Department of Music

• Friday, November 19, 2010
• Live Arts
• 8:00 p.m.
• Free

The University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music and The Virginia Center for Computer Music present TechnoSonics XI Mediated Nature, a multi-day festival which takes place in Charlottesville Virginia November 17th through 20th.

Since 1998 the TechnoSonics festival has brought exceptional performers and composers to Charlottesville, creating a lively mix with home-grown talent. Special guests include composers Douglas Quin and Emily Doolittle, as well as NYC's Praxis String Quartet. This year’s theme, Mediated Nature, explores ways in which Nature informs, inspires and translates to creative work. From November 17th to 20th the tendrils of TechnoSonics will weave their way through Charlottesville in a series of sound walks, installations and a public panel discussion at U.Va.’s Newcomb Hall featuring special guests and local artists. TechnoSonics culminates with a concert on November 19th at Live Arts in Downtown Charlottesville, an unmissable evening of contrasts, from exotic, Auto-Tuned soundscapes formed with live laptop improvisation, to whale songs sung by cello 21,000 leagues under the sea; from a tornado of real and virtual Slovakian fujura, to electronically amped-up and hybridized string quartet. Details available at https://music.virginia.edu/Technosonics2021

This is an Arts Enhancement Event supported by the Vice Provost for the Arts to increase access and engagement with the Arts. For more information about this event please visit https://music.virginia.edu/Technosonics2021 or call 434.924.3052.

The natural bridge, C-ville, 11/16/2010

TechnoSonics’ guests:

Emily Doolittle is a composer currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an early influence on Doolittle's composition came through intensive participation in various projects of a key founder of acoustic ecology, R. Murray Schafer. As a composer she has explored relationships between bird, animal and human music, composing for a wide variety of forces from symphony orchestra to electronics. Other interests include the traditional music of cultures spanning the globe, community music-making, and music as a vehicle for social change.

Douglas Quin is a sound designer, naturalist, public radio commentator, and composer. He travels widely to document natural soundscapes -- including Antarctic ice, Arctic tundra, African savannah and Amazon rainforest, and has built up a unique collection of the sounds of endangered and disappearing habitats. His pioneering work has received recognition and support from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He describes his work with natural soundscapes as "acts of remembering, in the sense of 'putting together again'. The process of field recording and composition involves cultivating an empathetic identification with nature, with the understanding that this is an inherited basis of our humanity."

Formed in 2009, Praxis is a New York City-based string quartet committed to excellence and excitement in the performance of contemporary, experimental, and traditional string quartet repertoire. The members of Praxis perform in numerous and varied ensembles, from Alarm Will Sound, Signal, and Newspeak to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. They hold degrees from Juilliard, the Eastman School of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook. Members: Esther Noh and Courtney Orlando, violin; Artie Dibble, viola; and Brian Snow, cello.