Month: May 2012

Miller and the robots

Composer Scott Miller has been selected to write new music for Kyma and EMMI: a trio of self-playing acoustic robots created by Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper and Scott Barton. (Rogers studied with Scott Miller at St Cloud State University and Jeffrey Stolet at the University of Oregon and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Virginia).

In Détente, Miller will be using Kyma to create an ecosystemic environment for the acoustic robots and exploring the limits of real-time amplitude and frequency modulation by forcing them to perform audio-rate tremolo and trills. The new work is scheduled for performance at the Sound and Music Computing conference on the Music for Robots concert on 14 July 2012.

 

Tomorrow you’re gone

Hamilton Sterling at Helikon Sound has just completed the sound for David Jacobson’s new film, Tomorrow You’re Gone, a story of psychological vengeance and real-world redemption. The film stars Stephen Dorff, Michelle Monaghan, and Willem Dafoe.

As sound designer, supervising sound editor, and re-recording mixer, Hamilton created a sonic world that functions almost as a musical score.  Aside from guitar and drums (used by the composer), almost every scene in the film is inflected by sounds generated in Kyma (appropriately enough, since most of the film may or may not take place from a point of view inside the main character’s head).

Di Scipio in the Age of Cage

Agostino Di Scipio “The Age of Cage”, on Friday May 18, 2012 was the final event in an Homage to Cage series organized by the University of Salerno, culminating in Polvere di suono e altri resti (“sound dust and other remains”) a concert curated by Agostino Di Scipio, featuring new music by Di Scipio as well as new realizations of classic Cage works including: a new version of 4’33” with Di Scipio’s Background Noise Study Kyma patch; several Audible Ecosystemics pieces; and the 6 studi for piano & electronics. The concert, technically managed by Silvia Lanzalone and her electronic music students in Salerno, was a big success.

Di Scipio and Longobardi have several upcoming concert dates that will include a new version of Cage’s Electronic Music for Piano (1964). Imagine Cage’s Music for Piano 4-84 played through a network of self-governing feedback circuits (realized in Kyma), using only piezo discs, getting feedback through the metal and wooden parts of the piano! The Stradivarius label is about to issue a 50-minute long version of the new Cage/Di Scipio work on CD at the end of May 2012.  For dates and times, please visit: Di Scipio Upcoming Events

Post apocalyptic LA hyper-opera

 

Composer/sound designer Phil Curtis is using Kyma to provide electronics and sound design for a new production of composer Anne LeBaron‘s opera, Crescent City, directed by Yuval Sharon and performed from 10-27 May 2012 at The Industry in Los Angeles.  Described by LA Times critic Mark Swed as a “darkly mysterious, troubling yet weirdly exuberant and wonderfully performed new opera,” the production is a meta-collaboration that includes six visual artists who were asked to build installations for the sets (shack, cemetery, junk heap, swamp, hospital and dive bar) in the Industry’s large warehouse-like space.  Variously priced tickets determine where you, the audience member, gets to sit (or roam), and the espresso bar has been deemed outstanding.

Curtis is using Kyma to spatialize sounds in the vast performance space and to create a swamp ambience at the climax of the opera as the Voodoo queen and healer Marie Laveau sings one final invocation and is swallowed up by the sounds of the swamp.

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the libretto metaphorically examines the way people deal with disaster and post-apocalyptic scenarios, including nurses, Voodoo, and Loa. As Swed enthusiastically concludes: “We now have something that can genuinely be called L.A. opera.”