September 14, 2018 The New AIR Festival will feature Alec Hall from the dynamic contemporary performer/composer collective “Qubit” Qubit is a collective of composers and sound artists who curate and produce events that feature innovative applications of technology in music.
Tickets: $20 / $15 students/seniors
Location: Tenri Cultural Institute,
43 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
Time: 8 pm
Notes from Alec Hall
After my involvement in Occupy Wall Street, for two fantastically intense and dream-like months in late 2011, I began to think more about the politicization of acoustic phenomena; the distinction between noise and sound as one mediated by ideology, and how to work with composite soundscapes using technology to explore the line between the two topographies. Working with Aaron Einbond, we developed software that would allow me to use an electric violin ostensibly as a digital controller—to scale the pitch and dynamic range of the instrument dynamically, controlling the flow of sample playback entirely from the violin. As time passed, I became interested in using the instrument for its own potential, allowing the sound of the violin to be transformed and processed by similar computer tools as before. This concert is the first solo performance of these techniques, and it combines sample playback, live violin performance, and computer-driven synthesis, all working together to create a lush and expansive soundworld that hovers over the boundaries between abstract and symbolic.
Bio;
Alec Hall is a composer and violinist living in New York City. His music attempts to re-imagine the possibilities of acoustic materials in the post-Avant-Garde musical landscape. Using forms of sonic representation to address urgent non-musical debates, his work is as aesthetically polycentric as it is politically engaged. His compositions have had been performed by such groups as Ensemble SurPlus, Proton, Intercontemporain, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, the JACK Quartet, ICE, Talea, Either/OR, Wet Ink, Continuum, Pamplemousse, Ekmeles, Continuum, and soloists Séverine Ballon, Stephane Ginsburgh, and David Broome. Alec is the co-founder of Qubit and currently serves as its co-artistic director. He holds a DMA from Columbia University, an MA from UC San Diego, and is a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellow.
“Hall explores with those skills reminiscent of Alfred Schnittke, polystylistic techniques of collage and borrowing while offering a personal and unique work.” From C’ette Ville étrange (Montreal).
“Seductive, brilliant, we want more. Alec Hall is a new name to follow.” Montrealistement, Normand Babin