The School of Performing Arts and the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology will welcome a collection of guest artists for this month’s New Music + Technology Festival.

The festival will run April 9-13 at the Creativity and Innovation District living-learning community and multiple spaces in the Moss Arts Center and will showcase innovations in the field of music technology and spatial audio, including a new international partnership founded by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT).

The festival starts Tuesday, April 9, at 7 p.m. with L2Ork, the world's first Linux-based laptop orchestra, in the main lobby of the Creativity and Innovation District. Led by Ivica Ico Bukvic, professor and director of the Creativity + Innovation community, the performance will last about 45 minutes and feature three EDM pieces created in collaboration with electronic musicians worldwide using Tweeter software. Each piece is also supported with projections by Thomas Tucker, associate professor of creative technologies. The main piece of the performance, “Transcontinental Grapevine," was co-created and will be co-performed with collaborators from UNTREF, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tuesday’s performances continue at 8 p.m. in the Perform Studio at the Moss Arts Center with a Listening Studio. This intimate, fixed-media presentation will feature original productions from students, faculty, and guest artists including cinema faculty Laura Iancu, Josh Yates, and Charles Dye and original composition by guest artist Tiffany Skidmore. These pre-recorded, fixed media productions will make use of the Perform Studio’s 26-channel surround sound audio and modular projections.

Wednesday, April 10, presents at 8 p.m. a selection of original works by Virginia Tech faculty and artists from the Virginia and beyond in the Cube at the Moss Arts Center. “Virginia Tech Faculty and Friends” will feature the following performances:

  • "Trust me on this” by Kate Sicchio, assistant professor of dance and media technology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a member of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, with Patrick Martin, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Richmond, and performed by Olivia Gwinner. 
  • An original piece for live drum and spatial audio by Otu Kojo, an African drummer in residence with the School of Performing Arts, and Charles Nichols, associate professor of composition, creative technologies.
  • "Memory Palace” by Annie Stevens, associate professor of percussion, and Rachel Rugh, adjunct professor of dance. This piece was originally presented in March 2023 in the Cube in an independent performance.
  • The winners of the Yee Memorial Student Composition Competition will be announced. Winners of this competition were adjudicated by Virginia Tech music faculty and Bobby Ge, the winner of last year’s Yee Memorial Composition Competition.

The festival continues Thursday, April 11, with a Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) Constellation event.

“SEAMUS is the premier electro-acoustic association in the United States,” said Kyle Hutchins,  director of the New Music + Technology Festival. “Typically they present a national or international conference, but this year for their 40th anniversary, they’re hosting constellation events instead of one major conference.”

These individual events, which take place all over the United States, are programmed by a juried panel of electro-acoustic musicians who select nationally acclaimed artists. The performance at the festival will feature a mix of live acoustic, live electric, and fixed-media compositions including a composition by Leah Reid, assistant professor of composition at the University of Virginia, performed by Hutchins as well as a work for saxophone by Elizabeth Hinkle Turner performed by Sheldon Johnson, instructor of saxophone at Radford University.

On Friday, April 12, Virginia Tech will launch the first ArtX Presents in collaboration with McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). ArtX stands for art, research, and technology exchange.

“One of the curious predicaments of creating work for the Cube is that our faculty and students create work for this space that is unique to the world that then gets showcased on this festival,” said Hutchins. “Then the question comes, 'What next?' … because there are so few places … that have similar multi-channel spaces.”

This program is aimed at finding and building pathways for exchange in collaboration with national and international partners, where the work being developed for multi-channel audio spaces then has an opportunity to move beyond its origins.

Building a network of presenters and institutions is the first step. The goal would be for these productions and compositions to travel around the world and be presented in whichever context makes sense for the host institution, whether at a festival, a concert, or beyond.

“In this first exchange, Virginia Tech will host a cohort from McGill and CIRMMT. In that visit will be performances, guest teaching, guest research presentations, and an ICAT Playdate,” said Hutchins. “Then in the fall, our faculty will travel to Quebec and share our work with them in their peer space to the Cube, called the Multi-Media Room. … This program helps us advance the creative scholarship being done by our faculty and share that with an international audience."

The festival concludes on Saturday, April 13, with four consecutive performances of “Epiphany Machine” beginning at 3 p.m. in the Sandbox of the Moss Arts Center. This performance is by College of Architecture, Arts, and Design faculty Scotty Hardwig and Zack Duer as well as Julia Basso, assistant professor of behavioral and community science. This performance is the result of an ICAT SEAD grant and is created specifically for the Sandbox to investigate the relationship between movement and brain activity using wearable biometrics.

A male dancer wears a biometrics cap with monitors attached, as a researcher services the cap with a plastic syringe.
A researcher services the wearable biometrics used to capture the dancer’s brain activity throughout “Epiphany Machine." Virginia Tech photo

Tickets and parking

All events are free and open to the public. Seating is limited and reservations are required. Reservations are required for all events except the April 9 event at the Creativity and Innovation District. Priority will be given to those with a reservation, and any available seats will be filled beginning five minutes before showtime for anyone waiting at the door.

Find information about the festival, including links for free reservations, online.

All university community members and visitors will need to display a parking permit, use the ParkMobile app, pay a fee, or pay using an hourly meter to park on the Blacksburg campus unless otherwise noted by signage. Find additional parking information online.

If you are an individual with a disability and/or desire an accommodation, please contact Susan Sanders at least five days prior to the event.

Written by Ashley Cooper, a graduate student in theatre arts leadership in the School of Performing Arts

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