Open Call: Ball State Laptop and Electronic Ensemble (BStLEE)

Do you want to make music…

…noise…

…silence…

with laptops, computers, synthesizers (analog or digital), drum machines, toys, human computer interfaces, video game controllers, iPads/iPhones/Andriods (phones or robots), even your old flip phones?

Do you like Merzbow, Eno, Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Richard Devine, Kraftwerk, John Cage, Meredith Monk, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Björk, Amon Tobin (or anyone making music with synths and/or computers)?

Come find your home with BStLEE.

Sign up for MUSP 436/136 (1 or 0 credit), section 2.

We need composers, performers, live sound engineers, and people to do promotional work. We’ll play on campus, off campus, in concert halls and clubs – wherever you want to play, and wherever people will let us play. Students will write works for the ensemble, we will experiment with adapting works and improvisations, and we will remix anything we want. We’ll team up with the New Music Ensemble for works with acoustic instruments.

BStLEE will be entrepreneurial, and driven by the students. I’ll be there for guidance, encouragement, and herding when you start to act like kittens. I’ll find all the odd instruments we have hidden away in closets, basements, and nooks. You’ll be responsible for the heavy lifting, both physical and mental.

Let’s take advantage of the fact that I have some newly found teaching time and make some cool noises next semester.

eabd2014OSC

a great trip to the jax

I opened up this concert year with a trip down to the inaugural Root Signals Electronic Music Festival, at Jacksonville University. The wonderful Michael James Olson (a former student) and John Thompson hosted. I got a chance to perform Thrown Glass in concert, and then break out a premiere performance as an ambient duo with Olson in their campus pub. Our fledging duo might still need a name. The ambient music band name generator came up with Cloudwave. Maybe we need some suggestions before our next gig at the Electro-Acoustic Barn Dance.

It was great to see the support Michael received from his colleagues at JU! So many faculty were there for every concert.

And John Thompson brought his students from his MM program at Georgia Southern to provide excellent tech support throughout the festival. A few pics got snapped along the way – lots of fun!

Sound checking Thrown Glass. (click for larger versions)

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And with Michael performing our ambient wonders at the Riverhouse.

MJO3KatJU

Photos by Jason Bolte and Jim Rhinehart.