“Oliver Schneller summons a photo on his laptop … from the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan,” writes Jeff Spevak in Tuesday’s (11/29) Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (N.Y.). “It is a geodesic dome with groups of loudspeakers arranged along the [inside] walls and the audience seated in the center, listening to a work by the German avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen…. That distant promise of music’s future may finally be arriving [with] the new Eastman Audio Research Studio [EARS] … at the Eastman School of Music.” Schneller is director of the studio and Eastman Computer Music Center. “Since EARS opened in August, it has been introducing Eastman students to the world of sound installations and multi-media projects.… ‘That’s where contemporary music is going. Technology is not going away’ … [and it gives] students ‘a much better chance of getting a job,’ Schneller says.… Eastman students will take at least one semester of an EARS class…. EARS will … produce two shows … at the end of March, in the manner of Francois Bayle’s 1974 ‘Acousmonium,’ a sound-diffusion system. The Eastman Mobile Acousmonium will be a speaker orchestra, built by Eastman and University of Rochester students.”
Posted November 30, 2016
