The Glance: A Laptopera

Curtis Ullerich is interested in the expression of live physical gesture as musical gesture, with forays into live coding, fixed-medium and improvisational electroacoustic music, interface/instrument design, and symbolic systems. Curtis has performed with myriad ensembles on saxophone, electronics, and trombone, including the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Wind Symphony, Stanford Saxophone Choir, SCU’s SCLOrk, the Google Mobile Orchestra led by Dan Iglesia, and now SideLObe/SLOrk; he joined Sideband at PdCon 2016 and their 2018 west coast tour. He showcased his undergrad honors thesis work in music HCI (contributions to Virtual Environment Sound Control, PI Dr. Christopher Hopkins) at SEAMUS 2013.

Selected projects are at curtis.in/projects/music.

By day, Curtis is a software engineer at Google, where he builds platforms for teaching young people STEM, with an emphasis on symbolic math systems. At other times, you can find him making music, splitting firewood, volunteering with 4-H, or running an ultra.

Kim Anno is a painter, photographer, author, and film/video artist whose work has been collected and exhibited by museums nationally and internationally. Her recent interests and expertise have been in the intersection of art and science, particularly in aesthetic issues surrounding climate change, water, and adaptation. She is currently working on “¡Quba!”, her first feature documentary film, and “90 Miles From Paradise,” a film about adaptation to sea level rise for both southern Florida and Havana, Cuba. The influence of abstraction and abstracting something remains prominent in Anno’s practice, with resulting work that remains “open, playful, and engaged with a difficult ephemeral beauty.” Anno’s work has been collected by SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Museum, Honolulu Academy of Fine Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Crocker Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Columbia University Library, University of Texas, Austin, Getty Research Institute, Goethe Institute, among others. https://www.kimanno.com/

Since 2005, NYC choreographer Carrie Ahern has used the medium of the body to investigate spaces of taboo with her dance company: Carrie Ahern Dance. She has a reputation for extensive research combined with an ability to make viewers deeply uncomfortable and comfortable simultaneously. Current multi-year project: “Sex Status” series (2018-present), performed in private homes, open to the public, that seeks to expose women in their sexual and quotidian lives. For her multi-year project about modern death “Borrowed Prey” (2011-2016) Ahern learned to hunt, butcher and slaughter animals to learn more about the animals we consume and worked as a hospice volunteer. “Ahern’s choreography is striking and original…powerful” The New Yorker Ahern has collaborated with Anne Hege since 2009 beginning with “SeNSATE” (2009)–a 3 hour, multi-floored performance installation; “Borrowed Prey: Part I” (2012) & “II”(2013); and “Carnal Spill” (2022). www.carrieahern.com

Carmina Escobar (b.1981) is a Los Angeles-based extreme vocalist, improviser, and intermedia artist whose work pushes the boundaries of voice, sound, and performance. Through visceral sonic explorations, she delves into the emotional, political, ritual, and communal dimensions of human experience––challenging conventional ideas of musicality, gender, queerness, race, language, and the foundations of human communication. As an immigrant from Mexico, Escobar’s practice is deeply rooted in interstitial states––those liminal spaces between worlds, identities, and borders. Her performances, installations, and film/video works create immersive encounters where voice becomes a force of disruption, connection, and transformation. She has presented her work across Mexico, Cuba, Europe, the USA, and Canada, appearing at festivals and venues such as PST:LA/LA, Fábrica de ARte (HVN), Machine Project (LA), CTM Festival (BRL), REDCAT (LA), The Broad (LA), Borealis Festival (NO), The Kitchen (NY), The Whitney Museum (NY), LACE (LA), MACO (OAX), and MMAPO Morelense Folk Art Museum (MOR), among many others. Her deep commitment to experimentation and research has led her to prestigious artist residencies, including Montalvo (SF), STEIM (AMS), Binaural (PT), OMI (NY) the Electroacoustic Music Studio in Kraków (PL), iPark (CT), Echo Park Film Center (LA), Fonoteca Nacional (MX), Indexical (SCR), The MacDowell Residency (NH), BEMIS Center (OMA), The Hermitage Residency (FL), and the Chinati Foundation (Marfa, TX).

Praised as “an excellent and impassioned” soprano possessing “a graceful tonal clarity that is a wonder to hear” (San Francisco Chronicle), Michele Kennedy is a versatile specialist in early and new music. Her recent venues include Carnegie Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, and Washington National Cathedral. She is a Winner of the 2023 American Prize in Voice. A lifelong advocate of new works, Michele has sung premieres with Experiments in Opera, Harlem Stage Opera, Seraphic Fire, Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, The Crossing, and The New York Philharmonic. This year, she is traveling with Lorelei Ensemble in a world premiere tour of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story – an outspoken celebration of women’s civil rights – in concert with the Nashville, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston Symphony Orchestras, culminating with the National Symphony in her debut at The Kennedy Center. Michele completed her musical studies at Yale University, Yale School of Music, and NYU. A lover of Redwood groves and Bay vistas, she lives with her husband, visual artist Benjamin Thorpe, and their adventurous daughter, Audra May.

Bass-baritone Sidney Chen, whose voice has been described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “expressive and richly mellifluous,” is passionate about creating new work through collaboration with artists of all disciplines. Recent projects include touring with ODC/Dance as a guest performer in KT Nelson’s Path of Miracles; premiering Ryan Brown’s theatricalized “medical oratorio” Mortal Lessons; collaborating with the Friction Quartet on a program of new works for vocal quartet and string quartet; and creating the role of Alex in Lisa Mezzacappa’s serial podcast opera The Electronic Lover. As a member of iconic composer/choreographer Meredith Monk’s Vocal Ensemble, he has performed in Monk’s music-theater work On Behalf of Nature, which toured internationally and was recorded for ECM Records. With the San Francisco Symphony he traveled to Carnegie Hall to premiere Monk’s chamber work Realm Variations. He is a co-founder of The M6, a New York-based vocal sextet, which has been heard on NPR and featured in The New York Times. In his hometown of San Francisco, he regularly performs with the new-music chorus Volti, and is a member of the acclaimed nine-man ensemble Clerestory. His solo performances often include his DIY music boxes, which were featured in a SF Chronicle Datebook cover story. sidneychenarts.com

Daniel Iglesia creates music and media for humans, computers, and broad interactions of the two. His works have taken the form of concert works for instruments and electronics, live audio and video performance, generative and interactive installations, and collaborations theater and dance. He is an accomplished technologist, and brings ideas of computational aesthetics and elegance into the combination of electronic media and human performance. His work has been presented throughout New York City in such diverse venues as Lincoln Center, Eyebeam Gallery, The Stone, the Kitchen, and many others. It has also been presented at concerts and festivals throughout the US and abroad, including the Experimental Media Series at the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington D.C.), Art.Tech@The Lab (San Francisco), the Hamburger Klangwerktage (Hamburg), the Guangdong Modern Dance Festival (Guangzhou), and the World Expo 2010 (Shanghai). His concert works have been performed by the California EAR Unit, So Percussion, the SEM Ensemble, the Talea Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Ostravska Banda, and many others. He has a doctorate in Music Composition at Columbia, where he spent a lot of time at the Columbia Computer Music Center. His writings have appeared in the Cambridge Journal Organised Sound. He has taught at Columbia, Pratt, and Princeton, where he was the 2010-2011 co-leader of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk). He recently gave a talk on PLOrk at the TEDx conference in Brooklyn, and is now a member of their permanent touring ensemble, Sideband. He is the recipient of the 2011 Van Lier Fellowship from Meet the Composer. He recently moved back to the SF Bay Area and works for Google.