SCGMC 2018

Composers Salon
September 29, 2018
The Bridge PAI, Charlottesville, VA

Opheodrys Ben Luca Robertson

Ben Luca Robertson, harmonic wand and electronics

Klangliche Durchforschung Maximiliano Amici

fixed electronics

mouthfeel Alex Christie

Alex Christie, electronics

Collage 4 “Landscape” Juan Vasquez

Collage 17 “Colombian Collage”
fixed electronics

free_language Ryan Patrick Maguire and mease hm

Ryan Patrick Maguire, a/v algorithms and sound
Heather Mease, video

Br==ks

Energy Archetypes IV Omar Fraire

Omar Fraire, electronics
 Program Notes

Opheodrys
Opheodrys is composed using a 7-limit just intonation. By shifting one or more pitches
by precise, microtonal increments—or commas—the performer leads the listener
through fifteen states of tonal flux. While perceptual stability is maintained internally,
the shift between succeeding sonorities evokes an ambiguous sense of tonality. The
cumulative effect resembles a single, lilting mass—a space where present & past events
become almost indistinguishable. Originally written for saxophone quartet &
electronics, this arrangement features the ‘harmonic wand’—a physically-activated
electronic instrument, designed & constructed by the composer.

Klangliche Durchforschung
In this composition, I combined unedited recordings. I made them at the
Electronisches Studio Basel, of a large variety of percussion instruments and objects –
rice flowing in a bowl, various gongs, rattles and bells, piano strings rubbed with
horsehair, glasses tapped one against the other, glass harmonica, etc. The piece
explores the dialectics between 'natural' harmonic sounds and inharmonicity. Formally,
it is conceived as a long fading after an initial outburst of spectral energy.

mouthfeel
Sound speaks into a space shaped by light. Light presses on sound. Space presses on
sound. Performer inserts themselves into space.

Collage 4 “Landscape”
This piece was composed for the Hilltown New Music Festival, July 2013 at
Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath (Ireland). Inspired by Pierre Schaeffer’s quote "Sound is
the vocabulary of the nature", and created by manipulating and processing a field
recording taken in Cali, Colombia. It explores how to experience a connection between
rural and urban soundscape in Latin America in a timeless, profound way; by
superimposing textures in a 5-voice canon. Landscape Collage 4 was also part of the
"Symposium on Acoustic Ecology" organised by the University of Kent (November
2013 - United Kingdom), "Kinokophonography" festival at the New York Public Library
for Performing Arts (February 2014 - United States) and selected for the Electronic
Language International Festival FILE (July 2015 - Brazil).
Collage 17 “Colombian Collage"
This piece was composed by superimposing field recordings in Cali, Colombia. Street
music is prominently featured, as according to research it has had a significant historical
impact on identity individually and collectively. Colombian Collage is therefore an
appropriation of a music-driven soundscape, re-contextualized as an acousmatic music
piece.

free_language
free_language was created from the deleted mp3 detritus of "In All Languages" by
Ornette Coleman, one of the original test tracks used during the development of the
MP3. the video was created using deleted mp4 detritus from the Ornette Coleman
documentary "Made in America".

Energy Archetypes IV
Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds
on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the
interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations. Where there is power, there is
resistance. Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions-
to define, classify, control, and regulate people.
 Composer Bios

Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, & founder of the

independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in
autonomous processes, landscape, & biological systems—often supplanting narrative
structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, &
microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa
pines, channel scablands, basalt outcroppings, & relics of boomtown decay haunt his
work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a
B.A. from the Evergreen State College, & is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition &
Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was
appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human
Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland & recently collaborated with biologists from the
University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chinook Salmon.

Maximiliano Amici
I always enjoy composing, and I particularly like to explore diverse, multiple facets of
music making, as mirrors of being and acting in the world. I was born in Rome in 1980
into a family of musicians. Apart from playing violin in my childhood, I started serious
studies of music late in my life, after one year of studying philosophy at the university.
Philosophy continues to be one of the great passions of my life, even though I did not
pursue it as a career. I studied composition (MA), as well as electroacoustic music (MA),
at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory under the supervision of Maestro Luciano Pelosi. I
also earned Masters Degrees in piano performance and conducting. Subsequently, in
2013, I spent three years specializing in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in
Basel, with Prof.s Erik Oña and Johannes Caspar Walter, before joining the Ph.D.
program at Duke in 2016, where I was first advised by Prof. Scott Lindroth. Presently
I'm honing my compositional abilities under the guidance of Prof. Stephen Jaffe. My
music has been played and recorded by several prominent chamber groups (Parco
della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Deviant Septet,
JACK Quartet). Nonetheless, my most prominent musical collaborations have been
with the OSN - RAI, for the recording of Flowing under the baton of Yoichi Sugiyama,
and with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, which recently read my piece
Cristalli di Tempo. Apart from music, I'm particularly interested in cinematography,
especially in relation to sound and music. To relax, when time allows, I love cooking
and walking to enjoy nature.
Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many
forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for
“ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is
particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference,
absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition.

Alex’s work explores the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive
electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, light, video,
and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through
which the audience can experience the work. He has performed and presented at a
variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell
nicedinsaucesfeemmmmmogscabsplot.

Alex serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, Director of Composers Forums, and
Academic Dean at the Walden School of Music Young Musicians Program. He holds
degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College and is currently pursuing a
PhD in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia.

Br==ks is the solo electronic project of Brooks Frederickson. Br==ks is concerned with
the physicality of sound and physicality of time.

Ryan Maguire‘s digital music has received millions of plays globally in over 200
countries and territories via Vimeo, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, and has been
presented widely in Los Angeles, Berlin, London, New York, Toronto, and Copenhagen.
His project Ghost in the MP3 has received international coverage from the BBC, CBC,
NPR, Radiodeutschland Kultur, and Vice NOISEY, with related awards from the
International Computer Music Association, Public Radio Exchange, the Raven Society
and others. He is credited with creating “a great new genre of ambient ghost music”
by Death and Taxes Magazine. Ryan is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Composition and
Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. He holds a B.A. in Physics from
Beloit College, a postgraduate degree in Music Composition from the New England
Conservatory of Music, and an A.M. in Digital Musics from Dartmouth College.

Mease HM is a multimedia artist, composer, and community arts organizer. Mease

composes with beeps, boops, bops, BIG SOUNDS, lil sounds, stinky sounds, no
sounds, known sounds, word sounds, snake sounds, video sounds (moving), image
sounds (unmoving), digital sounds, social sounds, thought sounds, collective sounds,
body sounds, sweaty sounds, sugar sounds, sour sounds, a computer!

Omar Fraire
Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher. After having deserted from two
composition universities in México, he specializes in Sonology (Koninklijk
Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master's Degree in Contemporary Art as auditor
(Aguascalientes). His work is inserted into reality by transducing it and functions as an
act of resistance. Enjoys collaborative work and your energies oscillate across
disciplines. Creator of Punto Ciego Festival and artist of the Guggenheim
Aguascalientes, is mostly self-taught although he holds an M.A. with Alvin Lucier at
Wesleyan and studies de Ph. D at Uva.