Oneohtrix Point Never—aka Daniel Lopatin—is a Brooklyn-based composer who creates electronic music that is often described as “cinematic” and “orchestral.” While broad in range, Lopatin does not ignore the small stuff; his sound engineering crafts and controls every detail and effect. Pulling from a wide range of influences—synth sounds, television commercials, classical minimalism, and high-end audio production—Lopatin condenses the disparate sounds to form music that slopes forward with self-contained narratives. Oneohtrix Point Never performs new music with visuals by Nate Boyce from his upcoming album R Plus Seven.

Daniel Lopatin has always deftly balanced the experimental with the accessible: He has released several albums under his Oneohtrix Point Never moniker on various independent labels – including the 2013 3-CD/5 LP Rifts, a compilation of his early work – as well as amassing a large catalogue of mini-album tape releases. His most recent disc, 2011’s Replica, was built around samples of television commercials; Sasha Frere Jones of the New Yorker called it “music that gently triggers a series of images and feelings, none of which you can name and all of which seem entirely common.” He has built live soundscapes at the Museum of Modern Art; collaborated with Montreal-based ambient electronic music composer Tim Hecker on the largely improvised 2012 Instrumental Tourist; and recast the title track from his 2010 disc Returnal as an elegant and emotive piece for piano, featuring the otherworldly voice of Antony Hegarty. Advertising powerhouse Saatchi & Saatchi tapped Lopatin for an installation event at the 2012 Cannes film fest and Sofia Coppola’s longtime cohort Brian Reitzell invited him to create original music for Coppola’s The Bling Ring. Said the Saatchi execs, “There’s this grandeur to his music, but it’s always counterbalanced by moments of irony and lightness.”

Praised by critics around the world, audiences over the past several years have gravitated to OPN’s profound arrangements, which touch upon both mainstream and discarded electronic music histories; merging the structural freedom of noise with the abstract emotionality of work considered by many to be “background music.” In addition to his work as OPN, Lopatin is known for his production and arrangement work, having collaborated with Antony Hegarty, Doug Aitken, Fennesz, Tim Hecker, and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, among others.

Taking jazz ensembles into the 21st century, the Peter Evans Quintet incorporates real-time sound processing with traditional instruments. These live electronics allow the group to change their sound fluidly from mellow tones to jagged rattling to cacophonous reverberation. The quintet draws on traditional jazz idioms as source material and contorts them into something resembling classical European avant-garde—complete with complex rhythms played with pinpoint accuracy and confounding extended techniques. Peter Evans Quintet:

Peter Evans (trumpets/compositions)

Ron Stabinsky (piano)

Tom Blancarte (bass)

Jim Black (drums)

Sam Pluta (live electronics)

One of the most beguiling experimental jazz groups working, the Peter Evans Quintet contorts traditional jazz idioms with European avant-garde structures. Their music comes alive with complex rhythms, pinpoint virtuosity, and surprising techniques of prolongation. Evans and his ensemble performed at EMPAC while they were in residence recording material for their next album. Evans is a trumpet player and composer based in New York City who works across a wide spectrum of contemporary music practices. In addition to touring internationally with the quintet since 2009, he has formed collaborative groups with other composers and improvisers (Pulverize the Sound, Rocket Science) and performed music by both new and established composers. As a trumpet player, Evans has been steadily working to broaden the expressive vocabulary of the instrument for both solo and group contexts. In 2011 he established his More is More label and has released several recordings of his music.

Pauline Oliveros began her exploration of listening as a child fascinated by sounds of nature, music and daily life. She noticed early on that others seemed to ignore the sounds that she loved. As a composer Oliveros began to address the direction of attention with Sonic Meditations (1970) – compositions written in prose. Sonic Meditations was a radical departure from conventionally notated music. Oliveros considers “ear training” to be a misnomer for what should be “brain training”. These compositions are directions for ways of listening (hearing plus attention) and ways of responding (vocalizing aloud or mentally).

Listening is not the same as hearing and is not as well understood as hearing. Hearing is physical and can be measured. Listening is more mysterious and as yet can only be measured subjectively.

So what does it mean to listen. Further what is Deep Listening? Deep Listening practice was created by Oliveros to experience and share what is heard in order to gain understanding of our primary sense.

Listening In can be understood ambiguously as over hearing sounds or listening inwardly. Listening Out could be directing attention to what is understood as sounds external to the self.
In any case listening requires attention and choice whereas hearing happens involuntarily.

Description

World premiere of a newly commissioned work, Circadian Rhythms, composed and conducted by Susie Ibarra featuring soloists Devesh Chandra, Alan and Jake George, Matthew Gold, Roberto Juan Rodriguez, Jim Weber, Mamadabou Camera, Eddie Ade Knowles, and Jennifer Milioto Matsue and scored for an 80 piece percussion orchestra. The work also features a surround soundscape of animal and bird recordings from the Macaulay Library of Cornell.

Circadian Rhythms is inspired by the built-in biological rhythms in plants, animals, birds, insects, and bacteria that oscillate, repeat, and change with patterns of movement, migration, birth, and sleep. The composition is a tribute to Earth Day and to the cyclical rhythms that each one of us has while we move and live on this planet.

Ensembles

Ensemble Congeros, Union College Taiko Drum Ensemble, Williams College Percussion Ensemble, Troy High School Drum Core, Troy Samba Group, Bennington College World Percussion Ensemble, Woodstock Day School Guinean Drummers, Rensselaer Percussion Ensemble and the Empire State Youth Orchestra Percussion Ensemble.

Bios

Susie Ibarra is known for her innovative style and cultural dialogue as a composer, improviser, percussionist and humanitarian. Her music is profoundly influenced by the interconnection of nature and cities and the intersection of Indigenous and urban ecologies. Within these relationships, Ibarra is interested in tradition and avant-garde and how this informs and inspires interdisciplinary art, education and public service. In most recent years Ibarra has been developing composition and improvisation that blends traditions and crosses rhythms and tunings of Asia Pacific, Middle East, Americas, Europe and Africa.

Devesh Chandra, of Latham, N.Y., began the Tabla at the age of 3. He has learned Northern Indian Classical Music from his mother, Smt. Veena Chandra.

Alan George, Cayuga Nation, has over 30 years drumming and dance experience, and has appeared with the American Indian Dance Theater in Oklahoma City. He is also active in cultural teaching at the Iroquois Indian Museum.

Matthew Gold directs the Williams College Percussion Ensemble and is a New York based percussionist with a deep commitment to new music. He is a member of Talea and Talujon percussion groups.

Roberto Juan Rodriguez, Cuban-American composer and percussionist, was born in Havana and since resides in New York. He is deeply committed to acoustic and electronic music and actively involved in creating music that crosses cultures such as Cuban, African, American, Sephardic and Arabic, Indian, Philippine, Korean.

Jim Weber is co-director of the Berkshire Bateria and Bossa Triba. He has studied extensively with Samba masters in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and performs programs in a variety of venues, including schools and major festivals.

Mamadouba “Mimo” Camara was a lead performer with Les Ballets Africains, the national company of Guinea, West Africa for 18 years before he moved to the Hudson Valley in 1995. Since then, he has continued to spread the richness and joy of his country’s cultural heritage through teaching youth and adults in a variety of venues.

Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an ethnomusicologist specializing in modern Japanese music and culture. She is Director of Asian Studies and the World Musics and Cultures Program, and serves as Associate Professor in Music, Asian Studies, and Anthropology at Union College.

Eddie Ade Knowles is an accomplished musician and Professor of Practice in the Arts with over 45 years of performance, residency, workshop, and recording credits as a percussionist. Ade’s artistic focus is on African, Afro-Cuban, and New World percussion.

The RMA is putting on our annual Pops Concert! We will be featuring the Symphony Orchestra, Repertory Jazz Orchestra, and Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, featuring guest singer Janice Pendarvis . Come support your friends and listen to some awesome music!

Laurie Anderson discussed the ever-evolving development of new instruments and interfaces for her productions and performances, and her “new rig,” which finally allows her to travel with her custom configuration of instruments in a suitcase. She was joined by her software and hardware collaborators: Konrad Kaczmarek, Liubo Borissov, and Shane Koss. She also discussed her new work with the Kronos Quartet, Landfall, one of the projects she was working on in residence at EMPAC.

Throughout her genre-crossing career, Anderson has invented several technological devices for use in her recordings and performance art shows, including voice filters, a tape-bow violin, and a talking stick. In 2002, she was appointed NASA’s first artist-in-residence, and she was also part of the team that created the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. She has published six books, produced numerous videos, films, radio pieces, and original scores for dance and film. In 2007, she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. 

Laurie Anderson, EMPAC’s inaugural distinguished artist-in-residence, presented a series of events focusing on topics unique to her practice as an artist. 

Ben Frost’s music is not just heard; it’s felt. Influenced by classical minimalism, punk rock, and metal, he creates intense, monolithic sounds that command attention. Keenly aware of listeners’ thresholds, Frost exploits every extreme of pitch and volume as he pushes the sound of electric guitars, drums, and laptops out from a wall of speakers and amps. As the music unfolds, overlapping layers and elongated structural forms emerge from within the encompassing sonic space.

Frost and his group were in residence to record and perform his composition A U R O R A. While using EMPAC’s Studio 1 for tracking, he routed sound back through the Concert Hall, transforming it into a real-time reverb chamber. Frost has given building-shaking performances at international festivals such as Montréal’s MUTEK, combining amplified electronics with the furious thrashing of live guitars. His music’s intense physicality has also driven contemporary dance productions by Chunky Move, the Icelandic Dance Company, and the choreographers Erna Ómarsdottír and Wayne McGregor.

Ben Frost’s music is not just heard; it’s felt. Influenced by classical minimalism, punk rock, and metal, he creates intense, monolithic sounds that command attention. Keenly aware of listeners’ thresholds, Frost exploits every extreme of pitch and volume as he pushes the sound of electric guitars, drums, and laptops out from a wall of speakers and amps. As the music unfolds, overlapping layers and elongated structural forms emerge from within the encompassing sonic space. Frost and his group were in residence to record and perform his composition A U R O R A. While using EMPAC’s Studio 1 for tracking, he routed sound back through the Concert Hall, transforming it into a real-time reverb chamber. Frost has given building-shaking performances at international festivals such as Montréal’s MUTEK, combining amplified electronics with the furious thrashing of live guitars. His music’s intense physicality has also driven contemporary dance productions by Chunky Move, the Icelandic Dance Company, and the choreographers Erna Ómarsdottír and Wayne McGregor.

Begun as a 40-minute personal essay for French-German Arte TV, this untitled film by EMPAC distinguished artist-in-residence Laurie Anderson captures a series of interconnected confessional stories set against a soundtrack of original music. Partially filmed at EMPAC, the film has been expanded to feature length, driven by Anderson’s spirit of transformation, embracing uncertainty in her process while allowing the work to take on new properties as it was being made. In crossing the nebulous border between television and feature film, Anderson’s film reveals new insights into each, while also opening a cinematic window into her own life.

Laurie Anderson, EMPAC’s inaugural distinguished artist-in-residence, presented a series of events focusing on topics unique to her practice as an artist.