Beginning today and extending until Friday, the Department of Music’s Composition and Computer Technologies program will be hosting the 26th annual Technosonics music festival at University venues and in Charlottesville. The festival is free, and it will commemorate the computer music art that has been deeply integrated into the University’s Department of Music for decades. Performances are expected to channel core electronic music and visual effects layered with improvisation, traditional instruments and even instrument inventions by the musicians themselves.
Performers include graduate students from the music department, CCT faculty and headliners Lauren Sarah Hayes, Ben Broening and Travis Thatcher. Broening is a Richmond musician who composes sound not just in the traditional melody and rhythm sense, but also with the sound in everyday life. He plans to have his set feature two tracks from his latest album “Fieldwork,” which is built around recordings from around the world.
“I am really interested in how sound is so closely connected to a place and so spend a lot of time recording streetscapes and other things when I travel. I listen back when I return for things that strike me,” Broening said.
The University has been a leader in electronic music innovation for almost a century. The first chair of the Music of Department, Arthur Fickenscher, joined in 1918 and was an electronic musical instrument inventor. After decades of continued commitment to electronic musical research, the University created the CCT program in 2002 to emphasize its dedication.
The festival will host concerts and sets both on and off Grounds. Studio 4B, the Conservatory Room of the Contemplative Commons Center, will feature sets from a number of the festival's performers. Alex Christie, current director of Composition and Computer Technologies, described the venue's state of the art sound system and noted the artists’ dedication to composing their sets for the studio's visual aspect.
“The Conservatory at the Contemplative Commons houses a 20-speaker surround audio system with reactive lighting,” Christie said. “This allows the composers to create musical gestures that excite and move through the physical space and also map the actions of sound to the actions or light. The result is a completely immersive audio-visual experience.”
The Conservatory sets will take place 2 to 5 p.m. each day of the festival and will be open to all students. Faculty and graduate students will be crafting an array of pieces in tune with the festival's electronic theme and curated to the light show displayed in the studio.
In the Old Cabell Hall Auditorium, “Concert 1” of the festival will take place Tuesday at 8 p.m.. The lineup includes headliner Lauren Sarah Hayes, a Scottish musician and scholar who specializes in improvising electronic and pop performances in tune with her sound, audience and venue.
Additionally, the event will showcase performances by graduate and faculty members. This will include music made with custom made software and electronic instruments developed by artists as well as traditional instruments such as flute, guitar and piano intertwined with electronic instruments.
“Concert 2” will take place at Visible Records located on Broadway Street at 8 p.m. Wednesday. The lineup will include Lauren Sarah Hayes, as well as several other artists such as Ben Broening and Travis Thatcher, an electronic instrument inventor and the former technical director of the University's CCT program. Thatcher described the technicalities of his set that push the limits beyond simply just playing music.
“The piece I will be performing, ‘Let's Eat Bananas For Lunch,’ is driven by signals derived from analog chaos circuits and toys with extreme stereo manipulation for immersive audio,” Thatcher said. “That may sound complicated and overly academic but the end result is a fun piece full of drones, blips, bubbles and playful zappy melodies easily at home in a vintage Dr. Who episode or techno club or in a modern concert hall.”
The event will continue to feature CCT faculty and graduate students through a number of inspirational sets including music for analog modular synthesizer, improvisation for drum machine and electric violin. Unfortunately, the Colloquium held on Thursday night is exclusively for CCT students and staff. However, the program and performers are enthusiastic about undergraduate students attending both concerts and contemplative commons events.
“We want everyone to come check it out,” Christie said.
The experience is set to be a reflection of almost a hundred years of progress the University has made towards and for the electronic community and offer rare and unique sounds, from improvisation with classical instruments to a piece with a body-movement and speech sensor mask worn by an artist. The best part is — it is free to everyone.
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