SPLICE2017 FACULTY

Website

www.marikimura.com/

Media

Bio

Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. As a performer, composer, and researcher, she has opened up new sonic worlds for the violin. Notably, she has mastered the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin’s lowest string without retuning. This technique, which she calls Subharmonics, has earned Mari considerable renown in the concert music world and beyond. She is also a pioneer in the field of interactive computer music. At the same time, she has earned international acclaim as a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire.

As a composer, Mari’s commissions include the International Computer Music Association, Harvestworks, Music from Japan and others, supported by grants including New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, New Music USA/Meet The Composer, Japan Foundation, Argosy Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts. In 2010, Mari won the Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, and invited as Composer-in-Residence at IRCAM in Paris. In May 2011, Mari was presented in a solo recital at the Bohemian National Hall in NYC by the Vilcek Foundation, in recognition of her groundbreaking work as a foreign-born artist; subsequently she was named one of 2011’s “Immigrants: Pride of America” by the Carnegie Corporation, published in the New York Times. Mari’s latest CD, The World Below G and Beyond, is devoted entirely to her own compositions and focuses on works using Subharmonics and interactive computer music. In 2011, Mari presented her “I-Quadrifoglo”, her first string quartet with interactive computer at New York’s Symphony Space, commissioned by the Cassatt String Quartet through 2010 Fromm Foundation Commission Award from Harvard. Mari’s work has been featured in major publications including the New York Times written by Matthew Gurewitsch, and in Scientific American written by Larry Greenemeier. In October 2014, Mari received the Inaugural Award Of Composers Now Creative Residencies at The Pocantico Center of The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

As a violinist, Mari has premiered many notable works, including John Adams’s Violin Concerto (Japanese premiere), Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII (US premiere), Tania Léon’s Axon for violin and computer (world premiere), and Salvatore Sciarrino’s 6 Capricci (US premiere), among others. In 2007, Mari introduced Jean-Claude Risset’s violin concerto, Schemes, at Suntory Hall with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. The cadenza she wrote for the concerto, incorporating advanced Subharmonics, was subsequently published in STRINGS magazine. In November 2010, Mari appeared as a soloist with the Hamburg Symphony performing John Adams’ Dharma at the Big Sur, under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer, conductor.

In 2013, Mari inaugurated a new summer program as the Director of the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival in collaboration with IRCAM. The program focuses on high-level performers using the latest technology. Since 1998, Mari has been teaching a graduate course in Interactive Computer Music Performance at Juilliard.

Website

paulamatthusen.com/

Media

Bio

Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.

Her music has been performed by Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the Estonian National Ballet, James Moore, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Other Minds, the MATA Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, International Computer Music Conference and Dither’s Invisible Dog Extravaganza. She performs frequently with the electroacoustic duo ouisaudei, Object Collection, and through the theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts.

Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship, the “New Genre Prize” from the IAWM Search for New Music, and recently the 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Matthusen completed her Ph.D. at New York University – GSAS. She was Director of Music Technology at Florida International University for four years, where she founded the FLEA Laptop Ensemble. Matthusen is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology.

Director of Performance Activities

Website

www.keithkirchoff.com/

Media

"Desire with Digressions" by Butch Rovan

Bio

Keith Kirchoff is a pianist, composer, conductor, concert curator, and teacher. Described as a “virtuosic tour de force” whose playing is “energetic, precise, (and) sensitive,” he works towards promoting under-recognized composers and educating audiences of the importance of new and experimental music. An active lecturer who has presented in countries throughout the world, his recital programs focus on the integration of computers and modern electronics into a traditional classical performance space.

Kirchoff has played in many of the United States’ largest cities including New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh, as well as major cities throughout Italy, England, Canada, Belgium, Mexico, and The Netherlands. He has appeared with orchestras throughout the U.S. performing a wide range of concerti, including the Boston premier of Charles Ives’ Emerson Concerto and the world premier of Matthew McConnell’s Concerto for Toy Piano, as well as more traditional concerti by Tschaikowsky and Chopin. He has also been a featured soloist in many music festivals including the Festival de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Festival Internacional de Müsica Contemporánea, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), Performing Arts at CAM (Chelsea Contemporary Art Museum, New York), the Oregon Festival of American Music, PianoForte Chicago, The Experimental Piano Series, Ives and His World, and The eXtensible Toy Piano Project.

Throughout his career, Kirchoff has premiered well over 100 new works and commissioned several dozen. As a strong supporter of modern music, he has worked closely with many prominent composers including Christian Wolff, Frederic Rzewski, and Louie Andriessen. As a lecturer, Kirchoff has presented seminars, lectures, and master workshops on the music of the 21st century at many of the country's largest Universities. One of the nation's prominent performers of electronic music, his "Electro-Acoustic Piano" tour has been presented throughout two continents, and he has twice hosted an international composers competition seeking music for piano and live electronics: first with the University of Toronto in 2011, and then again with the American Composers Forum in 2015. The first album in his Electro-Acoustic Piano series was released by Thinking outLOUD Records in July 2011.

As a composer, Kirchoff is equally comfortable in acoustic and electronic mediums. The 2010 Rozsa Visiting Artist & Composer at the University of Tulsa, Kirchoff has been awarded residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, New York Mills, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Wildacres, and has been a guest composer/pianist at several Universities including Brown University, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Cal State, University of New Mexico, University of North Florida, and Brigham Young University. He has received commissions from numerous ensembles and soloists including Ensemble Mise-En, pianists Shiau-uen Ding and Kai Schumacher, tuba player Jeffrey Meyer, organist Matthew McConnell, soprano Christine Keene, and Telling Stories Music. Often performing his own works in recital, his music, which has been described as "hyperactive," has also been performed throughout the United States, Canada, England, Turkey, Holland, Mexico, Australia, and Germany by many respected musicians and ensembles including the California E.A.R. Unit, the Firewire Ensemble, mezzo-soprano Erica Brookhyser, violinists Carmel Raz and Stephanie Skor, cellist Alex Kelly, and pianists Albert Muhlbock and Mabel Kwan.

Kirchoff serves on the board of directors for the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) as the Vice President of Programs, and is also the Artistic Director of Original Gravity: a Boston-based concert series that features the music of local composers and pairs that music with locally brewed beer. Together with Christopher Biggs, he is also the founder and director of SPLICE (Summer institute for the Performance, Listening, Interpretation, and Creation of Electroacoustic music) hosted at Western Michigan University.

The winner of the 2006 Steinway Society Piano Competition and the 2005 John Cage Award, Kirchoff was named the 2011 "Distinguished Scholar" by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association. He has also received composing grants from MetLife Meet the Composer and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Kirchoff’s primary teachers include Dean Kramer, Stephen Drury, and Paul Wirth. He received his Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Oregon in 2003 graduating summa cum laude and then received his Master of Music degree at New England Conservatory in 2005. He has also studied composition with Michael Gandolfi and Jeffrey Stolet, and conducting with Richard Hoenich. In addition to his recordings on his independent label Thinking outLOUD Records, Kirchoff has released recordings on the New World, SEAMUS, New Focus, Tantara, and Zerx labels.

Coordinator of Admissions and Calls

Website

www.vidiksis.com

Media

Bio

Adam Vidiksis is a composer, conductor, percussionist, and technologist based in Philadelphia whose interests span from historically informed performance to the cutting edge of digital audio processing. Equally comfortable with both electronic and acoustic composition, his music has been heard in concert halls and venues around the world. Critics have called his music “mesmerizing”, “dramatic”, “striking” (Philadelphia Weekly), “notable”, “catchy” (WQHS), “interesting”, and “special” (Percussive Notes), and have noted that Vidiksis provides “an electronically produced frame giving each sound such a deep-colored radiance you could miss the piece's shape for being caught up in each moment” (David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer). Vidiksis has become known for exploring new timbral soundscapes in his electronic and acoustic works, often using the computer not only as a means of enhancing and manipulating the sounds he produces, but as a digital performer on equal footing with its human counterparts. His unique approach to performance has been praised for its “outstanding control” (Philadelphia Weekly) and for being “restrained” and “magical” (Local Arts Live).

Vidiksis’s compositions have been heard throughout North America and Europe. His work has been performed by the orchestra of the Oleg Danovski National Theater of Opera and Ballet in Constanta, Romania, the Omaha Symphony, the Momenta Quartet, the Zephyrus Duo, and the percussion ensembles of NYU and the University of Alabama. He has been commissioned by many organizations and performers, including International Composers and Interactive Artists, Philadelphia’s Network for New Music, the Renegade and Luna Theater Companies, the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, and the ElectroAcoustic Piano project. His compositions have been heard at the national conferences of SEAMUS, CMS, NSEME, and SCI, the Huntsville New Music Festival, Soundcrawl Festival, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Raven Stadium, the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, Athens Slingshot, the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Csound Conference, and the Licino Refice Conservatorio di Musica in Frosinone, Italy. Vidiksis’s music has won numerous awards, including recognition from SCI and ASCAP. His works are available through HoneyRock Publishing and PARMA Recordings.

Vidiksis’s research in music technology focuses on techniques for realtime audio processing, designing gestural controllers for live digital performance, and machine improvisation. He has presented his research at a number of institutions, including the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the McNally Smith College of Music. His gestural controller, the Tapbox DSP, was a semifinalist in the 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. As a technologist, Vidiksis has worked with a number of prominent artists and ensembles, including Gene Coleman, Ge Wang, Eric Chasalow, Benjamin Broening, Toshimaru Nakamura, Network for New Music, Donald Nally, and the Crossing.

Vidiksis holds degrees from Drew University, New York University, and Temple University, culminating in a doctoral degree in music composition. Vidiksis currently serves on the composition faculty of Temple University, where he teaches classes in music theory, orchestration, composition, and music technology. He is currently conductor of the Temple Composers Orchestra, faculty advisor to conTemplum (Boyer College’s new-music student organization and student chapter of the SCI.), and director of the Boyer Electroacoustic Ensemble Project (BEEP). Vidiksis also regularly directs and conducts Ensemble NJ_P, an international chamber group of musicians performing both traditional Western and Japanese instruments.

Assistant Director of Performance Activities and Concert Coordinator

Website

samwellsmusic.com

Media

"(dys)functions" composed and performed by Sam Wells

Bio

Samuel Wells is a composer, performer, and music technologist based in New York City. As an advocate for new and exciting music, he actively commissions and performs contemporary works.

Sam has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, France, and China. He has also been a guest artist/composer at numerous universities including Western Michigan University, Western University of Ontario, and Northern Arizona University. His work, stringstrung, is the winner of the 2016 Miami International Guitar Festival Composition Competition. He has performed electroacoustic works for trumpet and presented his own music at the Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, N_SEME, and SEAMUS festivals. Sam and his music have also been featured by the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) and Fulcrum Point Discoveries. Sam is a member of the SPLICE Ensemble, Arcus Project, and Kludge, an innovative trumpet cello/trumpet duo with Jon Carbin. Sam has performed with Contemporaneous, the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra.

Sam has degrees from the University of Missouri – Kansas City and Indiana University. He is on faculty at Molloy College.

Director of Composition Activities

Website

elillios.com

Media

"Among Fireflies" Performed by Erin Lesser

Bio

Elainie Lillios's music reflects her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion and anecdote. Her music explores many sound worlds; sometime referential ones such as the human voice, cars, wind chimes, or water. Other times her materials are less obvious, like crunching branches, walking through snow or pebbles shuffling in water. Her compositional output includes electroacoustic and acoustic works, music for instruments with live interactive electroacoustics, and collaborative immersive multimedia audio/visual installation environments. Her research interests include sound diffusion as the performance practice of electroacoustic music, audio spatialization employing Ambisonics (3D audio), critical listening as a creative aid and Deep Listening.

Her creative work and research has been funded through grants and commissions from organizations including the International Computer Music Association, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, Reseaux, ASCAP/SEAMUS, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International, Louisiana State Universitys Center for Computation and Technology, Sonic Arts Research Centre Belfast, Ohio Arts Council, Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music, Ohio Board of Regents and National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. She has also received commissions from individual performers including saxophonist Steve Duke, soprano Diane Ragains and pianist Thomas Rosenkranz. Elainies composition,Veiled Resonance for soprano saxophone and live, interactive electroacoustics was recently awarded First Prize in the 36th International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art/Bourges 2009. Elainies music has received other awards and recognition from international competitions including the Concurso Internacional de Musica Electroacustica de Sao Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Concours Internationale de Bourges, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and La Muse en Circuit Radiophonic Competition.

Her pieces have been presented nationally and internationally at conferences, concerts and festivals including the International Computer Music Conferences (New York, Belfast, New Orleans, Miami, Goteborg, Cuba, Berlin), Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the United States National Conferences (Minnesota, Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, New Hampshire), Australasian Computer Music Conference, Festival di interpretazione della musica acusmatica and others.Her collaborative animation work has been screened at international festivals including SIGGRAPH 2009, Melbourne Animation Festival, London Animation Festival, Les Sommets du Cinema DAnimation de Montreal, Visual Music Marathon, Red Stick Animation Festival, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and the International Digital Media Art Association IDEAS Festival. She has been featured as a special guest composer at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Rien a Voir, festival lespace du son, June in Buffalo Festival, Mountain Computer Music Festival, Future Music Oregon, Western Oregon University Electronic Music Festival, Louisiana State University and Ionian University Corfu.

Elainie's music is available on the Empreintes DIGITALes, StudioPANaroma, La Muse en Circuit, and SEAMUS labels, and is included in New Adventures in Sound Arts The Radio Art Companion. Three of her pieces were released in 2009; Veiled Resonance for soprano saxophone and live interactive electroacoustics on SEAMUS Volume XVIII, Toronto Island Contrasts on Deep Wireless 6, and Listening Beyond the LMJ Mix on Leonardo Music Journal Volume 19.

Elainie serves as Interim Associate Dean, Professor of Composition, and Coordinator of Music Technology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio where she teaches applied composition, music technology and experimental digital audio and animation.

Director of SPLICE

Website

christopherbiggsmusic.com

Media

"Greed" Performed by Abderrahman Anzaldua

Bio

Christopher Biggs is a composer and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on integrating live instrumental performance with interactive audiovisual media. In addition to collaborating with artists in other disciplines on projects, he treats all of his works as collaborations between himself and the initial performing artist by working with the performers during the creative process and considering their specific skills and preferences.

Biggs’ music has been presented across the United States and Europe, as well as in Latin America and Asia. His music is regularly performed on conferences and festivals, including the SEAMUS Conference, Visiones Sonoras, Electronic Music Midwest, and Society for Composers Inc. His music is available on Ravello Records, Irritable Hedgehog, SEAMUS CD Series, PARMA Recordings, Electroacoustico Records and Thinking outLOUD Records.

Biggs received the 2008 Missouri Music Teacher’s Association composer of the year award, the 2009 SEMAUS/ASCAP first place award, the 2011 MACRO International Composition Award, the 2012 Issa Music and Dance Faculty Award, and a 2013 Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative Grant. He was a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow at the University of Missouri-Kansas City from 2007 to 2010. Biggs has presented on his work at numerous universities. He is co-founder and Director of Composition Activities at SPLICE Institute. He was a co-founder and board member of the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance.

Biggs teaches acoustic and electronic music composition, electronic music, digital media, and music theory. He was integral in developing Western Michigan University's Multimedia Arts Technlogy (Music) program and in revamping the B.M. in Music Compositon at WMU. He received degrees from American University (B.A. in print journalism), The University of Arizona (M.M. in music composition), and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (D.M.A. in music composition). He studied music composition with Zhou Long, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Joao Pedro Oliveira, Daniel Asia, and Paul Rudy.

Website

perbloland.com

Media

Solis-EA

Bio

Per Bloland is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music whose works have been praised by the New York Times as “lush, caustic,” and “irresistible.” His compositions range from intimate solo pieces to works for large orchestra, and incorporate video, dance, and custom-built electronics. He has received awards and recognition from organizations including IRCAM, ICMA, SEAMUS/ASCAP, the Ohio Arts Council, Digital Art Awards of Tokyo, ISCM, the Martirano Competition, and SCI/ASCAP. His first opera, Pedr Solis, commissioned and premiered by Guerilla Opera in 2015, received rave reviews from the Boston Globe and the Boston Classical Review. He has received commissions from loadbang, Keith Kirchoff, Wild Rumpus, the Ecce Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, the Callithumpian Consort, Stanford’s CCRMA, SEAMUS/ASCAP, the Kenners, Michael Straus and Patti Cudd. His music can be heard on the TauKay (Italy), Capstone, Spektral, and SEAMUS labels, and through the MIT Press. A portrait CD of his work, performed by Ecce Ensemble, was recently released on Tzadik.

Bloland is the co-creator of the Electromagnetically-Prepared Piano, about which he has given numerous lecture/demonstrations and published a paper. He is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Technology at Miami University, Ohio, and in 2013 completed a five-month Musical Research Residency at IRCAM in Paris. He received his D.M.A. in composition from Stanford University and his M.M. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Scores may be purchased at www.babelscores.com/perbloland

Director of Technology and Website

Website

www.composerjohnson.com

Media

"Introit" Performed by Sam Wells

Bio

Richard Johnson is a multimedia artist and composer whose interest in music was piqued during a childhood heavily impacted by film. Equal parts Kurosawa and Spielberg combined to create his ongoing interest in culture and history, the music of Takemitsu and Williams, and an obsession with mystery, adventure, and storytelling. This blend of interests is most clearly present in his set of pieces for soloists, electronics, and video entitled Quaerere Sententias.

Richard’s music has been performed throughout the United States and internationally, and has been presented at events such as SEAMUS, ICMC, Electronic Music Midwest, Electro-Acoustic Barn Dance, SCI conferences, Thailand International Composers’ Festival, and the Festival Internacional Punto de Ecuentro in Spain.

In 2012, Richard received his DMA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he studied with Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, and Zhou Long. He also holds degrees from the Hartt School at University of Hartford (MM) and West Chester University of Pennsylvania (BM).

Richard is the Assistant Professor of Multimedia Arts Technology at Western Michigan University.