For more information about this event please visit the RMA Facebook event.

Sound artist and composer/performer Bora Yoon has been commissioned by EMPAC to develop a new performative piece in which she uses EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array as a new instrument for spatializing sound in space. In this first residency, she will explore activating the array through gesture and movement in collaboration with visuals and interaction designer Joshue Ott of Interval Studios (Brooklyn), creator of custom software superDraw and iPhone apps Thicket and Variant—to establish digital set design environments, and dimensional navigation systems for the larger developing staged work. In Spring 2023, they will premiere the work at EMPAC that integrates a composed sonic landscape with lighting and visuals—based on new forthcoming record and musical album by Yoon.

Yoon premiered SPKR SPRKL, an excerpt of this new work now titled PHONO KINETIC, at TIME:SPANS contemporary music festival in NYC, August 2021 where EMPAC presented new works for the Wave Field Synthesis Array in a series of concerts.

HEARTBEAT OPERA—the daring young indie opera company whose unconventional orchestrations and stagings of classic operas have been called "a radical endeavor" by Alex Ross in The New Yorker—concludes its sixth season with its first adaptation of Verdi: LADY M, a reimagined and re-orchestrated work-in-progress, envisioning the story of Macbeth through the eyes of Lady Macbeth.

Stripping away the clichés that have accumulated around Lady Macbeth and her story, Heartbeat's version explores ambition, gender, and violence through a contemporary American lens. Heartbeat Co-Artistic Director Ethan Heard, known for his socially conscious adaptations of classics like a Fidelio that recruited real prison choirs as the chorus, directs. His LADY M holds a mirror to NY in 2020: hedge fund managers and escorts, in glass towers and back alleys; the ferocious ambition and the nonstop drive.

In light of COVID-19, Heartbeat Opera takes its LADY M rehearsals and performances online. Rather than cancel its production, the company launches a 10-day remote residency (April 20–May 1) with their artists rehearsing at home, followed by a series of intimate Virtual Soirées through Zoom video conferencing from May 11–20. The full production arrives in Spring 2021.

Each 60-minute Soirée will include:

• A welcome toast
• Introductory remarks
• Brief live performance by two cast members
• Q&A

Each Soirée will also feature two videos, newly unveiled for this project:

• A short documentary showing a behind-the-scenes look at Heartbeat's Remote Residency
• A music video of Lady M’s “Sleepwalking Scene” sung by Felicia Moore, played by the six-piece band, and featuring the five other cast members of LADY M

EXTENSION: Fourteen Virtual Soirées, each 60 minutes:

• Wednesday, May 27 at 2PM
• Wednesday, May 27 at 8PM
• Thursday, May 28 at 7PM and 9PM
• Friday, May 29 at 2PM and 8PM
• Saturday, May 30 at 8PM
• Wednesday, June 3 at 2PM and 8PM
• Thursday, June 4 at 7PM and 9PM
• Friday, June 5 at 2PM and 8PM
• Saturday, June 6 at 8PM

Eighteen Virtual Soirées, each 45 minutes:

• Monday, May 11 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Tuesday, May 12 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Wednesday, May 13 at 2PM and 8PM
• Thursday, May 14 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Friday, May 15 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Saturday, May 16 at 2PM and 8PM
• Monday, May 18 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Tuesday, May 19 at 7:30PM and 9PM
• Wednesday, May 20 at 7:30PM and 9PM

Seth Parker Woods performs new works on the theme of “translation” for cello and electronics composed by Freida Abtan, Monty Adkins, Ryan Carter, Nathalie Joachim, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.

When translation is treated as a mere concept, misunderstandings can be discussed to try to overcome challenges. However, when the meaning of what’s lost in translation bleeds over into actual losses for living beings, the consequences of theoretical misunderstandings can be devastating. Joachim’s work The Race: 1915 uses newspaper texts from The Chicago Defender that used translation and specificity of words to empower its readers by challenging the way language could be used to gloss over the atrocities faced by African Americans during that time. In recalling this language, Joachim asks the listener to examine their own assumptions about the current situation in the United States.

Some of the other works approach this search for understanding through multimedia, such as the collaboration between Adkins and McLean layering textures of snow/sound, while others try to reach clarity of expression through a common memory of a shared past. The final work is accompanied by a new film by British artist Zoe McLean. 

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

When we are close to something brilliant, what is the difference between that which lights our way, and that which impedes our journey? Young’s The Glow that Illuminates, the Glare that Obscures explores the intricacies of an old love—Renaissance architectural and musical practices—through new compositional forms and strategies. Architecturally, light and space have long been in conversation defining each other. Young uses EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array to allow the audience to follow the resonance of sound through architectural space.

In light of COVID-19, Heartbeat Opera took its LADY M rehearsals and performances online. Rather than cancel its production, the company launched a 10-day remote residency (April 20–May 1) with their artists rehearsing at home, followed by a series of intimate Virtual Soirées through Zoom video conferencing from May 11–20. The full production arrives in Spring 2021.

This New York opera company was scheduled to come to EMPAC at the end of our spring season to develop a new reordered and reorchestrated version of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, here renamed Lady M. The company was to use their time at EMPAC to collaborate with sound artist and RPI alumna Senem Pirler, creating the supernatural sound of the witches—manipulating their voices through electronic processing. In light of COVID-19, this collaboration happened online.

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All current EMPAC residencies are being hosted remotely with support from EMPAC curatorial, administrative, and production staff and resources. While no artists are on site in Troy, our staff is continuing to collaborate with artists toward the development of new works.

Lesley Flanigan is in residence in Studio 2 to produce a new EMPAC-commissioned performance-installation that continues her exploration into the sculptural potential of sound.

Developing a performance for voice, speakers, electronic tone, and the resonance between, this residency follows from her visit in early 2020 in which she explored the acoustic environment of EMPAC’s concert hall with sine-wave oscillators that generate low-frequency tones, her signature speaker sculpture instruments, and pitches from her own voice. 

Continuing her work here at EMPAC with spatial audio and in particular, EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array, Nina C. Young will develop her acoustic brass quintet into a multimedia work for live musicians, spatial audio, and live video processing based on geometric forms and Renaissance music. The residency culminates in the premiere of the new evening-length work on March 19th in the Theater.

Mivos Quartet are in residence at EMPAC to record Steve Reich’s three string quartets Different Trains, Triple Quartet, and WTC 9/11.

As long-time collaborators with Reich, Mivos Quartet is the first group to record and release all three quartets on a single album. Each of his quartets has one or two layers of quartet parts that must be pre- recorded. Mivos is working closely with Reich to re-record all of the backing tracks as well as the live quartet parts for an album that can serve as the definitive recording of these works.

Proclaimed by many as America's greatest living composer, Steve Reich is a musical icon. His body of work has largely defined a genre of modern music, which in turn has become one of the defining schools of American musical style. Reich’s three string quartets are modern masterpieces in string writing, pioneering his technique of interweaving field recordings and speech patterns into the fabric of the acoustic and electronic elements of the compositions.

Abstract turntablist Maria Chávez comes to EMPAC for the first of several residencies to develop a newly commissioned work. Her interest in exploring extremely quiet sounds will be developed in EMPAC’s acoustically generous spaces.