Philip Mantione - performance

The Improvising Composer
- music, technology and gesture -

Description

The Improvising Composer was an event I organized that took place at the Santa Fe Complex in March 2010. The day-long event included workshops in interactive audio software, a panel discussion and concert. Featured composers were Martin Back, James Brody, William Fowler Collins, J.A. Deane, Philip Mantione and Christian Pincock. The panel discussion was moderated by long-time music critic and writer, Craig Smith.

In the workshops, composers discussed their use of software such as MAX/Msp, LiSa, Nodal, Plogue Bidule, Super Collider, AudioMulch, Kontakt3, Artwonk and Ableton Live. There were demonstrations of custom built instruments and the use of micro-controllers such as the MIDITRON and Arduino to control external devices and capture sensor data.

Craig Smith moderated a panel discussion with the six participating composers. Topics included improvisational systems such as Cobra, Conduction and Soundpainting, approaches to solo versus group improvisation, and the influence of technology on live improvised performance.

The evening featured a series of six solo performances by each composer and a premiere performance of these musicians as a group. The six participating composers covered a wide breadth of experience and came from diverse backgrounds.

DATE: Saturday, March 6, 2010

LOCATION:  
Santa Fe Complex
632 Agua Fria
Santa Fe, NM  87501

CONTACT FOR MORE INFO: 
Philip Mantione
music@philipmantione.com
505-466-4832 

Event Images

Artist Bios:

Martin Back is an emerging composer and the youngest in the group of participating artists. He is a media and sound artist, musician, and composer, living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He received a B.A. in Moving Image Arts at the College of Santa Fe in 2004 where he was a student of pioneering media theorist, historian and author, Gene Youngblood, and media artist David Stout. Martin studies experimental composition privately with composer and sound artist David Dunn. He is a sonic provocateur and his work explores or makes use of drones, custom analog electronics, graphic and text scores, field recordings, software, site specific performances, noise, and sound object-sculptures. Recent works have been focused on the human body as a locus for sound making and performance, sound as a physical medium, and scores for environmental response. Martin has performed widely in and around New Mexico either in solo or ensemble situations. He is founder of the Ancestral Groan Liberation Orchestra, is a member of the New Mexico Soundpainting Orchestra, led by jazz trombonist and experimental musician Christian Pincock, and a member of The Transducers, an electro-acoustic ensemble founded by composer Philip Mantione. His video works have been exhibited in the United States and Canada. More information at: moongasm.blogspot.com

James Brody (1941-2010) studied composition at Indiana University with Iannis Xenakis and Franz Kamin. Brody wrote the liner notes for the original Nonesuch LP of 'Iannis Xenakis - Electroacoustic Music'. He was co-founder of the FIASCO group in Bloomington, CAPASA in San Antonio, and the Baltimore Composers Forum From 2005-2007. He taught composition and Music and Culture in the 20th Century  at the York College of Pennsylvania.  His Electroacoustic  works have been presented at six annual International Computer Music Conference(s) and two SEAMUS conferences. Traces for solo woodwinds and brass, piano, harp, percussion and strings was commissioned and performed by the Harrisburg Symphony in 1994. Brody was a guest composer at the Electronic and Computer Music Studio of The Peabody Institute and is an active member and past president of the Baltimore Composers Forum. Background Count was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as part of a concert of the SONIC CIRCUITS International Electronic Music Festival. Brody currently resides in northern New Mexico near Santa Fe where he is helping to design a music program for the Santa Fe Complex. His current compositional project is called the Archipelago Project, in which Brody seeks to use various powerful MIDI algorithmic generators  to drive a sampler, which triggers and manipulates hundreds of sounds. More information at: www.jamesbrody.net/

William Fowler Collins (b.1974) is a musician whose work explores and synthesizes both musical and extra-musical elements. Improvisation, field recordings, electric guitar, lap steel guitar, laptop computer, processed recordings, micro-cassette tape recorders, and homemade electronic devices, all play roles in the creating, performing, and recording of his music. In 2004 Collins graduated from Mills College (MFA, Electronic Music and Recording Media) where he studied with Fred Frith, Annie Gosfield, Maggi Payne, Chris Brown, David Bernstein, and Pauline Oliveros. He has performed at many venues including the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn (NY), Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in San Francisco (CA), The Headlands Center For The Arts in Marin County (CA), San Francisco Art Institute (CA), J. Donald Robb Trust Composers’ Symposium (NM), and Eagle Rock Center for the Arts (Los Angeles). More information available at: www.williamfowlercollins.com

J.A. Deane has been working professionally for nearly forty years. He has appeared on recordings with Ike & Tina Turner, Brian Eno and John Zorn. Mr. Deane has produced an equally diverse range of his own recorded music for both large and small ensembles. Deane Pioneered both the use of "Live Electronics" on Trombone with Indoor Life and "Live Sampling" through his work with Jon Hassell, playing Electro-Acoustic Percussion in Europe, Japan, and the U.S., all in the 1980's. He has created theatrical sound designs with writer/directors Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, Julie Hebert, Christoph Marthaler, and Theater Grottesco, winning critical acclaim in the United States and Europe. He has composed and recorded music for over fifty dance works in collaboration with choreographer Colleen Mulvihill, performing in the U.S., Europe, and China. He’s appeared as a musician throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan, and has worked with Butch Morris in his Conduction projects since 1985. In 1996, Deane moved to New Mexico where he works with a number of ensembles including the acclaimed Out of Context conduction ensemble, which he founded in 1997. Deane has expanded the Conduction Lexicon by contributing new signs and gestures.  In 1999 Deane began researching Human BioAcoustics, Five-Element Theory and non-locality, exploring connections between the meridian system and the body’s natural ability to come into energetic balance through the use of low frequency sound waves. More information available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._A._Deane

Philip Mantione has composed music for orchestra, various chamber ensembles, fixed media, computer-interactive performance, multimedia installations, and experimental video. His music has premiered at Merkin Hall in NYC, the Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and more recently at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe. Mantione’s CD-rom, Sinusoidal Tendencies was presented at the Media Arts Festival in Osnabrück, Germany, and his work has been heard in festivals and on new music radio around the globe. His involvement with the Santa Fe Complex includes, leading the SFMax group, a monthly event that presents the work of composers using interactive audio software and the UUUUT Experiment (<65 dB), a series of experiments in improvisation governed by a projected decibel meter he created using MAX/Msp.  In June 2009, Mantione curated and organized FrankenCircuit, an enormous installation of kinetic sound sculptures and live performances, involving over twenty artists, musicians, and technologists. In 1997, in NYC, Mantione co-founded M.A.N.Y. (Musicians and Artists in New York), a nonprofit performing arts organization that presented the work of over fifty artists in five multimedia events. Since 2005, Mantione has collaborated with multimedia artist, Alysse Stepanian, under the name BOX 1035, creating five major multimedia installations, including at galleries in Beijing, Berlin, and the Islip Museum of Art in NY. More information at: www.PhilipMantione.com

Christian Pincock is a performer of improvised and composed music on a modified valve trombone and a computer-interactive instrument of his own creation.  Using MAX/Msp and a variety of technology including buttons and sensors attached to his trombone, he is able to control sampled sounds and processing, integrating them expressively and musically into his work.  His work is both dynamic and subtle, drawing from diverse styles such as improvised experimental music, contemporary classical, avant-garde jazz, noise, and electronica. He has performed internationally in events such as the 9th, 10th and 11th Soundpainting Think-tank in Woodstock, Sweden, and France, the Music Omi International Arts Residency in 2007, the Banff Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music in Banff, Canada in 2006, as well as venues such as The Stone (NYC), Roulette (NYC), Le Petit Faucheux (Tours, FR). He has a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies from New England Conservatory and a Masters of Music in jazz studies from Manhattan School of music.  Currently living in Albuquerque, NM, he has been an active musician in New York City, Boston, and Berlin, where he has produced and collaborated in diverse musical, multidisciplinary and multimedia projects.  In addition to performing, Christian also gives workshops and master classes, and teaches privately. More information at: www.ChristianPincock.com

The event is made possible in part by the MetLife Creative Connections grant from Meet The Composer.