Dear Kyle Vanderburg,
Your paper “Inspiration/Perspiration: Creating a Map of the Music Composition Creative Process” has been selected for programming as part of the 7th annual ROCC conference at the University of North Georgia.
All participants must register for the conference.
The conference is scheduled for October 27 to October 29, and the program booklet will be sent electronically after the event. Congratulations and we look forward to an engaging conference this year.
Research on Contemporary Composition Conference
This will be fun! I haven’t had a presentation or performance in Georgia yet (but I did drive up from Jacksonville when I was there this spring for CMS).
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be presenting Cloud Music: Audience participation in electronic music , at the the 2019 Vu 3 Symposium in Park City, Utah!
Cloud Music is a work for audience participation and cloud computing. Audience members load a website on their mobile device, specify values, and then submit those values to a web server. The web server is periodically polled by a Max patch, which uses the user-specified data to launch Cloud sprites, which then drift across the screen. If a user specifies that a cloud should be a thunder cloud, it reacts with other thunder clouds.
Cloud Music is the first proof of concept in an ongoing project to unify audience participation, cloud computing, and interactive performance.
The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF) is always a fun time with great music and incredible people. This year they’re hosting the International Computer Music Conference as well, and I’m pleased to announce that Tempest in a Teakettle, which I presented there in 2017, will be returning to the program for this year as well.
The full list of works is available at https://nycemf.org/list-of-accepted-works/. Looks like I’m in good company!
CK and I agreed that we wouldn’t travel much this summer. Maybe a conference, visit some family, but no 25-state road trip and no taking 300 high schoolers to Europe.
That idea was short lived, because here’s what we ended up doing:
I’m going to paste a bunch of pictures, since I couldn’t do that before but now with WordPress I CAN!
The summer travel extravaganza started with CK judging the Musical Merit Competition in San Diego, while I drove to Missouri to visit my parents. CK joined a few days later, and we did our usual visit to Elephant Rocks and Johnsons Shut-ins. I broke down and finally bought an iPhone. And then it was back to Fargo.
Where we almost instantly put an offer on a house.
We’d been wanting to not live in an apartment since the moment we moved into our apartment, and we’d been surfing Zillow for months, and we’d spent a few weeks looking, and the night we got back from Missouri–after a day of driving from Omaha to Fargo, we unloaded our bags and went and looked at three houses, putting an offer on one. The offer was accepted, and then we…left town again.
Trip number 3 was CK going to Madison for the MACRO theory conference. Trip number 4 was me flying down to Oklahoma to work with Jonathan Nichol and Marvin Lamb to record Marvin’s expanded Tenor Saxophone quintet, Woodcuts (previously: HERD!). Three incredibly busy days spent in OU’s recording studio before flying back to Fargo.
Here’s Marvin’s Woodcuts and Bartleby:
Shortly thereafter we headed west to Montana to visit CK’s family. Since our travels were far from over, we took Bartleby to stay with the Keoghs for the summer. Bartleby wasn’t thrilled with the car ride.
But I got my annual picture of Woodbine Creek
And Woodbine Falls
And, you know, nature stuff.
And then it was back to Fargo.
The sixth trip was the big one. The International Clarinet Association’s CLARINETFEST® was held in Oostende, Belgium this year. Last summer, CK asked if I’d be interested in writing a clarinet-saxophone-piano trio for NDSU’s Boreas Ensemble, to be premiered in Belgium. I said yes, knowing that if it got accepted I’d get to write a fun piece, and if it didn’t, I’d get credit for being agreeable. Well, it was accepted, the piece got written, and on the fourth of July we landed in Brussels.
We stayed the night in Brussels
We saw some churches
And some larger churches
And some pretty intense stained glass.
We saw some art
We saw the Manneken Pis
We saw…what is that thing?
And then it was off to Clarinetfest! Where we were greeted by the embodiment of the clarinetfest logo!
And of course we had to take a selfie
Oostende was nice, as a coastal Belgian vacation town, but not what you’d think of as stereotypical Europe.
And then it was back to Brussels, and then an express train ride to Amsterdam for a short trip. There was the Rijksmuseum, which we saw a tiny part of
And across the road, the Royal Concertgebouw!
And also more art:
There’s something wrong with the clock at the Amsterdam Train Station
And then, back to Fargo again on Friday. But on Wednesday, we left again, CK to southern Minnesota, and me to New York for the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, or NYCEMF.
Andrew Allen at MSU Texas performed the New York premiere of Austerity for Soprano Saxophone and tape.
It’s a very long piece. Horizontally.
So after all of that, we ended up back in Fargo, closed on the house, moved in, and stayed put for a while.
Until the next week when we had to go get Bartleby from Montana. Where he was enjoying nature.
After all that travel, we were all exhausted.
There’s more to report, but at some point summer stopped happening and the school year began, but that’s for later.
Since February flew right by and I forgot to post an update, I'll just cover both months right here. How's that? Fine? Fine.
The Norton Lecture and the Oklahoma Student Composers Workshop keynote were both well-received, with the creativity-based Norton lecture generating a lot of comments. I'm planning on turning that lecture into CMS presentation or journal article (or both!), and there's still a lot of ground to cover. Composition Pedagogy and Creativity in Music kind of lie at an intersection of Music, Psychology, and Philosophy, which translates into a lot of reading to figure out how I want to tackle it.
I totally gave up on this piece. At least, I gave up on what I had. Don't worry, it's not a total loss, that music will probably show up in another piece someday. But it won't be in this piece. This piece has all new music to it, and I've finally moved away from the Writer's Block stage of the piece. I'll post a more substantial update when I have more substantial music, but I really like the direction this one is going. Lots of notes.
Business as usual. We'll be presenting some new works at the inner sOUndscapes series concert on April 15. I may or may not be playing melodica.
The theme for February and March was performances, which is spilling out into April. Most of these I've gotten to attend, thankfully. It started with the premiere of Joyride by the Boreas Ensemble at North Dakota State University in February, and a repeat performance of that piece at the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) regional conference at South Dakota State University in March. My new work Tempest in a Teakettle received its premiere at OU's Faculty Composers Recital a few weeks ago and received some great comments. I spent part of last week at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas for the south central regional conference of the College Music Society. The fixed media piece Remnants of Creation was presented at the first concert, and the clarinet quartet version of Caffeination received its premiere by a talented and fun group of students (Anthony Clark, Megan Hearn, Ashlynn Kegley, and John Platt) led by Dr. Steven Becraft on the second concert. They're repeating their performance on Wednesday, and I would love to go but there's no good way to get from Norman to Arkadelphia.
Coming up soon is the inner sOUndscapes concert, where I'll be trying out Cloud Music for the first time, assuming that it's working. And of course NYCEMF in June.
Meanwhile, it's back to grading, composing, and coding (though not in that order)
I'm pleased to announce that Creativity November's piece, Tempest in a Teakettle, has been accepted for this year's NYC Electronic Music Festival (NYCEMF)! Details below
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Congratulations! I am writing to let you know that your submission below has been accepted for performance at the 2017 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. The information we have for your piece is as follows:
ID-314 Tempest in a Teakettle duration 8:00 4-channel fixed media
The festival will take place June 19-25, 2017 at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City and July 14-16, 2017 at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.
Concert schedules are now being worked out. The program will be posted to our web site, www.nycemf.org, when it is ready.
Please reply to this message indicating
(1) whether you will accept our invitation,
(2) whether you are planning to attend the festival, and
(3) any limitations on the date when your piece could be scheduled.
Also, if you plan to attend, please let us know whether you would be interested in diffusing your piece in the 16-channel sound localization room.
Planning for the festival has been determined by the durations of pieces submitted, so please verify the duration indicated above. The duration of the piece will be shown in the printed program. If we do not have the final version of the media file(s) for your piece, please send them to submissions@nycemf.org using a file-transfer service no later than May 1, and please leave at least three weeks before the files expire.
We look forward to seeing you next summer!
I posted this on Facebook a few days ago, but I finally got the Acceptance notification for NYCEMF this year!
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Congratulations! I am writing to inform you that your submission below has been accepted for performance at the 2016 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. The information we have for your piece is as follows:
ID-344 Remnants of Creation duration 10:00 2-channel fixed media
The festival will take place June 13-19, 2016 at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City. Concert schedules will worked out soon. The program will be posted to our web site, www.nycemf.org, when it is ready.
Please reply to this message indicating
(1) whether you will be able to accept our invitation,
(2) whether you are planning to attend the festival, and
(3) any limitations on the date when your piece could be scheduled.
Also, if you plan to attend, please let us know whether you would be interested in diffusing your piece in the 16-channel sound localization room.
Planning for the festival has been determined by the durations of pieces submitted, so please verify the duration indicated above. The duration of the piece will be shown in the printed program. If we do not have the final version of the media file(s) for your piece, please send them to submissions@nycemf.org using a file-transfer service no later than May 1, and please leave at least three weeks before the files expire.
We would like all participants to attend the festival, and the $160 registration fee includes admission to all events. Even if you cannot attend the festival, you will still be required to pay the registration fee. We will add a registration page to our web site to allow you to pay this amount by PayPal.
NYCEMF will provide a sound system, microphones, cables, and a computer for fixed media playback. All other equipment required for live pieces (computer, audio interface, specialized MIDI/USB peripherals, etc.) will need to be provided by the composer. Speakers locations in our playback spaces will be fixed and cannot be moved between concerts to accommodate alternative schemes.
We have arranged for a limited number of housing spaces during the festival at New York University dormitories. The cost for these spaces
will be significantly less than hotels in the city, and they will only be available for specific dates. Details will be posted on our web site, and reservations must be made for each individual day that you will stay there.
We look forward to seeing you in June!
I let this one get away from me, with the end of the semester and all. My recent fixed media piece Reverie of Solitude has been selected for performance at this year's International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). I'll post more details when the conference schedule is posted.
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On behalf of the International Computer Music Conference 2015, I am pleased to inform you that your submission, entitled Reverie of Solitude has been accepted. Congratulations! We had a high number of superb works among the 650 submissions and we are pleased that your work is among those accepted for concert programming.
I'm pleased to announce that my new tape piece, Reverie of Solitude, has been accepted for the 2015 NYCEMF! Details below.
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Congratulations!
I am writing to inform you that your submission below has been accepted for performance at the 2015 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. The information we have for your piece is as follows:
ID-266 Reverie of Solitude duration 10:00 2-channel fixed media
The festival will take place June 22-28, 2015 at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City. Concert schedules are being worked out now. The program will be posted to our web site, www.nycemf.org, as soon as it is ready.
NYCEMF will provide a sound system, microphones, cables, and a computer for fixed media playback. All other equipment required for live pieces (computer, audio interface, specialized MIDI/USB peripherals, etc.) will need to be provided by the composer. Speakers locations in our playback spaces will be fixed and cannot be moved between concerts to accommodate alternative schemes.
We look forward to seeing you in June!
Cassie and I spent a week and a half in Montana, and it was pretty awesome. I recorded a great deal of sound (which I'll post on AudioAtlas when I finish building it), but meanwhile, here's some pictures!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kylevanderburg/sets/72157645448648837/