Steven Speciale teaches sound art and music at Loyola High School of Los Angeles where he is also the Choir Director and Music Director for Hannon Theatre. In 2018, Steven was named one of eleven international Art21 Educators for the 2018-’19 academic year. He remains active with Art21 Educators. Trained as a pianist and conductor, Steven also composes for the theatre having scored seven plays and adapted/arranged Jazz era standards into a new musical called “Handsome Devil” which received its World Premiere in May of 2019. Steven’s Loyola High students have been creating and exhibiting sound art projects since 2007.
Artist Location: Los Angeles, CA
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PARTICIPATION
Gallery installation, April 9 – June 4, 2022:
Blues-Birds
A band of bird-projects created by the Loyola High School Music Appreciation students. Steven Speciale, Instructor.
Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream
Virtual BreakOut During the OutBreak Videos [VBODOBV] III
Birdsong
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Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
Curlew Blues
A tent houses a cyanotype-reimagining of an Esquimaux Curlew painted by John Audubon. This Curlew is now extinct. We recreated the image with “extinct” recording technologies: cyanotype, audio tape, and vinyl records. Student-composed musique concrete compositions made from taped birdsongs play in the background. Hanging inside the tent are resonant found-objects programmed to be mechanically struck recreating actual birdsongs. Our tent is an opportunity to consider human impact upon the natural wonders of the world.
ein Klein blaue Stimme (a little blue voice)
A cyanotype fabric tower displays cyanotype-singers’ faces in the middle of singing a phoneme. Viewers are invited to lift the face to view a font expressing the phoneme. The tower hides a sound system broadcasting student musique concrete compositions about the voices.
The title is a pun; the German adjective “klein” is capitalized as a reference to Yves Klein and as a reference to Mozart’s famous serenade “A Little Night Music.”
Turntable Circus
Presenting 30 Loyola High School Music Appreciation students with their projects.
In the manner of John Cage’s Musicircus, we will install and perform sound art around the theme of records and turntables.
Students will perform abstract turntablism pieces throughout the evening.
Surrounding and defining the performance space will be at least four individually amplified turntables, each with boxes of regular and “prepared records” created by the students. Guests may select a record and play it on a turntable. Record preparations include all manner of physical alterations and even cutting and reassembling discs. The records will be sounding simultaneously. Sonically-reactive projections will accompany the presentations.
Students will lead guests in a performance of Christian Marclay’s “Record Players.” Guests will get two records and be led in all manner of noise-making with the discs culminating in the breaking of the records.
Automaton Bricolage Cogitating is the creation of Steven’s music appreciation classes. After performing a Fluxus piano work where all the keys were nailed down, the students transformed the instrument into a dadaist sculpture challenging the notion of what a piano is. Robotics, interactivity, and musique concrete inform the current incarnation.