Studio 1
After working with an amazing team to get EMPAC up and running (starting with six of us and now over 40) and fifty projects later I’m moving on from Troy NY .. stopping full-time work May 1 and continuing as consultant until a successor is found. When I get through all the archiving I need to do, I’ll post some highlights. In the meantime, I’ve cut/pasted a bunch of recent projects.
Steve Lehman Octet
Friday May 28, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
A trailblazing young saxophonist and composer whose thrilling, multilayered work stands at the frontiers of contemporary music
New Nothing: Josephine Foster + Victor Herrero
Friday April 2, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
In the final New Nothing of the season, two charismatic performers offer different takes on the construction of the song and the role of the human voice.
Music of Helmut Lachenmann
Saturday March 27, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
A rare US performance of one of the most influential living European composers, interpreted by two exciting new music ensembles.
PREMIERE: The OpenEnded Group: Upending
Thursday March 25, 7:00 PM | Theater
An evening-length work that combines breathtaking 3D experimental animation with music by Morton Feldman, recorded at EMPAC by the FLUX Quartet Followed by the making of Upending with The OpenEnded Group.
Frederic Rzewski
Saturday March 20, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
A monumental figure in new music who is both an instrumental virtuoso and a composer of revolutionary ambition in the tradition of Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill.
New Nothing: Extra Life + Dan Deacon with Nuclear Power Pants
Saturday February 13, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
A thrashing, zig-zagging, gorgeously heavy band that reconciles the 21st and 13th centuries mixes it up with two beacons of exuberant indie noise dance.
Rensselaer Holiday Concert
Tuesday December 15, 7:00 PM | Concert Hall
In celebration of winter and the turning of the year, Rensselaer invites you to the holiday concert at EMPAC – establishing a new tradition on campus.
Unfiction: Examined Life
Thursday November 19, 7:30 PM | Studio 2
In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.
Garth Knox
Saturday November 14, 8:00 PM | Studio 2
A world master of the viola plays an evening of music, some very old, some very new– written expressly for his instrument and its baroque-era cousin, the viola d’amore.
New Nothing: Prefuse 73 w/ Imnopf, Skeleton$ + Luciano Chessa
Friday November 13, 7:30 PM | Studio 2
Punky funk meets Futurism and homespun electro in this paradoxical grouping of artists from far ends of the musical spectrum.
Marc Downie: FIELD Workshop
Saturday November 7, 10:00 AM | Studio 2
Marc Downie, the creator of the powerful digital art programming environment FIELD, leads a two-day workshop in its manifold uses.
Marc Downie: The Secret World of Making Art by Writing Code
Friday November 6, 7:00 PM | Studio 2
A not-to-be missed sneak peak at the process and tools of OpenEnded Group – one of the most sophisticated digital artist teams working today. Presenting will be artist and programmer Marc Downie, one of the three OEG members collaborating on the commissioned stereoscopic video project “Upending”.
New Nothing: Zs + Little Women
Friday October 30, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
Zs, the scariest band from EMPAC’s Between a Rock and a Tiny Bell concert, returns on Halloween for a careening set of “[sputtering] Morse code dots of percussion and saxophone”
Art21: Systems
Wednesday October 28, 7:30 PM | Studio 2
A special preview screening of “Systems,” the fourth episode from the fifth season of the award-winning program Art21, including interviews with Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, Kimsooja, and Allan McCollum.
Daniel Teige & Volkmar Klien
Friday October 16, 8:00 PM | Goodman Studio/Theater
36 loudspeakers hung in different heights and in 360° around the audience; German composers and sound artists Daniel Teige and Volkmar Klien play music specifically designed for this immersive sound environment.
Per Tengstrand: The Battles of Beethoven
Saturday October 3, 8:30 PM | Concert Hall
On the anniversary of his performance as soloist in EMPAC’s Opening Concert, pianist and ambassador of classical music Per Tengstrand presents a concert tracking the evolution of the piano during the life of Beethoven.
Slow Wave: Seeing Sleep (Realization of Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer w/Jonathan Chen)
September 25 – September 27 | multiple venues
A three-day festival of installations, film, music, and scientific experiment devoted to the methods for giving form to the elusive, and at times, ineffable enigma of sleep. (Please note: September 26 includes a sleep-over with advanced reservations).
New Nothing: Boredoms: BOADRUM 9 plus DEERHUNTER
Friday September 11, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
The New Nothing series kickoff includes two bands, nine (make that ten) drummers, and an evening of noise/music that’s experienced not just with the ear but the entire body.
Contact Ensemble: ELEVATED
Thursday September 3, 8:00 PM | Theater
Composer and Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang presents four genre-defying new musical works in conjunction with films by visual artists William Wegman, Bill Morrison, Matt Mullican, and Doug Aitken.
Yvon Bonenfant: Beacons
Friday May 29, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
Bringing together the musicality of cutting edge vocal art with sensual, multi-screen video explorations of light and colour, “Beacons” takes the audience on a theatrical journey that explores love and loss, coming and going, and the intensity of the primordial human act of reaching.
Rafael Toral: The Space Program
Friday May 8, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
Musician and artist Rafael Toral presents “The Space Program,” a series of works exploring peculiar combinations of gestural control and sonic palette. Each ‘study’ is a conjoined spatial and aural exploration, often using Toral’s own DIY electronics.
In a Glass Hour: Steven Connor
Thursday April 2, 7:00 PM | Theater
Steven Connor, Academic Director of the London Consortium Graduate Programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies, delivers his EMPAC-commissioned text titled, “The Chronopher” a meditation on time and the nature of voice.
Catherine Sullivan with Sean Griffin: Triangle of Need, The Chittendens & D-Pattern
March 20 – March 29 | Studio 1 – Goodman
Three multichannel video and audio installations on rotation by the artist Catherine Sullivan with whom Griffin has been collaborating for over six years on music, sound, and “language design”: “D-Pattern”, “The Chittendens” and “Triangle of Need”.
Unfiction on Safari
Thursday March 19, 7:00 PM | Theater
A collection of three films: Olaf Breuning’s “Home 2″; Sascha Paladino’s “Throw Down Your Heart”, with Bela Fleck; and Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s “The Couple in the Cage”, together, present a complex terrain of intention and action surrounding tourism, cultural interchange, appropriation, and hybridity.
Zeroth Channel II
Friday March 6, 8:00 PM | Theater
Is listening to a “recording” of a bottle somehow still listening to a bottle? What about the wind around a glacier or a hammer? New works using up to eighteen loudspeakers by composers Doug Henderson (Berlin), Seth Cluett (Paris), and Natasha Barrett (Oslo) lead the listener into questions of what is real, true, or important in identifying the concrete origin of a sound used in the work.
Bobby McFerrin
Sunday January 25, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
A solo performance by the inimitable vocalist, improvisor, conductor and musical enigma whose path has ranged to audience-participatory improvisations, 10 Grammies, performances with major symphonies, and several unusual ensembles of his own design.
Quicksilver: Stile Moderno: new music from the 17th century
Friday January 23, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
Critically acclaimed early-music violinist Robert Mealy leads the new early-music ensemble Quicksilver, presenting a concert of brilliant and virtuosic music from the avant-garde of the 1600s
Sean Griffin: Hitting Things, Saying Things
Saturday January 17, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
As part of his two-part residency at EMPAC this spring, LA-based composer Sean Griffin presents “Hitting Things, Saying Things”, a collection of works in which the staged nature of music performance evaporates into an idiosyncratic breed of theater.
Unfiction: Our Daily Bread
Thursday December 11, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! “Our Daily Bread” is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always easy to digest and in which we all take part. A meticulous study that enables the audience to form their own ideas through long shots calculating what happens before food journeys to tables around the globe.
In a Glass Hour: Alfred Crosby
Tuesday November 18, 7:00 PM | Studio 2
Alfred Crosby, author of “The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600″, will speak about time from the historical perspective detailed of Western Europe’s adoption of quantitative approaches to time, space, finance, art, and music.
ZEROTH CHANNEL: Hans Tutschku
Saturday November 15, 8:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
Arraymusic
Saturday November 8, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
The Arraymusic ensemble is an eight-member performing group from Toronto recognized worldwide for its innovative programming and virtuosic performance. Their extensive repertoire includes a library-like collection of pieces they have commissioned from composers with highly individual voices from around the world.
Election 08: Take Me to Your Leader
Tuesday November 4, 7:00 PM | Evelyn’s Cafe
Join hundreds of citizens to watch election night coverage on EMPAC’s big screens wandering through Evelyn’s Cafe, Studio 1 – Goodman and Studio 2. Door Prizes! Scorecards! Free apple pie!
Inaugural Concert
October 4, 7:30 PM | Concert Hall
Open Late with Madlib
October 4, 11:00 PM | Studio 1 – Goodman
Dance and hang out under our 360° screen (suspended overhead) with Madlib’s fused strata of encyclopedic beats, the turntable mastery of J. Rocc, the 8-bit hip-hop antics of Juiceboxxx, and live video projections by lmnopf.
Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening Workshop
October 5, 11:00 AM | Concert Hall
Cecil Taylor: Floating Gardens
October 5, 2:00 PM | Theater
Pauline Oliveros and Cecil Taylor
October 5, 8:00 PM | Concert Hall
Per Tengstrand: 2 Hands, 3 Pianos
October 4, 12:00 PM | Concert Hall
Per Tengstrand will perform works chosen specifically for three of EMPAC’s grand pianos: the deep clarity of the Bosendorfer, the delicate precision of the Fazioli, and the massive sound of our Hamburg Steinway.
Robert Normandeau: Cinema for the Ear
October 9, 9:00 PM | Concert Hall
A winner of nearly every major prize within the field of electroacoustic music, Montreal-based composer Robert Normandeau will explore the Concert Hall’s ideal design for multichannel electronic music.
Fieldwork
October 10, 9:00 PM | Studio 2
A collective of three widely celebrated young composer/performers. Fieldwork’s music reflects each member’s ties to the American jazz tradition, modern composition, African and South Asian musics, underground hip-hop and electronica, and the influential music of Chicago’s A.A.C.M.
Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot
October 18, 2:30 PM | Evelyn’s Cafe
Gamelan Galak Tika is an orchestra of instruments traditional to Balinese music and dance; Ensemble Robot is a team of engineers, designers, and artists that have created a collection of unique robotic instruments.
Events that took place around campus before the EMPAC building opened:
04.25.08
Between a Rock and a Tiny Bell
03.06.08
Jonathan Berger: Data Speaks. Are you listening?
http://empac.rpi.edu/events/2008/berger.html
Flux Quartet
So Precussion | Dirty Projectors
