The US premiere of a new duo project from two of the most restless innovators in electronic music.

Mark Fell and Keith Fullerton Whitman are each known for their fluid approaches to electronic music making. Born of the techno generation, both have infused, deconstructed, and transcended their early mastery of vernacular dance styles with a more academic ear toward the legacy and promise of computer music. Exploring the technical, conceptual, and aesthetic notions of music synthesis, the duo is extending their shared approach to the project after an inaugural run of European performances in fall 2014.

Composer Chris Cerrone was in residence with video director Mark DeChiazza and percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum to shoot a video for Memory Palace, a 23-minute composition for percussion and electronics. The piece’s title refers to an ancient technique of memorization that helped orators remember very long speeches by placing mental signposts in an imaginary location and “walking” through it.

The majority of the instruments in Memory Palace are fashioned by the percussionist. These included a cheap guitar, fourteen slats of wood (to be played like a marimba), ten metal pipes, and wine bottles filled with varying amounts of water. The percussion- ist also triggers a series of electronic drones using an foot pedal, creating a resonant background aura that enhances the live music throughout.

Laurel Halo was in residence to record material for her album, Dust, released in 2017 on Hyperdub Records. Laurel Halo is a producer and live electronic musician from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Influenced by her Midwestern roots, Halo’s music speaks to new club ecologies explored through abstract rhythms, chaotic ambience, and moody jazz elements. “Techno is a meditative force that can process darkness and remove problems… in their place, the ideal of a non-threatening, transcended, sexually charged headspace emerges,” she told The Wire. Physical process and temporal drift are recurring motifs in Halo’s discography.

Dust was released by Hyperdub Records in 2017

The viola and bassoon are not typically brandished in the pursuit of free improvisation and noise, but the duo Architeuthis Walks on Land brings fierceness and energy to these typically “orchestral” instruments. By way of extended techniques, bass amplification, and rich textures, Amy Cimini and Katherine Young create a space where composition, indeterminacy, and immediacy intersect. Contrasting—yet complementing—the duo with a fluid elegance and grace, violinist Miranda Cuckson presented a set of complex and microtonal works for solo violin. Cuckson, a well-known performer in the new music scene, has built her reputation on technical refinement and beautiful tone. She presented music by Xenakis, Ferneyhough, and Haas. 

Amy Cimini and Katherine Young have been performing together as Architeuthis Walks on Land since 2003. The duo developed their approach to improvisation in the rich experimental music communities of Chicago and New York City, and have collaborated with artists such as Anthony Braxton and the Tri-Centric Orchestra, Peter Evans, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jessica Pavone, and Hans Joachim Irmler from Faust. Violinist and violist Miranda Cuckson is acclaimed for her performances of a wide range of repertoire, from early eras to the most current creations. She studied at the Juilliard School, where she received her BM, MM, and DMA degrees and won the Presser and Richard F. French awards. She is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician, appearing in major concert halls, as well as at universities, galleries, and informal spaces, and is on the violin faculty at Mannes College the New School for Music.

Program

Miranda Cuckson, violin

Iannis Xenakis - Mikka S (1976)

Georg Friedrich Haas - de terrae fine (2001)

Brian Ferneyhough - Intermedio alla Ciaccona (1986)

~interval~

Architeuthis Walks on Land

Amy Cimini, Viola + Katherine Young, Bassoon +

from The Surveyors (2014)

The Speculators 84°03′N 174°51′W

The Assayers 82°06′S 54°58′E

The Surveyors

The Mivos Quartet was in residence at EMPAC to develop and perform a new work for string quartet and electronics by American composer Eric Wubbels. Titled being time, the work explores the psychological experience of time through aural effects. Using a ring of eight loudspeakers specifically positioned in the room, the piece builds on Maryanne Amacher’s pioneering work with otoacoustic sound, deploying high sine waves to create vivid psychoacoustic illusions. These electronic sounds blend with the acoustic sounds of the string quartet, fusing them together into a tangled, sonically complex knot. The Mivos Quartet is devoted to performing the works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to diverse audiences, appearing at such venues as the Guggenheim Museum, Kennedy Center, Zankel Hall, MoMA, the Stone, Issue Project Room, and Roulette. Eric Wubbels is a composer, pianist, and executive director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a New York collective devoted to creating, promoting, and organizing adventurous contemporary music.

Michael Century will perform a solo concert at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) showcasing his musical versatility with a repertoire combining classical and experimental pieces, and piano and accordion performances.

The concert, “Bach and Beyond,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, in Studio 2 at EMPAC. The concert is free and open to the public.

Century will perform pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach on piano and then perform seminal 20th-century music on both piano and accordion.

The concert will present a broad vista of the keyboard music of Bach—the French Overture and three selections from Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues in the Well Tempered Keyboard—in counterpoint to an unusual selection of compositions by four of the leading voices in creative music from the mid-20th century—Terry Riley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and Morton Feldman.

“I see Bach not as a remote, if revered, figure from our classical past, but as very much ‘alive’ and our contemporary,” Century said. “The emphasis on classical pieces by Bach alongside more recent experimental music is a personal homecoming, of sorts. I’ve been performing Bach keyboard music for 40 years, and arranging this program to include a spectrum of music from my own time has happily allowed me to rediscover the earlier masterworks in a fresh way.”

Century is a professor of new media and music in the Rensselaer Department of the Arts. He teaches a variety of courses in media, art history and theory, and music history.

Students of the Arts Department Chamber Music program present their work on Tuesday, Nov. 19. Student ensembles to perform include The Dominant Five String Quintet, Circle of Fifths Wind Quintet, Rensselaer Chamber Brass, MSC Trio, Nason String Duo, and other duos and trios performing music from Handel to Ravel.