May 26, 2006
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

BEAM hosts Composers workshops at Stanford and Berkeley for "NuRoque"

The Beam Foundation and TrioMetrik presented a workshop to acquaint composers interested in learning how to write in the "NuRoque" style. The goal of this workshop was to find new composers to write for TrioMetrik. Two commissions from the BEAM Foundation are available for appropriately skilled composers.

The Stanford workshop was attended by most of the faculty of CCRMA and Chris Chaffe the Dean of Music. Also in attendance was John Chowning, inventor of FM synthesis and Max Mathews from Bell Laboratories who is considered to be the father of Computer Music.

The Berkeley event included Maggie Payne professor at Mills College, famed Canadian composer Ronald Bruce Smith and Bay Area Composer Jay Cloidt who has written for the trio.

"Finding composers and commissioning pieces in the NuRoque style is one of the main goals of the BEAM Foundation." Says founder Keith McMillen.

Max Mathews introduced the Stanford workshop with these word: "Forty years ago I had a dream where musicians using advanced instruments played together while connected to a central computer which integrated and guided their performance. With the work of Keith McMillen and TrioMetrik, this dream is now a reality. There is nothing else like this in the world. TrioMetrik changes everything."