Modern music, created through the "real-time" computer processing of sound produced during live performance, will be highlighted in a concert and lecture series hosted by Columbia University's Computer Music Center and Miller Theater. Through the technologies demonstrated, sound from acoustic instruments and recordings will be altered at the moment of performance, allowing listeners to experience a new genre of music that is already extending and enhancing the concert-going experience.

The series featuring the technology of IRCAM (Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Europe's foremost modern music center, will take place on the Columbia campus until Nov. 21. Tickets to the concerts are $5 for Columbia students, $7.50 for faculty and staff with a Columbia ID, and $15 for the public.

Daytime lectures and workshops on Nov. 19 at Altschul Auditorium are free and open to the public.

Thanassis Rikakis, series coordinator and associate director of Columbia's Computer Music Center, credits friend and colleague Professor Paul Lansky of Princeton as most accurately describing computer music by explaining that the computer is the instrument of the imagination and when computers and music merge, any sound you can imagine can be realized.

The series is IRCAM Forum's premiere in the United States and the first time that IRCAM Forum technology will be taught outside its home in the George Pompidou Center in Paris. The lecture series includes presentations by IRCAM creator and renowned French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, IRCAM's Director, Laurent Bayle, and others.

Original compositions of Tristan Murail, a top composer at IRCAM prior to his arrival at Columbia, will be performed on Thursday, Nov.18, 8:00 p.m. at Miller Theater. Murail is renowned for work that concentrates on the spectrum of sound rather than on melody, allowing the listener to enter into the structure of the sound itself.

IRCAM's mission is to bring music, science and technology into a new kind of collaborative dialogue in order to produce research and technologies that will aid the progress of musical composition. IRCAM, created in 1976, hosts composers from all over the world, giving them access to technology developed at IRCAM. With this technology composers are able to enhance their compositions and produce "modern" music. The IRCAM ensemble in residence, Ensemble Intercontemporain, presents select compositions created at IRCAM as part of an annual series of modern music concerts. The ensemble will perform while at Columbia.

The Columbia University Computer Music Center and IRCAM have begun a collaboration allowing artists, researchers and students from the two institutions to join efforts in the realization of artistic and research projects. IRCAM 99 @ Columbia is the first official event in this new collaboration.

The IRCAM 99 Program at Columbia includes:

CONCERT

When: Thursday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m.

Where: Miller Theater

What: Ensemble Sospeso performs works of Magnus Lindberg & Tristan Murail. Preconcert discussion begins at 7 p.m.

Tickets to concerts are $5 for Columbia students, $7.50 for faculty and staff with a Columbia ID, and $15 for the public. Contact the Miller Theater Box Office at 854-7799.

LECTURES/WORKSHOPS

When: Friday, Nov. 19, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Where: Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building

What: Open lectures on IRCAM activities, technique and software.

Who: Pierre Boulez, composer/conductor; Laurent Bayle, Director of IRCAM; Eric De Visscher, Artistic Director of IRCAM; Andrew Gerzso, Manager, IRCAM Forum.