The Mills College Music Department and the Center for Contemporary Music present
JOHN BISCHOFF and ZEENA PARKINS-LAETITIA SONAMI DUO
Composers and performers from the Center for Contemporary Music and guest
Composer John Bischoff celebrates his final semester as a Mills College faculty member with a performance of two solo works. He is also joined by James Fei and Tim Perkis in a new trio. The Zeena Parkins-Laetitia Sonami Duo share the program with harp and electronics improvisations.
John Bischoff, electronics
James Fei, electronics
Tim Perkis, electronics
and
Zeena Parkins, harp
Laetitia Sonami, electronics
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John Bischoff
Visibility Study (2015)
John Bischoff, analog circuits and digital synthesis
Bitplicity (2020)
John Bischoff, analog circuits and digital synthesis
These two solos incorporate custom analog circuitry in sonic exchange with laptop synthesis. As the composer activates the circuits in performance, the resulting analog tones and noises are analyzed in real-time by the laptop and used to inform an extended digital response. A binding together of the analog and digital realms is the result, the unique characteristics of each medium juxtaposed in time to create a hybrid sensibility.
Bischoff-Fei-Perkis
League Junior
John Bischoff, digital synthesis
James Fei, analog/digital synthesis
Tim Perkis, digital synthesis
Bischoff, Fei, and Perkis recast the early working methods of The League of Automatic Music Composers (ca. 1978) into a contemporary network assemblage of audio and informational data flows. The resulting music emerges from the interplay of three improvisational actors working in tandem with their linked electronic instruments.
Zeena Parkins-Laetitia Sonami Duo
Harp and electronics duo improvisations.
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Biographies
John Bischoff
John Bischoff (b. 1949, San Francisco) is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis and the pioneering development of computer network music. He was a founding member of The League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world’s first computer network band. He is also a founding member of The Hub (1987), a network band that continues to expand on the network music form in new ways. Recordings of Bischoff’s work are available on Artifact, 23Five, Tzadik, Lovely, and New World Records. As a member of the Hub, Bischoff was awarded a GigaHertz Prize for life-time achievement in electronic music in 2018 by ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is currently on faculty in the Music Department.
James Fei
James Fei (b. Taipei, Taiwan) moved to the US in 1992 to study electrical engineering but decided to become a musician after college. His works have been performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Noord-Hollands Philharmonisch Orkest. Recordings can be found on Leo Records, Improvised Music from Japan, CRI, Krabbesholm and Organized Sound. Compositions for Fei's own ensemble of four alto saxophones focus on physical processes of saliva, fatigue, reeds crippled by cuts and the threshold of audible sound production, while his sound installations and performance on analog electronics often focus on feedback. Fei has taught at Mills College since 2006, where he is Professor of Electronic Arts and Head of the Music Department.
Tim Perkis
Tim Perkis is a well-known figure in the worlds of improvised and electronic music. Over the course of decades he has played his unique computer-based electronic instruments with hundreds of musicians, including many of the leading players in free improvisation from Europe and the US. He is also a founding member of several electronic music ensembles, including FuzzyBunny, Splendor Generator and the pioneering computer network band The Hub. Recordings of his music are available on the Artifact, Tzadik, New World and EMANEM labels, among others and at timperkis.bandcamp.com. His documentary film NOISY PEOPLE(2007) and the NOISY PEOPLE podcast (2015) are available at vimeo.com, noisypeople.net and perkis.com.
Zeena Parkins
Detroit born, Brooklyn based Zeena Parkins: electro-acoustic composer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser and pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance. Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity within environments: architectural/emotional/topographical/social.
Commissions include: Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Sudwestrundfunk, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, 3 Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance, DAAD Fellowship, Shifting Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA Fellowship, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. Residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize,Civitella Ranieri/Umbertide, Montalvo, Oxford University/The Ruskin School.
Performances/recordings include: Bjork, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, William Winant, Brian Chase, Nate Wooley, Nels Cline, Yuka C. Honda, Okkyung Lee, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone, Pauline Oliveros, Chris Brown, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Myra Melford, Miya Masaoka, and Green Dome with Ryan Sawyer and Ryan Ross Smith.
Parkins released Captiva on Good Child Music in December/2019. Parkins has been a member of the Mills Music Department faculty since 2011 and is currently the Darius Milhaud Chair in Music Composition.
Laetitia Sonami
Laetitia Sonami is a sound artist, performer and researcher. Born in France, she settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the emerging field of electronic music and studied with Eliane Radigue, Joel Chadabe, Robert Ashley and David Behrman.
Sonami’s sound performances, live film collaborations and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation. She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and objects.
Best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-‐length lady’s glove, which is fitted with an array of sensors tracking the slightest motion of her hand and body, she has performed worldwide and earned substantial international renown.
Recent projects include the design of a new instrument, the Spring Spyre, based on the application of neural networks to real-time audio synthesis; an improvisation duo, Sparrows and Ortolans, with James Fei; and Le Corps Sonore, a fully immersive sound installation on six floors of the Rubin Museum, NYC in collaboration with Eliane Radigue and Bob Bielecki.
Upcoming projects include Peripheral Vision, a text based performance piece and a new live film project with Sue-C based on Italo Calvino Cosmicomics.
Sonami has received numerous awards among which the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Awards.
Sonami has been performing in numerous festivals across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and China, among which the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the Bourges Music Festival in France, the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, the Interlink festival in Japan, Bang-on-a Can, The Kitchen and Other Minds, S.F.
Awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts (2002), Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award (2000), the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2000), Studio Pass-Harvestworks residency (2001) and a Creative Work Fund award (2000) for a collaboration with Nick Bertoni and the Tinkers Workshop.
Sonami lives in Oakland, California and is a guest professor in the Music department at Mills College, CA and the Milton Avery MFA program at Bard College, NY.