UMBC's Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents Pamela Z, who will give an artist talk. (The artist will also give a public performance on April 1.)

Through video and audio examples and live demonstration, composer/performer and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z will share her work and her process and will discuss the increasingly blurred lines between disciplines in her practice. Highlighting her use of voice, processing, gesture-based MIDI controllers, video, found objects, and sampled speech sounds, she will illustrate the various directions her work has taken over the years and offer a preview of what she’s working on now.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. In addition to her solo work, she has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Ethel, and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Her interdisciplinary performance works have been presented at venues including The Kitchen (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations have been presented at such exhibition spaces as the Whitney (NY), the Diözesanmuseum (Cologne), and the Krannert (IL). Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can (New York), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Dak’Art (Sénégal) and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She is a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize, United States Artists, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Guggenheim, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Herb Alpert Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Please register to attend this free event.

Image: Pamela Z performing at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Photo: rubra (courtesy of Ars Electronica).