Annie Gosfield - Jammed Radios, Flying Signals, and String Noise

Thursday, February 9, 2017, at 8:00 pm

This is an archived event, not part of the current festival.

596 Broadway, Suite 602

New York, NY

Harvestworks, in partnership with Composers Now Festival presents Annie Gosfield – Jammed Radio Signals and String Noise

In a premiere of this spatialized work, String Noise (Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris) will perform "Static Strands and String Noise" for two violins and the eerie sounds of wartime radio interference, in a dynamic, multi-speaker environment. Pauline Kim Harris will perform "Long Waves and Random Pulses," a virtuosic solo violin piece that emphasizes the textural and melodic elements of jammed radio signals. Highly altered string sounds will merge with surreal, distorted radio broadcasts for a shifting installation-based electronic work that will reveal the finer points of the electronic elements of both pieces. The composer and violinists will give an informal demonstration of the sounds and techniques used.

This concert features music for strings and sampled radio sounds, work that is related to my research into the sounds and processes of jammed radio signals. I had received an AIR (artist in residence) grant at Harvestworks, where I expanded the work by adding spatialization, evoking the ephemeral, shifting nature of jammed radio broadcasts. Together with violinists Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris, we took a creative, approach that brought new dimensions to the music, adding multiple layers of increasingly odd violin timbres, expanding the sampled sounds, and taking a free approach to the spatialization and production of the radio sounds.