Composer, performer, and media artist Pamela Z will premiere a new work inspired by the Moss Arts Center’s Cube — a combined theatre and high-tech laboratory designed to support many forms of creative practice — along with her existing solo works adapted for the innovative immersive space, during a performance at 3 p.m. April 10.
Presented by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech in partnership with the School of Performing Arts, the performance will be in the Moss Arts Center’s Cube at 190 Alumni Mall.
The afternoon performance will feature works for voice with processing, samples, gesture controllers, spatialized sound, and interactive video. The event will mark the culmination of Pamela Z’s week-long visiting artist residency at Virginia Tech. She will work in collaboration with Eric Lyon, associate professor in the School of Performing Arts and Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology Fellow, to explore the spatial sound projection capabilities of the Cube.
Pamela Z is a pioneer of live digital looping techniques and processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo compositions combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and musique concrète techniques.
She uses visual programming language MaxMSP and graphic programming software Isadora on a MacBook Pro to create her work, along with custom MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures.
Her performances range from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multimedia works in theatres and concert halls. In addition, she has a growing body of inter-media gallery works, including multi-channel sound and video installations.
Pamela Z has toured throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. She has composed, recorded, and performed original scores for choreographers and film/video artists, and has received chamber music commissions from Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. Her large-scale, multimedia performance works have been presented at the Kitchen in New York, Theater Artaud and ODC Theater in San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre in Chicago, as well as at theatres in Washington, D.C., and Budapest, Hungary.
She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the ASCAP Music Award, and awards from the Creative Capital Fund the MAP Fund.
During her residency, Pamela Z will discuss her creative process and sources of inspiration with members of a graduate poetry workshop led by Erika Meitner, associate professor of English and director of Virginia Tech’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing.
Tickets for the performance are $10 for general admission and $5 for students and youth 18 years and under. Tickets can be purchased online; at the Moss Arts Center’s box office, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; or by calling 540-231-5300 during box office hours.
