The Corwin Chair presents a series of engaging concerts and lectures each quarter, with performances and topics ranging from live experimental/improvisatory electronic music to the conversion of DNA sequences into sound.
Winter 2021
Corwin Chair Series Lecture: "... I listen, therefore I am..." with composer François Bayle
Friday, January 22, 2021 | 11 am PST | Virtual Event | Free and open to the public
Zoom link: tinyurl.com/CorwinW21 | Meeting ID: 841 2398 4807 | Passcode: Corwin
François Bayle was born in 1932 in Tamatave, Madagascar where he lived for 14 years. He studied in Bordeaux from 1946-54. In 1958-60, Bayle joined Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, and between 1959-62 worked with Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1966, Pierre Schaeffer put him in charge of the GRM which, in 1975, became an integral department of the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA). He maintained this position until 1997. In addition, Bayle created the Acousmonium (1974). He originated the record series Collection Ina-Grm, still organizes concerts and radio broadcasts, and supports the development of technologically advanced musical instruments (Syter – Grm tools – Midi Formers – Acousmographe).
Corwin Chair Series Lecture: "Secrets, Dreams, Faith and Wonder: A Mass for the New Millennium" (Stephen Travis Pope)
Friday, February 19, 2021 | 11 am PST | Virtual Event | Free and open to the public
Zoom link: tinyurl.com/CorwinW21 | Meeting ID: 841 2398 4807 | Passcode: Corwin
The Department of Music will present a Corwin Series Lecture featuring composer Stephen Travis Pope. Pope's lecture, titled "Secrets, Dreams, Faith and Wonder: A Mass for the New Millennium," will focus on his film, “Secrets, Dreams, Faith and Wonder," a feature-length abstract music/video ritual of thanksgiving in five parts. It follows the structure of rituals of gratitude celebrated throughout the ages and across cultures and religions. The five pieces of music incorporate voices in Latin, English, and Arabic as well as bird and whale songs. Each of the videos was made to fit the music of the respective movement. The videos for the first three parts were contributed by Pope's friends Lane Clark and UC Santa Barbara student Lance Putnam; the video for the final movement was produced using software developed at UC Santa Barbara for Graham Wakefield and Haru Ji.
Corwin Chair Series Lecture: "Abstraction and Figuration in My Music" with composer Francis Dhomont
Friday, March 12, 2021 | 11 am PST | Virtual Event | Free and open to the public
Zoom link: tinyurl.com/CorwinW21 | Meeting ID: 841 2398 4807 | Passcode: Corwin
Francis Dhomont studied under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 40s, in Paris (France), he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer would later call “musique concrète” and consequently conducted solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording. Later, leaving behind instrumental writing, he dedicated himself exclusively to electroacoustic composition. An ardent proponent of acousmatics, his work (since 1963) consists exclusively of works for fixed media bearing witness to his continued interest in morphological interplay and ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.