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 #3
ID#: 140
From Nothing (2023) ; 9:56
by Julie Herndon
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
I moved to a new place. During the transition, I felt the empty quality that comes with a new home: furniture that doesn’t quite fit, old friends that are now distant, new friends that are not yet close. In the gap between old patterns and new ones, I found myself recording long, slow melodies on the harmonium, sending them through loops, delays, and distortion so I could immerse myself in the sound. Listening back to the recordings, I started to notice the qualities of my new environment: the wind in the trees outside my window, the cicadas singing seamlessly alongside the electronics. I started collecting and sampling these recordings and adding them in like coats of paint each day. As the sounds accumulated in spatiotemporal layers, a world began to emerge from nothing.
Julie Herndon
Julie Herndon is a composer, performer, and sound artist based in San Francisco, California. Her work explores the body’s relationship to sound using tools like musical instruments and personal technologies. Her electroacoustic compositions have been described as “truly brilliant” (Kulturpunkt), “like a signal from another world” (Tages-Anzeiger), and “blended to inhabit a surprisingly expressive space” (San Francisco Classical Voice). Her concert music and sound installations have been presented at festivals and venues such as MATA Festival and National Sawdust in New York, Music Biennale Zagreb in Croatia, Musica Nova Helsinki in Finland, Música Estranha Festival in Brazil, Sonorities Festival in Ireland, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca in Mexico, Abbotsford Convent in Australia, and Artistry Space in Singapore. Herndon has collaborated with ensembles such as the Decoder Ensemble, JACK Quartet, [Switch~ Ensemble], andPlay, and Kukuruz Quartet. She is the recipient of the Elisabeth Crothers Award for Music Composition, American Composers Forum Bay Area Residency, National Sawdust New Works Commission, George Lurcy Fellowship, Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant, and New Music America Creator Fund Award. Julie is an Assistant Professor of music technology and composition at California Polytechnic State University. Her compositions can be heard on the labels Infrequent Seams, New Focus Recordings, and Innova Records.
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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