Author: SSC

Jeff Stolet & Chi Wang open for Musicacoustica-Beijing Festival

Chi Wang at opening ceremony of Musicacoustica-Beijing (Xinhua/Luo Xiaoguang)

Two live electronic pieces for Kyma and game controllers were selected to be a part of the opening ceremonies for this year’s Musicacoustica Beijing festival on October 22, 2012: Chi Wang’s Sound Motion for Kyma and Kinect and Jeffrey Stolet’s Lariat Rituals for and Kyma and Gametrak controller.

Wang Chi’s Sound Motion is a multichannel interactive composition that utilizes Processing to analyze data captured from the user’s movement in space; that data stream is then used to control recorded, synthesized, and modified sound in Kyma.

In Jeffrey Stolet’s Lariat Rituals, fine positioning of the Gametrak in 3-space controls formants and other parameters of a synthesized male voice (as seen in this video).

Following the festival Stolet and Wang spent two weeks presenting seminars and lectures on Kyma at conservatories throughout China.

Jeffrey Stolet performs Lariat Rituals at KISS2012 in St Cloud MN

 

Charging into the abyss

John Paul Jones is once more joining forces with Supersilent, this time for a whirlwind tour of the UK, demonstrating yet again that “the prolific multi-instrumentalist finds bigger thrills in charging into the abyss than reclining into the rock stardom he achieved decades ago” according to Dave Kerr in a recent feature article for The Skinny.

Supersilent have only one rule: no rehearsals!  And according to the Village Underground, on this tour, “they intend to push each other further, harder, wilder and freer into uncharted sonic zones.”

NOVEMBER:
14th – Birmingham, Town Hall | www.thsh.co.uk
15th – Glasgow, The Arches | www.thearches.co.uk
16th – Manchester, RNCM | rncm.ac.uk
17th – Bristol, Arnolfini | arnolfini.org.uk
18th – London, Village Underground | villageunderground.co.uk

Jones, as well as Supersilent members Helge Sten, Ståle Storløkken, and Arve Henriksen, each utilize Kyma in their live, improvised electronics performances.

LA area performances by Phil Curtis

Composer Phil Curtis will be performing in two up-coming Los Angeles-area events, bringing his own brand of live sonic palimpsests to the work of two LA-area artists. On November 6, he’ll be providing live Kyma electronics for a performance of Anne LeBaron’s Floodsongs (2012), a choral setting of three poems by Douglas Kearney performed by the Santa Clarita Master Chorale as part of the last ever SCREAM electronic music festival at REDCAT on Saturday November 10 at 8:30 PM.

The following weekend – Friday through Sunday with two shows on Saturday – Curtis is performing as part of a Furnace, a piece conceived by Carole Kim at Automata in Chinatown. Shows are at 7:00 pm November 16-18 (extra show at 9:30 pm on the 17th). Automata is at 504 Chung King Court. This will be a big multimedia interactive extravaganza with Butoh dance, Experimental Music, and Live Video Projection! Seats are VERY limited, so advance tickets are highly recommended!

For more information and tickets, visit the ticketing site or the Furnace facebook page.

Willful Devices embrace the unpredictable

As anyone who works with computers or musical instruments knows: sometimes, even despite your best efforts, these devices can seem to have a mind of their own. Composer/improviser Scott Miller and Clarinetist/improviser Pat O’Keefe accept this fact and even celebrate it, in the knowledge that, within this unpredictability lies the potential for unimagined sonic discoveries.  Miller and O’Keefe will be embracing the unpredictable this Thursday, October 25 as Willful Devices (Scott Miller, Kyma; Pat O’Keefe, clarinets) present a 7:30 pm concert, preceded by an afternoon masterclass at San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Both events are open to the public:

3:30 pm:  Master class on Contemporary Clarinet Performance Practice and Real-time Computer Composition Issues in Room 160, Music Bldg., SJSU, no admission fee

7:30 pm concert: ‘Electroacoustic Mayhem Created With a Clarinet, Interactive Electronics, and Plenty of Improv!’ (Rumors hint at guest appearances by Stephen Ruppenthal and Brian Belet, of the ensemble SoundProof) in the Concert Hall, SJSU, Admission $10/$5

Be there; or be predictable.

Musical score for Unfinished Swan

Imagine yourself surrounded by nothing but a featureless whiteness, a world in which the only way to discover objects or people around you  is to splatter black paint in the hopes of revealing their outlines and shapes.

Giant Sparrow’s The Unfinished Swan is a new kind of game, and composer Joel Corelitz has taken a new approach to scoring the music for the new PlayStation title.  Seeking to blur the line between the real and the synthetic, Corelitz chose to imitate electronic sounds with acoustic instruments and to imitate acoustic instruments with electronics.  He used Kyma for the electric harpsichord sounds in the ‘switched-on’ type pieces, and he used the Kyma CrossFilter on the pads.

The Unfinished Swan, slated for an October 23, 2012 release, is already earning rave reviews for its unique approach and focus on creativity, exploration, and discovery.

Walking the road that only you can see

Sarth Calhoun’s introspective piece for a rainy Brooklyn evening (in a similar vein to the Metal Machine Trio tour he did with Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger). Performed entirely on Continuum fingerboard using Kyma and Ableton Live amp modelers, it evokes the sense of conflict that can arise when you feel you need to walk a road that only you can see. Recorded as a single take, with no edits.

quux collective

The quux collective, a new music ensemble of classically trained musicians who perform music for saxophones, percussion, bassoon, bass, clarinet, didgeridoo, theremin and Kyma, have three shows coming up:

Saturday, 6 October 2012 at 7:30 pm
Longwood University
Molnar Recital Hall
Free

Friday, 2 November 2012 at 2:30 pm
University of Richmond
Camp Concert Hall
Free

Saturday, 3 November 2012 at 8:00 pm
Virginia Commonwealth University
Vlahcevic Concert Hall
$5 (free for VCU students)

Here’s a sampling of Roland Karnatz’ Kyma work:

Didge III by Roland Karnatz for didgeridoo and Kyma:

Duet I by Roland Karnatz for improvised percussion and Kyma (Peter Martin, percussion):

Exploding Tickets at the Loft

The Exploding Tickets (Robert Landfermann – Bass ; Christian Lillinger – Drums ; Matthias Schubert – Saxophone ; Eckard Vossas – Kyma) are performing at the LOFT in Cologne on October 22, 2012 in a freely improvised, expressive, energetic, spontaneous and impulsive set of encounters between uncommon electronic sound experiments and natural instruments.

Eckard Vossas uses his Kyma system, controlled and tweaked by a Continuum Fingerboard and various other controllers like iPads and pedals, to create a unique individual style of improvised electronic music, sensitively modulating synthesized and artificial sound material with his fingertips, transforming and performing with the same expressivity as his acoustic improvisation partners with whom these sound transformations hold an intensive dialogue. It can be fascinating to hear how new and different the acoustic instruments – Saxophone, Bass, Percussion – can sound when they are confronted with experimental electronic timbres!

Concert at the LOFT starts at 20:30 (ticket information).