ARACHNODRONE

Composer/arranger Evan Ziporyn's music has taken him from Balinese temples to concert halls around the world. He has composed for and collaborated with Maya Beiser, Yo-Yo Ma, Brooklyn Rider, Anna Sofie Von Otter, the American Composers Orchestra, Iva Bittova, Terry Riley, Don Byron, and Bang on a Can. In 2017, his arrangements were featured on Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, and on Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home. Recent conducting appearances include LA Opera, Hamburg Elbsphilharmonie, the Barcelona Symphony, and his own Boston-based Ambient Orchestra, which premiered Blackstar in 2017. At MIT he is Distinguished Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology. He studied at Eastman School of Music, Yale, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He received a Fulbright in 1987, founded Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and has composed a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan and western instruments, as well as evening-length works such as 2001's ShadowBang, 2004's Oedipus Rex (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’s A House in Bali, which was featured at BAM Next Wave in October 2010. Awards include a USA Artist Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Prize from the American Academy, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and commissions from Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program, and Meet the Composer. He co-founded the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 1992, performing with the group for 20 years. He has also recorded with Paul Simon, Christine Southworth, and the Steve Reich Ensemble (sharing in their 1998 Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance). www.ziporyn.com  

Christine Southworth (b. 1978) is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes.

Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and an M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. In 2003 she co-founded Ensemble Robot, a collaborative of artists and engineers that design and build musical robots. She has been a member of MIT-based Gamelan Galak Tika since 1999, and has composed several pieces for the group and performed at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, EMPAC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, several Bang on a Can Marathons, and the Bali International Arts Festival. In 2010, she helped design Gamelan Elektrika for her piece Supercollider, which was premiered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival with the Kronos Quartet. In addition to gamelan, she studies bagpipe, playing both the Galician Gaita and the Great Highland Bagpipe.

Southworth's compositions have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Indonesia by ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, Calder Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Semara Ratih, California EAR Unit, Andrew W.K., and Ensemble Robot. She has received awards from the American Music Center, UCross Foundation, LEF Foundation, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the MIT Eloranta Fellowship, and Bang on a Can and has been a fellow at UCross Foundation and The Hermitage Artist Retreat.

She has four recordings available on Airplane Ears Music: Zap! (2008) and Gamelan Galak Tika: Bronze Age Space Age (2009), Christine Southworth String Quartets (2013), performed by The Calder Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, and Face the Music, with support from the American Music Center CAP Recording Grant, and In My Mind and In My Car (2013), for Evan Ziporyn on bass clarinet, electronics and video. www.kotekan.com

Isabelle Su is PhD student in the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics at MIT, working under the supervision of Prof. Markus Buehler. Her research aims to understand the interplay between silk mechanics and structural mechanics of webs and its role for completing their natural functions. She is also interested in data sonification, translating structural and mechanical data of complex 3D spider webs into music as a visualization method through sound. Isabelle previously received a Master’s degree in Building Engineering at ESTP as well as a M.Eng. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT in 2015.lamm.mit.edu

Ian Hattwick is an artist, researcher, and technology developer whose work focuses on the creation and use of digital systems for professional artistic performances. With a background in music composition and performance, he is particularly interested in use of multimodal hardware systems to explore and facilitate social and embodied interaction. He received his Ph.D. from McGill University and holds degrees from the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern California. He is a lecturer of Music Technology at MIT.www.ianhattwick.com