Composer, performer, and improviser Earl Howard presents a solo performance.
Curtis Roads is a pioneer of electronic and computer music and the first person to realize granular synthesis on a computer in 1974. A student of Iannis Xenakis and Morton Subotnick, Roads performs his latest spatialized electronic work. The set explores Roads’ continuing fascination with microsound, as described in his book of the same name (Microsound, 2001, The MIT Press) as well as analog techniques such as tape-echo feedback. The performance includes visualizations by his longtime video collaborator Brian O’Reilly.
“Roads has an exceptional gift.” –Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Earl Howard has been performing his compositions in the United States and Europe for over fifty years. His recent compositions include music for live electronics, electronic tape music as well as music for electronics and instruments. Earl Howard’s method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition. Howard has performed at numerous venues including Merkin Hall, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Roulette, and Carnegie Recital Hall. In 2011 Earl Howard received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2004 his first sound installation was commissioned for the Tiffany Collection at the Queens Museum of Art. In the spring of 2003 Howard had a Regents Fellowship at UCSD. Howard received three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. In 1998 Howard was the recipient of Harvard’s Fromm Foundation Commission. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts in Music Composition in 1974.
Curtis Roads is Professor Emeritus at UCSB. He also taught at the University of Naples Federico II, Harvard, Oberlin, IRCAM, and the University of Paris 8. A co-founder of the International Computer Music Association, he was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000. In 2002 he won an Ars Electronica award for POINT LINE CLOUD, a collection of electronic music with videos by Brian O’Reilly. POINT LINE CLOUD was re-issued on the Presto (Milan) label in 2019. His set of music FLICKER TONE PULSE appeared on the WERGO label in 2019. In 2010 he won the SEAMUS Prize for lifetime achievement in electronic music. In 2016, he won the Giga-Hertz Prize for lifetime achievement in electronic music, awarded by the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, and the Southwest Radio (SWR), Baden-Baden. In 2020 he led a team to produce EmissionControl2, an app for sound granulation. His book Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. The second edition of his textbook The Computer Music Tutorial (The MIT Press) was published in 2023. His new album Curtis Roads: Electronic Music 1994-2021 was released in 2025 by Elli Records.
