Patricia Alessandrini

This week I will be on the East Coast for some presentations, a Master Class, and a concert, on the following dates:

Wednesday 10 April: an intensive day with Seth Woods' students of the Masters Program in Digital Music, presenting my own work and hearing about their projects in the morning, then meeting for a Master Class in the afternoon

Thursday 11 April: presentation on my work at Brandeis at 4PM, entitled Transgression, re-purposing, and aura: an overview of recent work

Then off to MIT to perform some feedback with metal and instruments with the wonderful musicians of Dinosaur Annex in their Not so heavy metal concert, Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 7:30pm

I would also like to say how much I enjoyed my time in Chile last month, and give a big thank you to Rodrigo Cadiz of the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, André Mestre and Felipe Otondo of the Institute of Acoustics of the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, and most especially to Mauricio Carrasco and the wonderful students of his Artes Musicales y Sonoras course.

I have a lot of impressions to process from that time - also of the natural beauty of the mountains, lakes, rivers and coastline - but most especially I was impressed by the theoretical and aesthetic sophistication the students are gaining through their interdisciplinary education. Mauricio's approach opened my eyes in some ways to the degree to which students can be challenged and their horizons widened. I also enjoyed meeting lecturers in other domains, such as design, and seeing the development of interdisciplinary projects.

Another thing which struck me was the students' political engagement. I found out there is a very strong #metoo movement among students, both in Santiago and in Valdivia, which has led to coordinated mobilisations and massive strikes, and also to artistic expressions such as murals, spontaneous lists of feminist and female-identifying artists, writers and philosophers. I also witnessed students speaking out to teachers and authorities, both to call out lack of representation and praise it where they could find it.

In all, it was a very important experience for me, and I hope to be able to come back again soon!

Marco Fusi; Patricia Alessandrini and Mauricio Carrasco, Casa da Musica, Porto, 2011

Here are some events coming up over the next month:

- 'Focus on Composition' Seminar and Master Class, UCSD, 26 February

- Performance of Black is the colour (Omaggio a Berio) by Ensemble Paramirabo : Carte Blanche James O'Callaghan, 2 March, Salle Multimédia, Conservatoire de musique de Montréal

- Feedback performance with Marco Fusi, alongside new works by Stanford composers Charlie Sdraulig, Julie Herndon, Chris Lortie, Julie Zhu, and Davor Vincze, 8 March, CCRMA Stage, The Knoll, Stanford University (free entry)

And then I will be heading to Valdivia, for a residency at the Universidad Austral de Chile with dear friend and longtime collaborator Mauricio Carrasco, for whom I composed menus morceaux par un autre moi réunis and Funeral Sentences. More details on those plans to come...

In the meantime, if you are in the Bay Area, stop by CCRMA (the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) at Stanford for the yearly open house on 1 March - come and see the instrument petting zoo, as well as talks and live music!

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.

If you would like to receive quarterly updates from me via email, please subscribe at AlessandriniUpdates@gmail.com

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.