Hubert Howe

Sheena Hong

Linda Antas

Melissa Grey

David Morneau

Robert Voisey

Sabrina Peña Young

Tomás Henriques

Digital Music Ensemble

Digital Music Ensemble

Hubert Howe was educated at Princeton University, where he studied with J. K. Randall, Godfrey Winham and Milton Babbitt, and from which he received the A.B., M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was one of the first researchers in computer music, and Professor of Music at Queens College of the City University of New York, where he served as Director of the Aaron Copland School of Music for over ten years. He also taught at the Juilliard School from 1974 to 1994. He is currently Director of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and Executive Director of the New York Composers Circle. Recordings of his music have been released by Capstone Records (Overtone Music, CPS-8678, Filtered Music, CPS-8719, and Temperamental Music and Created Sounds, CPS-8771), Ravello Records (Clusters, RR 7817) and Ablaze Records (Electronic Masters, Vol. 2, AR00013).

Inharmonic Fantasy No. 2 is based entirely on sounds containing inharmonic partials, that is, overtones that do not so much create a timbre for the sound as they create a kind of cluster above the fundamental. The overtones have the same relationship, entering in the same rhythm and in the same pitch relationship, as all of the notes in the passage in which they occur. Thus, they are a kind of fractal. Sounds are presented in two ways: continuously, as a complex envelope, and attacked separately. Underlying everything is a very slow vibrato that expands from zero to a perfect fourth in the middle of the piece, making just one cycle over each entire section. The piece opens with a soft, slow passage unfolding the basic idea, and this underlies most of the piece, except for the middle. This is followed by faster and denser passages until the attacking tones are introduced. After a short pause, a climax occurs that uses both instruments together, after which the underlying tones are left by themselves. The work was composed in 2007 and synthesized with the csound program.

Sheena Hong is a Singaporean composer who is currently based in New York City. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, she has been writing music that taps on her skills as a pianist, singer, songwriter, composer and sound designer. She is passionate about finding the balance between experimenting with techniques and keeping a connection with her listeners. Philosophising is her first electroacoustic piece to be played for the public.

Philosophising is a setting of a short poem by Singaporean writer Amalina Jamaludin. The poem reflects an English major’s frustration with interpreting literary and philosophical works and subtexts. The text is read out, the words and syllables chopped and manipulated to create interesting effects. Some words are repeated, jumbled and stumbling upon one another, others melt into environments and walls of sound. These sounds are derived from field recordings. ‘Noises’ like water crashing on a shore and oil sizzling in a pan were selected and blurred into one another to create textures that go in and out of context when juxtaposed. The piece itself experiments with vocal manipulation set against textures.

Fourteen in the afternoon
Coffee, Cake and Camus for company
in that order or another
whichever rhymes
I don't care.

Linda Antas is a composer, digital artist, flutist, and educator. Her compositions have been broadcast around the world and are published on the Ablaze, TauKay, Centaur, EMS, and Media Café labels. A Fulbright Fellowship recipient, Antas has also been recognized by the Musica Nova International Electro-acoustic Music Competition, the International Music Contest Città di Udine (Taukay Edizioni Musicali), and has received commissions from the International Computer Music Association, and various internationally-renowned performers. She regularly collaborates with scientists and visual and sound artists for creative and educational projects. Her current research involves audiovisual works, real-time interactive signal processing, and physical computing. She serves on the faculty of Montana State University, teaching music technology, interdisciplinary multimedia courses, and composition, and is currently Vice President for Membership of SEAMUS. In addition to (and sometimes in combination with) musical activities, she spends time in the wilderness and practices Buddhism.

All that glitters isn’t treasure (but it glitters nonetheless). Not everything that goes bump in the night does us harm. Many things are nearly equal parts glitter and bump. All That Glitters and Goes Bump in the Night is a reflection on our often distorted perceptions of the objects, situations, and people around us, and how these distorted perceptions cause undue negativity, unfounded positivity, and overall confusion about the causes of happiness and suffering.

On a technical level, the work explores the parallels between moving image and audio art, including the creative process itself. The parallels between the basic elements of the two media (texture, layer, color/timbre, density, and the scaling of time and frequency), and methods for transforming the digital data were investigated in creating this work. The audio was created using CSound, SuperCollider, and MetaSynth. The visuals were created with a Canon 5D Mark III and Adobe AfterEffects.

David Morneau is a composer of an entirely undecided genre. Described by Molly Sheridan as a "shining beacon" of inspiration, his diverse work illuminates ideas about our culture, issues concerning creativity, and even the very nature of music itself. His eclectic output has been described variously as "elegantly rendered", "happily prissy", "impressive", "unusual, esoteric, and offbeat". His recent album, Broken Memory, "absolutely wrecks shop.… For that, David Morneau wins." Morneau is Artistic Director of Circuit Bridges and Composer-In-Residence at Immigrant Breast Nest. Find out more at http://5of4.com

In 2012 I curated a compilation album for Immigrant Breast Nest called B'ak'tun Waning. Each month that year, on the 21st, we released a new track by a different artist as a countdown to December 21, 2012—the much-hyped Mayan apocalypse. King of Iniquity is my contribution to the album, released on February 21, 2012, which was also Mardi Gras. It's a potent mixture of bass trombone drones, swirling synths, and splintered dub-step beats "bursting into a million ruined colors that that let you see forever."

Composer Melissa Grey’s projects include concert works, electroacoustic performances, installations, food+music events and collaborations with artists and architectural designers. Grey is currently Artistic Director of Circuit Bridges, a monthly electroacoustic concert series held at Gallery MC in New York City. Previous curatorial work includes 60x60 New York Minutes Mix (2012), Transrevelation (2007) and Sonic Channels (2006). www.melissagrey.net

Appassionata (2010) is a film collage and musical composition. Artist Angela Grauerholz invited composer Melissa Grey to interpret a fragment of music that Ludwig Wittgenstein had scribbled down in his journal in 1931. Accompanying this music, he wrote: “That must be the end of a theme which I cannot place. It came into my head today as I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself, I destroy, I destroy, I destroy.” Wittgenstein’s attempt to consider the implications of the limitations language places on human experience is reflected in this piece where the meaning remains open, and several sensibilities and forms of expression are merged into one. The film collage, by Grauerholz and Réjean Myette, was constructed as a response to Grey’s resulting composition, in a dialogue that reconsiders image-sound hierarchy.

“With few opportunities and much competition,...composers show creativity in just getting heard.” And in Chris Pasles’s article in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Voisey is highlighted as one of those composers. Composing electroacoustic and chamber music, his aesthetic oscillates from the Romantic to the Post Modern Mash-Up. His work has been performed in venues throughout the world including: Carnegie Hall, World Financial Center Winter Garden Atrium, and Stratford Circus in London. Voisey has been profiled and music broadcasted on HEC-TV public television in St Louis, Elektramusik in France, as well as radio stations all around the world including: Cityscape NPR St. Louis Public Radio; Arts & Answers & Art Waves on WKCR, Upbeat with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand; and Kol Yisrael Israeli Radio.

Lament and Sorrow – In Memory of Liana Alexandra and dedicated to Serban Nichifor; two of my dear colleagues, composers, and friends.

Award-winning composer, futurist, and obsessive sci-fi buff Sabrina Peña Young composes experimental works presented at the Beijing Conservatory, the International Computer Music Conference, Miramax’s Project Greenlight, the Athena Festival, the New York International Independent Film Festival, Art Basil Miami, Turkey’s Cinema for Peace, El Instituto Cubana de la Musica, Pulsefield International Exhibition of Sound Art and other arts events. The Holland Animation Festival premiered her “groundbreaking” machinima work Libertaria: The Virtual Opera. In 2014 Young presented a TED Talk on Libertaria and "Singing Geneticists and EPIC Machinima Opera"at TEDx Buffalo. Young recently released the album A Futurist Music Anthology: The Electroacoustic Mind of Sabrina Pena Young 2001-2014, produced the premier Urban Night: Sounds of the machinima group Nano Ensemble 21 at the upcoming IAWM Congress 2015, and is part of the social media opera event The Village by UK-based composer Scott Lee, premiering this spring.

Singularity: The point in time which accelerated technologies will cause a runaway effect in which artificial intelligence will supersede human intelligence and control, forever and irreversibly transforming society. Estimated year of Singularity: 2045. Enjoy your humanity while you can.

Tomás Henriques is a composer and researcher who obtained a Ph.D. in Music Composition in 1997, from the University at Buffalo, NY USA. Dr. Henriques' research is multi-disciplinary, crossing the artistic and scientific fields. It focuses on using sensor technologies to create innovative electronic instruments as well as digital controllers that explore sound and visual data for medical applications, etc. Dr. Henriques won First Prize at the 2010 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, with the invention of his “Double Slide Controller,” a slide trombone-like electronic instrument. His "Sonik Spring", a hand-held device that translates force and gestural information into sound and visual data, was granted a full US patent.

From 2010-2013 he was the Principal Investigator of the “See-Through-Sound” project, an international research project aimed at helping visually impaired individuals ‘see’, using sonic cues. Recently Dr. Henriques teamed up with Yamaha engineers to develop a hybrid AFC+52.1 surround sound system, unparalleled in the USA, which has been installed at SUNY Buffalo State's music department. At this university, Dr. Henriques is the head of the Music Theory and Composition and also the Director of the Program in Digital Music.

Trois Rêves (presque insolites) is a sonic narrative of a dream like experience where a group of events dwell in a loose but recurring manner exploring three main psychological threads that relate to the notion of memory, motion and nostalgia. The piece is electro-acoustic. Most of the concrete sounds are recognizable “found objects” such as those of unfazed children at play, the overpowering sound of jet planes or the anxious sound of an old train. They evoke unsettling memories that bounce off a contrasting and ethereal harmonic background. This distant but ever present background is based on the overtone series of the 'A' pitch, and appears as a subtle call that echoes a lost stability. The electronic sounds on the other hand are less complex and point-like, but formally relevant, cyclically appearing in the work and delineating the overall structure. The suggestion of a dream state is further explored with the use of sounds associated with sleeping.