Patricia Alessandrini

Here are some upcoming concerts in February (I thought I would add some February flowers here as I obviously don't have photos from these concerts yet.)

Friday-Saturday 1-2 February, Palo Alto (7.30PM): My Stanford première at Bing Concert Hall, in the free CCRMA @ Bing concerts

Wednesday 6 February, NYC (8PM): guitarist Neil Beckmann gives the New York première of menus morceaux par un autre moi réunis with electronics performer Caitlin Cawley at Future Space

Monday, February 11, San Francisco (8PM): Earplay Ensemble performs Hommage à Purcell , alongside works by Stephen Blumberg, Tristan Murail, and a world première by Hi Kyung Kim, at the Taube Atrium Theater in their Mise en abyme season opener (tickets available at the door)

Stay tuned for another performance in the Grains of Sound festival later this month (details to come).

I don't seem to be able to keep up with writing about events as they happen, so here is a post looking back at the past year, with a few previews for 2019:

My 2018 began and ended at the Estalagem da Ponta do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics, as we have decided to move the yearly residency from January to December, with a visit to Madeira-ITI in nearby Funchal.

It also marked my move - after five years at Goldsmiths, University of London - to Stanford University, where I am now teaching Composition and performing research at CCRMA. I am very grateful for all of the support I received for my research and creative work at Goldsmiths, and definitely plan to keep exchanging ideas and collaborating with my fabulous former colleagues working in interactive creative technology there, especially Freida Abtan, Rebecca Fiebrink, Mick Grierson, and Atau Tanaka. 

I had an enchanting springtime in London before my departure, including two concerts with Riot Ensemble and one last electronics workshop and concert at Goldsmiths featuring Ewa Justka and Heather Roche (thanks to the Goldsmiths Public Engagement initiative, the Henriksen Foundation, and Weisslich). Some of this work is set for a UK CD release (stay posted for updates on this in the next few weeks), and I will be back in London in 2019 for a première by the Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican on 2 November in their Life Rewired series, as part of an event focussing on the work of Ada Lovelace in relation to Artificial Intelligence. There will be some UK reprises of earlier work as well, including performances by the Explore Ensemble of Tracer la lune d'un doigt - featuring the 'Piano Machine' - in their Augmented Instruments tour, 19-23 June in Oxford, Leeds and London.

Autumn was marked by two premières of new works with electronics: one in the Moving Sounds Festival in NYC, with the Argento Ensemble (conducted by Michel Galante), and the other by Tiptoe Company in the Transit Festival in Leuven (with my sincere thanks to both of these festivals as well as the Austrian Cultural Forum, Q-02, and Champsdaction for their support) - both have been wonderful collaborations for me, beginning with residencies with both ensembles, and continuing in future projects.

I am also enjoying my new musical life in the Bay Area. I was delighted to be a featured composer in the Grains of Sound festival in October, and am looking forward to joining them again in February for a performance of menus morceaux par un autre moi réunis. Also this coming February, Earplay Ensemble will perform Hommage à Purcell. The first time I came to San Francisco was for their performance of Trio d'après Schoenberg five years ago, so it will be a very special occasion for me to perform electronics with them again, now that we are neighbors.

Also planned for 2019 so far are residencies at the Universidad Austral de Chile, MIT (with Dinosaur Annex) and at the Scientific Delirium Madness project at Djerassi.

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Wishing you all a peaceful and joyful 2019!

Here are some highlights from 2017:

Peyee Chen in Parlour Sounds, Edinburgh International Science Festival, Summerhall, Edinburgh 2017

The year began working on the theatrical multimedia performance Parlour Sounds with Peyee Chen, Scottish Ensemble Red Note and musicians from the Conservatoire de Paris' Diplôme d'artiste interprète programme at the lovely Woodend Barn in Banchory, and presenting a workshop version as part of their Sound Series, thanks to funding from Sound and Music and Diaphonique. The performance was premièred in the Spring at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and reprised at the Conservatoire de Paris, receiving a five-star review from the Scottish Herald.

Much of the rest of the summer was spent co-editing a special edition of Array, the yearly publication of the International Computer Music Association, alongside live-coder and researcher Shelly Knotts. This edition highlighting feminist perspectives on computer music practice was released in hard copy at the 43rd International Computer Music Conference/6th Electronic Music Week in Shanghai in October, and will be available in a new digital release for ICMC 2018 in Daegu.

In the Autumn, I worked with Explore Ensemble and Konstantin Leonenko in creating a new system to mechanically excite the strings of the piano, and composed a new work for it, Tracer la lune d'un doigt, premièred by Explore in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Once again, the British press looked kindly on my work.

Trying out a prototype of the piano excitation system, with Nicholas Moroz and members of the Explore Ensemble, Goldsmiths, October 2017

At the Web Radio series of the Nuit Blanche at the Fondation Vuitton this Sunday 2 October: Big Live Nuit Blanche Special

Featuring, among others, Ramon Lazkano, George Aperghis, Donatienne Michel-Dansac (singer), François Regnault (philosopher) and Françoise Rivalland (percussionist).

For more on La Nuit Blanche events in Paris see this article in Le Monde

Performing electronics tonight for my Hommage à Purcell with the wonderful Oerknal! Ensemble at Gaudeamus Muziekweek
Next post coming up in October: performance with electronics by Ensemble Recherche in Donaueschinger Musiktage and portrait concert in NY...

Delighted to be playing electronics with Richard Craig again over the next week, including a fantastic piece by Diana Soh at Huddersfield and a classic by Nono at INTER/actions

20 février, 18h: la deuxième Sound Kitchen à la Gaîté Lyrique

Spending the beginning of the year 2016 as an invited artist of the Estalagem da Ponta do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics, alongside Katherine Betteridge, Richard Craig, Karin Hellqvist, Gilbert Nouno, and other resident performers, composers, and sonic artists. Concerts and other public events starting on Friday 8 January at the Centro Cultural John dos Passos.