Dear colleagues:

I am pleased to invite you to the next talk in the Digital Musicology Study Group at Harvard. Please forward this announcement to anyone who might be interested. Thank you!

SASHA: Saxophone Audio Search and Heuristic Analysis
Wednesday, March 9, 5-7pm
Davison Room, Music Department
Harvard University
open to everyone


SASHA represents an attempt to collect and make easily searchable not only the recorded audio results of various instrumental techniques, extended or otherwise, but also the symbolic or “idiomatic” information necessary to encode the performance instructions which produce those sounds. We hope to provide both a set of compositional tools and materials to composers, with which they can draw harmonic and timbal connections between sonic objects, as well as reference and pedagogical tools for students and performers to aid in the assimilation of multiphonic and microtonal techniques, among others. The project will eventually be extended beyond the saxophone, perhaps necessitating an acronym adjustment.

Eliot Gattegno is the only saxophonist and one of the few Americans to ever win the “Kranichsteiner Musikpreis”, widely considered the most prestigious prize for the interpretation of new music. Mr. Gattegno
holds a Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego, a Master and Bachelor of Music degree from New England Conservatory, and a diploma from Interlochen Arts Academy. His principal teachers include Kenneth Radnofsky, Steven Schick, Marcus Weiss, William Sears, Jean-Michel Goury, Arno Bornkamp, and Jean-Marie Londeix. Mr. Gattegno is currently a Fellow at Harvard University and resides in New York City. (http://www.eliotgattegno.com)

Josiah Wolf Oberholtzer (*1984) is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, video artist and programmer. He holds a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory (2006), attended the Summer Academy at Schloss Solitude in 2007 and, since 2008, is pursuing his doctorate in composition at Harvard University. (http://www.josiahwolfoberholtzer.com)

With best wishes,
Matthias Röder