Category: Seminar

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.

Kyma Symposium in St Cloud

Fascinating papers, lively concerts, entertaining hands-on workshops, and conversations that carried on late into each night made KISS2012, the fourth annual Kyma International Sound Symposium, an inspiring and invigorating experience for all.

The symposium was covered by several local news outlets (click on photos to read the stories):

 

 

 

Hua Sun and Kurt Hebel perform the annual ritual for KISS2012

Here’s a slideshow of photos from the event:

 

For more details on the event, please see the official KISS2012 site and Kyma Symposium on Facebook.

Future Music’s Summer Academy of Electronic Music

Professor Jeffrey Stolet and post graduate teaching assistant Chi Wang

This year’s Summer Academy of Electronic Music, directed by Professor Jeffrey Stolet at Future Music Oregon, welcomed 5 faculty members from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the Shenyang Conservatory of Music and the Sichuan Conservatory of Music.  The faculty members, along with students from their schools and from Peking University and the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts, immersed themselves in Kyma, recording techniques, sound synthesis, and composition in a two week intensive seminar based on Professor Stolet’s text, Kyma and the SumOfSines Disco Club, now available in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

Professor Stolet was assisted this year by three of his current and former graduate students: Chi Wang, Jon Bellona, and Hua Sun (see photo on left).

The Summer Academy culminated in a final concert featuring 20 compositions, all completed by students over the course of the two-week course.

Professor Jeffrey Stolet, academy student Yang Fan, & Professor Yang Wanjun

If you missed the summer academy, you still have a chance to learn about Kyma.  During the fall semester 2012, Professor Stolet and his former masters degree student Chi Wang will be presenting Kyma seminars at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the Shenyang Conservatory of Music and Sichuan Conservatory of Music.

Lu Minjie & Han Yanmin at Sichuan Conservatory of Music

On May 24, 2012, Sichuan Conservatory electronic music professors Lu Minjie, Bai Xiaomo, and Han Yanmin presented the first in what is to be a series of seminars on “intermedia music”.  Hosted by Professor Yao Qi , the lecture was attended by the Electronic Music Department staff and students as well as many Electronic Music representatives in China.

Lu Minjie gave an overview of the development of new media art and described the creative process employed in her four-channel electronic music composition The Watching Tuvas. Bai Xiaomo described some new installation works created by the New Media Art group at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, the Audio-Visual Interactive Installation at Sichuan Conservatory of Music Gallery. He also presented his intermedia music composition for Symbolic Sound Kyma and Kinect Silent Room. Han Yanmin described his own methods for creating electro-acoustic music and presented his composition Echoes of Qiang Flute as an example. In the second half of the lecture, the three faculty members described their experience at the University of North Texas, College of Music where they had presented an electronic music lecture and concert in February of this year. They also analyzed some of the technical challenges that one might encounter while giving lecture and concert in another city.


Choreographic pianist

Choreographic pianist Eleonor Sandresky is performing music for piano and live Kyma processing at the Greenwich House Music School in New York on Sunday, March 11, 2012. In her performances, Sandresky is interested in how motion translates to emotion; she goes beyond merely composing the music to literally choreographing the entire performance. Recently, this interest has taken on a cyborghian element as she dons a new Perceptual Expansion Space/Suit (designed by Semiotech) to enhance the conversation with light and sound in her performances. Contact Electronic Music Foundation for an invitation.

Kyma International Sound Symposium 2012

The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.

This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!

Tonsalon

According to Wikipedia:

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation.

Composer Bruno Liberda is your inspiring host for a modern day Tonsalon to be held in Vienna on Wednesday evening, 7 December 2011. Focusing primarily on one work, through repeated “Readings”  (Listening, Looking, Learning, Asking questions = Pausing), time is accumulated in all dimensions; several episodes of individual perceptions merge into a star cluster of the now-plurality: a new piece of music systematically enters the consciousness of the guests.

Program

 Introduction:   Die Schläfer 2002, fixed Media, 5’14
 
 Main work:     Self portrait without self, 2011, Zither, Voice, Kyma, ca. 13′
 
 The composer speaks… and plays…the guests question (perhaps)
 
Coda: Echoes in people’s minds: everyone speaks with everyone else!
 
 

 When: Wednesday, 7 December at 20h (Doors open at 19h40, ending at 22h)

Where:1060, Linke Wienzeile 36/5a

Beletage (1. Stock, Reichmayer)
Vienna, Austria 

Anterior/Interior in London

Composer Scott Miller will be in London working with the ensemble rarescale for their concert at Shoreditch Church on Wednesday, November 23, which is to feature the premiere of his new work, Anterior/Interior, written for rarescale flutist Carla Rees.

Anterior/Interior is for 1/4-tone alto flute and Kyma and is an exploration of microtonal multiphonics that are isolated, dissected, and exploded into relief against the beautiful, complex timbre of the flute. The concert will also include other interactive and improvisational Kyma works by Miller, performed by Carla Rees, including Lovely Little Monster and haiku, interrupted.  Composer and rarescale member Michael Oliva has also invited Miller to do a presentation on his use of Kyma in interactive, improvisational music at the Royal College of Music.

Kyma Meeting in New York

Electronic Music Foundation is organizing a series of open meetings at Greenwich House Music School, starting with a free Kyma demo/concert/discussion in New York this Sunday, November 13, from 2-5 pm.

If you’d like to come by for a demonstration of Kyma, listen to some compositions, join the discussion, and try things out, please send email to EMF (it is free, but a reservation is required). Followup studio sessions are planned for November 17 and December 1 and 8 for becoming a Kyma professional.