News

Larry Austin (1930–2018)

Larry Austin, a composer whose expansive oeuvre demonstrated considerable fluency in contemporary, historical, and electronic musical practices, died 30 December 2018, at the age of 88. Austin composed over 80 musical works in his career, including a completed version of Charles Ives' unfinished Universe Symphony, premiered in 1994. In 1996, he was awarded the Magistère prize of the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition for his work BluesAx (1995–1996). In 2009, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) awarded Austin the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of the composer's contributions to the field of electro-acoustic music. A 2011 retrospective of Austin's musical achievements, commemorating the composer's 80th birthday, was held at the Issue Project Room in New York City, in collaboration with the Darmstadt Festival.

Austin studied composition with Violet Archer at the University of North Texas (UNT), with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, and with Andrew Imbrie at the University of California, Berkeley. Following his studies, he taught music composition on the faculties of University of California, Davis, from 1958–1972 and the University of South Florida from 1972–1978. In 1978, he joined the faculty of UNT's School of Music, whose Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) he directed from 1983–1990 and 1995–1996. In 1996, he retired from teaching, remaining Professor Emeritus of Music at UNT.

In 1981, Austin directed the seventh International Computer Music Conference, hosted by UNT (then known as North Texas State University). He was on the board of directors of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA) from 1984–1988 and 1990–1998, serving as the ICMA's president from 1990–1994. Austin co-founded, in 1966, and edited Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, a journal covering new music practices. He contributed a number of articles and reviews for Computer Music Journal over the years.

Sound and Music Computing Conference

The 2018 Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC) was held 4–7 July 2018, organized by the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol, Cyprus. SMC 2018 featured concerts, sound installations, and research presentations related to music computing topics. The conference's theme was "Sonic Crossings," which, according to the organizers, emphasizes the ability of sound and music to cross boundaries, to eliminate borderlines, and to overcome physical and digital limitations, in addition to drawing attention to the dual presence of Greek and Turkish cultures on the island of Cyprus. The conference included three keynote talks: Trevor Wishart covered perspectives on human speech and music, Rebecca Fiebrink discussed relationships between machine learning and human creativity, and Claude Cadoz presented a system for multisensory interactive simulation of physical models, which he used to create his audiovisual work Hélios. Among the research presented at SMC was a system for converting computer graphical models of three-dimensional objects into models appropriate for physical modeling synthesis, alternative perspectives of processing unit generator graphs, and approaches to frequency control of nonlinear oscillators. SMC 2018's musical programming included electroacoustic works performed by Artéfacts Ensemble, Chronos Ensemble, and pianist Anna D'Errico, in addition to acousmatic works and works for electronics. In Giovanni Santini's LINEAR, one performer drew graphic notation in real time using an augmented reality–based mobile phone application, and an acoustic ensemble interpreted this score as it was produced. Trevor Wishart's Movement One: Encounters in the Republic of Heaven (2011), an acousmatic work for eight-channel audio, assembled an extensive collection of audio recordings of stories told by residents of northern England, collected by the composer and manipulated to variously emphasize their speech content or obscure them in musical materials. In Kristina Warren's Stochast, the composer performed using a whole-body wearable instrument of her own design in which the performer's body movements were linked to musical parameters. Among the sound installations exhibited at SMC 2018, Martin Rumori's Promenade comprised a group of blank canvases outfitted with transducers whose sounds were activated as listeners approached them.

Web: cyprusconferences.org/smc2018

L'Espace du Son International Acousmatic Festival

The 25th L'Espace du Son International Acousmatic Festival took place 24–28 October 2018...