Stony Brook Students Win SUNY PACC Prize
Department of Music’s ENSEMBLE DECIPHER
The modular and technology-focused experimental music group, Ensemble Decipher, was recently awarded the SUNY PACC Prize for Performing Arts, Creation, and Curation, to tour multiple campuses in the SUNY system and commission new music from SUNY students and faculty alike. Current members include College of Arts and Sciences Department of Music students Joseph Bohigian, PhD ’20; Sam Beebe, PhD ’21; Robert Cosgrove, DMA ‘20; Taylor Long, DMA ‘22; Eric Lemmon, PhD ’21; Chelsea Loew, PhD ’21; and Niloufar Nourbakhsh, PhD ’21.
Since its founding as a laptop ensemble in 2017, Ensemble Decipher has evolved into a flexible, adventurous ensemble dedicated to advancing the work of composers and sound artists experimenting with vintage, contemporary, and emerging technologies, with the laptop serving as the central hub of connection. Through the prize, Ensemble Decipher will commission student and faculty composers and sound artists from SUNY Fredonia, Purchase, Oswego, Stony Brook, and Buffalo State College. The ensemble will then tour each SUNY institution as well as perform the new works publicly at a New York City venue.
“I’m incredibly proud of Ensemble Decipher who all worked together to make a compelling final presentation / performance to SUNY PACC after developing an entirely new approach to their presentation based on feedback on the initial round,” said Margaret Schedel, associate professor in the Department of Music. “By reaching out to music departments across SUNY, they were able to create an exciting commissioning and performing opportunity across the State.”
“This is something we’ve been working on collectively for several months with countless revisions, group meetings, and practice pitches,” said Taylor Long, DMA ‘22, Ensemble Decipher member. “We’re extremely grateful to the SUNY PACC prize judges for affording us the opportunity to see our project through and we can’t wait to begin collaborating with students and faculty throughout the SUNY system.”
The prize was announced live on YouTube by SUNY system Chancellor Jim Malatras.
The members of Ensemble Decipher share a desire to introduce their community to a sonic expansion of musical performance through their unconventional instrument—an assembly of laptops, speakers, and human performers. Ensemble Decipher was started in 2017 by current Stony Brook PhD candidate Niloufar Nourbakhsh, but progressively grew beyond the medium into a modular, technology-focused experimental ensemble using anything from laptops to accelerometers attached to rocks, boxes trained via machine learning to respond to touch, acoustic instruments, and anything in between. The Ensemble strives to dissolve the notion that new music requires performer virtuosity by embracing the technological advancements of our time to create complex and unique soundworlds that redefine the capacities of new music while also reflecting on the power structures that lace them.
Ensemble Decipher has worked with notable U.S. based composers and technologists including Department of Music Associate Professor Margaret Schedel, Mara Helmuth, Hannah Davis, and Lainie Fefferman and has premiered works by many others. Recent feature performances include concerts at the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music, International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Network Music Festival, and an ensemble residency at EarFest.