Artist Series

The Ghost of Autumn Winds (秋風の霊)

Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi
Johnny Gandelsman, violin

May 16-17, 2025, 8 p.m.

Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL)

This performance features The Ghost of Autumn Winds (秋風の霊)—a roughly forty-minute dialogue between shakuhachi and electronics using an original generative AI system named simerent. The simerent system captures an instrument's phrases, performs pattern-matching, and responds with variations on previously captured phrases in order of similarity, difference, or both, all through an immersive sound system. Holding both similarity and difference in the same space, giving them equal voice and value, and allowing them to engage in dialogue are central to the artistic and humanistic motivations underlying this work.

Top image credit: Anthony Mongiello

Image credit: Marco Giannavola

Johnny Gandelsman will perform UC Irvine Music Professor Kojiro Umezaki's contribution to Mr. Gandelsman's This Is America project as the first piece of the concert.

Learn more about Johnny Gandelsman, a MacArthur Fellow, at The New York Times.

Read about Mr. Ganelsman's MacArthur Fellowship here.

The Ghost of Autumn Winds is sponsored by UC Irvine Illuminations with generous support provided by the Marjorie and Robert Rawlins Endowment Fund.

Free admission

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