juliana snapper

En écho is a work composed by Philippe Manoury for soprano and real-time electronics — in collaboration with mathematician and sound designer Miller Puckette

In March 2003, Juliana Snapper gave the American premiere of En écho at the Sounds French Festival (Philosophy Hall at Columbia University, New York City, NY).

Since then, over the past twenty years, she has performed the piece in different venues many times including:

• 2004 concert series of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, University of California in San Diego (San Diego Museum of Art), CA;
• 2005 concert series of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University (Campbell Recital Hall), CA;
• 2008 62nd edition of Ojai Music Festival, Ojai (outdoors at Libbey Bowl, on June 7th), CA;
• 2017 first edition of the Vértice Festival, Experimentación y vanguardia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Cultural Center of Mexico City), MX;
• 2017 International Festival of Exploratory Music (Bendigo Bank Theater), Australia…

The composer elaborates :

“ I composed En écho at IRCAM in Paris, in 1993 and 1994, during my collaboration with the mathematician Miller Puckette. It was the first time in the history of electronic music that the vocal part of a composition was automatically followed by the computer which was making a real-time analysis of sounds of the voice to be used in — creating the synthetic sounds. A large part of the synthetic sounds is not pre-composed, as it is the case in the traditional approach of electronic music, but it is deduced from the analysis of diverse aspects of the interpretation of the song. I have imagined and stipulated new rules of composition which are absolutely directed towards the real-time situation, integrating live performance and electronics. My goal was to create a closer intimacy between the interpreter and the electronic music, as if the sounds diffused from the loudspeakers were a 'mirror' of the soprano solo’s voice. ”