The University of California-Santa Barbara's Ensemble for Contemporary Music, directed by Dr. Jeremy Haladyna, is the resident contemporary music ensemble for the UCSB Department of Music. Its members include outstanding student and faculty performers. Formed in 1992, it has performed to high acclaim both on campus and in the Santa Barbara community.
"The ECM is the place to go for new music." — Santa Barbara Independent
"When it comes to the sparse portions of contemporary music available in Santa Barbara, eager ears tend to lean toward UCSB, where its Ensemble for Contemporary Music presents several academic concerts each year." — Santa Barbara News Press
"The Ensemble for Contemporary Music continues to play an important role in the musical life of Santa Barbara." — Santa Barbara Independent
"This important event (New Music Festival) has quietly worked wonders over the past several years. Among the composers brought to town for past festivals are Milton Babbitt, Mel Powell, Lou Harrison, and Henry Brant." — Los Angeles Times
Dr. Jeremy Haladyna, Director
The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology was established in 1986, and is situated within the Department of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin founded CREATE and serves as its director. Dr. Curtis Roads is Associate Director.
CREATE serves as a productive environment available to students, researchers, and media artists for the realization of music and multimedia works. Courses are offered at the undergraduate and graduate levels in collaboration with several departments. The Center also serves as a laboratory for research and development of a new generation of software and hardware tools to aid in media-based composition. Their web site describes in detail the educational, research, and production activities at CREATE. CREATE is committed to maintaining the highest possible level of artistic and technological capability. Professional composers will find the Center a productive place to realize their works. Among those who have made use of our facilities are Iannis Xenakis, Thea Musgrave, and Bebe Barron.
Curtis Roads, Associate Director
Dr. Curtis Roads is Professor of Media Arts and Technology and also Associate Director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UCSB. He studied music composition and computer programming at California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego (BA Summa Cum Laude), and the University of Paris VIII (Doctorat «Très honorable avec félicitations du jury»). From 1980 to 1986 he was a researcher in computer music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the MIT Media Laboratory. He then taught at the University of Naples Federico II, Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory, CCMIX (Paris), and the University of Paris VIII. He has led masterclasses at the Australian National Conservatory (Melbourne) and the Prometeo Laboratorio (Parma), among others. He is co-organizer of international workshops on musical signal processing in Sorrento, Capri, and Santa Barbara (1988, 1991, 1997, 2000). He has served on the composition juries of the Ars Electronica (Linz) and the International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Bourges, France).
At UCSB he developed the Creatophone, a system for pluriphonic spatial projection of sound in concert, and the Creatovox, an expressive instrument for virtuoso performance in collaboration with Alberto de Campo. Roads and de Campo also developed PulsarGenerator, a widely distributed program for sound particle synthesis. Together with David Thall, he developed EmissionControl (2005), a program for generalized granular synthesis.
His composition Clang-Tint (1994) was commissioned by the Japan Ministry of Culture (Bunka-cho) and the Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo. His music is available on compact discs produced by Asphodel, MODE, OR, the MIT Media Laboratory, and Wergo.
His current research is focused on microsound synthesis (granular, pulsar, and related techniques), matching pursuit decomposition of audio signals, pluriphonic spatialization, notation and visualization of sound, and the history and aesthetics of electronic music composition.
In 2002 he won the Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for POINT LINE CLOUD, a collection of electronic music with videos by Brian O'Reilly. POINT LINE CLOUD was released on the Asphodel (San Francisco) label in 2005 and he has performed it in venues such as the Paris Planetarium, Instanbul Technical University, Venice Conservatory, Paradiso (Amsterdam), All Tomorrow's Parties UK (Camber Sands), El Rey Theater (Los Angeles), Recombinant Media Lab (San Francisco), Eastman School of Music (Rochester), Teatro Farnese (Parma), and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Belfast).