Contact: Michele Abba

805-756-2406; [email protected]

SAN LUIS OBISPO — The Music Department will host guest artist Matt Sargent for a unique guitar concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, in Room 218 of the Davidson Music Center.

The versatile artist — a composer, guitarist, recording engineer and music technologist — will perform new guitar works with electronics. The program will include works by renowned postminimalist composer Eve Beglarian, Connecticut composer and critic Robert Carl as well as Sargent’s original works.

Based in upstate New York, Sargent is an assistant professor of music at Bard College. His experimental compositions grow from interests in resonance and recursive systems, computer models of intelligence and the making/breaking of long-form patterns.

He recently recorded and premiered James Romig’s “The Fragility of Time,” a new concert-length work for electric guitar. Last December, he premiered “Splectar,” a new work by classical composer Carl for retuned electric guitar and live electronics.

In demand as an audio engineer for contemporary and experimental music, Sargent has worked with many internationally recognized ensembles and composers who work is in a variety of music genres.

Recent production credits include Alvin Lucier’s “One Arm Bandits” (Important Records), Musica Elettronica Viva’s “Symphony No. 107 - The Bard” (Black Truffle), Lucier’s “Ricochet Lady” (Black Truffle), Bard College colleague Sarah Hennies’ “Spectral Malsconcities” (New World Records), composer and Village Voice musical critic Kyle Gann’s “Whispers,” and David Felder’s expressive song cycle “Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux” (Coviello Contemporary), among others.

As a technical producer and software designer, Sargent developed a networked music notation program for the Swiss-based Ever Present Orchestra. In 2021, he co-composed with Beglarian and Robert Black, a virtuoso bassist who collaborated with prominent composers, “A Murmur in the Trees,” for 24 double basses. Along with Chris Cerrone, he is currently reconstructing the electronics of the late visionary composer Ingram Marshall, who died in June at age 80.

Sargent’s compositions have been described by Sequenza21 reviewer Paul Muller in 2020 as “bringing a sharpened sense of the transcendental into the 21st century.”

The concert, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Music Department and Instructionally Related Activities program. For more information, call the Music Department at 805-756-2406 or visit the department’s calendar website.