Soaring trumpet lines transform into haunting, guttural subtones. Resonant vibraphone ferocity hovers over basslines that throb and sear. Torrential drumming pushes toward episodes of improvisatory sonic exploration that is languid at times, boisterous and frenetic at others.

In a concert performance, trumpet player and composer Peter Evans leads the quartet Being & Becoming. Featuring some of the most forward-thinking young musicians in Jazz and Contemporary music, each of the members of Being & Becoming are widely known for their individuality, virtuosity, and deep musical curiosity and rigor.

The quartet features Evans on trumpet, vibraphonist and synth player Joel Ross, bassist and bass synth player Nick Joz, and drummer Adriel Vincent-Brown. The dynamic and charged lighting design of Azumi O E heightens the alchemic creation and recreation of musical worlds onstage.

Evans' compositions for the band draw from a wide variety of sources, traditional and experimental, with a grounding in improvisational idioms, notated concert music, and an array of experimental approaches. The group has released two albums–their eponymous debut in 2020 and the symphonic work Ars Memoria in 2022, both on Evans’s label More is More.

The last two years have seen the group tour major festivals and venues in the USA and Europe, constantly developing new music. A new album recorded in 2024 at the legendary Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey will see its release in 2025. All four members are recognized as leading virtuosi on their respective instruments, and have thriving careers as soloists, bandleaders, producers, and composers.

Who is the Rhythmanalyst and what is his laboratory? Following on his spring 2023 project Speakers That Speak to You, artist DeForrest Brown Jr. returns to EMPAC to ask: what comes after techno? How do we imagine new models of the music studio and of distribution, and how might these feed back into ways of capturing and assessing the sonic profile of technology today? This program offers a demo and preview of Brown’s new project, Rhythmanalytics, intended to culminate in a new album as well as a book.

Rhythmanalytics finds sound tunneling through space, through the ear, and then linking back to larger infrastructures of post-digital futures. Using the studio space as a meta-instrument, Brown explores non-repetitive rhythms and tonal shifts, probing rhythm as both techno’s primary means and as a way of calibrating the material conditions of production and logistics.

In addition to a live listening session offered during the event, Brown joins music scholar Louis Chude-Sokei in conversation to explore questions raised by Brown’s new project and their shared interests around Black culture, music technology, and discourses of Afrofuturism and posthumanism. A key question in Brown’s new project is sonic compression: of live performance into recording, of dimensional sound into a file, acoustic into digital matter.

The fall 2024 PULSE performance is an original DJ set comprised of original compositions and remixes created by the PULSE crew. The compositions are themed around synthesizing old and new media across platforms to create a familiar yet fresh sonic experience.

The People Using Live Software and Electronics (PULSE) working group and lab is a forum for Rensselaer students interested in producing live audio by experimenting with musical hardware and various digital audio workstations (DAWs). The lab culminates in a performance hosted by EMPAC at the end of each semester.

Facilitated by Jonathan Givan, PULSE meets every Wednesday, 5–7PM when classes are in session, in EMPAC Studio Beta.

To get involved, or for more info, please contact Jonathan Givan.

Within | Without Limit: Music for Cello is a series of two solo performances from internationally acclaimed musician Charles Curtis. The two programs feature delicate yet visceral works that challenge—and reward—the listener, opening up new musical landscapes both outside and within the work.

The second program takes full advantage of the generous acoustic properties of the Concert Hall while also showcasing repertoire that asks the listener to attend to subtle processes of transformation and speculation. Composer Carolyn Chen’s Rara Avis (2015) draws from the early-17th century piece Woodycock—anonymous in both authorial attribution and in its peculiar evocation of an elusive woodland bird. Éliane Radigue’s Occam V (2012) continues her series of solo and ensemble pieces Occam Ocean, written for individual instrumentalists; each performer’s technique and relationship to their instrument provide the foundation for the musical material. Curtis’s own Unfinished Song (1998), a work for multiple cellos and sine waves, is an immersive, swirling, and contrapuntal work influenced by the harmonic world of alternate tunings, renaissance music, South Asian raga-style improvisation, and the song structures of popular music.

Program

• Woodycock (17th c.)
• Anonymous
• Rara Avis (2015)
• Carolyn Chen
• Occam V (2012)
• Éliane Radigue
• Hélas! et comment (14th c.)
• Guillaume de Machaut
• C’est force, faire (14th c.)
• Machaut
• Unfinished Song (1998)
• Charles Curtis

Within | Without Limit: Music for Cello is a series of two solo performances from internationally acclaimed musician Charles Curtis. The two programs feature delicate yet visceral works that challenge—and reward—the listener, opening up new musical landscapes both outside and within the work.

NALDJORLAK

Composed specifically for Curtis and premiered in 2005, French composer Éliane Radigue’s hour-long Naldjorlak exists at the instrument’s limits—at the threshold of resonance and its disappearance. The result is what Radigue calls, “a wild and frail, versatile and volatile world of sounds” that pierces through to an intense intimacy. Performed in Studio 2, this performance is a rare opportunity to experience this intensity up-close.

Ticket holders are invited to a reception after the performance.

Program

• Naldjorlak (1963)
• Éliane Radigue

Composer and artist Raven Chacon are in residence in EMPAC Studio 2 with San Francisco-based experimental music duo The Living Earth Show to begin preliminary recording for a new work to premiere in fall 2025.

The [Switch~ Ensemble] continues with a second residency with composers Julie Herndon, Igor Santos, Christopher Chandler, and Jason Thorpe Buchanan. Utilizing the video and spatial audio capabilities specific to Studio 1—Goodman, the ensemble and composers continue to develop their pieces for premiere at EMPAC in September 2025.

Fall 2024

Composers and technologists Jason Thorpe Buchanan and Christopher Chandler are in residence in Studio 1—Goodman to develop and workshop their new interactive spatial sound, video, and light environment for an upcoming commissioned project with contemporary music ensemble [Switch~ Ensemble]. During this residency period, they also experiment with new VR interfacing technology developed by EMPAC audio engineers which utilizes gaming technology to deploy spatial audio in the venue.

Composer Sarah Davachi’s residency takes place in the EMPAC Concert Hall to begin preliminary recording for a new work to be premiered in fall 2025.

Composer-performers Charmaine Lee and Conrad Tao are in residence in EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman to record new music drawn from the sonic language of their eight-year-long duo collaboration.

Belgian sound and visual artist Maika Garnica is in residence in Studio 2 and the Concert Hall to document her sound sculptures. Her work examines and questions the relationships between object, body, sound, and space.