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Good questions are always more interesting than their answers. “What does the cello sound like?” seeks a factual, closed response, which most of us could easily produce in fairly short order. Through her work, however, Bay Area-based composer and Guggenheim Fellow Theresa Wong poses a much more adventurous and generative inquiry: “What can the cello sound like?” Wong has spent years honing a…

Air Pressure is a companion piece to last year’s Room40 release Atmospheres and Disturbances, in which Philip Samartzis explored the sounds of sub-zero research stations.  The new album pairs him with Michael Vorfeld, whose percussion and self-designed string instruments operate in duet with the Eastern Antarctic environment, creating a sonic third space. The sounds of the Antarctic can be sudden…

One of the season’s most fascinating projects is also a piece of physical art, and well it should be, as Material Prosody examines the materiality of sound.  Whether one holds the physical edition or simply views it, one can grasp the concept in an instant: matter affects sound.  The materials used in mHz‘s USB-powered sound sculpture are aluminum, brass, copper, steel, concrete and wood.  An…

Olivia Block - Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea

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