Chirp: NEC's Music Technology Showcase 3

New England Conservatory students electrify the Black Box Theater during Chirp, a multi-night music technology performance series showcasing live electronic music and cutting-edge music tech.

from Stratis Minakakis, curator of tonight's program
Beyond the "world of unsuspected sounds": A concert of Computer-Assisted Music
If there is one attribute that permeates the evolution of music in the past century, it is the radical expansion of its means of expression. As the frontiers of the medium expanded, older compositional practices were abandoned or repurposed, and new ones were invented. The electronic music revolution and the adoption, since the 1960s, of computers as compositional tools transformed the field to the extent that several compositional practices of the last 50 years are not truly accessible without the aid of technology. The efficiency of computers as interpreters of symbols, automators of tasks, and problem solvers make them ideal companions in exploring music that pushes the frontiers of sonic imagination and creates new modalities of experiencing music and music-making. 
        In the early 20th century, the French composer and electronic music pioneer Edgar Varèse expressed the desire to create new instruments that would contribute “a world of unsuspected sounds.” This concert features acoustic, electronic and multimedia works in which such “unsuspected sounds” acquire form, syntax, and meaning through the creative dialogue between composer and computer.