still [retrospective] [04.12.19]

Tuesday March 12 marked the next installment in the VIBES Concert Series called STILL. Thank you all so much to those that came and a huge thank you to Peabody Computer Music alumni Sandra Tavali Wuan-Chin Li for her piece and video program note. We had pieces by student computer music students Xiaogang Xiang, Dante Baskett, Tiantian Wang, and Norvin Tu-Wang. They submitted an incredible assortment of pieces and it was a fantastic time. 

Below are some fantastic pictures taken by department staff Yian Hwang! We hope to see you at the next concert, “Do You Like Jazz?” (as well as the pre-concert party and food at 6:30!)

One of our GAs, Jeremy Harvey, prepared some detailed comments regarding his experience at the concert:

"The theme of this concert was very unrestrictive in nature, and we enjoyed pieces inspired by a wide variety of topics (from lightning to ducks and roosters!) All but one piece was a fixed media piece. 

"Several of the pieces made me think about compositional devices and the way I write computer music. For example, the first piece, Dark Spots of Lightning, used D as a pedal point and used it as a drone throughout the entire piece, even though each of the synthesizers acted as layers. I would like to explore this further and practice focusing purely on texture rather than tonality. Tiantian’s piece for the Disklavier and Max/MSP challenged me to think about the validity of writing a piece involving electronics that sounds like it has any possibility of being played by a human. Does the use of Max with the Disklavier simply become an aesthetic? When writing computer music, is the only way to take advantage of electronics to write a piece that cannot be played by any other means?

​"This concert challenged my thinking with questions such as these, and I hope future concerts will continue to do so".