Doctoral Seminar in Composition: Viola Yip and Michael Mulshine

Two presentations will be given in this session:

• Viola Yip (3:00-4:00 PM PDT)
• Michael Mulshine, CCRMA Ph.D. student (4:00-4:45 PM PDT)

A Native of Hong Kong, Viola Yip is a New York-based experimental composer, performer, sound artist, and instrument builder. Her recent interest falls on creating performances based on an intermedial conception of music, as well as creating sound pieces that foreground human bodies’ performativity and imagination in analog and digital music making. Viola's instruments and performances have been presented by places such as OpenICE hosted by ICE ensemble (NYC), Women Between Arts at the New School, Frequency Festival at Constellation (Chicago), MOXsonic festival (Warrensburg, MO), University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellow University, Cornell University, New York University, Bowling Green State University, UC San Diego, KLEX Festival (Kuala Lumpur), Contemporary Music and Electronic Residency in Madeira, SARC at Queen’s University Belfast, QO-2 in Brussels, Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Currents/ Festival für aktuelle Tiefkultur in Cologne, and Universität der Künster Berlin.

An open-source project developed by Dan Trueman, Mike Mulshine, and Matt Wang at Princeton University, bitKlavier has been used by dozens of performers – from young students to renowned professionals – in a range of compositions by Trueman and others. An online course presented by Kadenze, Reinventing the Piano, makes extensive use of bitKlavier to teach about the history and ongoing development of the piano.

"Like the prepared piano, bitKlavier – the prepared digital piano – feels just like a piano under the hands and often sounds like one, but it is full of surprises; instead of bolts and screws stuck between the piano strings, virtual machines of various sorts adorn the virtual strings of the digital piano, transforming it into an instrument that pushes back, sometimes like a metronome, other times like a recording played backwards. The virtual strings also tighten and loosen on the fly, dynamically tuning in response to what is played. bitKlavier is a new kind of digital musical instrument, a novel assemblage of the familiar MIDI keyboard with bespoke interactive software. Inspired by John Cage’s prepared piano, bitKlavier both leverages and subverts the pianist’s hard-earned embodied training, while also inviting an extended configuration stage that “prepares” the instrument to behave in composition-specific, idiosyncratic ways. Through its flexible though constrained design, bitKlavier aims to inspire a playful approach to instrument building, composition, and performance.

Please note that you will need to register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting via Zoom.