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SEAMUS Week

November 4-8, 1997
Concordia Concert Hall
Montréal QC, Canada

 Index:

Selected works diffused during ÉuCuE XVI (Électroacoustiques université Concordia university Electroacoustics).

Musical introduction

Private Play — Scott Wyatt

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Affirmation (1997) Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner

A spring of defeat, the loss of yet another job, the recipient of one rejection letter too many, the theft of a car stereo, the theft of the National Endowment for the Arts by the United Sates government, the theft of monies for the Arts in nations around the world… We need some applause (I need some applause), some fanfare, some bells and whistles. Affirmation provides this. Be careful about the ending dear listeners it is not over until the lady sings!

Affirmation was created in the Music Technology Center of the Florida International University and in the composer's home studio utilizing ProTools, SoundEdit 16, StudioVision Pro and SoundHack for the generation and mixing of all sound files.

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner received her D.M.A. in 1991 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has most recently served as acting director of the electronic and computer music studios at Florida International University in Miami and visiting director of the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Iowa. Other teaching positions held by Hinkle-Turner have been at the University of Illinois and the Oberlin Conservatory. She is the treasurer of SEAMUS, and the technical liaison for the International Alliance of Women in Music (IAWM). Hinkle-Turner is the author of the book Crossing the Line: Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States, and she is also completing an instructional CD-ROM, An Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music. She has won awards from Mu Phi Epsilon, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center, and has been composer-in-residence at the Studios fur Elektronische Musik of West Deutscher Rundfunk in Köln. Currently she lives and composes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and teaches at the Center for Multimedia Technology at Richland College.

Affirmation — Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner

816 (1997) Barry Schrader

just east of Zzyzx on Interstate 15
1:10 A.M.
an apprehension of something sensed, not expected
an impression of something experienced, not remembered
created with a Yamaha TX816

Barry Schrader's compositions for tape, dance, film, video, multimedia, live/electronic combinations, and real-time computer performance have been presented throughout the world. He has received recognition in the form of grants, awards, and commissions, from such organizations as the Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Bourges, Apple Computer, ASCAP, Yamaha, Meet the Composer, Los Angeles Film Forum, URBAN-15, The CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, Res Musica, Yellow Springs Institute and the Centre Internationale de Recherche Musicale (CIRM). His works have been presented in numerous festivals including the Australian International Electronic Music Festival, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Tokyo Gakugei University Exhibition of Electronic Music, New Music Los Angeles, Musiques Actuelles Nice Cote d'Azur, the Darmstadt Festival, Synthèse, the London Almeida Festival, and the Biennale de Paris. Schrader is a founder and the first President of SEAMUS, and has been involved with the initiation and operation of several organizations such as SCREAM (Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music), the Currents concert series, and the CalArts Electro-Acoustic Marathon. He has written for several publications including Grove's Dictionary, Grollier's Encyclopedia, Contemporary Music Review, and Journal SEAMUS; he is also the author of the book Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music. He is currently on the Composition Faculty of the School of Music of the California Institute of the Arts. His music is recorded on the Opus One, Laurel, CIRM and SEAMUS labels.

816 — Barry Schrader

Departures from a Model (1986) Monroe Golden

Four versions derived from the same model are similar but vary in detail. The paths of departure from these derivations are like alternate realities stemming from what was initially a small degree of variance.
The score was generated by a compositional program that computes values for duration, pitch, and other parameters within boundaries specified by a composer. Distance is measured between successive values within integer ratios as found in the harmonic series and historical tuning systems. Thus, lesser terms result in Pythagorean (1-4) or Just Intonation (1-6) systems and greater terms result in non-traditional systems
The composition was realized at the University of Illinois Computer Music Project with final edits in the Experimental Music Studios. It was computed on an LMC microcomputer using Scot Aurenz's Music 4C language and stored on the Sound Conversion Storage System, which was built by Kurt Hebel. The "nonlinear function" instruments were designed by James Beauchamp and enhanced by Robert Maher.

Monroe Golden graduated from the University of Montevallo in 1983 and earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois in 1989, studying primarily with Edwin Robertson, Ben Johnston, James Beauchamp, Aurel Stroe, and Herbert Brun. Most recent works are motivated by contemplation of unusual tuning systems and the implications of those systems for other musical structures. He resides in Birmingham, Alabama functioning as computer consultant and freelance composer.

Departures from a Model — Monroe Golden

Some Find Me… (1994) Charles Norman Mason

Some Find Me… contrasts two portions of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland." The poem, which actually has thirty-five stanzas, was written in response to the sinking of the ship the Deutschland in the mouth of the Thames. The ship was carrying five Franciscan nuns who were exiles from Germany. In this poem, Hopkins (who was a monk) is trying to come to terms with his conflicting emotions and impressions of God brought on by this tragedy. The two stanzas I chose (#4 and #11) seem to sum up the overall expression of the poem.

#11

Some find me a sword; some

The flange and the rail; flame,

Fang, or flood goes Death on drum,

And storms bugle his fame.

But we dream we are rooted in earth - Dust!

Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,

Wave with the meadow, forget that there must

The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Primarily what attracted me to Hopkins' poetry is its sound. Hopkins' poetry has a special rhythm to it, a rhythm he referred to as "sprung rhythm." He wrote, "My verse is less to be read than heard." In addition to "sprung rhythm," Hopkins also employs a heavy use of repeated consonant sounds that lends itself quite well to electronic music. The piece was realized at the University of Alabama and Birmingham-Southern College Electronic Music Studios.

Charles Norman Mason has received numerous awards including a 1995 Delius Prize, a 1996 Dale Warland Singers Commission Prize, a 1980 BMI Award for Young Composers, First Prize in the Panoply of the Arts competition, First Prize in the City Stages Classical Music competition, the INTERNATIONAL ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC COMPETITION / BOURGES, a 1997 commission award from the Fairbanks Symphony Association, and a 1994 National Endowment of the Arts Individual Composers Grant. His works are available on seven different compact discs. He has held residencies in Alaska, Prague, New York, the Hambidge Center and the Seaside Institute in Seaside, Florida. Dr. Mason is vice-president of programs for SEAMUS, is managing editor of Living Music, is president of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and chairs the division of fine and performing arts at Birmingham-Southern College.

Some Find Me… — Charles Norman Mason

Oh, No! (Music for Kenneth) (1993) Stephen David Beck

This work is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth Gaburo.

Stephen David Beck is a composer of electro-acoustic music, orchestral and chamber music, and most recently, music for theater. His main focus of research is in Virtual Musical Instruments, a system of human-computer interaction for live performance and improvisation. Beck teaches composition and computer music at Louisiana State University where he is co-director of the LSU MAD studio (the Music and Art Digital Studio). He is chair of the LSU Festival of Contemporary Music Steering Committee, which directs the oldest university-based new music festival in the US. Beck also writes custom software for his research and composition with Virtual Musical Instruments. He is the author of Csnd.app, a NEXTSTEP user interface to Csound.
Stephen David Beck holds a Ph.D. in music composition and theory from UCLA, where he studied with Henri Lazarof, Elaine Barkin, and Alden Ashforth. In 1984, he was awarded a Boulez Fellowship from UCLA and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1985, he received a Fulbright Fellowship to study computer music at IRCAM. While his studies have included both traditional and technological media, his recent works have focused on computer-based interactive compositions, where acoustic performers play with and in counterpoint to computer-controlled synthesizers. He has received numerous commissions, grants, and awards, most recently from saxophonist Griffin Campbell, harpist Ann Benjamin, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, and the LSU Wind Ensemble.
His music has been performed throughout the world, including performances at Weill Recital Hall, Sao Paolo Bienal, SCREAM Radio Series, New Music America, World Harp Congress, and on the Triforium Series in Los Angeles. His music has been recorded on the SEAMUS Compact Disc Series. Beck has also presented lectures and papers on his research in interactive computer music at recent meetings of the International Computer Music Association, SEAMUS, and the Society of Composers, Inc. He is currently president of SEAMUS.

Oh, No! (Music for Kenneth) — Stephen David Beck

Igor (1997) Rodney Oakes

Igor Grigoriev is an amazing Los Angeles-based jazz guitarist and composer whom I perform with frequently. He is also an equally amazing avant-gardist. In his native Russia he has performed and recorded with his two highly respected new music groups, Asphalt andRoof. I have taken an excerpt of his performance of a passage from a work that we intend to eventually release on CD. Manipulating this sample, I have attempted to capture a musical essence of Igor's musical personality.

Rodney Oakes is the Chairman of the Humanities and Fine Arts Division at Los Angeles Harbor College. He has received a number of awards including a Rockefeller fellowship, an NEA grant, numerous ASCAP Awards and a Fulbright lecturing position at the Conservatory of Music in Cracow, Poland (Fall, 1991). In addition to editing the Journal SEAMUS, Oakes performs MIDI trombone in solo concerts and with the Duo OG. He may also be heard in the Los Angeles area performing with jazz ensembles.

Igor — Rodney Oakes

Paraptra (1991) Cort Lippe

Paraptra, for stereo tape, was created using the program Max, which was developed by Miller Puckette, and whose technical advice made this piece possible. The digital mix was done at IRCAM with the valuable assistance of Xavier Bordelais and Franck Rossi. The material for the tape is made up solely of digitally transformed and processed harp and classical guitar sounds. Transformations include: frequency shifting, spatial panning, harmonizing, random amplitude modulating and time-stretching routines which were written by the composer and Puckette for the 4X real-time signal processor. The piece is characterized by a very wide dynamic range, and contains four main sections.

Cort Lippe has been active in the field of real-time interactive computer music for over twenty years. He studied composition with Larry Austin in the USA, spent a year in Florence, Italy, studying Renaissance music and three years in Utrecht, The Netherlands, at the Instituut voor Sonologie working with G.M. Koenig and Paul Berg in the fields of computer and formalized music. He lived eleven years in Paris, where he worked for three years at the Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu), directed by Iannis Xenakis, while following Xenakis' course on formalized music at the Université de Paris, and eight years at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), founded by Pierre Boulez, where he developed real-time musical applications and gave courses on new technology in composition. He has followed composition and analysis seminars with various composers including: Boulez, Donatoni, Klaus Huber, Messiaen, Penderecki, Stockhausen, and Xenakis. His works have received numerous international composition prizes and have been premiered at major festivals world-wide. His music is recorded by ADDA, Apollon, CBS-Sony, Centaur, SEAMUS, MIT Press, Harmonia Mundi, Hungaroton Classic, and Neuma. Presently, he teaches composition and directs the Hiller Computer Music Studios at the University of New York at Buffalo.

Paraptra — Cort Lippe

Phoenix and the Harlequin (1995) Allen Strange

The Phoenix, noble creature of tesserae wings, embodiment of elegance and symbol of rebirth. The Harlequin, the eternal trickster, mime and clown. In this cabaret for the mind, Phoenix and the Harlequin link in a duel of elegance versus wit. The two characters are represented in nine short mimes, conversations and dances, each in an attempt to "upstage" one another for supremacy as the master showman in this "theater for the ear". The music is composed in a just intonation (43 notes to the octave) devised by American composer, Harry Partch, and sounds are derived from FM synthesis algorithms. Phoenix and the Harlequin was composed in celebration of the retirement of John Chowning, whose pioneering work made this music possible.

Allen Strange has been involved with music technology since the middle 1960's and has been active as a composer, performer, author and educator. In 1972 his text, Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques and Controls appeared as the first comprehensive work on analog music synthesis. After several editions the text still remains a classic reference and guide for studio synthesis. A student of Pauline Oliveros and Harry Partch, Strange has worked in a variety of media ranging from purely electronic works, music for live-electronic performance, multi-media, chamber, orchestral, choral and opera to music for the films and theater. With his wife, Patricia, he co-founded two electronic music ensembles: BIOME, a pioneering live-electronic music ensemble with Frank McCarty in 1969 and The Electric Weasel Ensemble with synthesizer designer Donald Buchla in 1976. Both ensembles have toured internationally and the Stranges have also concretized as a duo composer/performer team.

Allen Strange has been Visiting Scholar at the Computer Center for Research in Music Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and guest composer at California Institute for the Arts, the Hochschüle für Musik, Stuttgart, Germany, the Tempo Reale studios, Florence, Italy and the Laboratorio de Informatica in Guanajuato, Mexico. Strange is currently serving as the president of the International Computer Music Association, an organization co-hosting the annual International Computer Music Conferences. Strange's music has been recorded and performed in Europe, Canada, South Africa, South America, China, Japan and throughout the United States. He is Professor of Music at San Jose State University where he serves as Director of the Center for Research in Electro-Acoustic Music [CREAM]. This last year Allen Strange was the Colin McMillan Collegiate Scholar at Eastern New Mexico University, and visiting composer at the University of Oregon in Eugene and Bowling Green University in Ohio and guest composer with Professor Pablo Furman at the LIPM Studios in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the Fall of 1996 he was guest composer at the EMF96 Festival in Bratislava and Visiting Composer at the Prague Conservatory of Music.

Phoenix and the Harlequin — Allen Strange

Translation

Jean-François Delannoy, Ph.D., is a computer scientist and linguist living in Ottawa. His research focusses on automatic text summarization, information retrieval from text, and tools for the analysis and representation of knowledge and argumentation. He is also interested in cognition, epistomology, critical reasoning, modelling in many domains. Musically he is interested in computer music, acoustic ecology, jazz, Cuban music, and all that is worth listening to, playing, or reading. Jean-François plays the piano con brio, lives with literature (he hosts a radio show at CHUO FM in Ottawa), and is vice-president of the Círculo de Amigos de la Língua Espaola (Ottawa).

Jean-François Delannoy
delannoy@res.ca
http://www.csi.uottawa.ca/~delannoy

Curators: Scott Wyatt, Barry Schrader, Paul Koonce

Web editors: Yves Gigon & Jef Chippewa

Translation: Jean-François Delannoy

The Artists:

© Productions electro Productions (*PeP*) 1998

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