For Guitar and Electronics

Stockholm-based composer Ellen Arkbro was in residence to develop material to use with EMPAC's Wave Field Synthesis Array. While Arkbro was at EMPAC, she also performed a new solo work For Guitar and Electronics.

Arkbro is a musical alchemist whose work oscillates between the pop music of the ’90s and the American minimalism of the ’60s, while exploring microtonal realms that blur the standard tunings and harmonies of Western music. Her practice takes the form of compositions for early-music ensembles as well as long-duration performances of synthesized dream music, including one piece composed to last 26 days. Her sound work is heavily informed by her studies in pure intonation tuning with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in New York and with Marc Sabat in Berlin. She describes her 2017 album For Organ and Brass as “a very slow and reduced blues music” written for the 17th-century Scherer-organ in Tangermünde, Germany, paired with microtonal arrangements for horn, tuba, and trombone.