Tag Archives: utrecht school of the arts

“Universum II” @ “The Pale Blue Dot” concert

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“Universum II” is a composition for strings & clarinet, composed for “The Pale Blue Dot” project founded by Arjan de Wit and Bas Bouma.

[listen to Universum II example]

About the project

The earth is but a pale blue pixel in a vast space: “The Pale Blue Dot”. The photo was taken by spacecraft “Voyager 1″ from behind the rings of Saturn commissioned by astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan. The project: ” The Pale Blue Dot”, is a musical journey starting in space  from behind the rings of planet Saturn and ending on Earth. Six young composers had to write together a multimedia music concert, while drawing inspiration from the photographs taken by Voyager 1. The photo raises all kinds of questions. You can look at it with humanistic, scientific or religious eyes. What does this picture mean in terms of  ideas of how we came to earth, and more importantly, how we  look at ourselves? Besides the music, a number of composers engaged in cooperation with filmmakers, artists and animators. This included a different view in the story of the composers and in various ways encouraged to reflect on this issue.

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Urban Spectator soundscape @ 230 volt (online radioshow)

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Urban Spectator soundscape get’s a radio premier!

Augusto has created a soundscape for a temporarily art exhibition in Hilversum: “Made in Hilversum”. The concept is to create a mixture of fine art pieces being enriched by electroacoustic sounds, played back in the space. The resulting exhibition is called “Urban Spectator”.

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The soundscape consists of various electroacoustic works which are chained after each other.
Composers:  Olivier Schreuder, Arjen Jongeneel, Jannick Oeben, Augusto Meijer.

http://www.concertzender.nl/programmagids.php?date=2011-08-29&month=0&detail=51101


Bioluminescence @ ISMIR 2010

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About Bioluminescence:

“Bioluminescence” is a mystical journey of sound, which display’s the world of bioluminescent creatures that live in the great depths of our oceans. “Bioluminescence” is primarily made for an art installation project, in which both light-art and the “Bioluminescence” piece attempt to trigger our senses to experience this journey. There is a second version of the piece made for concert performances.

About ISMIR

The Eleventh International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2010) is held in Utrecht, Netherlands, from August 9th to 13th, 2010.

Since its inception in 2000, ISMIR has been the world’s leading forum for research on the modelling, creation, searching, processing and use of musical data. As the term Music Information Retrieval (MIR) indicates, this research is motivated by the desire to provide music lovers, music professionals and music industry with robust, effective and usable methods and tools to help them locate, retrieve and experience the music they wish to have access to. MIR is a truly interdisciplinary area, involving researchers from the disciplines of musicology, cognitive science, library and information science, computer science and many others.

After ISMIR’s scientific program on the 11th of August, the Utrecht School of Music and Technology (USMuT) presented a concert.
This 1 hour concert took place in the K&W gebouw (conservatory) in Utrecht.

program

Three compositions for prepared piano, Disklavier-grand piano and electronics performed by Sonsoles Alonso

  • Niek Lucassen: “Short Piece for Prepared Piano”
  • Ben Wallet: “Oh, Aarde bestel mij nu meteen, timmer zes planken om mij heen”
  • Rogier van Straten: “Improvisation for piano, Disklavier en electronics”

Three compostitions for various electronics

  • Konstantinos Vasilakos: “…” voor singing voice, Petzhold-blokfluit en electronics.
  • Laurens van der Wee: “Cake” for analogue synthesizer and sonic improvisation system.
  • Augusto Meijer: “Bioluminescence” for fixed media and 4 loudspeakers.


A Blind Date? 2010

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Put a choreographer and a composer together and instruct them to make a presentation within two weeks, from scratch, based on a theme. That is, in short, the purpose of the yearly workshop called A Blind Date? This is also organised this year.

The participating choreographers and composers are students from Rotterdam Dance Academy and Utrecht School of Music and Technology. For Rotterdam Dance Academy the fourth-year students of the Bachelor of Dance programme, specialisation Choreography take part: Gizem Bilgen, Rita Soeiro, Guillermo Blinker and Chun-ho Lam.

The students work in groups. During the workshop are a few miniperformances before a so called feedback team, which consists of guest teachers. This team judges the interaction between the students and the contents of the productions, among others. With the presentation on February 11 2010 in the Theaterzaal of the Codarts building at Kruisplein the students conclude the workshop.

Augusto Meijer collaborated with Guillermo Blinker.
This years theme was “contemporarily”.
What if a person got caught up in a loop, somewhere between his life and death? This idea is explored and exposed in a 12 minute performance.
Above this tekst, you can watch a short excerpt from the performance.

Free State of Amsterdam

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As its contribution to the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), the Municipality of Amsterdam presents the city of Amsterdam as a “Free State” – a place where designers display their ideas about a free and open future – in the exhibition The Free State of Amsterdam (Amsterdam Vrijstaat). Amsterdam wants to give new meaning to the saying “The city’s air is liberating”.

Nine firms of young urban planners from Amsterdam and Rotterdam have therefore fleshed out their vision of freedom and planning in nine largescale models for various areas of their proposed metropolis. The designers only wish to present strategies and ideas, not actual plans. To avoid even a hint of official blue-printing, they continue to work on their models during the Biennale, integrating ongoing input and thus making the exhibition a true workplace that reveals its full potential only towards the end.

Flyer

Karres & Brands was one of these firms.
Lars J. Brouwer, Mark Thur and Augusto Meijer, have created a sound installation for their largescale model.
They attempted to capture the ‘sound of Amsterdam’ and place it around the maquette.
Various famous speeches and anecdotes from citizens of Amsterdam are blended with environmental sounds in this installation.

E-live 2010

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The E-live concert is part of a festival for New Music.
Performers and musicians/composers from the Utrecht school of the Arts, performed their pieces in this beautiful location:

The Nicolaïkerk (St. Nicholas church) is a medieval church in the southern part of the old city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. This building is the home of two very interesting instruments, the organ built by Marcussen and the carillon built by the famous Hemony brothers (17th century). These instruments are the backbone for a series of concerts, which are organised each year by the Stichting Culturele Evenementen Nicolaïkerk (Foundation for Cultural Events in the Nicolaïkerk ).

'Landschappen' with Sara Licher & Arianna Cattini

'Consensual science'

Augusto’s piece ‘Landschappen’ was performed at this concert, which involved a modern dance improvisation.
Collaboration with:  Sara Licher, Arianna Cattini, Wim h. De Vries.
Also, he collaborated with Arjan de Wit and Michael Dzjaparidze for a second e-live performance.
Together they did an experiment with software programming and classical instruments. Augusto was involved in the composing process.
The end result is ‘Concensual science’.

Technology Penetrates Tradition

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Experimental mix of acoustic and electronic music! On the 14 days informal congregation of 20 young talented musicians in Ohrid, Macedonia, organizers tried to squeeze the very best of talents and present it to international audience.

The traditional ways v.s. the advantages of technology, Technology Penetrates Tradition – NL/MK was the first of a series of projects that offered a platform for young people to promote and propagate their culture, learn about other cultures in Europe, propagate cultural diversity and create a network of intercultural dialogue.

The participants explored the differences in each others culture, the different way of life, different perceptions of the cultures surrounding them, embraced those differences and communicated with each other by creating and playing music.

Period: 9th – 23rd July 2009

Place: Various locations in Ohrid, Macedonia

Coaches: Gerard van Wolferen, Hans Timmermans, Marcel Wierckx, Slobodan Bajić and Katerina Pejoska

Coordinators: Katerina Pejoska & Aleksandar Velinovski

Participants:

Laurens Joannes van der Wee
Martijn Jasper Duiven
Wesley Wai Win Wong
Sjoerd van den Sanden
Rutger Muller
Mark Ijzerman
Joost Spanjerberg
Robin Koek
Nolan Wessel Smeets
Augusto Meijer

Lejla Bekiri
Nikola Vaskov
Goran Petrovski
Irena Petrovska
Xhezire Aliti
Shkëlzen Pajaziti
Aleksandar Spasovski
Branislav Gerazov
Vladimir Krstevski
Ilija Volkan
This project was initiated by the Zoey Foundation for Arts and Culture.
For more information on the Zoey Foundation, please visit: http://www.zfac.org/

The pieces were performed in various cafe’s in Ohrid, and as a part of the ‘highlands of the lowlands’  filmfestival, again in Ohrid.
This filmfestival was part of the Ohrid summer festival.