Showing posts with label Maggi Payne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maggi Payne. Show all posts

Friday, June 15, 2012

New York's Spectrum Presents Surround Sound from Starkland

New York's new Spectrum venue, a technology-intensive site for innovative music and multimedia, has invited me to present a Starkland evening there on Monday June 18. Naturally my first thought was: Surround Sound. Fortunately I knew that Spectrum's overlord, the energetic Glenn Cornett, was a surround sound enthusiast.

The concert will focus on electroacoustic surround sound music I commissioned for two DVDs. (Starkland has likely commissioned more surround sound music for DVD than any other label in the world.)

The audience will hear a tidal wave of hyperdense bells, a trumpet reverberating for 7 seconds in a huge underground water tank, a spaced-out Ethel Quartet, West African balafons, a 14-foot long Quadrachord, a ghostly wailing wall, a weird madrigal, and 15,000 African parrots.

Commissioned composers include: Paul Dolden, Paul Dresher, Ellen Fullman, Phil Kline, Lukas Ligeti, Ingram Marshall, Merzbow, Meredith Monk, Bruce Odland, Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, Carl Stone, and Pamela Z.

The concert will open with selections from Starkland's Immersion DVD-Audio, recognized by sources such as Pro Sound News and Billboard as the first such recording in history. Sound & Vision wrote:

"Not only a fascinating array of musical innovation but a persuasive exploration of the possibilities of surround sound... The care that went into this disc is carried through to the stylish onscreen graphics [and] the excellent printed program notes."

The second half of the concert will play most/all of Phil Kline's Around the World in a Daze DVD, a major 65-minute work commissioned by Tom as a followup to Immersion. (Another first-of-its-kind recording.) Phil's imaginative, rich use of surround sound space has dazzled many:

The New Yorker: "A special-project disk in which Kline created, out of extravagant electronic means... an audio-visual feast that balances hipster zen with the seriousness of Bach and Wagner."

Stereophile: "This adventurous music... ranges widely from ambient recordings that are surprisingly musical, to complex constructions that emerge as lyrical."

New York Magazine: "A set of sensational etudes."

Sequenza21: "Imaginary vistas that envelope, even overwhelm... Our always adventuresome friends at Starkland have outdone themselves this time."

An Extras DVD in the Daze release features a lengthy interview with Phil by John Schaefer. Time permitting, some of these sections may be shown.

The concert will feature a high quality surround playback system, installed by techmaster Lawrence de Martin.

Read more here.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Intermedia Festival has 3 Starkland composers

Phil Kline's music video MEDITATION (run as fast as you can) will have its premiere public performance at this year's Intermedia Festival, scheduled for April 23-25 in Indianapolis.

The Intermedia Festival offers a unique series of concerts and events presenting futuristic modes, combining traditional performing arts, computers, media, and telecommunications. The Festival will feature artists, musicians, videographers, dancers, actors and writers from around the world. Over 100 performers will travel to Indianapolis, and others will participate through the Internet interactively with collaborators at the festival. Live drama, dance, music, visual arts, videography, scientific presentation, commentary, and discussion will synthesize to form a provocative and compelling set of experiences.

The Festival will be held in the new downtown Indianapolis Public Library and in the Informatics and Computer Technology Complex at IUPUI. Admission is free and open to the public for all events.

Kline's MEDITATION features both pulsing surround sound electronica and a handheld video shot by the composer. He comments that the piece is “based on a unified camera movement” which he describes as: “You’re in New York, hold the camera, and run!”

MEDITATION appears on Kline's "Around the World in a Daze" double-DVD, commissioned by Starkland and released in 2009. This release has been praised in over 20 publications, including The New York Times, Stereophile, and the Washington Post. The New Yorker described Daze as:
"A special-project disk in which Kline created, out of extravagant electronic means... an audio-visual feast that balances hipster zen with the seriousness of Bach and Wagner."
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Another Starkland composer, Pamela Z, is a featured composer/performer at the Intermedia Festival. She makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, and gesture activated MIDI controllers. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. Starkland has released Z's only solo CD, "A Delay is Better," which The Wire called:
"Sheer genius from the most gifted and enterprising vocalist/composer/audio artist in the US since the heyday of Joan La Barbara and Meredith Monk... The effects are stunning... Essential."
Maggi Payne is another Starkland composer whose music will be heard at this year's festival. Her electroacoustic works often incorporate visuals, including videos she creates using images ranging from nature to the abstract and dancers outfitted with electroluminescent wire. Payne is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.

Her surround-sound work White Turbulence 2000 was commissioned by Starkland for its Immersion DVD-Audio, now recognized as the first commissioned hi-res surround recording. Praised in over 2 dozen publications, Immersion was described by Sound & Vision as, "Not only a fascinating array of musical innovation but a persuasive exploration of the possibilities of surround sound."

The Intermedia Festival will present ten media-rich concerts. Featured artists also include New York composer and computer artist Luke Dubois, singer Bora Yoon, eco-acoustic composer Matthew Burtner, Indianapolis-based electro-acoustic ensemble Big Robot, and Dance Kaleidoscope.

Other performers include The Washington DC-based Floating Lab Collective, Florida-based Mobile Performance Group, Occupation Forces Project from New York, and Portuguese computer-artist Andre Rangel.

Visit Starkland.