Performed by Wavefield Ensemble:

Nicholas DeMaison, conductor
Roberta Michel, flutes
Madison Greenstone, bass clarinet
John Gattis, horn
Jen Baker, trombone & 3D-printed vocal tract tube
Dennis Sullivan, percussion
Erica Dicker, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Iva Casián-Lakoš, cello
Tristan Kasten-Krause, bass

Recorded by David Adamcyk
Mastered by Murat Çolak http://www.muratcolakmusic.com/geryon-sound.html
Filmed by Michael Sinicropi
Edited by Stuart Breczinski
DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, March 2023

Program Notes:

The term "disembodied voice," much like Alice's "grin without a cat," poses an inherent ontological problem. The voice, which is typically produced as a result of purely material processes, now exists detached from its physical source and becomes the sole manifestation of our human essence. Despite the present impossibility, however, our psyche seems to be able to close this gap rather easily.

Being our primary medium for language and expression, the voice can readily function as a portal between our corporeal existence and whatever we might choose to call the rest: a soul, a consciousness, or a persona. The voice can be a placeholder for all the latter, as made apparent in phrases such as “one’s inner voice,” “the artist’s voice,” or “making one’s voice heard.” It is for this reason that disembodied voices have commonly been used to represent human-like entities in many works of fiction, ranging anywhere between ghostly presences to super-intelligent AIs.

“This Person Does Not Exist” was titled after the website with the same name[1], through which Nvidia’s neural network StyleGAN can be used to generate human faces. While the original website reproduces artificiality through AI generated images, I wanted to approach the same uncanny possibility by creating the semblance of a disembodied voice. For this purpose, I designed and 3D printed a small instrument that models the human vocal tract with a trombone mouthpiece attachment. The trombonist, who remains concealed behind the suspended frame drum at the center of the stage, performs this instrument to produce human-like sounds ranging from soft moans to loud, distorted screams. With the use of both pre-recorded and live performances of this instrument, I wish to elicit the presence of a disembodied, artificial voice, and thus underline the reproducible nature of our own human essence.

[1] http://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

This Person Does Not Exist (2023)

Composer - Researcher.
https://zeyneptoraman.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tora_zeynep/

tora.zeynep@gmail.com

new album "Delicious" released on 16 May. New Amsterdam records.

Alex (1990),"A riotous overabundance of love and rage..an extraordinary experience” The Wire Magazine, is an award-winning composer & improvising-trombonist based in the UK. His Music is published by Ricordi (Berlin). "highly innovative...of exceptional creative imagination and musical energy, packed with life force unlike anything else” BBC Magazine Ivor Novello British Composer Awards.

Alex has been awarded the Paul Hindemith Prize, and Ivor Novello Composer He was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award for 2022 and was elected to the 9th International Composition Seminar and awarded a commission ILOLLI-POP for Improviser and Ensemble which he played with Ensemble Modern. He has been awarded by the London Sinfonietta’s Writing the Future commission CANDYFOLK- SPACE-DRUM  and has won the RPS Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, DANKWORTH JAZZ prize for composition BYE and was made a London Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Composer. Alex played and recorded his concerto OD ODY PINk’d for Jazz Musician and Royal National Scottish Orchestra (RSNO). He was a Leverhume Art Scholar with the London Philharmonic Orchestra 2016-2017: NOW WE ARE DUH-DUR and has been awarded the Harriet Cohen Memorial Music Award for his compositions. His piece SPAKE represented the UK in the Orchestral section of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM). He is a commissioned contributor to John Zorn’s Arcana X 2021. "Paxton is a system-crasher of genre, who merges jamming video game soundtracks, musical overtures, virtuoso chamber music and jazz improv into an unmistakable style...highly complex, sophisticated and extremely entertaining, virtuoso ad absurdum" Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik

His albums to date as a composer: MUSIC for BOSCH PEOPLE and iLOLLI-POP released to critical acclaim on Birmingham Record Company/ NMC label and nonclassical. Listen Pony Label (TELLSONG), Indigne de nous on Everest Records and leading Spotify playlists. HAPPY MUSIC for ORCHESTRA released on Delphian Label in  April 2023. “This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!”New York Times

His music has been played/recorded/ commissioned by leading orchestras and ensembles including Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), Philharmonia Orchestra, AskSchöenberg, Riot Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, Wigmore hall, Explore Ensemble, Klammer Klang, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), National Youth Orchestra (BBC proms 2021), Making Music (UK), Ensemble x.y, x.y Song, Hyper Duo, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO), National Youth Jazz Orchestra (UK) NYJO, Listen-Pony, Aldeburgh Festival, Psappha Ensemble, Orion Symphony Orchestra OSO, Helios Collective, Chaos Collective Orchestra, Mirrors of Hall Big Band, Dr. K Sextet, 5KBrass Quintet, RAM Philharmonic and RCM Philharmonic and soloists Zubin Kanger, Tabea Debus, Beibei Wang, Patrick Terry, David Zucchi. “This is what an orchestra can be like in the 21st century: an ensemble that speaks with one voice yet also gives voice to each of its members” The Times

He has written six operas including NOGGIN and the WHALE (Massed forces including 500 young instrumentalists and singes) FOR the LOVE of THORNSTIEN SHIVER hosted by English National Opera and Helios Collective, BEL and the DRAGON as part of the Tête à Tête opera festival, the EQUIVOCAL HARRIET BOWDLER at Second Movement Opera and WOOLF MUSIC at the Forge in Camden and RAVEN’s CHILD for Jacob Colier and Orchestra.
“Operatic Game Boy music played by a virtuosic motley crew that’s inexplicably been hired to provide live jingles for a primetime TV show sometime in the recent past that never quite was” Point of departure

As an improvising and jazz trombonist Alex has played as a soloist with Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta,  Riot Ensemble, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), & ensemble x.y. He is founder of Dreammusics ensemble and performs regularly with pioneering improvisers (eg: Charlotte Keeffe, Steve Noble). “meticulously scored…seems to change with every bar, enfolding bite-size pieces of classic minimalism, brass brand tradition, electronic noise, & video game plasticity..intensely virtuosic and giddily joyful. electronically slathered trombone…Paxton is a monster improviser …connects his garrulous attack to the most extroverted playing of George Lewis & Roswell Rudd..." Bandcamp Daily Best Contemporary Classical.

Extensively, Alex writes art-music for musicians in community settings including, innovative ways of writing for young instrumentalists & singers in a post-Roald Dahl world of new-music.  eg: NOGGIN and the WHALE (Massed forces including 500 young instrumentalists and singes), Fly Like a Kitchen, Muffin, Pudding Tummy and The Sound of Magic. He is professorial composition staff at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and has worked as lead-composition tutor (and workshop leader) on the National Youth Orchestra GB, he has taught/ lectured at composition and improvisation at conservatories including, RAM, GSMD & RCM (and multiple universities in the UK). “one of the most exceptional voices from a new generation of UK talent” The Philharmonia Orchestra

Alex studied as a scholar at Royal Academy of Music (BMushons1stclass)and LRAM (Distinction) and the Royal College of Music (MComp Distinction).“a Brit who defies every conceivable genre boundary…an extremely modern and future-oriented style.” Paul Hindemith Prize winner 2023

Alex is an endorsee solo artist with Micheal Rath Trombones since 2023 (R12 nickel bell & tuning slide).

www.artuncekem.com
a_cekem@hotmail.com

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Profile art: Christian Rex van Minnen
Cover art: Mario Panciera

Dilay Doğanay was born in Izmir, Turkey, in 1999.
Her music evolves in an effort to understand the theatricality of sound and implicit and explicit communication. Her pieces, which she created inspired by language, literature, oral and written communication, sometimes include texts she wrote. She has won, 2024 Ö1 Kompositions Preis.
She studied composition in İzmir. Recently finished her Master’s Degree in Kunst Universitat Graz with Franck Bedrossian. Now based in Paris and studying at CNSMDP. Her music has been performed by different ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, RIOT, Neue Vocalsolisten Stıttgart, Schallfeld Ensemble, IEMA, hand werk, Orbis, Next Ensemble; in different parts of the world: Italy, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Ukraine, Netherlands, Switzerland, Colombia, France (...)

Nikolai Galen is a performer and writer living in Istanbul

Think of the sound of NIM as the host of angels in Gustave Dore’s illustrations for Dante’s Paradise – radiant and terrifying at once, spinning in a whirlpool of celestial light. This is electronic music that far transcends its material origin and becomes an ethereal entity that belongs to no particular time. Its points of attraction are equally 21st century and Renaissance, science and mysticism, neoclassical and experimental, purity and imperfection, impenetrable depth and unbearable lightness, cosmic harmony and chthonic dissonance. These references define NIM, but not completely, as there is always room for something that escapes words.

Text author: Jurij Dobriakov

noiseismessage@gmail.com

This Person Does Not Exist (2023)

Artun Çekem