Two-day residency including a performance, lecture, and composition seminar.

Following the success of their duo album, NOWS, multi-instrumentalists and composers Sarah Belle Reid and David Rosenboom will present premiere performances of new creations encapsulating the spirit of their album with instruments ranging from strings, horns, and keyboards to modular synthesizers, analog signal processors, urban and desert soundscapes, and much more.

David Rosenboom will share a bill with the UK group, Still House Plants, on their first tour of the United States, along with a special guest, at 2220 Arts & Archives in Los Angeles. Rosenboom’s set will feature his continuously evolving, solo performance sound world, The Infinity of Things that Don’t Exist. (Photo: Fred Zwicky)

David Rosenboom will perform at REDCAT in Los Angeles, along with a stellar lineup, in a concert to celebrate the work and legacy of composer-performer Anthony Braxton, a long-time friend, colleague, and collaborator of Rosenboom.

At 12:00-1:00pm (time to be confirmed), David Rosenboom will present a keynote talk for the Business for Artists, City of Santa Clarita, symposium titled Capitalizing Authenticity. Artists tend to approach engaging in business practice with a unique kind of perspective and motivation: being energized by authentically inspired creative visions, they try to find new places in the business world for them, rather than search for already defined holes to fill in existing market structures. This talk will explore the critical market value of this authenticity and how it can be regarded as powerful creative capital to leverage in generating demand. Artists believe in and understand both the primacy and potential of inspiring ideas as drivers of the energy flowing through our creative economy. Perhaps surprisingly, many principles in economics are consistent with viewpoints that originate in cultural aesthetics, like the “Four C’s principles for business success: Clarity, Courage, Creativity, and Consistency. More recently, creative economists also talk about another version of the “Four Cs”: Critical thinking and problem solving, Creativity and innovation, Communication, and Collaboration. Along with these ideas, this talk will suggest other foundational concepts for new artist entrepreneurs to consider, including a few easy-to-understand practical matters and easy-to-access helpful resources, and will also touch on a range of important broader concepts: adaptability, emergence, and the assignment of value. Underlying all this, a foundational principal remains: persevering in the authenticity of one’s inspiration is not only the best pathway to fulfilling outcomes, but is, in fact, essential for the tangible capital value of that inspiration to become illuminated.

In conjunction with the innovative Mind in Vitro - Computing with Living Neurons group at UIUC, David Rosenboom and Mattia Gazzola will lead a real-time brainstorming workshop and demonstration to envision a potential longer-term collaboration in neuromusic cybernetics. The workshop will examine possibilities of directly linking the electrical activity sensed in living neuron cultures with a computer music instrument that, in turn, may generate acoustic vibration stimuli for the neurons to react to, creating a new kind of performative biofeedback system. Speculations on how a biosemiotics approach might be helpful in interpreting both the behaviors of neuron cultures and musical results may be explored, along with a quick survey of historical work in biofeedback and the arts leading up to this new possibility. Interactive discussion with colleagues and attendees will be welcome.

An audience is invited to experience a composing and performing practice in which music emerges from a process of making propositions and building musical models. To begin, a brass quintet and actor perform a piece about the nature of change. A sonorous sonic journey follows with 3D diffusion of resonances in an electronic tapestry emerging as two active imaginative listeners perform with their EEGs in one of Rosenboom’s seminal brainwave music pieces. An adaptive musical form arises from the concept of listening as performance, and Rosenboom joins with his e-vioviola to form a biocybernetic trio shaping the structure of the musical output. Next, Rosenboom performs several solo compositions embodying his model-building practice using a Yamaha Disklavier* computer-interfaced piano, interactive software instruments, and modular electronics, often inspired by poetic philosophic musings about human conditions, our Earth, qualities of stability and instability, and evolution. A collaborative work interlacing renowned filmmaker Lewis Klahr’s uniquely idiosyncratic filmic style with Rosenboom’s live soundtrack composition explores the intersections of memory and history with reflections on uncertainty. To conclude, composer Stephen Taylor conducts a brass quintet with electric rhythm section and singer-speaker in a piece resulting from imparting the approach of proposition-making in the performance of an epic art manifesto with socio-political references. Immersive, interactive video projections designed by Ben Grosser accompany some of the music, responding directly to audio features in the live sound performances.

Giving a lecture for the Composer's Forum (School of Music) David Rosenboom will discuss a selection of his scored works in depth to illustrate some of the technical details in his compositional methods and sources of inspiration. These may include: musical configuration spaces that map adjacent and contingent possibilities for performances, systems for transformation musical shapes with measured similarity and dissimilarity among elements, notation as interface, emergent forms inspired by models of evolution, multiple independent times, collaborative strategies, and other concepts as circumstances suggest. Both recent works and relatively historical ones will be included. Interactive discussion is encouraged.

Along with a series of demonstrations in perceptualizing data from nature for scientific and artistic purposes, David Rosenboom, Martin Gruebele, and Carla Scaletti will discuss mapping data to sound for applications ranging from scientific data sonification to interactive data sonification, to interactive musical performance making use of data. Scaletti and Gruebele will describe how proteins fold and how sonification can highlight aspects of protein folding that are difficult to visualize. Scaletti will demonstrate an interactive user interface that allows the environment of a protein (for example, temperature) to be tuned, so that one can hear and see, via sonification and visualization, how real-time interaction with data provides insights into a scientific problem like protein folding. Finally, the theme of real-time interaction with data will move from its application in scientific analysis to its application in musical composition and performance. Rosenboom will show how data extracted from the electroencephalograms of individuals engaged in what he calls listening as performance are mapped inside the interactive instruments used in his most recent brainwave music pieces. In one work, Ringing Minds, this includes mapping data from multivariate principal oscillation pattern analysis, auditory event related potentials, and other measures from several brains linked in a kind of “hyper-brain” onto an array of complex resonators inside in a computer music instrument. The event will conclude with a discussion among the presenters and attendees.

As a guest composer-instructor at Improvisers’ Exchange Workshop, David Rosenboom will interact with students and colleagues in a variety of improvisation exchanges to examine: the roles of technical skills in improvisation, recognizing and working with sound language elements that emerge in improvisations, composing for improvisation, and improvising with musicians from multiple cultural contexts. Rosenboom will draw from his repertoire of improvisation exercises, graphic scores, text scores, modular pattern structures, and other materials that emerge as appropriate for the interests and backgrounds of the participants.

The program for this event will unfold in three parts: (i) performances of original works by participants in the Electric Strings program along with commentary by David Rosenboom in a master class setting, (ii) performance by Rosenboom of a solo composition for wireless, five-string, e-vioviola and modular electronics, and (iii) structured group improvisation performance lead by Rosenboom in collaboration with the program’s participants.

In a guest lecture for the iSchool the course "Introduction to Computer Music,” David Rosenboom will focus on ideas that have informed his use of computer music software tools designed to bring algorithmic music composition methods into real-time performance. An influential historical tool, Hierarchical Music Specification Language (HMSL), developed by Phil Burk, Larry Polansky, and David Rosenboom in the 1980s will serve as a launching pad for discussion, from which Rosenboom will expand into a landscape of related tools developed since that time, illustrated with examples of his music. Speculations about future developments will ensue, and interactive discussion is encouraged.

Together with program director Rudolf Haken, students in the Electric Strings program will demonstrate a diverse array of original creative works for the audience and for David Rosenboom. Rosenboom will respond to the students’ work and will also discuss his approach to playing a modular electronic instrument with his wireless, five-string, e-vioviola as its primary input. This will include discussing general design concepts for developing practical instrument interfaces with electronics, employing techniques like spectral parsing, multi-band envelope following and threshold triggering, interactive control function generation, and shaping and morphing sampled waveforms as primary sound sources within a small modular setup activated by the e-vioviola. Techniques for improvising with this setup may be explored. The participants will then design the program for a performance to take place later in the week.

David Rosenboom will discuss concepts that have informed his work in electronic music systems development over several decades, especially those that emphasize blending performance with composition. Highlighted among them will be the early digital keyboard instrument, Touché, developed in collaboration with Donald Buchla in 1979-1980, and a recent digital simulation and expansion, called Touché II, which Rosenboom will use in performance during his residency at UIUC. Other current and historical examples of systems developed for selected compositions will also be shown. Interactive discussion is encouraged.

In this event, the legendary SalMar Construction will be demonstrated and situated at the center of a discussion led by David Rosenboom about the uniqueness of this electronic instrument and how Salvatore Martirano’s composing practices influenced a generation of practitioners in experimental music. The compositional frameworks employed in some of Martirano’s related earlier and later works will also be explored, along with examples of his approaches to improvisation and collaboration.

What is form? What is an instrument? Is time granular and emergent? How do hyper-brain ensembles perform? Questions like these are being explored in experimental music. In this talk, David Rosenboom will present concrete examples from his more than five decades of pioneering work in propositional music illustrating how testable theoretical models in science and process-based what-if models in speculative arts can converge to mutual advantage in the new artscience: musical forms that arise spontaneously and evolve, listening as performance, networked telematic projects, large-scale collaborative forms, new approaches to notation, adaptive engineering in interactive instruments, cybernetic compositions employing direct musical interface with the human brain, and more.

David Rosenboom will give a solo performance on a spectacular festival to honor the legacy of the Mills College Music Department and Center for Contemporary Music. Rosenboom will draw from several recent compositions for piano, e-vioviola, electronics, computer algorithms, and video under the title, Choose Your Universe.

David Rosenboom will be performing with James Fei and William Winant as a trio on day two of a spectacular festival to honor the legacy of the Mills College Music Department and Center for Contemporary Music.

David Rosenboom will present a modular sound work, The Infinity of Things that Don’t Exist, an ever-evolving solo performance practice, at Blank Forms in Brooklyn, NY.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED FOR COVID-RELATED REASONS. STAY TUNED FOR NEXT TIME. At 12:00-1:00pm, David Rosenboom will present a keynote talk for this symposium titled Capitalizing Authenticity. Go to event link for full day program, 9:00am to 4:00pm, of sessions and for tickets: https://santaclaritaarts.com/2021-arts-symposium/

CANCELLED. DUE TO TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH COVID-19 THIS EVENT IS BEING POSTPONED.. Deviant Resonances: Propositional Music's Challenge to Emerging Models for BCMI

Rosenboom will give a presentation on multimedia performance movements in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with early work on biofeedback in the arts for an event honoring the life and work of influential NYU psychology professor and multimedia catalyst, Ted (Edgar E.) Coons.

Rosenboom will be featured in both concert and lecture/speaking presentations on this major Improvisation Festival being organized by Haute École de Musique, Geneva, Switzerland. Programs are being planned now. Stay tuned for more details. He will also speak about unique curriculum and pedagogy approaches developed at the Herb Alpert School of Music, California Institute of the Arts.

Rosenboom’s new work for string quartet will be premiéred by the Isaura String Quartet at REDCAT. “Perhaps no composer has used more complex logical processes; a brilliant and multi–talented musician who also performs virtuosically.” —About David Rosenboom
Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century

Solo performance program including recent music for piano, 5-string electric violin, electronics, compositional algorithms, and active imaginative listeners with brainwaves on MADEIRADiG 2019 festival on the island of Madeira.

Rosenboom will present a performance at CYFEST International Festival of Media Art to include music for piano, interactive computer/electronics, and brainwaves. The concert will be on Sunday, 17th November 2019, at 15:00 (3:00 PM) in the main hall of Stieglitz Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Lecture will be on Monday, 18th November 2019, at 19:00 (7:00 PM). There will also be roundtable discussion about cyber-arts education on Saturday, 16th, at 10:00 AM. Program available on CYFEST website: