The VU Symposium for experimental, electronic and improvised music was founded by Katie Porter and Devin Maxwell of Listen/Space, a 501(c)3 arts non-profit, in 2019 we are proudly in collaboration with Westminster College School of Music, Red Desert Ensemble Artists-in-Residence at Westminster College, The Park City Library, and the Marriott Library Digital Archives.

The VU Symposium is dedicated to Vladimir Ussachevsky, pioneering electronic composer, and Utahn for a bit.

July 10-12, 2019

Park City Library, 1255 Park Avenue, Park City, Utah 84060

VU3 OVERVIEW SCHEDULE:

DAY 1, WED JULY 10

11AM- 8PM: Concerts and presentations in the Community Room and Jim Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library

DAY 2, THURS JULY 11

10AM- 8PM : Concerts and presentations in the Community Room and Jim Santy Auditorium of the Park City Library

DAY 3, FRIDAY JULY 12

10AM- 4PM: Concerts and presentations in the Community Room and Jim Santy Auditorium of the Park City Library

8PM Last night late concert/party/BBQ at the cabin

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VU3 working schedule (for participants)

VU3 sound check schedule (for participants)

DETAILED PROGRAM (word doc)

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FULL SCHEDULE/ BIOS

VU3.  

Pushing the envelope

WED July 10

PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS, PANELS,  LECTURE RECITALS, SHOWS

11AM

Papers  Presentation 1

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Welcome!

VU SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZERS

A quick welcome from your VU hosts:  Katie Porter & Devin Maxwell, co-founders, Ashkan Fakhrtabatabaie, papers, Claudia Escobar, tech

Nametags, logistics, coffee, call for participation in Trossingen Snorkel this afternoon.

15 mins.

Sivan Silver-Swartz / Everyone’s a Virtuoso: Open Scores and Just Intonation

LOS ANGELES, CA

Is it contradictory to make music of demanding specificity in its sound but of simplicity and autonomy in its technical requirements? In what ways can we start to write music that consciously brings in virtuosities not necessarily from established musical practices but from each person’s unique experiences across all fields of creative production? In suggesting ways of answering these questions and more, I’ll talk about the experiences of myself and others writing pieces for “open” scores in just intonation.  

30 mins.

Kevork Andonian / Improvisation vs. Chance

LOS ANGELES, CA

duality in music from the Twentieth Century and onwards:

Improvisation vs. Chance (and the reverse)

How has one influenced the other in the creative ideology of composers? Is the line between improvisation and chance getting more and more blurred? 

I will present seminal pieces by twentieth-century composers (such as Lutoslawski, Rzewski, and Reich) while referring to ethnomusicological and historical inspirations many such composers have had. Then I will like to open the floor for discussion.

15 mins.

12PM

Panel 1

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Clay Chaplin / Panel on DIY

LOS ANGELES, CA

Clay Chaplin leads a panel on DIY, with Lainie Fefferman (New Music Gathering), Katie Porter and Devin Maxwell (VU, Listen/Space, Red Desert), Heather Lockie and Sepand Shahab (Casa Berenice).  

I am interested in how experimental musicians and composers perform, record, and distribute their music. Bandcamp, Soundcloud, questionable sounding cassettes, compact discs, download codes, lossy Spotify, and expensive vinyl releases are the options at this moment. My response to the current state was to turn our house into a recording studio and start a small, self-produced “label” featuring live music recorded in our living room.  Heather Lockie and I have been hosting small house concerts of boundary-pushing music in our living room for a few years. Our house is an old Craftsman and the living room, given its’ size, sounds really nice when activated by live music. We figured out that our concerts were providing an interesting snapshot of a unique music community in Northeast Los Angeles and decided to more formally document our activites.

During the last year, I upgraded our recording setup in the house to make professional, multitracked live recordings of our concerts. Since the start of 2019, we have three concert recordings in the bag, one planned for April 27th, and we just finished our first podcast episode. The podcast features each artists’ live performance and an edited interview about their performance. The podcast is informative but doesn’t strive to be too serious and functions primarily as a vessel for releasing live recordings of experimentally-minded music. Our house is now a fully functional and professional recording studio. All of this interests me because we have tilted the orbit of the musical world around us in order to provide:  a curatorial focus, a small venue, promotional materials, documentation in the form of quality recordings, and distribution in the form of a Bandcamp “label”, a podcast, and the occasional CD or vinyl release. We work in advance with the house concert performers and get permission to record and release their performance. We have a record label domain name, a Bandcamp page, and a couple of nearly-finished podcast episodes. We have been moving slowly in this process because we are figuring it out and there are still some questions to answer. What does it all mean? Is this an interesting, reproducible, or sustainable idea? IE- venue + live recording + distribution? Will anyone actually listen to music recorded live? Why did we decide to make this the way for us to promote new music? What would happen if every musician with a room in LA started hosting house concerts and recording them? Why are we doing this again? How or why has the current state of experimental music pushed us in this direction? Why do you and Devin produce VU?  etc etc . . We are learning what we are doing here at Casa Berenice Recordings and would love to have an open discussion about the topics. We have an idea and are lucky to have an amazing music community that surrounds us. We’re interested in the ideas around promoting live experimental music, documenting it properly, and getting it out there. 

60 mins.

1PM-2PM

LUNCH BREAK. 60 mins.

2PM

Outside Concert

City Park, by the Skate Park and stream, across the street from the Library

Daniel Corral / Trossingen Snorkel

LOS ANGELES, CA

Daniel Corral leads Trossingen Snorkel in an outdoor environment with participants from VU Symposium performing. 

I first did a version of Trossingen Snorkel at a Metro station in Pasadena, commissioned by Newtown Arts. I’d like to try it in a drastically different location, maybe spread out in the woods around your cabin, in one of the city parks along Silver Creek in Park City, or at the Park City Mountain Village where all the tourists are eating lunch and riding the Alpine Slide. This would entail asking other VU participants to volunteer to be part of it. I have 12 identical C harmonicas that they can play. This piece asks up to 12 people (more if I get more harmonicas…) to simply breathe through a harmonica for the full duration of the piece. It requires zero experience playing harmonica, and creates a really great polychord wash like ocean waves rippling. 

30 mins.

2:45PM

Lecture Recitals 1

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Kyle Vanderburg / Cloud Music: Audience participation in electronic music

FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA

Audience Participation and cloud computing, 2016. 

Web-based and cloud-computing technology, paired with the ubiquity of mobile devices, allows for the possibility of including audience participation in the realization of a work of electronic music. As a stage in creating a framework for audience participation, I created a work entitled Cloud Music, which allows audience members to set a number of parameters via website, which are then submitted, uploaded to a queue, and processed to control a series of cloud sprites. Audience members have the ability to set the cloud’s rise time, float time, fall time, altitude, direction, and whether or not the cloud is a thundercloud. Sound is generated by a series of oscillators, which normally produce rising and falling continuums, except in the event that thunderclouds get close enough to produce thunder—randomized bursts of inharmonic noise.

30 mins.

Break / 10 mins

Ryan Ingebritsen / Composition vs. Improvisation : Body Camera controlled sound performance

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Ryan Ingebritsen, body controlled sampler.  

I would like to talk about as the question about composition/vs improvisation seems to fit on many levels about a topic I am currently writing a Dissertation about regarding performance practice in electronic and interactive music.  That is, where and how do these compositions live on. I recently co-wrote a paper with Erica and another former collaborator with whom I worked on a large scale dance performance involving a similar body camera system that used the motion of the human body to control sampled sound and realized that over the course of several iterations of the technology what we were really doing is training the bodies involved to develop a sense of “kinesthetic empathy” with the system.  In the third technological iteration, we actually found a means of creating that kinesthetic empathy between multiple performers as their collective movement controlled samples.  

In this way, though the technology might become obsolete and need to be replaced by another kind of system, it is actually in the human body that the information allowing the performance practice and the piece to live on resides.  

Musical notation is at best an approximation of the creative impetus present within a human mind that gives specific cues to performers representing specific embodied experiences they have developed with their instrument (as each note or extended technique certainly represents some form of embodied experience), so perhaps there could also in future be some form of shorthand that represented the experiences of such embodied performances that would then transcend the necessary technologies that would be used to produce it.  Not necessarily a “note for note” dictation of a piece, but more of a description of how the modes of interaction exist in the body.  

Both of the pieces included here have some form of experiential technique that can be outlined and explained.  These techniques could be realized in many ways by different software and systems. In fact, the body camera system used for this piece was originally developed to transform electronic manipulation parameters for the voice and other tools.  But the consistent method behind the system involves a particular mapping of the joints (in this case, hands, elbows, and knees) that the performers became familiar with that then applied to all of the different manipulation and sound generation elements involved.  

To me, that is the instrument, and the specific way the mapping is used in each “patch” as well as the way the relationship between these mappings and the sonic reaction unfolds is the composition.  The two interpretations of this composition (Erica Mott’s and mine) are both valid interpretations of one composition. But this composition could be re-created with different software and technology in the future.  

By demonstrating the way the mapping system works, defining what in this case is the instrument and what is the composition, and then performing the piece, I think we could provoke a really fruitful discussion surrounding the lines between improvisation, composition, instrument building, and technology.  

30 mins.

Break / 10 mins

4:05PM

Show 1

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Robert Matheson / Interactive Landscapes for Double Bass and Computer

SAINT GEORGE, UTAH

Performance environments for double bass and computer, 2014-2019.

Robert Matheson, double bass.  

The recital will consist of improvisation environments that I have created utilizing Max/MSP, Ableton Live, and Pure Data. Environments that I plan to perform include America, Zion Landscapes, …by association, and Obsolete Sounds. Some examples of my solo work can be heard at:

America

Zion Landscapes

Obsolete Sounds

30 mins.

4:35-5PM

Break / 25 mins

5PM

Lecture Recital 2

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Michele Cheng / I Kid You Not- Activist, Humor, and Experimental Music Theatre

FREMONT, CA

Solo duet for Vocal(s) about Asian American self-image and online dating culture, 2019.  

I am a composer-performer. This lecture, I kid You Not- Activist, Humor, and Experimental Music Theatre, will talk about my creative works, which many of them explore the interrelationship and application between activism and experimental music theatre. I will cover three of my major socially engaged experimental music theatre projects: To Be Heard X Unheard (2016), Voir dire (2018), and Speed Dating (2019). After the lecture I will perform Speed Dating, which is a solo duet between a vocalist and a hand puppet.

45 mins.

Break / 15 mins

6pm

Show 2

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Indigo Cook / Aphasia- Mark Applebaum

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

For singer and tape.  Indigo Cook, percussion.  

Written in 2010, the piece was originally scored for singer and two-channel tape, although it is primarily performed these days by percussionists (following the original singer’s protestations that the piece was unperformable). The composer recorded samples sung by vocalist Nicholas Isherwood and used these noises to create the tape, to which he choreographed and notated a series of hand and upper-body motions to be executed by the live performer. Aphasia, named after a language disorder that prevents the comprehension or articulation of speech, is a unique example of electronic music in that these gestures comprise the entirety of the live performer’s role in the piece. No sound is ever produced except the tape. My work with the piece has led me to some interesting questions about the nature of communication and expression (or the failure thereof), and how speech and meaning reside in the body or apart from it, as in something as abstract as electronic sound. 

9 mins.

Jacky Card / Turmoil On a Tuesday

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

Fixed Media Electronics, 2018.  

Turmoil On a Tuesday is a fixed media electronic work that was created using SuperCollider, Logic Pro X and sampled audio recordings of kitchen noises. It is made to mimic the chaotic motion that exists inside of a restaurant during a busy dinner shift.

7 mins.

Serge Bulat / Inkblot

NEW YORK, NY

Acousmatic composition + visuals, 2019.

ʺINKBLOTʺ is a multimedia experience by Serge Bulat, designed to demonstrate one’s ability to reinterpret data, perceiving reality as a ʺpersonal constructʺ.

Similar to the psychological inkblot test, the audio piece serves as a trigger for imagination; expecting an association, thought or feeling to take place. By adding a sense, the test takes one step further in exploring the territories of the Mind. The success of the test depends solely on the testee, based on the idea that the participant is both the experiment and the experimenter.

Stimulated by both visuals and sound, the subjects are invited for aʺself-diagnosisʺ, formed through the sensory experience.

Described by the artist as ʺlistening parties for the thinkersʺ, ʺINKBLOTʺ is aimed to bring back the wonder of sound, interactivity and conceptualism in music.  

10 mins.

Natalie Van Horn / Chatter

OREM, UT

Fixed Media Electronics, 2018.  6 mins

The idea of this piece is being overwhelmed over time. Nonsense phrases are used in clips as well as some more environmental sounds such as pans dropping, utensils and air conditioning. The nonsense phrases were generated by using a random word generator to pick words and then they were put in a reasonably logical grammatical syntax. These clips are layered and modified by sampling and granular processes. Over time even a sense of the words is lost to leave only a sense of noise to only come back briefly at the end.

6 mins.

Jascha Narveson / Feedback Improv

BROOKLYN, NY

For live feedback instrument and improv partner.  Jascha Narveson (feedback instrument) & Lainie Fefferman (voice).  

I’ve done a lot of electronic music via programming my own patches with SuperCollider and Max.  I love programming in these environments, but I’ve also started to get in to the idea of “programming” instrument by making cleverly interconnected instrument and FX modules in Ableton Live.  This is fun, and is (for me) an under-explored way of thinking of what “programming” could mean.

I’ve also used a bunch of fancy controllers, but I keep coming back to my tiny Korg Nano-Kontrol fader box.

Here I  play a solo set where I use a recording of a friend improvising that they make for me and I play with that, working it into more of a structured improv (the structure being the pre-existing recording).

10 mins.

7pm

Show 3

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Ryan Ingebritsen / Optical Dimensia

CHICAGO, IL

For Optical Theremin and 3D interactive delay system in MAX/MSP.  

This is a piece called Optical Dimensia for Optical Therimin and multi-channel sound environment.  The immersive sound environment is really a crucial part of the performance. 

10 mins.

Andrew Litts and Ryan Oliver / PhEAD

PHILADELPHIA, PA & SOUTH BEND, IN

Fortspinnung for trumpet and electronics by Ryan Olivier, 2015.

singularity for trumpet and electronics by Andrew Litts, 2016.  

Andrew Litts – Trumpet; Ryan Olivier – Keyboard and Electronics.  

Fortspinnung

“Fortspinnung” is a German term referring to the “spinning out” or development of a short musical motif. A half-step motif serves as the short basis for the present work. A sinusoidal keyboard and a trumpet develop this musical idea with the help of live visual accompaniment and audio processing which are cued and generated by performance data in real-time. The visual elements aid the audience in the identification of new harmonies and new pitches as well as the implied melodic and harmonic development over the course of the work. The work is semi-improvisational, resulting in a different visual and musical realization each performance. 

singularity

Digital media allows for the dissemination of ideas and conversation at an ever increasing rate and ease. The vehicles provided to those who long lacked a voice are an undisputed upside to this propagation of technology. The downside, though, is the potential danger in the loss of identity as the echo chamber of the Internet turns into a place for hyperindividualism to contribute to an amalgamation of noise. As we listen to each other less, ideas mean less. 

14 mins.

Akiko Hatakeyama / ち— chi for candles, live voice, and sounds

EUGENE, OR

for candles, live voice, and sounds, 2016

Akiko Hatakeyama – custom-made instrument. 

ち – chi for candles, live voice, and sounds is a live interactive performance piece. A custom-made instrument called myaku placed on a table senses luminance. The intensity variant of each light source, a candle, is translated to the amplitude of each sound sample. The performer controls the sound and the visual by lighting and moving candles. Candles portray various cultural meanings, and they may evoke unique memories for everyone including myself. The performance is a way of purification through a ritualistic sharing of the space, time, and experience being in the environment. The warmth, smell, sight, and sound all speak to us. 

 The title ち – chi could mean blood, earth, knowledge, lateness, planting, and more in Japanese.

Ten light sensors of the instrument distributed onto a table react to various light intensities emitted from candle flames. Each sensor converts the light intensities to values, and these values correspond to each gain of audio files in a music program. 

Candle flames emit strong light comparing to small electric lights, and the dancing motion of the flames are both visible and audible in this piece. I make compositional decisions by considering the light intensities and movements of different candles to place them to create a desired yet autonomous sound environment. The length, thickness, and kinds of candles as well as kinds of candle holders used for the instrument all change the property of the sounds and affect the performance. The heat, melting wax, and smell coming from candles influence how I perform the piece.

20 mins.

THURS July 11

PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS, PANELS,  LECTURE RECITALS, SHOWS

10AM

Papers 3

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Matthew Mitchell / Language and Music

OGDEN, UT

This piece was composed using a tonal system built around 26 tones, each assigned to a different letter of the English alphabet. The score can be written using regular English words, and is performed using electronic instruments.  Matthew Mitchell, Ableton Live.  

I have been really interested in the connection between a culture’s language and its music. There are so many connections: the meter of language being reflected in a culture’s music, the pitch correlations, breath-groups, accents, syntax, all can be seen moving from language into music (or arguably from music to language). 

For my project I am attempting to develop a tonal system that can be notated using only words. It would be built using 26 distinct tones, tempered with discretion, each assigned to one letter of the alphabet. English, French, and German all have 26 letters in their alphabets, and could map onto this tonal system. The ultimate goal would be to capture the essence of the language musically, and map the syntax of language onto the music. The end result is a piece of sheet music indistinguishable from a page of written words. The considerations I currently have include:

 What is the starting frequency, and what letter is it assigned to.   What constitutes a chord versus a note – ( I’m attempting to divide it into syllables right now to varying degrees of success).  How to translate musical concepts into this type of notation system (crescendos, accents, etc.) How to determine the spacing between notes in order to emphasize/”harmonize” more commonly occurring sounds.  How well does it interact with existing tonal systems. What other elements of language can be translated into musical concepts.

The first application of this will be manifested using digital instruments, where the frequency of each note can be assigned. I would like to develop a tool that can seamlessly “pull” a digital piano from traditional tuning into this new tuning system using automation, allowing a composer to freely borrow from traditional western music traditions while using this new tuning system alongside them.

20 mins.

Carey Campbell / A reception history of Electronic Music

OGDEN, UT

Paper Presentation, 2019.  

I’m interested in researching and presenting on the changing reception history of EEI. The organization I’m involved with presents mostly “traditional” music for acoustic instruments and EEI only occasionally, but over the past few years I’ve seen our audience’s reactions to and tolerance of EEI shift. Of course, back in the old days anything that wasn’t Beethoven drew disapproval, and audience tastes nationwide have broadened for contemporary music, but I’m not sure where EEI fits into that picture. What can we do to help our audiences along? Or do we even want to? Does EEI have to be “pushing the envelope” of general audience tastes in order to remain true to itself (whatever that means)? Etc. 

I’ll survey the reception history of some iconic pieces from the past 100 years or so with an eye towards shifts in audience and critical responses. Of course, I’m most interested in why those shifts took place (or didn’t). 

20 mins.

Mayank Sanganeria / Exploring AI in Art

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

AI is becoming more accessible for applications in art. This is a short review of the tools that I have used to apply AI in exploring my artistic ideas.  

The idea is to explore the connection between dance and music visualization. Traditionally music visualizers have been created by manipulating the audio waveform of the music. However, dance could also be looked as an approach to visualizing music, by using gestures performed by humans. There have been some attempts to use the gestures performed by dancers to inform certain music visualizations. These involve hooking up the dancers with motion capture equipment which makes it challenging to apply this method at scale. However, recent advances in AI have made it possible to capture human form data from videos, making it possible to explore such visualizations from videos.

20 mins.

11:15AM

Panel 2

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

VU3 / Panel on the Creative Process

Ashkan Fakhrtabatabaie leads a panel on the creative process, with SUBPATCH (Jon Paul Mayse, Jared Bennett and Lazar Liebenberg), Michele Cheng, Mauricio Rodriguez, Aine Nakamura . 

45 mins.

12PM-1PM

LUNCH BREAK. 60 mins

1:15PM

Lecture Recitals 5

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Robert Willey / Computer Mediated Performance

MUNCIE, IN

Frontiére su (The Southern Border), installation, 2019

Robert Willey, keyboard, with audience participation

One approach to computer-mediated improvisation puts the performer in control of timing and dynamics while the computer contributes to the choices of pitches, timbres, and locations. I call the class of environments I have created in this way “programmable instruments” rather than “intelligent instruments” since the instrument in effect has been programmed to respond in new ways to input. This helps the improviser play in new ways and break out of recycling overlearned riffs.

I will show how one of my patches, “Cereal” works. It allows the performer to improvise serial music. The rows of pitches does not have to be atonal, and at the same time it serializes timbre, pan locations, and video parameters.

The piece I will use to demonstrate the patch is “Frontiere sud (Southern Border) which has computer-mediated synthesizer and video improvisation which the audience repeats bits of what they hear played from language lessons on their cell phones playing the 18 most common foreign languages in Toronto, one of the world’s most multicultural cities.

15 mins.

Akiko Hatakeyama / Intermedia performance and fixed media pieces

EUGENE, OR

 I will show examples of live intermedia performances and fixed media pieces that embraces improvisation and the freedom that I gain from using electronics and custom-made instruments. 

I strive to create an ephemeral world through my music and performance. The purpose of creating an ephemeral world is to shake my senses and feelings to connect with my inner self and to invite the audience to do the same. During my creative process, things that speak to all of my senses naturally intertwine, resulting from living in the world of which awakens my senses. Thus, my music has elements in visual, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory senses in addition to auditory sense. Reflecting myself into a performance is my artistic practice.  

I integrate a strong element of improvisation in my compositions to reflect the real-time conditions of myself and the environment into the performance and fixed media. Specifically for live intermedia performance pieces, I first create a skeleton that solidifies the flow and the presentation of a sonic sphere of each piece. Improvising at the site is the way to make music in the moment, and it is an action to add the meat and skin to the pre-composed structure. Although I am familiar with the compositions and my body movements from rehearsals and previous performances, I do not pre-compose movements like creating a choreography. All movements that create sounds are improvised and thus the music is unique in every performance.  

Many times, my body navigates for me the ways to move in my performances. At the time of creating an intermedia performance piece called Blind | The world where I can’t be but you live in, the image and urge of pulling something like a rope often came to me. I tried to pull it hard, but lacking sufficient physical strength, I was helpless to do so; only frustration and disappointment remained. In everyday life, I did not encounter many occasions to move my body in the act of pulling something, but after incorporating similar movements in the performance of Blind, somehow the image and urge of the body motions and the helpless feelings that came with them disappeared. In Tsuchi, another performance piece, I sit on the ground to pour salt and sing. In Soto and Soak, I move my arms and hands as if I am swimming and paddling water in order to create momentary visual materials with salt and charcoal. These movements must be related to the feelings and images that I had at that time – diving into the ground and swimming in the darkness beneath it. Interestingly, the feelings and images have disappeared after the performance of these pieces. One of the reason why I create my own instruments is to meet these special demands from my body and mind.  

45 mins.

Break / 15 mins.

2:30PM

Show 4

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Connor Lockie / The Book of Heads by John Zorn

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

Written for solo guitar, realized for guitar and electronics by the performer.  

Connor Lockie, Guitar, Electronics, Balloons

John Zorn’s The Book of Heads is a 35-movement work originally written for solo guitar. While Connor Lockie’s realization still hinges on the electric guitar as a focal point, he updates the 1978 composition by reinterpreting Zorn’s atypically notated character pieces through the use of MAX/MSP effects, MIDI sequences and other digital technologies. 

45 mins.

3:15PM

Lecture Recitals 6

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Eli Fieldsteel / LightMatrix: A light-sensitive musical control surface

URBANA, IN

Light-sensitive control surface and interactive electronics.  Eli Fieldsteel, performer. 

LightMatrix is a light-sensitive control surface consisting of 256 photoresistors arranged in a 16-by-16 grid. The light-dependent voltages in these 256 parallel circuits are digitized and transmitted to a computer over a USB connection, where these data can be arbitrarily mapped onto sound parameters. LightMatrix currently relies on a combination of Arduino and SuperCollider software for data transmission, parameter mapping, and sound synthesis/sampling. This project is the latest result of several years of ongoing research and composition with sensor-driven data, the overall goal of which is to create new, innovative instruments that are musically sensitive, expressive, and intuitive.

30  mins.

Jacob Thiede / The Broken Saxophone

DENTON, TX

Ali by Alex Mincek for solo alto saxophone.

Jacob Thiede, alto saxophone

There is little research on “out-of-sequence fingerings.” In his dissertation covering works by Wet Ink Ensemble members (Alex Mincek and Eric Wubbels), Matthew Younglove briefly defines out-of-sequence fingerings. While Younglove provides a definition for the new technique, he mostly discusses the application and context of the sounds within the overall form of Mincek and Wubbels respective compositions. The goal of this research is to provide composers and saxophonists with a comprehensive guide to out-of-sequence fingerings through historical context, concise definitions, and a comparison of pedagogical resources and advice by saxophonists who have prepared, performed, and recorded Mincek’s music for saxophone (Gavin Goodwin, Casey Grev, Kevin Baldwin, and more). Ultimately, this paper aims to unite the composer community on proper methods of notation and applications of this new avant-garde technique by dissecting notational implications (descriptive and prescriptive), virtuosity of timbre and dynamics, as well as potential challenges and problems out-of-sequence fingers bring in composition. 

30 mins.

Break/ 15 mins.

4:30PM

Lecture Recital 7

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Martha Muehleisen / The Art of the Duo

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO

For violin and electronics.

Violin Phase, Steve Reich (b. 1936)

Voyage, Martha Muehleisen (b. 1982)

Frises, Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952)

Martha Muehleisen, violin

One of the most important responsibilities of a modern musician is to constantly grow and evolve. It is paramount to experiment and push musical and artistic boundaries. The violin has remained unchanged in its physical form for over 300 years. Over this time, violinists have been pushed to expand technical possibilities, from Niccolo Paganini to Brian Ferneyhough.  The technical demands of compositions have pushed performers, and conversely the technical capabilities of performers have encouraged composers. The sound capabilities of the violin can be further expanded by the integration of electronics.

The addition of electronics can expand the possibilities of the violin and the violinist. The violin can seem like a completely different instrument, or just a bigger version of itself. The sound can evolve with the live performance, or be set ahead of time. The violinist can have an active role in manipulating sound, or can perform chamber music with the electronic sound. I have created a lecture recital called The Art of the Duo to explore these possibilities.

I have chosen four different pieces to showcase a variety of techniques of violinist performing with electronics. Before each piece I will offer an explanation and demonstration of the various techniques used in each piece. Steve Reich’s Violin Phase (1967) is a classic example of electronic use. The piece can either be used with four live violinists, or one violinist and a pre-recorded track. Violin Phase shows how electronics can be used to add another option to a piece that can be done with live performers.

The second piece on this program is Kaija Saariaho’s Frises (2011). Frises was written as an extension to J. S. Bach’s Chaconne from the d minor Partita. For this piece, I perform the Chaconne first, and the seamlessly segue into Frises. This segue shows the difference in the live sound of the violin, then the sound enhanced with electronics. This can also be performed without the Bach Chaconne first, in case of time limits. The electronic format is a Max/MSP patch that contains pre-recorded sounds and live sound processing. The violinist controls the patch with a foot pedal.

The third piece is a composition that I wrote called Voyage. This piece showcases the idea of a perfomer/composer by using an electronic track that I wrote while I also perform with it. Voyage is inspired by and uses sound data files from the Voyager I and II missions from NASA; both still in operation 40 years after launch. Also included are files from the Golden Record which is onboard both of these spacecrafts. These sound files are mixed and arranged into a composition; violin improvises based on the electronic composition. The result is a fluid mix of live musical performance with sounds of discovery from these two missions.

The last piece on this program is titled UnRavel (2009) and was written by Anthony Tan, a colleague at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. This piece uses a Max/MSP patch with pre-recorded sounds and live sound processing. The format is similar to Saariaho’s piece, but UnRavel shows the importance interaction between a performer and composer when working on a piece.

60 mins.

5:30PM

Break / 30 mins

6:00PM

Show 5

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Kevin Zhang / small flux: FOUR

LOS ANGELES, CA

Noise set for analog synthesizers, cassettes, radio, and FX, 2019

My background is largely within concert-music composition, which includes live electroacoustic works, fixed media projects, and sound designs for theater/movement/dance, etc. However, I am currently developing a live improvisatory set using analog electronics, and I thought doing a five-minute performance of it at VU would be an appropriate and rewarding way to share it. 

5  mins.

SUBPATCH / A Well-Played Game

LONDON, UK

Jon Paul Mayse, Jared Bennett, and Lazar Liebenberg, Electronics

In A Well-Played Game, we reframe the simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to present its ramifications in a new light. While the traditional game is one of straight-forward victory, A WellPlayed Game emphasizes agreement rather than adversity as the desired objective. This naïve and beautifully simple game is transformed to become an immersive musico-dramatic experience, combining music, film, and theatre.

We use Max/MSP to organize the light and audio interface elements, which are responsive to the players’ motions. The audio is comprised of two tracks: one serene and nostalgic, the other glitchy and chaotic. Should the players ‘agree’ (i.e. both throw the same movement simultaneously), the music is pleasant; should the players ‘disagree’, (i.e. throw different movements, therefore resulting in a ‘win’ in the traditional game), the music becomes distorted and glitchy, crossfading to the less pleasant soundtrack. The film follows suit as well – if the players ‘agree’, the lights dim and the film becomes more visible, displaying scenes of childhood gaiety, whereas upon ‘disagreement’ the film glitches and becomes uncomfortable. 

 A Well-Played Game puts an interesting spin on the nostalgic singlemindedness of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Through the connection and subversion of nostalgic elements and childhood games, we hope to explore what it means to agree, to disagree, and to toe the line between the sentimental sublimity of childhood and the chaos of conflict.   

20 mins.

Audrey Lund / Supercritical Pulse

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

For violin and fixed-media electronics, 2019

Audrey Lund, violin

“Supercritical” in this piece evokes a state surpassing the critical point.  Once reached, fluids in a supercritical state cannot be differentiated as gas or liquid.  “Pulse” may refer to heart rate, breathing, wind currents, ocean waves, or other concepts.

6 mins.

Aine E. Nakamura / Pieces on Prayer

TOKYO, JAPAN and NEW YORK, NY

Structured composition for improvisation of voice and body movement, 2018-19

Aine E Nakamura: voice and body movement

The work is a resilience against violence. “Life of A Flower -War and lullaby”, “Night before War” and “The River” are presented through voice and body movement: experimental improvisation based on structured compositions. 

The set of works is a prayer and my decision as a human being not to repeat the history of war.  Coming from the ethnic background of Japanese and national background of Japan and the US, I have always owed history.  Instead of claiming as a victim of multinational discrimination, I want to focus on my role not to repeat wars and not to use weapons as a tool of human policies through art. 

I will perform three small pieces of voice and body movement in sequence:  (1) “Life of a Flower -War and lullaby-“, (2) “Night before War”, my music composition that will be arranged for Immersion for my voice and body movement, and  (3) “The River”, a composition of melody, body movement and media premiered at the New York Public Library and which will be arranged for this set of pieces to a shorter arrangement of voice and body movement.   All the three pieces focus or include orality of music, improvisation and elements of lullaby. “Life of a Flower -War and lullaby-” is a story of a flower that lived during a war time. The flower sees a mother and a child, and hears their singing, and also witnesses how they are lost through a war.  “Night before War” is also centered around a vulnerability that is taken away by war. A mother is telling a child a story a night before a war comes. She sings to a child in the piece. It talks about the vulnerable world we live in and how we create it through everyday life and love. “The River” I was inspired by the meaning of Shatemuc, the Hudson River in Lenape language, the river that runs both sides.  It reminded me of the flow of the river and the flow of people, including the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans during the World War ll. The piece goes back and forth the time when people 

traveled in canoes through the river and the time people traded people and the time people were forced to move.  The piece is mainly told through a song, melody, in addition to words in English and Japanese. The piece finally ends with an old man and his granddaughter meeting across the River, seeing it as the Jordan River or Sanzu no Kawa, the river of life and death.

Thank you: C.V. Starr Fund of Asian/Pacific/American Institute, and Dean’s Conference Fund of Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University

18 mins.

7:00PM

Show 6

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Lainie Fefferman / White Fire

BROOKLYN, NY

For processed vocals and live electronics 

Lainie Fefferman, voice, laptop, and homemade MIDI controllers

This is a one-woman electroacoustic feminist-torah-commentary song project called White Fire. It’s me singing (with heavy live processing on the vocals to make them sound pretty weird) and playing my home-made MIDI triggers (that I made from cutting out some rubber discs and getting some contact mic’s on there) that trigger a whole bunch of different sounds live along with a bunch of sounds that I’ve pre-cooked to play as fixed media backing track. Sometimes I use the phones of folks in the audience to stream multichannel audio live during my set, but that kinda takes a bunch of prep at this point, so I don’t always choose to do it. The texts are all words I’ve written as first-person retellings of the Hebrew Bible stories surrounding different foundational female characters; I asked myself “what must Dinah have been thinking when her brother slaughtered her lover?” or “how do I think Miriam felt when she saved her entire tribe from dying of thirst in the desert?” then wrote lyrics in what I imagined to be their voice in modern language.

30 mins.

Daniel Corral / The Count In

LOS ANGELES, CA

Live electronics and video, 2018

Performed by Daniel Corral

The Count In uses a vocal sample of Poly-Styrene from the 70s punk band X-Ray Spex to consider the place of individual voices in an imminent post-human environment. Styrene shouts the numbers “1-2-3-4,” and that counting is the basis of The Count In. Combining phasing techniques of American minimalism with just intonation, Styrene’s voice is reinforced by the visual presence of corresponding numbers, and the result is a combination of Steve Reich, Poly-Styrene, Jim Tenney, and Sesame Street Pinball Number Counts.

I have an early short demo video of The Count In, which is only grey scale and only 8 minutes. The final version includes gradually shifting colors akin to a James Turrel Skyspace, better sound quality, and a more interesting tuning system inspired by La Monte Young’s WTP.

30 mins.

FRI July 12

PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS, PANELS,  LECTURE RECITALS, SHOWS

10AM

Papers 4

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Sean Ellis Hussey / Refugees Living in Malmo: Connecting Cultures through (Re)Generative Music Discourse (Connecting Cultures through Music)

CHICAGO, IL

Ongoing composition/research project using music as discourse to reduce harmful biases

Fueled by an influx of immigrants largely from Arab countries, Sweden and much of the Western world have seen a rebirth of nationalist ideology focused on cultural authenticity and superiority. Sweden has one of the largest refugee populations in Europe (1 in 47), and the southern city of Malmö has the largest refugee population in Sweden (43%). The political discourse of fear and dehumanization driven by nationalist parties creates division and often violence, making productive conversation inaccessible. Seeing the inherent hybridity of music as an example of cultural contact, Connecting Cultures Through Music (CCTM), provides opportunities for disparate groups to collaboratively create new music. “As the final resistance to the acculturation and commodification of everything” (Said), I use musical performance in this context as an effort to provide solidarity for refugee communities. As an artistic research resident in 2017 at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö, and in collaboration with Swedish folk ensemble Åkervinda, as well as Palestinian/Jordanian singer Nemat Battah, I shift the focus from performing to finding inclusion and collaboration through the generative, creative process of musicking. Through the inclusion of live-processed electronics, we not only ignite productive conversation between people, but also demonstrate how public statements and perspectives are curated and performed, yet do not necessarily address issues of refuge and migration in a productive manner. In this continuing composition-research project, where each performance is followed by a discussion and that discussion becomes incorporated into the next performance through further improvisation and technological exploration, the lines between culture and performance are blurred and often erased—enabling music to create spaces for productive civic conversation. In this presentation, I will not only discuss the generative methodology and theoretical foundations of this project, but, together with the audience, will create music in a similar fashion. 

30 mins.

Jascha Narveson / A Nifty Feedback Instrument in Ableton Live

BROOKLYN, NY

This is a short presentation showing how I arrived at a nice playable mapping for a playable feedback instrument.

I “made” a mutli-rever controlled-feedback instrument  in Ableton Live.  

I’ve spend a long time programming proper patches in SuperCollider and Max/MSP.  I love this, but the last few years have seen me using Ableton Live much more via my frequent work with dancers.  I used Live in a duo I did in late 2017 with a pianist in which I used a simple Korg Nanokontrol fader-box to set up a playable controlled feedback instrument that I found quite pleasing.  Setting this up felt a lot like programming patches in a coding environment, which isn’t how I normally think of using Live or other DAWs.  

This isn’t earth-shatteringly new, but the particular mapping I used for this felt like it had some potential, and I’ve been playing around with extending this idea.  If it seems interesting, I’d get a kick of out of sharing this set-up and starting a conversation about what other people are doing in a similar vein.

15 mins.

10:45AM

Panel 3

Community Room, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

VU3 / Where does technology fail us?

Ashkan Fakhrtabatabaie leads a panel on Where does technology fail us?  With Jacky Card, Eli Fieldsteel, Devin Maxwell, Akiko Hatakeyama

15 mins.

Break / 15 mins.

11:15AM

Lecture Recital 8

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Joshua Tomlinson / Composition as an Act of Discovery and Risk

NORMA, OK

“Convergences” for stereo fixed media, 2015; “A Short Story” for typewriter, lamp, and live electronics, 2018.

The risks we are willing and unwilling to take while creating determine the discoveries we will make. So how do we decide which risks are worth taking? 

In this lecture recital I address the idea that creating is an act of risk taking that ultimately leads to discovery by comparing and contrasting two of my works. Convergences (for stereo fixed media) was created without any conclusion in mind, the discoveries made in each moment influencing the direction of the next. A Short Story (a theater piece for typewriter, lamp, and live electronics which I will perform) was created with the destination already decided, which required discovering the best path for reaching that target. Throughout this talk I share what risks I am willing to take, so that audience members can better decide which risks they are willing to take, and enhance their own creative process.

45 mins.

12PM-1PM

LUNCH BREAK. 60 mins

1:00PM

Show 7

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Keith Wecker aka V. Vecker / Composition for Looped Saxophone and Synthesizer

VANCOUVER, CANADA

1. Vecker- Saxophone, synthesizer, electronics

My project is V.Vecker and it is based around saxophone and synthesizers. It’s a combination of composed sections with improvisational passages and the back and forth between those 2 impetuses. I’m currently in a residency in Detroit for the month of April working on expanding my process and digging deeper into my own creative compositional process. For the Symposium I’d like to do a 2 channel performance based around synthesizer and saxophone loops. I usually start with a composed idea or part and then let my instincts take over as the loops start getting deeper and the sounds really starts meshing into one another.

20 mins.

Greer McGetrick / Let’s Eat An Orange

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Let’s Eat An Orange (2018) uses graphic score and open instrumentation to experiment with procedural communication and questions the roles of audience and composer

Participants 6-8, 6-8 oranges, graphic score for electronics and miscellaneous instrumentation

Let’s Eat An Orange is really more of an experiment than a conventional piece of music. A lot of the questions I ask in my work is can music have another function besides the aesthetic. This piece is absurdly asking the participants, can this music, with the help of a graphic score convey the way I am telling you how to eat an orange? I also want the participants to question the authority of the composer/performer (why must I eat an orange using this process) so there’s a level of respectful frustration which I’m always really excited to explore that can easily dive into a discussion about hegemony and consent within a group.

I think this would be really fun to recreate with participants in the audience and have conversation about (hashtag:) noise, organized sound, language verses communication and the role of music, form and structure, graphic score. 

9 mins.

Spenser Potter / Ethereal Realms

BOZEMAN, MONTANA

Fixed media electronics. 2018

Music tends to tell a story; this piece will take you to a place. A place full of realms that are stunning and majestic, yet haunted and empty, surrounded by an ethereal atmosphere. A world that only exists in the depths of the mind for those that are willing to explore.

8 mins.

Mauricio Rodriguez / Corpo Monolitico’

PALO ALTO, CA

One performer and native Mexican instruments.

‘Corpo Monolitico’ is music inspired on the pre-Hispanic Nahuatl cosmogony that describes the origins of existence. This work is presented as a ritual-like performance to explore the physical presence of the body as the origin of motion, sound, life, and existence. In ‘Corpo Monolitico’, all body movements of the player work as the “Ursatz” or background structure of the music. Body and performance actions unfold into their conceptual acoustic equivalents, therefore, working as extended sonifications of physical motions. This stage-music work metaphorically unfolds the “energetic envelope” of human body and instrumental morphology into sound. 

10 mins.

2:00PM

Show 8

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Robert Fleisher / Dans le piano

BATAVIA

Fixed media electronics, 1970

Dans le piano is a digitized recording of a brief improvisation I performed inside the upright Chase & Baker piano in my childhood home on Manhattan’s upper west side in 1970. A bare minimum of audio processing or editing was involved. The title’s derivation from Debussy’s Pour le piano reflects the primacy of timbre in this youthful experiment, one of three tape pieces retrieved in recent years from my analog archives (100 seven-inch reels) after resting there comfortably for four decades. Dans le piano was premiered at Electronic Music Midwest (2012); subsequent venues include CMS, SCI, SEAMUS, Parma Music Festival, and the University of Alabama (Cicada Consort marathon). In 2017, Dans le piano was heard at National Sawdust during the NYCEMF and during the Audiograft Festival (U.K.)–RF

3 mins.

Joseph Davancens / Abyssal Plain

SACRAMENTO, CA

For bass clarinet, double bass, tam-tam, and synthesizer

Performed by Katie Porter, Joseph Davancens, Devin Maxwell, and Kris Anaya

19 mins.

Maria Mykolenko / sounds and voices

NEW YORK, NY

2-channel fixed media electronics.

The piece “sounds and voices” for 2 channel fixed media was composed in 2018. The piece is based on samples of recordings of music performed as well as speaking voices and environmental sounds. The piece uses both processed and unprocessed samples to create a soundscape. The concerns here are both cultural and political. The piece presents a narrative; the very abstract story of an immigration from Eastern Europe. The spoken languages in the piece are English and Ukrainian. The piece has been performed in both eight channel and stereo format. The programs used included Logic, Audacity and Metasynth.

14 mins.

Jacky Card / Nausea

SALT LAKE CITY, UT

For tin cans, two human voices and live electronics, 2019

Marilisa Vega – Vocalist, Hannah Landesberg- Vocalist, Jacky Card- Tin Cans 

Nausea is an ensemble piece for tin cans, two vocalists and live electronics run through SuperCollider and Max MSP. The text is taken from the Jean-Paul Sartre novel Nausea (1938)

6 mins.

Carey Campbell / PBD19

OGDEN, UT

Fixed media electronics, 2019

PBD19 uses the audiobook version of Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, read by Sagan himself. What the astronomer has to say about the photograph is deeply moving, but so is the way he says it.  PBD19 decouples the words from their delivery and then recombines them, creating an accompaniment for Sagan’s reading built from the pitch contour, cadence, and tone of his actual voice. Every note, rhythm, and most of the sounds of PBD19 are sourced directly from the audiobook sample. Some are manipulated beyond recognition, and others are easily distinguishable; what emerges is a sometimes cacophonous mix of Sagan the author and Sagan the orator. The whale-like sounds at the beginning and end of the piece are taken from NASA’s sonification of our atmosphere’s electrical waveforms. 

Whenever a composer sets a text, he or she lays bare their own view of that text. In Sagan’s description of our tiny place in the universe I find hope and wonderment, to be sure, but also a sense of bleakness and humility, which I do not shy away from in my setting. Sagan’s excerpt ends with a call to action that I hope we will all heed, not only for the sake of the future, but also for those of us living right here, right now. 

6 mins.

3:00PM

Show 9

Jim Santy Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Park City Library

Ron Coulter / Elaborations on Pendulum Music

CASPER, WYOMING

For snare drums, microphones, and amplifiers.

Ron Coulter (percussion and electronics)

I would like to premier a new solo work, tentatively titled “Elaborations on Pendulum Music” for multiple snare drums, feedback, and radio.  The work explores rhythmic, melodic, and textural aleatory in a hybrid composed/improvised context.

15 mins.

Casa Berenice Trio

LOS ANGELES, CA

Ambient electro-acoustic improvisation

Clay Chaplin – Laptop, prepared piano, electronics

Heather Lockie – viola and electronics

Sepand Shahab – harpsichord, modular synth

Casa Berenice Trio is Clay Chaplin, Heather Lockie, and Sepand Shahab. Casa Berenice Trio makes ambient electro-acoustic improvisation. They scratch violas through electronics, stretch field recordings, tweak noisy oscillators, and have been known to weave a folk song into a patient, ambient mesh.

45 mins.

BIOS

Kris Anaya (Sacramento, CA) is a songwriter, guitarist and mathematician. As the leader of An Angle and Doombird, Kris songs have been released on Drive Thru records and featured in television and film. 

Kevork Andonian (Los Angeles, CA)  is a composer, orchestrator, and pianist who is currently pursuing post-graduate studies in music composition and film scoring at UCLA, where he is also a teaching fellow. Canada, the United States, Europe, and Armenia have all hosted performances of Kevork’s various compositions and arrangements. In Belgium, world-renowned flutist Marc Grauwels and marimbist Sarah Mouradoglou recorded a composition of his titled “A Longing for Joy” for the Naxos record label. The name of the album is “Music for Flute and Percussion, Vol. 2.” Kevork has also participated in many music festivals and symposia in North America and Europe.

Jared Bennett (London, UK) 

Serge Bulat (New York, NY) is a Moldovan born music artist, whose eclectic sound fuses electronica, neo-classical, world and experimental styles.

Bulat has been involved in both European and American scenes, exploring in various art mediums: from music and video to radio and theater productions. Artist’s most notable works are “Queuelbum”, the concept project that won an IMA award for Best Electronic Album Of The Year, and “Third World Walker”, the audio/visual installations presented at music & art festivals in more than 10 countries, including JAE 2018 (Argentina),  ROS Festival (Spain), Milano Montagna Video Awards (Italy), Parachute Light Zero (France) and Chellavison (USA).

Bulat’s work is described as “a new sound in the realm of electronic music” (Facts & Arts, France), “truly innovative” (Amazing Beats/Amazing Radio, UK) and “an ambitious project that can trigger intellectual thought” (The Deli Magazine, USA). The artist is honored with Best Dance/Electronica Album (IMA), Best Single Of The Year (Amazing Radio; Symphonic) and Best Artist (The Deli Magazine). In radio broadcasting he is awarded with a VIP Award for Best Radio Station (as program and creative director of Radio 21/Virgin Romania). 

Carey Campbell (Ogden, UT) is Associate Professor of Music at Weber State University and Artistic Advisor for NEXT Ensemble.

Jacky Card (Salt Lake City, UT) is a student at the University of Utah studying applied mathematics and music technology and expects to graduate Spring 2020. Music plays a large role in Jacky’s life regarding personal expression and identity. Jacky identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They became interested in electronic music while at the U and hope to continue studying computer music upon finishing their bachelor’s degree. Jacky currently plays in a folk punk band and wants to explore many different styles of music throughout their life.

Casa Berenice Trio (Los Angeles, CA) (Heather Lockie, Sepand Shahab, Clay Chaplin) makes ambient electro-acoustic improvisation. They scratch violas through electronics, stretch field recordings, tweak noisy oscillators, and have been known to weave a folk song into a patient, ambient mesh.

Clay Chaplin (Los Angeles, CA) Clay Chaplin is a computer musician, improviser, and audio engineer from Los Angeles who explores the realms of audio-visual improvisation, sound synthesis, field recording, electronics, and computer processing for creative sonic expression. Throughout his career he has worked on many projects involving experimental music, video, audio recording, and interactive computer systems. Chaplin studied composition and computer music with Morton Subotnick, Tom Erbe, Mark Trayle, Ichiro Fujinaga and Gary Nelson. He studied audio engineering with Tom Erbe, Ron Streicher and Jurgen Wahl.  Clay’s works have been performed internationally including performances at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Bent Festival, the Busan International Computer Music Festival, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektroakustiche Musik (DEGEM) studios, the Ear Zoom Sonic Arts festival, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conferences, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (CCM), the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, the Korean Electro-Acoustic Society Festival, the Sonic Circuits Festivals, the Santa Fe Electronic Music Festival and many others. Clay has been composer in residence at STEIM and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.  Clay has given talks about experimental sound practices for the American Composer’s Forum, the Machine Project gallery, the Sea and Space Explorations gallery, the Telic gallery, Otis College, and the Center for Research in the Computing Arts (CRCA) at UCSD. Clay is currently the Director of the Computer Music and Experimental Media studios at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and is Co-director of the Experimental Sound Practices program.

Michele Cheng (California) is an interdisciplinary artist who uses music, experimental theatre, and other forms of media to confront social issues and cultural identities. Taking a journalistic approach, she develops creative projects that reflect the complex issues to create public understanding. Examples include: a modern fairy tale about criminal justice; an experimental music theatre project about Asian women experiences; a musical card game that triggers laughter and cultural-awareness; and many more. She is the winner of the 2017 American Prize for her experimental music theatre project To Be Heard X Unheard. Michele holds an M.F.A in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from University of California, Irvine. https://www.michelecheng.com/

Indigo Cook (Salt Lake City, Utah) is a percussionist, dancer, and interdisciplinary maker-of-things. She graduated from Westminster College with a degree in percussion performance, where she studied with Dr. Devin Maxwell. She is currently employed as a musician and dance specialist for the University of Utah’s Tanner Dance program, in addition to working as a freelance artist, performing with the Afro-Brazilian music and dance company Samba Fogo, and collaborating with other wonderful artists through Interdisciplinary Arts Collective, a multi-disciplinary performance group she founded while in college. 

Daniel Corral (Los Angeles, CA) is a composer/performer born and raised in Eagle River, Alaska. Now in Los Angeles, his unique voice finds outlet in accordion orchestras, puppet operas, handmade music boxes, microtonal electronics, site-specific installations, chamber music, and multimedia collaborations. Corral’s work has been commissioned and presented around the world, and he is on the composition faculty at CalArts. His music has been released by Populist Records, Orenda Records, Innova Recordings, the wulf. records, and independently, with a forthcoming album on MicroFest Records. His teachers include James Tenney and Anne LeBaron. For more info, visit http://www.spinalfrog.com

Ron Coulter (Casper, WY) is an Instructor of Percussion at Casper College and has presented at 100+ universities.  He has performed internationally with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, L2Ork, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Tatsuya Nakatani, Michael Zerang, Sean Jones, Al Martino, Sandy Duncan, Improvisation Unit, Bolokada Condé, Youngstown Percussion Collective, Music from China, Tone Road Ramblers, and others.  He co-founded the Percussion Art Ensemble, Drm&Gtr, duende entendre, Marble Hammer, and founded the Southern Illinois Improvisation Series and Wyoming Experimental Sound Series. Additional interests include noise, intermedia, interdisciplinary collaboration, and organizing Fluxconcerts. As a composer, Ron has composed more than 350 works for various media.  http://www.roncoulter.org

Joseph Davancens (Sacramento, CA) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Sacramento, California. His pieces are mostly instrumental and mostly scored for acoustic instruments. They allude to dynamical systems and physical process, and lean on timbre as a structurally-defining element. He also plays and produces for a band called Doombird.

Composer Lainie Fefferman (Brooklyn, NY)’s most recent commissions have been from Tenth Intervention, So Percussion, Make Music NY, Experiments in Opera, ETHEL, Kathleen Supové, TILT Brass, James Moore, Eleonore Oppenheim, JACK Quartet, and Dither. Fefferman is a co-founder/director of Exapno New Music Community Center, lead-organized the New Music Bake Sale from 2010-2016, and is a co-founder/organizer of the New Music Gathering, an annual new music conference/festival. She received her doctorate in composition from Princeton University and continues to be a programming/performing member of Princeton-based laptop ensemble Sideband. She is currently a professor of music and technology at Stevens Institute of Technology. 

Eli Fieldsteel (Urbana, IL), serving as Director of the University of Illinois Experimental Music Studios since 2016, is a composer specializing in music technology with a diverse history of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Eli’s music and research engages with the intersection between music technology and performance, focusing on topics such as human-computer improvisation, interactivity, and sensor-driven music. Utilizing new technologies and real-time environments, his works are highly gestural, expressive, and richly detailed. He has worked closely with dancers, choreographers, lighting designers, architects, and video artists. Eli maintains an active teaching presence online through a well-trafficked series of SuperCollider tutorials.

Robert Fleisher (Batavia) ‘s acoustic music has been described as “eloquent” (Ann Arbor News), “lovely and emotional” (Toronto Musicworks), “astoundingly attractive” (Perspectives of New Music), and “ingenious” (The Strad)—his electroacoustic music as “rich, tactile” and “endearingly low-tech” (New York Times). Fleisher’s music is regularly performed in the U.S. and has been heard in more than a dozen other countries. Dans le piano was heard at NYCEMF in 2017; in 2018, Fleisher’s Altro Alfresco was heard at NYCEMF, and his Maniondala for solo malletKAT (released on Albany, 2017) at EMM. His music also appears on Capstone, Centaur, Navona, PnOVA (forthcoming), Sarton, and SEAMUS.

Akiko Hatakeyama (Eugene, OR) is a composer/performer of electroacoustic music and intermedia. She explores the boundaries between written music, improvisation, electronics, real-time computer-based interactivity, and visual media. Storytelling, memories, and nature play an important role in Akiko’s work, and she most often finds beauty in simplicity. Akiko’s research focuses on realizing her ideas of relations between the body and mind into intermedia composition, often in conjunction with building customized instruments/interfaces. She is faculty at the Music Technology program at the University of Oregon. Her instructors include Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, Ronald Kuivila, Maggi Payne, Chris Brown, Todd Winkler, and Butch Rovan. 

Sean Ellis Hussey (Chicago, IL) sees music as an opportunity to engage vulnerability, inspire introspection, and generate collective action. In this sense, Sean pursues collaborative projects that directly engage the community. This includes orchestral miniatures that chronicle perceptions of marginalized identity, an ethnographic multi-media oratorio revealing latent aspects of the US foster care system, and an opera that demonstrates the misrepresentation of women and minorities within the opera canon. Recognitions include the Grammy award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony Emerging Composer Award, the Chicago OperaFEST featured composer, and the 2018 Roosevelt University (RU) Matthew Freeman Social Justice Award. Sean holds degrees in music composition from Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music (BM) and RU Chicago College of Performing Arts (MM).

 Composer, sound designer, and electronic performer Ryan Ingebritsen (Chicago, IL)’s music and sound art focus on the multi-dimensional aspects of sound while attaining a degree of clarity and lyricism to permeate and reveal the musical structures he creates. Though grounded with an education of the musical cannon of the 20th century, Ingebritsen’s music stands with both feet firmly planted in the 21st.  Challenging performers and audiences to extend beyond themselves into the realm of interaction with visual, electronic, and natural experience, his music provides audiences a window to observe our multi-dimensional universe through the interplay and interaction of sound.

Hannah Landesberg (SLC, UT) is a dog that wants to bark.

Lazar Liebenberg (London, UK) 

Andrew Litts (Philadelphia, PA)is a University Fellow in music composition and theory at Temple University. He has studied composition with Samuel Adler, Paul Barsom, Richard Brodhead, Cynthia Folio, Matthew Greenbaum, Jan Krzywicki, Philip Lasser, Michel Merlet, and Maurice Wright. He earned honors during two summers of study at the European American Musical Alliance (EAMA) in Paris, France, and completed a BM in composition at the Pennsylvania State University and a MM in composition at Temple University. His music has been performed by Network for New Music, the Momenta Quartet, and the Temple University Wind Symphony, in addition to being featured in film festivals. His electroacoustic works have been heard at WOCMAT in Hsinchu, Taiwan, the Electroacoustic Barndance, and the Ammerman Biennial Symposium.

Connor Lockie (SLC, UT) is an aspiring musician and journalist living in Salt Lake City by way of the suburbs of Chicago. His musical focus is primarily on experimental electronics and new forms of composition—a love documented both in his own creations and his reviews for SLUG Magazine and Spectrum Culture. He has studied composition and electronic music performance with Devin Maxwell. Outside of his musical endeavors, Connor loves hiking, cheap wine and cats.

Heather Lockie (California)is a performer-composer, teaching artist and visual artist based in Los Angeles. She plays viola and piano, writes songs, plays live, writes and arranges for others and for herself, teaches music, gardens, and paints. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from Occidental College and an MFA in music composition and viola performance from the California Institute of the Arts. 

Audrey Lund (SLC, UT) is a three time winner and performer on the Utah Symphony Youth Guild Auditions Honors Recital. She has also won Honorable Mention, Third, Second and First Place award in the Utah Music Teachers Association Concerto Competition. She received the Presser Undergraduate Scholar Award, and graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Instrumental Performance and minor in Art and Music Technology. While attending she was a member of the Mount Olympus and O. C. Tanner Honors String Quartets, and served as Concertmaster of the Utah Philharmonia. Audrey enjoys composing, painting, and working as an audio engineer.

Jon Paul Mayse (London, UK)

Robert Matheson (St. George, UT) is Assistant Professor of Music at Dixie State University in Saint George, UT where he teaches double bass and music technology, and directs the Dixie Electro-Acoustic Performance (DEAP) ensemble. In his solo performances, he achieves a fluid interaction between acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Solo and ensemble performances have taken him throughout the United States and to Europe. Robert earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Arizona where he studied bass performance with Patrick Neher and electro-acoustic music with Dr. Craig Walsh and Dr. Norman Weinberg.

Greer McGettrick (San Francisco, CA) is a gender non-conforming artist/composer originally from Los Angeles. McGettrick uses their background in visual arts and music to explore and subvert the relationships between composer, performer and audience, questioning the conventional barriers that separating these.Their work examines noise versus organized sound; conventional definitions of noise, language versus communication within the role of music; form and structure; and graphic score. They live and work in San Francisco, CA.

Matthew Mitchell (Ogden, UT) is currently attending Weber State University pursuing a Bachelors of Arts in Music with a Minor in Sound Production. His current projects are an attempt to explore the intersections between music, technology, and the humanities in order to better understand the relationships between them. The characteristics of cultures often manifest in unseen ways, and by exploring these characteristics more deeply, we can better understand our own way of living while better appreciating the vast diversity of those cultures we are less familiar with.

Violinist Martha Muehleisen (Colorado Springs, CO) has performed throughout the US and Europe as an orchestral, chamber, and solo musician. Martha is an advocate for new music, performing with groups such as the Great Noise Ensemble in Washington, DC and the Mobtown Modern series in Baltimore, Maryland. She was selected as a participant in the Lucerne Festival Academy in Lucerne, Switzerland where she was able to work with Pierre Boulez and members of the Ensemble Intercontemperain. She is also a founding member of the Penbridge Trio, which presented a concert series of all new music in the United Kingdom in the summer of 2010.  In 2009, Martha participated in the soundSCAPE music festival in Pavia, Italy, where she premiered several pieces by young composers. She has been fortunate to work with conductors such as Marin Alsop, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, David Robertson, and James DePriest. She completed her Masters Degree at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in 2007, studying primarily with Herbert Greenberg, and has also completed a Certificate of Contemporary Music Performance at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, studying with Airi Yoshioka. Martha currently serves as a Lecturer in Violin/Viola at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She performs on a French violin made in 1880 by Nestor Audinot, student of Sébastian Vuillaume.

Maria Mykolenko (New York, NY) is a sound artist/composer, violinist and teacher. Her work has been performed in New York City, New England and the Midwest. Her interests include political sound art, often electroacoustic, chamber music and music performed from graphic scores. Her electroacoustic soundscapes have been performed at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival from 2014 to 2018. Recent improvised works included works guided by a verbal score and a live chess game as well as choral music and other chamber music for indeterminate combinations of strings, winds and voice. Maria has also recently delivered lectures connecting music and philosophy.

Aine Nakamura (Tokyo, Japan & New York, NY) Supported by C.V. Starr Fund of Asian/Pacific/American Institute, and Dean’s Conference Fund of Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University 

Aine E. Nakamura is a singer, composer and performing artist. She incorporates music, body movements and words into her works. She aims to connect with audience, and with the past and the current through the integral and interactive approach toward space, time and humanity to see ways of life in the future.

Her productions include Listening to Nature in NY supported by Tishman Environment and Design Center, and Exploration in Sound and Body supported by NYU. Her selective appearances include Bang on a Can: Music Among Friends at MoMA, Shelf Life at New York Public Library, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and October New Music Festival in Oulu, Finland. MA candidate of the New York University in the concentrations of Music Composition, Performance, Anthropology (orality, arts politics) and Music Therapy.

Jascha Narveson (Brooklyn, NY) was raised in a concert hall and put to sleep as a child with an old vinyl copy of the Bell Labratories mainframe computer singing “Bicycle Built for Two.” He now makes music for people, machines, and interesting combinations of people and machines.

Ryan Oliver (South Bend, IN), who grew up in the southern United States, is a composer and multimedia artist. Over the years he has been fortunate to work with talented performers, such as Blair McMillen, the Relâche Ensemble, the Momenta Quartet, the Cygnus Ensemble, ensemble39, Nonsemble 6, and the New Orleans New Music Ensemble, who have performed his works across the United States. His multimedia works have been featured at Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI) National and Regional Conferences, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, the International Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT) in Taiwan, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in the United Kingdom, and the Punto y Raya Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland.

PhEAD (Andrew Litts, Ryan Oliver) Both composers, performers, and music teachers, PhEAD members share their passion and knowledge of contemporary art-music in newly imagined interactive multimedia performances.

Spenser Potter (Bozeman, MT) is a senior student in the Music Technology program at Montana State University.  He has been involved in a number of performing ensembles such as the Wind Symphony, Percussion Ensemble, and the marching band.  Through his time and experience at MSU, he has completed an electronic composition as well as a symphonic metal composition. More information about him can be found at spot-music.com

Mauricio Rodriguez (Palo Alto, CA) music finds its expression in a fluid transition between archetype sonorities and the most experimental acoustic art. His music invites the listener to delve in a multi-modal sonic space, often intricate and abstract, however viscerally vivid as an experience. 

Inspired on the aesthetics and symbology of native Mexican Art, the music of Rodriguez unfolds as a vocabulary of primal elements that aim to uncover fundamental acoustic materials around the ‘Physical Existence’; therefore, his instrumental techniques submerse players to experience the factual “sensing” of their instruments, re-approaching performance in an continuous resistance to the “culturized” artistry of interpretation; these “physiological performance techniques” ask for experiential actions to ultimately manifest the musical significance and appreciation of the sensorial, embodied Self. 

Mauricio Rodriguez holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Composition granted by Stanford University, a master’s in Sonology from the Royal Conservatory The Hague in The Netherlands, and a bachelor’s degree in composition, piano, and ethnomusicology from the University of Mexico. 

His music is frequently played in the Americas and Europe. He has attended artistic residencies at the Arteles Center (Finland), University of California Santa Cruz (WACM- Workshop), International Centre for Composers (Gotland-Sweden), Xenakis Centre (Paris), Formations Professionnelles Royaumont, and Cuban Institute of Art. 

He is an artistic fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts of Mexico. 

Mayank Sanganeria (San Francisco, CA) is a composer, music technologist and multimedia artist.  He got his masters from CCRMA and has worked in new musical instruments and the interaction between performers, composers and instruments. His current interests lie in connecting his interest in visual arts and music. He has presented his research at the New Interface for Musical Instruments (NIME) and Digital Audio Effects (DAFx) conferences, with accompanying apps on the App Store showcasing the use of the presented research. 

Sepand Shahab (Los Angeles, CA) is a composer and harpsichordist.  Lately, his work has featured lots of speakers and acoustic sources as well as communal experience and participation.  He has been composer in residence at the Djerrasi Resident Artists Program and with the US Forest Service in Alaska through the Voices of the Wilderness program.  Sepand has an MFA in composition from the California Institute of the Arts.

Sivan Silver-Swartz (Los Angeles, CA)I make experimental music through notated composition, instal lation, and performed song. Just intonation, duration, cyclicality, and counterpoint are all things I often think about when making music. I was born in 1993 and was raised in Columbus, Ohio. I stayed in my home state to receive a Bachelor of Music in composition from Oberlin Conservatory and later received a Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, studying under Michael Pisaro and Wolfgang von Schweinitz. 

SUBPATCH (Jared Bennett, Lazar Liebenberg, Jon Paul Mayse) Technology expands human capabilities.  Yet, as technology evolves to our needs, so too do we adapt to technology.  This dynamic between human and artifice is at the heart of Subpatch’s work. By employing gesture capture devices to extend human expressivity into digital domains, Subpatch create multimedia experiences encompassing the range of human experience, from reflective and universal to light and absurd.  Subpatch was founded in 2018 by Jared Bennett, Lazar Liebenberg, and Jon Paul Mayse. In 2019, they premiered their first joint work, A Well Played Game, at the AMOK Festival in York, UK.

Jacob Thiede (Denton, TX) is a sound artist who aims to connect physical, emotional, and spiritual realms through music as composer, performer, and improvisor. Jake studies composition with Panayiotis Kokoras, Kirsten Broberg, and Andrew May as well as saxophone with Eric Nestler at the University of North Texas.

Originally from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Joshua Tomlinson (Norman, OK) is a composer, sound artist, and educator specializing in electroacoustic music. His background is rock with subsequent classical training in voice and guitar.  His compositions have been performed at numerous conferences and festivals including PARMA, NSEME, SEAMUS, EABD, EMM, RMA (UK), SMC (Spain), and TENOR (Australia).  Joshua serves on the steering committee of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and he has participated as a composer and audio technician at NYCEMF since 2012. He and his wife Hannah share their home with a salsa garden and four cats.

Natalie Van Horn (Orem, UT) is a masters student in composition. Her interest in music extends to both acoustic and electronic and she has written pieces for both. Her music often features a story or experience that informs the processes and form of the piece. She has a particular interest in interactive electronic pieces involving input from a controller. Van Horn has been performed in venues such as Salty Cricket and UCC.  Some of Van Horn’s recent works are: among electronics, Chatter for fixed media and Thunder Storm for electronics controlled by WiiMote; and acoustic, Oddity for wind quintet and Emergency for string quartet.

Composer Kyle Vanderburg (Fargo, North Dakota) grew up in Missouri where the Ozarks meet the Mississippi River valley. Raised on southern gospel and American hymnody, his music tries to walk the line between eliciting nostalgia and devising innovative sonic worlds. His electronic works place familiar sounds in new contexts, his acoustic works feature catchy melodies and too many time signatures.  He holds degrees from Drury University and the University of Oklahoma and has studied under Carlyle Sharpe, Marvin Lamb, Konstantinos Karathanasis, and Roland Barrett. He’d be delighted if you checked out KyleVanderburg.com.

1. V. Vecker aka Keith Wecker (Vancouver, Canada) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He has been a member of the Vancouver experimental scene since 2006 and is the founder of the Emergency Room.   V.Veckers current output of music is based around saxophone loops and synthesizers, with a distinct attempt to bend and manipulate the sounds being produced. Leading with an emphasis on free jazz and improvisation counter balanced with his interest in formal composition methods and electronic musics lead to a cross section of genres resulting in music familiar yet strange.   V.Vecker has participated (solo and with ensemble) in New Forms Festival, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Living Things Festival, and have shared the stage with Wolf Eyes, Hauschka, Jessica Moss, Nadja, Sun Araw, Thundercat, Zs, Anthony Braxton and Glenn Branca. 

Marilisa Vega (SLC, UT) has experience playing the melodica.  Thank you.

Robert Willey (Muncey, IN) received his doctorate from the University of California San Diego, where he studied computer music with F. Richard Moore and composition with Joji Yuasa. He currently teaches music industry, songwriting, computer music, and senior projects at Ball State University, and has published books on Louisiana Creole fiddle, Brazilian piano, music production, and the music industry. He is an expert on the music of two composers from Texarkana: Scott Joplin and Conlon Nancarrow. http://rkwilley.com

Kevin Zhang (Los Angeles, CA) is a composer and sound artist whose recent work combines notated music composition, electronic media, field recording, and site-specific and acousmatic sound installation with his interests in language, psychoacoustics, and perceptual thresholds to reimagine alternative temporal realities and geographies of materials and resources. His projects have been presented at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Dian Red Kechil International Young Composers Residency, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, MOXsonic, Puerto Rican Sound Art Fair, Qualcomm Institute’s IDEAS, Royaumont, and UCSD Soundings festivals and residencies. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches music technology at Chapman University.