 |
Computer Musicians Are International Hits
By A. Dunlap-Smith ignalling a return to the pre-eminence it had throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s, Columbia's Computer Music Center (CMC) this year received more invitations than any other institution in its field to the most important and prestigious computer music gathering in the world.
Musical compositions and papers by 12 Columbia computer musicians will be performed and presented in Greece this September at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC97), which annually draws the best in the field from around the globe. "This will give immense exposure to our students and terrific clout to our program," Thanassis Rikakis, adjunct assistant professor in the music department and an ICMC organizer, said, "because everybody who's anybody in the field goes to the ICMC and they'll see Columbia's name dominating the program." After a call for musical compositions and papers brought submissions from 36 countries, a jury selected 108 for performance during the conference. Nine were written by CMC students and staff. Moreover, two papers authored by three other CMCers were accepted for presentation. Columbia's winning composers are Yuriko Kosima, Jonathan Middleton, Douglas Geers, Matthew Suttor, Christopher Bailey, Fernando Gomez Evelson, Terry Pender, Roger Luke DuBois and Stanko Juzbasic. All are graduate students in the music department except Terry Pender, who is technical director of the CMC; Roger Luke DuBois, a Columbia College senior who will join the department as a graduate student next year, and Stanko Juzbasic, a visiting Fulbright scholar. DuBois's and Bailey's compositions were also selected for the ICMC97 CD; only 12 pieces each year are recorded and released on the conference's official CD. The authors of the papers are CMC director Brad Garton and David Topper (C.C. '96), presenting "RTcmix; A Real Time Interactive Computer Music Environment," and Karen Eliot-Kahn (B. '98), who will speak on the role of gender in the teaching of music. The ICMC, held this year in Thessaloniki, Greece on Sept. 25-30, is the world's annual premier gathering of, and showcase for, computer music composers, practicioners, teachers, critics and enthusiasts. As well as concerts and paper presentations, workshops and an exhibition of the latest technological advances in the field are scheduled. Simultaneous with and adjacent to ICMC97 in Thessaloniki will be the European Telecommunications Conference and the INFOSYSTEM exhibition, which organizers predict will contribute to making this year's edition of the ICMC the major computer music and technology conference of the decade.
| |||||||
