Electronic Music Unplugged

New music by students and faculty from the music theory and composition departments.

John Mallia Anastasis
performed by the composer on electronics


Simon Hanes blown
Andy Allen, saxophone
Nigel Taylor, trumpet

Katarina Miljkovic The Branch and Bench
performed by the composer on laptop


Anton Tanonov The Funeral of a Voodoo Doll
performed by the composer on piano and electronics
Futurists. Little House on Pesochnaya
A Magic Pot
soundtracks to animation
Lenin 2017
performed by the composer on synthesizer
with Yelena Beriyeva, piano

Neal Markowski Generic No. 9: Asbury Park, NJ—September, 2011
performed by the composer on Tascam 424, tapes, alarm clock, and laptop
with recitation by Phil Allen

Sarah Fylak Aye, Wonder
performed by the composer on violin, voice, and live electronics

Mike Frengel Hotbird
performed by the composer on electric guitar and electronics

Lou Bunk Study for Bowed Cardboard
performed by the composer on Scratch-o-lin and live electronics


The composers have provided the following notes on their music.

Anastasis is a five-channel composition realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB). The work is programmatic in its representation of Christ's Descent into Limbo, a frequently treated subject in Medieval art. The majority of sounds used are derived from concrète sources, some of which carry conceptual weight. For example, the recurring sound of wax being scraped away from the metal surface of the candle trays at Bourges's Cathedral St. Etienne: the residue of prayer—its removal, a daily chore (or performance ritual) captured in sound. Also, the emergence of a field recording of windmills at the work's close: transformation, by man, of nature's breath into energy as a storm blows in on the mountainside.

The piece itself is a stormy, transformative descent. Sounds of friction and resistance represent the interpenetration of spheres of existence. Long intense strokes of sound such as the dragging of wood along wood, glass on glass, and the grinding and scraping of metal against metal are fractured by abrupt, pointed declamations which lead, ultimately, to a representation of the breaking of the gates of hell. The only purely electronic sounds used in the composition are dense, bristling textures that occur as interruptions of the long descent. They represent the accumulation of a mysterious, electrical energy in the empty tomb above—static glimpses of that middle sphere.

blown is an exploration of how much space there is contained in small, quiet sounds.

The Branch and Bench is generated by an algorithm used for modeling bifurcation, the process of branching. In the first half of the composition, the evolutionary nature of the branching is based on repetition of a simple, regular pattern. In the second half, there is rapid development, an increasing in complexity to a point of chaos. Although the overall form of the piece is generative (the pre-determined process develops from point 1 to point 26000 without intervention), occasionally, there are layers playing with the same musical material on different time scales.

The self-similar nature of bifurcation makes me think of the piece as a part of a larger whole, a branch. Work on this piece became a resting place for me this past summer, a bench.

The Funeral of A Voodoo Doll This rather sarcastic work was composed in 2008 and is also known as "The Funeral of the Noblewoman" as a part of an opera to a Gogol text.

The Futurists A cartoon expressing the history of the Futurist movement in Russia, this is a retrospective of a production of Matyushin's opera, commissioned through the Museum of History of St. Petersburg.

Magic Pot A humorous children's horror cartoon, about growing up.

Lenin 2017 This is a Russian suite in five movements for two pianos and electronics, written in 2011. The work is a historic re-imagination of the course of Russian history were Lenin alive in 2017.

Generic No. 9: Asbury Park, NJ – September, 2011 This piece for tape is compiled from various sources. Durations of the specific sounds were determined by throwing dice and other board game-related tasks. The piece also includes space for instrumental or lyrical improvisation (with optional text).

Aye, Wonder is the musical storytelling of the poem Alice in Wonder by Luisa Inés Garcia. When I first read this epic poem it tore me to shreds, striking a chord so deep within my subconscious I was swept away on a nine-month compositional journey to set it to music. With violin, voice, and electronics, the performance rides a delicate balance between improvisation and composition using effects, loops, and a vocal processing patch developed in MaxMSP. These fundamental elements meld to cross between folk, classical, and new music aesthetics with the programmatic bones of the vivid text driving the performance.

One of the primary concerns in Hotbird is for the treatment of electronics as an extension of the live instrument. As with most of my mixed works, the electronics consist of a combination of pre-produced sounds and live processing. What is different about this work is the extent to which the live instrument is technically entwined with the electronics. In particular, I exploit the fact that the electric guitar emits almost no sound acoustically. When fed directly into a computer for live processing before going to the amplifier it becomes possible to turn the dry signal off completely so that all that can be heard is the processed sound. The guitar essentially becomes a controller, with the live and electronic sounds fusing into one inseparable voice.

Study for Bowed Cardboard explores the sonic and expressive potential of bowed cardboard.