Join us on November 20th, 2024, at 5 PM to celebrate the release of The Language of Landscapes, a groundbreaking new album by Christopher Stark (Wash U., Rome Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship) and acclaimed cello-percussion duo New Morse Code (ASU professor Michael Compitello, percussion, and Hannah Collins, cello).
This immersive event, hosted at the state-of-the-art Ambisonic Dome at ASUs School of Arts, Media, and Engineering (DAME), will combine live performance and ambisonic listening to showcase the boundary-pushing collaboration between music, technology, and nature.
This event is an exciting opportunity for scholars, artists, scientists, and community members to come together, explore the intersection of science and art, and engage in a unique acoustic experience that transforms the space itself. Join us for delicious treats and inquisitive music!
The Language of Landscapes redefines our understanding of naturalistic classical music. In this visionary work, Stark explores the tension and harmony between the synthetic and the organic, using found objects, field recordings, and live electronic processing. As Stark describes:
This piece explores the friction between the natural and the synthetic, reflecting on our wastefulness and resourcefulness while urging us to consider the geographies that shape our musical and environmental spirits.
At the album release event, attendees will experience a live performance by New Morse Code, as well as exclusive ambisonic remixes by cutting-edge artists Malitzin Cortes (CNDSD), Mvstermind, Chris P. Thompson, and Adult Fur, heard in ASUs 45-speaker immersive sound space.
The celebration will also feature an interactive demo of AME Professor Garth Paines pathbreaking mesh networking system, turning audience phones into a collective sound ecosystem.
About the DAME
The 5th order Ambisonic Dome at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (DAME) is a unique, state-of-the-art space to work with spatial audio. The DAME, established by Garth Paine, contains 45 speakers, allowing for the precise placement of sounds anywhere along a three-dimensional axis, giving artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences and explore new frontiers of sonic art, virtual reality and multimedia art.
About New Morse Code:
New Morse Code (Hannah Collins, cello; Michael Compitello, percussion) is the confluence of two magnetic personalities who have taken up the admirable task of creating a hub for the performance, commissioning, and promotion of new music. NMC is theoretically the alluring and uncommon combination of cello and percussion, but in practice is best described as two musicians of extraordinary depth and skill untethered by their instrumental constraints. This unrestricted approach has allowed them to create a body of work in which Hannah can be found crushing plastic bottles and Michael plucking the strings of the celloall with the intention of expanding and facilitating the imaginations of their composer-collaboratorswhile ultimately creating a meaningful and lasting repertoire. As tireless advocates for new music, they seek out diverse venues and strive to connect with disparate audiences by way of their accessible intellect and dynamic musicality.
Over the past decade, the remarkably inventive and resourceful duo (Gramophone) has developed projects responding to our societys most pressing issues, including The Emigrants, a documentary chamber work by George Lam, and dwb (driving while black), a chamber opera by Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander, called The Most Relevant, Hauntingly Evocative New Chamber Opera in Years (Lucid Culture - New York New Music Daily). Their long-term collaboration with Christopher Stark on The Language of Landscapes (commissioned in 2014 by Chamber Music America) incorporates found discarded objects, field-collected environmental recordings, and live electronic processing as a way of making commentary on the urgency of the climate crisis. As the recently named inaugural grand prize winners of the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize, they will develop and tour a program featuring Starks work alongside new pieces which address sustainability and scientific innovation.
New Morse Code's 2017 debut album Simplicity Itself on New Focus Recordings was described by icareifyoulisten.com as an ebullient passage through pieces that each showcase the duos clarity of artistic vision and their near-perfect synchronicity, while Q2 Music called the album a flag of genuineness raised. In 2019 they collaborated with Eliza Bagg, Lee Dionne, and andPlay on and all the days were purple, Alex Weisers Pulitzer Prize-finalist work on Cantaloupe music. They have also recorded for innova, Albany, and Navona Records.
About Christopher Stark
Christopher Stark (b. 1980, St. Ignatius, MT) is a composer of contemporary classical music deeply rooted in the American West. Having spent his formative years in rural western Montana, his music is always seeking to capture the expansive energy of this quintessential American landscape. Stark, whose music The New York Times has called, "fetching and colorful," has been awarded prizes from the American Academy in Rome, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, and the Barlow Endowment. Named a 2017 "Rising Star" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his music has been performed by such ensembles as Alarm Will Sound, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, BIT20 Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Momenta Quartet, Unheard-of//Ensemble, No Exit New Music Ensemble, and New Morse Code. In 2012, he was a resident composer at Civitella Ranieri, a fifteenth-century castle in Umbria, Italy, and in June of 2016 he was awarded a residency at Copland House. Recent highlights included performances at the 2016 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2016 NY Phil Biennial. In 2018, he was in residence in Bergen, Norway where he worked with musicians from the Bergen Philharmonic, and in 2020, he was in residence at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy as the Aaron Copland Fellow in Music. His score for the feature-length film, "Novitiate," premiered at Sundance in January of 2017 and was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics. His debut CD, Seasonal Music, was released in 2019 on Bridge Records.
Location
Stauffer Communication Arts B (View)
950 S Forest Mall
Tempe, AZ 85281
United States