PRAx and The School of Visual, Performing and Design Arts Presents: An Hour for the Ears
A profound sensory journey to the frontiers of contemporary musical composition. Audience members are invited to sit or lie down, on comfortable cushions, in the completely darkened Edward J. Ray Theater. Surround, ambisonic and other creative speaker placements immerse listeners in experimental music – often featuring high-fidelity field recordings captured from the forest, ocean or everyday life.
Composer and Director of the School of the Arts Peter Swendsen hosts this unique program, which – in 60 minutes – includes contextualizing remarks and time to comfortably emerge from deep listening. Video installation may occasionally be included.
October 30 Program: Eli Stine and Jana Winderen
During the 2024-25 season, featured compositions will speak to the PRAx theme of water. The first program, presented in fall of 2024 will feature two works that investigate and celebrate the rich and immersive soundscapes of water, many recorded with hydrophones.
In Eli Stine’s Where Water Meets Memory, we hear a dialogue between acoustic instruments and sounds recorded by Stine during a residency at the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center (Oyster, Virginia), including the sounds of oyster reefs.
In Jana Winderen’s Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone, “The listener experiences,” according to Winderen, “the bloom of plankton, the shifting and crackling sea ice in the Barents Sea around Spitsbergen, towards the North Pole, and the underwater sounds made by bearded seals, migrating species such as humpbacks and orcas, and the sound made by hunting saithe, crustaceans and spawning cod, all depending on the spring bloom.”