Scott Deal

Sick Puppy Percussionists from left: John Andress, Gary Donald, Stephen Drury, Scott Deal, Stuart Gerber, Cory Bracken, Dave Tarantino, Jeff Kolega, Sayun Chang, Ryan Packard, Christian Smith. Not pictured: Jeffrey Means.

The New England Conservatory Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, affectionately known to its participants as “Sick Puppy” was held at New England Conservatory in Boston June 18-25.  SICPP is an 8-day immersion into new and experimental music for advanced and professional musicians. SICPP began in the 1990’s when Artistic Director Stephen Drury, himself a concert pianist who specializes in new music, decided to create a contemporary music performance seminar for his advanced students.  In the 2000’s Drury, gradually began to add composers, percussionists, vocalists and instrumentalists. It has now grown to include an Ensemble Program, an Electronic Music Workshop, and the New Works Program, which is a workshop where composers have the opportunity to study with the Composer-in-Residence (this year, the French composer Tristan Murial). » Read the rest of this entry «

Peter Kates (onstage, Norway) Scott Deal (onscreen, Indiana)

On April 27, I performed online in concert with Peter Kates, of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Bergen Norway. The work was “Response 1″ by Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim, for two percussionists and electronic tape. The concert was a recital in Norway presented by Peter and this work was on the program. I performed from the Tavel Lab at IUPUI, Indianapolis.

Big Robot was awarded an Indiana Arts and Humanities Institutes (at IUPUI) grant.  This funding gift has been awarded for the production of the upcoming Big Robot DVD, due for release in 2012. The DVD will be a combination of music and video graphics composed by the ensemble, and represents their current concert repertoire.  For more information on Big Robot, please visit their website.

Harpist Erzsébet Gaál Rinne and myself collaborated on a duo concert on March 24th, featuring works for harp and percussion and electronics. » Read the rest of this entry «

Big Robot presented a concert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on April 14. We premiered Jordon Munson’s new video for our piece Noir. The following day I had a great time with the percussion professors Bill Moersch and Ricardo Flores, and their students, in a clinic presentation on percussion and interactive music.

ZeroSpace was presented by the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Organized by Matthew Burtner, the event included Chris Chafe of Stanford University, the Interactive Media Research Group, the Telematic Collective, Margaret Dolinsky, Christopher Burns, and myself. Photo: Nick Hartgrove performs Deconstructions #4 (M. Drews, 2011) online from Indiana with the composer and myself onstage in Milwaukee.

Concert at the IEEE 2010 Cloud Computer Conference, featuring Big Robot with the computer artistry of Margaret Dolinsky, IUPUI Convention and Conference Center on Thursday, December 2, Indianapolis. Photo Couresty of Hang Yu

Big Robot (Michael Drews, Jordan Munson and myself), presented at the opening Gala of Supercomputing 2010 by the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute.  New Orleans is a great town…and the crowd at SC was lots of fun.

Auksalaq at Ear to the Earth Festival. Photo: Jill Steinberg LLC

A 45 minute concert version of the Auksalaq was performed in New York on October 31 as part of the Electonic Music Foundation’s Ear to the Earth Festival.  Joan LABarbara as singer/narrator, with the NYU New Music Ensemble (Esther Lamneck), and Percussion Ensemble (Jonathan Haas).  Also featured was pianist Shiau-Uen Ding, Flautists Margaret Lancaster and Yael Acher and Shawn Phillip Arawjo.  Jordan Munson, Matthew Burtner and myself created the media, spread across three screens.  The media included live manipulation of photo sets, movies, animations and interviews on the opera’s theme, Arctic Climate Change. For more information on the opera, visit the website