Rochester, N.Y. – The Eastman School of Music kicks off a year-long celebration of the Eastman Computer Music Center’s 25 th Anniversary on October 12 at 8 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall, with a concert that features the works of visiting artist and computer music revolutionary Jean-Claude Risset. During the 2006-2007 academic year , the ECMC will sponsor an additional five concerts, as well as multimedia presentations, guest lectures, and other events to celebrate the explosive growth of new technical and expressive digital audio resources available to today’s musicians and audiences.
The inaugural October 12 concert will be accompanied by audio-visual stations available before and after the concert, and during intermission. At these stations, concert attendees will have the opportunity to view experimental films with musical scores by Risset, Iannis Xenakis and Alvin Lucier, and to listen to historically important works of computer music. Risset, one of the foremost practitioners of computer music and the featured artist for the concert, composed the first major work realized by computer synthesis in 1968.
“Computer and electroacoustic music has become so commonplace in concert and popular music and in multimedia productions that it is easy to take these digital audio resources for granted,” notes Allan Schindler, Director of the Eastman Computer Music Center.
“However, the situation was quite different in 1981, when the first computer, the size and weight of a refrigerator, was installed in the electronic music studios at Eastman,” Schindler adds. “New creative and instructional programs were established to explore ways to coax expressive and colorful music from this behemoth.”
The concert series, which includes performances on November 16, February 23, February 24, March 8 and March 22, will feature internationally acclaimed visiting composers, digital audio researchers and developers, and performing and media artists. Additionally, premiere performances will be given for the winning submissions to the ECMC-sponsored International Electroacoustic Music Competition. Joining Eastman musicians for this series will be several composers and performers who worked or studied in the ECMC studios over the past 25 years and who have gone on to achieve prominent recognition in their fields.
For more information on the Eastman Computer Music Center 25 th Anniversary Celebration – including concert programs, artist biographies, and lecture/presentation details – visit www.ecmc.rochester.edu/ecmc25 .
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