During the second night of public concerts highlighting EMPAC’s Spatial Audio Summer Workshop, Hans Tutschku will present four multi-channel electronic compositions arranged for a large array of loudspeakers. Tutschku is a master in the creation and performance of music that includes sonic movement, space, and scale as important features of the listening experience. For this performance, Tutschku will adapt his work for a 248-channel Wave Field Synthesis array and 60-channel Ambisonic dome surrounding the audience in EMPAC’s Concert Hall.

PROGRAM:

• Rituale (2004)
• agitated slowness (2010)
• –intermission–
• remembering Japan - part 1 (2016)
• Issho-ni (2014)

As part of EMPAC’s Spatial Audio Summer Workshop, audio researcher Markus Noisternig will present an evening of multi-channel audio works. Using a 248-channel Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) array and a 60-channel Ambisonic dome, Noisternig will showcase the capabilities of this immersive system in a pristine acoustic space. WFS and Ambisonics represent the cutting edge of 3D, “holophonic” sound systems, which allow the composer to place and move sounds around the audience with an incredible degree of precision. While part of the workshop, this performance is open to the general public.

A five-day intensive workshop on the technical, theoretical, and practical issues surrounding spatial audio platforms, particularly focused on Wave Field Synthesis and High-Order Ambisonics. Hosted by EMPAC at Rensselaer along with IRCAM (the Paris-based Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), and HUSEAC (Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition), this workshop will give participants the opportunity to experience large-scale, complex audio setups in pristine acoustic environments.

Markus Noisternig (IRCAM) and professor Hans Tutschku (Harvard) will join EMPAC’s audio staff in dissecting the technical and artistic concerns in the creation and presentation of high-count multi-channel audio projection. Each day will consist of seminar-style workshops and lectures, along with time for hands-on experience with the over 700 channels of audio, including EMPAC’s new Wave Field Synthesis array.

WAVE FIELD SYNTHESIS

EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis array was constructed in 2016 and consists of 558 independently controllable speakers spread across 18 portable and reconfigurable modules.

VENUES

The workshop will take place throughout EMPAC, granting participants access to the sophisticated audio systems in place. In addition to smaller studio spaces, five venues will be outfitted with high-channel-count audio arrays, including:

• 1,200-seat Concert Hall
  with 248-channel Wave Field Synthesis Array and 60-channel Ambisonic array.
• Large absorptive studio
  (66’x51’x33’; 315m², 12m high) with 124-channel Wave Field Synthesis Array and 20-channel Ambisonic array.
• Large diffusive studio
  (44’x55’x18’; 230m², 9m high) with 20-channel Ambisonic array.
• Theater stage
  (40’x80’x60’; 300m², 20m high) with 186-channel Wave Field Synthesis Array and 20-channel Ambisonic array.

Cost and Registration

• $150 Includes: lectures ONLY.
• $590 Includes: lectures, hands-on access to various audio systems, performances, and coffee, lunch, snacks each day.
• $800 Includes: workshop registration as well as single room lodging for six nights on the Rensselaer campus.
• June 5, 2017—Full registration cost due
• Attendance limited to 25 participants

ABOUT EMPAC

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