The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) presents compositions written for the instruments and Creatophone spatialiser, a pluriphonic sound projection system developed at CREATE. It consists of an orchestra of loudspeakers under the directed by a composer operating a sound projection console. The loudspeakers are distributed in various positions around the concert stage and around the audience. Using the Creatophone, each "scene" in a composition can be enhanced by a unique spatial image. Movement within a composition (in pitch, rhythm, loudness, or timbre) can be enhanced by spatial animation.
1 Entanglement (2000) for saxophone and Creatophone, by Earl Howard. Earl Howard, saxophone; Curtis Roads, Creatophone sound projection [10:00]
Earl Howard has been performing his compositions in the United States and Europe for the past thirty years. His recent compositions include music for live electronics, electronic tape music as well as music for electronics and instruments. Earl Howard's method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics. and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition that has been performed to enthusiastic audiences at Merkin Hall, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, Roulette, and Carnegie Recital Hall. Howard's personal vision translates itself to the ensemble situation so effectively that even the sense of spontaneity is retained, though the material is clearly composed. In 1998 Earl Howard received the Fromm Foundation Commission. Strong Force, the new composition was performed in the Fall of 1999 at Merkin Hall on the "Interpretations" program series. Recent works included Pancho Via's Spoon, for live electronics and Episteme Ensemble premiered at Merkin Hall in New York City and Abondigas Soup for live electronics, performed at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague Holland. He performed with pianist, Georg Graewe at the Ruhr Jazz Festival. His works have been performed and recorded by a number of musicians including Anthony Davis' recording of Particle W, for piano and tape, released on the Gramavision label and Gerry Hemingway's recording of D.R. for Solo percussion on the Auricle Record label. The recording, Pele's Tears is from ten years of his electronic music on the Random Acoustics Label and most recently this year, Fire Song on Erstwhile Records with hyperpianist, Denman Maroney. In 1985 Ursula Oppens and Anthony Davis commissioned Mr. Howard to compose Monopole for two pianos and tape. The Parabola Arts Foundation commissioned Quarks for tape and the Episteme Ensemble. Mr. Howard is also a virtuoso saxophonist and has developed an extended repertoire for the instrument including Cinco Centavos for solo saxophone and Naked Charm for saxophone and tape which was performed at the New Music America festival in Hartford, Connecticut. He has received Composer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation on the Arts. He has produced numerous soundtracks for some of the leading film and video artists including Nam June Paik, Mary Lucier, Rii Kanzaki, Bob Harris, and Bill Brand. Gerry Hemingway and Earl Howard performed duo and solo works in six concerts in Holland and Cologne. These works were first performed at the Knitting Factory in NYC . Earl Howard received his second New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and a third in 1995. Nomad was commissioned for Episteme Ensemble through Parabola Arts Foundation. Funding was received from New York State Council on the Arts Composers Commissions Program. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 1974.
2 Imaon (1998/1999) by Alberto de Campo [8:00]
All the sounds in this piece are synthesized and extended simulations (or variations on) sound sources that have a rich symbolic aura in many cultures: Nightingale song, meditation bells, singing bowls, and ritual chants. "Imaon" is one of the names the ancient Greek ethnographer Megasthenes introduced for the largely unexplored mountain regions of Central Asia, roughly corresponding to the Himalayan range. Imaon was written to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against the Chinese occupation in 1958. The sound synthesis (physical modeling and cross-synthesis), the compositional algorithms and the room simulations were done in the SuperCollider2 language. The 8-channel mixdown was done in ProTools at CREATE, Studio Varese.
Alberto de Campo is Research Director at CREATE. He was born in 1964 in Graz, Austria. He studied composition at the Music University Graz with Andrej Dobrowolski, Younghi Pagh-Paan and Beat Furrer, and jazz guitar teaching at the Bruckner-Conservatory in Linz, Austria, with Peter O'Mara and Adelhard Roidinger. He was awarded a one-year working scholarship for composers by the Austrian Ministry for Science, Traffic and the Arts, spent a year as visiting researcher/composer at CREATE, UC Santa Barbara, and was Guest Composer at the Institute for Electronic Music, Graz. He has taught workshops on Sound and Music Synthesis with the SuperCollider language in Europe and the US. Currently he is Research Director at CREATE, UC Santa Barbara, and holds a Lectureship for the Electronic Music Composition Lab at Music University Graz. Ongoing projects include a tutorial book on the SuperCollider language, the Creatovox and Pulsar synthesizers (with Curtis Roads), a music/video/installation project at ZKM Karlsruhe, and other pieces.
3 Alleluia (2000) by Abbey Thompson [3:17]
Abbey Thompson will graduate from Music this year with a emphasis in soprano performance.
4 No Word (1999) by Mauricio Palomar [2:59]
Mauricio Palomar is an undergraduate composer at UCSB.
5 Frankenstein 2000 (2000) by Ross Pitto [4:29]
Ross Pitto is an undergraduate composer at UCSB.
6 Restless (2000) for eight-track tape, by Bryan Brown [8:00]
Bryan Brown is a graduate student in the Media Arts and Technology Program at UCSB. He graduated from the College of Creative Studies at UCSB in music composition.
7 Williams Mix (1951-53), for eight magnetic tapes, by John Cage, as restored by Larry Austin for eight-track, octophonic playback (1997-2000) [4:25]
The composer John Cage wrote in 1952:
"It is thus possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and "traditions" of the art. The sounds enter the time-space centered within themselves, unimpeded by service to any abstraction, their 360 degrees of circumference free for an infinite play of interpenetrations."
In the summer of 1997 I embarked on a project to restore and subsequently to create a new realization and variations on John Cage's Williams Mix (1951-53), the first known surround sound, octophonic tape composition. Presignifying the development of algorithmic composition, granular synthesis, and sound diffusion, Williams Mix was the first piece completed in the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape (1951-53) established in New York by Cage, funded by architect Paul Williams. It involved as collaborators--pianist David Tudor; composers Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolfe; and electronic music pioneers Louis and Bebe Barron among others.
The 192-page score for this 4:25 minute piece is, as Cage referred to it, a kind of "dressmaker's pattern--it literally shows where the tape shall be cut, and you lay the tape on the score itself." Cage explained further that "...someone else could follow that recipe, so to speak, with other sources than I had to make another mix." I have done just that. I collected new sounds for such a second realization of the score, as well as additional variations on the piece: a "theme", a new realization, and "variations", whose working title was Williams [re]Mix[ed]. Enjoy! - Larry Austin
8 Entanglement Derivative (2000) for synthesizer and Creatophone, by Earl Howard. Earl Howard, Kurzweil K2600 synthesizer; Curtis Roads, Creatophone sound projection. [10:00]