CFP: "Technologies of Sound: Systems, Networks, Modernities"

The Stony Brook Music Department announces its Fifth Annual Graduate Music Symposium, “Technologies of Sound: Systems, Networks, Modernities,” to be held February 13-14, 2015.

The Stony Brook Graduate Music Symposium aims to engage emerging scholars from various disciplines in dialogue about the relationship between music and technology. In this conference, technology is conceived as a broad discourse shaping music history and theory, not only in reference to the tools of music making, but also to methods and procedures in the creation and performance of music, the ethics of various music technologies, and effects of technologies on performers and listeners. We welcome symposium participants to explore these various conceptions of technology and how it relates to historical, social, political, philosophical, and scientific manifestations in music. The topics may include, but are not limited to:

● Electronic music, electro-acoustic music, acousmatic music
● Notation and theoretical systems as technologies
● Performance practices and organology
● Technology and its effect on soundscape and/or aurality
● Technological mediation, reproduction, and distribution of sound and music
● Sounds and technologies of conflict and power
● Sounds and technologies of gender, sexuality, race
● Audio-visual production and multimedia
● Acoustics, amplification, sound systems
● Audio recording technology, including musique concrète and digital methods

The symposium will also feature a keynote address by Arved Ashby (Ohio State University), and will coincide with a performance by the Stony Brook Opera. We invite graduate students to submit 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers and 30-minute composer presentations, and 40-minute lecture recitals. We welcome proposals from scholars in music history, theory, ethnomusicology, and other areas within the humanities and social sciences, as well as performers and composers whose work resonates with our theme. Proposals for composer talks should include a description of the proposed work and a short biography.

Please submit proposals to musicgradsymposium@stonybrook.edu by Friday, December 19, 2014 (please note a deadline extension). Stony Brook is accessible via JFK, the Long Island MacArthur Airport, the Long Island Rail Road, and the Bridgeport/Port Jefferson ferry. Housing with Stony Brook graduate students may be available for presenters staying overnight.

Conference Program

Music and Nature: Between Scientific Reason and Divine Power

Stony Brook University, February 14-15, 2014

the schedule reflects changes caused by inclement weather as of  9 am Feb 14

Friday, February 14 (1006 Humanities Building)

9:30 Coffee and Registration

11:15 Opening Remarks

Oksana Nesterenko, Symposium Chair

11:20-12:20 Birds

Hayley Roud and Barkley Heuser, chairs

Zachary Ebin (York University, Toronto)

“Suzuki and Bird Song: Assessing Suzuki’s Claim that Talent is not Inborn”

Ryan Taussig (University of Tennessee)

“Divine Creation, Human Music: The Spiritual and the Natural in Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles”

12:35-1:35 Engaging Senses

Benjamin Downs, chair

Anna Reguero (Stony Brook University)

“Dancing Structure: Modern Dance Choreography, Musical Analysis, and Phenomenology”

Rogan Bogaert (University of Western Ontario)

“Two Senses of ‘Body’ in Janet Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet” (skype session)

Suzanne Thorpe (UCSD, Integrative Studies Program) and Paul Geluso (NYU)

“Phloq: A Collaboration of Composition and Technology to Evoke Corporeal Engagement with Environmental Sound” - rescheduled to Saturday, February 15, 4pm

Composer presentation

Visit to the installation of Phloq, a multichannel work evoking the sensorial experience of a flock of birds taking flight (Wang Center, Gallery 4, alcove L ) 
 rescheduled to Saturday, February 15, 4: 30 pm. the installation will be running all day on Saturday

1:35-2:20 Lunch break

2:20 – 3:20 Soundscapes and Places

David Blake, chair

Garrett L. Johnson (Arizona State University)

“Deserts, Insects and Oscillators: David Dunn’s Bioregional Music”

Jason Kirby (University of Virginia, Critical and Comparative Studies in Music)

“"Country Pie": Bob Dylan's Genre Experiments in a "Back-to-the-Land" Moment” (skype session)

3:35-4:45 Cycles and Tonality: Human and Nature

Michael Boerner, chair

Katherine Betteridge  (Bangor University, North Wales, UK)

“Earth, Spirit and Shamanic Ritual: a Musical Journey to Mongolia”

Composer presentation

Ryan Rowen (UCLA)

“A Reminiscence of Nature's Forgotten Melodies: Reactionary Tonality in Nikolai Medtner’s Sonata-Reminiscenza”

5:00-6:00 Keynote Address

Professor Stephen Decatur Smith, chair

Professor Holly Watkins (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester)

“Toward a Posthumanist Organicism”

Reception to follow

Staller Center, Music Wing

Saturday, February 15 (Recital Hall, Staller Center for the Arts)

9:30-10:00 Coffee

10:00 – 11:00 Evolution and Natural Science

Michael Richardson, chair

Felipe Ledesma-Núñez (Stony Brook University)

“Luis Humberto Salgado: Nationalism, Music Evolution, and Mestizaje”

Yu Jueng Dahn (University of Cincinnati)

“Natural Science and Bostonian Musical Scene: Reception of Robert Franz’s J.S. Bach Arrangements”

11.15 - 1:00 Spirituality and the Supernatural

Oksana Nesterenko, chair

Tysen Dauer (University of Nebraska – Lincoln)

“The Zazen Pianist: Meditation, Oneness, and the Nature of Sound in Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds”

Lecture recital

Valerie Rogotzke (Yale University)

“Exercising the Spiritual Senses: Musical and Liturgical Practices at Helfta”

Joe Cantrell (University of California San Diego)

“The disembodied digital voice: Sound recording as means of accessing the supernatural”

1.00-2:30 Lunch break

2:30- 4:00 Sounds of Nature

Anna Parkitna, chair  

Mary Hubbell and Alice Jones (The Graduate Center at the City University of New York)

"Images of Nature in 20th-century Works for Voice and Flute"

Lecture recital

Katherine Pukinskis (University of Chicago)

"March Snow, Marta Sniegs: writing the beautiful into new concert music"

Composer presentation

 Suzanne Thorpe (UCSD, Integrative Studies Program) and Paul Geluso (NYU)
“Phloq: A Collaboration of Composition and Technology to Evoke Corporeal Engagement with Environmental Sound” - followed by a visit to the installation of  Phloq

 Dinner break

8:00 Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra Concert

The event is funded by Stony Brook University  Graduate Student Organization and supported by Stony Brook University Music Department.