Cvetelin Andreev became enamored with the kaba gaida, a type of Bulgarian bagpipe, eleven years ago, after spending several weeks hiking Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountain range alone. “If you stay, let’s say, two weeks, only with yourself, you change a bit,” … Continued
Simon Smith remembers vividly his first encounter with the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The piece was Trans, a composition for orchestra and recorded sound that the German composer, a giant of mid-century contemporary music, wrote in 1971. “It was immediately like … Continued
A Study in Contrast? If you want to know what the upcoming 2016-17 season of MIT’s Sounding Series is all about, you need look no further than its two inaugural concerts in September 2016. The first, a performance by the … Continued
Composer and MIT professor discusses the enduring legacy of Visiting Artist Alvin Lucier.
It’s easy, watching Pamela Z perform, to get distracted by her gadgets: the MIDI controllers strapped to her hands like bionic appendages, the ultrasound-activated box that sings when her fingers flutter past, the laptop with its glowing screen. But if … Continued
It is often said that Morton Feldman’s “String Quartet II” is an experiment in scale. That is a fancy way of saying that the piece is very, very long—approximately six hours. The players—perhaps better described as marathoners—cannot eat or relieve … Continued
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are Shakespearian in their iconicity. Every serious performer must subject them to study, memorizing a monologue or, in this case, a movement, tracing and retracing the familiar, fleet-footed phrases in the … Continued
Maya Beiser’s recent album of classic rock covers, cheekily titled “Uncovered,” may come as a surprise to those who know her as a daring cellist primarily focused on new classical works. But the Israeli-born soloist (she now resides in New … Continued
New music series features Maya Beiser, Johnny Gandelsman, the Persona opera, Feldman’s six-hour string quartet, and Pamela Z. The new music series, MIT Sounding, has announced its 2015 and 2016 schedule of innovative performances by some of the world’s leading … Continued
“Prandit Pran Nath used to say, ‘You in the note, and the note in you,’ and that’s a good way to describe the state to be in when you’re performing. At least, it’s the state I want to be in … Continued
Lontano Ensemble: Rowland Sutherland, flute; Peter Furniss, clarinet; Caroline Balding, violin; Clare O’Connell, cello; Mary Dullea, piano; Odaline de la Martinez, conductor. The famed London-based Lontano Ensemble returns to MIT on March 15 to perform works by MIT composers in … Continued
Before the age of print all books were manuscripts (the word means hand written), and therefore each existing manuscript is a unique artifact. A manuscript’s text, images and material components contain clues to the cultural, artistic, political, and technological achievements of … Continued
It is hard to have a bad time when you are playing a drinking straw as a flute. At the concluding concert for his IAP class, “Small Instruments: Musical Instrument Building & Performance,” Pawel Romanczuk gave the audience their very … Continued
When the gods hand you a gift, they also hand you a whip for self-flagellation, to paraphrase Truman Capote. The Cassandra story typifies the blessing-and-coeval-curse topos. Apollo gives Cassandra the gift of prophecy to seduce her. When she refuses, he … Continued
Ukraine means “borderland, edge or outskirts.” Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn’s new collaborative project Borderland: A Cantata for Ukraine, which will premiere this week at Kresge Auditorium at MIT in a performance by Grammy-award winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth, operates … Continued
MIT Presents New Music Series: MIT Sounding Featuring World Premieres, Reconstructed Classics, and Grammy Award winning musicians in new concert series For the 2014-15 season, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) inaugurates the innovative annual performance series MIT Sounding, curated by … Continued
Students create sound installations inspired by Visiting Artists Scanner, Stephen Vitiello, and Either/Or.
Guest post by Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT and Inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science & Technology. Pamela Z and Hauschka met only moments before their back-to-back lecture/demonstrations last Wednesday; two days later … Continued
It was likely the first time Senegalese sabar drums, a cello, a didgeridoo, an accordion, a piano and panpipes made from test tubes all occupied one stage together. A follow-up to 2011’s FAST Forward Marathon concert, the concert celebrated the convergence of art and technology — from simple percussive acts to the most sophisticated gestural controls — and showcased the many creative tools and techniques used by artists from MIT and beyond.
Suzanne Bocanegra’s performance piece-cum-film, “When a Priest Married a Witch,” is a kind of creative origin story, the portrait of the artist as a young woman. She writes on her website it is “part artist’s talk, part performance, part cultural history, part sound installation.” Showing a rough cut of the film, Bocanegra kicked off CAST’s Spring Sound series as the first in a series of lecture/demonstrations by prominent sound and multimedia artists. Part of the MIT course, Music and Technology, the lecture/demonstrations are open to both students and the general public alike.