4 décembre 2017
Music blog

Improtech Paris – Philly 2017 Workshop – Festival, December 11th – 13th, 2017 in Philadelphia

Improtech Paris – Philly 2017
Workshop – Festival, December 11th – 13th, 2017 in Philadelphia

11th – 13th, Workshop keynotes, presentations, demos and performances at U.Penn, Drexel U. and ICA, from 9:30 – 18:00
11th, Evening concert #1 at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
13th, Evening concert #2 at The Rotunda

Workshop, concert #2  : open to all and free, please RSVP at http://ikparisphilly.ircam.fr/pages/rsvp.html
Improtech Paris – Philly (ikPP) gathers scholars, technologists, musicians, makers, around the idea of musical improvisation with machines and digital intelligence, taking notice of the emergence and development of this new creative field. ikPP creates a link between the european and american research and creation scenes through the symbolic matching of two of their more eminent emblems, Paris and Philadelphia, just as it did a few years ago with Paris and New York (http://repmus.ircam.fr/improtechpny)

Five years after its first iteration in New-York the ImproTech workshop – festival formula is back again to see the technological, aesthetical, and sociological evolutions that happened since the last gathering. The meeting place in Philadelphia seems a natural destination, for its unique improvised music scene and history, and its perpetual enchantment with so many ever floating historical musical figures.The ImproTech Paris – Philly workshop will take place at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University from Dec. 11 to Dec. 13 2017, with two evening concerts at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (dec. 11th) and The Rotunda (dec. 13th), and social events at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).

Scholars, musicians, students or makers will come from different places  to talk about their work, demo, teach and perform. ikPP will flourish on the explosive encounter of prominent research labs and scholars, well established musical figures of Jazz and contemporary music, and the young avant-garde / underground scene of Philadelphia and surroundings.

ImproTech brings together artists, musicians, composers and researchers from several continents, all motivated by the possibilities offered by creative improvised interactions between humans and machines of all sorts.

Workshop

Keynote Speakers : David Rosenboom (CalArts), Bob Ostertag (UC Davis)Round Table : The Figure of the Musician / Researcher, David Wessel Legacy, with Roscoe Mitchell and Matt Wright (CCRMA), Marc Chemillier, George Bloch

36 presentations including talks, demos, performances

Concerts

ImproTech Paris-Philly :: Concert #1 offers a staggering sampling of such creative alliances, featuring legendary figures of free improvisation, Roscoe Mitchell, Bob Ostertag and Bernard Lubat; experimental music icons David Rosenboom and Michael Young; and renowned favorites of the new scene, Steve Lehman, LaDonna Smith, Susan Alcorn, Miya Masaoka, Mari Kimura, Hatchers, György Kurtág Jr and Pierre Couprie. These artists will interact/interface with electronics, synthesis in many forms, mathematical/algorithmic music systems, artificial intelligence agents, spatialization systems and hybrid instruments.

ImproTech Paris-Philly :: Concert #2 features Moor Mother, Madam Data, Mental Jewelry , Dafna Naphtali, Sarah Belle Reid, Georges Bloch, Rémi Fox, Max Eilbacher, Charles Kely Zana-Rotsy, Marc Chemillier, Bhob Rainey (electronics), Lance Simmons, Ada Baba, Adam Vidiksis
Participants Highlight

« A legend of avant-garde jazz and contemporary music, Mr. Roscoe Mitchell is a founding member of the world renowned Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and many music ensembles. »« Described as “a state-of-the-art musical thinker” and a « dazzling saxophonist,” by The New York Times, Steve Lehman (b. New York City, 1978) is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms…His recent recording, Mise en Abîme (Pi, 2014) was called the #1 Jazz Album of the year by NPR Music and The Los Angeles Times. And his previous recording, Travail, Transformation & Flow (Pi, 2009), was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of the year by The New York Times…»« Composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist, kayak instructor, Bob Ostertag’s work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. He has published more than twenty CDs of music, two DVDs, and five books. His writings on contemporary politics have been published on every continent and in many languages. Electronic instruments of his own design are at the cutting edge of both music and video performance technology. … He is rumored to have connections to the shadowy media guerrilla group The Yes Men… »

 » As the founding member of the critically acclaimed Antipop Consortium, HPrizm aka High Priest (beats, composer, futurist, mc, producer) has consistently challenged all artistic boundaries. In the course of his career, Prizm has shared stages with a wide array of artists, ranging from The Roots to Radiohead, Mos Def, Vijay Iyer, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, (…) . As a composer, his pieces have been installed in the Whitney Biennial (NYC) as well as the Mazzoli Gallery (Berlin). Most recently, along with the Antipop Consortium, Prizm has collaborated with legendary film director David Lynch (…). «

 
« Matmos have released over ten albums on labels such as Matador and Thrill Jockey. They also have a history of rich collaborations with artists like Bjork, Antony, So Percussion, Terry Riley, The Kronos Quartet »
 

«Camae Ayewa is an interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. Moor Mother (Goddess) is her low fi/dark rap/chill step/ blk girl blues/witch rap/coffee shop riot gurl songs/southern girl dittys/black ghost songs/love chants/african warrior spells/kongo hoodoo/holly hill Mississippi root jams/project housing bop/baptism jazz/quantum futurism/anthropology of conscience/superdefstar gospel/Lima dream music/slaveship punk/soultronic beats/death poems project, with which she has toured worldwide and performed at numerous festivals »

« KEROAÄN is a collaborative research project between IAN M FRASER and REED EVAN ROSENBERG exploring composition of electronic music by an artificial intelligence. Pieces are diffused in real time with no human intervention whatsoever as the machine agent manipulates the qualities of chosen non-standard synthesis and microsound techniques. In live diffusions, the machine agent additionally controls laser apertures and an array of strobe lighting which collectively act as a visual projection of the agent’s internal state as it structures the performance. A distinctly non-human logic pervades the resultant arrangements of chaotic sounds and high-intensity lighting, presenting an immersive, alien environment. »

 
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Improtech Paris – Philly 2017  is brought by
Ircam,  Collegium Musicae, University of Pennsylvania and djazz project
with direct funding from Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR Grant ANR-14-CE24-0002-01),  Sorbonne Universités, and Région Nouvelle Aquitaine – Cultures connectées, with support from :
 
The Cultural Services of the French Embassy & FACE Foundation, New York University,  Studio de Création et de Recherche en Informatique et Musique Électroacoustique (SCRIME), California Institute of Arts (CalArts), Drexel University (ExCITe Center), Princeton University, Pr. Dmitri Tymoczko,  Stanford University CNMAT, University of California at Irvine, HyVibe, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia,  Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, The Rotunda, Philadelphia, Ars Nova Workshop, Philadelphia