This event is presented by the Rensselaer Music Association.

Kicking off the 10YEARS celebration, Formosa Quartet leads guests on a unique musical journey throughout the EMPAC building. Performing in all four EMPAC venues— the Concert Hall, Theater, Studio 1, and Studio 2—the ensemble will showcase classical repertoire particularly suited to the distinct acoustic profile of each space. Throughout the show, the audience will be led from venue to venue to hear how, in performance, the room is as important as the musicians and music.

Regarded as one of the very best quartets of their generation, Formosa Quartet formed in 2002 when the four founding members came together for a concert tour of Taiwan. Committed to championing Taiwanese music and promoting the arts in the land of their heritage, as well as exploring diverse and adventurous mediums for string quartet, Formosa have performed in major venues throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe.

With degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, and New England Conservatory, the members of Formosa Quartet—Jasmine Lin, Wayne Lee, Che-Yen Chen, and Deborah Pae—have established themselves as leading solo, chamber, and orchestral musicians and have been top prizewinners in numerous prestigious competitions, including both the First Prize and Amadeus Prize at the London International String Quartet Competition. Formosa Quartet performs on Joseph Curtin (2001) and Andrea Guarneri (1662) violins, an Enrico Catenari viola (1680), and a Vincenzo Postiglione cello (1885), on generous loan from the Arts and Letters Foundation.

Program

• CONCERT HALL
• JOSEPH HAYDN / String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 6, 2nd Movement
• STUDIO 1 - GOODMAN
• BÉLA BARTÓK / String Quartet No.4, 5th Movement
• STUDIO 2
• JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / Die Kunst Der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV
• THEATER
• SHIH-HUI CHEN / Returning Souls
• CONCERT HALL
• LEI LIANG / Song Recollections

Lost Highway Suite by Olga Neuwirth is a composition for a large ensemble of musicians, six soloists, and live electronics, with many loudspeakers surrounding the audience. The suite is drawn from the orchestral parts of Neuwirth’s 2003 opera Lost Highway, the libretto of which was co-written by Austrian Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek and inspired by the film of the same name by David Lynch and Barry Gifford.

The suite consists of instrumental sections from the opera that the composer has tied together into one piece. The opera and its libretto set the tone and atmosphere for this composition, but there is no direct link between the film and the suite. However, the film, opera, and suite share a common structural approach. Rather than pursuing narrative continuity and evolution, different musical tableaus and sonic spaces are established, which then mutate, and change into one another, almost like cuts between different scenes in a film.

Six soloists (saxophone, clarinet, trombone, guitar, accordion, and keyboards) are positioned behind the ensemble and channeled to the live electronic system, the output of which is then fed to the loudspeakers. Originally, the suite was performed with a ring of loudspeakers surrounding the audience. The performance here at EMPAC will utilize a 64-loudspeaker dome installed in the concert hall, for which the electronic part of the composition needed to be reprogrammed. This technology, High-Order Ambisonics, is a refined system for the spatial projection of sound environments that goes beyond traditional stereo or surround sound that we may know from movie theaters. Underlying the music is a series of existential questions: How do we know what is real and what is imagined? How do we differentiate between what is inside of us and what is outside? How do we get out of a situation that seems like an infinite loop with no beginning, middle, or end, when we do not see a way out?

Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth (born 1968) gained international recognition at the age of 22 for two mini-operas based on works of Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek. Since then, she’s written several music theater pieces including her first dramatic work, Bählamms Fest (also based on one of Jelinek’s works), The Outcast, American Lulu, and Hommage á Klaus Nomi.

International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a 35-member artist collective that explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. Works by emerging composers have anchored ICE’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.

The music of composer/performer Park Jiha blends classical minimalism and improvised music with traditional Korean instruments like the piri (double-reed bamboo flute), saenghwang (bamboo mouth organ), and yanggeum (hammered dulcimer). Deftly combining the instrumentation and complex expression of traditional Korean music with an array of contemporary forms and sounds, Park Jiha has staked her place in the international music scene over the last few years as a fellow for Red Bull Music Academy, Seoul, and as the official showcase for The World Music Expo, Berlin.

Trained in Korean traditional music, Park Jiha started her career by founding the duo Sum, which had a major impact upon the “new Korean music” scene. Her first solo album, Communion, pursued more distant sound traditions and an eclectic instrumental palette. Collaborating with musicians from different genres, the project pursues a form of experimental minimalism that rejects ornamentation in favor of a stark clarity and meticulous balance. Pitchfork said of the album, “Jiha’s gift is in her ability to skirt dull prettiness in favor of exploiting the edges of her instruments, yet not at the expense of tangible, straightforward melodies.”

At EMPAC, Park Jiha will perform material from the Communion project.

Park Jiha Quartet:

• Park Jiha — piri, saenghwang, and yanggeum
• Chris Varga — vibraphone
• Jeon Jekon — double bass
• Kim Oki — bass clarinet, saxophone

Please visit hass.rpi.edu for more information about this event.

Returning to EMPAC, Oneohtrix Point Never (AKA Daniel Lopatin) was in residence to develop elements for his concertscape MYRIAD, which premiered at the Park Avenue Armory in 2018. Lopatin and his team worked on audio, video, and staging — which included the construction of a giant inflatable object which occupied the Concert Hall.

Pulling from long-standing fascinations with film and television tropes, abstract sculpture, game ephemera, poetry, apocryphic histories, internet esoterica, and philosophies of being, MYRIAD generates a conceptual spectrum that is as much a speculation on the unthinkable future as it is an allegory for the current disquiet of a civilization out of balance with its environment.

Our second annual Spatial Audio Summer Seminar, co-presented by the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University and the Paris-based Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM).

This intensive seminar offers musicians, composers, audio engineers, and programmers the rare opportunity to study the fundamentals of multi-channel spatial audio in pristine acoustic environments. Participants will experience multiple large spatial audio systems, including Wave Field Synthesis, High-Order Ambisonics, and Binaural audio.

SEMINAR—July 9–13, 2018

The first week of the seminar is an open forum for participants of all backgrounds and experience levels to dive into general concepts, workflows, and control mechanisms related to spatial audio. Topics will include introductory, intermediate, and advanced patching for IRCAM’s SPAT software, in-depth discussions of Wave Field Synthesis, Ambisonics, Binaural and Transaural audio, 3D audio recording and mixing, and more.

WAVE FIELD SYNTHESIS WORKSHOP—July 16–22, 2018

The wave field synthesis workshop gives participants focused time and hands-on access to the system in order to develop new creative work. This portion of the workshop will be reserved for only a handful of participants who submit project proposals in advance. Submissions will be reviewed by workshop leaders and accepted based on the degree to which they utilize the capabilities of these spatial audio systems and the potential to realize the proposed project within the given time frame.

Media

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Bang on A Can co-founder David Lang brought his pensive evening-length piece, darker, to EMPAC, for a recording residency and performance featuring Esnemble Signal with live projections by Suzanne Bocanegra.

Scored for 12 strings, darker is a slow exploration of sound. At times, it gives the ensemble the feel of a giant pipe organ or, with the aid of visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra’s live projections, the feel of splattering rain on an immoveable wall. As much a hypnotic sonic and visual object as it is a piece of music, darker weave its intricate solo lines into a delicate and subtly emotional fabric.

darker was recorded in the Concert Hall by Ensemble Signal for future release on Cantaloupe Records.

David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can. 

Ensemble Signal, described by the New York Times as “one of the most vital groups of its kind,” is a NY-based ensemble dedicated to offering the broadest possible audience access to a diverse range of contemporary works through performance, commissioning, recording, and education. 

Suzanne Bocanegra is an artist living and working in New York City. Her recent work involves large-
scale performance and installation, frequently translating two dimensional information, images and ideas from the past into three dimensional scenarios for staging, movement, ballet, and music.