05.22 - Light and Power reviews

Isaac Schankler's chamber opera, Light and Power, was recently reviewed in Miss Music Nerd and the Boston Musical-Intelligencer, which wrote:

Schankler’s music is extraordinarily eclectic--where traditional operatic roles may have themes or motifs associated with characters, Schankler attached entire musical idioms to them... All of the music was masterfully composed.

Congratulations to all the performers and crew!

05.19 - Light & Power!

The Juventas New Music Ensemble premieres Isaac Schankler's opera, Light & Power, billed as "a Nikola Tesla World Premiere Opera" and "a Tesla/Edison story" (libretto by Jillian Burcar), in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Cambridge YMCA Theater
820  Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139

Thu, May 19, at 8 pm | Fri, May 20, at 8 pm
Sat, May 21, at 8 pm | Sun, May 22, at 2 pm

More details here.

04.29 - Ge Wang Visit (Pictures)

Ge Wang's visit to USC began with the Structure In Music (ISE575/EE675/CSCI575) class, where he chimed in on Huihui Cheng's presentation of a paper on his iPhone Ocarina app, and Samir Sharma's presentation of a paper on the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrK), and gave numerous insights into the development of both the Ocarina and SLOrK.

Following the class, we had lunch at Morton Fig, where Ge showed off his Magic Piano app, which is about to be released on the iPhone in two weeks. At Maged Dessouky's request, Ge called in to Smule to have Chariots of Fire reinstated on the playlist so we could play the piece on the Magic Piano.

The activities culminated in a talk by Ge Wang in the Epstein Institute Seminar Series (the ISE PhD seminar), which gave us a glimpse of laptop ensemble concerts orchestrated by Ge, and the many apps created by Smule, including Sonic Lighter, World Stage, Leaf Trombone, Magic Fiddle, and I Am T-Pain.  Ge described how they experimented with giving users a social experience with the development of each app.

04.26 - Ge Wang Visit

ISE PhD Seminar Series:

The World Is Your Stage — 

Social Music-Making 
on Mobile Phones

Ge WANG, Stanford / Smule

TUESDAY, April 26, 2011

3:30pm - 4:50pm, RTH 105

Ge Wang visits USC and gives a talk in the ISE PhD Seminar Series.  Ge Wang is an Assistant Professor at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and CTO and Chief Creative Office of Smule, creators of the Ocarina iPhone app.

04.17 - Isaac and Mimi @ Ussachevsky Memorial Festival (Video)

Isaac Schankler's performance with Mimi at the Ussachevsky Memorial Electronic Music Festival (see Feb 4 post) has been posted on VIMEO:

Mimi and Isaac Schankler in Concert at Ussachevsky Memorial Festival from People Inside Electronics on Vimeo.

04.16 - MicroTextual: music with words | words without music

MicroTextual, a Catalysis Projects presentation curated by Aron Kallay, brings together musicians and artists to create microtonal music, text performance, and performance-integrated sculpture, expanding the points of convergence between modes and disciplines of artmaking.

MicroTextual will present the premiere of Honey, Milk and Blood for soprano, women's chorus, and electronics: a collaboration between composer and MuCoaCo artist-in-residence Isaac Schankler, artist Kim Ye, and writer Jillian Burcar. Also featuring works and premieres by Harry Partch, Cat Lamb, Jeffrey Holmes, Bill Alves, Quintan Ana Wikswo and David Rosenboom.

SATURDAY, APRIL 16 8:00 PM • MIMODA STUDIO
5772 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019
$15/$10 online or at the door

For more information, call (818)397-6954 or go to catalysisprojects.com.

04.07 - Isaac Schankler at Electronics Live!

Today at Electronics Live!, Isaac Schankler presents and performs with The Harvester, a new interactive audio installation based on Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation), a system that allows humans and machines to create improvised music together, designed and implemented using François' SAI framework. For this installation, Isaac Schankler creates a new sonic environment for Mimi, which helps it interpret, synthesize and resample audio information.

This installation will also feature a special guest appearance by the BoeBot Music Ensemble, created by Keith DeRuiter, Isaac Schankler and Elaine Chew.

Electronics Live! is the third CARL residency hosted by the Culver Center. Creating an environment that is equal parts sound art installation, live music performance, and media fair expo, composers Jason Heath and Robert Giracello convert the atrium floor of the Culver Center into an interactive media fair, demonstrating a variety of approaches to interactive technologies in music and the arts, and engaging the public with hands-on experience of these technologies in a fun and experimental environment.


THU, April 7, 6-9 PM • Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts
3834 Main St, Riverside CA 92501 • FREE admission (Info: 951-827-3755)

04.06 - Eran Egozy Visit (Pictures)

Eran Egozy met with students in the MuCoaCo Lab at 3pm.  Isaac Schankler gave a demonstration of Mimi, including a preview of Mimi making music with the BoeBots — the BoeBots are programmed by freshman Keith DeRuiter.

Informal Q&A with Eran took place at Tutor Cafe.

At the formal event, Eran performed two movements from Poulenc's Clarinet Sonata with Elaine Chew, and spoke about the founding of Harmonix Music Systems, its humble beginnings, the success of Guitar Hero, and the growth of the company.

03.31 - Musical Patois — reflections of language in music

Visions and Voices: the USC Arts and Humanities Initiative

Thursday, March 31, 2011 : 7:30pm University Park Campus Alfred Newman Recital Hall (AHF) Admission is free.

Musical Patois is the result of a unique collaboration among a neuroscientist, a composer, a performer/engineer and a computer scientist. This event will boldly explore and transgress the boundaries between science, music, technology and art. The event is inspired by the research of neuroscientists Aniruddh Patel and John Iversen and composer Jason Rosenberg, which demonstrated that the instrumental music of British and French composers reflects the rhythm and intonation of their native languages. Patel, along with composer Peter Child, pianist-engineer Elaine Chew and computer scientist Alexandre François, will examine the influence of language on music through an evening of scientific presentation, musical performance, interactive visualization and lively conversation.

Organized by Elaine Chew (Engineering) and Alexandre François (Engineering).

More information at the Visions and Voices website.

03.31 - When Music & Technology Collide

Megan Dickey or Annenberg Radio News interviews Elaine Chew about this evening's Musical Patois event. The interview is posted here.

03.05 - Preview of Musical Patois at FAST: live webcast

The preview of Musical Patois takes place at the MIT150 Festival of Arts, Science, and Technology as part of FAST Thinking. The event is webcast live at: www.media.mit.edu/events/webcast/fast.html. A slide show of the Mar 5 FAST-Thinking events can be found at: http://arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-thinking-events

02.04 - Ussachevsky Memorial Festival @ Pomona

Isaac Schankler performs with Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation) at the Ussachevsky Memorial Electronic Music Festival at Pomona College organized by Tom Flaherty.  Details below:

Friday, February 4, 2011 - 8:00pm
Lyman Hall, Thatcher Music Building, Claremont, CA
FREE admission

Isaac Schankler's performance with Mimi has been posted on VIMEO:


Other concert performers include:
Robots, Rachel Rudich*, flute; Cynthia R. Fogg, viola; Roger Lebow*, cello; Mojave Trio: Sara Parkins, violin; Maggie Parkins, cello; Genevieve Feiwen Lee*, piano; Joti Rockwell*, electric guitar; Tony Perman, kalimba
 
Electronic and acoustic music by MaryClare Brzytwa, Karlheinz Essl, Tom Flaherty*, Matthew Malsky, Frank Zappa, and more

11.05/06 - Prosody and Dialog in Language and Music

Elaine Chew and Alexandre François co-organize an Exploratory Seminar on Prosody and Dialog in Language and Music at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.  The seminar brings together scientists, humanists, and artists to examine prosody and dialog in language and music from multiple ideological, scholarly, and technical perspectives with the goal of creating new avenues for scholarly exploration

During the two-day seminar, the participants were treated to a beautiful performance of Persian music on the tar by Bahman Panahi, artist-in-residence at the Harvard Music Department, thanks to Richard Wolf.

Following the introductory presentations of the first day were stimulating discussions at lunch and in the conference room on the connections between music and speech, and future directions for exploration.

09.30 - Mimi Concert Video Annotated

Video of the concert debut of Mimi with Isaac Schankler at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena on Saturday, June 5, 2010, as part of the People Inside Electronics concert event, Vicious Circles and Deadly Elements.

Mimi, which stands for multimodal interaction for musical improvisation, is a system for human-machine improvisation.  Mimi was created by Alexandre François using his Software Architecture for Immersipresence.

In Mimi, the computer learns from the human musician, creates a factor oracle from the music input, and recombines the material to generate improvisations like the music it 'hears'.  The visualizations show the music stream from the computer and from the human, the music material Mimi learns, and how the system recombines the material. 

The human musician determines when Mimi learns, when it starts/stops improvising, and the recombination rate.  The annotations in the video provided by Isaac shows this decision process, and reveals the improviser's thought process as the performance unfolds.

Isaac is a composer-pianist-improviser who received his DMA in Composition from the USC Thornton School of Music in 2010; he is currently a research consultant at MuCoaCo.

08.19 - Geraint Wiggins

Geraint Wiggins, Professor of Computational Creativity in the Department of Computing in Goldsmiths, University of London, visits the MuCoaCo Lab at USC and gives a seminar on Computational Creativity through a Model of Music Cognition.

08.13 - Katie's Poster @ ISMIR in Utrecht

KatieAnna Wolf presents a poster on "Evaluation of Performance-to-Score MIDI Alignment of Piano Duets" (abstract pdf) in the late breaking / demo session at the 11th ISMIR in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Katie was a 2010 CRA-W DREU (distributed research experiences for undergraduates) awardee—one of 70 selected from over 500 applicants—and a senior double majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. She was at the MuCoaCo Lab over the summer to work on analyzing data from the DIP (distributed immersive performance) project.

08.12 - Chinghua's Poster @ ISMIR in Utrecht

Ching-Hua Chuan presents a poster on "Quantifying the Benefits of Using an Interactive Decision Support Tool for Creating Musical Accompaniment in a Particular Style" (paper pdf) at the 11th ISMIR in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

07.23 - Mimi4x @ IMIDA Workshop

Mimi4x, an interactive installation for high level structural improvisation based on Mimi, is unveiled at IMIDA 2010, an IEEE Conference on Multimedia & Expo workshop.  Alex François and Elaine Chew present the paper:

Francois, A. R. J., I. Schankler, E. Chew (2010). Mimi4x: An Interactive Audio-Visual Installation for High-Level Structural Improvisation. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME 2010), Singapore, July, 2010.

and demonstrate Mimi4x in Singapore.  The Mimi4x system is also shown in the video below with four sets of music material composed by Isaac Schankler collectively titled Airport:

The paper will be extended and included in a special issue of the International Journal of Arts and Technology.

06.05 - Vicious Circles and Deadly Elements

Mimi 1.5 makes her concert debut at the People Inside Electronics concert at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center, Pasadena. See/hear the concert preview with Isaac Schankler at the Yamaha Disklavier. [ press release, poster ]

05.11 - ISE 575 Final Projects

Final project presentations for EE 675 / ISE 575, Topics in Engineering Approaches to Music Cognition, take place today.  The topic this year is Musical Prosody and Interpretation.  Here is a link to the list of projects and the photos.