Tales from the Road - ICMC and the Barn Dance

It has been a while since the last KLANG post, mostly due to my crazy fall semester schedule, but I’m hoping to get on a more regular schedule again now that some of the craziness has died away. This week I would like to do a quick review of a couple recent festivals I attended last week - ICMC and the Electroacoustic Barn Dance.

From September 25 through October 4 I was one the road with two friends of mine - Kramer Elwell and Chris Ozley - attending the International Computer Music Conference in Denton, TX (University of North Texas) and then the EA Barn Dance in Fredericksburg, VA (University of Mary Washington) and it was a blast! I have been a little hesitant to apply to ICMC in the past because the cost of the conference alone is pretty high (for good reason) and the cost of international travel has always been an issue. However, this year, ICMC was not only in America, but it was only 4 hours up the road from where I live (Austin, TX). I would have been crazy not to apply, right? So I did, and ended up presenting my 8-channel acousmatic piece Wind Chimes Clatter through the Mist and Fog. It was a really incredible experience, and I’m thrilled that I was able to attend the festival and present some of my music in such great company.

In general I had a really great time at ICMC. Jonty Harrison (Univ. of Birmingham/BEAST director), Miller Puckette (UCSD and creator of Max/MSP) and Carla Scarletti (developer of KYMA) were the keynote speakers and all three gave incredible addresses. There were a number of wonderful and interesting papers presented and many of the pieces I heard were absolutely mind-blowing. With that said, I wasn’t quite mentally prepared for ICMC. I have been to conferences and festivals in the past, but they always last 2-3 days. ICMC was my first 7-day conference with events stacked right on top of each other, and more careful planning on my part would have saved me a lot of listening fatigue and concert burnout. I came away from the conference really loving some of the pieces I heard, while others really didn’t stick with me at all, which I guess is almost to be expected from a conference of that size and scope. However, I do feel that I may have missed out on some great pieces as a result of not listening attentively enough or not giving them a fair shake due solely to the fact that my brain was completely fried by the end of day 3. I do have some thoughts on the programming of the conference that may have improved (or at least lightened) the amount of fatigue i experienced, but that is a much larger topic for a later post.

I think the highlight for me was hearing Jonty Harrison’s keynote address, followed by a live diffusion performance of his piece Unsound Objects (my favorite acousmatic piece!) the next day. I’ve gone to concerts in the past in which friends and colleagues get to hear a performance of their favorite works and they talk about what a moving and enriching experience it was. I had never fully experienced that until ICMC. I’ve heard plenty of pieces in concerts that I absolutely love and have had many unforgettable concert experiences, but sitting behind Jonty Harrison and watching him diffuse his piece in a hall with a diffusion system he designed himself was something I may never experience again. Not only that, I heard Unsound Objects the way Jonty intended it to be heard. It was diffused into the space exactly as he wanted, mixed as he wanted it mixed, and performed to perfection. Jonty closed out the concert and after he finished I was so taken by his performance that I was honestly speechless. I ran into Elainie Lillios (my former teacher at BGSU) right after the performance and she asked me what I thought of it. I didn’t have any words for her. She just smiled and said something to the affect of it being “like a religious experience, right?” and all I could do was shake my head in agreement. It really was one of the most moving musical experiences of my life. It was a performance that I will never forget and a presentation of piece that I (unfortunately) may never experience again. That alone, made the entire conference worthwhile, at least for me.

Kramer, Chris and I got on the road Wednesday (a couple days before the end of ICMC) and drove up to Virginia (yes, all 21 hours of it) for the Electroacoustic Barn Dance. The three of us perform as a laptop trio called Cmd+Q and were scheduled to perform at a late night concert at the Barn Dance. I have to say the Barn Dance was like a breath of fresh air for me. While ICMC was a wonderful opportunity and experience, there was so much music presented that one can’t help but be overwhelmed and miss a lot of what goes on. In addition to that, the majority of the concerts were about 2 hours long (sometimes a little longer), and while I understand it has to be that way in order to program everyone’s music, it makes it difficult as an audience member to stay fully engaged throughout the conference. With that said, the UNT faculty (Jon Nelson, Andrew May, Panayiotis Kokoras), the CEMI staff and everyone involved did a bang-up job of running ICMC. I'm stoked and thankful that I was able to attend and present my music .

The Barn Dance, however, took a different approach. There were a lot of concerts throughout the weekend, but they all last roughly an hour (sometimes a little under an hour). The pieces were programmed well, there was never a risk of listening fatigue and the performances were really astonishing. There was also a nice blend of fixed media and pieces with live performers on each concert in addition to a nice blend of styles and aesthetics. I heard everything from analog synthesis pieces to chamber ensembles with electronics to feedback performance, performance art and video/multimedia pieces. Suffice to say I had a wonderful time, and I was very happy that Cmd+Q was able to be a part of it. Mark Snyder has a really amazing program at Mary Washington and I urge everyone to apply to this festival in the future. I guarantee you will have an amazing time.

Below are some highlights from ICMC and the Barn Dance along with some photos (none of which were taken by me personally…).

Thanks for checking in, and I’ll be back soon with a review of Eric Honour’s CD Phantasm which features works for saxophone and electronics.


ICMC
Jonty Harison - Unsound Objects (truly a religious experience)
Elainie Lillios - Contemplating Larry
Mark Pilkington - Lens 7
Phillip Sink - Frayed Cities
Per Bloland - Solis-EA
Mike Polo - Warped Metals
Michael Thompson  - Pressure
Chris Biggs - Decoherence
John Gibson - Red Plumes
Steven Ricks - Medusa in Fragments
Keith Kirchoff - Seeing the Past through the Prism of Tomorrow
Ioannis Andriotis - Lokassena



Barn Dance
Becky Brown - Hold Still
Kaitlyn Wagner - I, Phillip
Jerod Sommerfeldt - Dharma in Excelsis
Joo Won Park - Eyelid Spasm
Aaron Anderson - Studio Study I
Mark Phillips - Waiting for Lucille
Eric Honour - Extensions
Eli Stine - Ring|Axel|Gear
Anthony Morasco - Weld
Tom Dempster - ahalugisdi unole
Phillip Schroeder - Lightness is the Root of Gravity
Andrew Walters - Red Plastic Bell Abstract
Brian Sears - Reverberance


(There were so many great pieces at both events, and this is just a short list of the pieces that stuck out in my mind. Check them out!)