In this talk and open studio, composer-performers Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and Jessie Marino present an intimate look into their individual practices and discuss their recent work as Artists-in-Residence on their new collaboration Susceptible Chambers. Taking place amidst their workspace in Studio 1, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about an EMPAC commission in development directly from the artists.

Antonia and Jessie use elements of the mundane and quotidian as generative ways to disrupt traditional musical forms and performance practices. In Susceptible Chambers, Antonia and Jessie bring this sense of play to one of the foundational instruments of electronic music: the microphone.

Susceptible Chambers is an extension of Antonia and Jessie’s Extended Microphones Project (EMP), a sound-based research, development, and performance project in which the typical structure of a simple microphone is prepared using alternative materials. What would it sound like to embed a microphone capsule inside a terracotta pot with a grid made from dried-out pine cones? Or to cast a microphone enclosure completely out of agar-agar (a vegan alternative to gelatin)?

EMP will fabricate sonic relationships between home-built microphones, the objects they will amplify, and the speakers that disseminate this aural symbiosis into a network of analog sculptural filters which draw aural focus to unexpected features of the physical space.

Antonia and Jessie began work on Susceptible Chambers at EMPAC in August 2023 and will return for a final residency in March 2024, culminating in a premiere performance and installation in April 2024.

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

Watch and listen as composer and professor Christopher Theofanidis works with talented composers on honing their craft as part of his weeklong AMF workshop Orchestrating for the 21st Century. Hear how it all comes together on Sunday night at First Draughts Reading Sessions.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop with a love song set list spun by DJs from Collectiveffort.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

An intimate performance by composer and violinist DBR (Daniel Bernard Roumain), hailed by The New York Times as “about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets.”

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

DAVID ALAN MILLER, CONDUCTOR | REGINA CARTER, VIOLIN | MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH, SPEAKER

Adolphus Hailstork: Symphony No. 4, “Survive”

David Schiff: Selections from Four Sisters

Daniel Roumain & Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Forgiveness, Spoken Word Concerto for Orchestra (world premiere)

WHAT IS CONVERGENCE? The Albany Symphony, long known for celebrating the breadth of American culture through new music, continues its community-building work with Convergence, a three-year collaborative project through which the Symphony, Capital Region communities, and nationally acclaimed artistic partners join together in an exploration of three Black American art forms. Funded by the Carl E. Touhey Foundation, Convergence will build community-wide awareness of our contemporary world through artistic inquiry and musical creation.

More information and tickets for the 2023 American Music Festival can be found on the Albany Symphony Orchestras website.

DAVID ALAN MILLER, CONDUCTOR

Horacio Fernández: Unruly (world premiere)

Marie A. Douglas: The Candidate (world premiere)

Kyle Rivera: (new work) (world premiere)

Christian Quiñones: (new work) (world premiere)

Jack Frerer: TBA

Composer Patricia Alessandrini and violinist/violist Marco Fusi present two works at the 2023 Time:Spans Festival in New York City featuring EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array. The program includes Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (1988-89) and Proximity, distance by Alessandrini and Fusi. The latter is an improvisational exploration for violin, FeedBox, and the EMPAC Wave Field Synthesis Array that the artists developed while in residence at EMPAC during the summer of 2022.

Bring your own musical instrument! Join the EMPAC Research program for a hands-on workshop exploring Pauline Oliveros’ Expanded Instrument System (EIS) with introductions by Michael Century, Stephanie Loveless, and Jonas Braasch. Under continual development since 1965, the system is a series of computer-generated delays that process acoustic and vocal sounds, offering musicians, composers, and the curious ways to explore improvisations and compositions using sonic manipulation. We invite you to try it out with us in EMPAC Studio 1–Goodman.

DeForrest Brown Jr. will be in residence in Studio 1–Goodman with CCS Bard curators Katherine Adams, Liv Cuniberti, Mary Fellios, Abel González Fernández, and Sidney Pettice. Brown will work with Higher Order Ambisonics for a performance that explores how techno’s machine-like aspects connect to embodied dance and live music histories.