Talk and concert as guest composer @ Brooklyn College’s Annual International Electroacoustic Music Festival

Tuesday, Nov 5th. : “Artifacts and Notation Systems”
Merche Blasco Talk
1230-2pm in Tow PAC SoundLab

Wednesday, Nov 6th: Merche Blasco Performance
7-830pm in Tow Studio 250
Fauna, Bardenas, EEMF02

Fauna, a live improvisation with a set of custom-made instruments and repurposed household appliances used to process field recordings, incorporating body movements and the live exploration of intricate material textures.

Bardenas is a composition for variable ensemble and multichannel field recordings. The graphic score is composed of a series of twelve images that belong to a desert canyon outside the town where I was born and raised, in the north of Spain. The beauty and natural resources of this rugged terrain attract tourism, animal herders, and film productions. And, ever since the Spanish and American governments signed an agreement under Franco’s dictatorship in the 1950s, Bardenas Reales has also served as an arena for bombing rehearsals conducted by the militaries of various coalition nations.

Bardenas combines field recordings of military jets streaking overhead with live instrumentation, guided by the shape of a landscape that has absorbed the resonance of thousands of bombs detonated there over the decades. Performers embody the mountains that surround the shooting range and that for the first time speak back this history to an audience placed in the center.

Performers:
Matthew Weisberg – Trumpet with electronics
Gabriela Baez Electric Bass with electronics
Ashlae Blūme Accordion with electronics
Everett Pettiecord – Modular Synthetizer
Emilie Weibel – Voice with electronics

EEMF02 is the second installment in a series of multichannel pieces in which I explore and perform the electromagnetic field activity (EMF) of specific architectures. As I listen to the structures themselves, conducting field recordings of the electromagnetic activity unique to every space, I involve my body in the data collection and the technology I use to translate the EM activity into audible material. EEMF02 was originally composed for an octophonic system and has been translated into a quadraphonic system for this occasion.,

Thursday, Nov 7th: Emerging Composers Concert
7-10pm, Tow PAC Studio 250

Friday, Nov 8th: Electronic Dance Music Party
To close out the Fall 2019 IEAMF, Sonic Arts students celebrate the legacy and influence of experimental electronic music on popular culture. For four hours we celebrate this history with hip-hop, downtempo, techno and psychedelia.

7-8: Francois Deville
8-9: Louis Hamilton
9-10: Zach Weinstein
10-11: Yagiz Ertan