Dr Newton Armstrong

Lecturer in Composition

Centre for Music Studies

Overview

Dr Newton Armstrong is a composer, performer, and occasional builder of electronic musical instruments. His work has encompassed a diverse range of activities, including solo and collaborative performance, score-based instrumental music, projects for children, and pieces created for radio and the internet.

Much of his work is situated across and between the areas of composition and improvisation, with the focus directed towards practices of music-making that emerge in the composed interactions between people, technologies, and their environments.

His music has been featured at Darmstadt, Royaumont, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Festival of Exiles (Berlin), What is Music? (Melbourne), the Now now (Sydney), and Movement Research Festival (New York), and he has been the recipient of grants and commissions from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Network for Art and Technology, the Ian Potter Foundation, Arts Victoria, Libra, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

After completing a PhD. at Princeton University (2006), he taught in the Music Department and Graduate Program in Electroacoustic Music at Dartmouth College (2006-8). He joined City University as a Research Fellow in January 2009, where he's developing an extended performance project in collaboration with ELISION ensemble.

Research interests

• composition
• improvisation
• issues of human agency, embodiment, and intentionality in electroacoustic and improvised music
• phenomenological and cognitive aspects of listening and performance
• formal theories and models of musical structure and behaviour
• software and hardware design and development
• interdisciplinarity and collaborative process
  
  

Publications

Beacon Event. With Maria Chavez, David Linton, Stephan Moore, Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Richard Serra Sculpture Room, DIA:Beacon Galleries (Beacon, NY), July 2008.

Variations on a Door. With Jennifer Mesch and Nate Wooley. Movement Research Festival, Judson Church (New York, NY), June 2008.

The Un-Australian Tour. With Will Guthrie and Howard Stelzer. Bowerbird, Borowsky Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Sigogglin, Fotòfono (Brooklyn, NY); ffmup, McAlpin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ); Live Constructions, WKCR-FM (New York, NY); Semata Productions, The Piano Craft Guild (Boston, MA), May 2008.

An Enactive Approach to Digital Musical Instrument Design: Theory, Models, Techniques. Book. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2007.

Selected recent performances

Beacon Event. With Maria Chavez, David Linton, Stephan Moore, Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Richard Serra Sculpture Room, DIA:Beacon Galleries (Beacon, NY), July 2008.

Variations on a Door. With Jennifer Mesch and Nate Wooley. Movement Research Festival, Judson Church (New York, NY), June 2008.

The Un-Australian Tour. With Will Guthrie and Howard Stelzer. Bowerbird, Borowsky Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Sigogglin, Fotòfono (Brooklyn, NY); ffmup, McAlpin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ); Live Constructions, WKCR-FM (New York, NY); Semata Productions, The Piano Craft Guild (Boston, MA), May 2008.

The Way to Go Out. With Anthea Caddy, Robin Hayward, Christian Wolff, Larry Polansky. Spheris Gallery (Hanover, NH), November 2007.

Dartmouth Festival of New Musics. With Nate Wooley, Timothy Feeney.  Faulkner Recital Hall (Hanover, NH), May 2007.
With Nate Wooley, Cor Fuhler. Issue Project Room (New York, NY), Nave Gallery (Boston, MA), May 2006.

Cross Currents. With Seth Cluett, Scott Smallwood. Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA), April 2006.
With Nate Wooley, Alex Waterman. Deep Listening Space (Kingston, NY), The Knitting Factory (New York, NY), The Red Room (Baltimore, MD), a/v space (Rochester, NY), November 2005.

ffmup. With Mike Bullock, Nate Wooley, Alex Waterman, Dale Gorfinkel. Terrace Club (Princeton, NJ), November 2005.
With John Butcher. Taplin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ), April 2005.

Magnetophone. With Will Guthrie. Atelier Tampon (Paris), January 2005.

Kraakgeluiden in de Binnenstad. With Gert-Jan Prins, Steve Heather, Alex Waterman, Marko Cicilliani, Jan-Bas Bollen. Overtoom 301 (Amsterdam), January 2005.
With Chris Abrahams, Clayton Thomas. Impulse Response, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY),  Phonomena, Tonic (New York, NY), Flywheel (Easthampton, MA), Midway (Jamaica Plain, MA), The True Vine (Baltimore, MD), July 2004.

What is Music? With Tim O'Dwyer, Cor Fuhler. Iwaki Auditorium (Melbourne), February 2004.

Melbourne International Festival of Improvised Music. With Robin Fox, Robbie Avenaim. Make It Up Club (Melbourne), February 2004.

The Now Now Festival of Improvised Music. With Joel Stern. Lan Franchis Discotheque (Sydney), January 2004.

Selected works

Q. What's red and invisible? A. No Tomatoes. or, 'Their ear is uncircumcised.' (Jeremiah 6:10). In collaboration with Chris Mann and Barbara Bloom. First performance: The Not Operas, Frist Performance Theatre (Princeton, NJ), December 2004.

Unsaying. In collaboration with Melissa Madden Gray. First performance: Taplin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ), May 2003.

Space Monkeys. In collaboration with Princeton Young Achievers. First performance: Taplin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ), May 2002.

April, May. First performance: Listening in the Sound Kitchen, Taplin Auditorium (Princeton, NJ), November 2001.

Geology. In collaboration with Timothy O'Dwyer. First performance: Trades Hall (Melbourne), August 2001.

Stone. First performance: New Music Lighthouse Ensemble. Sydney Opera House, August 1998.

Site. First performance: Line of Site, LIBRA ensemble. Westspace Gallery (Melbourne), October 1996.

So large and smooth and round (says Wilhelmine). First performance: Ensemble Accroche Note. Abbaye de Royaumont (France), August 1994.

Three points in an expression machine. First performance: Ensemble Fa. Festival d'Automne à Paris, November 1993.

Two Studies in Presence. First performance: Friedrich Gauwerky. ABC Studios (Adelaide), August 1993.

Cool amber gliding. First performance: Christina Bott. Darmstadt Summer School (Germany), July 1992.
Selected Publications

An Enactive Approach to Digital Musical Instrument Design: Theory, Models, Techniques. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2007.

'When Music Resists Meaning: The Major Writings of Herbert Brün'. The Open Space 6, 2004.

'Ted Coffey: Georgia, etc.' The Open Space 5, 2003.

'Two by Four Tangents to a Text by Chris Mann'. HEAT 1, 1996.

'Adaptable Dogma (1-4)'. Sounds Australian Journal 46, 1995.