New Music + Technology Festival
Oct. 1-4, 2024
CID LLC and the Cube, Moss Arts Center

The School of Performing Arts and the Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology present the New Music + Technology Festival, showcasing the ever-broadening field of music technology, focusing on new compositions and performance systems. Please check back later for more information.

Since its inception in 2021, the New Music + Technology Festival has presented multi- and interdisciplinary performances while furthering research at the nexus of music, theatre, cinema, dance, visual art, creative coding, computer science, neuroscience, molecular biology, robotics, and cyber security.

Now in its seventh iteration, Kyle Hutchins, assistant professor of practice in saxophone and festival founder/director, says the “festival is reaching its stride as we imagine disciplines connecting in new ways, reframing what interdisciplinarity means. We can showcase the creative work that faculty and students are making at Virginia Tech, while providing a platform to support our local, national, and international colleagues.”

Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. at the Creativity and Innovation District LLC
On the first night of the festival, Jennifer Bellor will present an evening of new acoustic music. Bellor, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will play alongside Virginia Tech students as well as music faculty members John Irerra,violin; Annie Stevens Irerra, vibraphone; Alan Weinstein, cello; and Hutchins, saxophone. The repertoire, or portrait concert, will include:

  • "Indigo Nocturne," with alto sax and piano
  • "A Smile and a Sigh: Echo, Song of Flight," violin and piano
  • "Noche,’ with violin and piano
  • ‘A Grey Dream," with violin and piano
  • "Reviravoltas Sonoras," with violin, cello, and vibrafone
  • "Reflections at Dusk," with solo vibraphone and tape track
  • "Of Maker and Movement," movements 1 and 3, with percussion quartet

While in residence at Virginia Tech, Bellor will hold workshops with students and present in the School of Performing Arts’ composition seminar. Hutchins shares that Bellor is “up and coming in her field, so it is exciting to have a composer in residence who will work with students while also holding a concert centered around her music.”

Wednesday, Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. in the Cube
Ross Karre, associate professor of percussion at Oberlin College and Conservatory, will be featured on the second night of the festival, and is a “leading figure in contemporary percussion in the United States,” says Hutchins. A longtime member and former artistic director of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble, Karre will present his evening-length work, "Styrophone," which will be adapted for the Cube. The piece is a multimedia performance which includes live electronic music, vibrating resonance sculptures, and video projection with mapped imaging. The performance utilizes objects that are intended for the landfill and endows them with a creative second life as both sonic and visual art pieces.

Thursday, Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Cube
ArtX — which stands for art, research, and technology exchange — will present an interdisciplinary, film-forward projection piece by Irish artists, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, from the University of Galway. This festival screening is part of the new international, collaborative ArtX program, which is housed in ICAT. Hutchins, who additionally serves as ArtX’s director, says that the “mission of the program is to take creative scholarship and research, the study of live performance, and original works that Virginia Tech’s ICAT fellows and faculty are making for the Cube, and find new avenues to share it moving forward.”

Last April, Virginia Tech launched the first "ArtX Presents" in collaboration with McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). The screening of the film by Clinton and Moriarty at the New Music + Technology Festival is the next phase of the multi-university exchange.

In addition to presenting their film, Clinton and Moriarty will be in residence at Virginia Tech, engage with students in the living learning communities, guest teach, and present an ICAT Playdate. To complete this particular Irish exchange, Chelsea Thompto, assistant professor in creative technologies at Virginia Tech, will travel to Ireland in November to work at the Centre for Creative Technologies at the University of Galway, Burren College of Art, and the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts.

Friday, Oct. 4 at 8 p.m. in the Cube
The festival will conclude with a "Virginia Tech’s Faculty and Friends," performance. The final event will feature a variety of musical artists:

  • A composition called ‘The Fluted Bird’ by Charles Nichols, an associate professor of composition in creative technologies at Virginia Tech will be performed by Elizabeth Lantz, senior lecturer of flute at Virginia Tech.
  • Hutchins will perform a new saxophone piece by Freida Abtan, an audiovisual composer and multi-disciplinary artist from Pittsburgh. Abtan had a residency at the Cube this past summer.
  • A saxophone piece by Eric Lyon, a professor of practice at Virginia Tech, will feature Hutchins and Jeffery Loeffert, the director of the School of Performing Arts. They will perform alongside Lyon on his composition.
  • A solo set influenced by soul, dub, and R&B by Roanoke’s Sam Lunsford, aka, Stimulator Jones, will conclude the festival.