Current Curatorial Projects

Curation at EMPAC

An experienced curator as well as a highly accomplished violist, composer, scholar, and educator, Lanzilotti was the Curator of Music at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2019–2021. During her tenure, she developed the music residencies and commissions as well as performances and events in continuation of EMPAC’s artistic directions and with her own perspectives.

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In Conversation with EMPAC Artists in Residence

This video is also available with closed captions at: https://youtu.be/tCWi1x2TK40 An interview with visiting Artist Sarah Hennies, and Music Curator Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti. Working with both traditional orchestral percussion instruments and found objects, Hennies challenges rigid definitions by relating the structure of her work to themes of queer and trans identity, love and intimacy. Hennies has mentioned in interviews that percussionsts are unique in that they don’t have a specific instrument. Their identity and role changes constantly with the context of different pieces and even within a single piece. The standard definition of a musician identified by their instrument does not hold. In Hennies’ performance, listeners and performers are encouraged to enter a shared space that reflects everyday life. Hennies’ music begins to expose the exhaustion and virtuosity of maintaining even simple actions. A gentle sound, such as the ringing of a small bell, is sustained beyond virtuosity to expose the exhaustion of maintaining even simple actions that are thought of as societal norms. As these sounds are challenged by the addition of other actions, her performance becomes more and more mesmerizing: an act of determination.
Abstract turntablist Maria Chávez was at EMPAC in early 2020 for the first of several residencies to develop a newly commissioned work. Her interest in exploring extremely quiet sounds will be developed in EMPAC's acoustically generous spaces. https://empac.rpi.edu/program/curatorial/residencies/2020/maria-chavez This video is available with closed captioning at: https://youtu.be/-mB0rvaNpZg
in conversation with Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti. Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist making works for voice, electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird). Her awards include the Rome Prize, United States Artists, the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Herb Alpert Award. Through video and audio examples and a bit of 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 consider the new work she’ll create during her upcoming EMPAC residency. https://empac.rpi.edu/events/2020/process-and-performance
This video is also available with closed captions at: https://youtu.be/RcSfYBj0KPo “My art practice organically floats between architecture and sound and improvisation and written music and classical, experimental noise.” Sound artist, vocalist, and composer Ken Ueno has the ability to completely transform the nature of spaces with sound. Loudspeakers become ceremonial objects. Megaphones become musical instruments that shape feedback in the room and amplify its natural resonance. Ueno’s breath is woven into the electronic parts, slowly introduced so they become a complex background texture upon which he layers live vocalizations. Instead of treating feedback and white noise as sounds found in a city to be ignored or eliminated, Ueno places them around the room in such a way that they can be heard as individual colors, encouraging the listener to open their ears to hear not only this music, but also hear their own daily environments as musical. At times Ueno’s incredible ability to control his breathing makes it sound as though he is channeling a radio transmission from another galaxy. In the artist’s own words, “My art practice organically floats between architecture and sound and improvisation and written music and classical, experimental noise.” Ueno’s intense performances reveal the acoustic power and complexity of the different audio ecosystems surrounding us every day from all directions. His music asks: How do we open our ears to the sounds of our cityscapes? In our efforts to control the spaces around us, do we lose our humanity? In exposing the rawness of our humanity do we alienate others? How do we stay open in a time when technology allows us more and more to be isolated and closed off? https://empac.rpi.edu/events/2019/ken-ueno

Spring 2021

May 24, 2021 — Paper Pianos: Mary Kouyoumdjian with Alarm Will Sound and Kevork Mourad (Virtual Residency)

March 10–12, 2021 — In Process: Commissioned Composer Talks by Lesley Flanigan, Miya Masaoka, and Bora Yoon (Virtual Talks)

January 28–29, 2021 — Graveyards & Gardens: Vanessa Goodman & Caroline Shaw

2020 Fall

November 5, 2020 — In Depth: Seth Parker Woods (Virtual Performance/Talk)

October 15, 2020 — Pamela Z: Process and Performance (Virtual Performance/Talk)

October 6, 2020 — Announcing 2020 New Music Commissions

2020 Spring

May 11–20, 2020 — Lady M: Heartbeat Opera (Virtual Residency, Co-Production)

March 9, 2020 — Artist Residency: Lesley Flanigan (Residency)

February 20, 2020 — The Glow That Illuminates, the Glare That Obscures: Nina C. Young (Commission, Residency)

January 6, 2020 — Untitled Commission: Maria Chávez (Commission, Residency)

2019 Fall

December 8, 2019 — Residue: Lesley Flanigan (Residency)

December 4, 2019 — Falsetto: Sarah Hennies (Performance)

September 20, 2019 — A History of Breath: Ken Ueno (Performance)

April 19, 2019 — Press release: EMPAC Welcomes Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti as new Curator of Music