60x60 project
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60x60
60x60 is an elctroacoustic project
containing 60 electronic works
each 60 seconds in length.

Vox Novus
is calling for works
for its 60x60 project.

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60x60 (2005 / Pacific Rim)
 
Concert Program
1. Doug Cohen Welcome
2. Alex Shapiro Just a Minute of Your Time
3. Allen Strange ShadowBoxer
4. Jeannie Pool A Walk with Shakespeare
5. Robert W. Parker The Golden Door
6. Kevin Ponto 4x15>60
7. Rodney Oakes Matise
8. Polly Moller Cold Blood
9. Cindy Cox Nature is
10. John Biggs Aviary
11. Jason Heald Love’s Young Dream
12. André Cormier 380
13. Ensemble Ordinature Jibberaphonics
14. Stephen C. Ruppenthal VoceCembalo
15. David Evan Jones You are forever
16. Kubilay Uner Squint
17. Marc Barreca Cinder Cone
18. Maggi Payne :60 Fizz
19. Emma Lou Diemer Waves
20. Frank Lee Sprague Organ Madness
21. Larry M. Gaab Clash
22. John Villec Construction Waves
23. Dwight Winenger rnd.snd.bas
24. Mikako Endo Where am I?
25. Christopher Winslow Slinky
26. Max Simoncic 60 for Marimba
27. Ray Sherman Invention for Piano
28. Patrick Stoyanovich The Kentucky Preceptor
29. Benjamin Boone & James Miley Drunken Bastards
30. Jonathan Stone From Mr. Knight
31. Agnes Szelag Who are you?
32. John G. Bilotta A 12-Step Rag for the Tonally Co-Dependent
33. Ray Cole Sodium</td>
34. Brian Mark Redemption
35. Celeste Hutchins Clocker
36. Brian Kane Bagatelle: On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
37. Cheryl Leonard Ashi
38. Norman Teale FAFM 8
39. Aaron Drake EAR CANDY 1b:
40. Paul Steenhuisen Poland is not yet Lost
41. Phillip Stearns A Few Words
42. Deeann Mathews Broken Waltz
43. Warner Jepson JUDY JOLLY
44. Sherene Strausberg Davanita
45. Meri von Kleinsmid Monorail
46. Sharon Cheslow Right Now Be My Molasses
47. Robert Voisey Executive Privilege
48. RD Wraggett Matrix Minute
49. Benedikt Brydern Ancient Connections
50. Greg Bryant Bobfricative
51. Igor Korneitchouk The Kiss
52. Greg Bartholomew No, George, No
53. Chris Ward Glenda in Paris
54. Peter Swanzy Eulogy for Bill Swanzy
55. Katrina Wreede 56 Seconds of Creep
56. Dylan Mattingly Handful of Rain
57. Margaret Schedel Whirlitzer
58. Julia Norton WBQ
59. Susan Hurley Sunrise
60. David Hahn AMERIKA IST NUN ERWACHT
Doug Cohen Welcome
Cohen completed his M.F.A at the California Institute of the Arts and Ph. D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Cohen was an early advocate for digital media on the Internet. He organized the NewMusNet Conference of Arts Wire with Pauline Oliveros and later worked for Arts Wire as their Systems Coordinator. Currently he is on the composition faculty of the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music / CUNY.
Alex Shapiro Just a Minute of Your Time
Alex Shapiro, born in New York City, 1962 has become one of southern California’s best known composers of acoustic and electroacoustic chamber music. Published by Activist Music, her works are heard weekly in concerts and broadcasts across the U.S. and abroad, and are found on many artists’ recordings. Educated at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music as a student of Ursula Mamlok and John Corigliano, Alex’s awards include those from American Music Center, ASCAP, American Composers Forum, California Arts Council and The MacDowell Colony. Alex resides in Malibu and procrastinates on her next piece by updating her website.
Allen Strange ShadowBoxer
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. Sideshow is an "in-progress" collection of "ear-movies" based on oddities, real and imaginary, from turn-of-the l9th century dime museums. Sideshow may be played as a collection, or as individual works. Does a sound have a shadow?
Jeannie Pool A Walk with Shakespeare
Jeannie Pool is a composer whose music was heard last season in California, Washington, D.C., Paris, Beijing, Belgrade, and Toronto. She writes for orchestra and chamber ensembles, and recently completed her first documentary feature film (which she scored and directed), Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band, narrated by Lily Tomlin. She studied composition, orchestration, and arranging with veteran film and television composer Mauro Bruno. An award-winning radio producer, Jeannie Pool specializes in contemporary music of the Americas and was heard weekly on KPFK-FM, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles for 17 years. She produces recordings for Cambria Master Recordings. A Walk with Shakespeare (1999) is for piccolo, viola, cello, hand drum and finger cymbals, and features the lovely piccolo playing of Los Angeles musician, Patricia Cloud.
Robert W. Parker The Golden Door
Robert W. Parker is a prizewinning, critically acclaimed composer and performer with over twenty-five years' experience in musical theater and thirty years' experience as a liturgical musician. Called "a delight" by the press from Connecticut to California, he has performed for Presidential inaugurations, appeared on stages throughout Europe, the Caribbean, and Japan, and has been seen (and heard) on both national and international television. The Golden Door is the sound of ethereal light streaming in through a golden door; the transforming light of the truth that lies within and around us all.
Kevin Ponto 4x15>60
Kevin Ponto is currently studying composition independently. His questionable preoccupation with computer music arose at 12 when he discovered how to control a Casio keyboard via a Macintosh and coax from it an awful racket. Since then the racket has slowly become less awful, if only through familiarity. When asked what instrument he plays, he responds "The laptop", which of course is nonsense, though he hopes to eventually change that through the development of expressive control interfaces. He also wants you to know that microwaving a CD for a just few seconds is really neat. 4x15>60 is composed of a single looped piano note. It is played in fifteen simple four-voice chords. No other notes are triggered. The melody that is heard is a result of the individual notes of each chord looping as they decay. The higher the note is played, the faster is loops, like the raised pitch on a record playing at a higher speed. The chords chosen dictate the melody and influence it over the measures that follow. Change a chord or change the tempo and the melody rearranges itself. A maximum of fourteen notes is maintained to avoid cacophony.
Rodney Oakes Matise
Rodney Oakes earned a BA, an MA in music from San Diego State University and a DMA at University of Southern California. Oakes is currently an Emeritus Professor at Los Angeles Harbor College. Among his awards are a Rockefeller Grant; an NEA grant; a Fulbright Senior Lectureship to the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland; and ASCAP Standard Awards for every year since 1987. Oakes was the founding editor of Journal SEAMUS. He has pioneered the use of the trombone combined with electronic devices and has performed throughout the United States and Europe. In addition, he performs with numerous Los Angles jazz ensembles. Oakes works are available on the Cambria, the Living Music, and Innova labels. Matise is a brief work created with the software MetaSynth, a program that allows for the creation of sounds and music using digital images as a source of sound. The music for this work was created from digital pictures taken during a trip to Provence during the summer of 2003. Numerous sites connected to Matise were visited, including his home, and photographed. The result is an audio montage based on these photos.
Polly Moller Cold Blood
Polly Moller enjoys a multifaceted career as a performance artist, composer, improviser, and avant-garde flute player. Her past performing credits include a flute recital at the University of Missouri-Columbia New Music Festival and a Late-Night Cabaret at the National Flute Association's annual convention. Her recordings have been released on Albany Records, Pax Recordings, Mindspore Records, and Silver Wheel Music. Polly Moller has been awarded grants by the American Composers Forum Subito Program, the American Composers Forum Community Partners Program, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She is currently recording her fourth solo CD, “Not Made of Stone”. Cold Blood was created in November 2004 for the Pax Recordings compilation album Voices In The Wilderness: Dissenting Soundscapes and Songs of G.W.'s America/ -- and adapted for 60 x 60. It features Polly Moller's original spoken words (written on an afternoon hike up Sweeney Ridge in the San Francisco Bay Area) and her flute multiphonics, transformed and made into electronica by Will Grant.
Cindy Cox Nature is
Nature is (2006) music by Cindy Cox text by John Campion
Nature is
and our nature is
the opening of a woman leads to Xibalba
the doors of the church must open to her
Cindy Cox (b. 1961) has emerged as one of the most vibrant, intelligent, and fluent composers working in the twenty-first century. As Robert Carl notes in Fanfare, “Cox writes music that demonstrates an extremely refined and imaginative sense of instrumental color and texture...This is well-wrought, imaginative, and not easily classifiable music.” She has received awards and commissions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and the Gemeinschaft der Kunstlerinnen und Kunstfreunde International Competition for Women Composers. She has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the MacDowell Colony, and the Civitella Ranieri and William Walton Foundations in Italy. Recordings may be found on the CRI, Capstone, Valve-Hearts (Germany), and Mark labels. Cox has a doctorate from Indiana University, and studied there with Harvey Sollberger, Donald Erb, Eugene O’Brien, and John Eaton. She is also an accomplished pianist, and studied with the great Mozart and Schubert pianist Lili Kraus. Cindy Cox is presently an Associate Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
John Biggs Aviary
John Biggs was born in Los Angeles in 1932. His father was organist Richard Keys Biggs, and his mother was singer Lucienne Gourdon. He was number 8 in a family of 11 children. During his youth he received training in acting, singing, piano, bassoon, and violin, and was a member of his father’s church choir. As a performer, he founded the John Biggs Consort, which specialized in vocal chamber music from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century. NOTE: The composer's voice was the sole source of sound in this composition. A click track was set down at 120 per minute. Four basic metered bird calls were set down in a kind-of counterpoint to each other, all at the same volume. They were a crow, a duck, a turkey, and a chirp. Over those four tracks, four more tracks were added using improvised, un-metered bird calls; two at one octave above vocal pitch, and two at two octaves above. The improvised tracks were faded in to the mid point, then faded out to the end, allowing the duck have a final "quack" alone.
Jason Heald Love’s Young Dream
Dr. Jason Heald is an active conductor, performer, clinician, and college professor in the Pacific Northwest. Heald holds a Ph.D. in composition from 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, Sound Music Publication, 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. “Love’s Young Dream” is an a cappella setting of a timeless poem by Thomas Moore. (1779-1852). Inspired by traditional English part songs, the piece paints the excitement and uncertainty of romantic relationships.
André Cormier 380
After graduating from the University of Victoria (1999), André attended the California Institute of the Arts and received an MFA in composition (2002). His teachers include Christopher Butterfield, James Tenney and Michael Pisaro. André co-founded the artist collective OXO in Brooklyn, NY in 2003 and founded Ensemble Ordinature in Vancouver in 2004 and has since served as its artistic director. His work has been presented by performers and ensembles in Canada, the US and in Europe. Originally from Moncton NB, André has lived in British Columbia and Los Angeles since the early nineties. He is an associate member of the Canadian Music Centre. 380 is a gently manipulated Bach chorale
Ensemble Ordinature Jibberaphonics
Ensemble Ordinature is a vocal, but not necessarily a singing, ensemble that is committed to performing unusual repertoire and material. Their focus is vocal works that do not fall naturally into any common genre of music or vocal performance. They discovered everything about themselves and each other in early spring 2004. André Cormier is the ensemble's artistic director. The source material for the piece is spam email. Spam never sounded so good.
Stephen C. Ruppenthal VoceCembalo
Stephen C. Ruppenthal is a electro-acoustic and text-sound composer, and trumpet player. His writings on contemporary composers appear in the New Grove Dictionary of American Composers. Most of his compositions have been inspired by ritual ceremonies of traditional non-Western societies and employ speech, synthesizers, and improvisation in slowly evolving, rhapsodic formats with gestures stimulated by graphic notations of the composer’s own design. Mr. Ruppenthal studied composition and electronic music with Allen Strange and musicology with Lou Harrison at San Jose State University; MA in musicology, 1975. His thesis, "A History of the Development and Techniques of Sound Poetry in the Twentieth Century in Western Culture," constituted the first comprehensive documentation of the genre in English. VoceCembalo (2005-06) is a text-sound work that takes as its conceptual point of reference, "one of the innumerable versions of the 'Wake' stumbled upon in Borges' infinite concentric cosmic library." Sonic materials for VoceCembalo consists of fragments of text from Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (read by Linda Leudke) and recorded/processed earth-chimes. VoceCembalo is a movement of a longer sound-scape of the same name.
David Evan Jones You are forever
David Evan Jones is a composer of operas, chamber music, computer music, and a jazz pianist. He has composed in residence at the Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm and at IRCAM, Paris. His articles have appeared in Perspectives of New Music, Computer Music Journal, and elsewhere. Jones' compositions are on compact disks from Wergo, Contemporary Recording Studios, Musical Heritage, Centaur, Capstone, and Composers' Recordings Inc. His most recent CD, Neo-Balkan Jazz and Concert Music, was released by Centaur in 2004. Jones' first chamber opera, Bardos, was recently staged by the Seoul Contemporary Opera Company. He is orchestrating his second chamber opera and composing a piece for Korean gayageum with 'cello and clarinet. This composition was originally scored for piano and computer tape and was to have been performed by my friend Smith Dobson. Smith died in an auto accident before the performance. The piece (in versions with and without piano part) is dedicated with love to his memory.
Kubilay Uner Squint
Munich-born, L.A.-based composer and producer Kubilay Uner has bounced around the planet and through every musical genre, which explains a thing or two about his individual approach to music. He studied composition at the Academy of Music in Cologne, workshopped with Luigi Nono in Avignon, and eventually earned his Masters degree at CalArts. With eight feature film scores, two TV pilots and a raft of record productions to his credit, as well as a number of concert music works performed, Kubi is as comfortable in the concert hall as he is on the dubbing stage. "Squint" was written and realized as a submission for the 2006 60x60 project. Most of the tracks are contact mic recordings of a custom-made fretless banjo built from a Danish cookie tin. "Squint" grants you a brief glimpse (a 60 second glimpse, to be exact) into its little universe.
Marc Barreca Cinder Cone
Marc Barreca has been composing and performing electronic music for over twenty-five years. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s he performed with the Seattle-based electronic music group Young Scientist and released recordings on K. Leimer’s Palace of Lights and Jeff Greinke’s Intrepid labels. He was also a member of K. Leimer’s studio group, Savant. Marc uses digital and analog synthesizers, digital samplers, environmental field recordings and computer processed audio loops to create multi-layered audio compositions. Cinder Cone was recorded in 2006 at Drab Studios, Bainbridge Island, USA on a laptop computer using sampled and synthesized sounds.
Maggi Payne :60 Fizz
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 :60 Fizz 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
Emma Lou Diemer Waves
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.
Frank Lee Sprague Organ Madness
An original American composer, Frank Lee Sprague was born in Wichita Falls, Texas and began to compose at the age of eight. He wrote String Quartet in B-flat Major in 1994 and debuted it in Los Angeles to rave reviews. His Symphonic Poem, is his best-known score. Sprague’s other noteworthy works are currently being published, including Concerto for Violin with Orchestra, Guitar Quintet, Symphony No. 2, Pirate Music Suite for Strings, Quartet No. 2, etc. His music is described as lyrical and tonal, with passionate and original writing marked by exclusive modulations and chord techniques. Various works by Sprague have been recorded and performed around the world which landed him acclaimed articles in such periodicals as Washington Post, Playboy Magazine and features on such radio programs as NPR’s All Things considered and All Songs considered. The aleatoric work “Organ Madness” by Frank Lee Sprague was written and recorded using a new technique in which the MIDI information for percussion is applied to a tonal instrument. This is only one of many new innovations the composer has created and applied to his works. The result is a piece with momentum and atonality that propels the listener onward until the short journey ends with a fade.
Larry M. Gaab Clash
Composing contemporary music in his studio in Chico, California, the artist produces, engineers, and masters the music collections. The work Clash was chosen from 7 other pieces especially composed for the Vox Novus 60x60 project. The piece is about movement against pressure. Consider the pressures and weight against one's breathes. Larry Gaab currently had 6 new releases available.
John Villec Construction Waves
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.
Dwight Winenger rnd.snd.bas
Dwight Winenger was born into a farming family in Indiana in 1936. He worked his way through Indiana State University as a motion picture projectionist. Winenger earned his B.A. in 1958 and his M.A. in 1959. He also did post-graduate work at Montana State University. In 1995 Minuscule University Press, because of its increasing role in international musical activities, became The Living Music Foundation, Inc. Founder and former Chief Executive Officer, Winenger is now the Publisher of LIVING MUSIC and the Webmaster of the Living Music Foundation Web Site.
Mikako Endo Where am I?
Mikako Endo is a composer who lives in Bay Area since 1990. Born in Tokyo, Japan. She comes from three generations of professional musicians. She received her B.M. in Music education and Composition from Tokyo Gakugei Univ. and her M.A. from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has composed music for concert performance, jazz band, film, CD-ROM, and even (shudder) karaoke. She also works as a mother, a piano teacher, a translator, and a recording engineer. I originally named this piece “Where in the world is Goldberg? It was made using several synthesizers in my home studio. The motive is quickly moving and changing. Where in the end am I?
Christopher Winslow Slinky
Graduated from the Conservatory of Music in Kansas City ,Christopher has composed 2 full-length theater pieces - "Peer Gynt" and "Servitude of the King", He is currently a vocalist with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and studies composition with David Conte. Christopher Winslow lives in Berkeley, CA.
Max Simoncic 60 for Marimba
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. Max has received a commission from the Stockton Symphony to compose a work for its 80th anniversary. The work will be premiered on the November concert 2006.
Ray Sherman Invention for Piano
Born Chicago, IL 4/15/23. To Los Angeles 1939. Played piano and arranged for various bands, including Gus Arnheim, Ben Pollack and Jan Savitt. Army band ‘43-6. Mainly worked as studio musician (including film Pete Kelly’sBlues) ‘50-’80. With Benny Goodman band ’61. Composed "Theme, Variations and Fugue," performed in ’68 by The Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra under Stan Kenton. Renewed activity in jazz in ‘80s with Bob Crosby, Jack Sheldon, Pete Fountain, et al. Solo CDs available on Arbors Records. My Inventions are based on jazz-inspired thematic material, and utilize modern contrapuntal techniques and traditional invention form.
Patrick Stoyanovich The Kentucky Preceptor
Pianist and composer, Patrick Stoyanovich, combines the sounds of urban Jazz, classical structure and phrasings, adds a dash of sweeping melodies found usually in the best movie scores, mixes in an understanding of the harmony of the great masters with inflections of music from our roots. Blending these with an imagination filled with passion, melancholy and wonder and you will begin to approach his fresh vital music he calls “American Realism”. The Kentucky Preceptor is a progressive cycle of piano pieces designed for the student. Classification would be as follows: Volume I- intermediate, Volume II- moderately difficult, Volume III- difficult. This work should also be of interest to the professional performing artist as well, particularly if performed as a complete cycle. “The Tobacco Farmers Blues” is a brief movement from the larger work. It is short, light hearted and is inspired by Kentucky Roots music. As the CD jacket states: “It can’t be too easy being a Kentucky tobacco farmer these days.”
Benjamin Boone & James Miley Drunken Bastards
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
Jonathan Stone From Mr. Knight
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Jonathan Stone received a degree in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991, and currently lives in San Francisco. From Mr. Knight is based on samples from John Coltrane, Björk, and Toru Takemitsu, and was constructed using the software tools Reaktor and Reason.
Agnes Szelag Who are you?
Agnes Szelag received her B.S. from Northwestern in video and film. She is currently studying music at Mills College. She performs music, dance, and visuals in the bay area as “aggiflex”, as well as putting on a series of events her self. Agnes’ work includes song-writing, composition, dance, interactive performance with cello and supercollider, video projection, installation, and improvisation. In 2005 she performed at San Francisco's first all female electronic music festival - Estrogenesis. Who are you? is a song exploring finality. Memory and nostalgia make it difficult for relationships to really end. The childlike voice represents the innocence of when we are falling in love with someone else. This is one of the only times in our lives when we see someone else in ourselves and at that time we are infinite. We are so intertwined with the energy and persona of this "other" we see them in our own image - in our eyes when gazing in the mirror. The vocal sounds in the background represent the voice of this other. The other high pitched sound creates the eeriness felt upon realization that this "other" has penetrated our reality to the point of loss of self-identity and will; simultaneous with the realization that this person is a stranger. These words can also be interpreted as therefore being estranged from ourselves--looking in the mirror and wondering who we really are.
John G. Bilotta A 12-Step Rag for the Tonally Co-Dependent
John Bilotta was born in Waterbury, Connecticut but has spent most his life in the San Francisco Bay Area where he studied composition, theory, and orchestration with Frederick Saunders. A recipient of multiple commissions, grants, and awards, John has concentrated on music for chamber ensembles and orchestra. His works have been performed at concerts and festivals by such outstanding international soloists, ensembles, and orchestras as Rarescale, the Kiev Philharmonic, and the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society. In 2005, his Concerto for Wind Quartet and Orchestra was recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic and released in March 2006, and is available from Amazon.com. Trying to make the break, but unsure how to do it? Finding it hard to hold onto seven (plus-or-minus-two) needing tonality as much as it needs you: you didn’t get here alone. But twelve simple steps, one at a time, taken with care and consistency can sever the irresolvable bond. Step high, it’s a cakewalk.
Ray Cole Sodium
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 broadcasted 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 Helpling at DHM Music Design and Igor Korneitchouk ar The Studio At The Post. It’s a short piece for solo piano which I wrote back in 1991. Unlike a lot of the 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.
Brian Mark Redemption
Brian Mark holds a B.M. from the Berklee College of Music in film music and composition. He also completed a certificate in composition from La Schola Cantorum in Paris, as well as completing a graduate certificate in film composition at the University of Southern California, where he received the Henry Warren Scholarship in film music.Brian has worked with many professional ensembles: the Esterhazy String Quartet, the San Francisco New Music Ensemble, and the Paramount Studios union session players. His teachers include James Smith, Howard Frazin, Michel Merlet, David Garner, and David Conte. Brian recently completed a master's degree in composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Celeste Hutchins Clocker
Celeste Hutchins was born in San Jose, California in 1976. In 1998, she graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, where she studied electronic music with Maggi Payne. In 2005, she graduated with an MA from Wesleyan University, where she studied with Ron Kuivilla and Anthony Braxton. She has played a tape at Woodstockhausen 2000 and 2002, played at the Exploratorium in 2001, played in the BRINK Series in 2005, appeared on a CD put out by Ibol Records and has had German and American radio play. Celeste is currently enrolled at CCMIX in France Clocker is a collection of saw tooth waves, each ticking like a clock. Every new tick is faster than the previous one until they become tones rather than ticking. Each divides the 60 seconds into smaller and smaller divisions, like faster, smaller clocks for faster, smaller people.
Brian Kane Bagatelle: On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Brian Kane is currently completing his PhD in music composition at UC Berkeley. It addition to composition, he is also active as a writer on topics in the philosophy of music and aesthetics, as well as working as a jazz guitarist. He composes works for a variety of settings, from orchestras, to chamber music, to electronics, to sound installations. He has also been published in qui parle and Array. Over the past few years I have been working on a loosely connected cycle of electronic, electro-acoustic and installation works which focus on the concept of a musical physiognomy, partially inspired by Darwin’s last great work. In this project, source material is borrowed, derived, or based on animal and human sounds. Then, the archive is re-configured into various manifestations. This short piece, perhaps more akin to a bagatelle, was composed specifically for 60x60. The scraps of the workshop often produce hidden treasures.
Cheryl Leonard Ashi
Cheryl E. Leonard is a composer, performer and improviser of music and interdisciplinary works. Her interests include finding and building instruments, collaboration across artistic disciplines, site-specific work and exploring the intricacies of sounds not generally considered musical. Over the past several years she has focused on creating compositions with found natural materials. Cheryl received a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from Mills College. She has been awarded grants from the ASCAP Foundation and Meet the Composer, and artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Engine 27, and Villa Montalvo. Ashi (the Japanese word for foot, pace, or gait) is a work for amplified rocks. All sounds in this piece are generated by wobbling rocks, which are first nudged into motion, then allowed to settle naturally back into a state of rest. The “instruments” are granite and volcanic tuff. They range from about the size of a quarter, to a large “sea egg” which weighs around 10 lbs. This piece is designed to be playable live by three performers.
Norman Teale FAFM 8
Composer and recording Engineer/producer Norman Teale was born in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1980. He finished his undergraduate degree in Recording Industry (Production and Technology) at Middle Tennessee State University in 2003. Currently he is studying at Mills College (Oakland, CA) under Chris Brown, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, and Fred Frith. He will graduate in 2006 with his Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media. FAFM 8 is part of a 10 piece set under the “Fuck Art Fuck Music.” Using only random samples given by fellow composers, Norman edited, processed, chopped, and mangled these samples without ever hearing them. He then combined them in a digital audio workstation to manipulate them further, and once the waveforms “looked” finished then he printed them to stereo files. The result is an industrial landscape devoid of common melodies, structured by the 60 second time limit of each piece.
Aaron Drake EAR CANDY 1b:
Aaron Drake is a composer based in Los Angeles, California and is currently working towards a MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. Drake earned his Bachelor of Music in Composition from San Francisco State University. His studies have also taken him to the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Trossingen, Germany. Aside from his compositional work, Drake’s experience includes an interest in interdisciplinary projects such as kinetic sculpture, experimental video and sound installation. His projects have included improvisational composition for theater and collaborative art pieces with visual artists. Ear-Candy 1b h explores some of the physiological effects of music by combining traditional harmonic processes (the cadence and suspensions) and microtonal deviation from pitch centers. The desired physiological effects are based on my own personal experience however, not scientific research. Dense, sustained, polyphonic textures sometimes create rich sound fabrics that can literally tickle one’s ears. While I find these to be engaging, I also find them to be pacifying not unlike the lulling feeling of a humming motor.
Paul Steenhuisen Poland is not yet Lost
Born 1965, Vancouver. Studied with Keith Hamel, Louis Andriessen, Michael Finnissy, Tristan Murail, in Vancouver, Amsterdam, London, and Paris. As a student, he received more than a dozen national and international awards for his music, including four awards in the now-defunct CBC Competition, and seven awards in the SOCAN Awards for Young Composers. He was also awarded the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal as the outstanding student in all faculties at UBC, and his work WONDER was ranked third at the International Rostrum of Composers . Steenhuisen held the job of Composer in Residence with the Toronto Symphony from 1998-2000, and now teaches composition at The University of Alberta. Poland is not yet Lost is part of the series of brief electroacoustic pieces entitled Attractive Test Music, sounding/recontextualizing iconography and textural characteristics of visual artists in the opposite manner of projective test drawings used in psychological diagnosis. The set also includes Circumnavigating the Sea of Shit (Schnabel), and projected work such as I like America and America likes me (Beuys), and If a picture paints a thousand words then why can't I paint you? (Klein).
Phillip Stearns A Few Words
Phillip Stearns is an emerging experimental electronic music composer from the Los Angeles area. He works primarily with DIY electronics, analog and digital feedback, and hard-wire hacking though the computer has sneaked its way into the mix on occasion. A fair amount of his recent work deals with composition as it pertains to improvisation in the context of the small group performance setting. He is currently studying composition at the California Institute of the Arts under Mark Trayle and Sara Roberts. ‘A Few Words’ was composed using your standard text editor. Intuitively generated text was entered into the text editor and various parts were copied and pasted thousands of times. The result was a rather large and largely unreadable file that was then opened in Pure Data and played as an audio file. It’s becoming a common practice to open PDF or other files into audio buffers and use them as source material. I thought it would be interesting for this project to try my hand at creating the music in the data file itself.
Deeann Mathews Broken Waltz
Deeann D. Mathews is a composer, arranger and pianist living in San Francisco, California. While her primary compositional activity is in sacred art song, she began her career as an instrumental composer and greatly enjoys writing small “salon Pieces” for the enjoyment of herself and friends. Mathews, 25, is also a novelist and short story writer. Her “day job” is copy editing for the Oakland Tribune. At a basic level, “Broken Waltz” is a short exploration of the effects of polyrhythm and minor keys in succession on a familiar standard of western classical music, the waltz. But its inspiration comes from Mathews’ own recent perceptions of Western society and culture. There is much beauty, but underneath there is a great deal of conflict, contradiction, and brokenness. Yet life rushes on, in a swift but often tragic harmony. The composer contracts her thoughts to a minute’s span in “Broken Waltz, scored for celesta.
Warner Jepson JUDY JOLLY
Warner Jepson, grad. of Oberlin Conservatory, began improvising for modern dance classes, which led to a theater review, than to a ballad opera, SAN FRANCISCO'S BURNING, with 60 songs that ran 6 months. After other musicals he created Buchla synthesizer music for gallery and museum openings and exhibitions throughout the Bay Area, films {THE BED], the SF Ballet [TOTENTANZ], A.C.T., and, as composer in residence, for the Nat. Cen. for Exp. in TV-KQED with 5 programs for PBS. After another musical, he's composing chamber music finally for acoustic instruments. JUDY JOLLY was first a piano piece with chords too large for the first Amiga music 4 voice software to handle, so I split up the chods into alternating 16th notes resuling in this high-speed piece. JUDY JOLLY started as a piano piece; the first Amiga couldn't play more than 4 parts so I split up the chords into 16th notes making this hi-speed piece.
Sherene Strausberg Davanita
Sherene Strausberg, a native of Baltimore, began studying piano at age 5. At 18, she won a National Composition Competition, which awarded her a four-year scholarship to Indiana University’s School of Music. She graduated in 1999 with a B.M. in Composition and Piano, and a B.S. in Audio Engineering. Sherene earned her M.M. in Film Scoring at North Carolina School of the Arts where she had the opportunity to write music for 16 student films, as well as conduct and record music she wrote for orchestra and jazz ensembles. Now living in Los Angeles, Sherene is pursuing a career in music for television and film, while continuing to write music for orchestra and chamber groups. "Davanita" was written with the idea of creating another world. I wanted to make the listener feel like they're removed from their surroundings by creating a wall of sound that feels like there's no beginning, no end. The only distinct melody can be heard in the recorder, which I played slightly out of tune to give it a little off-kilter, mysterious effect. I also liked the idea of juxtaposing a very old instrument, a wooden recorder, and modern electronic sounds.
Meri von Kleinsmid Monorail
Classically trained and educated in Western music as well as ethnomusicology (and a collector of found-sound since age eight), composer, sound-artist, and phonographer Meri von KleinSmid's primary aim is to create work that challenges the listener psychologically. Her work has included collage and computer-manipulated electronic compositions, which critics have described as stunning, uniquely expansive, sparse and mesmerizing delicious. The short work 'Monorail', composed and created from purely electronic sources, was inspired buy an evening journey using this mode of transportation.
Sharon Cheslow Right Now Be My Molasses
Sharon Cheslow is a sound and visual artist, musician, and writer. Her works have been featured in Lincoln Center Out of Doors (New York), Sound Junction 2 (UK), Ladyfest (San Francisco), International Mechanical, Kinetic & Electronic Arts Festival (San Francisco), Deep Listening Space Gallery International Dream Festival (New York), and Il Corral Turn the Screws Festival of Love and Noise (Los Angeles). She has toured the U.S. and Canada, and she won the Frog Peak Experimental Music Award in 2000. Recent audio and video releases are on Kill Rock Stars, 5 Rue Christine, Collective Jyrk and her label Decomposition. "Right Now Be My Molasses" is a piece originally written for a Toyo Records compilation of 20 second compositions. The piece was then pitch shifted to 60 seconds. In doing so, the composition’s original mix of sped up and slowed down samples was highlighted and enhanced.
Robert Voisey Executive Privilege
Composer and impresario, Robert Voisey is the Founder of Vox Novus, Vice President of programs at the Living Music Foundation, Director of the 60x60 project, and Director of the Composer’s Voice Concert Series. His mission is the promotion and dissemination of contemporary new music. “Executive Privilege and pompous circumstance” is created entirely from digitally manipulated voice samples to create a landscape of sound.
RD Wraggett Matrix Minute
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.
Benedikt Brydern Ancient Connections
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.
Greg Bryant Bobfricative
Greg Bryant is a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development at University of California, Los Angeles. In 2004, he received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been playing and recording music and noise for over 20 years in a variety of styles, and is planning a CD release of experimental work later this year. He has a broad interest in the relationships between music and language, and has published research on the evolution of music, spontaneous speech, and verbal irony. The basic loop, created on a four-second digital delay, remains stable along with several spontaneously layered parts, two recorded backwards with tape speed manipulations. The loop was generated by recording several segments of vocal sounds over one another between 100ms and 800ms and then slowing the blend down to 2 seconds. Sound sources include speech through a portable radio with a lo-fi microphone, drum stool squeaking, an egg shaker, and vocal noise.
Igor Korneitchouk The Kiss
[Written with the belief that no program notes should be longer than the piece they describe. Thus read the following quickly in less than 43 seconds!] 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 a founding member of the performance art group touch me hear, 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 here is that there are only 4 strings per violin, so the preparation (e.g. a piece of paper) must be mutable." — Igor Korneitchouk
Greg Bartholomew No! George! No !
Greg Bartholomew’s music has been performed across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Europe. His Suite from Razumov, for clarinet and string quartet, was recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic for the Masterworks in the New Era CD series. Capstone Records has released the Ars Brunensis Chorus recording of From the Odes of Solomon on their Society of Composers CD series. The Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium commissioned his String Trio for George Crumb, which was premiered by the Third Angle New Music Ensemble and reprised by Accessible Contemporary Music of Chicago. No! George! No! first occurred to me as spoken text for a music composition in early 2005, and the words have only grown more appropriate with the passage of time. I was inspired to use spoken text as a musical collage element by John Adams’ brilliant early work, Christian Zeal and Activity. With the voice element as the starting point, I then created a backdrop musicscape. The vocal parts were performed by two amazing Seattle attorneys.
Chris Ward Glenda in Paris
Chris is a composer living in Oregon. He writes mostly in his basement in a narrow space between two of the puddles. On alternating Sundays, he plays bass for a trio called the HalliburTones. Glenda in Paris is a sonic collage of original electronica and serves as a pointedly odd counterpart to Dance Truman Dance, the final piece on the first release of 60X60(2004). Glenda in Paris is a tribute to the writings of the late David Foster Wallace. "Late" in the sense that his post-modern ideas would have been even more helpful had they come around a few decades earlier.
Peter Swanzy Eulogy for Bill Swanzy
Peter Swanzy was born in Seattle, Washington in 1980. He earned his BFA in performance and composition from the College of Santa Fe. Swanzy's work has been commissioned by Santa Fe New Music, under John Kennedy, by UnHeard Of!, under Nina Carlson, and by Thomas Sewell for Enigma Of the Mill, a multimedia work in 2006. Mr. Swanzy has been featured as a multi-media composer, film-editor, and performer in northern New Mexico, Hawaii, and New York City, and has studied under John Kennedy, Steven Miller, David Dunn, and Oliver Prezant. Eulogy was created using seven short samples of Shakuhachi Japanese flute of which the composer performed. Each of these short gestures were manipulated and distorted in time and space to form one overall gesture of breath, based within a predetermined algorithmic structure taken from Edo-period Shakuhachi pieces. My uncle Bill died on May 8th, 2005, and that is the date of composition and assembly for this piece.
Katrina Wreede 56 Seconds of Creep
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.
Dylan Mattingly Handful of Rain
Dylan Mattingly was born March 18th, 1991 in Oakland California. He plays cello, piano, elect5ric bass, electric guitar, and ukulele, and is a prolific composer whose works have won composition contests by the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music and the Asia America Symphony. He also enjoys translating ‘60 pop songs into Latin Picture yourself climbing an unraveling rope ladder while the fog slowly clears, revealing a slow dark escalator.
Margaret Schedel Whirlitzer
Margaret Anne Schedel is a composer and cellist specializing in the creation and performance of ferociously interactive media. While working towards a DMA in music composition at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, her thesis, an interactive multimedia opera, A King Listens, premiered at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and was profiled by apple.com. She is a founding member of the NeXT Ens, an ensemble with the unique mission to perform and support the creation of interactive electroacoustic works, and she also is a board member of the New West Electroacoustic Music Organization (NWEAMO). Currently she is serving the International Computer Music Association as a Director-At-Large and Array Editor, as well as co-editing an issue of the journal Organised Sound with the theme “Sustainability.” She makes a living as the education coordinator for Cycling74. This piece contains fifty eight thousand, nine hundred ninety eight miliseconds of pure evil. Please make sure there are no sharp object around while you listen. Just kidding, but I got your attention! Imagine if you could circuit bend a music box, now (after checking for sharp objects) you may listen.
Julia Norton WBQ
Born in Oxford England in 1968, Julia moved 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 finally found the vocal freedom she always craved. 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 tone of the piece is one that is melodic and harmonious.
Susan Hurley Sunrise
Originally from New England, Hurley (MM, Eastman; DM, Indiana University) currently composes and teaches in Los Angeles. Discography: ambient experimental improvisations on clavichord Soft Sounds, 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, yoga videos, meditations, theatre: Trojan Women, The Tempest; chamber opera, Anaïs; upcoming full opera, Oracles. Hurley’s 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, 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!]
David Hahn AMERIKA IST NUN ERWACHT
DAVID HAHN is an eclectic composer who creates diverse styles of music ranging from the experimental sounds of electronically-processed guitars to real-life sound collages to instrumental and vocal music featuring traditional instruments and voices. He has composed over seventy-five diverse pieces of music, many of which commissioned and performed by established professional ensembles and soloists His music has been released on Centaur and Capstone Records, is regularly broadcast, and has been performed throughout the United States and in Canada, Chile, Turkey, Croatia, France, Germany, Cuba and Cyprus Two voices which have—rather unfortunately—made history are here blended together in a chillingly apt juxtaposition. As the bumper sticker reads: "If you are not completely appalled, you are not paying attention."
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