Ho in Mexico at Transitio_mx03

Ho - a sonic expedition to Vietnam

Electronic Arts and Video International Festival Transitio_mx03, MEXICO
1 - 10 October 2009

Ricardo Climent says: 'Creating Ho has been a full-of-fun journey and a very stimulating project. Ho is an imaginary sonic expedition to Vietnam, plenty of adventures and drama. Although it is immersed in a three-dimensional visual environment, it has a focus on sound. In Ho, the performer, sound artist or casual visitor, becomes ‘the captain of a ship,’ who controls a sound-wheel interface inspired by maritime navigation. While 'navigating', he/she leads listeners to an aural journey with critical stops at specific locations. Such scenes are my personal imaginary reconstruction of a number of sketchy stories with unique sound interest and located in Vietnam. Audiovisual scenarios vary from a rickshaw trip finding your way out of a sonic-maze, to experiencing a zebra crossing in a jungle of cars and mopeds, or even having an argument in a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, because you dislike eating live giant squids... My Research Diary (yet to be disclosed) provides a contextualisation for the concept of navigation through sound and identifies new research and creative questions arising, which may be solved with creative practice. However, at the end of the day it is simply a piece of creative work, which I hope you enjoy!'

Pictured above: Ho's real navigator wheel for concert/installation version

The SPLICE GIRLS at Soundings, Limerick Ireland

The Splice Girls are Manuella Blackburn and Diana Simpson. Their laptop improvisations utilise tools built in Max/MSP to create messed up loops and shimmering soundscapes. They regularly perform at experimental music nights across Manchester. In 2007 they performed on the Sonic Ferry at the Sonic Arts Expo in Plymouth, and had their USA debut at the Atlantic Canter for the Arts in Florida.
Born in Glasgow, Diana Simpson studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with Alistair MacDonald, where she was awarded a BA, PGDipMus, and MMus with distinction. She is currently a PhD. student at the University of Manchester (UK), supervised by David Berezan, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a Dewer Arts Award.
Manuella Blackburn was born in London in 1984 and is now living in Manchester. She gained a Distinction with a Masters in Electroacoustic Music at the University of Manchester in 2006 and was awarded the Peter J. Leonard Composition Prize. In September 2006 she began a PhD. at the University of Manchester and is now studying with Dr. Ricardo Climent.
Date: Thursday 24 September for the second in this season's Soundings events. This is a very special concert in cooperation with the Tweak Festival. The location will be the historic St. Munchin's Church on Church Street in Limerick.
Soundings is a continuing performance series designed to open the senses to new forms of music, sound art and media interaction. It is sponsored by the CCMCM at the University of Limerick and features a state of the art sound system.
For more click here

Mark Pilkington gives a Processing workshop at IDKA, Sweden

Mark Pilkington PhD composer at NOVARS has been invited to perform a series of his works at the Swedish digital arts organisation IDKA. During his stay he will be performing a concert of his audio visual electroacoustic works at a film festival organized by IDKA 18th September 2009.

As well as the concert he will be running a workshop in the open source programming language Processing http://processing.org in collaboration with Swedish artist Michael Larsson. Demonstrating the architecture of the program from an artistic perspective.
The visit will finally cumulate in a visit to Stockholm EMS with composer Thomas Bjelkeborn, former artist-in-residence at NOVARS, to discuss ideas for a future collaborative project.

Composer Kaho Cheung returns from sound-source collection in Beijing, Hong Kong and Thailand

Rapid transits in Thailand (picture by KCh)

Manchester-based composer K. Cheung is back from a productive summer in Asia. His mini-marathon included activities which ranged from doing some technical work for his previous institution in Hong Kong, to

a creative recording project in Thailand, where he met his former supervisor Paul Rudy.
Kaho is currently working on the last piece of his PhD composition portfolio (Rapid Transits) at the electroacoustic studio of the Mantis Harris Centre (NOVARS).

Rapid transits in Beijin (picture by KCh)

New work for the JACK Quartet, New York, Feb 11 2010; Society of the Americas

NOVARS-based composer Maurico Pauly to premiere his new work for the Jack Quartet in New york, alongside the five Altavoz composers.

About the JACK Quartet:
Praised for its "powerhouse playing" by the Chicago Sun-Times and its "extraordinary precision" by the Boston Globe, the JACK Quartet has quickly established a reputation for giving high-energy performances of today's most demanding works for string quartet. The New York Times called the quartet's performance of Iannis Xenakis' complete string quartets one of the "most memorable classical music presentations of 2008," and in 2009, the quartet received an ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.
Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, the quartet has performed at Carnegie Hall (USA), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Germany), and the Festival Internacional Chihuahua (Mexico) with future appearances at the Miller Theatre (USA), the Library of Congress (USA) and the Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany).
The commissioning and performance of new works for string quartet is integral to the JACK Quartet's mission, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Matthias Pintscher, Wolfgang Rihm, Elliott Sharp, Samuel Adler, and Aaron Cassidy. Upcoming premieres include works by Caleb Burhans, Peter Ablinger, and Alan Hilario.
The quartet has lead workshops with young composers at Columbia University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Victoria, and the University of Washington. In addition to working with composers and performers, the JACK Quartet seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience.
The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music, and they have since studied closely with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir String Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

ACUTE for searched objects and fixed media at the Spanish National Percussion Conference

Kontakte, grup de percussió will perform “ Acute” for searched objects and fixed media by NOVARS based composer Ricardo Climent and “Une poupée en flammes” by London based composer, Oscar Colomina will be presented at the Spanish National Percussion Conference held from the 18th to 20th, September 2009.

Location: Palacio de Congresos Fernando Rojas, Badajoz, Spain.
Concert day / time: 20th Sept. 11:00 - Main Auditorium.

Above, video snap of Acute's premiere, performed by Kontakte Grup de Percussio, back in 2008.

For more, Kontakte, grup de percussió
Email: info@kontakte-percusion.com

more about acute? read paper at SMC berlin
listen to some mp3 excerpts from the CD release: actue1 acute2 acute3

'Papyrus' wins Prix Destellos 2009 !!

Diana Simpson's new acousmatic work Papyrus has won Prix Destellos competition 2009. Payrus was written at the NOVARS Research Centre in Manchester.
Prix Destellos constists of a monetary prize and an artistic residency in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Congratulations to Diana!

For more about the fundacion Destellos, visit this link

Horacio Franco's premiere of 'Rock-et roll' at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid (15, Oct 09)

The Auditorio Nacional de Musica in Madrid, commissioned NOVARS composer Ricardo Climent, to write a piece for virtuoso Mexican flutist Horacio Franco, as part of its XXth anniversary celebrations. Horacio Franco is one of the most acclaimed Mexican musicians and contemporary artists and as a recorder player, a world-wide distinguished figure.
Premiere: 15th October 2009, Auditorio Nacional de Musica, Madrid. See the full concert programme here.
Concert 2: 19th October 2009, Teatro Tres Cantos, Madrid.

Horacio Franco is a Mexican flautist and recorder player. He studied in the National Conservatory in Mexico City and later in the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam, Holland, today Conservatory of Amsterdam, with Marijke Miessen and Walter Van Hauwe, where he received the rank of “cum laude soloist”. Franco is a very active musician, who has widely changed the repertoire of the recorder from the traditional forms of medieval, Renaissance music and baroque - including Latin American colonial music - to contemporary, folkloric and popular. He has an ample repertoire of contemporary music written specially for him by Mexican and foreign composers: Graciela Agudelo, Kart Bellinghausen, Sergio Berlioz, Sergio Cardinal red, Daniel Catán, Jorge Cordova, Luis Courteous Jaime, Felipe De Jesus, Juan Fernando Durán, Itziar Fadrique, Maria Granillo, Rosa Gurayeb, Rafael Hubberman, Martha Lambertini, Ana Lara, Mario Lavista, Arming Moon, Antonio Navarro, Gabriela Ortiz, Hilda Paredes, Rodolfo Ramirez, Ricardo Risco, Marcela Rodriguez, Eduardo Soto Millán, Salvador Torre, Eugene Toussaint, and Michael Wolpe. During his tours through Europe, United States, South America and Israel he has given numerous master classes; in England and the United States he has participated in projects of education, as well as in projects to support marginalized and unprotected sectors of society.
In the beginnings of his career he was founder member of the “Hotteterre Trio”, conformed from 1986 to 1994 with Luisa Durón and Bozena Slawinska, with those who he recorded 2 discs. They offered numerous concerts in all Mexico, participated in Festivals like the Cervantino, Festival of the Historical Center of the Mexico City, Cultural Festival of Sinaloa; abroad they played in Oregon Bach Festival, The Festival Music Society of Indianapolis, in several cities of Belgium and the Festival Europalia 93.
Franco was founding director and conductor of the vocal and instrumental ensemble “Cappella Cervantina”, from 1993 to 1998, they made several recordings and numerous tours of concerts in Mexico and several cities of the United States and Europe, where he conducted the The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in London in 1997. Formed like an academic project within the National Conservatory of Music, Franco formed it as an alternative educational program for barroque and contemporary music, the “Capella Cervantina” released several works especially written for them by Mexican composers and presented versions just transcribed of Mexican colonial works. They offered numerous concerts in all Mexico at the most important Festivals; abroad they appeared in Chicago, in France in the “Festival les Chemines du Baroque” and in several places of the Great Britain.

Diana Simpson starts job in music at Kingston University, London.

Sept 2009: NOVARS PhD Composer Diana Simpson has accepted a lecturing position in Music Technology at Kingston University, London, UK.

Click here for more details

Point and Lines audivisual work by Mark Pilkington at IDKA, Sweeden (September 09)

Point and Lines from mark pilkington on Vimeo.

In Mark's words: 'I have always had a fascination with the motion of light and the way it physically affects our lives and our very existence.
The way light reflects through materials and off different surfaces; the way it blurs with motion. I have recently been reading Albert Einstein's Relativity the Special Theory and the General Theory in regards the way motion effects our perception of light, bending it in time and space.
This piece is made up of found, instrumental and synthetic sounds manipulated into different scenes that are fused together into an acoustmatic work.
Images for the piece range form mobile phone film clips, a film of a model city, paintings and computer graphics.
The piece plays with the dual perception of audio and visual stimulation.
What we call 'sunlight' is only a narrow span of the entire solar spectrum - the immensely broad band of vibrations which the Sun, our nearest star,pours into space.
If we use a musical analogy. Visible light light is merely a single octave of the Sun's radiation, this octave contains most of the power; the higher and lower frequencies are relatively feeble.'

In liaison with Thomas Bjelkeborn (composer in Residence at NOVARS), Mark Pilkington will also present a Processing workshop at IDKA and will be collaborating with an a/v artist Michael Larsson.

Sam Salem/ Patrick Sana's Pond Life II @ ICMC 2009 - VIDEOS

Pondlife II - ICMC 2009 from Windfarm Music on Vimeo.

Pondlife II - ICMC 2009 from Windfarm Music on Vimeo.

Pondlife II - ICMC 2009 from Windfarm Music on Vimeo.

PondLife. An audiovisual laboratory. This is an ever-evolving environment which you are invited to experiment with. Adjust the light and nutrient levels to promote or destroy creatures. Watch the system grow and evolve, or stick your hand in to stir things up!

The work combines a wide range of technologies and aesthetics to create a unique and captivating environment. Fluid simulation, sound and motion sensing, genetic algorithms, a unique setup, and carefully crafted sounds and visual elements come together to create a piece which allows the audience to watch and intervene in the evolution of a small society of abstract microbes which grow, hunt, mutate, and crossbreed to generate subtle and surprising variations on the visual and aural scene.
— Sam & Patrick