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Jorge Luis Borges

New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2018: Inspirations and Purposes

August 31, 2018

The Festival’s sole lecture-presentation proved useful in revealing how one composer viewed the intersections of science and art in his own composing: trumpeter Skye van Duuren, now a trumpeter and PhD candidate in Composition in the College-Conservatory at the University of Cincinnati spoke on “Bridging Worlds: Creating Fixed Media Microtonal Music with Acoustic Instruments” and then presented the third movement of his Manifestations. Emphasizing the development of his “microtonal language … with traditional chromatic scale as a baseline … and gradations of 5 cents in octaves that each have 240 ‘notes,’ van Duuren discussed the use of Melodyne software to increase the microtones of acoustic instruments. [more]

Matthew Welch Music: Three Residency Concerts

December 18, 2015

At the 10:00 show on Wednesday, December 9, Welch played bagpipes with Brendon Randall-Myers on electric guitar and Brian Chase on drums and electronics performing "The Library of Babel," a 35 minute piece Welch composed in 1999. In a subsequent post-concert conversation, Welch indicated that the work of Jorge Luis Borges had been a foundational inspiration in his composing early in his career. This piece, titled to pay homage to Borges' astonishing 1941 story of the same name, is an immediately recognizable child of Borges. It is also, however, strong enough to stand on its own, meaningful and effective, even for listeners unfamiliar with the works of the Argentinian writer. [more]