update: Pt. 1

No posts since august. Clearly I need to pick things up. Lots of performances have been happening, which is great. I had 20 performances last year, and 2012 is shaping up to be even bigger! I have my exams in july and hopefully onto the dissertation in august. terrifying, but exciting.

I have a huge backlog of works to upload, and I’m starting that process this month. In the meantime, here is a videodoc of my  collaboration with the Institute for Digital Intermedia Art at Ball State. The piece is being featured at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai.

 

Textures I

here’s a much better photo from the rehearsal of “Textures I” at the 41st Ball State Festival of New Music.

Iridium

As the summer winds down and the new academic year gears up, I find that for the first time in a while, I’ll miss the end of summer. Usually I dread the slowdown that the summer provides. I like the fast paced atmosphere of the school year. This summer, however, was quite a bit different. I’ve spent my time taking classes, working, and finishing a lot of projects that I had left 4/5 done throughout the year. Now that I have wrapped up these projects, I’m really looking forward to starting some new ones, including a piece for chamber orchestra, and a new piece for laptop ensemble.

This spring I worked on a laptop piece in collaboration with my good friend Tim Moyers. the piece, “Iridium” is an exploration in sonification of images(here’s a picture of one of our rehearsals). The idea of the piece is that Tim would interpret video and images as direct sonification, while he controlled some of the effects and other temporal parameters. My video was to be interpreted as score. the max patch was set up to generate different views, colors, and sizes of images in the video. What I think is really interesting about this piece is how the audience views these interpretations; While Tim’s video and audio are in lockstep, changing with precision, my video and audio are much contemplative. In viewing the piece, there is a striking dichotomy between precise control, and artistic interpretation.

continue….

This semester seems to be going by so quickly; we are almost to spring break. The 41st Ball State Festival of New Music has just concluded, with five great concerts full of exciting music! I had two pieces on the festival; “Textures I”(for amplified string quartet and video) and “[in] Pieces |Slivers” (for video and fixed media).

Both pieces seemed to be received well, and I’m grateful to the performers(the picture is a little blurry, and take with my phone, but you get the idea.). Now that the festival is over, I have some more time to focus on two new pieces that I am really excited about. the first is an intermedia collaboration between myself and Tim Moyers, a fellow doctoral student. The piece will feature four networked laptops and multiple video screens, all controlled by us at two central computers. The piece revolves around the interactions between us; Tim generating harsh granular textures, and me generating smoother filtered sounds. Causality always being the goal, we hope that these networked interactions will be apparent through the video manipulations. It’s an ambitious project, but one that is now finally in the testing stages. We will be exhibiting it later this month at a gallery on campus, and next month for one of our EM concerts. Lots of work to be done there. The other piece is for flute, video and fixed media that is about 1/2 done. I’m really looking forward to having this one performed because it is one of the only pieces I’ve done recently that really attempts to build bridges back to what might be called “traditional accessibility”. It’s not commercial music; but it doesn’t clearly fit into the avant garde either. I’m interested to gauge reactions on that one.

-mjo

all the news that’s fit to print………

august. that’s the last time I posted. Time just slips away. It’s been a great first semester at Ball State University, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know everyone. I’ve finished two new pieces: one for string quartet, and one for tenor sax, video, and fixed media. Alex is premiering the new sax piece at the International Saxophone Symposium in January. Also in January “Telsonic” will be featured at the Noisefloor Festival in the UK, and “Driftwood” will be featured at the SEAMUS national conference in Miami. So January is shaping up to be a great month!

As the semester winds down, I’ll be updating the site to include some new excerpts from pieces I’m working on, as well as some scores. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.

Lastly, EMM in Chicago was great. There was a lot of fantastic music, and the festival was expertly run. Kudos to Mike Mcferron(bigcomposer.com) for a great festival. I had the opportunity to get to know some really great composers that you should check out:

Greg Dixon (http://www.gregdixonmusic.com)
Robert McClure (http://www.robertwmcclure.com)
Brett Wartchow (http://www.brettwartchow.com/brettwartchow/Home.html)

-mjo

Fall Performances

The new academic year is up and running, so as always there are some perforamances to update you about.

-My good friend Alex Sellers (alex-sellers.com) will be performing Driftwood at the Threshold Festival at Bowling Green State University. I’ll also be presenting Telsonic(my newest audio visual work) there.

-In October I’ll be traveling to Lewis University outside of Chicago to present Telsonic at this year’s Electronic Music Midwest.

-And lastly, I’m presenting the Vermillion mix(60X60) from ICMC at Ball State. We are still working out the times, but since this is the first concert that I’ll have put on at BSU, I’m excited.

-mjo

And Into the Summer…..

The summer always seems to slow things down for me. I’m not sure if it’s the constant heat, sun, or distractions that cause it, but my compositional output tends to lag until mid july, at which point it picks up and off we go again, into another full year. Maybe this is a good thing. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about creating space in my work; what it looks like, what moments I want to suspend. a season of reflection may often be necessary in order to refocus what is important. I’m not one to burn out on music; but I certainly think that without stopping periodically to reevaluate, we can sometimes get caught in a feedback loop, leading inevitably to the music sounding rushed, or worse, frantic.

So here it is. My summer of reflection. Alex has graciously compiled a number of sax and electronic works for me to listen to, and I will enjoy those immensely. I’m doing some research for my Ives-inspired string quartet piece, and the more I learn about Ives, the more I like him.

So that’s it, hope your all listening to a lot of new music. Have a great summer.

mjo

new works posted

I’ve just posted two new videos. the first is a recording of Driftwood, performed by my good friend Alex Sellers at GSU. Driftwood is the first in a series of pieces that I am writing for him.

The second piece is a live performance of Preludium, my animated graphic score. This recording is from our Channel Noise concert series, and features fellow MM students Yemin Oh, Alex Sellers, and Brandon Parham. It was a blast to perform this piece live, so I hope you enjoy it.

new places…..

Well, it’s official: I’ve accepted a doctoral assistantship at Ball State University. I’ll be studying theory/composition, and serving as a music technology Instructor. I’m looking forward to the change of scenery, but it will be difficult to leave all of the friends and colleagues I’ve made over the past two years.

upcoming performances, and new software

my piece “Against Silhouettes” has been selected for inclusion at the International Computer Music Conference in New York this summer! being selected at ICMC is really great, and I’m looking forward to attending. “Waterstate” has also been selected for the IUPUI Intermedia festival. I’m hoping to make it to Indianapolis for that one as well. lots of travel this year.

my application GrainSynth, is nearly complete. the software works, and all that’s left are the “bells and whistles”. I’ll be posting a more complete “journal” of the process in the coming weeks. hopefully before my master’s defense.