Third Practice

Electroacoustic Music

Festival

university of richmond •
november 4-5, 2005 • camp concert hall

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Welcome to Third Practice 2005

Third Practice is an annual event presented by the Department of Music and the Modlin Center for
the Arts at the University of Richmond. The aim of the festival is to
present new electro-acoustic music and works for mixed media. Now in its
fifth year, the festival will present works for instruments and computer,
video, and stereo and multi-channel works for tape. In past years, Third
Practice has featured the work of composers Evan Chambers, Natasha
Barrett, Russell Pinkston, and Mario Davidovsky. For further information
on the festival, contact Benjamin
Broening.

All Third Practice concerts will take place in Camp Concert Hall, the
University of Richmond's exclusive venue for musical presentations. Our technical
specifications include a breakdown of all the equipment available to
our visiting composers, as well as concert hall specifications.

Composer In Residence:   Paul Lansky

Paul Lansky is one of
the most prominent and accessible of modern American composers who write
primarily for the medium of computer-generated sound. He has made advances
in purely technical areas, especially those of Linear Prediction Coding,
which he developed for his own first computer-generated pieces, and Cmix
(in the 1990s), a set of programs which he has made freely available. In
the areas of theory and analysis, Lansky has collaborated closely with
George Perle, a former teacher of his, in developing the latter's ideas of
"twelve-tone tonality," a way of combining serial techniques with
pitch-centered motion. Lansky is a thoughtful and articulate writer and
speaker, and has written extensively on his own music. The metaphor most
often used by Lansky to describe his use of the computer is as an "aural
microscope" (sometimes a "camera"), with which he "tries to make the
ordinary seem extraordinary, the unmusical, musical. [I] try to find
implicit music in the worldnoise around us." Like photographs, "recordings
of real-world sounds ... create a nostalgic ache in that they almost
capture events which are, in reality, gone forever," and Lansky's music
can be extremely affecting.

Ensemble In Residence:   eighth blackbird

The
Modlin Center for the Arts and the University of Richmond Music Department
are pleased to announce that eighth blackbird will appear
once again as the ensemble-in-residence at 3P05.

The members of eighth blackbird are:

Matthew Albert, violin

Molly Barth, flute

Matthew Duvall, percussion

Lisa Kaplan, piano

Michael Maccaferri, clarinet

Nicholas Photinos, violoncello

Why 'Third Practice'?

The term Seconda Pratica appeared in early 17th century Italy to
characterize the emergence of a new compositional style that represented a
departure from the modal, equal-voiced counterpoint of the Prima
Pratica. The debate between practitioners of the old and new styles
centered not only on innovative compositional techniques, but also on
shifting compositional values. The Seconda offered composers not
only new technical resources but also new ways of thinking about their
craft.

The development of electro-acoustic music in the latter half of the
20th century might be understood as a change comparable in many ways to
that of the early 17th century. While the specifics of the musical change
differ in the two cases, both musical revolutions reflect innovations in
compositional technique and practice as well new compositional goals and
values.

The Third Practice Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music explores both the
variety of the emerging electro-acoustic tradition and its relationship to
past musical practices, and is committed to presenting new work through
commissions and premieres.

design by matthew mccabe / escapement arts & media for third
practice

previous years: 2001 2002 2003 2004