Tag Archive | Interview

Sounding Out! Podcast #10: Interview with Theremin Master Eric Ross

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In this podcast Sounding Out! interviews Ithaca, New York theremin master Eric Ross. Eric talks here about his background in avant-garde classical music but also waxes philosophical about performance, embodiment, emotion, technology, and play. Please listen in as Eric shares his experience as a pioneer in wrangling the interfaces of electronic music and as an explorer of the theremin’s wonderful contradictions.

Check out Eric on the internet here.

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Interview with Theremin Guru Eric Ross.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES

Eric Ross (born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, USA) received his B.A. and M.A. from the State University of New York at Oneonta. He premiered his Concerto for Orchestra at Lincoln Center in New York, and released his first solo album,Songs for Synthesized Soprano, in 1982. He has written symphonies, chamber pieces and many works for solo instruments. He’s performed concerts of his original music at the Newport, Berlin, Montreux, and North Sea Jazz Festivals, the Copenhagen New Music Festival, the Kennedy Center, and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival among others worldwide.

Eric performs on piano, guitars, synthesizers, and the theremin. For over twenty years, he has led his own ensemble that has featured jazz greats John Abercrombie, Larry Coryell, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Byard Lancaster, new music virtuosos Robert Dick, Lydia Kavina, Youseff Yancy and many others. He has also played with Blues Legends Champion Jack Dupree, Lonnie Brooks, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee and appeared with BB King on Danish RTV.

With his wife, Mary Ross, Eric presents multi-media concerts of video, film, computer art, dance and music. He began playing the theremin in 1975, and has performed on radio, film and television. He has written an Overture for 14 Theremins and performed on the 1997 World Premiere of Percy Grainger’s Free Music No.1 in New York City. In 2006, he was guest artist on the No.1 Best Selling CD in Japan, Aqi Fzono’s Cosmology.

Sounding Out! Podcast Episode #4: Within a Grain of Sand

Borrowed from farm5.static.flickr.com .

Today’s entry in the Sounding Out! podcast series is a collection of interviews with sound artists from around the world. Compiled by Maile Colbert, these interviews show as much as they tell, often featuring the artists speaking in tandem with a recorded soundscape. At other moments, however; the soundscapes take on a life of their own as the artist pauses and the sonic landscape breathes.  Although Maile had discussed some of these artists’ work previously in a blog post for Sounding Out! Within a Grain of Sand, this recording seeks to investigate their work in a unique and true-to-form manner. So, listen and learn – about the practice of creating sound art.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Within a Grain of Sand

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Here are some brief biographic notes on the contributing artists:

Jen Boyd

“Under the Golden Gate”
Jen Boyd is a sound artist living in Northern CA. She spends time recording sounds in her environment and then arranges them into layered soundscapes. In these pieces, some sounds unfold naturally while others are processed. Although her work mostly relies on ‘natural’ sounds she uses a wide variety of sound sources to paint sonic pictures for the listener. Jen hopes to spark the interest in people of all ages to listen more closely to the environment they live in everyday. If you listen, you can hear some of her recordings on touchradio.org.

Eric Leonardson

“Interview” (feat: recording artists from the World Listening Day)

Eric Leonardson is a Chicago-based composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor, improvisor, visual artist, and teacher. He has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and microtones. If you are interested in learning more about Eric and his project, the World Listening Project, click this link.

Rui Costa

“Sightseeing for the Blind”

Rui Costa is a sound artist from Lisbon, Portugal. He has been publicly presenting his work since 1998. He is a founding member and artistic director of Binaural. He has performed in many venues and sound art festivals in Portugal, Spain, Italy and the United States.

and the podcast producer, compiler, and contributing artist

Maile Colbert

“Debaixo da Ponte 25 de Abril”

Maile Colbert  is an intermedia artist with a concentration on sound and video, relocated from Los Angeles and living and working between New York and Lisbon, Portugal, and teaching at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto. She spent the last two years collaborating with the art organization Binaural, and is currently director of Cross the Pond, an organization based on arts and cultural exchange between the U.S. and Portugal. She holds a BFA in The Studio for Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art, and MFA in Integrated Media/Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently in production on an interdisciplinary experimental opera based on Portuguese Maritime history, and will release two albums this year.