I’m reporting back from the February 2012 National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S. (SEAMUS), held this year at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. This excellent festival, hosted by the most friendly people imaginable, delivered an overwhelming number of events packed into just three days: 13 concerts, 3 paper sessions with nine presenters, and five installations. With just a ½ hour break between many of the concerts, my brain was constantly reeling from sensory overload; the 15-minute, near-0 degrees (wind chill) walk between the hotel and the university helped to clear the mind.

I was able to attend for 2 ½ days, and heard/saw 40 works for fixed media (the new term for “tape music”) and live electronics, with or without acoustic instruments and video. I wanted to hear good music that brilliantly integrated electronic sounds with acoustic instruments, and that made me pay attention to the creative continuum between the two. I came away with a couple of good pieces.

Many of the purely electronic pieces were, in my opinion, mildly interesting to somewhat boring, often exercises in achieving the coolest and most unusual timbres, usually in some kind of sequential or arch form. There were some good ones: L. Scott Price’s “Thrymmatizo,” a well put-together, fixed media piece with an interesting and discernible structure that did not go on for too long. Others: elegantly beautiful pieces by Natalie Draper and Eli Stine, and a simple, disturbing work with effective, abstract video by Tohm Judson.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This amazing pianist was,in many of the works, able to virtuosically control complex live electronics while playing wickedly difficult piano parts, thereby becoming a real chamber musician with himself!

One of the best works on the program was Joo Won Park’s short, aptly-named “Toccata,” a hands-on, improvisational piece for contact microphone and “solid objects,” performed by the (Philadelphia) composer himself. Although acoustically-produced, albeit through microphones, this piece was more interesting than many of the works fabricated in the electronic studio. Joo Won’s work incorporated an entertaining, black and white, real-time video of the composer’s virtuosic performance; however, if you closed your eyes and just listened, you were still left with a fine piece of music.

Another beautiful work, exploiting the slippery and fascinating interface between acoustic instruments and electronic sounds, was “Keerthanata,” for two soprano saxophones and electronics, composed by the talented Asha Srinivasan, head of Lawrence U.’s electronic studio. But the absolute high point of the festival, for me, was a work by David Taddie – “Convergences” for harp and electro-acoustic sound, given a riveting performance by Julia Kay Jamieson. Although it is already 18 years old (in 1995 it won the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Music Teachers National Association Distinguished Composer of the Year award), this work is fresh, intoxicating and invites many hearings.

An interesting observation about the festival, the composers, and the audience: the overwhelming majority were male; out of about 95 programmed works, 9 were by women. Not only that, but in an audience that regularly numbered from 100-150, I was the OLDEST WOMAN! (There were plenty of older guys with gray ponytails.) This totally freaked me out – I mean, I had been prepared to have this experience at my daughter’s 6th grade parent meeting, or in a new music concert in the year 2037 (maybe), but not at age 60 at the SEAMUS 2012 festival!

In November, I spent 5 days at the international Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF) – courtesy of a Philadelphia Music Project professional development grant – attending myriad concerts and symposia featuring music performed by some of the best new music bands in Europe (or anywhere).

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (c. Alex Beldea)

Presenting 36 paid and 34 free events over a span of 9 days, the HCMF proved to be an ambitious showcase for (mostly) experimental music that explored the “Nordic Sound” including works by featured composer Bent Sorenson and other Danish and Norwegian composers, as well as music by Xenakis, Bernhard Lang and Fausto Romitelli, a recently-deceased Italian composer I had never heard of but whose music made me want to hear lots more.  Wildly-extended instrumental techniques, multi-genre commissions, free improv and electro/acoustic works (with both fixed media and real-time computer interaction) made up the bulk of the thought-provoking programming.  Interestingly, although about 150 composers were represented in this festival, U.S. composers consisted of only a small fraction of the programming, including music by Aaron Jay Kernis and Annie Gosfield.

Emanuele Casale

Unexpectedly, one of the stand-out pieces was Studio 2a, a bass recorder/tape work by Emanuele Casale (again, an unknown to me) that picks up where Davidovsky leaves off in an astounding work of complex beauty, performed in a shattering performance by the young Brit, Chris Orton.  In fact, I experienced the great majority of performances as shatteringly beautiful: the ensemble recherche, the Cikada Ensemble, Ensemble Scenatet, players from the London Sinfonietta: they all played with total conviction, passion and brilliant virtuosity. There were lots of large, long and complex ensemble pieces (8-10 players), performed WITHOUT A CONDUCTOR, with the aid of lots of body language and the benefit of countless rehearsals – these performances could lure any listener into a new music addiction.

It was wonderful to get to hear some of the most cutting-edge music in Europe today. The HCMF, of course, has lots of support, including the BBC Radio 3, the British Council, the resources of the University of Huddersfield, arts funding from Norway and France, and several large foundations.  Although the town of Huddersfield is out in the middle of nowhere, an hour northwest of Manchester, events were packed, and often sold out.

musikFabrik (c. Carolene Lees)

Makes me wonder what audiences and funders would hear on this side of the ocean, if new music in the U.S had access to the kind of broad government and media support that European composers and ensembles have?

We’ll start this out the easy way and talk about Network’s season and the terrific music (and more!) that you’ll find here, but we hope to widen the conversation as we go along.  We love to hear about the amazing cultural life that characterizes Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, London…it’s a rich and vivid world of art out there, and we look forward to exploring it all with you.

I’ve been using the royal “we,” and really, this blog is from all of us at Network–but in fact, today’s post is just by me, Lisa Miller. I’ve been with Network since 1997, and I’ve probably met some of you (I hope a lot of you!) at Network’s concerts, or talked to you on the phone. I’m also the one who’s been randomly popping up in front of people after a concert, asking them to make a few comments for the camera. (I know, it’s only semi-polite to sail up and ask like that, but it’s actually pretty fun to hear what strikes people right after hearing a performance. Once they start talking about the music, they usually forget about the camera and become really passionate about what they felt as they listened. It’s a blast to hear!)

When I get a chance I’ll post some of those video comments here or on Network’s Facebook page. But in the meantime, since I brought up having opinions: what nicer way to begin this blog than sharing some of the enthusiasm that a couple of reviewers felt for our recent concert The Poetry of Solo, when we played upstairs at the World Cafe? Here you go:  Tom Purdom’s article in the Broad Street Review, and Chuck Holdeman, in a blog post for LocalArtsLive.

Please come back to our site often–we’ll have much more from the composers and artists we’re working with this season, plus posts from Linda Reichert, Network’s Artistic Director, and Judith Mendelsohn, our Program Associate, and others.  And I hope you’ll always feel free to share your opinions with us, through our website or just by emailing or posting to our Facebook page–we love to hear from you.