Official organ of the Symbolic Sound Corporation
John Paul Jones will be joining Spin Marvel at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival on April 30, 2011 for a set of “textural soundscapes and colour” and “electronica jazz”. Â JPJ will be enhancing the “distinctly European sound” of Spin Marvel by processing his bass through all manner of spectral transmogrifications arranged in a Kyma Timeline controlled by a SoftStep USB MIDI foot controller.
(Additional jazz gigs to follow later this summer so stay tuned!)
Working to keep St. Louis “strange and wonderful”, the Hearding Cats Artists Collective presents another poetry and multimedia word warping event on Saturday, Apr. 16, 2011 – 8 pm at Floating Labs multimedia performance gallery in St. Louis.
Featuring word-artists Brett Underwood, Anna Lum, Treasure Williams and Stef Russell conversing musically with Zimbabwe Nkenya (psaltry) and Rich O’Donnell (Kyma/Pacarana electronics), These Cats Can Speak promises an evening of enhanced word-play and lively interaction.
Richard Lainhart is performing his music for guitar, lapsteel, and Kyma at EMF Studios in Manhattan at 7 pm, March 21 2011. A discussion of Kyma in live performance and a wine and cheese reception will follow the performance.
Composer Yannis Kyriakides’ “The Trojan Light” for ensemble and live Kyma electronics will be premiered by musikFabrik at the Muziekgebouw on Thursday the 17th of February 2011 at 20:15.
Yannis Kyriakides‘ The Trojan Light will be premiered by ensemble musikFabrik in the Muziekgebouw on Thursday the 17th of February 2011 at 20:15.  The Trojan Light, a new 45-minute piece for ensemble and  both fixed and live Kyma electronics, will share the program with two other pieces by composers named Yannis (but with alternate spellings): Kassandra by Iannis Xenakis and the cult performance piece, Anaparastasis III: The Pianist by Jani Christo.  Full program and ticket information.
Composer Jeffrey Stolet’s new composition for bass/baritone Nicholas Isherwood and Kyma: Manda no Sahou will be premiered February 16, 2011 at CCRMA (Stanford).
Composer Jeffrey Stolet has just finished a new work for bass/baritone Nicholas Isherwood and Kyma: Manda no Sahou. Manda is the name of a character played by actor Riki Takeuchi in a series of Japanese films. Despite the fact that he is a mafioso and a loan shark, Manda lives by his own ethical code, championing the little guy and letting the real Yakuza (bad guys) have it.
Stolet uses lines from the films to evoke a cool Clint-Eastwood-meets-Buddha type vibe over menacing, Kyma-granulated samples of Isherwood singing his basest of bass notes. The premier is set for February 16 2011 at CCRMA (Stanford) after which Isherwood will incorporate the piece into his European concert tour.
John Littig’s Audio Grafitti opens Tuesday January 18, 2011 at SOB’s in New York. He described how he used Kyma for the intro to Inside Reprise in a December 27 2010 interview with Lynne Rosen on WBAI in New York.
While studying at NYU and working as a research assistant in the brain imaging department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, John Littig was simultaneously hard at work developing his craft as a jazz drummer in clubs from Greenwich Village to Harlem.  In a December 27th interview on Lynne Rosen‘s “In Pursuit of Happiness” radio show on WBAI in New York, John gave a shout-out to Symbolic Sound and played the Kyma-generated intro to Inside Reprise, one of the songs from Audio Grafitti,  his new show opening at Tuesday January 18 2011 at SOB’s in New York.
Listen to John Littig interview on WBAI; the Kyma shout-out occurs at  around 39 minutes, and the larger discussion on the importance of surrounding yourself with positive, affirming influences is important advice for all artists to reflect upon at the beginning of this new year.  As Littig points out, “No one can do this alone.”
Computer music by Jonty Harrison and Silvia Matheus will be featured on The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011, Friday-Sunday, January 7-9, 2011, 8pm at the Southside Theater, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco: http://www.sfsound.org/tape.html
Surround yourself with 16+ speakers at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, during three concerts of new and classic fixed-media compositions by 20 composers. This year’s event features Jonty Harrison, the British composer and pioneer of surround-sound diffusion and a performance of Crossings by composer/videographer Silvia Matheus.
For more details and advance ticket sales, visit http://www.sfsound.org/tape.html/
The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011Composer Julien Bilodeau’s Kroniks_01, for flute and live Kyma processing was performed by Geneviève Déraspe at the Cirmmt Center, McGill University on Thursday, the 9th of December 2010.
Composer Julien Bilodeau‘s Kroniks_01, for flute and live Kyma processing was performed by Geneviève Déraspe at the Cirmmt Center, McGill University on  Thursday, the 9th of December 2010.
The work, composed in 2005 was influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen in its use of a single kernel of material to generate intervallic and durational relationships on multiple timescales, from the microstructure to the entire piece and even over multiple pieces of music in a larger cycle. This consistency is audible in the overall coherence of the piece and Déraspe brings an intensity and energy to the piece that makes it sizzle. Bilodeau used 84 flute samples reconstructed in sparkling granulations.
In keeping with its multi-scale structure, Â Kroniks_01 depicts the relationship between individual and the masses.
