Help celebrate the Consortium’s 25th anniversary season!

Sound of Silent Film

Sound of Silent Film this weekend is to include scores by Elizabeth Start, Brian Baxter and other Chicago composers. Produced by Access Contemporary Music, the Sound of Silent Film is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Sunday, April 19 7:30 PM
Music Box Theater
3733 N. Southport Ave.
$20, $12 online, $8 students and seniors
(at the door with ID)

Into the Cave of Wonders (2011), Spain

Director: Manuel Benito de Valle
Composer: Elizabeth Start
Synopsis: A silent short documentary shot in 4k resolution and HDR that strives to show -definitely not tell- a glimpse into one of the most beautiful creations on earth… from its unfathomable beginning millions of years ago to what it has become today.

Hitclown (2001) U.S.A.

Director: Chris Mancini
Composer: Brian Baxter
A Hitman and a Clown accidentally switch bags and find they like the other’s job better. Starring Jay Johnston (HBO’s Mr. Show, Anchorman, Moral Orel) and Jennifer Elise Cox (The Brady Bunch Movie, A Very Brady Sequel)

Shot in black and white with no dialogue, Hitclown is a comedy noir that explores the thing inside all of us that runs opposite to our outward natures.

Pillow Girl (2007) U.S.A.
Director: Ronnie Cramer
Composer: Andrew Tham

Marquee (2014) U.S.A.
Director: Brian Zahm
Composer: Oren Boneh

Junk Girl (2014) Iran
Director: Mohammad Zare
Composer: Rob Steel

The West Begins at Fifth Avenue
Director: Max Sherwood
Composer: Joseph Buchheit\\

Into the Cave of Wonders (2011) Spain
Director: Manuel Benito de Valle
Composer: Elizabeth Start

function:object • October 24 • 8:00 PM • Sherman Theater • 1702 Sherman Avenue, Evanston • $15/$5

Music with electronic roots by Nic Collins, Kyong Mee Choi, Christopher Biggs, Timothy Ernest Johnson, Elizabeth Start, Francisco Castillo Trigueros, Timothy Dwight Edwards and Ben Sutherland

Program VI in our series Live Digital Performances

Buy tickets for function:object online or at the door. $15 or $5 for students and seniors.

Hospício É Deus: Valsa for guitar and electronics

Performed by the composer.

This work is from a series of works inspired by the writing of Brazilian author Maura Lopes Cançado, specifically her book Hospício É Deus (Diário I). The title of this book translates to “The Asylum is God.” It relates her experiences while interned at the Gustavo Riedel psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro in the years 1959 to 1960. The book is written in the form of a diary and explores themes of human tragedy, poetry and eternity. “Valsa” refers to a scene in which Cançado asks one of the patients, a former opera singer, to sing the “Valsa da Museta” aria from La Bohème.

function:object • October 24 • 8:00 PM • Sherman Theater • 1702 Sherman Avenue, Evanston • $15/$5

In Ben Sutherland’s Simulacra Lingua the computer sonically and musically interprets the performer’s posture and position onstage by means of the Xbox Kinect interface, synchronizing and juxtaposing recorded instructional language excerpts with live and live-processed flute performance by using C flute and alto flute.

Here, in part, is what electronic pioneer Howard Sandroff said about Ben Sutherland’s musical event “The Machine is Neither” in which Simulacra Lingua was premiered in August:

Those of us who focus our lives on making art using the most current technology are plagued by the conundrum inherent in the balance of technological mastery and artistic sensibility. Yesterday evening was one of those seminal events that demonstrates that mastering the technology AND artistic sensibility are within grasp… Ben Sutherland’s performance at Constellation, was that event.

Ben spent the year mastering the ‘quirkiness’ of the Xbox Kinect driving real-time, interactive programs in Max/MSP instead of its designed application to control Xbox games. Having dabbled in gesture control of Max/MSP I am more than familiar with the programming challenges of just making these devices work with Max let alone reaching a level of programming complexity that forces the ‘machine’ to deliver subtlety, thereby achieving reliable artistic control of audio processing and synthesis. Ben did it. His collaborations with flutist Emma Hospelhorn and dancers from The Space?Movement Project achieved a level of musical and movement meaning that touched and moved this curmudgeonly old composer as well an audience, which included many critical fellow artists.

To my mind, Ben reached the pinnacle of artistic expression through the eight individual pieces, which flowed one to another explicating an organic and seamless transition. Ben’s programming skills, audio practice and compositional excellence perfectly embodies our goal of integrating and mastering audio and music technology to the service of artistic expression…

— Howard Sandroff

In the composer’s words

This piece explores the spatial, embodied, and inter-permeable dimensions of language and music. To begin the movement, the performer selects loops of spoken language which the Machine provides at random. She then manipulates the length and pitch of the loops, before replacing them with musical imitations of each phrase. The performer then blurs the line between dance and instrumental performance by using her body to mold, reshape, and decimate the musical simulacra to create new sonic textures. The piece closes with a return to its linguistic roots.

Music with electronic roots by Nic Collins, Kyong Mee Choi, Christopher Biggs, Timothy Ernest Johnson, Elizabeth Start, Francisco Castillo Trigueros, Timothy Dwight Edwards

Program VI in our series Live Digital Performances

Buy tickets for function:object online or at the door. $15 or $5 for students and seniors.

Nicolas Collins
Bracken (after Christian Wolff) (2014) For five or more people with computer direction

with members of Articular Facet

& only play when one or more other players are playing (AND = ensemble)
xor only play when no-one else is playing (Exclusive OR = solo)
} start immediately after another player ends (triggered)
{ stop as soon as another player starts (ducked)
| play in synch with other player(s) (gated)
= play as similarly as possible to another player (mimic)
? play as differently as possible from the other player(s)
::: sparse, isolated sounds (or progressively thin out an ongoing texture)
? fill the entire time interval with continuous soun
< crescendo over entire time bracket
> decrescendo over entire time bracket
~ a clearly pitched sound
* a noise or a distorted sound
@ change location of sound in space (walk around, pan sound in PA)
± change of pitch, detuning, vibrato
loop repeat a phrase/sample regularly (can reverse direction)
eq change timbre/equalization/filtering one or more times

The computer randomly shuffles through this symbol set, projecting five at a time onto a screen that can be seen by the players (and probably the audience as well). A time bracket is displayed under each symbol, indicating the seconds remaining during which the symbol can be articulated; at the end of this interval a new symbol is chosen. Each player can perform any of the displayed symbols, in any order, at any time within the available time bracket, whenever the necessary conditions are met, i.e.: following immediately after another sound ({); playing in synch with another player (|); playing only when no-one else is playing (xor).

Francisco Castillo Trigueros
Sur le débris for bass flute and electronics

with Shanna Gutierrez, bass flute

The Chicago Composers Orchestra’s program CCO +Baroque Pop will feature Hecuba Project,  Phyllis Chen and Larry Axelrod

Thursday, November 6, 2014
8:00 PM
Constellation – 3111 N Western Ave

The concert will include Axelrod’s Brandenburg Fantasias #1 and #4.

For tickets and more info, see the CCO website.

Kathleen Ginther was named a 2014 Artist Fellow by the Illinois Arts Council Agency Artist Fellowship Program!