Fall Concert [1994]
Tuesday 15th November, Campbell Recital Hall, 8p.m.
Winter Concert [1995]
Saturday February 4th, Dinkelspiel Auditorium, 8p.m.
CCRMA
FALL CONCERT
CCRMA Computer Music
Concert of new works by CCRMA composers: Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics (CCRMA) will present a concert featuring new computer music by CCRMA composers, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, in Campbell Recital Hall (Braun Music Center)
Tickets for this performance, $7 general admission and $4 students, are available at Tresidder Ticket Office, (415) 723-4317, or at the door. For information, call the Music Department at (415) 723-3811.
Program
* Apocalypse was postponed due to lack of interest -- Juan Pampin * Dance Episode -- Ron Alford * Knock knock... anybody there? -- Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
Interval
* Life on Earth -- Janet Dunbar * ...que me hiciste mal... (You did me wrong) -- Pablo Cetta * Brownian Motion -- Michael Edwards
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APOCALYPSE WAS POSTPONED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST
* Juan Pampin 1994
"Apocalypse was postponed due to lack of interest" is my first computer music work created using Bill Schottstaedt's CLM (Common Lisp Music), a synthesis and sound processing language developed at CCRMA. Most of the sounds are synthetic, coming from hybrid synthesis algorithms, but others use processed natural sources such as radio voices and female speech (a polish literature text). I wrote some algorithms in LISP to generate different textures, rhythm fluctuations and density control. The idea of "impact", is used in different ways in the composition, which is mostly a work with memory that tries to create electronic sounds with strong perceptual characteristics, producing some kind of "physical" sensation (rugosity, fragility, etc.). The title, coming from an Internet news group, matches with the idea I have about art today.
Juan Carlos Pampin, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1967, is finishing a master in composition at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Lyon, France. During last year he was Visiting Composer at CCRMA starting his work "Apocalypse..." that he finished in a second visit last summer. He has explored different fields in contemporary music, from instrumental to computer music works, including mixed media and improvisation. He is currently working on a piece for two percussion players and live electronics.
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DANCE EPISODE
* Ron Alford 1994
This composition is for computer interactive system and dance ensemble (when that part of the work is finished).The sound material is that of a metal object scraped and a marble in a bowl (along with a mysterious mechanical machine that makes such interesting sounds as it moves. When these sounds are deconstructed, one finds that much sound material is revealed, much like when a dancer moves, much is revealed about the emotional and kinetic content of movement. Further, sound suggests itself in episodes much like life itself; organic in nature, and following only its own pattern.
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KNOCK KNOCK... ANYBODY THERE?
* Fernando Lopez Lezcano 1994
"Knock Knock... anybody there?" is an extension of the original sound track for a collaboration project with visual artists in which I participated this past year (Willie Scholten and Ruth Eckland provided the sculptures and visual framework and I provided the sound). The music explores altered states of consciousness and in particular insanity, in a journey through multiple and conflicting states of mind. All the sound materials used in the piece were gathered at a meeting with friends where we discussed the central topic that motivated the project. From the digital recording I extracted small (and significant!) fragments and subsequently processed them using CLM instruments (the materials include the piano jam session at the end of the meeting!).
Fernando Lopez Lezcano (Buenos Aires, 1956) received both a Master in Electronic Engineering at the Buenos Aires University and a Master in Music at the Carlos Lopez Buchardo National Conservatory. He started working with electro-acoustic music by building his own analog synthesizers and studio in 1976. After graduating he worked in industry as hardware and software Design Engineer and latter spent one year at CCRMA as Invited composer (as part of an exchange program between LIPM in Argentina, CCRMA and CRCA funded by the Rockefeller Foundation). He did research and taught Electronic Music for one year at Keio University, Japan, and is now Lecturer and System Administrator of the computer resources at CCRMA.
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LIFE ON EARTH
* Janet Dunbar
Life on Earth, conceived as a musical backdrop to a dramatic reading by the poet, April Eiler, mirrors the tripartite form of the poem for which it is named. The first section of the poetry/music depicts cooperation in an innocent primitive world, the second, pain, disillusionment and fear in the face of evil, and the third, reaching out in blind faith for something or someone to trust. As suggested by the meaning of the poem, the music is through-composed with activity somewhat circumscribed so as to enhance but not overpower the poetry.
In the first section a canvas of sustained voice-like parts with a generally upward motion underpaints counterbalancing strokes of ostinati based on a descending tetrachord. Koto and shamisen melodies generated by statistical processes on the computer add layers of increasing activity to underpin the dramatic climax of the first section. After the solo recitation of the second section of the poem, an angular interlude for drum, bassoon and tubular bell influenced by the Afro-Haitian dance Ibo fades in to support a prominent, metrically loose, folk-like violin melody based on the a harmonic minor scale. In the third section a rhythmic drone on the shamisen sets up the expectation of new material. Superimposed on this drone are both chordal and arpeggiated ostinati from the F major pentatonic scale in contrasting registers as well as the final lines of the poem.
Ourobouros-Life on Earth was composed for the multimedia exhibit, Visual Cymbals, sponsored by the South Bay Women's Caucus for Art at San Jose State University Art Gallery. Artist Nina Koepke and poet April Eiler collaborated on the sculptural/poetic/musical installation called Ourobouros after that ancient symbol of rebirth. The musical ideas were generated on the Next computer using Stella and Common Music, extensions of Common Lisp specifically designed for algorithmic composition.
Janet Dunbar is a DMA student in composition at Stanford. The composer holds an MA in music from San Jose State University and a BS in psychology from Duke University.
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...QUE ME HICISTE MAL... (YOU DID ME WRONG)
* Pablo Cetta 1992
This work deals with some poetic aspects of tango, the popular expression of the Rio de la Plata region, and particularly with its dramatic nature. The title refers to part of a famous phrase from urban poetry: "Tango que me hiciste mal y sin embargo te quiero" (Tango, you did me wrong but I love you anyway). Its use here refers to the fragmentation of the famous tangos used in the piece. When processed by a computer these fragments take on a new significance. There is a brief imaginary dialogue between two characters, played by two popular tango singers: Roberto Goyeneche and Carlos Gardel. The first represents the nearness of death, and the other takes a consoling attitude. Even without knowing the meaning of the words, the intonation itself suggests other stories, which themselves could be the lyrics of a new tango. This piece was realized at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (UC San Diego) and the Laboratorio de Investigacion y Produccion Musical (Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires) using the CARL software.
Pablo Cetta was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1960. He studied engineering at the National University of Technology, composition under the guidance of Argentinian composer Gerardo Gandini and he received a degree in composition from the School of Music at the Catholic University of Argentina. He is professor of Acoustic and Electroacoustic Music at the University Quilmes, and also coordinates the Center for Research in Electroacoustic Music (C.E.E.-U.C.A.). In 1992 he was a visiting composer at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (UC, San Diego) as part of an exchange program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. He is currently associate composer / researcher at the Laboratorio de Investigacion y Produccion Musical (LIPM, Buenos Aires.)
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BROWNIAN MOTION
* Michael Edwards 1994
No. Nothing to do with the kinetic energy of gases, everything to do with the kinetic energy of ageing ex-con singers who claim to feel good yet need to be helped offstage by burly men offering capes to cries of please, please, please...don't go. Reduced him to bits and played with them. Stood him on his hair, turned him around, disturbed his naturally equal temperament, sliced, diced, spliced, dumped him in the mixer, hit the button marked full-speed, and processed him beyond all recognition. (Maybe you'd never have guessed. Probably should have kept my mouth shut. But then, towards the end, you'll know that isn't me in there, after all, there's no mistaking Fred.)
Michael Edwards was born in England in 1968. He began playing the oboe at the age of fourteen and thereafter went on to study music at Bristol University. After completing a B.A. and a Master of Music degree in composition he came to the United States to study computer music with John Chowning. He is currently a final year doctoral student at Stanford.
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CCRMA
WINTER CONCERT [1995]
CCRMA Computer Music
Concert of new works by CCRMA composers: Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics (CCRMA) will present a concert featuring new computer music by CCRMA composers, at 8 p.m. Saturday February 4th, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium.
Tickets for this performance, $7 general admission and $4 students, are available at Tresidder Ticket Office, (415) 723-4317, or at the door. For information, call the Music Department at (415) 723-3811.
Program
* Piece of Mind -- Celso Aguiar * Cycles -- Cem Duruoz * Hommage a Xenakis -- Will Grant * Duo for prepared piano and electric guitar -- Marco Trevisani
Interval
* RAIN -- Nicky Hind * Busted Pipes -- Bill Schottstaedt * Ascension, Compression and Detachment -- Glen Spearman
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PIECE OF MIND
* Celso Aguiar 1995
"Piece of Mind" is about violence, and about fun, in higher doses than we allow ourselves in our daily lives. The piece dwells in a world where there's only one truth: that there are many. And is irresponsibly uneconomical by opening the box to myriads of incongruent sounds to obtain its congruency. "Fun is dangerous", I was told once! But if you once realized in your life that you can become intimate to your closest enemies, then you'll probably be satisfied if I say the piece is about having fun with violence. That's all it took the composer to earn his peace of mind.
In the technical aspect, the piece is a mix of old-fashioned read-sample 'musique concrete' and Xavier Serra's powerfull SMS technic. I feel most indebted to his detached collaboration (mea culpa! I also stole one of his samples) and to some help from Bill Schottstaedt during the last DSP Summer Course at CCRMA when we came to recreate, from very scarce literature, Rodet's IFFT algorithm for additive synthesis. Based on that, instruments were written to synthesize, modify, or fade between real world sounds in (close to) real-time CLM conditions.
Celso Aguiar was born in Palo Alto, California and grew up in Brazil in the city of Salvador, Bahia. He studied composition under the Swiss-Brazilian composer Ernst Widmer, becoming interested in electroacoustic music. As a result of this, he built a real-time digital synthesizer controlled by computer, in a project funded by a research agency of Brazil. He is currently pursuing a DMA in Composition at CCRMA, Stanford University as the result of a fellowship granted by the Brazilian government. His area of interest is the application of DSP technics to composition and, at the moment, the use of Spectrum Modelling Synthesis (SMS) in Electroacustic Music.
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CYCLES (DEDICATED TO JODY ROCKMAKER)
* Cem Duruoz 1995
Cycles is a duet for guitar and a physical simulation for the flute that I have named the "flutar". The synthesized instrument is implemented by using the software "SynthBuilder" on one computer while a second computer modifies its parameters in real-time, or in other words "plays" the "flutar".
The physical model for the simulation combines an excitation section and a resonator, which correspond to the embouchure and the bore of a real flute, respectively. The two instruments interact with each other during the performance. In other words, the sound that the computer generates is dependent of the guitar sound that it receives by means of a microphone: the amplitude of the guitar sound modifies the input noise that simulates the breath blowing into a flute. At the same time the captured guitar sound goes through the resonator to produce the impression of a "plucked flute". This way, there may be resonances which emphasize the guitar sound depending on the pitches played by the guitar as well as the pitch that the flutar is tuned to. Cycles explores these resonances by using two chords as its main building block. These chords are composed such that they excite only some of the overtones of the simulated flute. Therefore some notes in the chord can become louder after being processed. The piece has a form similar to that of a classical sonata. In the exposition the main harmonic material, consisting of the two chords, is presented. Later the basic ideas are developed and exchanged between the "flutar" and the guitar. The piece ends with the final statement of the main theme reminiscent of a circle which winds back upon itself.
Cem Duruoz won the first prize in the Turkish National Guitar Competition in Istanbul in 1984, and the Stanford Soloist Award in 1991. On scholarships from the Italian and English governments, he participated in the master classes of John Duarte, Oscar Ghiglia and Eliot Fisk, and later Norbert Kraft and David Russell. He has received his master's degree in guitar performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied with David Tanenbaum. Besides his recitals in Turkey, Japan, Miami, Buffalo and San Francisco, he performed as a soloist with the Stanford Chamber Orchestra in 1992 and 1993.
In Turkey, he studied composition and theory with Bujor Hoinic for three years. At Stanford, he has been studying composition with Jody Rockmaker as a master's student. Cem Duruoz is also a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering.
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HOMMAGE A XENAKIS
* Will Grant 1994
Last spring at Mills College we studied some Xenakis. I like his music very much, but am not happiest doing arithmetic. So, while trying to emulate his ideas, in order to set (for example) the rising "stochastic" masses that appear near the end of the piece, I visualized a cloud that looked like the sound I wanted, and then I drew it in by entering and pasting bunches of notes in a sequencer's graphic window. On screen they look like a couple of careening galaxies. The orchestration uses sixteen separate instruments designed on a Yamaha TG33 synth.
Will Grant began his career in performance art, as a chorus member with Antoine Perriche, during the Paris festivities of May 1968. Since then he has worked in numerous small theater companies throughout the U.S. and Canada. He is currently a Master's candidate in electronic music at Mills College.
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DUO FOR PREPARED PIANO AND ELECTRIC GUITAR
* Marco Trvisani 1995
Members of Songo Be'nd: Marco Trevisani, prepared piano; Davide Rocchesso, electric guitar; Michael Edwards, sound projection.
Songo Be'nd is a band founded by Marco Trevisani, who is the only permanent player and author in the band. Different musicians follow on in this band. The goal of Songo Be'nd is to produce rhythms and leave them without control, and also to mask noise with other poly-un-rhythmical noise.
The name of the band comes from a Nicolas Guinllen (a Cuban poet) stanza.
"Songoro, cosongo, songo be: songoro, cosongo de mamey; songoro, la negra baila bien; songoro de uno songoro de tre."
Born in Verona, Italy, Marco Trevisani studied music composition and piano in Milan with Luigi Bonafede, then electronic music and composition at the Musik Hochschule in Vienna with Dieter Kaufmann and Tamas Ungvary. Mr Trevisani's music has been performed in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia as well as in the U.S. In addition, he holds a degree in architecture from the Politecnico of Milano (University of Milano). He has been a visiting composer at Stanford' CCRMA since 1992, and a Ph.D student in the italian Dept. since 1994. His current interest is in theatre-computer-music plays, two of which are now in progress.
Mr. Rocchesso works at the CSC (Centro Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padua, Italy). He collaborates with Alvise Vidolin, Maurizio Pisati, Giorgio Battistelli and Marco Trevisani, as a live electronics designer and performer. He plays in a computer music band called the P.I.T. group.
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RAIN
* Nicky Hind 1993
Consisting essentially of a single melodic strand, RAIN creates the illusion of polyphony through timbral streaming. RAIN was composed on the NeXT computer, using the `Common Music' composition software package to algorithmically control the evolution of pitches and timbres. For me, RAIN is a moment of pensive reflection, as if stirred by the sight and sound of gently falling rain-drops.
RAIN was premiered at the Dark Music Days festival in Reykjavik, 1993, and has since been featured on CD, in the audio journal, Unknown Public.
Nicky Hind began his career with the 1987 release on Move Records of the recording HINDSIGHT -- a collection of six compositions performed by his own ensemble, which combined atmospheric textures with (jazz) improvisation. Since then he has been commissioned to write music for acoustic and electro-acoustic media, and in conjunction with Dance, Theatre, and Video. Works have received numerous international performances, as well as in his native Scotland. Nicky Hind studied composition at the University of Glasgow (with Graham Hair), and at City University, London. His interest in computer music has led to further studies at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University, California, where he is presently based.
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BUSTED PIPES
* Bill Schottstaedt 1989
"Busted Pipes" was written in 1989, originally using the Samson Box. This version was done in CLM on the NeXT last summer. The computer instrument used here is the FM violin; sudden simultaneous changes to all the modulation ratios produce the intricate ornamentations and inharmonicities.
Bill Schottstaedt was born in New York City in 1951, grew up in Oklahoma, got various degrees in music from Stanford University, worked awhile in the computer industry, and is currently on the CCRMA faculty.
ASCENSION, COMPRESSION AND DETACHMENT
* Glen Spearman
alt.music.out is a free improvised music group which combines free jazz and elements of Eastern European punk rock into a frenetic and harmolodic musical conversation. Running on a NeXT computer, the SynthBuilder application will be used as a real-time effects processor. We will be playing Ascension, Compression and Detachment by Glen Spearman.
Scott Levine was born in New Jersey and grew up in Dallas, Texas. His research interests include audio data compression, multirate filter banks, and audio effects processing. At Columbia University, he studied electrical engineering under Professor Martin Vetterli and computer music under Professor Brad Garton. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, working under Professor Julius Smith at CCRMA.
Lukas Ligeti was born in Vienna in 1965; studied composition and drums at the Vienna Music Academy, now a Visiting Scholar at CCRMA. His music has been performed by the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, "die reihe", and Vienna Saxophone Quartet, etc., at festivals in Europe, Japan, and Australia. As a drummer, he has performed and/or recorded with Things of NowNow, Kombinat M, Siamese Stepbrothers, Henry Kaiser, Anthony Coleman, Roy Nathanson, a.o. In 1994, together with Kurt Dahlke, he led a cultural exchange project in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, in the course of which the group Be-Ta-Foli was formed.
Nick Porcaro was born 1961 in New York City. He received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1984. In 1987 he moved to San Francisco and started the Haight Ashbury Free Band in which he played keyboards. Since 1990, Nick has been a visiting scholar at CCRMA, where he has developed SynthBuilder, a graphical software application for synthesizer patch development and effects processing. SynthBuilder has been used extensively over last year at CCRMA for several research, composition and performance projects. Nick demonstrated SynthBuilder at the 1994 International Computer Music Conference in Aarhus, Denmark.
David G Rhodes: Born in California in 1948. Studied music and education at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Played and studied bebop in New York in the 70's and in 1987 helped start the Haight Ashbury Free Band which eventually became an Avant Garde jazz band.
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