Known for her purity of sound as much as for her innovative programming and commitment to commissioning new works, violin virtuoso Anne Akiko Meyers has maintained an active performing schedule for the past three decades since being discovered as a child prodigy at the age of 7. The top-selling classical instrumental soloist in 2014, she has released more than 34 albums and has performed with many of the top orchestras in the world. For this performance, Meyers mixed repertoire works by Ravel, Beethoven, and Arvo Pärt with performances of O Magnum Mysterium by composer Morten Lauridsen, Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Fantasia, and Jakub Ciupinski’s Wreck of the Umbria, all written for her.

Anne Akiko Meyers performs on the 1741 “Vieuxtemps” Guarneri del Gesu, considered to be one of the finest violins in the world due to its powerfully luxuriant sound and mint state of preservation.

PROGRAM:

• Ludwig van Beethoven Violin Sonata in D major, Op. 12, No. 1
• Arvo Pärt Fratres
• Einojuhani Rautavaara Fantasia (NY Premiere)
• Maurice Ravel Tzigane
• Morten Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium (NY Premiere)
• Jakub Ciupinski Wreck of the Umbria

We regret to announce that Iranian musician Mohammad Reza Mortazavi will not be able to travel to EMPAC for this performance due to visa-processing delays stemming from current federal immigration policy.

Respected from Tehran to Berlin to Shanghai, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi has dominated elite international competitions since the age of 9. Considered one of the most innovative and virtuosic hand drummers in the world, Mortazavi is most well-known for re-envisioning the traditional ways of playing the Tombak—an ancient Iranian goblet-shaped drum—and developing over 30 new striking and finger techniques, not always to the delight of old masters. Arte Magazine has commented that “watching the unbelievably virtuosic soloist, one could get the impression he does not have two but at least six hands."

EMPAC’s music curator Argeo Ascani and audio engineers Todd Vos and Jeff Svatek presented a series of in-depth demonstrations and discussions of EMPAC’s 496-speaker Wave Field Synthesis audio system.

One of the most extensive systems of its kind in the world, EMPAC’s wave field array was constructed by the EMPAC audio engineering department in 2016 and the curatorial program has begun developing new work for the system in conjunction with leading electronic composers. Consisting of a large field of small speakers oriented very closely together, the system produces a virtual audio environment by localizing the source of individual sounds in space with an extreme level of precision.

In preparation for these demonstrations, the audio team undertook a series of recordings with a string quartet consisting of Leah Zelnick (violin), Brooke Quiggins (violin), Stefanie Taylor (viola), and Caleigh Drane (cello). The recordings were spatialized using the Wave Field array and integrated with overhead lighting that gave listeners a visual cue for where to find each instrument virtually positioned in the room.

Ipse dixit /IP-suh DIK-sit/: noun (Latin). Literally “he, himself, said it.”

An uproven yet dogmatic statement, which the speaker expects the listener to accept as valid without proof beyond the speaker's assumed expertise.

Ipsa dixit: “she, herself, said it . . ."

Ipsa Dixit is an evening-length work of theatrical chamber music by American composer Kate Soper. Exploring the intersection of music, language, and meaning, the piece blends elements of monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy to skewer the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic expression. Each of the piece’s six movements draw on texts by thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Jenny Holtzer, and Lydia Davis, delivering ideas from the linguistic disciplines of poetics, rhetoric, and metaphysics through extended vocal techniques and blistering ensemble virtuosity. Developed in pieces since 2010, Soper’s EMPAC residency culminated in the first performance of the work’s entire cycle.

An Evening with Queen White was produced at EMPAC with a 360° camera rig—originally manu-factured to capture footage for virtual reality environments—placed at the center of a mono-chromatic purple set. Guitar amps, microphones, a piano, and acoustic panels that refer to the Motown recording studios of the 1960s decorate the set. Filmed in a single long take, the performer Fay Victor (as Queen White) moved freely around the set and was continually captured by the camera. 

Eschewing conventional VR, Syms explored how the audience can experience this kind of image environment without the use of a headset. The installation played with the possibility that parts of the performance still remain out of frame or off screen. Several screens were placed in different locations around the studio and each only showed a small part of the 360° video, exposing the limits of each screen’s size and shape. A mobile screen allowed the audience to explore the missing parts of the image for themselves. 

An Evening with Queen White is exemplary of Syms’ use of the monologue as a medium for exploring how voice, gesture, and persona are learned and performed. The script complicates the artist’s own biography and points toward how strategies of performing oneself as a Black woman in America are transmitted and crystallized across generations through both familial teaching and societal conditioning. 

A concert and multimedia lecture on the scientific and spiritual dimensions of music and health
 
Featuring music by:

Hildegard von Bingen                          O clarissima Mater sancte medicine
Steve Gorn                                         The transformative power of Indian music
Sergei Rachmaninoff                           Tarantella, from Suite #2 for Two Pianos
Eric Miller with Michael Century            Research demonstration of Ganzfeld effects­
Al and Jake George                              Medicine Music from the Cayuga Nation

Video segments featuring neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks              

Curated and produced by Michael Century, Professor, Arts Department

Violinist Olivia De Prato was in residence in the Concert Hall to record, mix, edit, and master new solo works by composers Reiko Füting, Taylor Brook, Ned Rothenberg, Samson Young, Victor Lowrie, and Missy Mazzoli.

Austro-Italian violinist Olivia De Prato has been an active performer in New York City’s contem- porary music community since moving there in 2005. As a member of critically acclaimed ensem- bles, the Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Signal, and Victoire, De Prato has been invoved in commis- sioning, premiering, and recording countless new compositions, with a range of figures spanning the diverse landscape of new music.

In Spring 2016, EMPAC completed construction on a 496-channel wave field audio system, one of the most extensive in the world. Consisting of very small speaker heads oriented very close together, the system produces a 3D audio environment by localizing the source of individual sounds with an extreme level of precision.

For the wave field array’s inaugural performance, Rensselaer Professor Rob Hamilton created a running installation and performance (on Sept. 2) to explore and demonstrate advanced concepts of spatialized sound. Using a Disklavier piano, Hamilton transformed digitally recorded notes and distributed them across each of the independently controlled speakers in the system. Audiences were encouraged to physically explore the resulting environment much like a giant sonic hologram. The live performance was realized by pianist Chryssie Nanou.

The Mivos quartet (Josh Modney, Olivia De Prato, Victor Lowrie, and Mariel Roberts) and composer Eric Wubbels were in residence in Studio 2 to record his work being-time, for string quartet and electronic sound.

being-time is an audio variation on the psycho- logical experience of time. Extending nearly an hour, it moves from sections of extreme slowness and static sustains to high-energy plateaus of dense, saturated sound textures. In the final sequence, quadraphonic electronic sound pushes the performance into an altogether new dimen- sion, creating vivid psychoacoustic illusions by using extremely high sine waves.