Electronic music pioneers

[Roland Kuit]

Ernst Krenek
(August 23, 1900 – December 22, 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now (1939), a study of Johannes Ockeghem (1953), and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music (1974). Krenek wrote two pieces using the pseudonym Thornton Winsloe.

The jazz-influenced score of Jonny spielt auf and its central character of a black jazz musician (who is also seen womanising and stealing a priceless violin) brought Krenek the opprobrium of the nascent Nazi Party; the image of Jonny was distorted to form the centrepiece of the poster advertising the Entartete Musik exhibition of so-called 'degenerate' music in 1938. Krenek was frequently named as a Jewish composer during the Third Reich, although he was not, and was intimidated by the regime until his emigration; on March 6, 1933, one day after the election in which the Nazis gained control of the Reichstag, Krenek's incidental music to Goethe's Triumph der Empfindsamkeit was withdrawn in Mannheim, and eventually pressure was brought to bear on the Vienna State Opera, which cancelled the commissioned premiere of Karl V.

In 1938 Krenek moved to the United States, where he taught music at various universities, the first being Vassar College. He later taught at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1942 to 1947. There he met and married his third wife, his student and composer Gladys Nordenstrom. He became an American citizen in 1945. He later moved to Toronto, Canada, where he taught at The Royal Conservatory of Music during the 1950s. His students included Milton Barnes, Lorne Betts, Samuel Dolin, Robert Erickson, Halim El-Dabh, Richard Maxfield, Will Ogdon, and George Perle. He died in Palm Springs, California, where he had lived since 1966. In 1998 Gladys Nordenstrom founded the Ernst Krenek Institute; in 2004 the private foundation moved from Vienna to Krems, Austria.(Wiki)

Krenek's music is in a variety of styles. His early work is in a late-Romantic idiom, showing the influence of his teacher Franz Schreker. He later embraced atonality, but a visit to Paris, during which he became familiar with the work of Igor Stravinsky and Les Six, led him to adopt a neo-classical style. His opera Jonny spielt auf (Johnny Strikes Up, 1926), which is influenced by jazz, was a great success in his lifetime, playing all over Europe. In spite of Nazi protests, it became so popular that even a brand of cigarettes, still on the market today in Austria, was named "Johnny". He then started writing in a neo-Romantic style with Franz Schubert as a model, with his Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen as prime example, before using Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique; the opera Karl V (1931-33) is entirely written using this technique, as are most of his later pieces. In the Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae (1941–42) he combined twelve-tone writing with 16th century techniques of modal counterpoint. He also composed electronic and aleato(from an interview here: http://www.bruceduffie.com/krenek2.html )

Ernst Krenek op. 152 (1956) pt 1-Spiritus Intelligentiae Sanctus:
http://youtu.be/XpwnuuD6mFk

[Roland Kuit]

Peter Beyls

Biographic note

Peter Beyls is a Belgian born artist/composer working with computer media since the Seventies. He explores computer programming as a medium for artistic expression and develops generative systems in music, the visual arts and hybrid formats. He studied music and computer science at EMS, Stockholm, the Royal Music Conservatory, Brussels and University College London. Beyls was awarded a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Plymouth UK, for his research on evolutionary computing applied to real-time interactive music systems. He published extensively on various aspects of digital media, including computer assisted composition, real-time systems design, interface design, personal expert systems and, in general, the application of Artificial Intelligence for artistic purposes.

Beyls pioneered the use of cellular automata in the field of computer music while at the VUB AI-Lab. His work was widely exhibited and performed at conferences like Siggraph, ICMC, Imagina, ISCM, Generative Arts and ISEA. Beyls was guest lecturer at a.o. the University of Quebec, California Institute of the Arts, Queens University Kingston and the Osaka Arts University. He currently teaches theory and history of Media Art at The School of Arts, University College Ghent, coordinates research at the KASK Interaction Lab and lectures on Sound Art and Generative Systems at LUCA Brussels.

Approach
I have always thought of computer media as active partners in the creative process, a methodology I have referred to as “conceptual navigation”. Software is written in order to explore my (often ambiguous) intentions. Once an idea is formalised in a program, one can evaluate its imaginative potential by way of the feedback that program provides. Since a program reflects the objectives of the artist, programming is considered a method of artistic introspection. Software is thus instrumental as a functional, materialist means allowing the active manipulation of otherwise purely conceptual constructs.

Over the years, my work has primarily centred on (1) generative systems, including plotter drawings created from genetic algorithms (nested LISP functions viewed as DNA), (2) human-machine interactive music systems using machine-learning and (3) interactive audiovisual installations, many of them using computer-vision.
I am also fascinated by the problem of translating digital/virtual artefacts back into the tangible analog world as to make them available for humans to be experienced. This raises questions of how digital art (1) is connected to the sensual parameters of human physicality and (2) how it can be referenced/understood from the whole of human culture and the massive depth of its history.
(http://hala.be/portfolio/?cat=19)

Peter Beyls - Prints:
http://youtu.be/H6njj2D5M_U

[Roland Kuit]

The Synket synthesizer

Made by Paul Ketoff in 1965. Sound engeneer at the RCA.

En 1965 le synthétiseur Synket de Paul Ketoff, un ingénieur du son pour la RCA Italiana, ce petit synthétiseur simple proposé pour William O. Smith, directeur du studio de musique électronique de l’Académie américaine de Rome.

[Roland Kuit]

Curtis Roads
Curtis Roads (b. 1951) holds a joint appointment as Professor in Media Arts and Technology (MAT) and in Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he is also Associate Director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE). He studied music composition and computer programming at California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego (BA Summa Cum Laude with Highest Departmental Honors), and the University of Paris VIII (PhD Très honorable avec félicitations). From 1980 to 1986 he was a researcher in computer music at the MIT Media Laboratory. He then taught at the Federico II University of Naples, Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory, CCMIX (Paris), and the University of Paris VIII. He has led masterclasses at the Australian National Conservatory (Melbourne), Prometeo Laboratorio (Parma), Ionian University (Corfu), Goethe Institute (Rome), Kunitachi College of Music (Tokyo), Royal Conservatory (Aarhus), Catholic University (Porto), and the Zürich University of the Arts, among others. He is co-organizer of international workshops on musical signal processing in Sorrento, Capri, and Santa Barbara (1988, 1991, 1997, 2000). He served on the composition juries of the Ars Electronica (Linz) and the International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Bourges, France). Certain of his compositions feature granular and pulsar synthesis, methods he developed for generating sound from acoustical particles. A cofounder of the International Computer Music Association in 1979, he was Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 1989, and Associate Editor 1990-2000. His books include Foundations of Computer Music (1985, The MIT Press), Composers and the Computer (1985, AR Editions), The Music Machine (1989, The MIT Press), Representations of Musical Signals (1991, The MIT Press), The Computer Music Tutorial (1996, The MIT Press), Musical Signal Processing (co-editor, 1997, Routledge), L’audionumerique (1998, Dunod), The Computer Music Tutorial – Japanese edition (2000, Denki Daigaku Shuppan) and Microsound (2002, The MIT Press), which explores the aesthetics and techniques of composition with sound particles. A revised edition of L’audionumerique was published in 2007. A Chinese version of The Computer Music Tutorial is scheduled for publication in 2010 as a national textbook. His music is available on compact discs produced by Asphodel, MODE, OR, the MIT Media Laboratory, and Wergo. His composition Clang-Tint (1994) was commissioned by the Japan Ministry of Culture (Bunka-cho). His electronic music collection POINT LINE CLOUD won the Award of Distinction at the 2002 Ars Electronica and was released as a CD + DVD on the Asphodel label (San Francisco) in 2005. In 2007 he received a National Science Foundation grant for research in algorithms for sound analysis (dictionary-based pursuit). He is currently completing a new book Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic for Oxford University Press, a revised edition of The Computer Music Tutorial for The MIT Press, and a new set of electronic music.(Bohlen-Pierce)

Publications:
Roads, Curtis (2009). Composing Electronic Music. Oxford University Press. (forthcoming)
Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18215-7
Roads, Curtis (1996). The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68082-3
Roads, Curtis (1997). Musical Signal Processing. Routledge. ISBN 90-265-1483-2
Roads, Curtis and Strawn, John, eds (1987). Foundations of Computer Music. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-68051-3

Curtis Roads - nscor (1980, remix 1986):
http://youtu.be/sZjpnttuAiE

nscor is the third piece in a cycle of four related works. It was organized in 1980 at the MIT Experimental Music Studio. The primary sounds material is a collection of sound objects generated from 1975 to 1980 at various studio in La Jolla, Utrecht, Toronto and Cambridge.
For every Studio visited, Curtis Roads used a different computer music system, such as the Music 11 at the MIT or the Project1 at Utrecht.
Many synthesis techniques was adopted: Frequency Modulation, Vosim, Waveshaping, Granular and many others.
The 1986 remix version was realized at Studio Strada in Cambridge.
The first movement of his composition Clang-Tint, "Purity", uses intervals from the Bohlen–Pierce scale.

[Roland Kuit]

Erkki Kurenniemi
(born July 10, 1941 in Hämeenlinna, Finland) is a Finnish designer, philosopher and artist, best known for his electronic music compositions and the electronic instruments he has designed. He is considered one of the leading early pioneers of electronic music in Finland. Kurenniemi is also a science populariser, a futurologist, a pioneer of media culture, and an experimental film-maker.

Kurenniemi completed the majority of his instruments, electronic compositions and experimental films in the 1960s and 1970s. Between 1962 and 1974, he designed and constructed ten electronic instruments and studio devices when he was working as a volunteer assistant at the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki, and as designer at Digelius Electronics Finland Oy, founded in 1970. In addition to the Musicology Department, Kurenniemi also worked as assistant and senior designer at the Department of Theoretical Physics from 1962 to 1973. Kurenniemi earned a Bachelor of Sciences degree in 1968.

He subsequently worked as a designer of control systems for industrial robots at Oy W. Rosenlew Ab (1976–1978), and as a designer of industrial automation and robotic systems at Nokia’s cable machinery division (1980–1986). He also worked as a specialist consultant and Head of Planning at the Science Centre Heureka in Vantaa, Finland (1987–1998).

Kurenniemi received the Finland Prize of the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2003. In 2004, he was elected honorary fellow of the University of Art and Design Helsinki.[2] 2011 Kurenniemi received Order of the Lion of Finland medal from The President of Finland Mrs. Tarja Halonen.(Wiki)

'Electronics In The World Of Tomorrow' (1964) by Erkki Kurenniemi:
http://youtu.be/KjpPJugj6SY

[Roland Kuit]

Francis Dhomont
(born Paris, France, 2 November 1926) is a French composer of electroacoustic / acousmatic music.

He studied composition under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 1940s he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer at about the same time came to call musique concrète, consequently conducting solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording.

In 1963 he decided to dedicate his time to electroacoustic composition utilising natural sounds. Performances in public of his music are done using the French "diffusion" technique over multiple loudspeakers. His work consists exclusively of tape pieces using natural, or "found" sounds, exploring morphological interplay and the ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.

Dhomont's work has won many international awards including at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), the Magisterium Prize in 1988, Prix Ars Electronica in 1992 (Linz, Austria) and others. In 1997, as the winner of the Canada Council for the Arts' Lynch-Staunton Prize, he was supported by the DAAD for a residence in Berlin. He was recently awarded a prestigious career grant by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec . Dhomont is the editor of several electroacoustic music journals, and has produced many radio programs for Radio-Canada and Radio-France.

From 1978 to 2005, he divided his time between France and Québec, where he taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996. He was a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He now lives in Avignon (France) and regularly presents his works in France and abroad. A great traveller, he frequently participates in juries.(Wiki)

Francis Dhomont - Cycle du son Mov. 3 "Novars" ,1989:
http://youtu.be/45PQX_2j1Y0

[Roland Kuit]

Guy Reibel
(born 27 October 1936 in Strasbourg, France) is an electronic or acousmatic composer. Made his musical studies at the Conservatoire de Paris. Trained under Olivier Messiaen. He is a pioneer of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, François-Bernard Mâche, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani, Marcelle Deschênes. He has also collaborated with French public broadcasting stations like France Musique and France Culture. He is also cited as the conceptualizer of the Omni.(Wiki)



Guy Reibel - Variations En Étoile:
http://youtu.be/oiLIF1XkisE

[Roland Kuit]

Denis Smalley
Denis Smalley studied at the University of Canterbury and Victoria University in his native New Zealand, and later at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen, with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), and at the University of York, [1] as well as the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the City University, London in England, where he has lived since 1971.[citation needed] He also studied with Musique concrète pioneer François Bayle.

He initially composed onto tape, but as early as the 1980s realised his works using computer software. His composition Pentes (1974) is regarded as one of the classics of electroacoustic music. Source sounds for his works may come from the environment—and are often the starting point for his pieces—but he may also develop highly sophisticated timbres from scratch using computer software. He describes his approach as "spectromorphological", featuring the development of sounds in time.

A lecturer at the University of East Anglia, England, from 1976 to 1994, he has been professor of music at City University, London since 1994(Wiki)

Denis Smalley - Wind Chimes (1987)
http://youtu.be/g2KcSqiuY3A

"I remember that I’d just set up the gear at home after a major up-grade of equipment many years ago. Wind Chimes was the first CD that I played through it – and I was stunned! They guy who helped me bring the gear home and set it up was unfamiliar with any kind of electroacoustic music, and looked completely helpless when the first loud chime cut through the room like a shining sword!
The growling glare, the resounding clay, the springing of forces, the expansion of force fields, the rattling clatter of tumbling chimes, the sonic equivalence of clashing gravitational forces – the tear and strain of relentless pull… Wind Chimes reaches a purity of detail and a level of craftsmanship seldom heard, even in the deepest realms of today’s most celebrated studios, gallantly delivered by Smalley in 1987; a true masterpiece, a Rembrandt of the audios, difficult lighting and all." (GRM Archive)

[Roland Kuit]

Ricardo Mandolini
born 1950, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He came to Europe to study at Köln’s Musikhochschule in 1977, then in various European countries and is now a teacher living in France. This LP was the first to be issued on Edition RZ, launched by Berliner curator and art critic Robert Zank in 1982 to document the local Inventionen Festival – with figures like Luigi Nono, Pierre Schaffer/INA-GRM, Mario Bertoncini, Canadian electroacoutic group Sondes, etc. Mandolini’s agenda for electro-acoustic music is more or less the same as Monoton for dub: ‘der Ökonomie der Materialien’, ie: rarefied and self-restrained compositions. Mandolini indeed reduces electroacoustic music to its vital skeleton (the fishbone of music, so to speak) but never forgets structure, dramatization and the evocative power of well chosen sounds. The 4 electronic works included here were created in various European electroacoustic studios between 1979-1981. They’re all based on a few sound sources, usually 2 only. ‘Estallido Breve’, for instance, is build on an increasingly accelarating electronic sound over a slow synthetic percussion rumble, the composition consisting of the articulation of both with occasional additional sounds for drama. ‘Juego De Marionetas’ comprises musique concrete and synthesizer sounds for an evocation of a puppet game where your imagination is left figuring out the games at play. Pressing quality is unbelivably good, arguably one of the most impressive piece of vynil engineering I have ever heard, with virtually nonexistent background noise.(aural delicacies).

Ricardo Mandolini - Fabulas II, 1985:
http://youtu.be/GJAVWJsX7zI

[Roland Kuit]

Åke Parmerud(1953)

Although he originally trained as a photographer ( 1972-74 ) he went on to study music at university and subsequently the Göteborg Conservatory of Music.
In addition to his electro-acoustic and instrumental music, his prolific list of works includes compositions covering a broad cross-section of modern experimental music in the fields of dance, film, interactive art, multi-media, theatre and video.
Åke’s work has been acclaimed since his piece “Proximities” received first prize at the 1978 Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Festival in France. Since then he has received 17 international prizes and 3 major Swedish prizes (see prizes and awards).
On two occasions he has also received the Swedish “grammy” award for Best Classical Album of the Year and his music has represented Swedish Radio twice at The Prix Italia.
He is regularly commissioned to compose works by important international institutions and his works have been presented worldwide. In 1997 his piece “Grains of Voices” was performed at the U.N in New York on United Nations Day.
His music has been released on numerous albums and compilations, and in 1998 he became a member of The Swedish Royal Academy of Music.(http://www.parmerud.com/MediaArtist/Home.html)
Åke Parmerud has composed a number of works comissioned by international institutions in Holland, France, Germany, Norway and Denmark. His music is played worldwide. Åke Parmerud also teaches computermusic and composition at the Lindbladstudio, Gothenburg University.

Åke Parmerud ... SubString Bridge, 1999
http://youtu.be/Jtfaw7-2REY

[Roland Kuit]

Here a start for pioneers in the commercial field.
Till now I have placed composers out 'the more institutional field' (universities).
Dick Raaijmakers was already mentioned here.

Raaymakers was born in Maastricht, and studied the piano at the Royal Conservatoire (The Hague). From 1954 to 1960 he worked in the field of electro-acoustic research at Royal Philips Electronics Ltd. in Eindhoven. There, using the alias Kid Baltan, he and Tom Dissevelt, under the name Electrosoniks produced works of popular music by electronic means (which turned out to be the first attempts of their kind in the world). Wiki

Largely unrecognized as one of the most earliest studios producing commercial electronic music, The NatLab was a playground for Dutch tape-wizards Tom Dissevelt & Dick Raaijmakers.
The composer/technician duo were hired by The Philips Company to create incidental and composed music, resulting in a far-out collection of jazz and orchestral pieces mixed with oscillated blips and concrète tape trickery.
While selling their records in American shops labelled as “Sounds from Space”, their output earned high praises from Jean-Jacques Perrey and other electronic innovators.
In the early 60s, Dissevelt was asked by Philips to create an original album consisting of only electronic sound. The composer took it to deep space with Fantasy In Orbit . The LP is now considered one of the earliest examples of minimalist synth/ambient music.


The NatLab


L-D.R. R-T.D.

From their LP 'Electronic Movements', 1958:
http://youtu.be/HW-n6GWFAvI

[Roland Kuit]

Horacio Vaggione
(born 1943 in Córdoba, Argentina) is an electro-acoustic and musique concrète composer who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and thus microsound and (Landy 1994, p. 148) whose pieces often are for performer and computer-generated tape. He studied composition at the National University in Córdoba and the University of Illinois, where he first gained exposure and access to computers.
Vaggione lives in Europe and visited every electronic studio there during the 1970s. From 1969 to 1973 he lived in Madrid, Spain, and was part of ALEA and co-founded an electronic studio and the Projects Music and Computer at the Autonomous University in Madrid with Luis de Pablo. In 1978 he moved to France, where he still resides, and began work at GMEB in Bourges, INA-GRM and IRCAM in Paris where his music moved from synthesized and sampled loops (as in La Maquina de Cantar, produced on an IBM computer) towards micromontage. Since 1994 he has been Professor of Music University of Paris VIII and organized the CICM(Wiki)

Horacio Vaggione - Consort for Convolved Violins, 2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F20kvxuX ... ture=share

[Roland Kuit]

Robert Ashley
(March 28, 1930 – March 3, 2014)

American composer, who was best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.
He studied at the University of Michigan with Ross Lee Finney, at the Manhattan School of Music, and was later a musician in the US Army. After moving back to Michigan, Ashley worked at the University of Michigan's Speech Research Laboratories. Although he was not officially a student in the acoustic research program there, he was offered the chance to obtain a doctorate, but turned it down to pursue his music. From 1961 to 1969, he organised the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor with Roger Reynolds, Gordon Mumma, and other local composers and artists. He was a co-founder of the ONCE Group, as well as a member of the Sonic Arts Union, which also included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma. In 1969 he became director of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In the 1970s he directed the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. His notable students include Maggi Payne.

The majority of Ashley's recordings have been released by Lovely Music, which was founded by Performing Artservices, the not-for-profit management organization which represents Ashley and other artists. Ashley's opera Perfect Lives was featured in Peter Greenaway's documentary 4 American Composers. November 2011 will see the release of two new books of Ashley's by Burning Books, a re-staging of his 1967 opera That Morning Thing commissioned by Performa '11, and a number of other performances in New York City as part of a week long festival at Incubator Arts.(Wiki)

Robert Ashley: Automatic writing (1979):
http://youtu.be/Rh_TC8j_JkE

[Roland Kuit]

Daria Semegen
(born June 27, 1946) is an important contemporary American composer of classical music. While she has composed pieces for traditional instruments — her Jeux des quatres (1970), for example, is scored for clarinet, trombone, cello, and piano — she is best known as a "respected electronic composer." She is a figure on the academic side of the electronic music genre, connected with the conservatory and the university (like her older contemporary Karlheinz Stockhausen), rather than the more popular expression of the genre that followed upon the widespread availability of synthesizers and personal computers in the 1970s and after.
Born in Bamberg, West Germany of Ukrainian heritage, Semegen pursued an academic career in music, earning her MA from Yale University in 1971; she has studied at the Eastman School of Music and the Rochester Institute of Technology. She taught at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (1971–75). She studied composition under Bülent Arel and Alexander Goehr, and in turn has taught other composers, including Joseph DiPonio, Daniel Koontz, Gilda Lyons and Philip Schuessler. Her writing covers a range of topics related to musical composition and has been the subject of studies by other scholars.

In a distinguished academic career in a field still heavily dominated by men, Semegen has received six grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; has been selected as a Fulbright fellow; and has been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood, the Chautauqua Institution, and Yaddo — among a range of other awards and distinctions. She is currently associate professor of composition, theory, and electronic music composition at Stony Brook University, and is director of its Electronic Music Studio.(Wiki)

Daria Semegen - Electronic Composition No. 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSgMXyT2 ... 4&index=22

[Roland Kuit]

Georg Katzer

Katzer was born in Habelschwerdt, Lower Silesia in 1935. From 1954 to 1960 he studied piano, music theory, and composition with (amongst others) Rudolf Wagner-Régeny and Ruth Zechlin at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in East Berlin. From 1957 to 1958 he studied in Prague with Karel Janáček. From 1961 to 1963 he was a postgraduate student of Hanns Eisler and Leo Spies at the German Academy of the Arts in Berlin (Klingberg 2001). In 1963 he became a freelance composer and musician.

From 1976– to 1977 he worked in electronic-music studios in Bratislava and Paris. In 1978 Katzer was elected to membership in the Academy of the Arts in East Berlin (Klingberg 2001). In 1982 he founded the Studio for Electroacoustical Music affiliated with the Music Department of the Academy of the Arts (the first studio of this kind in the GDR), whose artistic director he remained until 2005.

In 1987 he was appointed Professor and subsequently taught a masterclass in composition at the Academy of the Arts. From 1988 to 1991 he was President of the German Section of the C.I.M.E. (International Council for Electroacoustical Music) and from 1990 to 2001 was a presiding member of the Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council, a member of the International Music Council). Katzer now lives in Zeuthen near Berlin.

This piece by composer Georg Katzler won the Prix C.I.M.E. aequo at the 15e Concours International / Bourges 1987:
http://youtu.be/VKTF3htZZvY



Katzer’s compositions include works for chamber ensembles, orchestral works, solo concertos, operas, ballets, puppet plays, and oratorios. His work also encompasses electroacoustical pieces, music for radio dramas, multimedia projects, and projects involving improvised music.(Wiki)

[dawman]

Nice vid with ancient pics suits the recording well..

Thanks.

[dante]

BT (Brian Wayne Transeau ) (born October 4, 1971), better known by his stage name, BT, is an American music producer, composer, audio technician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is an artist in the electronica genre – most often considered a composer of trance music, but known to work within several other styles. BT has also produced and written for artists such as Paul van Dyk, Peter Gabriel, 'N Sync, Sting, Blake Lewis, Tori Amos, and Tiësto. As a film composer, he has worked on films such as The Fast and the Furious and Monster.

BT

BT.jpg (147.09 KiB) Viewed 6723 times

"This Binary Universe" performance, CD and DVD is one of the most abstract pieces of music I have listened to and yet it has a really elegance to it which is difficult to explain. The tracks have no vocal collaborations like in previous albums (Emotional Technology), and the track “Everything That Makes Us Human” was written exclusively in an audio programming language called CSound.

Quoting from : http://simoncpage.co.uk/blog/2008/10/bt ... -universe/

BT’s fascination with mathematics, thinking outside of the box, creating tracks purely in code without the aid of sequencers or instruments, and even developing his own software (BreakTweaker) whilst producing this album has made it something purely unique and the album he is most proud of.

Binary Universe

BinaryUniverse.jpg (388.89 KiB) Viewed 6723 times

There are fewer tracks here than on any previous album, and they are all long, unresponsive, unwieldy, and very much have an innocent, childlike “hey, remember Aphex Twin” quality to them. They alternate between extremely quiet moments where nothing happens and loud, bombastic moments with full orchestras. He is no longer adhering to the 4/4 dance groove and pop sensibilities preferred by his fan-base, choosing odd keys and uneven time signatures that change pace and direction, naming tracks after mathematical concepts like the Golden Ratio (1.618), time correcting minute slivers of samples that no one will notice, slicing down 2,048th notes and micro-edits, and inserting hidden Easter eggs and advanced sonic tricks (particularly now that he has started working with 5.1 audio). None of these will be apparent to you, however, unless you look at the source code.

This Binary Universe is like Marmite – you either love it or hate it. It’s really isn’t something, I find, you can’t easily listen to as say background music, as it make you stand up to attention and try to understand all it’s beauty

[hubird]

Exellent indeed, majestuous and greatly sounding.
On the edge, but with an eye for the listener who isn't into pure conceptualism.
He continues where the esteemed gentlemen/women (npi) in this thread stop.

I have a beat sample cd from him, which is outstanding also.

[Roland Kuit]

I'm sorry, I don't consider BT a pioneer in the electronic field.
En-light me please, where lies his pioneer-ism?
In composition? Sound Design?
What is cutting edge about him, despite is professionalism?

[Roland Kuit]

I understand people want to feed forward this thread.
All those 'old' composers with 'old' styles of electronic music.
So here a preview in how electronic music has developed to this century.
But there is a whole gab what need to be filled in between.

Ryoji Ikeda

Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in Paris. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. The conclusion of his album +/- features just such a tone; of it, Ikeda says "a high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance". Rhythmically, Ikeda's music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.

In addition to working as a solo artist, he has also collaborated with, among others, Carsten Nicolai (under the name "Cyclo.") and the art collective Dumb Type. His work matrix won the Golden Nica Award in 2001.
In 2004, the dormant Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue Terminal 5) at JFK Airport briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal 5 curated by Rachel K. Ward and featuring the work of 18 artists including Ikeda. The show featured work, lectures and temporary installations drawing inspiration from the idea of travel — and the terminal's architecture.[4] The show was to run from October 1, 2004 to January 31, 2005 — though it closed abruptly after the building itself was vandalized during the opening party.
In May – June 2011 a presentation of three of the artist's immersive audio/visual projects, The Transfinite, was exhibited at the Park Avenue Armory(Wiki)

RYOJI IKEDA : THE TRANSFINITE:
http://youtu.be/omDK2Cm2mwo