City. She has performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Music-On-The-Edge (Pittsburgh), the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and the Park Avenue Armory with ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, wildUp, and Music for Copland House. She is co-artistic director of theatrically-charged ensemble, thingNY, experimental duo Popebama, New Thread Saxophone Quartet, and HYPERCUBE, a mixed quartet specializing in "fearless and flawless" performances (Sequenza 21). Her work has crossed genres from theatre-to-installation-to-silence, through collaborations with Orange Theatre, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Harvestworks, and Music for Contemplation. As composer and performer, she has been featured on the Ecstatic Music Festival, Prototype Festival, and Splice Festival with an upcoming commission on the 2018 MATA Festival. http://www.erinmrogers.com
Kristina Warren Kristina Warren (http://kmwarren.org) is an acoustic and multimedia composer, improviser, and researcher based in Providence RI [US]. Motivated by the unique intersections of noise and listening, Warren's work takes many forms, including electronic/vocal performance, novel analog/digital instruments, compositions for/with chamber ensembles, and scholarship on gender in electronic music. Her work has been programmed at events such as the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition [US], Espace des arts sans frontières [FR], ICMC [GR, NL], ISSTA [IE], Mise-En Music Festival [US], NYCEMF [US], and TENOR [ES], and performed by ensembles such as Chartreuse, Dither, Ekmeles, JACK Quartet, loadbang, Meehan / Perkins Duo, Sō Percussion, and Third Coast Percussion. She has been selected as a PEO Scholar Award recipient (2016), an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2016), and a finalist in the American Composers Forum National Composition Contest (2014). Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Electronic Music & Multimedia at Brown University, Warren holds a PhD in Composition & Computer Technologies from University of Virginia (2017) and a BA in Music Composition from Duke University (2011).
Lauren Hayes, Ph.D, Arizona State University — submission evaluator
Kevin Patton and Jaimie Branch : Cast Down Thither (laptop and trumpet)
Jonghyun Kim : Performance for Leap Motion Controller and Granular Synthesis
Lauren Sarah Hayes : Riot Map Vision (hybrid analog/digital performance system)
Kerry Hagan and Miller Puckette : Hack Lumps (networked laptop improvisation system)
Thomas Ciufo and Curtis Bahn : Sonic Constructions (hybrid acoustic/electronic instruments)
Nick Demopoulos : Archeon Eon ("Smomid" and "Pyramidi" invented electronic instruments)
Adam James Wilson : Skronkbot (fretless electric guitar and automatic improvisation system)
Doug Van Nort : Solo Improvisation with GREIS (tablet controller and GREIS improvisation system)
Jeff Kaiser : ZEITNOT (Bb trumpet, quartertone trumpet, flugelhorn, interactive audio software)
Cast Down Thither Cast Down Thither is an improvised duet between trumpeter Jaimie Branch and Kevin Patton steering the BrundleFly Framework. The BrundleFly Framework is a series of DSP modules built in Max/ MSP/Jitter that use a real-time analysis of Jaimie's performance to control the parameters of the different DSP modules. The modules also operate independently through various levels of controlled randomness to challenge Jaimie with anomaly, the unexpected, the disruptive, and the contradictory.
Performance for Leapmotion and Granular Synthesis Motion-controlled granular synthesis using Leapmotion. The granular synthesizer was programmed in Puredata. The performer swings his hands in the 3D axis above the Leapmotion controller. The aim of this piece is discovering new spatial sounds with the motion-tracking sensor.
Riot Map Vision This improvisation was formed out of a playful exploration of my most recent hybrid analogue/digital performance system. An excessive number of components mutually affect each other through a network of sound analysis and DSP. Engaging with different parts of the instrument through a game controller, I bring a sense of immediacy into my hands: the slightest movement may trigger a mechanical relay bank, which in turn may activate digital processes.
Hack Lumps Hack Lumps is an improvised duo with three unstable oscillators, 72 stochastic samplers and two loudspeakers, which form a single musical system, in which one player's influence is gestural and the other's textural. These opposing origins combine to form an intricate, inter-related instrument. Built into this instrument is a moderate degree of unpredictability and instability, so the musicians are also contending with the dynamics of the system itself. The instrument variably lends itself to making large formal shapes and disruptive, unexpected discontinuities.
Sonic Constructions Sonic Constructions is an improvisational electronic music performance by composer-improvisers Curtis Bahn and Thomas Ciufo, who design, build, and perform on computer extended instruments. This performance project has developed around a gestural and sonic language that explores the expressive capabilities of a range of custom build, hybrid acoustic/electronic instruments. Utilizing a variety of physical interfaces and signal processing techniques, these constructed/composed instruments extend acoustic sound sources and location specific field recordings through real-time computer processing and sonic transformation. Custom instruments developed by Bahn and Ciufo include the eSitar, eDilruba, the eighth nerve hybrid electric guitar, the prepared physical / digital piano, as well as a collection of flutes and percussive objects.
Archeon Eon Archeon Eon is a piece named after and inspired by the period in Earth's history 4 to 2.5 billion years ago when some believe life came into existence. This piece is performed on electronic instruments called "Smomid" and "Pyramidi" that were designed and built by Nick Demopoulos. The Smomid is an instrument that allows a guitar player to interface with interactive computer music software. In this piece, the melodic content played by the instrumentalist is analyzed and used to generate harmonies and a bass voice. Rhythmic elements of the piece are constantly varied and shifted using several processes that periodically displace voices across several axes.
Skronkbot Skronkbot is the latest version of my evolving real-time human-computer improvisation system. The system incorporates a novel software component enabling the computer to improvise in the musical styles of its human collaborators. It also generates formal structures for independent musical accompaniment from the aggregate data supplied by the human performers. All of this is achieved with an adaptation of the online factor oracle algorithm, which is used to build and update automata representing all substrings of notes from the human performance—in the smallest number of states—and perform rapid pattern matching on the results to generate more or less stylistically coherent musical responses. In this instance, the system receives input from a fretless electric guitar player in real-time.
Solo Improvisation with GREIS The latest evolution in my electroacoustic improvisation practice using my GREIS system. The practice centers on live sculptural (granular, additive, vocoder, source-filter, concatenative/mosaicing) transformation of both incoming signals as well as a growing array of field recordings, ranging from environmental and machinic sounds to recorded acoustic instruments. The system acts as a mirroring partner, re-presenting past content in an altered state and forcing me to react in the moment.
ZEITNOT The music in this work furthers my development of software for live improvisation, creating a hybrid sonic environment of human, trumpet, software and space. The majority of sounds you hear are created live with my trumpet and voice and then processed by software I author in Max. Other sounds you hear include selections from a sample library I have been creating by recording the trumpet while it is not being played in the traditional fashion: the sound of air escaping from slides, valves descending and ascending, pipes and bells being struck and plucked. These libraries are accessed by rhythm and pitch generators that provide a context for live improvisation. The processing of the live sound—and triggering of sample library events—is interactive through the use of pitch and dynamic followers, onset detection, and through the software itself making decisions by a variety of probability gates.
Curtis Bahn Curtis Bahn is an improvising composer involved in relationships of body, gesture, technology and sound. He holds a PhD in music composition from Princeton University, and studies Hindustani classical music as a formal disciple of acclaimed sitarist, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan. He has taught at Columbia University, Brown, NYU, Princeton and CUNY. His music has been presented internationally at venues including Lincoln Center, Sadler's Wells—London, Palais Garnier—Paris, Grand Theatre de la Ville—Luxembourg, as well as numerous festivals, small clubs and academic conferences. He has worked with the Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham Dance Companies. Curtis recently was named the Ralph Samuelson Fellow through the Asian Cultural Council, receiving a grant to study and collaborate with artists in India.
Jaimie Branch In a generation crowded with trumpet talent, Jaimie Branch has emerged in recent years as a unique voice capable of transforming every ensemble of which she is a part. At times fierce and direct, her scintillating tone also has the ability to ignite music from within while propelling a group organically. In 2015, Branch exploded onto the New York scene, quickly building associations with many of the other key innovators such as Brandon Lopez, Shayna Dulburger, Chris Welcome, Sam Weinberg, Chris Pitsiokos, Max Johnson, Kevin Shea, Jason Ajemian, Weasel Walter, Jason Nazary, Nathanial Morgan, Mike Pride, and Chad Taylor (attr: jazzrightnow.com).
Thomas Ciufo Thomas Ciufo is a sound artist, composer, improviser, and researcher working at the intersections of electroacoustic performance, interactive instrument design, sonic art and emerging digital technologies. He holds a PhD in Computer Music and New Media from Brown University. International festival presentations or performances include Visiones Sonoras in Mexico City, the Enaction in Arts Conference in France, the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference (Vancouver, Genoa, Montreal and Ann Arbor) as well as numerous conference presentations for the International Computer Music Society and International Society for Improvised Music.
Nick Demopoulos Nick Demopoulos is a performer, composer, and instrument builder. As a guitarist he worked with NEA Jazz master Chico Hamilton from 2008 to 2013 and recorded on the albums The Inquiring Mind, Revelation, and Euphoric. He also released several recordings with Exegesis, a group that mixes jazz and electronic music. In 2008, Exegesis traveled on behalf of the State Department to conduct cultural diplomacy and perform in Bahrain, Yemen; Oman, U.A.E; and Kuwait. Other artists he has worked with include choreographer Camille Brown, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, George Bohannon, Jimmy Owens, Don Mckenzie, Willie Jones the 3rd, and Intra Faction. Nick's current primary pursuit is performing with his String Modeling MIDI Device (Smomid), a guitar-like interface, and Pyramidi, a triangular MIDI interface resembling a console—instruments that he designed and built. In January 2015 he released his first full-length album of music created only with Smomid and Pyramidi instruments, called Rhythms of Light. With his Smomid, Nick has been featured on the Discovery Science Network, Guitar World, Create Digital Music, Metal Injection and Popular Noise Magazine, among others.
Lauren Sarah Hayes Lauren Sarah Hayes is a musician and sound artist who builds and performs with hybrid analogue/digital instruments. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sound Studies within the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. Her research explores new strategies for live electronic performance by investigating the performer's physical relationship with the digital realm. Her music lies somewhere between free improv, experimental pop, techno, and noise. She also composes haptic music that can be experienced as vibration throughout the body, and enjoys performing in unusual locations.
Lauren has written about embodied music cognition, enactive approaches to digital instrument design, and haptic technologies (Contemporary Music Review, Organised Sound). She is a regular improviser, enjoying a wide range of collaborators, and for over a decade has given multisensory workshops for various groups, including those with sensory impairment, learning difficulties, and autism. Her person-centered approaches often result in custom built instruments designed specifically for a user. She is an associate of the New Radiophonic Workshop.
Jonghyun Kim Jonghyun Kim studied composition, piano, and computer programming at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. His pieces have been performed in New York (USA), University of North Texas (USA), Griffith University (Australia), ZKM (Germany), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Musikhochschule Freiburg, and accepted at several international computer music festivals, such as ICMC 2015, Nime 2016, Linux Audio Conference 2015. Currently, he is teaching computer music and composition at the Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Kaywon University of Art & Design in Gyeonggi-do, Chonbuk National University in Jeonju.
Miller Puckette Miller Puckette is known as the creator of the Max and Pure Data real-time computer music software environments, which are taught and used by electronic musicians and artists worldwide. Originally a mathematician, he won the Putnam mathematics competition in 1979 and received a PhD from Harvard University in 1986. He was a researcher at the MIT Media lab from its inception until 1986, then at IRCAM (Paris, France), and is now professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and at the Technical University of Berlin.
Puckette performs with the Convolution Brothers and in a duo with Juliana Snapper, and has performed in concert music by composers Rand Steiger, Philippe Manoury, and Pierre Boulez, in venues including the Ojai Music festival, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Centre Acantes, and Carnegie Hall. He has been awarded two honorary degrees and the SEAMUS prize.
Doug Van Nort Doug Van Nort is a sonic artist/researcher whose work is concerned with the complex and embodied nature of listening, improvisation both with and by machines, the phenomenology of time consciousness and of collective co-creation. His research takes the form of scholarly writings on these phenomena, composed and improvised electroacoustic music, pieces of sound-focused art and software artifacts designed and developed in these pursuits. Van Nort's work is a synthesis of his background in mathematics, media arts, music composition and performance; in recent years he has a growing engagement with teaching courses and workshops that combine this set of experiences with his unique take on Deep Listening practice, in which he is a certified instructor. Van Nort is currently a Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor at York University in Toronto, while also working as an Assistant Editor for the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press).
Heidi Boisvert, Ph.D, New York City College of Technology — submission evaluator
We are pleased to announce the inaugural NYC EIS concert program:
Chapman Welch : 500 Great Things about Wichita, performed by Brandon Bell
Dafna Naphtali and Jen Baker : Clip Mouth Unit performance
Eric Lyon : Parallel Noise Construction, performed by Eric Lyon and Pauline Kim Harris
Kevin Patton and Nikki D'Agostino : A Bird Escaped From the Snare of its Fowler
Adam James Wilson : Eighteen, performed by Adam James Wilson and Arto Artinian
Margaret Schedel : Tattoo of a Gesture : performed by Christopher Howard
Paul Botelho : Solo for Voice and Computer
The concert will take place at 6:00 PM on Saturday, February 27, 2016 at New York City College of Technology's Voorhees Theater, 186 Jay Street in Brooklyn (Google map).
500 Great Things about Wichita This piece uses flexible formal structures and controlled improvisation. The flexibility allows the performer to shape the form and content of the resultant work. During the performance, the computer records and manipulates the performer's input and uses these materials to accompany or disrupt the later sections of the work. The piece was commissioned by Brandon Bell as part of a 2014 Presser Graduate Music Award from The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.
Clip Mouth Unit Clip Mouth Unit is an ongoing duo project of Dafna Naphtali and Jen Baker (live sound-processing/electronics/voice and trombone/multiphonics/voice). After improvising/performing together for several years, including a presentation at 2014 ISIM (International Society of Improvising Musicians Conference), the duo have created a unique set of open-form compositions/improvisation environments for their multi-faceted performance concept, merging electroacoustics, multiphonics and extended techniques. The duo has enjoyed specifically working on open-form pieces (deck of cards, inspired by Stockhausen's original scoring for Stimmung) addressing all of those music possibilities in conjunction with true experimentation with sound-processing-as-musical-instrument. This evolving deck of cards contains improvisation behaviors, notated themes, simple gestures/suggestions, and scenarios of overlap and juxtapositions of acoustic/electric and extended techniques.
Parallel Noise Construction Since 2009, I have applied the process of articulated noise to instrumental improvisation. This is implemented with Max patches on multiple computers connected on a local WiFi network, which generate correlated random instructions for each instrumentalist. The resulting noise-guided improvisation sequence is different for each performance. Parallel Noise Construction takes this process one step further by randomly generating both the instructions for instrumental improvisation and a randomly organized DSP configuration for each violinist.
A Bird Escaped From the Snare of its Fowler A Bird Escaped From the Snare of its Fowler is an improvisation between saxophonist Nikki D'Agostino and the BrundleFly Framework. The BrundleFly Framework is a series of DSP modules built in Max/MSP/Jitter that use a real-time analysis of Nikki's performance to control the parameters of the different modules. The modules also operate independently through various levels of controlled randomness to challenge Nikki with anomaly, the unexpected, the disruptive, and the contradictory.
Eighteen Eighteen is the latest version of my evolving real-time human-computer improvisation system. The system incorporates a novel software component enabling the computer to improvise in the musical styles of its human collaborators. It also generates formal structures for independent musical accompaniment from the aggregate data supplied by the human performers. All of this is achieved with an adaptation of the online factor oracle algorithm, which is used to build and update automata representing all substrings of notes from the human performance—in the smallest number of states—and perform rapid pattern matching on the results to generate more or less stylistically coherent musical responses. In this instance, the system receives input from a fretless electric guitar and a Haken Continuum fingerboard, played by myself and Arto Artinian, respectively.
Tattoo of a Gesture In 2013, percussionist Patti Cudd asked me to write her a piece that could travel well and used her twenty-inch bendir as a focal point. This constraint dictated the orchestration—a small bongo rounds out the membraneaphones while elephant bells, singing bowls and cymbals create a metallic orchestra. Inspired by the range of sounds Xenakis and Gordon were able to coax out of simple 2x4's, I included three slats of wood cut to fit the dimensions of her suitcase with various treatments including moleskin, sandpaper, and drilled holes. A number of striking and muting implements allow me to generate a wide variety of sounds and textures from this small set of instruments that are then processed and augmented by the electronics.
The piece has 9 movements: I gave Patti ten English phrases, she chose one for the title and ordered the remaining nine. Each of the movements uses the same processing techniques in the same order, although they can be compressed to 1.5 minutes or develop over 6.5 minutes. These fixed positions define the form, but the live percussion projects through these potentialities in very different ways. The first step of the processing acts almost like a sieve—only allowing certain sets of frequencies or dynamics at specific times in to be analyzed and manipulated by the computer. In this way, each movement shows a different angle to the piece; the whole is only suggested, heard behind a tattered veil. Notation for each of the movements varies wildly, some are textual improvisation instructions, others are done in graphic notation, while still others are rigorously notated in rhythms I expect the performer to attempt to play accurately while not expecting them to be able to do so.
The piece also exists as shorter paths through the movements in order to make it more flexible for concert presentation. The entire piece is almost forty minutes, but three of the four alternate paths are under ten minutes.
My good friend David Wetzel realized the electronic portion using his Interactive Event Manager (IEM), a scriptable, modular environment for interactive computer music. I designed the electronics knowing the capabilities of his system. Many thanks to Christopher Howard, a doctoral percussion student at Stony Brook University, who helped with the development of the percussion mechanics and techniques.
Solo for Voice and Computer Solo for Voice and Computer is a new improvisatory work for voice and computer. I am a vocalist (countertenor) who specializes in performing with extended vocal techniques. The work includes several computer processes that will transform the voice into electro-acoustic textures, upon which I sing, reacting in an improvisatory fashion to the computer-generated textures.
Jen Baker Trombonist Jen Baker is a new music specialist and has performed internationally in ensembles spanning symphonic music and free improvisation. Baker's solo multiphonic project, Lyrical Vibrations, has been performed around the country, including at the 2008 ISIM conference in Denver, and can also be heard on her solo album, Blue Dreams. An active commissioner of new solo works for trombone, she is currently performing transcriptions of her own improvisations and collaborating with other composers as part of her ongoing vision to improve the repertoire for solo trombone.
Brandon Bell Houston-based percussionist Brandon Bell is active as a performer and educator. He is currently pursuing a doctor of musical arts degree at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, where he is the Malcolm W. Perkins Teaching Fellow, and is curator of the New Art/New Music series at the Rice Gallery. A fierce advocate of the music of our time, Bell used the 2014 Presser Graduate Music Award to fund Plugged In, a commissioning project that resulted in five new works for solo percussion and interactive technologies. He has also performed electronic works at numerous conventions and festivals, including PASIC, Electric LaTex, Null Point, Root Signals, Houston Fringe Festival, and ICMC. In addition, Bell produced and performed in the Houston premieres of John Luther Adams' Inuksuit, and Michael Gordon's Timber. In addition to performing, Bell has also taught at numerous Houston-area colleges and universities, including Rice University, Lone Star College-Cyfair, and Sam Houston State University, where he served as the acting director of percussion studies as a sabbatical replacement during the spring 2015 semester. As a young artist with Da Camera for two seasons, Bell worked with hundreds of children in elementary schools throughout Houston. A native of Buffalo, New York, Bell received a Master of Music degree from Rice University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. He spends his summers in Aspen, Colorado, where he is the percussion manager of the Aspen Music Festival and School.
Paul Botelho Paul J. Botelho is a composer, performer, developer, and artist whose work includes a series of one-act operas, acoustic and electro-acoustic music, multimedia installation pieces, visual art works, and vocal improvisation. He performs as a vocalist primarily with extended technique and incorporates the voice into many of his pieces. His work has been performed, presented, and exhibited in concerts, festivals, galleries, and museums across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Botelho received an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University, an M.A. in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College, and a B.F.A. in Contemporary Music Performance and Composition from the College of Santa Fe. Currently he is Assistant Professor of Music at Bucknell University where he teaches music composition.
Pauline Kim Harris Pauline Kim Harris is a Grammy-nominated artist who engages in music from classical to the experimental/avant-garde. Since recording John Zorn's tour de force solo violin work Passagen for Tzadik in 2012, choreographer Pam Tanowitz created a duet named after the piece with Pauline playing onstage. Premiered at the Joyce Theater in 2013, it was also presented by Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the Chicago Dance Company. As the first violinist of the Alchemy String Quartet, she completed a European tour in the "Zorn @60" concerts in London, Gent, North Sea and Warsaw, as well as at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Miller Theater and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. She is member of the S.E.M Ensemble, Ostravska Banda, OBSq, Ensemble LPR, the Wordless Music Orchestra and the "enterprising violin duo" String Noise. Pauline has been a guest artist with many of the leading new music ensembles to include Talea, Argento, Transit, Ensemble Signal and Alarm Will Sound and has toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As Music Director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, she toured the US, Germany, France and Holland as well as performing with the Orion String Quartet at The Joyce Theater for the 30th Year Anniversary Celebration. As a soloist, Pauline has performed in the LIVE screening of There Will Be Blood with Jonny Greenwood and the Wordless Music Orchestra at the United Palace Theatre in New York City, presented the Southeast Asian Premiere of John Zorn's Contes De Fees with the Thailand Philharmonic at TICF, and gave the Czech premiere of Helmut Oehring's Vier Jahreszeiten with Ostravska Band at Ostrava New Music Days. Pauline is the featured soloist in Petr Kotik's opera MASTER-PIECES and is the founding member of "Holographic," an electroacoustic multimedia work by Daniel Wohl, co-commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music, Mass MoCA and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Husband Conrad Harris and Pauline curated Drawing Sound: Part II at the Drawing Center - a three night mini-festival featuring artists Alvin Lucier, Greg Saunier and Jad Fair. A collaborative work with sound artist Gordon Monahan, A Note And Its Lifetime featuring Pauline was installed on the Floating Library in NYC on the Hudson River (Pier 25) aboard the Lilac Museum Steamship. STRING NOISE: THE BOOK OF STRANGE POSITIONS was released on Northern Spy Records on November 27, 2015, available world-wide showcasing original compositions and punk rock arrangements by Eric Lyon showcasing songs by Deerhoof, Violent Femmes, Radiohead, Black Flag, Bad Brains and Half Japanese. Pauline's first feature album /SHä'kôn/ will highlight new works inspired by Bach's Chaconne. Pauline Kim Harris was a member in the final masterclass of Jascha Heifetz.
Christopher Howard Christopher Howard is a percussionist from St. Louis, Missouri who is currently based in Long Island. He enjoys exploring a wide range of musical styles with many different groups. He has performed in New York City with Iktus Percussion Group and the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, with a focus on electro-acoustic works that include performances at conferences such as the Percussive Arts Society International Conference, Machine Fantasies, and the New York City Electronic Music Festival. He has played jazz and explored free improvisation with world-renowned trombonist Ray Anderson and others around the Long Island area. He has also performed, toured, and recorded with the award-winning Fountain City Brass Band multiple times in Europe. This varied background has made him a versatile musician interested in crossing the boundaries between these many different genres. Chris has a BM in Percussion Performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he studied with Nick Petrella, and is currently working on his DMA at SUNY Stony Brook under Eduardo Leandro, where he also received his Masters Degree.
Chapman Welch Chapman Welch received his D.M.A. in music composition and electronic music from the University of North Texas where he worked at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI). Currently, he is a lecturer at Rice University where he serves as the electroacoustic specialist for the Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs (REMLABS). He was recently commissioned by the city of Houston, along with composer Anthony Brandt and visual artist Jo Fleischhauer, to create an installation for the market square clock tower. The six-month installation tunes the sounds of downtown Houston to create a resonant glow that is improvised by the computer each hour. Other recent commissions include works for saxophonist Woody Witt, percussionist Patti Cudd, the American Harp Society, and the Liminal Space Duo as well as a multimedia collaboration with visual artist Carmen Montoya for the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College. In addition, Welch's article "Programming Machines and People: Techniques for Live Improvisation with Electronics" was published in the Leonardo Music Journal and discusses his interactive work Moiré, which was included in the Music from SEAMUS CD series. Active as a performer, Chapman's diverse musical interests have allowed him to appear in settings ranging from performances of Stockhausen's Kontakte with percussionist Christopher Deane to improvising with traditional American "fiddle" tunes at the National Flatpicking Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas. Welch's music has been presented at numerous festivals in the United States and abroad, including June in Buffalo, Third Practice Festival, SPARK, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, ICMC, and SEAMUS conferences.
William Brent, Ph.D, American University — submission evaluator
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Call for Works
The Emerging Media Technology program in the Entertainment Technology department at CUNY's New York City College of Technology invites submissions for the fifth annual New York City Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, a concert series featuring music by artists focused on the integration of music improvisation and real-time interactive computer systems.
NYC EIS is made possible by faculty, staff, and students in the Emerging Media and Entertainment Technology programs at CUNY's New York City College of Technology.
NYC EIS 2020 will take place on Friday, February 28th, and Saturday, February 29th, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM on both nights, at New York City College of Technology's Voorhees Theater:
We will provide the following:
Stereo sound. Our sound system includes a pair of Meyer Sound CQ-1 speakers with UPA-1P down-fills and 650-P subwoofers.
Stagehands and technical crews for sound and lighting.
Documentation. We endeavor to capture audio and video of each performance, but cannot make any guarantees about the availability or quality of documentation.
Email with links to the following (no attachments please):
An abstract summarizing your submitted or proposed work. We program improvisatory works, as opposed to precisely notated or largely predetermined music. Your work must incorporate real-time interaction with a computer system, and this interaction must contribute substantially to the structure and dynamics of the music.
Media demonstrating your work, in performance if possible.
If you are proposing a new work, media demonstrating similar recent work that you have done, in performance if possible.
Detailed information about your technical needs, including installation diagrams and equipment list. Indicate any personnel or equipment that you plan to provide.
Deadline for submission is November 7, 2019, end-of-day Eastern Standard Time.
You must be able to perform a version of your work that is less than 15 minutes in length.
Submission of a work does not guarantee acceptance.
We cannot provide remittance for travel or accommodation. All costs for lodging and travel to and from NYC EIS 2020 must be assumed by participants.
There is no registration fee.
We cannot provide instruments, performers, personnel, or equipment beyond what is listed under the Venue section above.
Presence at the summit is required of all authors of accepted works.
2020 Administrators
Please address all inquiries to .