ECMC: About

About The Center

Established in 1981, the Eastman Computer Music Center provides computing and digital audio facilities for the realization of compositional, performance, theoretical and other types of musical projects by Eastman, University of Rochester and visiting faculty, students, musicians and researchers. Currently, the Center supports creative and instructional work by about thirty users annually. Roughly one third of these users are composers, and another third are either performers or music theorists. Our remaining ten or so users are divided fairly evenly among jazz studies, music education, science and liberal arts majors.
ECMC: Mission Statement

Central functions of the Eastman Computer Music Center:

ARTISTIC MISSION
providing needed resources for creative and research projects of the highest possible musical and technical quality.

EDUCATIONAL MISSION
to teach and to help disseminate the use of these resources to student, professional and amateur musicians of varying specialties, interests and prior experience, and to audiences of similar diversity, in a manner that encourages each participant to explore and to stretch his or her own musical capabilities and artistic vision.

Given the wealth of solo, chamber and large ensemble performing talent at Eastman, many of our projects involve collaborations, from the brainstorming stage through eventual concert presentations and/or recordings, between composers and performers or performing ensembles. Lists of available compact disc recordings and of publications of works realized at the Center are included within the home web pages of several of our current and alumni users.

The Center also seeks to foster artistic collaborations between musicians and film makers, choreographers and dancers, literary and theatrical artists, and professionals and students in a variety of other other fields. The yearly ImageMovementSound Festival (co-produced by the ECMC, the Film/Video/Animation Department of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Graduate Department of Dance at SUNY Brockport) sponsors the creation of innovative multimedia works by collaborative groups of two or more artists from the three institutions, multiple performances of these works within the Rochester area and on a variety of international venues, and an Image, Movement, Music course. In addition to the IMS Festival works, composers from the Center create several musical soundtracks each year for films produced by faculty and students at RIT and by independent film makers. Purely musical works realized at the ECMC are presented in concerts sponsored by the Center and by various other organizations.