News

Release of "La Lluvia y la Sequía" with the Rural Situationism Project

More info. about Rural Situationism here Purchase album here

I am excited to be part of the Rural Situationism project and contribute this release. This album-length piece is a meditation on the rural land in the face of drought, noise polution, and urbanization. The sound sources are various recordings in the Sample Ranch, in the Central Velley, California. It is the fifth of seven extended duration pieces by seven sound artists fully immersed in the world's soundscape. Check out the other pieces by Francisco López, Andrew Weathers, Jon Mueller, Jim Nollman, Stephen Karnes, Kate Carr.

"Time's Arrow" released by Other Minds Records

Purchase album here Read album review by Rob Haskins here

I am very pleased to announce my second album release, now with the Other Minds Records label. The album collects five previously unavailable pieces that explore the variety of methods that I have been developing throughout the years to create music from environmental sound and information. The album features these high caliber performers and improvisers: Kelly Sulick and Diego Villaseñor, flute; Rachel Condry, clarinet; Christopher Luna-Mega, electronics, guitar, piano; Jakob Pek, electric guitar; Aaron Oppenheim, Jeanie Aprille Tang, and Maxwell Tfirn, electronics; Jennifer Wilsey, Nava Dunkelman, and Ian Antonio, percussion; Laura Berger and Ning Yu, piano.

Water and Fire Ecoacoustics at the Hammer Theatre, San José

Welcome to a sonic immersion in the science of fire and water. The evening features music for string quartet and electronics that is drawn from water and fire research from science departments in SJSU and UCSD. The wildfire-driven music is written by students of composition, electronic music, and theory & analysis at SJSU’s School of Music and Dance. Music students have analyzed data from SJSU's Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC) as source material in order to compose pieces for string quartet and/or electronics. The water-driven music explores the otherworldly sounds of Arctic bearded seals and the multiplicity of rhythms and patterns of water, all cast into music for string quartet and electronics by Christopher Luna-Mega. All the music for string quartet is performed by the stellar Friction Quartet.

Watch video of the concert and pre-concert talk

New Position at San José State University

I am excited to announce that I have joined the School of Music and Dance at San José State University, in San José, California. As an Assistant Professor, I am teaching composition, electronic music, and theory. Additionally, with the help of my colleagues, Pablo Furman and Fred Cohen, I will be developing a new degree in Music Technology. I will be announcing our progress as we launch courses and, ultimately, the degree. I am very happy to be back in the Bay Area with friends, collaborators, and the amazing music scene!

The New York Times features "Splatter" in an article on orchestras and improvisation

read New York Times article by Seth Colter Walls

Forestcover at the Crozet Arts Initiative

(photography by Bonner Creager)

The first installment of a multdisciplinary collaboration with environmental scientist, Stephanie Roe, musician / mathematician, Zach Baugher, and composer / programmer, Diego Villaseñor, will be presented at Pro Re Nata Brewery, in Crozet, VA. In "Forestcover", the musical material of the viola, cello, piano, and electronics, is derived from data predictive models exploring how forest cover based on biophysical and sociopolitical realities will impact climate as well as ecosystems and the services they provide, at the global and regional scale, from year 2000 to 2100. The main idea is to explore and compare two scenarios: 1. "Business as usual", in which we face a catastrophic climate change; 2. "A greener world", in which we are able to revert dramatic changes in albedo, temperature and land use, that would give us a chance to re-think the way in which we inhabit our planet. I am very pleased to perform with wonderful musicians Danielle Wiebe-Burke on viola and Schuyler Slack on cello.

Album release –"Aural Shores" (Environment-derived composition, Vol. 1)

purchase Aural Shores on Edgetone records

Orchestrating nature –Interview by Fifteen Questions music magazine

read article here

First installment of the Sounds in Pilgrimage series (based on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela), at the 2020 Digitalis online music festival

"Splatter" reviewed in Avant Music News

Splatter release as title track in AngelicA Festival's record on Roscoe Mitchell performances

Publication of "Musical Aesthetics of the Natural World" in the Jefferson Journal of Science and Culture, Issue 5 (co-authored with Eli Stine)

Soundscapes of Pilgrimage in Northern Spain

With the support of the Buckner W. Clay endowment for the humanities, I will begin a project on sounds related to spiritual practice. The starting point will be Northern Spain, specifically the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage that dates back to the Middle Ages. Incidental, spoken and architectural sound will be recorded in the course of two weeks on the path from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (France) to León (Spain). The recordings will be used as sound models for a series of electroacoustic pieces. I will have the joy of collaborating with Virginia Luna, my wife, who will write prose and poetry reflecting on the recorded sound.

Geysir at the 2019 Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) conference

Excited to present the electronic procedures and compositional decisions behind my piece "Geysir", for seven pianists, at the CMMR conference in Marseille, France in October 14-18, 2019. The paper 'Geysir, for seven pianists: pitch class predominance/amplitude analysis and musical translation of geological noise', was written in collaboration with Jon Gomez. We will explain the programming used for the extraction of the most predominant pitches in a recording of one of the geysers in the Haukadalur valley, in Iceland. Some of the compositional procedures for the piece will be presented as well. The article will be included in the proceedings of the 2019 edition.

Investigating the effects of increasing forest cover on climate, and translating the results into music

This is a collaboration with Stephanie Roe, environmental scientist focused on temperature and land use change impacts on tropical forests and CO2 concentrations. As 2019 fellows of the Environmental Resilience Institute of the University of Virginia, our project combines climate science with musical composition. Through earth system modeling, we will test how expanding forest cover based on biophysical and sociopolitical realities will impact climate (biogeochemical and biophysical processes) as well as ecosystems and the services they provide, at the global and regional scale. We will then translate the modeling outputs into music, thereby transforming ecological climatology data into a medium accessible to the general public. This inter-disciplinary collaboration seeks to connect the sciences with the arts, specifically environmental science with music, in order to expand the possibilities of cultural engagement with environmental change and sustainability.

Under the sea ice performance in the Future Coastline Conservatory 2019 Conference

The Rivanna String Quartet will perform "Under the sea ice" in the 2019 Futures Coastline Conservatory conference. Instrumental and electronic performances and installations featuring ocean-climate-change-related pieces will be presented in this international event.

Sound model-based improvisations

This is the first of a series of concerts with collaborator Diego Villaseñor. We explore sound model-based improvisations and composition. Part 1: Stridulating insects; Part 2: Cetacean sonograms; Part 3: Noise: wind at Loft Mountain, Shenandoah; Part 4: free improvisation