Festival on the Hill: An Electro-Acoustic Concert
Tuesday, Feb. 16
8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Memorial Hall
Free and open to the public
New digital technology has had significant impact on both popular and classical music production. Evolving from German electronic music and French musique concrète traditions, electro-acoustic music is now a burgeoning field in the world of music composition. Stephen Anderson and his team will debut new electro-acoustic works at this opening concert, which also features a number of premieres.
The complete lineup of performances for the evening is:
Two featured performances for the evening are:
War Peace by Stephen Anderson and David Tinapple
Project leaders Stephen Anderson (UNC) and David Tinapple (Arizona State University) have collaborated to create a visual and musical multimedia piece, War Peace, involving digital technology and centered on the topic of war.
Tinapple has collected hundreds of hours of footage from the Iraq war and has combined the footage into a video format that can be modified during the performance to coincide with the pacing of the music on stage. Anderson created a musical score incorporating traditional, aleatory and graphic notation that similarly allows the performers flexibility to interact with the images and each other during the performance.
UNC faculty Richard Luby (violin), Brent Wissick (cello), Brooks de Wetter-Smith (flute), Lynn Glassock (percussion), and Anderson (piano) will perform into microphones sending audio signals through a custom software patch designed by Anderson in Max/MSP that alters the sound of the instruments in real-time through the use of digital delay, ring modulator, harmonizer and reverb modules.
The images and the music, like the war itself, juxtapose the seemingly incongruent by reflecting the trauma, anger and horrors of war, while at the same time eliciting a hope for peace and an end to the violence.
Maurice Remembered by Thomas Otten and Frances White
Maurice Remembered is a chamber opera for pianist/baritone with electronic sound. UNC faculty member Thomas Otten will perform a piece written by 2004 Guggenheim fellow Frances White. The text for the work is drawn from E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, while the music references Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.
The sonic landscape of the work comprises live pianistic and vocal performance, along with electronic music derived from recorded piano and natural sounds. Various sophisticated digital audio techniques are used to process these recordings, creating a multi-dimensional sonic space with which the performer interacts.
A unique aspect of this composition is its use of one soloist as pianist and singer, an innovative and exciting crossover element from the pop/jazz arena. By utilizing Otten’s past recordings of the Ravel as a source for the electronic track, a fascinating, and radical, unification is created: pianist, singer and electronic sound as an expression of “multiple selves,” intertwined with multiple dimensions of time (past and present performances occurring simultaneously).
8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Memorial Hall
Free and open to the public
New digital technology has had significant impact on both popular and classical music production. Evolving from German electronic music and French musique concrète traditions, electro-acoustic music is now a burgeoning field in the world of music composition. Stephen Anderson and his team will debut new electro-acoustic works at this opening concert, which also features a number of premieres.
The complete lineup of performances for the evening is:
- Andrew Babcock (Buffalo, NY) - Anagoge
- Allen Anderson (UNC) - Graffito
- Thomas Otten (UNC) and Frances White (Princeton, N.J.) - Maurice Remembered
- Stephen Anderson (UNC) and David Tinapple (Arizona State University) - War Peace
- Hee Yun Kim (Seoul, Korea) - Fluctuation
- Rodney Waschka (NC State) - CHATting Up
Two featured performances for the evening are:
War Peace by Stephen Anderson and David Tinapple
Project leaders Stephen Anderson (UNC) and David Tinapple (Arizona State University) have collaborated to create a visual and musical multimedia piece, War Peace, involving digital technology and centered on the topic of war.
Tinapple has collected hundreds of hours of footage from the Iraq war and has combined the footage into a video format that can be modified during the performance to coincide with the pacing of the music on stage. Anderson created a musical score incorporating traditional, aleatory and graphic notation that similarly allows the performers flexibility to interact with the images and each other during the performance.
UNC faculty Richard Luby (violin), Brent Wissick (cello), Brooks de Wetter-Smith (flute), Lynn Glassock (percussion), and Anderson (piano) will perform into microphones sending audio signals through a custom software patch designed by Anderson in Max/MSP that alters the sound of the instruments in real-time through the use of digital delay, ring modulator, harmonizer and reverb modules.
The images and the music, like the war itself, juxtapose the seemingly incongruent by reflecting the trauma, anger and horrors of war, while at the same time eliciting a hope for peace and an end to the violence.
Maurice Remembered by Thomas Otten and Frances White
Maurice Remembered is a chamber opera for pianist/baritone with electronic sound. UNC faculty member Thomas Otten will perform a piece written by 2004 Guggenheim fellow Frances White. The text for the work is drawn from E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, while the music references Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.
The sonic landscape of the work comprises live pianistic and vocal performance, along with electronic music derived from recorded piano and natural sounds. Various sophisticated digital audio techniques are used to process these recordings, creating a multi-dimensional sonic space with which the performer interacts.
A unique aspect of this composition is its use of one soloist as pianist and singer, an innovative and exciting crossover element from the pop/jazz arena. By utilizing Otten’s past recordings of the Ravel as a source for the electronic track, a fascinating, and radical, unification is created: pianist, singer and electronic sound as an expression of “multiple selves,” intertwined with multiple dimensions of time (past and present performances occurring simultaneously).
