Join Matt Sargent, Ben Luca Robertson, & Aaron Michael Butler for an evening of actuated strings, microtonal guitar, percussion, & bespoke instrumentation.
Matt Sargent is a composer, guitarist, recording engineer, and music technology specialist based in upstate New York, where he is an assistant professor of music at Bard College. His music grows from resonance, memory, the making/breaking of patterns, and computer models of musical thought. Working between the concert stage, the recording studio, and the code box, Sargent’s audio technology has been called “a veritable fountain of intensifying, kaleidoscopic spumes” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp). Over the last decade, his work has focused extensively on musical algorithms and real-time notation systems, which can be heard in his compositions and technical collaborations with other artists.
Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, sound artist, experimental luthier, educator, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. As a practicing artist, he employs a variety of instrumental and electronic forces, including chamber ensembles, generative algorithms, analog circuits, and handmade instrumentation. The bulk of his projects address an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems — often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound and place, just intonation, spectral tuning structures, and microtonality. Ben lives and works in rural eastern Washington, where he teaches & directs Eastern Washington University’s Music Technology program.
Aaron Michael Butler is a percussionist, composer, and educator based in Seattle. His work often deals in static textures, repetition, durational stamina, resonance, and psychoacoustic effects.