CSULB Laptop Ensemble

laptop ensemble

Open to students across campus, the Bob Cole Conservatory Laptop Ensemble of CSULB is a collection of composer/performer/sound artists who explore and explode the boundaries between contemporary sound art, computer music and interactive technologies. The ensemble brings together performers, composers, and artists across disciplines in experimental sound practices and cross-disciplinary projects and concerts.

Recently, the Laptop Ensemble performed at the 2013 Spoleto Festival dei due Mondi, where it participated in the creation and multiple performances of a new theatre work, Voyage, at the Cantiere Oberdan performance space in Spoleto. It developed the piece with the Korean Singing Actors Group during a 10-day invited residency at LaMaMa Umbria in Italy. The Laptop Ensemble will be in Seoul, Korea in 2015 as part of an invited week-long residency and performances of the work there.

The ensemble has also been featured in various webcasts and performance spaces for experimental sound artists throughout LA, such as LA Artstream’s “Ear Meal” for live performance and broadcast in 2014. It was also a featured ensemble in 2012 as part of the SoundWalk and MERGE Festivals in Long Beach, California and performed in the John Cage 100th birthday celebration concerts in Los Angeles with realizations of selections from the John Cage Songbooks I and II.

The ensemble has premiered over 20 compositions written especially for it by members of the group as well as other prominent composers and sound artists. These pieces run the gamut of works exclusively for laptops to pieces that incorporate live video, live acoustic instrumentalists performing alongside the ensemble, modular synthesizers, and “hyperoperas” that are fully staged.