Category: Event

Bach meets Kyma

On 30 September 2017 Franz Danksagmüller performed the premiere of his newly commissioned work “Kyrie” at the Hildebrandt-Tage in Naumburg on an historic pipe organ that was once examined by Bach and Silbermann.

Besides being the first performance of “Kyrie”, this was the first time in history that the organ had been processed through live electronics (Kyma) and the first time it was accompanied by a Minimoog. The Minimoog is a nod to Walter Carlos’ «Switched-On Bach» LP which was produced using a Moog synthesizer and is now considered an important historical instrument, so the historic pipe organ entered into dialog with an historic synthesizer.

According to Danksagmüller, “It was a strange feeling when I placed my mics into the organ, knowing that Bach was also inside the instrument inspecting the pipes etc. So, somehow between space and time, Bach meets Kyma and Minimoog!”

Part of Danksagmüller’s Broken Bach project, “Kyrie” begins with the compositions of J.S. Bach and several of his contemporaries, and reworks them using the techniques and means at our disposal today: sampling, remixing, digital sound manipulation and more. In this way the original compositions are taken apart and their rhythmic or harmonic essence is extracted. Then new pieces of music are constructed using these newfound building blocks.

Last month, Franz performed a live sound track for the silent film Phantom of the Opera to a sold out audience of over 2000 at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg Germany.

Sound & Music for Augmenting Reality

KISS2017 in Oslo Norway 12-15 October 2017 — a symposium on new opportunities for sound designers & musicians in virtual, augmented and mixed reality creation

Sound and music are the original augmented reality technology. Throughout human history, sound and music have played an essential role in transforming the mundane into the sublime, turning everyday events into memorable milestones, and enhancing the flow of experience.

Sound designers, musicians, museum curators, game developers, researchers and others interested in the power of sound to create and augment reality are invited to participate in the Kyma International Sound Symposium, KISS2017 in Oslo Norway 12-15 October 2017. Join fellow participants exploring the uses of sound in Augmenting Reality through talks, live performances, hands-on sessions, and informal conversations over meals (which are included with your conference registration).

Program
The full KISS2017 technical and creative program is available here: http://kiss2017.symbolicsound.com/complete-program/

Here are a few highlights from the international lineup:

• Tour and reception at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, including a special lecture on computer music pioneer Knut Wiggen’s musical innovation during the early years of the EMS Electronic Music Studio in Stockholm (presented by NOTAM’s founding director, Jøran Rudi), followed by a science/art-themed concert at the museum.

• An evening at Norway’s premiere jazz venue Victoria Nasjonal Jazzscene featuring Deathprod/Supersilent members Helge Sten & Arve Henriksen (Norway) performing live Kyma electronics on a program that also includes sets by SØS Gunver Rydberg (Denmark) and Michael Wittgraf (USA)
http://nasjonaljazzscene.no/arrangement/helge-sten-arve-henriksen-wittgraf-sos/

• Presentations on designing sound for planetarium-presentation; listening to the past in museum exhibitions; learning how to listen with cochlear implants; sound and music for calming dysregulated children; cooperation between musicians and machines

• Technology talks including pitch-tracking of live audio signals to control game avatars in real time, multidimensional audio, ambisonics, head-tracking, sonifying geo-spatial data, Open Sound Control, connections between Kyma 7 and the Unity3d game engine, live performance of electroacoustic music for an audience wearing VR headgear, using physical objects to interact with digital sound synthesis and processing, using wireless sensors to control and manipulate sound, and integrating live dance with generative sound and video for mixed reality performances.

• Desktop Demo Sessions where you can speak to the presenters one-on-one and ask them questions about their work

• An Open Lab where you can ask questions and consult on your Kyma projects with fellow practitioners and the creators of Kyma 7

• Live mixed reality performances including:

• A performer running through the streets of Oslo & transmitting a live video feed to the audience as his geospatial data generates and controls quadraphonic processing of a live ensemble
• A live musical performance of a computer game where acoustic audio controls real-time decisions leading to a distinctive outcome on each play-through
• Mixed reality performances where physical objects, like Tibetan bells or balloons, control digital sound and image generation
• Performances utilizing new musical inventions like the Electronic Bull Roarer and a new input device inspired by Ssireum Korean wrestling
• Citizen journalism and crowd-sourced news as an augmented reality performance
• A performance that looks at how organizations can use language to alter reality and neutralize our position as workers
• A mixed reality performance where long-distance communications augment time and space and magnify our stories
• The sounds of writing create sound fantasies in the minds of the audience & then mutate into other sounds that augment and clash with those imagined by the audience

Summary
KISS2017 is an opportunity for anyone interested in creating sound for augmenting reality to immerse themselves in new ideas and experiences and to meet and learn from like-minded colleagues.

Registration includes talks, concerts, reception, lunches & dinners (Student discounts are available): http://kiss2017.symbolicsound.com/kiss2017-registration/

For travel and lodging information: http://kiss2017.symbolicsound.com/travel-lodging/

Official KISS web site: http://kiss2017.symbolicsound.com

To follow the latest KISS news and developments:

Facebook
Twitter

Organizers and Sponsors

The Norwegian Academy of Music
University of Oslo Department of Musicology
NOTAM
Symbolic Sound Corporation
The Research Council of Norway

Contact the organizers

See you in Oslo!

Architecture of Sound

RIETVELD PAVILION — Roland Emile Kuit’s new album published by Donemus — is now available on iTunes. The album was released in conjunction with the 9 July 2017 World Premiere at the sculpture park of the Kröller-Möller Museum in Otterlo in The Netherlands. With this work, Kuit makes a connection between sound and De STIJL’s ideas and architecture, using pure tones as spectral building blocks, stacking energies to build harmonic sound planes and placing them in space by dividing the spectrum and displaying it on a maze of speakers.

Photography: Henk Porck

Sonologist-composer Roland Emile Kuit balances on the interface between research, music and sound art, at a point he called “the new listening”. Using Kyma, Kuit warps time — influencing the present with events that will happen in the future and vice versa. He uses real-time analysis of the sound of acoustical instruments to create spectral compositions.

Mu-psi: a sonic analog to sci-fi


Composer and Kyma-creator Carla Scaletti, along with special guests Anna Lum (poet) and Rich O’Donnell (percussionist/composer), present an evening of Mu-psi: a sonic form of science fiction that you experience with your entire body through total immersion in the vibrational field we call sound.

Mu-psi, like sci-fi, starts with a hypothetical premise and imagines a universe in which that premise is true. Inspired by ideas like double-well potentials, friction, Huygen’s pendulum clocks, CERN, and the emergence of life from inorganic matter, the sounds are visceral, passionate, and playful.

Mu-Psi is an evening of live experimental quadraphonic electronic music where the audience is invited to listen, to ponder, to question and, at times, to help generate some of the sounds.

Produced by the HEARding Cats Collective (now in their eighth season of “working to keep St. Louis strange and wonderful”), this all-Kyma concert will be at the .ZACK, the Kranzberg Arts Foundation’s new four-story, 40,000-square foot property, developed in the historic Cadillac building in St. Louis:

Friday, 7 April – 7:30pm
.ZACK, 3224 Locust Street
St. Louis, Missouri USA

$20 General Admission, $15 Students and Artists
Tickets are available at MetroTix as well as at the door on the night of the show.

2017 SEAMUS Award Goes to Kyma Creator


On April 21 2017, the 2017 SEAMUS Award for “important contributions to the field of electroacoustic music” will be presented to Carla Scaletti at the SEAMUS National Conference banquet, following a concert of her music.

Carla is an experimental composer, designer of the Kyma sound design language and co-founder of Symbolic Sound Corporation.

SEAMUS Conference registration is now open: April 20–22, 2017 at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Cloud to Ground Strikes Again!


John Paul Jones and Helge Sten will be performing together as the Minibus Pimps on April 16, 2017 as part of a Présences Electroniques concert in Paris.

Since their first performance in 2011, Minibus Pimps — a unique and unconventional UK/Norwegian collaboration featuring John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin’s legendary multi-instrumentalist), and prolific electronic musician, improviser and producer Helge Sten (Deathprod, Supersilent) — have, in the words of Mark Roland, been creating a “dense, disturbing primordial world of dread and awe.”

Their debut album ‘Cloud To Ground‘ includes seven tracks, each recorded live at a different venue, from London’s Café Oto to venues in Norway and Denmark. The secret of Minibus Pimps’ colossal sonic gas giants is their use of the Kyma computer system (created by Symbolic Sound). Instruments such as guitar, bass and violin are fed into the system and radically transformed by self-designed digital instruments and processors until their sources are barely recognisable.

More info here: http://www.inagrm.com/presences-electronique-2017-0

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