Come celebrate a joyous close to 2023 at the RPI Holiday Concert on Sunday, December 10th, at 3pm in the EMPAC Concert Hall. The festive program will include performances by the Rensselaer Orchestra, Concert Choir, and Wind Symphony, with a reception to follow.

Wind Symphony

• Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008) – Scenes from the Louvre, arr. Robert Longfeld (1966/2019) [7’]
• The Portals [1’]
• Children’s Gallery [1’]
• Kings of France [2’]
• Nativity Paintings [1’]
• Finale [2’]
• Gustav Holst (1874-1934) – First Suite in E-flat Major [11’]
• Chaconne [5’]
• Intermezzo [3’]
• March [3’]

Concert Choir

• Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) – All-Night Vigil, Movement 6, “Bogoroditse Djevo” (1915) [4’]
• Avery Roach ’25 (b. 2003) – Kouyou (2023) [5’] *World Premiere
• Randall Thompson (1899-1984) – Peaceable Kingdom (1936) [5’]
• “Have Ye Not Known” [1’]
• “Ye Shall Have a Song” [4’]

Orchestra

• Claude Debussy (1862-1918) - Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894) [10’]
• Audrey Niedland ’26, flute
• Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) – Piano Concerto no. 1 in e minor, Movement 2 (1830) [12’]
• Rory Devin ’23, piano *Rensselaer Student Concerto Competition Winner
• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) – Ballade in A minor (1898) [11’]

Conducted by Dr. Robert M. Whalen, III; Alex Cohen, Graduate Teaching Assistant

Nancy Mounir is in residence in Studio 1 to develop a new sound work for Shifting Center. The work will be spatialized in Studio 1 and later installed in the concert hall as part of the November exhibition. Mounir will work both with her own compositions and with archival recordings.

ARTIST TALKS and RADIO PROGRAMS

In September, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School presented a talk with artist Beatriz Cortez on Ilopango, the Volcano that Left and her research around the project.

ON-SITE PROGRAMS

The exhibition includes an after-hours installation and closing-day event by Hugo Esquinca, who will be presenting a work that probes the negative space and time of Shifting Center. Amplifying EMPAC’s sound systems throughout the building during the exhibition’s off-hours, the piece will explore sound at the margin of perceptibility, mediated through the Center’s architecture.

SATURDAY EXHIBITION TOURS WITH CURATORS VIC BROOKS, NIDA GHOUSE, and KATHERINE C.M. ADAMS

Three public tours with the Shifting Center curators offer insights into how EMPAC’s unique building is used to stage the exhibition. Shifting Center uses EMPAC’s performing arts and media production venues as exhibition spaces. In doing so, the exhibition sonically activates the building as though it were an instrument. The tour introduces the Center’s unique acoustic and theatrical architectures in the course of exploring the exhibition’s featured artworks.

Aura Satz is in residence this fall to work on the post-production for her new feature film composed of footage shot at sites around the globe where sirens are deployed. In her ongoing project Preemptive Listening, she asks: “How do we hear and understand emergency signals at a time of intersecting environmental and sociopolitical crisis? How can we address alarm fatigue, as both a lived reality and a metaphor for our current state?”

Artist and curator Micah Silver is in residence to (re)activate and transform the site-specific loudspeaker arrangement designed by composer Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009) for the theater. This new work is commissioned for the exhibition Shifting Center. Silver was EMPAC’s founding curator of music (2006–10) and the commissioner of Amacher’s original EMPAC work.

Composer Maurice Louca is in residence in Studio 2 to spatialize a new composition for Shifting Center. An ensemble work for seven musicians recently recorded in Berlin, Louca’s work will be developed into an installation designed to highlight both individual instrumental parts of the work as well as larger ensemble pieces.

Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and Jessie Marino return to EMPAC to continue the development of their commissioned work Susceptible Chambers, a piece that combines sound, sculpture, light, projection, and movement in an exploration of the myriad possibilities of one of the most foundational instruments of electronic music: the microphone.

Artist Clarissa Tossin and composer Michelle Agnes Magalhães are in residence in Studio 1 to work with Wave Field Synthesis. This new work combines performances by Alethia Lozano Birrueta playing ceramic 3D printed versions of pre-Columbian flutes with poetry by Rosa Chávez and commentary by Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal. The installation utilizes audio recordings from Tossin’s moving image work Before the Volcanoes Sing (EMPAC, Fall 2022) and will be presented as part of the building-wide exhibition Shifting Center.

Sound artist Hugo Esquinca is in residence for production and research of a new site-specific multi-channel sound work. Amplifying EMPAC’s sound systems within its public spaces, Esquinca will make a work that explores sound at the edge of audibility. The artist’s work will be perceptible from outside EMPAC after the opening hours of Shifting Center and will culminate in a performance on the closing day of the exhibition. Esquinca will continue his sound research throughout the span of the exhibition.

Set to premiere in Manchester in 2024, ARK is an opera starring a host of mythical and contemporary figures. Anderson’s subjects—time, technology, and American history—are warped into a story that sometimes moves backwards. Apocalyptic climate events and information overload set the scenes for these stories, visual poems, and songs.

Laurie Anderson and her team are in the Theater in August for a final production residency for her opera ARK before it premieres in Manchester in November 2024.