The lecture will take place in TANNA SCHULICH HALL, followed by a catered reception in the lobby of the Elizabeth Wirth Music Building. This event is free and open to the general public.

Registration

No registration is required for this event.

**CIRMMT Students wishing to have their attendance tracked for awards eligibility, please make sure to scan the QR code available at the entrance of Tanna Schulich Hall.

Abstract

This lecture tells the story of creativity through patching, of real time solutions for timeless problems, of musicality through interactivity, and complexity emerging from layers of simplicity, of the quest for perfection and the acceptance of error, of controlling musical parameters and mapping gestural controllers, of using cameras to capture movement and digital instruments to move sound, of activating space and spending time…

I will explore my musical practice over the last 35 years through a series of Max patches – modular environments for interaction, and real time processing, algorithms of structured randomness et determinant sequences, camera tracking and karlax mapping. Patches for composition and performance, spatialization and synthesis, audio analysis and human interaction… and maybe even just for fun.

Biography

Born in California, living in France most of his career, Tom Mays is a composer, computer musician, teacher and researcher – head professor of electroacoustic composition and computer music at the Strasbourg Academy of Music of the Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin. He also teaches computer music to NYU-Paris students at Ircam. He proposes seminars, masterclasses and workshops, and develops real time musical creation environments. He composes and improvises various forms of electroacoustic music, with and without instruments, for real time systems, gestural controllers and DMI’s (such as Karlax and camera tracking). He composes for concert, interactive installations and music for dance, theater and film – with works commissioned and supported by various studios, organizations and ensembles in France and internationally, such as the centers for musical creation La Muse en Circuit and Césaré, the CIRM, Fabrique Nomade, Didascalie.net, Radio France, Voix de Stras’ and Les Percussions de Strasbourg.

He collaborated on the creation of CNCM Césaré in Reims, spent 10 years at Ircam as a computer musician, taught 14 years of computer music in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and developed several environments for real time musical creation (most recently: CRT). He is associate researcher with the University of Strasbourg’s CREAA research unit and is currently president of the Association for the Teachers of Electroacoustic Music Composition (Aecme) in France.