Dislocating their instruments from their traditional orchestral context, Rane Moore and Okkyung Lee presented an evening of solo performances to explore a greater sonic range of the clarinet and cello.

Experimental cellist Okkyung Lee can be found everywhere—performing in underground clubs and venues across the world as well as with legends like Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, and Thurston Moore. Lee brings aggressive intensity to her amplified solo cello set, deconstructing the sound of the cello and rebuilding it in unexpected ways.   Boston-based new-music virtuoso

Rane Moore is known for her “enthralling and phenomenal” performances as a soloist and with Talea Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, and Sound Icon. She will present a solo set of some of the most challenging contemporary works for bass and contrabass clarinet and electronics, by composers Raphaël Cendo, Hans Tutschku, Per Bloland, and more.

PROGRAM

Rane Moore, clarinets

Per Bloland — Quintet for solo clarinet and electronics (2009)

Hans Tutschku — Still Air 1 (2011)

Ronald Bruce Smith — Something Suspicious (Small) (2005)

Raphaël Cendo — Décombres (2006)

Okkyung Lee, cello

Solo Improvisations

Ensemble Signal returned to the Concert Hall to complete their ongoing recordings of the works of American composer Steve Reich. This record- ing of Radio Rewrite, Reich’s 2012 composition for 11 players, joined Double Sextet, previously recorded at EMPAC on a 2016 release by the label Harmonia Mundi.

Recent advances in 3D audio technologies have given rise to new ways of creating spatial experiences with sound and in music. Sound is not only composed as moving along in time but also through the space surrounding the listeners. In playing with spatial relationships in musical performance, artists may access a further dimension of expressivity, and this play can redefine our understanding of sound in space. Along with rhythm, melody, harmony, and the "color" of sound, space has become an essential expressive element in music composition and performance.

This talk gives a brief introduction to modern 3D audio technologies, such as Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) and Higher-Order Ambisonics (HOA), and discusses their respective advantages and limits. It offers some insights into how the use of new sound projection and recording technologies helps create novel musical effects.

The visit of Markus Noisternig comes in collaboration with EMPAC's development of an innovative Wave Field System composed of 500 quite small loudspeakers, which uses the software developed at IRCAM.

Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker returned to EMPAC to forge a new performance of sound and light for his album Love Streams. Hecker was previously in residence at EMPAC in 2012, during which time he recorded a portion of his critically acclaimed album Virgins.

Credited for helping lead and popularize the genre of experimental electronics, his works have been described as “structured ambient,” “tectonic color plates,” and “cathedral electronic music.” More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody, fostering an approach to musicmaking that is both physical and emotive. Drawing on traditions of metal, techno, classical, and musique concrete, his sound has found itself at home in the liminal space between traditional genres, audiences, and performing contexts.

For this multidisciplinary project, Hecker worked with lighting designer MFO, a Berlin-based visual artist who works with imagery, light, and space. He has created and directed audiovisual performances with artists such as Ben Frost, Kode9, and Clark. Performers also included Eliza Bagg, Suzanne Kantorski, Charlotte Mundy, and Amelia Watkins.

Consisting of two pianists and two percussionists, the Brooklyn-based ensemble Yarn/Wire was in residence to record and produce newly commis- sioned works by composers Mark Fell, David Bird and Sam Pluta. Yarn/Wire/Currents is a yearly project that serves as an incubator for new experimental music focused on intersec- tions of composition, technology, installation, live performance, music theater, and much more. Yarn/Wire/Currents Vol. 3 was released in 2015.

When Oneohtrix Point Never (aka electronic musician Daniel Lopatin) was last at EMPAC, he and visual artist Nate Boyce developed and debuted a multimedia stage show for the world tour supporting his 2013 album R Plus Seven, released by Warp Records. Upon returning in 2015, he was in residence to develop and premiere the live stage show for his upcoming Garden of Delete world tour.

Daniel Lopatin is known for creating intricate electronic music that is characterized by its emphasis on melody and hypnotic pacing, con- ceptually stylized structures, and extreme use of audio-processing techniques. Early incarna- tions of Oneohtrix Point Never date back to the mid 2000s and drew heavily on the stylistic forms of cutout-bin ambient and new age records, combined with the structure and abrasiveness of noise music.

Newer work has focused on sample-based con- structions, while R Plus Seven drew on procedural poetry and ersatz instrumentation to produce a cryptic meditation on the materiality of sound itself. In addition to his own studio work in 2014/2015, Lopatin toured with Nine Inch Nails, produced Antony’s album, and exhibited an installation in collaboration with Boyce at MoMA PS1.

Using an array of specifically placed loudspeak- ers numbering in the dozens, the electronic music composer France Jobin presented a new work built for the EMPAC Concert Hall. Her approach to composition as sound-sculpture reveals a minimalist aesthetic where analog and digital methods intersect. While her music often makes use of restraint and limit, she isn’t one to shy away from extremes. Her skillful interplay between highs and lows, louds and softs, creates an intricate narrative, which stretches the listener’s perception and continu- ally refocuses attention.

France Jobin is a sound/installation artist, com- poser, and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her installations express a parallel path, incor- porating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in various music venues and new-technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe and Japan.

Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker returns to forge a new performance of sound and light. Hecker was last in residence at EMPAC in 2012, during which time he recorded a portion of his critically acclaimed album Virgins.

Credited for helping lead and popularize the genre of experimental electronics, his works have been described as "structured ambient," "tectonic color plates," and "cathedral electronic music." More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody, fostering an approach to musicmaking that is both physical and emotive. Drawing on traditions of metal, techno, classical, and musique concrete, his sound has found itself at home in the liminal space between traditional genres, audiences, and performing contexts.

For this multidisciplinary project, Hecker worked with lighting designer MFO, a Berlin-based visual artist who works with imagery, light, and space. He has created and directed audiovisual performances with artists such as Ben Frost, Kode9, and Clark. Performers also included Eliza Bagg, Suzanne Kantorski, Charlotte Mundy, and Amelia Watkins.

MFO (AKA Marcel Weber) is a Berlin-based visual artist who works with imagery, light, and space. He has created and directed audiovisual performances with artists such as Ben Frost, Kode9, and Clark.

Featuring:

• Eliza Bagg, voice
• Suzanne Kantorski, voice
• Charlotte Mundy, voice
• Amelia Watkins, voice

Returning to EMPAC after his 2013 multi-venue installation and performance, British artist Mark Fell presented Recursive Frame Analysis, a new work for light, sound, and human movement. As with many of Fell’s previous works, Recursive Frame Analysis emphasized highly formalized aesthetic strategies: arrangements of intensely saturated light, raw synthetic sound, disrupted rhythmic structures, and kinetic systems that urge the audience to their perceptual and cognitive boundaries.

Taking its title from a therapeutic technique (RFA) developed in the 1980s, Recursive Frame Analysis refers to the cognitive patterns around which behavioral relationships and interactions develop; typically these are thought of as “stuck” and therefore also somehow problematic. The frame in the case of this performance could refer to the semiotic or the phenomenological.

The work engages with and responds to vocabularies of shapes developed by New York-based choreographer and dancer Brittany Bailey and was performed by Bailey and Burr Johnson.

Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield, UK. He is widely known for combining popular music styles such as electronica and techno with more academic approaches to computer-based composition, with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems. As well as recorded works, he produces installation pieces, often using multiple speaker systems. He started his career in the ’90s house and techno scene as one half of electronic duo SND and released The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making earlier this year on label The Death of Rave.

Brittany Bailey has worked as a dancer/choreographer in NYC since 2008. She graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2008 and went on to train with Merce Cunningham. Bailey has performed with Marina Abramovic, Michael Clark Company, and Robert Wilson. Along with creating performance works for her dance company, Bailey is currently the choreographer on performances with Christopher Knowles, Mark Fell, and a solo dance with visuals by Louise Bourgeois and text by Gary Indiana.

For WITHIN 2, Tarek Atoui presented his approach to performing sound in relation to anticipation, tactility, visual noise, gestures, and the multimodal nature of hearing. The workshop was a platform for performance, research, improvisation, and spatial composition that explored not only auditory perception among our diversity of listening abilities, but the social relations of public space, techniques of visual communication, and architectural tactility.

Atoui presented the project's first incarnation, WITHIN, as a series of performances and workshops during the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 and has continued to research principals of sonic architecture (in particular, the system of DeafSpace, developed by Hansel Bauman at Gallaudet, Washington) in the development of instrument-building techniques. During his time at EMPAC, Atoui worked with Distinguished Research Professor of Music Pauline Oliveros to engage students in designing and building new instruments and interfaces for performance.