[Image: Still from Mary Lucier’s Summer, or Grief] On November 15, 2007, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College will celebrate its 40+ year with works by Robert Ashley, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, James Fei, David Behrman, Chris Brown and Pauline Oliveros. The event will take place at Roulette, New York City at 8:00 pm.

Since its inception (1966), the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) has played a leading role in the development of electronic music practices in the US. It was the first publicly accessible electronic music studio on the West coast, and in the early 70s the first site where computers were used in musical performances, predating the laptop music era by over three decades.

Among its many accomplishments, it collaborated with Turbulence.org and Harvestworks on Loose Ends/ Connections (1998), a live, distributed performance that explored uses of sound in a networked collaboration with eight composer/musicians. Streamed live to the web, the performance originated from three locations: Mills College, Oakland, CA; and Harvestworks and the Morton Street Studio, New York City. A slide show of video stills from Mary Lucier’s 1998 Summer, or Grief with text from A Conversation by Allen Grossman accompanied the performance. Performances from Mills College and Harvestworks were streamed via RealAudio to the Morton Street Studio, where they were mixed with live music and sound from the performers there and streamed by RealAudio back to the web. The performers were: Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, and Brenda Hutchinson - Mills College; Beth Coleman and Zeena Parkins - Harvestworks; and Scott Rosenberg, Helen Thorington, and Jesse Gilbert - Morton Street Studios. The group collaborated a second time on Feedback. [NMR blogger Peter Traub included both in Chapter III: The Aesthetics of Bits and Pieces and Other Web Based Art.]

Presented by Interpretations, 40+ year Celebration of The Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College will pay homage to the CCM’s legacy with performances by pioneers in electronic music as well as by a younger generation of composers currently working at the center. The program will feature five N.Y. premieres, including excerpts from David Behrman’s new solo work, Long Throw; Robert Ashley’s pre-recorded electro-acoustic piece, Hidden Similarities; John Bischoff’s Decay Trace (for laptop computer and small metal objects); Maggi Payne’s pre-recorded electro-acoustic piece, Distant Thunder; and a duet, Improvisation, by Pauline Oliveros (accordion) and Chris Brown (piano and electronics). The evening will also include James Fei’s The Nerve Meter (for microphones and frequency-shifted feedback).