Now in its 12th year, the SPLICE Institute is underway at Western Michigan University, and three of its founding figures — pianist Keith Kirchoff, trumpeter Sam Wells, and percussionist Adam Vidiksis — join Cara Lieurance to discuss the week's public concerts, a new album, and the evolving role of electronics in classical performance.
The Institute, hosted annually at WMU's Dalton Center, brings together composers and performers from across the country and beyond. Daily workshops serve everyone from complete beginners to tenured faculty, while free public concerts run every night at 7:30 p.m. Kirchoff notes that the music on offer is strikingly fresh: "Most of the pieces, especially those that are performed by the participants, are fresh off the press — maybe they were only finished a couple of days ago."
The three also perform together as SPLICE Ensemble, a piano-trumpet-percussion trio that has been playing with electronics for a decade. The ensemble's new album, Ansible, releases July 3rd on New Focus Recordings and is currently available for pre-order on Bandcamp. The album's title track, composed by Caroline Shaw Miller, draws from the science fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and centers on themes of digital communication. They listen to the fourth movement, featuring the trio playing back through car speakers driving down a desert highway — a spatial effect Vidiksis describes as central to the piece's concept of time and communication.
Kirchoff emphasizes that the album rewards repeated listening: "Great music is the same — every time we come back to it, we are hearing something different. We're bringing something new to it."
The week's guest artists include saxophonist-composer Nick Zoulek and percussionist Levy Lorenzo. Thursday's faculty concert features the ensemble performing new works written specifically for them by this year's participant composers. For young composers, Kirchoff says electronics have become essential: "Any composer should have some working knowledge — electronics is just one more [element] that you really should know as a composer in the 21st century."
More information and full concert listings are at splicemusic.org.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
