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Georg Katzer (1935–2019)

Georg Katzer, composer and pioneer of electroacoustic music within the former German Democratic Republic (commonly known as East Germany), died 7 May 2019. Katzer was born 10 January 1935 in Habelschwerdt, Silesia. He studied composition with Rudolf Wagner-Régeny and Ruth Zechlin at the Hochschule für Musik in East Berlin and with Karel Janeček in Prague, and from 1961–1963 he studied under Hanns Eisler in Eisler’s masterclass at the Akademie der Künste (AdK) in East Berlin. Following some years as an independent composer, in 1978 he was elected to membership of the AdK, and was appointed professor of composition there in 1980; he founded its Studio for Experimental Music in 1982. Katzer’s extensive musical output includes orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, operas, ballets, and electroacoustic works. His works garnered composition awards and distinctions from both East German and West German institutions, including the German Federal Cross of Merit, as well as awards from the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges and the Reine Marie José prize in composition. An interview with Katzer, covering his career and the evolution of electroacoustic music in East Germany, appeared in Computer Music Journal’s Fall 2018 issue (Martin Supper, “Constraints and Freedom” CMJ 42:3).

Sound and Music Computing Conference

The 16th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC 2019) was held 28–31 May 2019 at the University of Malaga in Malaga, Spain. SMC 2019 included presentations of research, concerts, and poster and demo sessions related to topics such as acoustics, psychoacoustics, audio analysis, musicology, sonification, musical games, machine learning, immersive audio, and sound synthesis. The conference theme was “Music and Interaction.” Research presented at the conference covered topics such as digital manufacturing techniques for musical instrument design, automated tuning of pianos, real-time control of large-scale physical models, and modeling of audio effects circuits with deep learning. A system for generating Scandinavian-like folk music using recurrent neural networks was presented, as was an augmented reality system for enabling soundwalks. Among the works in SMC 2019’s musical program were John Granzow’s Axes, in which unassembled guitar pieces were actuated with motors normally used in a milling machine, and Amy Brandon’s Seven Malagueña Fragments for Augmented Guitar, inspired by Spanish traditional music and performed using a guitar and augmented reality system. A Women in Inclusive Engineering, Sound and Music Computing Research event preceded the conference, on 28 May 2019, promoting gender-inclusivity in sound and music computing-related careers to high school students and featuring talks by Elvira Brattico, Stefania Serafin, Anja Volk, Ana Rivera, Gema Martín, and Ana Pedraz. The SMC 2019 Summer School also took place before the conference, including workshops on embedded audio synthesis, music recommendation systems, and other topics.

Web: smc2019.uma.es

Next Generation 8.0

The eighth edition of the Next Generation festival of electronic music occurred 5–9 June 2019 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Organized by the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe and held biennially, the festival comprised eleven concerts of music involving spatial audio, live electronics, and live coding, with the aim of presenting new works and innovative ideas in these genres. As in previous editions, the festival hosted composers and musicians associated with a variety of European music institutions, including the Universität der Künste Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik, and the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. A lecture series featured presentations on a new software system for symbolic music processing, a collaborative environment for audiovisual live coding, spatialization strategies for electronic music ensembles, sound synthesis using artificial intelligence, and other topics.

Web: zkm.de/en/event/2019/06/nextgeneration-80

Présences Électronique

The 15th edition of the Présences Électronique festival of electro-acoustic music took place 22–24 March 2019 at Maison de la Radio in Paris, France, and organized by the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel Groupe de Recherches Musicales (INAGRM). The festival included three concerts of electroacoustic music, both historical and contemporary, and featuring both French and international composers. The festival opened with an acousmatic rendition of Delia Derbyshire’s The...