How the news arrived:
M E E T I N G ' W I T H T H E A U T H O R
Tuesday, April 16, 2013, at 3:00 PM in the Auditorium of the
"C. Pollini" Conservatory of Padua, entrance via via Eremitani 6, there
will be a meeting with
C U R T I S R O A D S
Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic
To compose means to have fun solving more or less complicated puzzles
of pitch, rhythm, timbre, phrasing and of process, but also of taste and
of emotions. Composing electronic music, however, requires a
special predisposition due to the particular specificity of
this medium. This seminar compares composition for traditional
instruments and vocal music with that of electronic music,
highlighting similarities and differences. The objective is to
examine the specificity of the electronic medium and in particular the
challenges and opportunities that it confers upon composers. The
seminar is derived from a forthcoming book for Oxford University Press
titled "Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic". It will be accompanied by examples drawn from recent musical works by the author.
Following the meeting in the Auditorium, at 6:00 PM, there will be a concert with
music by Curtis Roads
FILCKER TONE PULSE
Sculptor (2001)
Touche pas 1 and 2 (2009)
Eleventh vortex (2001)
Fluxon (2003)
Half-life 1 and 2 (1999)
Never 1,2,3 (2010)
Volt air 1,2,3,4 (2003)
Nanomorphosis (2003)
Tenth vortex (2000)
Epicurus (2010)
Curtis Roads is Professor and Chair of Media Arts and Technology (MAT) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he is also the Associate Director of CREATE. He studied musical composition and programming at the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego, and Paris VIII University. From 1980 to 1986, he was a computer music researcher at the MIT Media Laboratory. He has taught at the Federico II University of Naples, Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory, CCMIX (Paris), and Paris VIII University. He has held master classes for the Australian National Conservatory (Melbourne), the Prometeo Laboratory (Parma), Ionian University (Corfu), the Goethe Institute (Rome), Kunitachi College of Music (Tokyo), the Royal Danish Conservatory (Aarhus), the Catholic University (Porto), the Zurich University of the Arts, and many others. He is the co-organizer of numerous international workshops in Sorrento, Capri, and Santa Barbara. He has participated in composition juries for Ars Electronica (Linz) and the International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Bourges, France). Some of his compositions use granular and pulsar synthesis, methods he himself developed to generate sounds from acoustic particles. Co-founder of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA) in 1979, he was editor of the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) from 1988 to 1989 as well as associate editor from 1990 to 2000. Among the books written or edited by him are Foundations of Computer Music, Composers and the Computer, The Music Machine, Representations of Musical Signals, The Computer Music Tutorial, Musical Signal Processing, L'audionumerique, The Computer Music Tutorial - Japanese edition, and Microsound, which explores the aesthetics and compositional techniques related to sound granules. The Chinese version of "The Computer Music Tutorial" was published in 2011 and is a national textbook in China. His music is available on compact disc, produced by Asphodel, MODE, OR, the MIT Media Laboratory, and Wergo. His composition Clang-Tint (1994) was commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Culture (Bunkacho). His electronic music collection POINT LINE CLOUD won the Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2001 and was published on CD + DVD by the label Asphodel (San Francisco) in 2005. In 2007, he received a grant from the National Science Foundation for research in sound analysis algorithms. Currently, he is completing a new book: Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic for Oxford University Press, a revised and corrected edition of The Computer Music Tutorial for MIT Press, and a new collection of electronic music titled FLICKER TONE PULSE.