New Music and New Technology THE COMPUTER JOINS THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

FROM GUY GARNETT GUY@CNMAT.CNMAT.BERKELEY.EDU

A world premiere performance uniting the latest in high technology with a traditional full symphony orchestra will take place on Friday March 4 and Saturday March 5, 8 PM, at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall. Guy E. Garnett, a composer at UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) and a leader in the field of computer music technology, has composed a Concerto for Violin, Orchestra, and Electronic Conducting. The conductor of the orchestra, Jung-Ho Pak, will lead the orchestra and violin soloist (Mari Kimura) with traditional conducting gestures that will be analyzed on the fly by a Macintosh computer and used to control playback tempo, dynamics, and other parameters of an electronic "score" stored on the Macintosh. This system leads to an astonishing degree of coordination between the orchestra, the violin soloist, and the electronics. Since the computer follows the conductor's movements, traditional gestures can now be used to control new synthetic sounds in a flexible and expressive manner.

The Concerto was written in November and December of 1993 and the electronics were designed in January and February of 1994 at the CNMAT. It was written for Mari Kimura, a young violinist of growing international fame, and Jung-Ho Pak, the outstanding director of the University Orchestra.

Also on the program is a new work by Anthony DeRitis for orchestra and digital processing controlled by a Macintosh computer.

In addition, there will be a premiere by UC Professor John Thow, and a piece by the late Witold Lutoslawski.