The 1998-1999 season features appearances by such outstanding and innovative composers/performers/programmers as Mari Kimura, Pamela Z, Sylvia Pengilly, Pedro Eustache, Joan La Barbara, and others.
New York-based musician Mari Kimura is a Juilliard-trained virtuoso violinist who composes her own music and writes her own computer programs for interactive computer-mediated performance. She has developed innovative techniques for both acoustic violin and Zeta electronic violin, and is internationally recognized as a unique and exciting improviser and performer of new works.
San Francisco-based composer/performer Pamela Z works with voice, electronic processors, samplers, and a novel control device called The BodySynth to create layered works using vocal styles ranging from experimental extended techniques to operatic bel canto.
A computer installation with animations by Daniel Beck, sculptural design by UCI professor Douglas-Scott Goheen, and interactive MSP audio processing by Christopher Dobrian. Sounds "heard" by the computer are used to cause changes in the animation and are processed and incorporated into a musical fabric of sounds from the immediate environment.
Sylvia Pengilly retired from her job as a professor of music, and started a daring second career as a computer musician, programmer, dancer, and experimental video artist. Her performances include dance, live computer video processing, and computer-mediated synthesizer music, producing beautiful and hypnotic sonic and visual theater.
Christopher Dobrian, whose work focuses on the development of "artificially intelligent" systems for composition, improvisation, and cognition, speaks on how to write computer programs that compose.
A concert/demonstration of the latest MIDI wind controller and related synthesizers from the Yamaha Corporation of America, by Ross Costa.
Pedro Eustache is not only a virtuoso flutist, but is a master of a great many wind instruments from around the world, and incorporates computerized instruments and realtime signal processing in his performances. He will present a workshop on music for wind instruments and realtime interactive computer processing, and perform a concert of unique compositions.
Students of computer music composition present their latest works for computer, synthesizers, and live performance.
Synthesizer restorer Kevin Lightner speaks on the resurgence of interest in the classic synths of the '60s and '70s.
Joan La Barbara, is a singer renowned for her extended vocal techniques and performance of avant garde works by contemporary composers. In a concert of her own compositons she sings with collaged layers of extended vocals and instruments, filtered through electronic processing. In an afternoon lecture she will discuss her composition techniques, collaborations with other composers, and some of her film work, including creating vocals for the alien newborn in "Alien Resurrection" and the layered vocal solos in John Frizzell's musical score for "I Still Know What You did Last Summer".
Richard Moe has been the project leader of several of the most popular interactive entertainment CD-ROMs produced by one of the leading companies in the field, Humongous, Inc.. He will speak on the challenges of designing and implementing a complex interactive software project, and strategies for managing team development of such a project.
A concert of new compositions and improvisations for electronically processed instruments, synthesizers, and interactive computer music, performed by the new UCI student ensemble for electronic music performance.