‘Circuits And Circles’ Concert To Feature Performance Studies Students Exploring Experimental Sounds
Student performances in electronic and experimental music will be featured during a concert titled “Circuits and Circles” on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Rudder Theatre.
The free show, hosted by the Performance Studies program in the Texas A&M School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, will feature students in Electronic Music Composition and Small Ensembles classes, both taught by Dr. Will Connor, Performance Studies instructor.
The first half of the concert will feature 16 students in Electronic Music Composition who have each worked on projects throughout the semester, Connor said. Students will be putting music and sound to their crafted compositions, he said.
A group of students will use a synthesizer, Chinese martial arts drums and vocals during their performance. Another will use multiple oscillators, and one group will use a waterphone and theremin. All students had to utilize analogue instrumentation that they learned during the course, Connor said.
The second half of the concert will feature eight students in the Small Ensembles course. The students had to create pieces utilizing a card system for composers that Connor created. This features graphic notation cards, which are music sheets filled with symbols rather than standard music notes.
“Each card has a narrative element and a sound suggestion,” he said. “The students chose a story, any kind of story that has narrative elements, like settings or a feeling or a character. Once they chose their narrative element, they pick a set of cards that will tell them what sounds go with that setting or feeling. The card system is almost like a game: You roll dice, you find out how long cards are played, you piece them together according to your narrative and then you use the narrative elements to pick the cards.”
Another group of three students will play bicycles, either by playing the spokes, treads on the tires or any other part in a percussion style, he said. The final performance will be conducted by Jeffrey Morris, professor, who will lead an improvised piece by all the student performers.
The students are gaining a set of skills they can use in any performance moving forward, Connor said. He said he hopes to help them understand the music they are playing, and each element that comes with making a great performance.
“They are all gaining improvisational skills through taking their ideas and realizing what can become of them,” he said. “There is a project element, collaboration element and an exploration element. This becomes something they can teach themselves and really help them understand how their music works and the impact it can have.”
Top photo: Breanna Loredo-Rayas and classmate Nat Cortez perform during the ‘Analogue Electronica’ event in Rudder Theatre in April. Photo by Spencer Bryant.
