About the Los Angeles Laptop Collective
The Los Angeles Laptop Collective is a group of composer/performer/sound artists based in Long Beach, California who explore and explode the boundaries between contemporary sound art, computer music and interactive technologies. The ensemble brings together performers and composers in experimental sound practices and cross-disciplinary projects and concerts. The Los Angeles Laptop Collective has premiered over 30 compositions written especially for it by members of the group as well as other prominent composers and sound artists, most recently in theatrical performances in Germany and Spoleto, Italy. 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. The ensemble has been featured in various webcasts and performance spaces for experimental sound artists throughout LA, such as Monkspace, LA Artstream’s “Ear Meal” and as part of the SoundPedro, SoundWalk and MERGE Festivals in San Pedro and Long Beach, California.
About Martin Herman,
Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Laptop Collective
Dr. Martin Herman is a composer whose acoustic and electronic works have been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. He is Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Laptop Collective, which supports the creation and production of new media and sound art works. He was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Downtown Opera, which commissioned and performed new experimental short operas in Long Beach and the Czech Republic between 2000-2002.
He has collaborated on sculpture/sound installations as sound designer and programmer in “GArdenME”, 2016-17, “Arquitectura Sonora” with sculptor Mayte Alonso in 2008 and 2006. More recently he has worked as composer and music director with the theatre director, Byungkoo Ahn, on “Voyage”, a theatre piece for singers, actors, live instrumentalists and laptop ensemble that was premiered at the 2013 Spoleto Festival de Due Monde as part of LaMaMa Spoleto Open and toured in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany in 2017.
Martin is the Chair of the Department of Design at California State University, Long Beach as well as Professor of Music at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music, where he teaches electronic music and composition.
He has received fellowships, residencies, grants and commissions from the Valparaiso Foundation, the Sanskriti Foundation, the American Music Center, the Banff Center for the Arts, the Camargo Foundation, Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, National Endowment for the Arts, the California E.A.R. Unit, Long Beach Symphony, and Berkeley Contemporary Opera. He received his education at Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, U. C. Berkeley, and Stanford University. He was also a Fulbright Grantee in France where he worked at the studios of Boulez (IRCAM) and Xenakis (CeMAMu).