Category: Concert

La Berge Touring North America

Composer/Performers Anne La Berge and David Dramm are touring North America from the end of February through March 2017.  This is your chance to catch a live performance of Anne’s controversial Utter — for flute, multiple iPads and Kyma — and discover for yourself why Utter generated such intense post-concert discussion at KISS2016.

Here are the dates (in reverse chronological order so scroll down for the upcoming dates):

11 March 2017
San Francisco Center For New Music
San Francisco

10 March 2017
Indexical Concert
Radius Gallery
Tannery Arts Center
Santa Cruz
20.00

6 March 2017
Composition Colloquim with David Dramm
UC Santa Cruz
13.20 – 14.50

1 – 4 March 2017
Residency with David Dramm
Brigham Young University
3 March – La Berge solo concert
Madsen Recital Hall
19.30

28 February 2017
Solo concert
Music on Main
Vancouver
20.00

24 February 2017
INsphere
Vancouver

23 February 2017
Elastic Arts concert
with
Sam Pluta, Dana Jessen and Katherine Young
Elastic Arts, Chicago
21.00

21 February 2017
Compostion Seminar
University of Chicago

Between What Is and What Could Be…

The Hearding Cats Collective presents Between What Is and What Could Be, a concert in celebration of the 80th birthday of their co-founder and artistic director, Rich O’Donnell.

Director of the Washington University Electronic Music Studio in St. Louis, Rich O’Donnell’s musical career spans over six decades, including 43 years as principal percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony. O’Donnell is also a prolific composer, innovator and inventor of percussion and electronic instruments, a producer, a teacher and a writer.

Between What Is and What Could Be spans 47 years of creative work, from O’Donnell’s 1970 MikroTimbre I solo for amplified TamTam, to free improvisation in the present moment with the Symprov Trio, an ensemble of virtuoso current and former St. Louis Symphony Orchestra musicians Asako Kuboki (violin) and Timothy Myers (trombone), and includes interludes featuring O’Donnell’s virtual drumming on Wiimote and nunchuck to accompany Casper McElwee’s 3D Anaglyph video and live poetry performance by Anna Lum.  It’s a major birthday, so there will be other surprises as well!

Rich O 80 logo
Sunday, 26 February – 7:30pm
The Sheldon Ballroom, 3648 Washington
St. Louis, Missouri USA
General Admission $20, Student and Artist $15
Please RSVP

Visit the Hearding Cats Collective site for full details.

Just Call Me God!

In Just Call Me God! John Malkovich plays a megalomaniacal dictator teetering on the brink of madness in a one-man show exploring the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely.


Martin Haselböck (organ) and Franz Danksagmüeller (composer/organist, LinnStrument and Kyma processing) — respond to Malkovich’s words with music by Bach, Wagner and Schubert — in a confrontation of words against music. At one point, Danksagmüller even uses Kyma to merge the voice of Malkovich with the timbre of the organ, allowing the actor to speak with the voice of a mighty pipe organ — every power-mad dictator’s dream!

On tour this spring in Europe and Russia, the group is arranging bring their message to a worldwide audience early in 2018.

08-10 March 2017
Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie

12-13 March 2017
Vienna, Konzerthaus

15 March 2017
Amsterdam, Concertgebouw

18 March 2017
Groningen, De Oosterport

21 March 2017
Birmingham, Symphony Hall

23-25 March 2017
London, Union Chapel

28 March 2017
Luxembourg, Philharmonie

2 April 2017
Moscow, House of Music

4 April 2017
Budapest, Palace of Arts

9 April, 2017
Munich, Residenztheater

Transformation of fear

Kurt Schwitters Ursonate is a testament against war, nationalism, protectionism and establishment. In Landscapes of a voice, Roland Kuit seeks to transform his own fears into beauty by combining Schwitter’s poetry processed through Kyma with visuals by Karin Schomaker. In the face of his fears that progress has come to an end and the only thing left is degradation, Kuit seeks to create disruptive art, creating a peregrination through the human soul, finding new values in an impellent quadraphonic terrain of vocal spectra.

Roland Kuit – Kyma, voice 
Karin Schomaker – visuals

Hear it December 3-4 2016 at the Festival Internacional de Música Experimental en Vallecas, Sonikas XIV, Centro Cultural Lope de Vega, Madrid, Spain

TMIE — mediating the inner and outer sound worlds

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Carlos Alberto Augusto’s new opera “TMIE, on the threshold of the outside world” just had a successful premiere in Lisbon on Thursday September 8th, 2016, at the O’culto da Ajuda; so successful in fact, that they added two additional performances! Apparently, the sound quality of the 10-track Kyma-generated score also attracted attention and appreciation from composers in the audience.

The 51 minute work was entirely composed in Kyma and is dedicated to Portuguese soprano Marina Pacheco who performs three roles over the course of the opera — Meretseger, who loves silence; Selene, who drives her silver chariot through the skies and vibrates to the beats of the stars; and Corypheaus who listens and tries to interpret their dialog.

The TMIE gene (Transmembrane Inner Ear) is implicated in the development of the cochlea and in the synthesis of a protein that mediates between the outer acoustic environment and the inner sound world of the auditory nerve and the auditory cortex of the brain; in the opera, TMIE serves as a metaphor for the interface between the inner and outer self.

For more details and contact information on how to program this work, please see Augusto’s fascinating program notes and news site.

One man’s junk is another man’s musical instrument

Since childhood, composer/performer Franz Danksagmüller has been fascinated with the rich, interesting sound palette one can create from broken, discarded and so-called unplayable instruments. In 2013, on a visit to a local junkyard, he noticed a strange metal object that immediately captured his attention.

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Read the story of how he added contact mics and sensors and developed a bowing technique to transform this strange object (which he later discovered was part of a device for food preservation) into a new musical instrument that sends both audio and MIDI control data to Kyma.

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You can hear this mysterious and beautiful instrument performed live at KISS2016, when Danksagmüller and composer/performer/computer scientist John Mantegna perform their new piece — The Artificial Brain!
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KISS2016: Emergence

Emergence — it’s what a complex system of interconnected agents can do collectively that they could not do in isolation. Emergence goes beyond the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — emergence arises from the relationships among those parts. Emergence is that seemingly magical moment when an unanticipated novel behavior or dynamic pattern arises from a complex network of simple components and rules.

Symbolic Sound, in partnership with De Montfort University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities; the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, and the Performance Research Group, invite you to participate in the eighth annual Kyma International Sound Symposium and to explore emergence with an international gathering of Kyma practitioners ranging from experts to aspiring experts and including many who have never used Kyma before and are simply curious.

Get the inspiration, support and professional connections to motivate and energize you for the rest of the year. Join us at the Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2016) — 7-10 September 2016 in Leicester, UK — as we explore the concept of “Emergence” through 4 days and nights of words, live musical performances, open labs, and interactive discussions.

Unique features of this year’s program include an improvised conduction performance by the Emergent Ensemble; a 3-D sound immersion lecture/concert in De Montfort University’s 20+ speaker DOME; a 3-D film with a live sound track; workshops on ecosystemic composition; collaborations across international and disciplinary borders; and a celebratory club concert featuring live Kyma with acoustic instruments, vocals and analog synthesis.

Live performances featuring some of the most cutting edge music composed with Kyma this year, lectures where Kyma practitioners share their insights and reveal a few of their secrets, master classes and labs led by the creators of Kyma; and the unparalleled camaraderie and inspiration from your fellow sound and music explorers — these are some of the regular features of KISS that inspire people to return to KISS year after year.

Explore the full program here: http://kiss2016.symbolicsound.com/program/

Register now to immerse yourself in the fun, hands-on creative technology environment that will inspire you for years to come! http://kiss2016.symbolicsound.com/kiss2016-registration

Based on current registration levels, we are anticipating a record turn-out this year. So please be sure to reserve your spot by registering as soon as possible. Do it today so it doesn’t get forgotten on your to-do list. (Please be advised that there is a strict upper limit on attendance based on the venue sizes). Thanks!

Photos by Belinda B Carr.

Lectures & Concerts at BYU

Composer/performer, Steven Ricks invited Carla Scaletti to Brigham Young University for the week of March 7 to work with his students, present lectures, and participate in two concerts. Here’s the full schedule:

Tuesday, March 8
Barlow Lecture: “Data-driven”
3PM at BYU (E400 Harris Fine Arts Center, 50-minute lecture)

Wednesday, March 9
“Computer Music” Looking back/looking forward
11AM E400 HFAC, 50-minute lecture

Thursday, March 10
Overview of Kyma 7
11AM at BYU Electronic Music Studio

Thursday, March 10
Group for New Music, featuring works by Scaletti, Adler, Cage, Pärt
7:30PM BYU Madsen Recital Hall

Friday, March 11
Concert
7:30 PM Art 270 Gallery
Salt Lake City

ICMC2015 keynote smiling at laptop2

The ear as an organ of knowledge

Unerhört! 3000(0) Jahre Neue Musik

So-called new music employs the aesthetic of resistance, of irritation, of reflection. But why, in comparison to the visual arts, is the abstract and contextual musical work still so difficult? Schoenberg’s prediction that his work would be understood in 50 years is today still an illusion…

The ear develops over time from mere alarm organ via the detour of seduction toward the organ of knowledge, a harrowing perspective on the inner and outer world.

Liberda is a composer, promoter and performer. His Lecture Performance is a tour de force through the history of sound systems, instrument development and notation systems towards a new theory of hearing.

Text and Performance: Bruno Liberda
Idea, development and scenic design: Fanny Brunner
Dramaturgical assistance: Hans-Jürgen Captain
Graphics: Klemens Wihlidal
Duration: 80 minutes

Premiere: March 12, 20:00 // Ateliertheater, Burggasse 72, 1070 Wien // 12 Euro
Box office at 19:00 // Reservations at 0681 819 630 or 62 office@ateliertheater.eu
A co-production of january thirteenth Vienna and Wiener Klangwerkstatt.

Music for robots and other people

Scott Miller has a jam-packed schedule of upcoming collaborations with robots, humans and Kyma electronics. Here are a few highlights:

23 February, ALL DAY: SCSU Performing Arts Center 158, FREE!

On February 23, as a part of the MNMade Festival at SCSU, composer Scott L. Miller and musical roboticist Troy Rogers are holding a free open workshop and rehearsal on composing for robots. Everyone is invited to observe, assist, and ask questions as Scott incorporates theatrical lighting control into his Kyma ecosystemic environment for his new piece Détente.

27 February, 7:30 pm: SCSU Ruth Gant Recital Hall, FREE!

On February 27, you’re invited to the MNMade Festival concert, featuring works by Per Bloland, Troy Rogers, student participants, and Scott Miller’s updated ecosystemic robot piece, Détente.

15 March, 9:00 pm: The Nicollet, $5

In Minneapolis on March 15, Ars Electroacoustica celebrates the Ides of March with visiting saxophonist/electronics artist Jorrit Dijkstra, saxophonist Nathan Hanson, Scott Miller on Kyma and Ted Moore on laptop.

16 March, 7:30 pm: SCSU Ruth Gant Recital Hall, FREE!

On March 16th, Jorrit Dijkstra will be at St Cloud State University where he and Scott Miller will present a concert of improvised music for saxophone, electronics, and Kyma.

20 March, 5:30 pm: honeympls, $5

On March 20th, Ars Electroacoustica welcomes Adam Zahller to Min­neapo­lis for a session with recorder & electronics (Scott Miller on Kyma).

Interested in collaborating with Scott Miller on future Ars Electroacoustica concerts? Let him know!