December 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Saturday, December 8 7:30 PM   The Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness Ave
San Francisco, CA
info: 510-451-0775
Thomas Buckner Concert  tickets: 415-392-4400

Four Seasons Concerts
presents

Thomas Buckner
Baritone

performing newly commissioned works by Leroy Jenkins, Roscoe Mitchell,
JD Parran, and W.A. Mathieu

with
Joseph Kubera, piano
Robert Afifi, flute
Mark Deutsch, bazantar
Shira Kammen, viola
Kash Killion, cello, sarangi
George Marsh, drums
Devi Mathieu, soprano
Peter Maund, hand percussion
Roscoe Mitchell, reeds
JD Parran, alto clarinet and flutes
Donald Robinson, drums
Suzanne Elder Wallace, alto
David Wessel, electronics

info: 510-451-0775
tickets: 415-392-4400

November 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Tuesday, November 27, 2001  4:00 PM  CNMAT  Bob Ostertag  CNMAT's Music and Technology Seminar  Free

 "Computer Music Can Be Better"
Bob Ostertag

Bob Ostertag is the blaspheming priest of the art of noise.  Genius underlies his performance. -- Messagger Veneto (Italy)

Bob Ostertag is the hero of the digital frontier and leader of new performance in sonic exploration. -- Il Piccolo (Italy)

Ostertag's music brings together audience and musicians alike in an almost corporal bond -- music of enormous emotional impact. -- Il Gazzettino (Italy)

    By almost any measure, electronic music composer/improviser Bob Ostertag is an extreme radical.  His raw material is the world.  He digs his trowel into the wet cement of everyday life, where nothing is really permanently set, anyway, and plasters it in impressionistic smears and pointillistic dabs across the walls of our perception... -- San Francisco Bay Guardian

 Tuesday, November 20, 2001  4:00 PM  CNMAT  Bernard Mont-Reynaud  CNMAT's Music and Technology Seminar  Free

"Steps Towards an Intelligent Editor of Musical Audio:
What Has Changed in Twenty Years?"

Bernard Mont-Reynaud
Sony R&D
San Francisco, CA

"It is tempting to look at companion papers that a CCRMA group published in 1982 in the Computer Music Journal, under the title "Steps Towards an Intelligent Editor of Musical Audio" and to get a feel for how relevant this work might be today. The basic theme was that progress of research in music and audio pattern recognition would take audio editing workstations to new levels of intelligence, translating into better performance and usability. Was this a dream? I plan to briefly review the research we did then (with developments until about 1985) to see what aspects of the work, if any, are relevant and "fresh" today, and when aspects are obsolete, what replaces them. Could this type of work, integrating hearing research and music pattern recognition with audio recording and editing practices, make a realistic contribution to the world in 2001? Has the time finally come? Besides discussing my own answers to this question, I am interested to open the floor to a discussion."

After he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, Bernard Mont-Reynaud did research at INRIA, then left for Stanford University where he obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science; his advisor was Prof. Don Knuth. He taught CS at UC Berkeley, until called to join research in music analysis at CCRMA. The analysis, visualization and perception of music and audio have been major themes of his work over the years, along with image processing, real-time systems and advanced UI design. Places he has worked include Lucasfilm, TDW, Xerox PARC, Studer Editech and FXPAL. He is currently Chief Software Architect at Sony's "Super Audio Project" R&D facility in San Francisco .

 Tuesday, November 13  4:00 PM  CNMAT  James A. Moorer  CNMAT's Music and Technology Seminar  Free

"New Directions in Spatial Audio"
James A. Moorer
Novato, California

The multi-channel music revolution is upon us. The difference between stereo music and multi-channel music is as great or greater than the difference between stereo and mono. This naturally begs the question of how we are to record and produce multi-channel music. This lecture will focus on one approach, which is to drive the speakers in such a manner that the spherical harmonic expansion of the sound field at the listener's head is made as close as possible to the desired sound field. The inverse problem of how to make wide-band microphone arrays of arbitrary directionality has recently been solved, and will be presented here (world premiere!).

James A. Moorer is the Senior Founder and Director of Advanced Development at Sonic Solutions. He personally designed and wrote much of the SonicSystem™ and developed the advanced DSP algorithms for the NoNOISE  process which is used to restore vintage recordings for CD remastering. To date,  NoNOISE  has been used in the production of over 50,000 CD's. While Vice-President of Research and Development at Lucasfilm DroidWorks between 1980 and 1987 he designed the Audio Signal Processor ASP which was used in the production of sound tracks for "Return of the Jedi", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", and others. Between 1977 and 1979, he was a researcher and the Scientific Advisor to IRCAM in Paris. In the mid-seventies he was Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1975.
In 1990, he received the Audio Engineering Society (AES) Silver Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 1999 he received the Academy of Motion Picture and Sciences Scientific and Engineering Award for his pioneering work in the design of digital signal processing and its application to audio editing for film.

 Tuesday, November 6  4:00 PM  CNMAT  Laetitia Sonami  CNMAT's Music and Technology Seminar  Free

Laetitia Sonami:
The Lady's Glove and Recent Works

Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the growing field of electronic music. Her work combines text, music and "found sound" from the world, in compositions which have been descibed as "performance novels". She is creating and utilizing some of the most sophisticated technologies in order to create an intimate, spontaneous art form which transcends technology. For the past few years she has developed and adapted new gestural controllers to musical performance and composed works with these materials. Her latest creation developed at STEIM, Amsterdam, is the lady's glove made out of black lycra, embedded with sensors which track the slightest motion of each finger, the hand and the arm. The performance thus becomes a small dance where the movements shape the music.

For more information see: http://www.sonami.net/

October 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Wednesday, October 3  12 noon  CNMAT  Xavier Rodet  Lecture/ demonstration  Free Xavier Rodet, Director of IRCAM's Analysis/Synthesis Group, presents: 
Sound Analysis/Synthesis: latest results from IRCAM
 Wednesday, October 10  7:00pm Pre-Concert Discussion
8:00pm CONCERT
 Miller Theatre, Columbia University  Edmund Campion  Concert (part of the National Conference on the Orchestra and Technology, October 10 - 14, 2001 in New York City) Contact the American Composers Orchestra
212.977.8495, aco@americancomposers.org, or visit their website.
What Goes Up...
by composer Edmund Campion, will be performed as part of the American Composer's Orchestra's national conference on technology and the orchestra called Orchestra Tech.
Friday, October 19 8:00 PM   CNMAT Mark Applebaum Concert Free

Electro-acoustic works by Stanford composer Mark Applebaum. Applebaum will perform on his sound-sculptures, the Mousetrap, the Mini-Mouse, the Duplex Mausphon, and the new Mouseketier, instruments built out of junk, found objects, and hardware mounted on electro-acoustic soundboards and transformed with live electronics. He will also present several remixes from his CD The Janus ReMixes: Exercises in Auto-Plundering.

In addition, Applebaum will present a composer's colloquium in Morrison Hall (Next to Hertz concert Hall) on the UC Berkeley Campus on Friday, October 19 at 3 p.m. The composer's talk is free and open to the public.

 Saturday, October 20  8:00 PM  Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium, Jefferson Building  Richard Felciano  Concert  Free (see their website)

Concerts from the Library of Congress

PHYLLIS BRYN-JULSON, Soprano and SOUTHWEST CHAMBER MUSIC

Washington premiere of An American Decameron, a song cycle by Richard Felciano based on Studs Terkel's Working and Coming of Age. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress.

Tuesday, October 23 4:00 PM  CNMAT Roger Linn CNMAT's Music and Technology Seminar Free

Roger Linn is a designer of electronic music products, best known for having created the first programmable, sampled-sound drum machine in
1979. This product and many other innovative designs have made a significant impact on popular music styles over the past two decades. His new company, Roger Linn Design (www.rlinndesign.com), is poised to release its first product in early 2002.

Electronic music technology has had a profound impact on the music we play, the instruments we choose, and how we compose. Traditional acoustic monophonic instruments are losing popularity in favor of synthesizers, recording software and samplers. Beyond that, new electronic instruments are beginning to emerge that enable a high degree of compositional and improvisational creativity while being easier to master. Of these new instruments, many will become extinct but a few will survive. What will these new instruments be?

 Friday, October 26  8:00 PM  CNMAT  Louis Sclavis, Cecile Daroux, Nicolas Verin, David Wessel  Concert $15  A concert featuring new works: 
Louis Sclavis, clarinet and soprano saxophone; Cecile Daroux, flute; Nicolas Verin and David Wessel, electronics.
 Saturday, October 27  7:00 PM

 Pacific Film Archive (PFA)

2575 Bancroft Avenue
Berkeley, California
510/642-1412 (office)
510/642-5249 (tickets)

  Undergraduate and graduate composers  New scores for silent films  Free

New Music for Silent Films by UCB Composers
New scores for silent films by undergraduate and graduate composers from UC Berkeley's Music Department. Students in two courses taught in Spring 2001 -- Professor Edmund Campion's Introduction to Computer Music Composition at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, and Professor John Thow's Music Composition -- created original scores that were performed at the end of the semester for faculty and students, and from which PFA selected six to be presented in the public exhibition program.

Electronic scores composed and performed by:
Hubert Ho for Dancing Pig (a Pathé production from about 1905, possibly directed by Ferdinand Zecca, 4-5 mins).
Ben Jacobs for Groucho Marx Home Movies (c. 1933, 2 mins).
Ahm Lee (in collaboration with performance by guitarist/composer John Schott) for Acrobatic Fly (Percy Smith, 1911, 2-3 mins).
Ali Momeni and David Bithell for Interior NY Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905, American Mutoscope and Biograph Co., directed and photographed by Billy Bitzer, 5 mins).
Alan Tormey for Acrobatic Fly and Interior NY Subway.
Score for string quartet by:
Daniel David Feinsmith for The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson Jr.,1928, c. 13 mins)

 Sunday, October 28  8:00 PM    Louis Sclavis, Cecile Daroux, Nicolas Verin, David Wessel  Concert  $15   A concert featuring new works: 
Louis Sclavis, clarinet and soprano saxophone; Cecile Daroux, flute; Nicolas Verin and David Wessel, electronics.

 

July 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 July 1 8:00 PM   CNMAT Shafqat Ali Khan, Pakistani Khyal vocals, with Matthew Wright, live electronics, and Salar Nadir Khan, tabla. Concert of evening ragas.  $10 Extraordinary Pakistani singer Shafqat Ali Khan, an 11th generation classical Khyal vocalist, is joined by tabla player Salar Nadir Khan and computer musician Matthew Wright. Wright will use a custom pen-and-tablet interface to control computer synthesis of Shafqat's own voice, resulting in an improvised duet between "the real" Shafqat and Shafqat's voice as played by Wright.
 July 3  8:00 PM CNMAT Barre Phillips string trio: Barre Phillips - bass, Hans Burgener - violin Martin Schültz - cello  Concert  $10 Improvised Music by a String Trio

 

June 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 June 24 5:00 PM   CNMAT Shafqat Ali Khan, Pakistani Khyal vocals, with Matthew Wright, live electronics, and Salar Nadir Khan, tabla. Concert of afternoon ragas.  $10 Extraordinary Pakistani singer Shafqat Ali Khan, an 11th generation classical Khyal vocalist, is joined by tabla player Salar Nadir Khan and computer musician Matthew Wright. Wright will use a custom pen-and-tablet interface to control computer synthesis of Shafqat's own voice, resulting in an improvised duet between "the real" Shafqat and Shafqat's voice as played by Wright.
 June 24  8:00 PM 2200 Shattuck, Berkeley (former Lee Frank Jewlers) Ben Goldberg's Brainchild, featuring Scott Amendola, John Schott, Will Bernard, Ashley Adams, Matthew Wright, Matt Brubeck, Graham Connah, Dan Plonsey, and others.  Concert  ??? A concert of creative improvised music including CNMAT's Matt Wright on interactive electronics.

 

TEMPO Festival, June 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 June 1-9 8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  TEMPO: Berkeley Festival of Contemporary Performance, June 1-9, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley  Concert  $15 each concert, $75 for 6-concert series TEMPO: Berkeley Festival of Contemporary Performance, June 1-9, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley
An international gathering of some of today's most exciting and innovative musicians and composers in performances that will blur the lines between improvised and composed music. The music will encompass a wide range of musical styles, from contemporary concert music to jazz to ragas, while incorporating cutting edge computer music technology.
 Friday, June 1  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  Steve Coleman and Five Elements  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)  Steve Coleman, whose jazz-based work encompasses a wide cultural and spiritual range including influences from the music of Ghana, Cuba, Java and the Karnatic tradition of India, is a leading figure in the incorporation of computer technologies in improvised music.
 Saturday, June 2  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  Roscoe Mitchell Group, featuring George Lewis, David Wessel, and Thomas Buckner  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)  Legendary multi-instrumentalist and ECM recording artist Roscoe Mitchell, a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) has performed and recorded widely with George Lewis (improviser-trombonist, composer and computer/installation artist). The concert will feature noted new music baritone Thomas Buckner who is also an important producer/promoter of contemporary music, and will include new interactive works for computer-driven electronics by George Lewis and David Wessel.
 Tuesday, June 5  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  Music of Edmund Campion, with Lauren Carley, David Milnes, Karen Rosenak, William Winant and friends  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)  American composer Edmund Campion's energetic and eclectic work often employs computer technology in variety of ground breaking ways. This concert will show the diversity of his talent with a new work for silent film, player piano and eight channel tape; Corail (Coral) for roaming saxophone and live electronics; Domus Aurea for piano and percussion; Natural Selection for midi-piano and reactive electronics, and l'Autre for mezzo-soprano, two percussionists, horn, harp, multi-channel tape and live electronics.
 Wednesday, June 6  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  Shafqat Ali Khan, Pakistani Khyal vocals, with David Wessel and Matthew Wright, live electronics  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)  Extraordinary Pakistani singer Shafqat Ali Khan, an 11th generation classical Khyal vocalist, is joined by David Wessel and Matthew Wright in a concert featuring live interactive electronics.
 Friday, June 8  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, David Milnes, Music Director  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)  A concert of works for chamber ensembles and electronics. The works being presented represent an international array of some of today's most prominent young composers working with technology including Cindy Cox (USA), Atli Ingólfssohn (Iceland), Michael Jarrell (Switzerland), Philippe Leroux (France), Jorge Liderman (Argentina/US), Yan Maresz (Monaco/Italy) and Martin Matalon (Argentina/France).
 Saturday, June 9  8:00 PM  Hertz Hall  John Schott (guitar and live electronics). Also, John Abercrombie with Rich Fudoli, George Marsh, and Mel Graves  Concert  $15 ($75 for 6-concert series)

 John Schott is well-known as a guitarist and composer working in the boundaries between jazz and new music. His 14 CDs include Shuffle Play (New World), In These Great Times (Tzadik), and, with TJ Kirk, If Four Was One, which was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1996.

Renowned guitarist and ECM recording artist John Abercrombie will head a stellar ensemble featuring George Marsh on drums, Rich Fudoli on saxophone and Mel Graves on bass.

Both Abercrombie and Schott willl be using innovative guitar technologies developed at CNMAT.

May2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
Monday, May 7  8:00 PM   Hertz Hall  Berkeley New Music Project  Concert  Free

The Berkeley New Music Project presents a concert of new musical works by graduate student composers. Included in the program are works by Ali Momeni and Alan Tormey that use technological resources developed at CNMAT. Other composers represented are Hubert Ho, Tom Swafford, Adrianna Verdie, and Peter Slavin.

Featured performers include John Schott, Tim O'Keefe, Matt Ingalls, Leighton Fong

Free and open to the public: Reception to follow.

April 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details

*********
NEW DATE
*********
 

Monday, April 30

 4:00 PM   CNMAT  Juan Campoverde, Roger Reynolds, Ali Momeni David Wessel  Lecture  Free

 Compositional Strategies - A panel consisting of Juan Campoverde and Roger Reynolds from UC San Diego and Ali Momeni and David Wessel from UC Berkeley.

UC Presidential Fellow Juan Campoverde from UC San Diego will disscuss his new work for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Professor Roger Reynolds, Compoverde's advisor, will be on hand to present and discuss his own recent compositions. UC Berkeley will be represented by Ali Momeni and his advisor Professor David Wessel who will both present and discuss their work. The session will be replete with musical example.

 Wednesday, April 11  8:00 PM  CNMAT  Thomas Buckner, baritone, Joseph Kubera, piano  Concert  $10, $5 students

Thomas Buckner, baritone, Joseph Kubera, piano

Wadada Leo Smith - "Spirit Catcher"
David Wessel - "Situations I"
(Performed by Thomas Buckner and David Wessel)
Ushio Torikai - "Voiced One"
William Hawley - "Shelly Songs"
Robert Ashley - "Yes, but is it edible?"

 Sunday April 8  4:00 PM  CNMAT  Douglas EWART and Friends  Concert  $10, $5 students

 Douglas EWART and Friends' Sunday Afternoon Special

Douglas EWART -- reeds and instrumental conceptions
KITUNDU -- live electroacoustics
Miya MASAOKA -- koto and electroacoustics

 Saturday, April 21  12 noon - 4 PM   CNMAT   Cal Day  Open house  Free  Cal Day at CNMAT -- visit our facilities and meet some of the staff.

March 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Saturday, March 10 8:00 PM   CNMAT  CNMAT/CCRMA  Concert  

February 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Thursday, Feb15 8:00 PM   CNMAT  Moritz Eggert, piano  Concert  $10, $5 students

Moritz Eggert's, born in 1965, is equally known as a pianist and a composer. His compositions include 5 large-scale operas, ballets, and works for dance and music theatre, often with unusual performance elements. As a pianist he has gained recognition as important interpreter of the work's of Hans Werner Henze. 

Program:
Hans Werner Henze: Sonate (15')
Wilhelm Killmayer: From "Douze Etudes Transcendentales" (10')
Wolfgang Rihm: Klavierstueck VII (6')
Enno Poppe: Thema mit 840 Variationen (7')
Helmut Lachenmann: Guero (5')

Moritz Eggert: Haemmerklavier II: Upon the first 4 notes of "Lulu" (5')
Haemmerklavier III: One Man Band (5')
Haemmerklavier V: Study in Fall (6')
Haemmerklavier VII: Secret Desires (7')
Haemmerklavier IX: Jerusalem (7')

January 2001

Date Time Location Who What Cost Details
 Monday, January 29 4:00 PM 5101 Tolman Richard Felciano Colloquium Free

Richard Felciano: Masking Techniques in Music Composition

While the discussion of masking is not quite finished (Pierce), enough is known about the conditions necessary to produce it to allow the composer (at least, this composer) to attempt to use masking as a component of his musical language. Flute and trumpet would seem to be instruments the sounds of which can be easily separated and distinguished. Yet, through careful intervallic and range positioning, careful selection of mutes, eliminating vibrato, etc., the two instruments move along a trajectory which ranges from complete separation of the two sounds through passages where one cannot tell which instrument is playing which note, to others where complete masking occurs, one instrument "covering" the other. A partial of the trumpet mute is literally excised and played as a separate melody after the trumpet stops playing (!)