Over the years, I’ve developed a model for composition interdisciplinary/intermedia performances and have used it to devise performances with my students, typically getting a dozen students involved in one performance. I can do this at your school too, adapting an existing composition to your students’ skills or working with them to create a completely new performance. I can also do extended intensive residencies in which students develop Continue reading
“The Collected Solo Piano Works of Ferin Martino, as Conjured by Your Presence”
This is an interactive art installation using a piano playing computer algorithm I wrote that generates music reminiscent of early twentieth century expressionist composers like Arnold Schönberg. Since the software is capable of generating its own œvre, I gave it a human-like name, Ferin Martino. Continue reading
PerfTech Presents: The TAMU Laptet and Friends with Guest Artist Ivica Ico Bukvic
PerfTech students presented new compositions for live electronics with a 3D surround sound system in TAMU’s Fallout Theatre. The concert featured a performance by the TAMU Laptet, TAMU’s freshman laptop ensemble, one by guest artist Ivica Ico Bukvic (Virginia Tech). Continue reading
PopMusing: On Evil
Students and faculty met to discuss the notion of evil in music, from Paganini to Robert Johnson to the Rolling Stones to death metal. It was a great mixing of minds at all levels of academia to reflect on deeper issues between popular and classical music.
Third Prize in Music/Architecture Competition
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Research Embodied, a site-specific intermedia performance created for the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library with designer Autum Casey was selected as a finalist from 70 international submissions, performed on October 19, 2011, and awarded third prize in the Music in Architecture—Architecture in Music symposium in Austin, Texas.
Research Embodied: site-specific intermedia performance
Co-created with designer Autum Casey, Research Embodied is an intermedia performance designed for the Great Hall of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library with musicians performing with amplified books and QWERTY keyboard, footsteps, and movement (in front of a camera-triggered synthesized carillon), along with two large video projections and five actors.
Acoustically, we highlight how the Great Hall amplifies presence in the space. The reverberation preserves instants in time, mirroring the function of a library. Visually, we merge the view of the archives with a glimpse of their contents. Functionally, we scripted and made music form the activities of participants in the Great Hall and scholars in the stacks. Conceptually, we call attention to the union and separation of the public and scholars and the challenges of moderated access to information.
TAMU Faculty Recital with Mariana Gariazzo: Afterimages Premiere
Flutist Mariana Gariazzo premiered Afterimages for bass flute and live electronics.
Afterimages for bass flute and electronics
Afterimages is a solo work composed for bass flutist Mariana Gariazzo with live electronics. All sounds played by the computer are captured form the soloist live during the performance. It’s a study in counterpoint through live sampling.
PerfTech Presents: Electroacoustic Masterworks 2011
PerfTech students got hands-on experience performing classic electroacoustic literature by spatializing the recorded works live in a 11.2 channel, 3D surround sound system using a multitouch interface in TAMU’s Fallout Theatre.
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Using the structure of today’s screen-mediated communications, these performers contribute their parts one at a time, responding to what was played before, and together they build “born digital” performances that expose the delays and glitches of network communications and make something genuinely *human* with it. As the audience, we witness performances that only exist in our web browsers, in the moments we’re viewing it. There is no “definitive version” of the performance!
This isn’t “pop music.”
It’s not likely to be danceable or singable, so if that’s the only way you define music, then you can call this “sound art” or“performance art.” It’s free improvisation in the avant garde tradition: adventurous and skilled improvisers building a performance together spontaneously, without any pre-written melodies or chord charts. They’re simply having a conversationtogether in music, sound, visuals, and performance!