A free multimedia variety show will be held this weekend to showcase experimental music and digital media, integrative arts professor Mark Ballora said.
The show, Cross Currents, will feature a series of five- to 10-minute performances by Penn State students and faculty at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in 16 Borland Lab. New York University professors and students will also take part.
Ballora, the event's organizer, said the event gives people who are working in these fields an opportunity to present their work to students.
"No one else is doing this kind of thing at Penn State," he said.
The event will also offer a combination of different mediums, Brian Edwards (graduate-music performance) said.
"The concert promotes the use of acoustic instruments played along with more electronic, synthesized instruments or in conjunction with a computerized visual display," Edwards said. "So it's pretty cool."
Ballora said he got the idea to do the show from his days at NYU, where his professor Robert Rowe had been putting on similarl concerts.
"I got the idea four years ago and brought in people from Princeton," Ballora said. "People kept asking about it after that so we've done it every year since. It's been very successful in the past."
This year, however, Ballora's former professor will be present for the first time -- showcasing his compositions along with those of fellow NYU professor Esther Lamneck and four of his students.
"One of the pieces features Lamneck playing clarinet into a microphone from which the signal travels into a computer with interactive analyzing software that I wrote," Rowe said. "The software gives the signal modification and amplification sort of like effect pedals, though there is a sampling function as well, and the software improvises and creates something different each performance."
Other performances will include a piece that Edwards will perform called "For Tuba and Soundscape Continuum" by freelance composer Coleman Webster.
"The piece was commissioned and written for me and this will only be the second time it's ever been performed," Edwards said. "It has some very dissonant parts but also parts with a definite groove. It's definitely out there in terms of the amount of sounds going on."
Jason Johnson (senior-music performance and integrative arts) will perform his own version of a piece called "Fnugg" by tubaist Øystine Baadsvik.
"The piece features a technique called multiphonics, which involves playing more than one pitch at once," Johnson said, adding he'll play the piece on his MacBook and images will be projected on a screen that correlate to his music.
The event was organized with help from the School of Music, the College of Arts and Architecture and the School of Theatre and also received funding from the University Park Allocation Committee, Ballora said.
"It was nice how everything comes together for the concert -- everyone shows up and adds something else," he said. "It's also good getting the students working together from different schools."
