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.
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.
Main Image: [Switch~ Ensemble], 2022. Pictured (l-r): Christopher Chandler, Jason Thorpe Buchanan. Courtesy the Artist. Photo: Jason Thorpe Buchanan.
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.
Main Image: Sarah Davachi. Courtesy the artist.
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.
Main Image: Maika Garnica, From Bow to Ear, 2020. Courtesy the Artist. Photo: Pieter Kers.
Pan Daijing conducts a research and development residency to establish work on a possible future commission with the curatorial program. Taking full advantage of the expert staff and advanced technical venues at the center, Daijing explores the implications of music, dance, and video intersections following her monograph exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.
Pianists Ning Yu and Corey Smythe, along with technologist and performer Levy Lorenzo, develop and prepare Brigitta Muntendorf’s two piano work Trilogy for two pianos, tape, and live electronics for its premiere at the 2024 edition of TIME:SPANS Festival in New York City.
Brigitta Muntendorf makes the concert introduction at the festival with curator Amadeus Julian Regucera.
Main Image: Brigitta Muntendorf, Trilogy, concert video still, 2018. Pictured (l-r): Andreas Grau, Götz Schumacher. Courtesy the artist.
Composer Rama Gottfried is in residence with contemporary music ensemble Yarn/Wire to develop the experimental music theater piece Ontopoeisis (formerly Schismogenesis).
Main Image: Rama Gottfried, Scenes from the Plastisphere, concert video still, 2020. Courtesy the Artist.
Kite’s artistic practice draws from Indigenous Lakȟóta ontologies to consider the possibility of kindred collaboration with technologies such as artificial intelligence. In this engagement, the artist centers the concept of the “visual score,” a form of experimental music notation that contains symbolic forms for performers to read and interpret.
Performance artist, visual artist, and composer Kite engages with Rensselaer student musicians in a workshop for dream scores. Audience members are invited to observe an open rehearsal as Kite leads the student ensemble in her artistic practice, discussing the musical potentials of experimental notations/scores when interpreted and embodied through sound. Attendees will also observe as Kite leads students through building scores using their own visual language, drawing on personal references and dreams.
Kite’s performances often use custom-made interfaces that bring the body into contact with the machine—such as a Machine Learning hair-braid interface—to address ethical ways of being in relation with the non-human. Kite derived this performance’s graphic notation as a score from the geometric shapes and symbols of traditional Lakȟóta quillwork and beadwork, as well as shapes and symbols that appear in dreams. The performance is followed by a discussion and Q&A session with the audience.
Main Image: Kite, Listener, 2018. Performance in Linz, Austria. Photo: vog.photo.
Award-winning composer and visual artist Raven Chacon gives a talk on his recent work, which explores the sonic, visual, and thematic elements of his experimental practice.
Chacon’s work threads its way through sound, video, scores, sculpture, and performance to engage with the land and its inhabitants, and to address topics of Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice. His compositions include orchestral instruments and instrumentalize found objects, as in his American Ledger No. 1 (2018), a large graphic score displayed as a flag which traces the history of settler colonialism in the United States. His piece Voiceless Mass (2021), for which Chacon won a Pulitzer Prize, is a work for organ and ensemble which reflects upon the relationship between the Christian church and Indigenous populations. A mass without voices, the composition gives musical form to the silencing of Indigenous expression and language, and the impossibility of their recovery.
Chacon also introduces a new EMPAC-commissioned project with San Francisco-based experimental music duo The Living Earth Show, which is being developed over the next year and includes artists and musicians based in New York’s Hudson Valley and Capital Region.
This residency continues and expands Chacon’s musical collaboration with The Living Earth Show as a follow-up to Tremble Staves, an outdoor collaborative performance with professional and student performers, which premiered at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco in 2019. Exploring issues around water usage, access, and rights, Tremble Staves was developed in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Art in the Parks Program in San Francisco.
All are invited to stay for a reception, following the talk.
Main Image: Raven Chacon presented his work in EMPAC's Studio 2 in November, 2024. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Michael Valiquette/EMPAC.
Raven Chacon's 2022 Pulitzer prize-winning composition Voiceless Mass premiered on November 21st, 2021 at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.