The Undeniable Truth About Women Composers That No One is Telling You As an undergraduate music major, I did not find it unusual that after four exhausting semesters of music history, I had only studied a handful of talented women involved in composition. The usual names popped up - Clara Schumann , Fanny Mendelssohn, and Amy Beach. Of these women, only one, Amy Beach, was not associated with a famous male composer. After graduate studies in music, I realized the importance of studying women in music, notably contemporary living composers. I had been fortunate to be mentored by Clare Shore , Kristine Burns, and Pauline Oliveros. For more in-depth studies on women in western music, I suggest Burns' Women and Music in the US Since 1900: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2002), Dr. Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner's Crossing the Line: Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States , the Kaprova Society's Women Composer Database, and the International Alliance for Wome...

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE CANADIAN MUSIC CENTRE 'S CAROL ANN WEAVER 1. What are 3 words that describe your music? genre-bending, African-influenced, jazz-inflected 2. Share your major influences and overall style. My major influences have been Medieval and Renaissance music as wells music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven Brahms, Charles Ives , Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok , African jazz, minimalist music including music by Ann Southam, Meredith Monk , Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass, as well as jazz/folk/roots music.  My current style reflects all of this, fusing many of these sounds together. 3. What are you working on now?  I am working on a multi-media piece, Earth Voices, to be premiered at Mennonite/s Writing Conference in California, March 2015, pairing earth-themed writings with soundscapes and recorded compositions of mine. 4. What piece of advice would you give your younger you today? Listen to music at least 200 years old.  Assume this is your only sound....

What is MIDI? MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface The MIDI language allows different electronic instruments and computer interfaces to "talk" to each other. Before the invention of MIDI, musicians had a difficult time syncing up their instrument set-ups because the instruments were not compatible with each other. MIDI was developed in 1982 and was shared freely as open source. Today most music studios and professional software programs operate off of MIDI. At first MIDI sounds were limited to 127 specific sounds that you would most likely recognize from some of the earliest video games of the 1980s. Ghostbusters Atari Music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDjALoIeKU Composers like Laurie Anderson took MIDI and found new ways to express music and art through technology like the Drum Suit, samplers, CD -Rom, vocoder, and video. Puppet Motel CD Rom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPYOSLqN5Ns O Superman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd7XnOnSkkA Pa...

Image via Wikipedia Music Technology : The Great Democratizer Lecture from the November 9th Lecture/Recital Murray State University IAWM Electronic Music Concert 2010 Today I had several different routes I could follow for this electronic music concert. 1) Number 1. I could hum, hah, and harangue about the injustices in the world. I could give you one example after another about how difficult it is being a composer who is also a woman, who is also young, who is also Latina. I could whine and weep and exhort you to understand the plight of young girls and talented women who face adversity each day when they attempt to convince professional orchestras and opera companies to play their music. But the truth is : who cares about the few hundred women who have difficulty having a symphony performed when there are billions of women being denied basic inalienable human rights, even the right to be born. Their only crime? XX not XY. 2) Option Number 2. I could give you a his...

"History is the story of an angel being blown backwards into the future." - Laurie Anderson Intermedia - the copulation of the art forms. Movement accompanies sound and the visual in an overstimulation of the senses. Once orchestrated with analogue tape, static images, and inexplicable actions, current intermedia art encompasses logorhythmic music, digital video, and virtual reality. As Dick Higgins described in his landmark, "Statement of Intermedia," in 1966, intermedia exists "between the media" (1) . Though often considered a visual art medium, the role of music and sound proves to be essential components of many artworks. Technology has accelerated creative expression as ideas, once existing only the in the mind, can exist in a tangible form. Music has embraced the digital world. Out of circuitry and imaginiation the next musical age evolves. No survey of contemporary culture can begin without a comprehensive look at the history that gave birth ...