David Wessel was an innovative researcher, teacher and performer; his work had a major impact on the fields of both music psychology and computer music. His early research and publishing on the musical role of psychoacoustics – a branch of science that studies psychological and physiological responses associated with sound – laid the foundations for much of his career and was part of his path-breaking accomplishments. He applied his training in psychoacoustics to pioneering work on the perception of musical timbre and worked extensively on questions of human-computer interaction for musical improvisation.

David Wessel was born October 6, 1942, in Belleville, Illinois. After graduating in 1964 with a B.S. in mathematical statistics from the University of Illinois, Wessel pursued graduate work at Stanford University, culminating in a PhD in Mathematical and Theoretical Psychology in 1972. Wessel first taught at San Francisco State University before moving to Michigan State University in 1973. While at Michigan State he began working directly on music perception and cognition, focusing on the application of psychoacoustics to the perception of musical timbre. He also organized the inaugural International Computer Music Conference at Michigan State in 1974.

Wessel’s work in the 1970s on the compositional control of timbre, or musical tone color/quality, inspired the creation of some of the first computer software for analyzing, understanding and using musical material. In 1976, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor, he moved to Paris to work as a researcher at the then nascent Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustic/Musique (IRCAM). In 1979 he was made head of IRCAM’s Pedagogy Unit and linked the science and technology side of the institute to the artistic side. In the mid-eighties he started a new unit in IRCAM dedicated to developing real-time music software for personal computers. At the time Wessel taught the first computer music class at the Paris Conservatory. 

While at IRCAM, Wessel continued his research into timbre, with a particular focus on the application of multidimensional scaling to produce low-dimensional representations of timbre that could be used for synthesis control. Wessel was also actively engaged in promoting the use of personal computers for real-time computer music. He described what came to be known as the “Wessel Illusion,” a phenomenon in which timbre determines the way a listener groups the musical notes in a melody. In recognition of his work at IRCAM, Wessel was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

In 1988, Wessel moved to the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, and helped establish the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), serving as co-director until his death. Wessel developed and taught courses on music perception/cognition and musical applications of computers and related technologies. 

He was also affiliated with the Cognition, Brain, & Behavior area of the Department of Psychology and collaborated with people in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he was a member of the Parallel Computing Laboratory (ParLab) and TerraSwarm Research Center.

At UC Berkeley, Wessel continued to merge art and science in both his research and creative output. His published papers from this time primarily address issues related to musical improvisation with computers, with a particular focus on the development of gestural controllers and the development of Open Sound Control (OSC), a robust communication protocol for digital instruments. He chaired the biennial meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, held at Berkeley, in 1995.

Colleagues noted that Wessel also had an extensive career as a performing musician in free-form improvisational works, performing on his custom-designed controller/computer system alongside accomplished instrumentalists from many musical genres. As an improviser, Wessel performed both nationally and internationally with collaborators such as Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Coleman, Ushio Torikai, Thomas Buckner, Vinko Globokar, Frances-Marie Uitti, Jin Hi Kim, Shafqat Ali Khan, and Laetitia Sonami. Wessel also forged industry connections, such as with Meyer Sound Laboratories and Starkey Hearing Technologies. He sat on numerous advisory boards, including IRCAM, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) and the Beam Foundation and was invited to give numerous talks, including recent keynotes at the 12th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression in 2012 at Ann Arbor, MI, and the Re-New Digital Arts Festival in Copenhagen, in 2013.

While at CNMAT, Wessel continued research on topics such as musical applications of machine learning and neural networks, the design and use of new musical instruments, novel approaches to analysis and synthesis of musical material, and communication protocols for electronic musical devices. He integrated his work with mentoring of UC Berkeley students from departments including music, computer science, engineering, statistics and psychology.

“He was a genius at merging art and science, play and rigor, life and ideas,” recalled Edward A. Lee, Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

“David conducted pioneering research in music perception, audio signal processing, and computer music, and he mentored dozens of students and postdocs. He had a clear head, a tremendous sense of humor, and a big heart,” said Lee.

Edmund Campion, co-director of CNMAT and a UC Berkeley professor of music and composition, said that Wessel “searched at the boundaries of music, insisting that the results inform our understanding of music while helping create music and inspire musical things.”

“His impact at Berkeley was enormous. As the first director of CNMAT, David was responsible for bringing music research with computers and technology to the university for the first time,” said Cindy Cox, chair of UC Berkeley’s Music Department and a professor of music and composition.

“Before he came,” Cox added, “we had no faculty, resources or facilities devoted to computer music or research. Under his leadership, that area has grown enormously to impact an interdisciplinary community of scholars, researchers, composers, performers, and students.”

Excerpted from an article written by Richard Andrews, Kathleen Maclay, Johanna Devaney;

https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/inmemoriam/html/DavidL.Wessel.html

Gérard Assayag has founded and currently heads the Music Representation Team at IRCAM STMS Lab that he directed from 2011 to 2017. He was involved in the creation of international research institutions s.a. Sorbonne’s AI and Music Institutes, or the Learned Society and Journal of Mathematics and Computation in Music. Assayag has defined through publications and popular technologies (OpenMusic, OMax, Somax & co) the concept of symbolic interaction to account for rich and versatile human/machine musical dialog, laying ground to the CoCreativity concept he has fostered for next generation AI musical interaction. Assayag holds the prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant, awarding his research career achievement and vision for the future in the project REACH (Raising Co-Creativity in Cyber-Human Musicianship), where he leads an international team developing theory and tools for Artificial Creative Intelligence in Music.

Jean-Baptiste Barrière is a composer and multimedia artist born in Paris in 1958. He studied music, art history, philosophy, and mathematical logic. He joined Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris in 1981, successively directing Musical Research, Education, and Production; and left in 1998 to concentrate on personal projects. He composed the music of multimedia shows such as 100 Objects to Represent the World by Peter Greenaway (Salzburg Festival 1997), and of virtual reality and interactive installations by Maurice Benayoun, like Worldskin (Prix Ars Electronica 1998). In addition to realizing or supervising the electronics of many works by Kaija Saariaho, he regularly realized visual concerts with her music, including her opera L’Amour de loin, in Berlin and Paris in 2006 conducted by Kent Nagano and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, La Passion de Simone with the RSO conducted by E.P. Salonen in Musiikkitalo, or Circle Map with the New York Philharmonic also conducted by Salonen at Park Avenue Armory in 2015. He directed visuals for operas such as Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise with Nagano and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (Grand Prix du Conseil des Arts), and Myung-Whun Chung with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France in 2008; Berg’s Wozzeck with Salonen and the Philharmonia of London in 2009.

The Art of Change Opera, his multimedia work based on statements by philosophers and thinkers about ‘what needs to be changed today’, was premiered in New York in 2019.

He is currently working on a large multimedia project around the poems of Nelly Sachs.

Marc Battier is a composer of instrumental and electroacoustic music. After twenty years at Ircam, Paris, he became full professor of musicology at Sorbonne University in Paris. In 2017, he received the award of the 1000 Talents experts plan of China and joined Shenzhen University (China) as distinguished professor. He also taught at the University of California at San Diego, NYU and at the university of Music and Arts of Aichi, Japan. He has been assistant to John Cage (in Paris), François Bayle (at GRM), Karlheinz Stockhausen and Joji Yuasa (at IRCAM). He received commissions from France (Jean-Claude Risset for a MUSIC V piece, Ircam, French State commission as well as individual performers), Hungary, United States, Chile, Japan, China. His music was performed in France by soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Itinéraire, 2E2M, GRM, Ircam…

He Is a cofounding member of the ICMA and Electroacoustic Music Studies Network, and founder and director of EMSAN (2007), a network studying the electroacoustic music of East Asia.

He has written music for several Western and Asian musical Instruments. He published articles in Leonardo, Leonardo music Journal, Computer Music Journal and Organised Sound. He wrote several books and chapters on the history of electronic music. He is currently on the board of Organised Sound. He wrote articles for the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments and The Grove Dictionary of American Music.
His latest book, Esthétique du son”arti’Iciel (Aesthetics of Artificial Sound), was published in France this year. In 2023, he published in China Computer Music in the 21st Century. History and Practice (bilingual English-Chinese),

In 2023, he became an ICMA director for Asia/Oceania. His music is published by BabelScores.

Marco Fiorini is a musician and researcher specializing in music improvisation and human-machine interaction. He is part of the Music Representation team at IRCAM, contributing to the REACH project, the development of the co-creative improvisation system Somax2, and the conception and development of SoVo, a new system combining Voyager and Somax2, first presented at ICMC 2025. Pursuing a PhD at Sorbonne University on interactive systems for music improvisation, Fiorini collaborates with renowned artists like Jöelle Léandre, George Lewis, Steve Lehman, and Horse Lords. His work bridges improvisation and human-machine interaction, integrating guitar and live electronics. He has presented concerts, workshops, and lectures at prominent international venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, ManiFeste, Klang, Improtech, Mixtur. In 2024 he was an invited lecturer at the Max Summer School at Tokyo Geidai University of the Arts, and in 2025 he will lead a workshop on Somax2 at Berklee College of Music for ICMC 2025, alongside the REACH team from IRCAM. Fiorini holds degrees in Sound and Music Computing, Electronic Music, Jazz Guitar, and Computer Engineering.

Camilla Hoitenga is an internationally acclaimed flutist, known especially for her close work with composers like Kaija Saariaho and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and praised for her captivating performances and exceptional versatility. Described by The New York Times as an artist who seamlessly integrates technical brilliance into compelling musical narratives, Camilla appears on stages such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall, or the Beijing Concert Hall.

She has premiered concertos by composers like Kaija Saariaho, Péter Köszeghy, and Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, performing with top orchestras worldwide, including the London Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony. Camilla’s repertoire ranges from early music to improvisation with visual art and collaborations with live video and electronics, and, because of her special connection to Japanese culture, includes numerous works by Japanese composers.

Her recordings, especially those featuring Saariaho’s compositions, have garnered accolades across Europe and North America. A passionate educator, she has taught at institutions like SUNY and the Folkwang Hochschule, and regularly offers masterclasses and workshops. Camilla has been based in Cologne since 1980, with additional residence in Sylva, North Carolina. She performs on a concert flute custom-made for her by Lillian Burkart, piccolo by Anton Braun, alto flute by Altus and bass flute by Kotato

Damon Holzborn is a Brooklyn based musician, new media artist, and software developer. His new media work includes algorithmic image and language projects, mobile games, music tools, and sound installations. As a musician, he is an improviser and composer who works primarily with electronics, employing custom software, traditional effects, and interactive processes. Holzborn has long relied on instruments that he develops for his own use, creating dynamic software designed for improvisational performance. He also collaborates with other artists to produce custom technology for their installations and performances, including software or hardware for projects by George Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Miya Masaoka, and Duane Pitre.

Holzborn has presented his work in the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Japan, both as a solo artist and with several ensembles, including Donkey — a decades-long collaboration with musician/filmmaker Hans Fjellestad. He has performed and/or recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Sparks (Peter Evans and Tom Blancarte), Lê Quan Ninh, Eugene Chadbourne, Mike Keneally, and Nortec Collective. He also composes for dance and theater, having worked with Sean Griffin, Bruce Andrews, Alicia Marván, and dance collective Lower Left.

He was a founding member of the Trummerflora Collective (1999-2009), a group whose aim was to create a fertile, varied, self-sustaining environment for experimental and improvised music. He was co-creator of Zu Casa (1997-2013), an online guide for experimental music once named one of the top 25 essential online music resources by The Wire.

Holzborn holds a degree in music from UCSD and a DMA in composition from Columbia University. He has taught music technology classes at Columbia University and Manhattanville College and given talks and workshops at Brooklyn College, Amherst College, Dorkbot, NIME 2012, ImproTech ’12, Max Expo ’74, and the Web Audio Conference 2016.

Described as “one of the transforming figures of early 21st century jazz,” by The Guardian and as a “state-of-the-art musical thinker” by The New York Times, Steve Lehman is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, So Percussion, JACK Quartet, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet. His recent recording, The People I Love, was cited as one of the “Top 10 Jazz Albums” of 2019 by NPR Music, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. His previous recordings include, Sélébéyone (2016), Mise en Abîme (NPR #1 Jazz Album of 2014), and Travail, Transformation & Flow (NY Times #1 Jazz Album of 2009).

The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, Lehman is an alto saxophonist who has performed and recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, George Lewis, Bennie Maupin, Jason Moran, Georgia-Anne Muldrow, Meshell Ndegeocello, Tyshawn Sorey, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium, among many others. He has taught undergraduate courses at Columbia University and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, and is currently a professor of music at the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles.

George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist, and trombonist. He is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and Area Chair in Composition at Columbia University. In 2020-21 he was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study), and he currently serves as Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. Lewis’s other honors include the Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis’s work is presented by ensembles worldwide, published by Edition Peters. A Yamaha Artist, Lewis is widely regarded as a pioneer in the creation of computer programs that improvise in concert with human musicians.

Lewis’s central areas of scholarship include the history and criticism of experimental music, computer music, interactive media, and improvisation, particularly as these areas become entangled with the dynamics of race, gender, and decolonization. His most frequently cited articles on these topics include “New Music Decolonization in Eight Difficult Steps” (VAN Outernational, 2020) and “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives” (Black Music Research Journal, 1996). His widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award. Lewis is the co-editor (with Harald Kisiedu) of the bilingual edited volume Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today/Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute (2023), as well as (with Benjamin Piekut) the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016). Lewis’s many publications on technology include “Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager” (Leonardo Music Journal, 2000) and “Why Do We Want Our Computers To Improvise?” (Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music, 2018). Lewis holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New England Conservatory, New College of Florida, and Birmingham City University, among others.

Thierry Miroglio in his brilliant solo career has been invited to give recitals, concerts in 40 countries, in prestigious Festivals from Salzburg, Berlin Philharmonie to New York, Venice Biennale and Paris, from Sao Paulo, Beijing and Mexico city to Tokyo, Hong Kong and Chicago…

He is one of the very few percussionists in the world to realize such a high level of solo activity with a repertoire of more than 400 works (solo and concerti). Has had close collaboration with prestigious composers such as Cage, Berio, Saariaho, Denisov, Donatoni, Battier, Teruggi, Unsuk Chin, Grisey, Zhang Xiaofu, Chagas, Stroppa, Barrière, Mochizuki, Risset, Nodaira, Manoury, Jolas, Fedele, Dufourt …. giving premieres of their pieces, many dedicated to him.
Numerous international Radio-TV productions, more than 20 soloist CDs for various labels (incl. The world of percussion by Naxos).
Professor at the Milhaud Conservatory (Paris), Miroglio gives masterclasses, recitals tours which join music, visual and digital arts, crossing theater and Dance in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and United States. Solo concerti accompanied by prestigious orchestras.

Master saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell (born in Chicago in 1940) is one of the great innovators in creative music of the post-Coltrane, post-Ayler era. He has for over 40 years been a restless explorer of new forms, ideas and concepts. In 1967 he founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago (originally the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble). Its motto – “Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future” – is vividly demonstrated on their ECM legacy, including the widely praised albums Nice Guys, Full Force, Urban Bushmen and Tribute To Lester. More recently Mitchell co-led the Transatlantic Art Ensemble with fellow saxophonist Evan Parker, which can be heard on Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3, and collaborated with Jack DeJohnette on Made In Chicago, celebrating the early days and continued relevance of the AACM. Mitchell’s instrumental expertise extends through the full range of the saxophone and recorder families, as well as the flute, piccolo and clarinet. He has also been an innovator in percussion instrument design. In 1997, fifteen years after the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s The Third Decade, Mitchell returned to ECM with his Note Factory group, an ensemble brimming over with improvising soloists of the highest calibre. Mitchell described their first ECM outing, Nine To Get Ready, as “the coming together of a dream I had many years ago of putting together an ensemble of improvising musicians with an orchestral range”. The Note Factory dream continued with Far Side, as Mitchell continued to blur the demarcation between composition and improvisation. In autumn 2015 ECM recorded Roscoe Mitchell’s concerts at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. An album is in preparation.

Laetitia Sonami is a pioneering French sound artist and performer known for her innovative use of technology in her work. Her sound performances, live-film collaborations and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation. She applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and objects. A pioneer in wearable technologies, Sonami devised new gestural controllers for performance and created several unique instruments for live performance. In 1991 she devised her first lady’s glove. It became her primary instrument for the next 25 years at which point she devised the Spring Spyre which applies Machine Learning to real time control of audio synthesis. The lady’s ball(s) conceived during the pandemic is the simplest instrument she can imagine. Sonami has collaborated with film makers and musicians, such as Paul DeMarinis, SUE-C, James Fei and Zeena Parkins. Her collaborations with David Wessel include Nga’I pa yul (1997) and Music Mobil (~ 1999). Sonami has exhibited and performed at major international festivals and venues and has mentored many young artists in the field. Black Truffle recently released an LP with two recent works and Lovely Music is releasing a double CD of earlier works in May.