James Bohn, Editor
Its been an eventful year here on the fifth floor. Redesign and construction of Studios A and D have been progressing, and CMP recently acquired a new Silicon Graphics O2 System machine. Also, this year we've been fortunate to add a new face to the electronic music scene, Guy Garnett. Before coming to Urbana, Professor Garnett was the director of The Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) Ensemble, a new music ensemble focusing on the use of technology in performance. Before that, he was an engineer at Yamaha Music Technologies.
A good portion of this issue is devoted to James Beauchamp and John Melby, both of whom retired from the University of Illinois at the end of this past semester. Professor Beauchamp has been a driving force behind the Computer Music Project since its formation in the mid eighties. John Melby has been an active composer of computer music since his years at Princeton.
I've enjoyed being the editor of the EMS / CMP notes this year. Its been a rewarding experience for me. I'm very pleased with the cooperation I've gotten from faculty, staff, and students. If anyone would like the experience of putting together the newsletter, please approach me by August.
I would like to begin by honoring Professors James Beauchamp and John Melby as they have announced their retirement from teaching at the end of this academic year. Let there be no doubt that both have significantly contributed to the field of computer music and have established themselves as international leaders within their respective fields. Both have given thousands of hours to their students and together have dedicated a total of 55 years of teaching as faculty members while at the University of Illinois.
Professor James Beauchamp is considered internationally to be one of the top musical acousticians. He developed the Harmonic Tone Generator (one of the first voltage- controlled electronic music synthesizers) in 1964. He was a visiting Research Associate at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1968-69. He has served as director of the School of Music Experimental Music Studios (1969-72), the Hybrid Computer Project - PLACOMP music synthesizer (1973-81), and the Computer Music Project (1984-93). He is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society and member of the Acoustical Society of America, where he serves on the ASA's Technical Committee on Musical Acoustics. He was co-editor and author of Music by Computers (1969), and an advisory editor for Interface (1976-90). He is former president and member of the Board of Directors of the Computer Music Association and co-organized two International Computer Music Conferences at the UIUC School of Music in 1975 and 1987. And in his spare time he has produced 31 concerts of electronic and computer music at UIUC and has published numerous articles in professional journals on audio, acoustics, and computer music.
Professor John Melby is internationally known for his instrumental music as well as music written for computer- synthesized tape, either in combination with live performers or for tape alone. His compositions have won numerous awards and have been widely performed both in the United States and abroad. In 1978 he received and NEA commission grant, and in 1979 he was awarded first prize at the 7th International Electroacoustic Music Competition in Bourges, France. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983, an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984, and an associateship in the University Center for Advanced Study in 1989-90. Professor Melby received a 1993 Research Board Grant for score preparation of his Symphony No. 1 and in 1995 he received another Research Board grant to record his Alto Rhapsody for Saxophone and Tape and his Concerto for Clarinet and Tape. His music is published by American Composers Edition, Margun Music, Inc., and Theodore Presser Co., and is recorded on the CRI, Advance, New World, Centaur, and Zuma labels.
And while Professors Beauchamp and Melby are departing from their usual classroom encounters, we can be assured that Professor Beauchamp will continue his research activity and Professor Melby will expand his compositional time and achievements. I am most appreciative to have had the opportunity to work with them both, and I wish to thank them for their many, many contributions.
Dr. James Bohn was recently awarded his D.M.A. in composition from the University of Illinois, and we wish him our sincere congratulations on this achievement. Jim has served as editor of this Newsletter for the past two years and has done a marvelous job with his writing, editing, and motivating others to participate. Jim's energy and enthusiasm has been infectious to all around him. Jim's dedication, participation and creative output continues to serve as a role model for other students. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Jim for all of his efforts with this Newsletter and with the EMS Computer Music Project.
This year has been an exciting and active one full of compositional activity, course revision work, concerts, installation of some new equipment and renovations of facilities. Studio D was finally completed after many hours of work by Mike Pounds, Chin-Chin Chen, John Dahlstedt, Qiong Liu, Bub Phillippe and myself solving grounding incompatibilities. Four additional channels of audio playback were added to the existing Studio D system now allowing for 8 channel audio work. Both Professor Guy Garnett and I received research grants that required additional renovations within the Studios to accommodate the proposed work. This resulted in moving the previous EMS Workshop into two smaller rooms (rm. 5094 - now called EMS Operations Support and rm. 5084 now called EMS Service Center), and then creating Studio X (rm. 5089) for Professor Garnett's interactive electronics research and my eight-channel sound projection work. These moves and renovations were completed by late January. Preparations then immediately began for Cyberfest. +522 Composers and Computers: an ongoing collaboration was the School of Music contribution to the Cyberfest calendar of events. The concert was performed in the Tryon Festival Theatre of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on March 12 and included Lejaren Hiller's Computer Cantata, Herbert Brun's U-TURN-TO, James Bohn's Implosion, John Melby's Layers, Chin-Chin Chen's Points of Departure, Heinrich Taube's 2nd movement of Swansongs, Sever Tipei's Curses, Andrew Walters's Moth to Flame, Erik Lund's Planes, Terrains & Auto-mobiles, and my recent work, s.
While much of the above activity was being pursued, the production of another EMS compact disc recording was in the making and was completed this May. The disc, waveFORMation, includes works by Richard Power, Brett Terry, James Bohn, Donnacha Dennehy, Andrew Walters, Benjamin Grosser, Chin-Chin Chen, and Christopher Preissing. The discs are being mailed to more than 500 universities and art centers throughout the electro-acoustic music world.
And as the 96-97 academic year comes to a close we are now immersed in renovating Studios A and B. With the help of Chin-Chin Chen, Mike Pounds, John Dahlstedt, John Wu, Qiong Liu, Derek Hurst, Jim Kilbourne, Paul Oehlers, and even Richard Freeman-Toole, we plan to complete all renovations by the first or second week of Fall semester classes. We look forward to working in our new facilities and to another year of creative activity.