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New Piece by Stelios Manousakis Premiering at the Dag in de Branding Comtemporary Music Festival

Submitted by Jacob M Lambert on March 8, 2013 - 12:00am

'What is the current that makes machinery', a new composition by Stelios Manousakis for voice and surround live electronics will be premiering at the 'Dag in de Branding' contemporary music festival in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Saturday March 9th as part of a tribute to singer Cathy Berberian.

About the piece
Stelios Manousakis: composition, live electronics
Stephanie Pan: voice


‘What is the current that makes machinery’ is a cycle of short pieces for female voice and live electronics, written for vocalist Stephanie Pan and her unique capabilities in extended vocal techniques. The pieces are based on texts from the first section of Gertrude Stein’s ‘Tender Buttons: objects; food; rooms’, a collection of short prose-poems written in 1912. In these modernist texts, often characterized as ‘verbal cubism’ or ‘language art’, Stein composes with language not for the world it represents, but with its first matter - signs, sounds, rhythm, syntax and semantic fragments - treating it as a rediscovered aesthetic object that alludes to new worlds on the listener’s mind. The piece uses the voice and electronic processing to best reveal and amplify the complex multi-dimensional beauty of the texts and their inherent sonic, structural, and poetic musicality in a live setting.

About the festival
'Dag in de Branding' is the Hague's festival for contemporary music. In its 27th edition, 'Dag in de Branding' pushes borders. With Cathy Berberian, Peter Adriaansz, Greg Haines, Stelios Manousakis and Stephanie Pan.

For more information on the festival: http://www.dagindebranding.nl/

Acknowledgments
The piece makes extensive use of technology that Stelios begun developing in the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) during a research seminar with composers/researchers Juan Pampin and Joseph Anderson. It also uses technologies developed in DXARTS by Joshua Parmenter, Richard Karpen and Juan Pampin.

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