Acoustic Investigations in the Theater

When composer Maryanne Amacher passed away in October 2009, she had been working for two years on an EMPAC-commissioned piece in residence. During the residency, she created an ethereal space for floating sounds with 30-plus loudspeakers, most hidden in rooms distant to the performance space. In 2010, the air plenum beneath EMPAC’s Theater—a space for circulating air, which inspired Maryanne and which she called The Star Room—was named in her honor. 

Amacher was a major innovator in the field of 20th-century electronic music. A rigorously perceptive mind and uncannily sensitive listener, she created powerful situations for listening that broke new ground in areas of telematics with her CityLinks series in the 1960s, sound spatialization with her unique approach to structure-borne sound, and the creative use of otoacoustic emissions (sounds self-produced by the inner ear). Her work has been produced at festivals worldwide since the late 1960s and, until her death in 2009, she traveled extensively, continuing to research, compose, and inspire those around her.