Gene Pritsker

[Margaret Lancaster, flute]

Daniel Blinkhorn

George Brunner

Michael Pounds

Jay C Batzner / Carla Poindexter

Mike McFerron / Jackie K. White

[Christina Hourihan, soprano]

Elainie Lillios

James Mercer (aka Mysterious House)

Nicholas Nelson

M. Anthony Reimer

Jason Bolte

Melissa Grey / Angela Grauerholz / Réjean Myette

[Margaret Lancaster, flute, Lynn Bechtold, violin]

Mike McFerron

Julius Bucsis

David McIntire

Composer/guitarist/rapper/Di.J. Gene Pritsker has written over four hundred ninty compositions, including chamber operas, orchestral and chamber works, electro-acoustic music and songs for hip-hop and rock ensembles. All of his compositions employ an eclectic spectrum of styles and are influenced by his studies of various musical cultures. He is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation; an eclectic hip hop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc. ensemble, as well as being the co-director of Composers' Concordance. Gene's music has been performed all over the world at various festivals and by many ensembles and performers. The New York Times described him as "…audacious…multitalented."

Sorrow, Like Pleasure, Creates Its Own Atmosphere: (Written for Margaret Lancaster, 2003)s The title is from the novel ‘Cousin Bette’ by Honore de Balzac. The samplestra part consists of an Indian voice, Indian flute, drums, and synth. sounds. Samplestra is the name I give to any prerecorded elements in my music. I see it as an orchestra of samples, since I use little fragments of pre existing music or sounds and manipulate them to my own composition. The flute part dances around the Indian voice/flute fragment till it breaks into a perpetual motion like line that becomes the counter motif to the pre recorded music. Technically it is relentless and creates various atmospheres over a static feel from the track. The music builds to a climax and recedes to a calm conclusion.

“New-music luminary” (The New York Times) and “leading exponent of the avant-garde flute” (Kyle Gann, Village Voice), Margaret Lancaster has built a large repertoire of new works that subtly and unabashedly fuse music, theater and movement. Performance highlights include Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Ibsen Festival, Santa Fe New Music, Whitney Museum, Edinburgh Festival, Tap City, New Music Miami and Festival D’Automne. Recent collaborations include playing Helene in the 7-year worldwide run of OBIE-winning Mabou Mines Dollhouse, BMP’s Kocho (Fisher Ensemble), multi-media artist Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and Fables on Global Warming with Karole Armitage’s ArmitageGone!Dance…www.margaretlancaster.com

Daniel Blinkhorn is an Australian composer and new media artist who currently resides in Sydney. His works are regularly performed, exhibited and presented internationally at festivals, concert halls, conferences, galleries and other loci, and his creative works have received over 25 international and national composition citations. He has worked in a variety of creative, academic, research and teaching contexts, and is currently lecturing into the composition and music technology department at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. More information about Daniel, as well as samples of his work can be found at www.bookofsand.com.au environmental sound and field recordings activities at www.bookofsand.com.au/frostbite

le son de la lumière: In 1982 composer Luc Ferrari scored the soundtrack to the animated film ‘Chronopolis’ by Piotr Kamler. The moment I saw the film I was struck by its beauty and elegant synchronicity between sound and image. In particular, the composers response to the impossible shapes conjured by the animator, in which he seemed to capture the light reflected from the shapes. When I was provided with the opportunity to use some of Luc Ferrari’s original samples from his recorded archives, I set about creating a work that reflects my own impressions of his musical oeuvre. The resulting composition gravitates conceptually around the film ‘Chronopolis’.

George Brunner, composer of electroacoustic and acoustic music. Residencies include Institut IMEB, France (2003, 2009), EMS Stockholm (1996, 1998, 2001), and Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey (2002, 2004). Significant commissions: Royal Irish Academy, Dublin Ireland (2003, 2004), Morris Lang, Percussionist, New York Philharmonic (1997, 2007, 2012), Relache Ensemble (2001). Two Short Operas produced by Remarkable Theatre Brigade for Opera Shorts Program (2009, 2010). Brunner’s La Nuit dans le Marais was featured in New York City Electronic Music Festival (2013) and June at Ionian University, Corfu Greece. His music has been released on Chrysopée Electronique 25 (2003), MSR Classics (2009), MSR Classics (2010).

La Nuit dans Le Marais is a remix of Within/Without composed at the studios of the IMEB. Le Marais is a very special place in Bourges, France that has a unique acoustic quality. John Cage referred to it as the most perfect acoustic space he encountered. Le Marais is also a beautiful place that comes to life in a way that can only occur at night. This work was made possible through a commission by the IMEB and was composed in the studios of the IMEB (Bourges, France) January and February of 2003 and remixed in NYC 2012.

Michael Pounds began his career as a mechanical engineer, but returned to the academic world to study music composition with a focus on computer music and music technology. His awards include the ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Award, a Residence Prize at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship for studies in England, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and I-Park. He is co-hosting the 2014 National Conference of the Society of Composers, Inc. Michael teaches composition, acoustics, music perception, recording and computer music at Ball State University.

Lingering Licks is a substantial development of a short work created for the 60x60 Project. It was created using only (mostly processed) recordings of a 1968 Les Paul guitar playing through a ca. 1954 Supro tube guitar amp, using only a Shure SM58 microphone. The guitar was played by poet, author and Ball State University faculty member Matt Mullins.

Jay C. Batzner is a composer, sci-fi geek, comic book reader, amateur seamster, home brewer, and juggler on the faculty of Central Michigan University where he teaches music technology, theory, composition, and electronic music courses. He has been many places and has done several things, some of which are rather impressive.

Associate Professor, Carla Poindexter teaches intermediate and advanced painting, advanced drawing, foundations design, various classes in upper level experimental book arts and occasionally, a graduate level studio concentration course in the MFA program, Studio Art and the Computer. Poindexter is actively involved in the graduate program's growth and has served as chair on several MFA thesis committees. She is a UCF Faculty Senator (2010-2012) representing the SVAD and is Chair of the Faculty Senate Budget and Administration Committee for 2010-11.

Carnival Daring-Do – In quantum physics, there is no such thing as negative space. Everything is filled. In the animated short, Carnival Daring-Do, inevitably propelled characters journey into fields of energized micro and macro space, in a mind-expanding reverie touching on current philosophic preoccupations, cosmic homesickness, and lyrical emotions.

Mike McFerron is professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University, and he is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest (http://www.emmfestival.org). His music can be heard on numerous commercial CDs as well as on his website at http://www.bigcomposer.com.

Jackie K. White, associate professor at Lewis University, earned her PhD in Creative Writing (poetry) from UIC with concentrations in Latino/Latin American and Women’s Studies. An editor with RHINO for 9 years, she currently serves as a faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous print and online journals. Her chapbook Bestiary Charming won the 2006 Anabiosis Press award; Petal Tearing & Variations was published by Finishing Line in 2008, and Come Clearing with Dancing Girl Press, 2012. She is a native Illinoisan in love with Chicago, prairie, and Puerto Rico. Co-translator of Rondón’s History of Salsa, she is currently translating Vicioso’s Essays on Caribbean Women Writers.

Christina Hourihan, soprano, will graduate from the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College with her Master of Music Degree in 2014. A budding ingénue, she has already performed the roles of Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), The Bat (L'enfant et les Sortileges), Suor Genovieffa (Suor Angelica), and Papagena (Die Zauberflöte). She previously performed Mike McFerron’s “X Marks the Sirens” in the 2013 Electro Acoustic Music Festival at Brooklyn College. Future engagements include the world premiere of a set of songs written by composer David Morneau in the fall of 2014.

X Marks the Sirens

She was what she was
and she knew it.
Fate is often like that.
People don't change.

At the end of her DNA,
an added twist, vixen
gene, where it was
written: men will love

you but you can't
keep them; she took
blue & yellow to green
her colors, but they

saw only red. Her heart
became a shack
for bits of the dead
because the myths repeat

your body will sing
them toward you; their
bodies will break
against rock. A trickle

separates desire, love, or
so it is said. She goes on

crooning: I do not wear
the scent of flowers but flesh,
its musk draws in your animal,
into my hum-howled breath:

Sometimes you have to shut up;
unbelieve what you've read.

Elainie Lillios’ music reflects her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion, and anecdote. Awards include a 2013-14 Fulbright grant (Greece), First Prize–Electroacoustic Piano International Competition, Special Mention–Prix Destellos, Prize Winner–Medea Electronique Competition, and First Prize–Concours Internationale de Bourges. Recognition from Concurso Internacional de Música Electroacústica de São Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, ICMA, and La Muse en Circuit. Elainie’s acousmatic is available on the CD Entre Espaces, produced by Empreintes DIGITALes, plus Centaur, MSR Classics, Irritable Hedgehog, StudioPANaroma, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, SEAMUS, and Leonardo Music Journal. www.elillios.com

La fête de la huitièmme decennie weaves a fantasy about celebrations and the aftermath. It celebrates François Bayle’s 80th birthday and premiered October 27 2012 in Brussels, Belgium on a concert honoring him.

James J.A. Mercer (born in Boston, 1984) is a visual, sound, and video artist living in Brooklyn, New York. He has been producing sound since 2004, currently under the alias Mysterious House, and has played throughout the United States. He has releases on Immigrant Breast Nest and IYNGES. His science fiction animations MORRIS and Stargate SG-47719 were shown in 2012 and 2011 as part of DMTV in Los Angeles and Portland. He was a resident at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, and in 2007 received a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Melt like Clay or Break like Dirt was created using a variety of digital synthesis methods, but comes primarily from a MAX/MSP patch with 80 simultaneous oscillators, 40 in each channel. Certain sounds are absorbed into muck, while others stand out as clear as day. Of central importance is the physicality of these sounds, which do not refer to any ideas but are platforms for intuitive play.

Nicholas R. Nelson holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York where his teachers have included Morton Subotnik, Jason Eckardt, Doug Geers and George Brunner. He has collaborated with the Remarkable Theater Brigade under Monica Harte who produced the New York City premiere of his first opera, as well as the CYGNUS ensemble, the Vigil ensemble and Ensemble Moto Perpetuo. His pieces have been premiered on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the bi-annual International Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and recently the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music (SEAMUS) national conference in 2011.

A Sketch of Roadsigns on the Journey from Denial to Anger – As I age (at 1 sec/sec, as many of us do) I find myself decreasingly able to be satisfied with only one aesthetic perspective on a given phenomenon; as such, my work has started appearing as constellations of related pieces, each piece an un-integratable reflexion on one aspect of a larger aesthetic or conceptual whole. (Was that not a needlessly long sentence or what?) "A Sketch of Roadsigns on the Journey from Denial to Anger" is one such piece, and part of one such constellation.

Commissioned by the Dutch trombone ensemble "Low Brass Connection" as part of their upcoming oilwar project, this piece presents one view (in this case, a fixed-media view) of our national journey of grief over our nation's recent military adventurism. My role in the oilwar project was to chart musically the passage from denial to anger (duh!), and what you hear tonight represents one technological-aesthetic perspective on this journey.

Originally an orchestral French Horn player hailing from Indiana, Tony Reimer has spent most of the last 25 years freelancing mostly in live theatre as a composer and sound designer. His work has been heard on stages and at festivals across the country and internationally. He completed his undergraduate work at Ball State University, received a Master's in Computer Music and New Media from Northern Illinois University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Music Composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

water is loosely based on one movement of a larger stereo work, Let's Pretend We're All Wearing Sunglasses, composed for the NYC dance company Collective Body Dance Lab in the spring of 2012. In turn, the movement from ...Sunglasses was inspired by an earlier electro-acoustic work from 2009 entitled Turning the Tide. For me, the addition of the simple rhythmical elements to the earlier material has provided a very interesting insight into my own work. Mostly motivated by the dancers and the choreographer, the construction of these elements allowed me to perceive my own work through the perceptions of others in a way I had not previously experienced.

Jason Bolte is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. He currently resides in Bozeman, Montana with his wonderful wife Barbara and their two daughters, Lila and Megan. Jason teaches music technology and composition at Montana State University where he also directs the MONtana State Transmedia and Electroacoustic Realization (MONSTER) Studios. Jason’s music is available on the SEAMUS, Irritable Hedgehog, Vox Novus, and Miso Records labels.

Putt'n Around (2012) was composed in response to David McIntire and Irritable Hedgehog's Putney Project. The work uses material derived from David's early exposure to the EMS VCS-3, also known as the "Putney."

Composer Melissa Grey’s projects include concert works, electroacoustic performances, field recordings, installations, music and sound for film and video and collaborations with artists and designers. Recent works have been published by The MIT Press and exhibited or performed at the National Gallery of Canada, Goethe-Institut Montréal, The Stone, Spectrum, Dorsky Gallery, Parsons The New School for Design, Judson Church, Whitney Museum of American Art (with Antenna International), International Computer Music Conference, Alphabet City Festivals 2010 AIR and 2009 WATER, Cinesonika: First International Film and Video Festival of Sound Design.

Angela Grauerholz's photographic work has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. She has participated in numerous international events of distinction, including the Biennale of Sydney, Australia (1990), documenta IX, Kassel, Germany (1992), and the Carnegie International (1995). Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized by the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (1991), the MIT List Visual Arts Center (1993), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, in 1995, a travelling exhibition (Hanover, Zug/Zürich 1995 - 96). Angela received the 2014 Governor General Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

Violinist/composer Lynn Bechtold has appeared in recital throughout NA and Europe, and has premiered solo/chamber works by composers such as Gloria Coates, George Crumb, John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, and Morton Subotnick. She is a member of groups including Zentripetal Duo, Bleecker StQ, Miolina, SEM, and the NY Symphonic Ensemble, and her performances have been broadcast on various TV and radio, including WNYC, 30 Rock, The CBS Morning Show, and Good Day NY. An active performer of all genres of music, she has appeared at diverse venues, from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to LPR and Joe’s Pub. Her electroacoustic compositions have been performed around the city and she is currently working on a piece for solo violin and electronics based on the sounds of Kendo (Japanese fencing). She holds degrees from Tufts University, New England Conservatory, and Mannes-The New School for Music, where she was a student of noted violinist Felix Galimir.

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. This work premiered at the National Gallery of Canada, 2010.

Shape Study: Music for Metamorphoses – Structurally, this composition reduces the distances between traditional foreground, middleground, and background musical layers, thus clouding these dimensions. Yet at the same time, this work strives to present a clear and logical dramatic shape by assembling spectral, dynamic, and spatial elements.

Julius Bucsis is an award winning composer, guitarist, and music technologist. His compositions have been included in many juried concerts, conferences and festivals worldwide. He also frequently performs a set of original compositions featuring electric guitar and computer generated sounds. His artistic interests include using computer technology in music composition and developing musical forms that incorporate improvisation.

In the Interest of Time explores the relationship between subtle rhythmic shifts and the sense of groove. Rhythmic devices employed include the use of syncopation, rhythmic displacement, and polymeter. The piece was composed in 2011. It was accepted into the Electronic Music Midwest 2011 festival held in Kansas City, Kansas, the Soundcrawl 2012 festival held in Nashville, Tennessee, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance 2012 held in Fredericksburg, Virginia, the Tutti New Music Festival 2013 held in Granville, Ohio, and the SEAMUS 2013 conference held in St. Paul, Minnesota.

David D. McIntire is a sound artist and producer based in Kansas City. He currently teaches at Missouri Western State University and operates Irritable Hedgehog, a label devoted to minimal and electroacoustic music, several of whose releases have been widely praised for their excellence. He also leads the Ensemble of Irreproducible Outcomes, a trio specializing in performing indeterminate works.

The Pornography of Unfettered Optimism removes the notion of the "pornographic" from its customary location and applies it to another concept. The text is by poet and musician Michael Ives, the voice is that of Michelle Allen McIntire. I take the poem to be an examination of the notion of "pornographic" in a broader sense than the commonly accepted sexual one, although that perspective is not ignored here. If one thinks of pornography as a depiction of a physical act in a highly exaggerated and mannered fashion, unmoored from reality or attendant emotions, then pretty much anything can be depicted "pornographically." Even optimism.