Vox Novus busy! And there is no sign of slowing down in the near future.
This week’s newsletter is focusing on support. There are lots of pleas from organizations and artists these days for support. All are worthwhile, but I want to bring to your attention some WIN-WIN endeavors which need your support. (And in turn will be supporting you!)
60x60
Later in the newsletter you will see an article by David Morneau about 60x60 and data about what it has done in the last 11 years. To sum up, the more a composer participates and supports the more they benefit from the project. Simple. Be active. Get more. I don’t know a single new music project which gives as much as you put into it. It is a rough environment, 60x60 makes it easier.
What can you do to support?
Submit to 60x60. Yes, it really is that simple. Composers that submit reap rewards. Those that submit and participate receive more rewards. You will not find a more prosperous way to make 60 seconds of music.
What more?
There is a radio station in Vermont which has been a HUGE supporter of 60x60. when I mean huge. I am talking the type of support that makes and breaks projects. This radio station has easily presented 1000 composers from 60x60. Its time to help them out!
The last day of the fund-drive is today. They need help. They are looking for $5. Please give. They have given much to 60x60 over the last 10 years. And if you are reading this they most likely played your work. Please give. You can visit them at www.wgdr.org
You can hear the 10 hour marathon Jim Cross did at WGDR for 60x60 Decade celebration here: http://www.wgdr.org/60x60-radio-extravaganza-archive/
I know, it is tiring to see all the pleas for help. As director of Vox Novus, I get many.
I want to reiterate that this request for support is for entities helping the community.
Did you see above that you can help by submitting works?
Vox Novus has more than 10 calls for works currently active! Submit! We have several calls for 60x60,Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame, and a call for Sayat-Nova. Being a composer myself, I can tell you from the inside that every single call currently out has a great success ratio! If you are looking to submit and have a better than fair chance of your work to be selected and performed, these calls for works are the ones to focus on. I can go on and on about 60x60 and Fifteen Minutes of Fame. And I will let David Morneau keep putting out facts on how innovative these projects are, but I want you to focus on a new Vox Novus endeavor: the 2014 Sayat-Nova competition with Music Avatar. Music Avatar www.MusicAvatar.org is a new system to submit works online. It is easy for composers to submit works to competition on the web quickly and efficiently. It is also a fantastic way for organization to accept, process, judge, and select works from composers. The process is easy, organized, and very affordable. The goal is to make the submission process so effective and reliable that it will be a beneficial process for everyone. (Hopefully cutting down submission fees for composers and getting more opportunities for composers to have their works performed.)
How can you help?
Submit to Sayat-Nova on Music Avatar.
This is our first endeavor with a client outside of Vox Novus projects and we want to make a big splash. Sayat-Nova has 5 big prizes and no submission fee. It is a WIN-WIN. I strongly urge you to submit to the competition. Let’s show Sayat-Nova how strong the Vox Novus network is and get more great opportunities like this available to us!
$5 donations? Submitting works not enough? What else can you do?
Attend concerts.
Yes, that is right. Attend your concerts and the concerts of your colleagues.
This past weekend we had a Composer’s Voice concert which featured Face the Music and Quartet This Side UP. This is a youth program that is performing only the works of living composers. In the audience there were composers like Aaron Kernis, David Wolfson, Masatora Goya, Skip La Plante, Christian McLeer, Douglas DaSilva, and me (Robert Voisey) But that wasn’t enough! This is a group specifically learning OUR music as standards and a way of life. Besides supporting them everyway we possibly can we should be getting to know them and introducing ourselves and our work to these wonderful players. (Oh yes! And they were FABULOUS performers. It almost made me cry they were so good!)
Vox Novus has many many concerts. More than most new music organizations. The lifeblood of every concert performance is audience. Attending concerts is supporting that you want new music heard. This past week there was Circuit Bridges at EMM, 60x60 Dance in Toronto, Circuit Bridges in NYC, Composer’s Voice in NYC. We notice everyone who comes to support. And we make special efforts to include those who make the effort.
Coming up we have 60x60 Surround Sound Mix, a concert called ONE in midtown New York, Circuit Bridges at Brooklyn College, and another Composer’s Voice! Come support! Listen to some great music! Every time there is another audience member we grow in strength as a new music community!
Wait! What is ONE did you say?
There is a new Vox Novus project called ONE. I don’t want to give away too much, but we are at it again! There is yet another new music project from Vox Novus of energetic musicians looking to perform new music. This is the beginning of a large endeavor to fund raise for a Vox Novus festival in 2016 for our 15th anniversary and to present the works of living composers.
So just to recap.
-Vox Novus needs your support!
-What can you do?
-Submit works to calls.
-Attend concerts.
-Donate $5 to WGDR or come to ONE $10 admission.
-Promote the above!
That’s it. Really simple. Not much. Big rewards. If everyone this newsletter reach does one or two of the things above, it woudl be one of the strongest new movements happening in the world. No joke. Its kind of crazy, but true.
WIN-WIN
That is our motto. Don’t do this for us. Do it for yourself. Doing any of the above: submit to calls, attend concerts, donate $5-$10, and promote by passing this to all you know. Will get more performances of new music which includes YOU.
I can’t stress that enough. Helping Vox Novus will help you. We try to make it easy, but we still need your support.
And we notice. We look at who submits, we see who promotes, we check web stats, count audience attendance, donations, etc. We know it is important to support those who put in the effort and help. Don’t ever think your contributions go un-noticed. There is a bunch going on, so sometimes we can’t express how much we appreciate our community, but we do. And we are always open to comments and feedback.
Please support!
And just you wait! A very very exciting year is coming up! For all of us! Because we are all in it together.
60×60 is a one-hour-long show made by sequencing 60 pre-recorded electroacoustic works by 60 different composers, each piece a minute in length or shorter. A unique collaboration between VoxNovus / Robert Voisey and Harvestworks in New York City to create a 5.1 surround sound mix, this 60×60 presentation originally debuted on May 16th at Harvestworks in New York City, and will be presented again at Jack Straw New Media Gallery in Seattle, WA.
Every one-minute piece will be played continuously without pause in 5.1 surround sound. Each of the 60 pieces will begin precisely at the beginning of the minute.
No charge for admission.
Vox Novus and Harvestworks invited composers and sound artists to submit recorded works as 5.1 audio 60 seconds or less in length to be included in a special 60×60 project collaboration in New York City. We received over 160 submissions, and present the finalists in an event at Harvestworks’ multichannel TEAMLab listening space.
60×60 is a one-hour-long show made by sequencing 60 pre-recorded pieces by 60 different composers, each piece a minute in length or shorter. A unique collaboration between VoxNovus / Robert Voisey and Harvestworks in New York City to create a 5.1 surround sound mix, this 60×60 presentation will be premiered at Harvestworks’ multichannel TEAMLab listening room. See the list of works below!
Every one-minute piece will be played continuously without pause. Each of the 60 pieces will begin precisely at the beginning of the minute, this will mark the end of one piece and the beginning of another.
A word from the curator
Setting out to assemble one hour of music from the breathtaking range of submissions we received, it became clear that I had to approach the task in the same way I would create a composition. Does it have a beginning, middle and end, and possibly multiple movements? Is it organized in a non-linear or abstract way, perhaps by algorithmic means? (Organizing it in alphabetical order would been a simple example of algorithmic organization.) Or could I simply create sections by grouping all the pieces that are similar in style, instrumentation (we got swamped with works using synthesis), or even the way the composer handles spatialization?
5-1-surround-sound.svgI opted for a more traditional, narrative approach, constructing the piece with a beginning and an end in mind. In fact, the “bookends” were the first pieces I chose. I then squeezed several movements in between those two bookends, some movements morphing smoothly into the next, others sharply contrasting those before or after.
Finding the right combinations took time. Whether I was looking for contrast or for a smooth transition, the ending of one piece determined what I was looking for in the next piece. I have to admit that I cheated a few times when it came to pieces that were shorter than 60 seconds. Instead of starting at 0’00″ and adding the silence at the end (as we announced we would do), in some cases I added silence at the beginning to make the flow to the next piece more organic and natural.
Sadly, I had to reject many a good work because it simply didn’t fit between other chosen pieces. I remember spending more than half an hour on one single piece alone that I couldn’t find a spot for. Though I liked it a lot, however, it had a very peculiar beginning, that I was by no means able to make work in conjunction with other pieces. However, since we would have had to reject around 70 pieces anyway, I finally let it go.
Let’s talk about numbers here… we received 160 submissions, around 30 we had to reject because they didn’t have anything to do with our call requesting surround sound works. Robert & I divided the remaining 130 submissions into approx. 40 “yes”, 70 “maybe” and 20 “no” categories. As you can guess from my earlier explanation, the finalists were chosen from all of those categories, because they worked well within their surroundings (pun intended).
So what do you hear during this one-hour show? There are the soft and almost inaudible works, those that work more with pauses than with sounds. Field recordings, voices singing or talking, acoustic instruments, electronics and analog synthesis – the latter often frantic outbursts of sound mass. Some works you can dance to, some you can sing to, many others not, although that’s up to you, of course. Some works will sound strangely familiar until you realize they are a take on another famous work, I placed them in one of the “surprise” spots. I don’t like to be too serious, so there are a couple of surprises in store for you, and maybe you can spot them when you attend one of our presentations.
Since this exhibit is about multichannel sound, we chose a few works that are exemplary in terms of spatialization of sounds, while most others employ these means in a more subtle way. Everything you can do beyond stereo with 5.1 channels is there: 5.1, 5.0, 4.1 and 4.0. There is even a 3.1 work, it does spatialization solely with the center and rear speakers.
If you are interested in artistic approaches to multichannel sound, come to one of our “5.1 60×60″ shows at some point, or listen to our Surround Sound DVD (yes, we’re producing a DVD from it). You get a good overview over the various artistic approaches to multichannel sound. As long as it fits within the 5.1 DVD standard: we can just drop the DVD in the mail in case you’re interested in hosting this show on the other side of the planet. Of course, we need to discuss other things beforehand, but still – the whole show fits on one DVD.
I have to thank Robert Voisey for giving me the opportunity to curate a multichannel 60×60 work for Vox Novus; our audio engineer Kevin Ramsay for working hard on assembling and organizing all the works; Katie Sundsted creating all the text materials; Matt Fidler to assemble the video that goes along with the audio showing the titles of the work and composer’s names; and Nicholas Kiray for the logo. And of course, my most heartfelt thanks go out to all the composers who submitted their works to us. It’s them who made this show interesting and inspiring.
Hans Tammen, April 2014
Composers selected for the 60x60 Surround Sound Mix include:
Jeff Anderson, Daniel Bartos, Simon Belshaw, Jason Bolte, Mike Boyd, Andrei Branea, Arnold Brooks, Steve Bull, Jeremy Van Buskirk, Alejandro Casales, Ian Corbett, Douglas DaSilva, Jamez Dean, Blake Degraw, Rob Dietz, Lorenz Erdmann, Bit.Seq~ (Fred Feeney), Josh Feldman, John Ferguson, Matt Fidler, Tim Fodness, Enrico Francioni, Richard Garrett, Guiseppe Gavazza, Nate Goossen, Scott Gresham-Lancaster, Jenn Grossman, Samuel Hertz, Jason Hoffman, judsoN, Vivek Karun, John Kehoe, Andrew Levine, Jörg Lindenmaier, Buddy Lorentz, Nicolas Marty, Mike McFerron, Claudi Meneghin, Tiago Morais, Dafna Naphtali, Daniel Neumann, Serban Nichifor, Hull Pacific, Maggi Payne, Chris Peck, Samuel Pellman, Patrick Pham, Julien Poidevin, Kevin Ramsay, Cody Ranaldo, Steve Reinthal, Lorin Roser, Josh Simmons, Mary Simoni, David Jason Snow, J Sohn, Yuri Spitsyn, Ariane St.Louis, Hans Tammen, Jamie Todd, A. P. Vague, Robert Voisey, Jaeseong Wu, and Xo Xinh
Beginning with ONE is
sponsored by SONY and Strings By Mail
This is the kick-off for a series of promotional concerts for the Vox Novus festival in 2015. The event will present highlights of Vox Novus original and innovative performance series: including 60x60, Composer's Voice, Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame, Circuit Bridges and ONE.
Beginning with ONE presents world premieres by NYC based composers Margaret Schedel, JP Redmond, and Douglas DaSilva. It showcases Lyra dancer Megan Hornaday, violinist Eva Ingolf, composer/vocalist Robert Voisey, guitar & cello of Duo Anova, violist Conway Kuo, guitarist Oren Fader, and special performances by flautist Melanie Chirignan performing works by Atanas Ourkouzounov, Jason Ulysses, Rain Worthington, Masatora Goya, Benjamin Boone, and Joe Gianono.
You will have the opportunity to experience exciting works from the Vox Novus archive including acoustic & electronic music and dance. Meet and chat with performers, composers, and directors. Snack and drink will be served. Kids are welcome and FREE!
There will be raffles during intermission. Thanks to the generous donations from our sponsors. The prizes include video editing software and a special music gift certificate.
For the last 14 years, Vox Novus has presented over 5000 works by living composers at venues and festivals, including London's Open Weekend for 2012 Olympics at Stratford Circus, the Montreal Fringe Festivals, Carnegie Hall and venues in more than 30 countries. Its mission is to make the cultural world go around by presenting the wealth of new music to the masses everywhere.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
3:00pm-4:30pm
Basha Studio 34
45 East 34th Street Suite 3
New York, NY 10016
Ticket: $10 at the door
For any questions please contact Artistic Director Kenji Haba at:
habahabakenn@gmail.com
Correction: In the first graph there is an error. By adding the wrong column on my spreadsheet I reported the incorrect number of composers selected at least one time. That number is actually 1441 (49% of the 2950 composers who have submitted). I apologize for this error. Updated graphics have been supplied and can be see here:
Before we move on to 60x60 performance data I’d like to look at a different configuration of the selected composer data. This chart shows the distribution of composers by their number of compositions included in 60x60 and the number of mixes in which these compositions appear. The vertical scale shows the number of compositions and the horizontal scale shows the number of mixes. Dots appear at each intersection that corresponds to at least one composer. The number next to each dot is the number of composers at that point.
For example, the dot at the intersection of (2,1) represents 304 composers. Each of these composers has had one piece selected for 60x60, which has appeared in two mixes. The dot at (15,9) represents a single composer with 9 pieces in 15 mixes. (Note that the green dots indicate single composers.) Not surprisingly, most composers are represented in lower left of the graph.
616 (43%) have only a single composition in a single mix. Refer to Graph 1 (Composers with only one piece, sorted by number of mixes). Of the 1441 total composers in the project, 1096 (76%) only have a single composition. These are the composers on the bottom row of the distribution chart. If you’ll recall the first chart I posted back in August, most composers submitting to 60x60 only apply one time. It’s safe to assume that if more composers applied more than once, the percentage with only one composition would decrease.
Composers in the first three rows of the distribution chart, that is, composers with three or less pieces in 60x60, represent 94% of the total composers in the project. This is shown in Graph 2 (Composers sorted by total number of pieces).
Looking at the columns of the distribution chart now, we can examine the number of composers appearing in different numbers of mixes. Again, there 616 (43%) of composers in only one mix. (It’s not possible to have multiple pieces in a single mix, so this is not surprising). 364 (24%) of composers appear in two mixes (column 2 of the chart). Take a look at Graph 3 (Composers sorted by total number of mixes). The distribution difference between this and Graph 2 is stark. 91% of composers appear in 7 or less mixes, where 94% of composers have only 3 or less pieces in 60x60.
Be careful to notice that this is not a complete overlap. Back on the distribution chart we can see that some of the composers in the first 7 columns have more than 3 pieces (there are 26 composers in rows 4 and 5 that overlap columns 4–7). There are also 14 composers in the first 3 rows that are in columns 8+. The true overlap of composers with 3 or less pieces in 7 or less mixes is 1343 (93%)
Clearly the distribution chart does not provide a good visual representation of the distribution of the composers, only the ratios of compositions to mixes. What I do like about this chart is that it shows clearly the trend towards using compositions repeatedly in the mixes. We saw this in the previous charts that examined overlap between the mixes.
If each piece were only in a single mix, all points would be on a line that extends from (1,1) at a 45 degree angle. What we have instead is a trend for the points to lie to the right of this imaginary line. (Remember that they will never be to the left because a mix will never contain the same composition more than one time.) In fact, there are only 4 points on this imaginary line. Graph 5 (Composers with an equal number of pieces and mixes) shows the percentage of composers on this line. Only 46% have an equal number of pieces and mixes. The other 775 (54%) composers have had their pieces repeated in multiple mixes.
Getting a piece selected for 60x60 means that you have a good chance of being in more than one mix. Submitting more frequently just increases the likelihood of being in multiple mixes. This is a project that really benefits composers. I haven’t looked at the numbers for other long-running new music projects, but anecdotally it seems safe to say that no other project gets as much mileage out of as much music as 60x60 does. Next time, we’ll look at the performance data for 60x60, which will reinforce this point even more.
If you haven’t submitted yet this year, there’s still plenty of opportunity to participate in 60x60. You can find the calls here www.60x60.com/calls.
David Morneau http://5of4.com/ David Morneau is a composer of an entirely undecided genre, a provider of exclusive unprecedented experiments.
AGBU is deploying efforts to attract the interest of young composers to classical music and the traditional Armenian repertoire. If the encounter between classical musicians, of written tradition, and traditional musicians, of oral tradition, is sometimes difficult, it is all the more richer. Together they create the musical heritage of tomorrow.
Hence, the idea of the Sayat Nova composition competition is born, combining modernism, tradition and Armenian inspiration. It aims to discover talented young composers, help them financially, record their works, and diffuse them.
When it was first introduced in 2006, the Sayat Nova Composition Competition proved to be a laboratory of creativity. Amidst festivities for AGBU’s centennial, a panel of expert judges reviewed an impressive range of submissions. On December 9, 2006, it ultimately granted Artur Akshelyan with the first prize. That night, Akshelyan’s piece was brought to life by the Armenian Diaspora Chamber Orchestra through a memorable performance in the Salon Opéra at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris.
The 2012 AGBU Sayat Nova International Composition Competition was a great success as evidenced by the 22 candidates participating from around the world. Two young composers were distinguished: Tomas Berreiro, Mexican, was granted the 2nd Prize for his work The Death of the Nightingale and Ernest Dulgaryan, Armenian, the 3rd prize for Whispers. In addition to the Sayat Nova competition prize, Tomas Barreiro was awarded the Special Prize "Carnegie Hall” by the jury. As such, his composition was interpreted during the AGBU - NYSEC Annual Concert in December 2013 in the prestigious New York concert hall.
Contest participation conditions:
The 2014 Sayat Nova competition candidates will have to compose for a chamber ensemble consisting of 3 (three) instrumentalists (piano, cello and duduk) and a woman's voice, mezzo- soprano register (spoken or sung).
The duration of the piece must be within 7-10 minutes.
The piece must include one quotation, in any form, from a text of Daniel Varoujan in Armenian or translated into a Western language (i.e. English, German, French, Italian, Spanish or Russian).
The deadline for submission of works is no later than 28 November 2014.
60x60 is calling for works for its 11th performance season!
Vox Novus is inviting composers/sound artists to submit recorded works 60 seconds or less in length to be included in its 11th annual 60x60 project. 60 compositions will be selected to be played continuously in a one-hour concert.
60x60 is a one-hour-long show made by sequencing 60 pre-recorded pieces by 60 different composers, each piece a minute in length or shorter. Highlighting the work of a great many composers, 60x60 testifies to the vibrancy of contemporary composition by present a diverse array of styles, aesthetics, and techniques being used today.
60x60 mixes have received more than 350 performances in more than 30 countries including venues such as the Winter Garden Atrium at the World Financial Center, Stratford Circus for Opening Day Festival for the 2012 London Olympics, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. 60x60 collaborates with multimedia including dance, video, art, and sculpture. 60x60 Dance was described by the New York Times as "...60 new pieces of music, each lasting no more than 60 seconds - is quite mad. But it's this kind of madness that makes the cultural world go round..."
During the concert each of the 60 pieces selected will begin precisely at the beginning of the minute, this will mark the end of one piece and the beginning of another. There will be no pause between the pieces. Works may be less than 60 seconds in length, but may not exceed 60 seconds. Works selected that are less than 60 seconds long will be "padded" with silence either before, after, or surrounding the composition. Please note that the total duration of the work including silence may NOT exceed sixty seconds.
The 60x60 project's definition of a record work is as follows: any work created as a musical composition which is captured on recorded media, which does not require live performers for its production in broadcast at concert halls, radio, multi-media, etc. Its creation can include but not limited to acoustic instruments, voice, environmental sources, and computer (Sampling, MAX MSP, MIDI, C Sound, ProTools, etc.)
All works submitted should be with the understanding that it is their recording that is of prime importance and is what will be used to determine its selection.
60x60 is a project of "signature works" and short works created specifically for the 60x60 project. Excerpts of larger works are strongly discouraged. Works generated from procedures (i.e. mathematical matrices, organizational systems, or computer programs,) remixed works, or themes and motives recomposed from other of the composer's own work are acceptable.
In addition to the 60x60 International Mix, Vox Novus is planning to create several alternate mixes to the 11th call for works. Planned themed mixes include the Wave Farm Mix, BPM Mix, Death Mix, Latin Mix, and more. All works submitted to alternate mixes will be considered for the 60x60 International Mix. (Works need to be submitted to the various alternate mixes directly to be considered for the mix concerned.)
The call is open to composers of any nationality, age, or career stage.
Deadline for 60 second compositions for 60x60 is November 30th, 2014.
There is no admission fee.
Audio submissions must be in either AIFF or WAV file format.
Multiple submissions are accepted from a single composer/sound artist.
All submissions must be uploaded online at: www.MusicAvatar.org DO NOT EMAIL AUDIO FILES!
All submissions must be uploaded by November 30th, 2014 - 12:00 Midnight (local time)
Works selected for the 11th Annual 60x60 project will be announced on the Vox Novus newsletter NM421: http://www.NM421.com
Any questions regarding the call for works can be addressed to: Support@VoxNovus.com More information can be found at: www.60x60.com
60x60 is a one-hour-long show made by sequencing 60 pre-recorded pieces by 60 different artists, each piece a minute in length or shorter. 60x60 has been presented in many performance formats including TV shows, radio shows, multimedia and multidisciplinary events, as well as published several albums of works. Since 2003, 60x60 has received thousands of submissions from over 30 countries. Highlighting the work of a great many artists and composers, 60x60 testifies to the vibrancy of contemporary composition by presenting a diverse array of styles, aesthetics, and techniques being used today http://www.60x60.com
Music Avatar is a great new way to upload works for composer opportunities hassle free! You will be able to submit, update, and modify your submission all the way up to the deadline date of the opportunity.
www.MusicAvatar.org
