ICMC BOSTON 2025

Online Listening Room

Curiosity, Play, Innovation - A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Creativity in Music, Science, and Technology

June 8-14, 2025

ICMC BOSTON 2025: Online Listening Room #1

ID#: 690

Playper (2025) ; 6:05

by Matthew Lam

Eastman School of Music

“Playper”, as its title suggests, is a play on paper. The majority of the sounds in this piece are very familiar to our everyday lives: they are samples or processed samples related to paper, such as writing, wrinkling, tearing, printer noises, etc. These sounds are panned through a three-dimensional plane, creating surrealistic effects (for instance, you could not write on a sheet of paper three-dimensionally!). This piece is also inspired by the composer’s composition process: a frustrated composer who writes his idea on paper but immediately thinks that the idea is uninteresting, crosses out his drafts and tears the paper. Playper is written in 5th-order ambisonics originally, and this version is the 8-channel (in-person listening room)/stereo (online listening room) reduction of it.

Matthew Lam

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Matthew Lam is an active composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music and an enthusiast of contemporary music style. His goal is to explore and experiment on a wide array of sounds and timbre, especially with contemporary instrumental techniques and electronics. His recent interests include saturationist music and ambisonics. Winning multiple awards, his works were featured in numerous festivals and events across 4 continents, including June in Buffalo (USA), International Rostrum of Composers (2023: Netherlands), Midwest Graduate Music Consortium (USA), Ignite the Arts Festival (Canada), MUSLAB (Ecuador), Nanhua University International Symposium of Contemporary Music Research (Taiwan), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Connecticut Summerfest (USA), SCI National Conference (USA), and Hong Kong Contemporary Music Festival (HK).  Groups such as the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Eastman Graduate Composers Sinfonietta, Mivos Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, [Switch~ Ensemble], Mise-en Ensemble, Du.0, Cong Quartet, NEXUS Ensemble, and Toolbox Percussion are among the many who have presented Lam’s music over the years. Lam earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music with highest honours from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he had worked with Prof. Wendy Lee, Prof. Kai-Young Chan and Dr Hau-Man Lo, and completed his master’s studies in composition with Dr Mikel Kuehn, Dr Marilyn Shrude, and Dr Christopher Dietz at Bowling Green State University. He is currently pursuing is doctoral studies at Eastman School of Music with Dr Elizabeth Ogonek and serves as a teaching assistant at Electroacoustic Music Studios at Eastman (EMuSE), supported by the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Music Scholarship for Overseas Studies.

Registration is now open!

ICMC BOSTON 2025 can be accessed IN-PERSON and REMOTE). ICMA Members at the time of registration will receive a 25% discount.

Early Bird Registration: pre-May 1, 2025 (15% discount)
Regular Registration: post-May 1, 2025

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