TechnoSonics XIV: Motion Explores Music in Motion

Paul Matteson dancing

Dancer and choreographer Paul Matteson of Amherst University will participate in a performance at this year's TechnoSonics XIV.

The McIntire Department of Music of the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences and the Virginia Center for Computer Music will present two days of events exploring the intersection of music and motion in October.

TechnoSonics XIV: Motion” concerts are scheduled for Oct. 17 and 18, at 8 p.m. both days, in the Ruth Caplin Theatre, located in the Drama Building at 109 Culbreth Rd. in Charlottesville.

As part of the festival, composer-technologist Chris Chafe of Stanford University will present a talk, “A Listening Tour of Musical Portraits and Sonic Landscapes,” on Oct. 18 at 3:30 p.m. in the OpenGrounds Studio. All events are free and open to the public.

The concerts will feature works composed by U.Va. composition and computer technologies faculty and dances choreographed by University and guest dancers. These performances will include works by Matthew Burtner and Ted Coffey produced for the festival, and the Virginia premier of Judith Shatin’s “Spring Tides,” with choreography created for the festival.

U.Va. drama and dance faculty members Kimberly Brooks Mata and Kathryn Schetlick will present new work as well, in collaboration with U.Va. composers. In addition, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Chafe and dancer-choreographer Paul Matteson of Amherst College will participate. The program also will feature excerpts from composition and computer technologies doctoral student Joe Adkins’ dissertation piece, “Strange Tales from Appalachia.”

Shatin’s “Spring Tides,” commissioned by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and previously featured in The Juilliard School’s Beyond the Machine event, will be choreographed and danced by Katharine Birdsall. Coffey’s work is being presented in collaboration with dancer Paul Matteson. Burtner’s piece will present an expanded setting of his “Carving Light from Earth,” in collaboration with choreographer Dinah Gray. Mata and Schetlick will premiere new work, which will feature dancers from the U.Va. Dance Program. Chafe will present his telematic music using technology he invented.

Patrons can park in the Culbreth Road Parking Garage, located adjacent to the Drama building.

Chafe’s colloquium will present recent collaborations and computer synthesis projects ranging from concert pieces to investigations about how we imagine sounds in our head. The threads involve joint work with biologists, instrument builders, neurologists, conductors, students, cargo ship captains and massive groups of online listeners. Some of the work is pure music, some of it part engineering and observation.

U.Va.’s Virginia Center for Computer Music is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2013. Founded in 1988 by Shatin, its director and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Music, the center provides a rich development environment for computer music and new audio technologies. Shatin now works closely with Burtner, the center’s associate director; David Topper, the technical director; and Coffey to support and guide the center.

The center houses a wide range of computer resources and a variety of commercial and in-house-developed software and hardware. Current work involves multichannel digital audio, interactive multimedia performance, installation art, robotics, network music and alternate controllers.

The Virginia Center for Computer Music supports the McIntire Department of Music’s Ph.D. program in composition and computer technologies. The program’s graduates hold faculty positions at Yale University and Oberlin College, and students’ music and research is regularly commissioned, performed and published worldwide.

TechnoSonics is an Arts Enhancement Event supported by the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts.

For information, call 434-924-3052.

Media Contact

Robert Hull

Office of University Communications