Katy Abbott, born in 1971, is an Australian composer who writes for a variety of ensembles specializing in vocal and chamber music. Recent highlights include being Composer-in-Residence for Sydney Youth Orchestra 2003, performances by the Song Company, Zephyr String Quartet, The Finders Quartet, Melbourne Chamber Choir and Sydney based AARK Ensemble. Katy is currently completing a Ph.D. through the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Brenton Broadstock. “We already know you have a bum-crack - display is unnecessary.” Text by Kaz Cooke. We Already Know is a short piece; part of a collection of humorous works entitled Words of Wisdom (2004).
For more information please visit www.katyabbott.com
Wave
Aaron Acosta
Aaron Acosta is a graduate from the College of Santa Fe with a BA in Sound Design in Media in 2002. This is a self-designed major that consists of studies in Theatre, Film, and Music. He loves designing soundscapes for theatre and film. He has many skills as far as theatre and film production, but what he likes the most is sound. Sound helps us interpret the world in a unique way with frequency, amplitude and time: he chose to explore these realms. He is involved with electro-acoustic composition as well as more traditional composition. “Wave is an electro acoustic composition created with conventional synthesis and sound FX. It captures the essence of the surf for me.” - Aaron Acosta
For more information visit his home page at http://www.home.earthlink.net/~benkei/
Swarm
Glenn Adams
Glenn Adams began his musical life at age 10, with trumpet lessons. By age 15 he was writing big band charts for his high school jazz band. After high school graduation he attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. His undergraduate work also includes courses at Manhattan School of Music, California Institute of the Arts, Cal State Northridge and Cal State Los Angeles, obtaining a B.A. in Composition. Adams was signed to Columbia Records with the prog-rock band Daddy Warbucks, was a founding member of the electronic space-rock duo Atlas, and is currently a solo artist recording under the name of Galactic Anthems. The first Galactic Anthems CD was released in 2002, and Abstract Circuitry, his second CD, was released in 2004. An album of earlier work, Before The Drone, was also released in 2004. Swarm was conceived in the mid-1980’s as part of his continuing exploration of MIDI sequencing and interesting MIDI software for the Mac. The program used for Swarm is Music Mouse, by Laurie Spiegel. Adams recorded several pieces with Music Mouse, but Swarm always struck him as the most evocative and organic. If you hear sounds like this outside, don’t open your door!
For more information please visit www.galacticanthems.com
Mongooses
Renee T. Arakaki
Renee Arakaki was born in California and raised in Hawaii. A self-taught
musician, she performed professionally as a guitarist and rock singer for 15
years before pursuing formal music study. Quick and mischievous, Mongooses
is ... as a mongoose is.
Petit homage à Varèse
John L. Baker
John L. Baker composes on paper and with and for computer-controlled synthesizers. He studied math and computers at college and grad school in the 1950¹s and ¹60s, music theory and composition in the 1990s as a non-degree student at Washington State University. He now lives in Vancouver, Canada and serves as treasurer for Vancouver Pro Musica, an association of composers. Petit hommage à Varèse varies the F-Sharp G A-flat motif, which recurs in Varèse¹s Poème electronique (1958). Here the motif is compressed from which the semitones to sixth-tones and presented in an ascending sequence with varied attacks and with timbres varying subtly and continuously. Dynamics gradually, then more steeply, increase until a storm breaks. The sound sources are two original patches for the Subtractor software synthesizer component of Reason 2.5 (Propellerhead) controlled by Digital Performer 4 sequencer with eVerb plug-in (Mark of the Unicorn).
Caprice
John G. Bilotta
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, John G. Bilotta studied composition at the Music & Arts Institute in San Francisco with Frederic Saunders. His works have been performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Aria de Capo was a finalist in a New York City Opera competition. He received first prize for the chamber work Notes from a Diary as well as the 2000 Digital Media Arts Award for The Unicorn in the Garden, a work for actors and orchestra. More recent compositions include the Divertimento for Orchestra, the Madison Sketchbook for piano, and Gen’ei no Mai for flute clarinet. A very accessible twelve-tone work, the Caprice for flute and piano was written in late 2003 to serve as a virtuoso encore for a flautist. Brimming with syncopations and offbeat musical gestures, the piece begins with an explosion of energy and continues that way to the end.
For more information visit Bilotta's website at http://www.johnbilotta.com
Intensification
Colin Black
Colin Black is a composer and sound artist whose works have received international recognition. He composes for films, radio arts programs, dance and theater works, installations and multimedia projects. In 2003 Black won the prestigious International Prix Italia Award in the category Best Music Radio-Composed Work for his major work, “The Ears Outside My Listening Room” which he composed and produced. Colin Black’s works have been selected for performance at events including “Zeppelin 2004-Festival de Arte Sonoro” and “En Red 0 2000” music festival Barcelona, Spain, the Festival Synthese Bourges France, Rencontres Musiques Nouvelles, Lunel (France), The Literature Sound Barrier 2002 in Wien, Austria, Sydney University’s Live Wires Concerts ’97, ’98, Melbourne’s Extatic Concert for the Next Wave Festival ’98 and Wellington’s Extatic Concert ’99. Intensification by Colin Black explores the micro polyphonic textures produced by a single treated Bouzouki sample. It challenges our idea of aural perception and asks the listener to actively become aware of their comprehension threshold. It looks at how we focus on a sound mass and how we react to sonic overload, emotionally, physically, and mentally.
Hyperbola
Stephen Blumberg
Born in New York City in 1962, Stephen Blumberg has won numerous awards including a BMI Student Composer Award, UC Berkeley’s George Ladd Prize, and most recently the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dr. Blumberg is Assistant Professor at California State University, Sacramento, where he teaches composition and music theory. Hyperbola for piano solo is one of a series of short two-part fantasies composed in July 2004.
Six Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano
Rolf J. Boon
Rolf is an associate Composer of the Canadian Music Center and Member of the
Canadian League of Composers as well as an instructor in music theory, new
media, and orchestration. His research interests include music technology,
sound architecture, creativity and emerging curricula in fine arts
education. His compositions have received national and international
exposure and have been broadcast on CKUA radio, and CBC television/radio.
Six Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano presents six different musical
mind-sets. The work is based on elements of serial technique and progresses
through a series of musical gestures that explore an intimate conversational
relationship between clarinet and piano. With a wide dynamic range, and
diversity in articulation and rhythm, the piece depicts six brief dialogues
in their unstructured natural flow.
Middle East Peace Talks
Benjamin Boone & James Miley
A composer and jazz saxophonist, Boone’s compositions have received numerous national/international awards, appear on thirteen CD’s by leading performers and received performances in venues from Carnegie Hall to Bavarian National Radio. Boone is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University, Fresno. Co-composer James Miley, Recipient of the IAJE 2004 Gil Evans fellowship is currently an Assistant Professor of music at Cuesta College. Both Appear on the Electronic Music Foundation Compilation CD, State of the Union 2001. “In one of the world’s most volatile regions, negotiators blow their chance at peace by resorting to meaningless babble.” - Benjamin Boone & James Miley
Ancient Connections
Benedikt Brydern
Benedikt Brydern is a violinist and composer based in Santa Monica,
California. He composes for the concert stage as well for feature films.
He won the William Lincer Award for his string trio "Tales from the Bavarian
Woods" and the Marmor Foundation Award sponsored by Stanford University in
2002 for his piano trio and 2003 for his wind quintet. In 2004 the Composer'
s Symposium at the Bach Festival in Eugene, Oregon commissioned a string
trio in honor of George Crumb's 75th birthday.
As a guest lecturer he was invited to do various presentations about the
film scoring process and musical challenges in Hollywood at universities and
colleges within and outside of the United States.
For more information go to www.ConSordino.com .
Excerpt from ‘tseebii’
Raven Chacon
Originally from the Navajo reservation, Raven Chacon is one of the few avant-garde and experimental native composers working in the world today. Chacon has recorded many works for classical and electronic instruments and ensembles and has had many performances and exhibits of his work across the southwest. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he has regular performances of his work. This Excerpt from ‘tseebii’ is taken from a recording of a live performance of a theremin-guitar. Theremin components are attached to an electric guitar to generate an electromagnetic field. The dual signals are processed in real-time through high pass and low pass filters.
Sodium
Ray Cole
Ray Cole is a San Francisco based new music composer and multimedia producer. As a composer, he has studied privately with San Diego composer Igor Korneitchouk. His homage to Colon Nancarrow, Canon for Conlon for computer-driven piano, was selected by the Stuart Commission to be broadcast on the Terry Allen “Music Tree”, part of the Stuart Collection of modern art installed on the campus of the University of California San Diego. His Multiplex: Etude for Clarinet Solo is published by Drake Mabry Publishing. He is currently pursuing a masters degree at San Francisco State University. "Sodium was recorded with the kind assistance of David Helping at DHM Music Design and Igor Korneitchouk at The Studio At The Post. It is a short piece for solo piano that I wrote back in 1991. Unlike a lot of music I was writing then, I still like this piece, especially since it is one of the few I have written that is simple enough so that I can play it myself.” - Ray Cole
J. Andrew Creaghan, born in Canada in 1953, is an award winning composer, performer, teacher and writer who has been a leader in the field of music for his generation. His recordings have received international acclaim and his concerts have taken him across Canada and abroad. His many compositions have been commissioned, performed and recorded around the world, and span the known genres of music including symphonies, solo and chamber works, choral music and film scores. In 1996 Mr. Creaghan was named an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Center and is also a member of the Canadian League of Composers.
Angry at Something
Emma Lou Diemer
A native of Kansas City, Missouri (b. November 24, 1927), Emma Lou Diemer received her degrees in music composition from the Yale School of Music (BM, MM) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.).
She studied further in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at Tanglewood. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she taught composition and theory from 1971 to 1991. She has been composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony, and is organist emerita at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara. Angry at Something is from a collection of intermediate piano pieces written for the FJH Music Company for publication in 2004. The collection is titled Reaching Out. The recording is from my Sibelius files using Kontakt Player Gold.
For more information visit Emma Lou Diemer's personal page on Vox Novus.
Hok-sip
Nicholas Duggan
Nicholas graduated from The City of Leeds College of Music in 1981, with a distinction for performance and a Memorial prize for composition, before taking up teaching posts overseas in Spain, Kenya, and Thailand. Between 1991-1994 he worked as a musician in the British Army while studying for his Master’s degree. On leaving the Army, Nicholas studied for his PGCE in Music before taking up employment overseas, again in education (Kuwait/ S. Korea) before returning to Thailand as Assistant Principal at an International School.
Nicholas is presently working towards his Ph.D in Musical Composition at The University of Wales. The structure of Hok-sip is derived from language. Many languages (including Thai, as the title) make up the numeral 60 by combining the words for 6 and 10. This piece consists of 10 chords lasting 6 seconds each. The pulse in the music is representative of the Human Heart- a poignant reminder of the passing of time and the fragility of life. The Piano is introduced as a way to enrich and add movement to the chords.
Dos Aguas
Marcelo Fernandez
Marcelo Fernandez studied composition and guitar at the Conservatorio
Alberto Ginastera in Moron, Argentina. From 1995 on he has been part of a
guitar duet (Duo Fernandez - Russo)that has carried out many concerts in
diverse parts of Argentina, interpreting original compositions as well as
masters of the 20th century. Dos Aguas for guitar tries to summarize the
idea of two opposed elements that try to cohabitate simultaneously. Two
tonalities, two modalities that from the beginning try to sustain a
dialogue. In the central section the separation becomes evident for the
appearance of a new element: the polymetric. Has the dialogue been achieved?
The listeners can decide.
60x60 project
Nobuyukji Furukawa
“I began the piano at six years old. I control voice and violin by the pitch and create special sound.” - Nobuyukji Furukawa
Fugitive
Larry Gaab
Composing contemporary music in his studio in Chico, California, the artist
produces, engineers, and masters the music collections. The work Fugitive
was chosen from 7 other pieces especially composed for the Vox Novus 60x60
project. The music is a fugitive piece or ephemeral composition representing
energy in bursts of tone and pitch, through its short life. He currently
had 4 new releases available. For more information please visit his Web
page at http://shocking.com/~garbanzo.
The Digested Illusion
Yuko Hamura
I was born and raised in Tokyo Japan. Currently I am independently studying Psychology. I also write and compose contempory music.
I created " The Digested Illusion" initially by composing all of the individual data sounds entirely by improvisation.
Afterwards I input all of the sound data into my digital recording studio to arrange in into something much more appealing and recognizable to the listener.
This music is mainly composed from the use of toy like musical instruments, the nocternal cries of insects, an intentionally mistuned violin, and a recorder sound created using my digital recording studio equipment along with a digital sound processor.
"A momentary life.......".
That is what I want say, in this little peace of my work.
Salvation is the Lord’s
Jason Heald
Dr. Jason Heald is an active conductor, performer, clinician, and college professor in the Pacific Northwest. Heald holds a Ph.D. in composition form the University of Oregon and is Chairman of the Fine and Performing arts Department at Umpqua Community College. Heald is a prolific composer with works published by UNC Jazz Press, Northwestborough Music, and Call of the Wild Publishing. Dr Heald was the winner of the Grand Prize at the 2004 Cascadian Choral Composition Competition and was recently selected as a finalist in the Ithaca College Choral Composition Competition. He also has been the recipient of several ASCAP Awards.
The text is taken form the Breastplate of St. Patrick. The translation is as follows:
Salvation is the Lord’s.
Salvation is the Lord’s.
Salvation is the Christ’s.
May Thy Salvation, O lord, be always with us.
Fanfare for a puppet theater
Duane Heller
Duane Heller’s compositions have received awards from the Florilege Vocal de Tours- France, the International Trombone Association, the Barlow Foundation International Composition Contest, Victor Herbert-ASCAP, Percussive Arts Society, Baroque Choral Guild, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. Heller has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Paul Stock Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Humboldt State University. Fanfare for a puppet theater is a small fanfare for brass quintet, with the original intention to play it very slowly, record it, and play the tape back at twice the speed. It has not yet been performed with live instruments to try out the effect, so the composer is presenting a basic synth version.
Sunrise I
Susan Hurley
Originally from New England, Hurley (MM, Eastman; DM, Indiana University)
currently composes and teaches in Los Angeles. Discography: song cycle Wind
River Songs on Capstone Records (CRI), choral work Vermont Poems on
Finnadar. Selected film scores: Whiskey Riddles, Here Dies Another Day,
Soapy Soapy Samba. Music for audio book Alice in Wonderland
( www.kcrw.org/alice), yoga videos ( www.terra-ent.com), meditations
( www.mindrest.com), theatre: Trojan Women, The Tempest. Premiering: chamber
opera, Anaïs; anti-noise pollution project Soft Sounds. Hurley¹s 60X60
piece, Sunrise, is excerpted from Soft Sounds and is performed by the
composer on a small, home-built clavichord with inexact tuning capabilities.
Unaltered and unprocessed, it includes natural extraneous noises and retains
the intimate quality of the one-on-one instrument. [N.B., do not play at
high volume---this can and should be barely audible!]
Number 59
Marc Hyland & Silvio Palmieri
Marc Hyland is a composer, “apprentice-poet,” and translator. Musical education at the Conservatoire de musique du Quebec a Montreal, from 1981 to 1988, notably with Gilles Tremblay (composition and analysis), Clermont Pepin (counterpoint, orchestration), and Yves Daoust (electro acoustic music). Commissions from ensembles such as the Quatuor Molinari, the Societe de musique contemporaine du Quebec, the Ensemble contemporain de Montreal, and the Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay Lac-St-Jean. Catalogue essentially comprises works for voice and for small chamber ensembles, which have received performances and broadcasts here and abroad. He is also an assistant professor at UQAM (musical analysis) and at the Conservatoire (Music since 1945).
Silvio Palmieri received his musical studies at the Montreal music Conservatory where he studied composition and analysis with composer Gilles Tremblay; orchestration with Clermont Pépin, electroacoustic with Yves Daoust...His works have been performed by the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal; Lorraine Vaillancourt; the SMCQ Ensemble; Arraymusic; pianists André Ristic and the pianist Angela Tosheva in Montréal, Toronto, Paris, Roma , Milano... His repertoire includes the opera Elia; two important cycles, the first, Duchamp unfinished, and the second, Pasolini. He has written many preludes for piano ; Poesiole Notturnebased on three sonnets by Pier Paolo Pasolini: these works are part of a cycle devoted to the poetic and multi-formal world of the great Italian poet Pier Paolo Pasolini . Symphonie portuaire for boat horns, train whistles, and the Montréal Notre-Dame Basilica’s chuch bells.
For more information please visit his page on Center for Canadian Music (CMC)
The Wind of Coins
Cha-Hyuk
Cha-Hyuk was born in Korea and studied composition with Don-oung Lee at Han-Yang University in Seoul. He graduated the university in 2003 and he is studying Computer Music at the Han-Yang Graduate School. Also he is working as an assistant of Han-Yang Computer music Studio. His Acoustic music for piano trio was performed at Se-Jong Arts center in Seoul (March 2003) and he won 2nd prize of Tape Music contest in the 7th Computer Music contest in Korea (March 2004). The Wind of Coins represents sounds of wind using the varied timbres including sounds of coins and dynamic rhythms. The sounds are car, coins or something that we can achieve easily around and recorded by DAT. The sounds were recreated by Soundforge, Peak, Csound, Cmask, Audioscript, sonic Worx and other DSP programs. Finally the music was edited on Protools and bounced as a CD.
TFC Improv #1
Daniel Iglesia
Daniel Iglesia recently graduated magna cum laude from Princeton’s music department, studying both electronic and acoustic composition. Starting in the fall, he will be a Faculty Fellow at Columbia University, working in both the music department and the Computer Music Center. He studied primarily with Dan Trueman and Steve Mackey, additional work with Perry Cook, Barbara White, and Paul Lansky. TFC Improv #1 is from an extended improvisational set from a performance at the Terrace Club. A Max/ MSP patch of my creation juggles several ever-changing samples, and puts them through various processes and transformations (stretching, filtering, etc….). The over-all effect is surprisingly tranquil, floating between concrete samples and auditory abstraction. This clip presents only a small slice of the slowly-changing landscape.
Dididahdit
Solange Kershaw
Solange Kershaw is a composer based in Australia. Among others, she has produced many works for radio, theatre and sound art installations. Dididahdit is created for 60x60, repeating the word s-I-x-t-y in mores code and has a little fun building itself around the emerging pattern.
Summerholic
So-young Kim
It’s an honor for me to participate in the 60 x 60 competition. I am a 32-year-old woman. I majored in architecture in my bachelor studies, but am currently enrolled as a graduate school student majoring in modern composition in Korea. The genres of modern composition that I pursue are electric jazz, fusion jazz, avant-garde music and minimalism. I hope my music world will be verified in the wide world through this project.
1. Theme: the emotion when I get a good feeling from the heat of summer. I was enraptured by summer and I enjoy it fully; “Summerholic.”
2. Focus: This music is brief and simple, but it has ‘constructive beauty.’
3. Used Techniques: she started drawing diagrams here…
Monorail
Meri von KleinSmid
Meri von KleinSmid has created sound art an experimental music with a variety of techniques and sources. Her work has included collage and computer-manipulated electronic compositions, which others have described as stunning, uniquely expansive, sparse and mesmerizing delicious. Monorail, created form purely electronic sources was inspired buy an evening journey using this mode of transportation.
The Kiss, for 2 violins, paper, and lips
Igor Korneitchouk
Korneitchouk is a professor at San Diego’s Mesa College where he teaches
composition, music technology, and modern music history. Korneitchouk’s
music is available on several recordings released by Old King Cole
Productions, MMC, Aucourant Recordings and ERM. American Record Guide has
called his music “cutting edge.” He plays violin for the La Jolla Symphony
and is the founding member of the performance group Touch Me HearR, exploring
the boundaries between music, art, drama, technology, performance and
audience participation. He recently finished an American Composers Forum
commission for piano solo to be double premiered in Minneapolis and San
Diego. The kiss is for two performers playing violins, paper and their
lips. If John Cage can prepare the piano, why can’t I prepare violins? The
difference is that there are only 4 strings per violin, so the preparation
(e.g. a piece of paper) must be mutable.” - Igor Korneitchouk
For more information please visit his home page at http://la.znet.com/~ikorn/
Iche hab’ nur eine Minute
Mark Langford
“I majored in Piano in the Executant Music Course at Wellington Polytechnic and switched to a major in composition at Victoria University where I completed my Honors degree. I later studied digital and analogue music at the Instituut voor sonologie in Utrecht. I have received commissions from Otago University and the Queen Elizabeth the II Arts council. My works have been published with University Commissions, Waiteata Press and American Gamelan Institute. My works have been performed in New Zealand, Germany, U.S.A., the Netherlands, Taiwan and Japan.I have recently completed a diploma in Astronomy and I am an organist with the Christian Scientist Church in Wellington. Ich hab’ nur eine Minute was written for the Neue Musik in Delmenhorst concert. The request was for works no longer than one minute in duration. I immediately thought of using my less favorite Chopin work- Minute Waltz- as a basis fro this piece. After cannibalizing the bare essentials of Chopin’s piece, I set about my own.” - Mark Langford
Ostinato
Daniel Luzko
Daniel Luzko is the first prize winner of the “Villa de Madrid” Composition Prize. A native to Paraguay, he has been commissioned to write Flute Concert by the California Artists. The work has been performed numerous times in California, Indiana, and Michigan. He studied composition with Marian Borkowski in Poland and Edward Mattila in the United States. Ostinato is a piece built with patterns creating polyrhythms and accent shifting from left to right hands. It is a piece that helps develop independence in both hands.
Into The Last Furlong
David Marguiles
Into The Last Furlong is a section from a piece entitled Horseraces.
In Horseraces, a perpetual three against two rhythm combined with
changing harmonies attempt to generate the excitement of a horserace from a
horse’s perspective. This section is toward the end of the piece and hence
the title.
Intersticios
Luis Menacho
Luis Menacho was born in La Plata (Pcia. de Buenos Aires, Argentina) in 1973. He studied piano with Carolina Martìnez, Santiago Santero and Haydèe Schvartz, he take a degree in Harmony, counterpoint and musical morphology at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) and the Licenciate of composition (UNLP) with Mariano Etkin and Mario Allende (composition), Sergio Barderrabano (harmony and musical morphology) and Carlos Marstropietro (instrumentation and orchestration).He has composed music for soloist, chamber ensembles, choral and orchestra, and received numerous commissions. He composed music for “Señuelos en la oscuridad” for the company of dance-theatre “La terna” conducted by Pacha Brandolino premiered in 2004. He have participate in the proyect “International tango collection” a group of tango pieces for solo piano commissioned by the argentine pianist Haydèe Schvartz and premiered in the Goethe institute (Buenos Aires) and The Edimburgh Festival (2004).He has received mentions for his pieces from the Tribuna de mùsica argentina (TRIMARG) and the Centro de estudios avanzados en mùsica contemporànea (CEAMC) and the choral Ars subtilis Composition competition 2004.He teaches musical analysis and music history in Arts Schools and Composition at the UNLP.
“I`ll always be a word man/ better than a bird man” is a piece for solo high voice amplified composed during 2002. The work are constructed with different possibilities to use the voice around six symmetric micro pieces.
1- intermitencias
2- Kleine misuk (for Kurt Weill)
3- La vieja atraviesa el monte
4- Sin aliento (for Jean-Luc Godard)
5- Tonalidades
6- Intersticios
The title are taken from the music/poetry Jim Morrison “an American prayer” and it is dedicated to him.This work was premiered in September 2003 at the Auditorio de la Agremiaciòn mèdica platense by tenor Alfredo Soubielle and it is the first piece of the first solo pieces series.
W.B.Q.
Julia Norton
Julia moved from London to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000 where she has been composing vocal music for live theatre and solo voices. She draws her inspiration from the emotional heart of a subject and uses extended vocal technique to seek out the edges of discomfort, irreverence and harmony. She found she had to somewhat limit her voice as a singer of folk, rock or even jazz, but in using her voice as a compositional instrument she has found the vocal freedom she always craved. Speaking of 'WBQ' "I am a musician, composer and mother of a toddler. From my son I find inspiration, joy harmony, and purpose in my work. At the same time there is a sense of frustration because I feel like I never have enough time to simply sit and write. I chose to reflect the different desires of my son and I by having us singing in different time signatures. The frustration is reflected in the highest pitched vocal line. My feeling is however that the overall emotion of the piece is one of harmony and honest expression". - Julia Norton
For more information visit her website at www.julianorton.com.
:60 Fizz
Maggi Payne
Payne is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, CA, where she teaches recording engineering, composition and electronic music. She also freelances as a recording engineer and editor. Her works are available on Starkland, Lovely Music, Music and Arts, Centaur, MMC, CRI, Digital Narcis, Frog Peak, Asphodel, and/OAR, and Mills College labels. Developing a miniature of this length is always a challenge for me as my works usually evolve slowly, but I love this challenge. In this piece the low frequency pulse was generated by feedback in my system due to a broken pot (now repaired); the other two sounds were a faint sound created by a toilet tank disequilibrium state processed with granular synthesis, and unprocessed "fizz." - Maggi Payne
For more information visit Payne's personal page on Vox Novus.
Caja de Recuerdos
Alexis Perepelycia
Born April 16th, 1979 in San Nicolas, Argentina. Bachelor Degree in Music from the National University of Rosario. Studies Composition under Prof. Dante Grela (NUR). Participated in lectures and workshops by composers Ricardo Perez Miro, Osvaldo Budon, Marcelo Toledo, Jorge Molina, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Carmelo Saitta. Founder of ‘knob,’ and co-founder of ‘hiss…’, a multimedia duo. His music has been performed in Argentina and Europe. His work ‘Lo que quedo solo en tu mente’ (‘Which remains just in your mind) (live electronics, experimental video, words, acting) was premiered at ‘Rosario Arte Digital: Muestra O,’ in August 2003. The work title Caja de Recuerdos (‘Box of Memories’) was given actually by the materials, which I had worked with on this project. I found a couple of sounds of previous compositions and others that had never been used before but kept them as a back up. When I started toying with these archives of sounds I remembered when I was working on previous music, and the first sound manipulations I’ve made. It’s a tiny piece with a lot of energy self-contained and static at the same time. Voices turning around, click and noises flying above a deep bass.
A Glimpse Beyond the Zero
Steven Ricks
Steven L. Ricks , born in 1969, holds degrees in composition from the Brigham Young University (B.M.), the University of Illinois (M.M.), and the University of Utah (Ph.D.). He received a Certificate of Advanced Musical Studies from King’s College London in 2000 for his work with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the University of Utah. Mr. Ricks received first prize in the 1999 SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Competition and he has received two Barlow Endowment Commissions. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University where he directs the Electronic Music Studio and the Group for New Music. A Glimpse Beyond the Zero is a snapshot of the primary musical gestures in one of my current works-in-progress for violin and electronics. The phrase “beyond the zero” comes from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, and is meant to suggest the idea of crossing thresholds into spiritual or supernatural realms.
For more information visit www.stevericks.com
Od Soluna do Tetovo
Robert Sazdov
Robert Sazdov is a composer/performer multimedia artist/producer/re-mixer/lecturer currently based in Sydney. He has been composing multimedia and/or multi-channel neo-traditional Macedonian works since 1991. His works have been performed throughout Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S and has been invited to perform in China. His recording project Maxim has been released through out Europe and Canada and received national radio play in Australia. Robert has collaborated with many internationally acclaimed artists/ensembles including DD Synthesis, The Dragan Dautovski Trio, The Bisserovi Sisters and the ‘Queen of Macedonian Song’ Vaska Ilieva. He has received critical acclaim for his recent neo-traditional Macedonian compositions/performances from respected Macedonian commentator and artist Vasil Hadzimanov.
Od Soluna do Tetovo is an adaptation of a traditional Macedonian song, ‘The Moon Shorn from Solun to Tetovo’ dating from the mid-19th Century. The song was interpreted by the late Vaska Ilieva as taken from a recording session in Sydney, Australia in 1992 whilst on her Australian tour. This composition is essentially a ‘road trip’ of the ethnographic size of Macedonia as viewed by the Macedonian consciousness in the 19th Century. The composition utilizes FFT based audio processing and manipulations found in the program MetaSynth and AudioSculpt. The resultant audio was composed and mixed in Digital Performer.
A Minute of Madness #8
John Schappert
John Schappert's formal education and background is in music, the computer
sciences and systems engineering. He has been a musician, chef, computer
operator, database and systems administrator, systems engineer,
house-husband, caretaker, and home-school teacher. His life-long passions
for electronic and Electro-acoustic music, Christian spirituality, art, and
systems engineering come together to create a fusion of unique sound design
and construction as inspiration, technology, and opportunity present
themselves. He believes that he owes whatever talents and opportunities he
may have to God and to his wife, and he offers to them his eternal gratitude
for the endless patience and inspiration they have offered to him over the
years.
The Minutes of Madness series is generally a collection of short works
that have been developed as experiments for larger and longer
electro-acoustic works. Each individual track represents a separate
experiment in composition and sound.
Alex Shapiro born in New York City in 1962, is one of southern California’s best known chamber music composers. Her award-winning works are heard weekly in concerts across the U.S. and abroad, and when she’s not exploring the tide pools, she frequently updates her website with concert information and audio clips of each of her pieces. Plasma bumps and oozes across the listener’s ears from examples taken from Alex’s larger flute quartet, Bioplasm, and is performed by the Los Angeles Flute Quartet.
For more information please visit www.alexshapiro.org
Concerto 1 in B flat Major
Donald Shearer
“I consider myself a naïve composer. I hope listeners will connect with at least some part of the emotion in my work that they find truthful and authentic. The one minute Concerto 1 in B flat Major is a new work for piano and orchestra.” - Don Shearer
60 for Marimba
Max Simoncic
60 for Marimba Max Simoncic Max Simoncic, Professor theory/ composition, San
Joaquin Delta College, Stockton, California, from 1970 to the present. His
recent premiere, Petit Cirque, recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic, will be
featured on ERM Media's, Masterworks of the New Era CD (Vol. 5). Other
commissions include Stockton Symphony, Bay Brass, San Francisco Saxophone
Quartet, Norwalk Youth Symphony and numerous other ensembles. He is a
founding member of California Composer's Consortium (CCC) which premieres
works from new and established composers throughout California. The current
project, 60 for Marimba, a work from a collection of pieces proves
physically challenging for the performer and ideal for the listener in terms
of length, especially for unaccompanied marimba. I enjoyed the brevity of
the piece and exploring the intricacies of the instrument.
For more information visit: www.max.stocktonmerchants.com .
Poland is not yet lost
Paul Steenhuisen
Paul Steenhuisen (born 1965) was raised in Vancouver by parents from The Netherlands and Curaçao. The confluence of his heritage and upbringing in North American culture has informed both his education and musical output. In addition to earning his doctoral degree from the University of British Columbia under the direction of Keith Hamel, Paul Steenhuisen studied with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of Music in the Hague, privately with Michael Finnissy in London, England, and with Tristan Murail at IRCAM (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris). Between 1998 and 2000, Paul Steenhuisen was composer in residence with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and in 2003, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Alberta. Poland is not yet lost deploys sonic iconography based on the paintings of Anselm Kiefer.
Return to Misty Magic Land
Allen Strange
Involved with music technology since the middle 1960's, Allen Strange has remained active as a composer, performer, author, and educator. His 1972 text, Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls, appeared as the first comprehensive work on analog music synthesis. With his wife, Patricia, he co- founded two electronic music ensembles: BIOME, a pioneering live-electronic music ensemble with Frank McCarty in 1969 and The Electric Weasel Ensemble with synthesizer designer Donald Buchla in 1976. He is Professor of Music Composition Emeritus from San Jose State University in California and currently lives on an island in the Puget Sound. Return to Misty Magic Land is 1 of 6 works in the collection Brief Visits to Imaginary Places. Misty Magic Land is the home of the Promethea characters in writer Alan Moore's graphic novels of the same name. This music is made of sounds of wind driven stretched wires used as primary sources for the composer's extended work, Misty Magic Land for instruments and recorded sounds.
For more information please visit his page on Vox Novus
The fragment of memory
Mayu Tsuzaka
“I am making the installation, and the performance by ‘Equipment which extracts girl’s element.’ The fragment of memory of various accidents of me and the world.” - Mayu Tsuzaka
Stick
John Villec
John Villec is an instructor of music and recording technology at Sacramento College. He received his Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from California State University, Sacramento and has complete post graduate study at the University of Oregon. He has studied composition with Jeffrey Stolet, Robert Kyr, David Crumb, Stephen Blumberg, and Leo Eylar. He is a frequent collaborator with visual artists Charles Aitken and Brian Clark. His media compositions have been performed at music film and multimedia festival worldwide. He is a member of SEAMUS, EMF and has received grants from ASCAP.
Velocity
Jen Wang
Jen Wang Recently received her Masters of Music in Composition from the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Glenda in Paris
Chris Ward
Chris Ward resides in Portland, Oregon. His day job is working on electronic design for renewable energy systems. His late-afternoon job is a concoction of music composition and of practicing bass, guitar, vocal and drums. Most of his previous work appears on the internet (or on a Sharpie inked CD-R) as "Errol Morris Candidate", but some of it inks as "Merle" or "Stygggurkan."
The introduction of Glenda in Paris is an answering machine message from the apartment of a contemporary flutist who lived on Rue des Bouchiers in Strasbourg, France in 2000. Le Beep is used as the framework for this piece. The backbone of this work was created using a modern soft-synth in a rather unorthodox manner. By overtaxing its host PC, audio glitches appeared and were controlled to create a uniquely hitched texture. This process is high unstable and difficult to recreate, as the hitching can rapidly digress to the blue-screen. It was a mode that was fortunate to be kept alive for 60 seconds. The track adjacent to the hitched track uses a more traditional skip method to get complimentary textures. With the single exception of the phone message intro, all the material, including the skip track, was sourced by the composer. Source credit for the intro is given to Violaine Contreras and Anna-Frida Abrahamsson.
one-minute invention for 8 virtual guitars
Dwight Winenger
Dwight Winenger was born in 1936. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree at Indiana State University. He was worked as a motion picture projectionist and as a microfilmist. He was trombonist in the 451st Army Band and graduate assistant in the Art Department at ISU. He has taught art, stagecraft, band, chorus, Spanish, and English in the public schools of Indiana, Colorado, Montana, and California. He received an award as Associate Conductor of the Chamber Symphony of the Desert. He has worked as studio artist for Creative Designs Advertising Art Studio and for Palm Springs Life Magazine. His awards include Broadcast Music, Inc. Awards, and he is listed in some twenty biographical publications. Winenger is CEO Emeritus of The Living Music Foundation, Inc., as well as webmaster. One-minute invention for 8 virtual guitars For more information please visit his page on Vox Novus
Matrix Minute
RD Wraggert
RD Wraggett was educated at the Royal Conservatory of Music (Composition Scholarship) and the University of Toronto. A commissioned composer of music for concert, stage and multimedia his music has been performed, broadcast and received prizes both nationally an internationally. He currently teaches theory/composition and runs the electroacoustic music at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. Matrix Minute is a segment of a larger piece that uses a complex, self-generating modulation matrix. This interdependent network of connections and influences is an analogue of the phenomenal world and the societies found within.
56 Seconds of Creep
Katrina Wreede
Katrina Wreede has been a professional symphony musician, a jazz violist, a member of the Turtle Island String Quartet, a concert soloist, a belly dancer, a police finger printer a player of Tango Nuevo, Persian, Jewish, and Central European music and a composer for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestras, film and dance. 56 Seconds of Creep is written for viola and G-4 Macintosh, confirming for the composer that hearing your heartbeat is not always a comforting thing.
O X O
Hajime Yabe
“I’m a Japanese food shop owner. (TO-FU) This is composed mainly by musical instruments like toy used by electrical equipment.” - Hajime Yabe
