As part of their prep for a tour of Beijing, China, the Electric Monster Laptop Ensemble, directed by Hsiao-Lan Wang, is giving a concert tomorrow night, April 22, 2010 @ Montana State University. They’ll be playing “RadioGamelan” – my piece for networked laptops – as well as other works written for the group.

Here’s the full program:

“SoundCloud” by Hsiao-Lan Wang

“RadioGamelan” by Greg Surges

“I will Play the Swan and Die in Music” by Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner
Will Hartley, trombone

“Awake” by Daniel Zajicek

“Static Forests” by Chapman Welch
Kelley Barnett, flute; Trevor Ostenson, violin; Stephan Gueguen, marimba

“WaveDrag” by the Electric Monster based on Jeff Morris’ Max patch
Kent Johnson, guitar

Stellar performers on all the works, especially Christopher Biggs’ piece Bioluminescence – excellent handling of a complex score paired with equally challenging electronics. Larry Austin’s ReduxTwo was another treat, with live and taped pianos coming from all directions, and a great performance by Joseph Kubera. David Bithell’s Hithering for electronically-augmented trumpet was an enjoyable outlier, in that there weren’t too many “meta-instrument” performances. His performance was great, and the instrument seems very responsive and versatile. Hearing Curtis Roads diffuse his music in 8-channel was enjoyable – the spatial character of his gestures really comes through in that setting.

I enjoyed Schuyler Tsuda’s piece Viscera Voltaic Pile - probably the noisiest piece, and definitely a lot of improvisation. Contra-bass Clarinet paired with bowed/tapped amplified hunk of metal. Also liked Michael Boyd’s Reconstruction, a Fluxus-like piece where we listened to the processed sounds of him destroying an alarm clock with various hammers, saws, and electric drills, before attempting to rebuild the object with duct-tape. Totally chaotic, and he wore sunglasses, inside a bar, at night.

Set list:

1) Improvisation – drones juxtaposed against flurries of rhythm.

2) Fission - Performance premiere of this piece, very short middle section – fun!

3) Improvisation – Glitchy, sparse, and responsive.

4) Mediation (David Collins) – Good performance, solid cueing.

5) Radio Gamelan - Premiere also, small tech difficulties getting started, but got into some really weird and cool sonic areas.

6) Improvisation – Again, drones moving towards ambience w/ percussion.

Here’s an article about the concert my piece “Waveformations” will be appearing in at SEAMUS 2010 in St. Cloud, on Thursday nights, April 8 at 10pm.

http://www.universitychronicle.com/entertainment/headphone-concert-to-be-performed-at-seamus-1.2191891

By the way, if you’re interested, you can check out the original album that Waveformations was released on. It’s from Wandering Ear, a netlabel releasing primarily field-recording and phonographic works. All of the tracks are reconstructions of an earlier Wandering Ear release, made of field recordings from Minnesota. My friend and collaborator David Collins also has a track there, which you should definitely check out.

The Electric Monster Laptop Ensemble, headed by Hsaio-Lan Wang, is making their concert debut tonight. They’re based at Montana State University, and playing in Reynolds Recital Hall there. My piece for networked laptop ensemble, “Solid State,” is being performed along with six other pieces for laptop ensemble. You can see more on Hsiao-Lan Wang’s site here, and I’ll post a recording when I have one.