Greece Is the Word, for Waschka

A new piece by composer Rodney Waschka received its world premiere and U.S. premiere in the same week.

The world premiere performance of Waschka’s A Portrait of Pablo Picasso by One of His Former Lovers, took place at the joint International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) and Sound and Music Computing Conference in Athens, Greece, on Sept. 18 as part of a concert in the former Greek Stock Market.

“Having the world premiere of the piece as part of this event is particularly exciting since the ICMC is the most important festival of computer music in the world, and one of the most significant stages for new music in general,” Waschka says.

The U.S. premiere of the electronic computer music work took place on the “Circuit Bridges” concert series sponsored by Vox Novus. The piece was performed in a concert called “Spanning I-95 South” at Gallery MC in New York City on Sept. 25.

A preview performance of A Portrait of Pablo Picasso by One of His Former Lovers was given at NC State in February.

“As planned, after that performance, I made some revisions to the piece,” Waschka says. “I changed various parts of the work, but I particularly concentrated on the ending.”

Waschka, professor of arts studies, created the music by inputting photos of two Picasso paintings and a photograph of Picasso himself into programs that interpreted the digital visual information as sonic information. He then manipulated the resultant sounds to create the piece.