Remember the lockdowns? Throughout those bleak days when musicians couldn’t perform in public, a small group of Kyma artists managed to find a way to continue meeting and making music together via Zoom in two virtual concerts they called Toe and Shell. In early November 2024 they decided to meet in person at Splendor, a former bathhouse that Anne La Berge has converted into a musical mecca in the center of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Setting up for a multi-system jam session
The first order of business was for the participants to collectively agree on a schedule of presentations, discussions, and public concerts. Then, over the course of the three day meetup, everyone had a chance to ask questions, experiment, share expertise, and improvise together.
Pete Johnston, Anne La Berge, Charlie Norton sharing expertise
At the IRCAM Forum Workshops @Seoul 6-8 November 2024, composer Steve Everett presented a talk on the compositional processes he used to create FIRST LIFE: a 75-minute mixed media performance for string quartet, live audio and motion capture video, and audience participation.
FIRST LIFE is based on work that Everett carried out at the Center of Chemical Evolution, a NSF/NASA funded project at multiple universities to examine the possibility of the building blocks of life forming in early Earth environments. He worked with stochastic data generated by Georgia Tech biochemical engineer Martha Grover and mapped them to standard compositional structures (not as a scientific sonification, but to help educate the public about the work of the center through a musical performance).
Data from IRCAM software and PyMOL were mapped to parameters of physical models of instrumental sounds in Kyma. For example, up to ten data streams generated by the formation of monomers and polymers in Grover’s lab were used to control parameters of the “Somewhat stringish” model in Kyma (such as delay rate, BowRate, position, decay, etc). Everett presented a poster about this work at the 2013 NIME Conference in Seoul, and has uploaded some videos from the premiere of First Life at Emory University.
Currently on the music composition faculty of the City University of New York (CUNY), Professor Everett is teaching a doctoral seminar on timbre in the spring (2025) semester and next fall he will co-teach a course on music and the brain with Patrizia Casaccia, director of the Neuroscience Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center.
A highlight of this year’s Cortona Sessions for New Music will be Special Guest Artist, Anne La Berge. Known for her work blending composed and improvised music, sound art, and storytelling, Anne will be working closely with composers and will be coaching performers on improvisation with live Kyma electronics!
Anne La Berge at KISS2017
The Cortona Sessions for New Music is scheduled for 20 July – 1 August 2025 in Ede, Netherlands, and includes twelve days of intensive exploration of contemporary music, collaboration, and discussions on what it takes to make a career as a 21st-century musician.
Anne is eager to work with instrumentalists and composers looking to expand their solo or ensemble performances through live electronics, so if you or someone you know is interested in working with Anne this summer, consider applying for the 2025 Cortona Sessions!
Applications are open now (Deadline: 1 February 2025). You can apply as a Composer, a Performer, or as a Groupie (auditor). A full-tuition audio/visual fellowship is available for applicants who can provide audio/visual documentation services and/or other technological support.
At the invitation of UWL Lecturer Charlie Norton, Carla Scaletti presented a lecture/demonstration on Generative Sound Design in Kyma for students, faculty and guests at University of West London on 14 November 2024. As an unanticipated prelude, Pete Townshend (who, along with Joseph Townshend, works extensively with Kyma) welcomed the Symbolic Sound co-founders to his alma mater and invited attendees to tour the Townshend Studio following the lecture.
After the seminar, graduating MA students Vinayak Arora and Sabin Pavel (hat) posed with Kurt Hebel & Carla Scaletti (center) and Charlie Norton (distant upper right background)UWL Professor of Music Production Justin Paterson and Trombonist/Composer/Kyma Sound Installation artist Robert Jarvis discuss the extensive collection of instruments in the Townshend Studio
It seems that anywhere you look in the Townshend Studio, you see another rock legend. John Paul Jones (whose most recent live Kyma collaborations include Sons of Chipotle, Minibus Pimps, and Supersilent among others) recognized an old friend from across the room: a Yamaha GX-1 (1975), otherwise known as ‘The Dream Machine’ — the same model JPJ played when touring with Led Zeppelin and when recording the 1979 album “In Through The Out Door”. Yamaha’s first foray into synthesizers, only 10 were ever manufactured; it featured a ribbon controller and a keyboard that could also move laterally for vibrato. Other early adopters included ELP, Stevie Wonder and Abba.
JPJ recollects his days of touring with the GX1 and the roadie who took up temporary accommodation in its huge flight case, as Alan, two students, Bruno and Robert look on.Charlie Norton with Alan Jackson (back), JP Jones (at Yamaha GX-1), Carla Scaletti & Kurt Hebel in the Townshend StudioAlan Jackson and Pete Johnston pondering the EMS VocoderComposer Bruno Liberda (the tall one) with Symbolic Sound co-founder Carla Scaletti
Franz Danksagmüller has had a densely packed fall 2024 concert season of hyper-organ plus Kyma performances in London, Köln, Helsinki, Lübeck and Berlin.
Franz Danksagmüller placing mics inside the organ at Kulturstation St. Peter, Cologne (narrow and treacherous paths…)Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter (which despite it’s name is a functioning church with a congregation and services) – looking down from the balcony to the mobile organ console.Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter organ console with Franz Danksagmüller’s Glove controller and Muse EEG scannerCologne, Kunststation St. Peter, the horizontal trumpets…Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter with paper score & iPad running Kyma Control
After the film festival at St Albans in London, it was on to Helsinki for Danksagmüller, where he performed with Kyma and the new hyper-organ at the Musiikkitalo on 11 November 2024 — the first time that this organ was played with live-electronics and video! Danksagmüller performed his new composition there is no free will for EEG scanner and Kyma and a live-electronics “remix” of a prelude by D. Buxtehude.
Helsinki, Musiikkitalo, view from the stage of the organ consoleHelsinki, Musiikkitalo, organ consoleHelsinki, Musiikkitalo, Franz Danksagmüller featured on a sign outside the concert hallHelsinki Musiikkitalo; the entire organ is in a swell box with wooden shutters (in addition to the individual swell boxes) for dynamics. The twisted organ pipes are fully functional!Helsinki organ console with laptop and Kyma Control on iPad
Following the Helsinki performance, Danksagmüller returned to Lübeck to perform an hour-long DJ set with Kyma and variety of controllers for an after party following a concert at the Kunsttankstelle Lübeck.
Lübeck, Kunsttankstelle, Franz Danksagmüller’s live DJ setupKulturtankstelle Lübeck; the first part of the performance (Danksagmüller joined at the end of their first part and played the last part)
And the busy concert season is not over yet! Danksagmüller’s students are performing their own compositions for hyper-organ and Kyma at the Musikhochschule Lübeck on 8 December, and Franz will perform with organ and Kyma in Berlin on Friday the 13th at the Zum Heilbronnen church on their Opposites Attract series. Danksagmüller’s “Light and Shadow” — featuring music by W. Byrd, J. S. Bach and F. Danksagmüller — is framed by other concerts on themes like “Fire and Water”, “Life and Death”, “Beginnings and Endings”, and other evocative opposite-pairings.
Carla Scaletti, creator of the Kyma language and co-founder of Symbolic Sound, was invited to present the closing keynote for the 2024 Audio Developer Conference in Bristol, UK on 13 November 2024.
Scaletti spoke about strategies for exploring the boundary between the known and the unknown through “recursive construction” and reminded software developers that the risky kinds of thinking required for creating something truly new are best supported by facing the unknown together.
She also touched on some of the design decisions behind the Kyma Sound (why it is a function, rather than a wiring diagram), the ways in which a user-interface defines an explorable universe of computable sound, the influence of programming languages on what you can imagine and create, and the co-evolution of the Kyma hardware and software.
An annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems, ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new skills, and build a network that will support their career development. It also showcases academic research and facilitates collaborations between research and industry. ADC will begin releasing videos of the ADC 2024 presentations on YouTube, beginning in 2025.
Ping Pong Percussion represents a new, hybrid art form created by experimental composer / visual artist, Giuseppe Tamborrino and featuring a robotic instrument that he designed and built.
Part robot, part sound sculpture, part musical composition, part video art — Ping Pong Percussion Experimental Sampling with Wifi Servo Motor & Live Granular Synthesis. Laterza (TA) 2024-10-6 blends robotically-actuated acoustic percussion sounds with live Kyma granular synthesis and leads the viewer on a path from real world to imaginary visuals.
Giuseppe Tamborrino’s Wi-Fi servo motor-controlled sound sculpture
In his compositions, Laterza-based composer Giuseppe Tamborrino combines jazz scales, Greek modes and personalized scales with partially tonal, tonal and non-tonal timbres, blended with instrumental acoustic effects. Each work takes a different form, some are stochastically shaped, others reflect the golden section, others take on algorithmic structures experimentally generated by custom software for computer music and sound.
On Friday afternoon, 15 November 2024, Pete Johnston (software department) and Michael Aitchison (head of R&D) invited Carla Scaletti to present a seminar on sound synthesis for the R&D team at DiGiCo.
Following the lecture, Pete Johnston (who routinely prototypes and tests new signal processing algorithms in Kyma first before implementing them on the embedded processors in the live consoles) led the guests on a tour of DiGiCo’s testing facility and answered questions about the fully redundant, live fall-back dual consoles and the on-call 24/7 worldwide user support that DiGiCo provides for their live pro consoles.
Matt, Carla, Alan, Pete, and Robin discussing Capytalk expressions after the lecture at DiGiCo
Portland-based multimedia artist William Selman’s 8 November 2024 album, The Light Moves Between, poses the question: “Can scenes from the Pacific Northwest of America connect us to entities in distant universes, or are we listening to William’s unique processing of his own surroundings?”
Various Kyma techniques can be heard on each track, with cross-synthesis emerging as Selman’s personal favorite. Here are a few details you can listen for on the album:
“Outshone the Sun”
Sunspots are caused by intense magnetic fields emerging from the interior. Image created by NASA.
Inspired by sunspots and electromagnetic interference reminiscent of the sounds of popping air bubbles that barnacles make during low tide, Selman used a frequency shifter in Kyma to modulate the Serge New Timbral Oscillator for the sharp droning tones near the beginning to match the character of the shortwave radio sounds. Much of the bed of textures in the second half of the piece is made by cross-filtering field recordings of barnacles against shortwave radio recordings.
“Kept in Banks and Vessels”
For the triangle and singing bowl sounds, Selman designed a Jaap-Vink-inspired feedback Sound in Kyma to create the drones. For the final section, he cross-filtered Serge sounds with frog sounds that he recorded in Hawaii. The warbly animal call sounds are made in Kyma with an Oscillator and a LossyIntegrator.
“Flutter at the False Light”
Here you can hear a Kyma frequency shifter modulating various electromagnetic field recordings made near the composer’s house. The bed of textures for the ambience are cross-filtered sounds from recordings made with contact mics in his studio space and on his windows.
“New Topographics”
The last track was inspired by American landscape photographers and photos of empty, non-places primarily in the American West. Selman recorded sounds such as birds, wind storms, electrical lines, and water wells in the Central Oregon high desert. He used a cross filter patch made by Pete Johnston and Alan Jackson during the Kyma Kata sessions, which he finds particularly useful for creating a stream of sounds that flow seamlessly from one into another. Other instrumental elements include a Serge synthesizer, organ, and bowed (and hit) vibraphone.
The Light Moves Between represents Selman’s return to visual work following a long hiatus — this time around, he is bringing his visuals together with his sound work. The first three tracks on the album were written to accompany three short films. Although the first one (“Outshone the Sun”) has been set aside, the second and third pieces are complete and can be viewed on Vimeo:
In October 2024, Franz Danksagmüller, along with his students from the Royal Academy of Music, performed a live soundtrack for pipe organ and Kyma to accompany the silent film Nosferatu twice in London: The first performance, on 4 October 2024, was at the Royal Academy, and the second performance was on Halloween at the cathedral in St. Albans to a sold-out audience and was, by all accounts, a fantastic success (resulting in some very happy students).
St. Albans organ loft during live soundtrack for “Nosferatu” with Kyma Control on the iPadAudience for the sold-out performance of Nosferatu at St. Albans (view from behind the projection screen)Students of Franz Danksagmüller performing the live soundtrack for Nosferatu at St. AlbansEntryway to St. Albans Cathedral
At the Musikhochschule Lübeck, Danksagmüller’s students in the new master’s program in Hyper-organ, Improvisation, Composition & New Media are presenting a concert for organ, Kyma and live-video on 8 December 2024 in the main concert hall at the MHK. Composer/performers include:
Sarah Proske: Emerson, Lake and Palmer´s “Fanfare for the common man for organ, percussion, live electronics
Patrycja Olszewska: Liquid Motion for organ, live electronics, video
Lennart Pries: Improvisation for the silent film “The Fall of the House of Usher (USA 1927) for organ and live electronics
Karin Lorenz: (Un-)Known for organ and electronics
Sarah Proske: smoke for organ, live electronics and video
Valentin Manß & Wojciech Buczyński: crowds, live & death, Music for (historical) silent film excerpts for organ, live electronics, video
Fabio Paiano: á la ELP for organ and live electronics
