On December 4th, MTI²'s John Richards gave the keynote talk at the Bowed Electrons 2020 event hosted by the South Africa College of Music and the University of Cape Town.
His keynote, titled 'The Danger of the Crowd', can be found at:
https://youtu.be/HvaZ80z36oA?t=17790
(starting at 4h57’)
Work by MTI² alum & adjunct Neal Spowage graces the cover of the very last issue of Leonardo Music Journal, accompanying his article 'Now I’m Digital, Where Is My Ritual? Exploring Post-Digital Performance Objects as Totems for Agency and Ritual':
https://www.leonardo.info/journal-issue/leonardo-music-journal/30
The Midlands New Music Symposium is taking place online this weekend, December 5th & 6th, and will include a keynote by MTI²'s Prof. Simon Emmerson, on the topic of 'Composing for flutes and electronics':
https://nottfar.org.uk/symposium
Late registration requests should be sent to nottfar@nottingham.ac.uk
"The Midlands New Music Symposium seeks to explore and celebrate the diversity of current contemporary music and sound practices in the fields of composition, performance, and technology. The two-day online symposium will include a series of presentations, lecture recitals, discussions, and concerts.
The symposium themes are open to let practitioners and scholars set the agenda. As such, the committee invites a broad range of proposals (outlined below) from individuals in and outside of academia."
The winners of the Musica Nova 2020 International Music Competition have been announced, and MTI² has done very well indeed:
In Category A ('compositions of autonomous art electroacoustic music'), it's a clean sweep for MTI²:
- First prize goes to Prof. John Young, for his work 'Abwesenheit'
- Honorary Mention goes to David Holland for 'First Rituals'
...with alumna & adjunct Louise Rossiter included among the finalists.
Congratulations to all!
https://musicanova.seah.cz/vysl/2020.pdf
On Saturday November 21st at 9AM UTC, MTI²'s Leigh Landy led an online
Webinar on the EARS 2 and Compose with Sounds projects, for the Greek Society of Music Education (and two MA groups at the Ionian University) with MTI alumna Nasia Therapontos:
https://www.facebook.com/events/4991937157490703/
The webinar was attended by ca. 150 music teachers and music education students, was recorded and will now be distributed to hundreds of other music teachers and students. The outcome of the webinar, beyond an enthusiastic response, is that the Greek Music Education Society has formally endorsed the use of EARS 2 and Compose with Sounds in all Greek schools, particularly secondary schools. There was great enthusiasm that it has now appeared in Greek with plans to add composer portraits to the site and hold a concert in a year’s time featuring student compositions (with professional works as well) and workshops which will be attended by Landy.
This Saturday November 14th, MTI²'s Anna Xambó will perform as part of the Sound Junction Satellites: Live Coding & 3-D Sound – Online Live Stream:
https://performancevenues.group.shef.ac.uk/event/sound-junction-satellites-live-coding-3-d-sound/
"A live streamed concert featuring the best of live-coding and electroacoustic composition. Starting at 7.30, expect an evening of sound both immersive and frenetic – as performers explore the possibilities in live coded music, and acousmatic composition. We’re especially excited for some binaural live performances from our live-coders – so you’ll be able to experience 3D binaural effects at home. Binaural sound is a way of creating the illusion of 3D sound through stereo audio – it’s a strange but immersive experience, and can be achieved through any pair of headphones. Right now, that might be the closest you get to the real thing, and it should be a lot of fun!"
Estimated schedule:
7.30pm to 8.30pm – Live-coded performances from Alex McLean, Gerard Roma and Anna Xambo
8.30pm to 9pm – Discussion of the potential of binaural effects in live coding and a Q & A (access link will be sent out to the audience).
9pm to 9.40pm – Acousmatic pieces from Sound Junction friends and University of Sheffield Sound Studios followed by a chat between the composers about their process
MTI²'s Prof. John Young's new work Once He Was a Gunner (2020)—a 56-minute radiogenic composition—will have its premiere broadcast on Radio New Zealand's Concert's Sound Lounge programme on Saturday 3 October, at 21:30 (9:30am UK time on the same day). The live stream will be available at https://www.rnz.co.nz/concert.
Once He Was a Gunner is based on the Second World War memories of the composer’s father, Alex Young. Born in the North East of England in 1920, Alex had emigrated to New Zealand as a child. In 1941 he was conscripted as a gunner in the 5th Field Regiment of the New Zealand Division and served continuously until 1945. He was at key moments of the New Zealanders’ North African and Italian campaigns such as El Alamein, Minquar Quaim, Monte Cassino, Orsogna and the Senio River. During the Italian campaign the severe and wet winters of 1943 and 1944 meant that many units of both allied and German forces stayed in civilian homes. It was at one such location in Central Italy that Alex met his future wife, and the work is based on an interview that John carried out with Alex after revisiting that place in 2005. A series of vividly described recollections is connected by sound transformations aiming to evoke the unspoken emotions that lie behind strong memories. The events represented are not in strict chronological sequence and John writes:
“I wanted to present them in the manner of memories revealed, perhaps through association or as a response to some unknown conversational seed. This is precisely how I grew up, with a patchwork of knowledge about my father’s wartime experiences—sometimes shocking, sometimes humorous—and, as was the case for many returning soldiers, he talked more about the war as he grew older. Hearing these stories now I am reminded of the extent to which the war, or more precisely memory of the war, was a current that ran like a river through our family life. For our father and mother, for me and my sisters it was always there to remind us of why we were together.”
Once He Was a Gunner is a journey through one man’s experience of the war in Italy—living with civilians, moments of lucky escape, the fear, the camaraderie, the panacea of alcohol, and the sense of loss on returning home.
A streaming version of MTI²'s Prof. Bret Battey’s “Three Breaths in Empty Space” will be part of Festival Visiones Sonoras, hosted by MTI² partner-institution CMMAS (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras), 23-25 September, 2020:
There will be a launch event at Ultima Festival in Oslo this week Friday, September 11 at 3pm, for the open access book "Taking the Temperature: Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity", which features an interview with MTI²'s Anna Xambó, talking about her experiences during her time as a chair of the organisation WoNoMute.
Launch event: https://www.ultima.no/en/events/110920_context_samtale-og-boklansering
Order or download the book here: https://on-curating.org/book/taking-the-temperature-crisis-curating-and-musical-diversity.html
"We view this current crisis as creating an opening for contemporary music to finally escape its toxic relationship with tradition, quality and a white, European bourgeois aesthetic and embrace the many newly-made musics that exist in this world." (extract from Editorial by Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson, Vanessa Massera)
The latest issue of the Cambridge University Press journal Organised Sound is now out, on the theme of 'Time in Electroacoustic Music':
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/issue/1370A3BD3D3A0CB1B656F2654D8F5511
The issue is co-edited by MTI²'s Prof. Kevin Dahan, and includes two articles by MTI² members - Kevin Dahan's 'A Temporal Framework for Electroacoustic Music Exploration', and James Andean's 'Rhythm in Acousmatic Music' - as well as an article by an MTI alumnus: Michael Gatt's 'Memory, Expectation and the Temporal Flux of Acousmatic Music'.
A new book chapter by MTI²'s Leigh Landy has recently been published:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/between-tracks
The chapter, titled 'Hildegard Westerkamp’s Beneath the Forest Floor (1992)', appears in 'Between the Tracks: Musicians on Selected Electronic Music, edited by Miller Puckette and Kerry L. Hagan and released by the MIT Press on August 12th 2020.
"This collection of writings on electronic music goes outside the canon to analyze influential works by under-recognized musicians. The contributors, many of whom are composers and performers themselves, offer their unsung musical heroes the sort of in-depth examinations usually reserved for more well-known composers and works. They analyze music from around the world and across genders, race, nationality, and age, discussing works that range from soundscapes of rushing water and resonating pipes to compositions by algorithm. Subjects include the collaboration of performer and composer, as seen in the work of Anne La Berge, Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian, and others; the choice by Asian composers Zhang Xiaofu and Unsuk Chin to embrace (or not) Eastern themes and styles; and how technologies used by composers created the sound of the works, as exemplified by Bülent Arel's use of voltage-control components as compositional tools and Charles Dodge's resynthesizing of the human voice."
