Olivia Block performs Breach

Hallwalls is excited to partner with the UB Music Department to present the groundbreaking work of musician/composer Olivia Block in UB's new state-of-the-art immersive multi-channel audio space.

Olivia Block is a media artist and composer. She is the recipient of the 2026 Alvin Lucier Award for music/sound from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her discography, spanning nearly thirty years, is published on Another Timbre, Black Truffle, Erstwhile, Ina GRM, NNA Tapes, Room40, Sedimental, and Touch, among other labels. She performs live experimental music, where at any given concert she might be playing electronic instruments, piano, organ or amplified objects. Block also creates surround sound concerts, sound installations and scores. Her most recent live performances are long experimental songs for voice, piano, and electronics. She composes for chamber ensemble, orchestra and pipe organ.

Block has performed, premiered and exhibited her work throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours in festivals and performance series including Rewire, MoogFest, Festival del Bosque Germinal, Sonic Light, Redbull Academy, Kontraste, Archipel and many others.

She has taught at The School of the Art Institute in the Sound Department and at Northwestern University in the Sound Arts and Industries program. She has completed many university teaching residencies and teaches workshops around the world. Olivia is based in Chicago and Northern New Mexico. She travels widely for her work.

More at: https://www.oliviablock.net/

Breach is an electronic and field recording sound concert mixed live via computer and mixing desk by Olivia Block through multiple speakers surrounding the audience. The composition contains field recordings from various locations within the Laguna San Ignacio (San Ignacio lagoon) in Baja, Mexico. Additionally, Block includes analog synth audio material in response to the field recordings.

This composition places the listener in the lagoon from multiple points of view-underwater, on the shore, and inside of imaginary seascapes. The combination of field recordings and textures creates a subjective, often surreal aural space rather than an objective representation of a location. The sound collage is a framework through we which we might imagine the experience of a listening whale or sea bird.

San Ignacio is the winter home to eastern Pacific gray whales (whose exhalation breaths at the surface water may be heard in some of the recordings). The lagoon is an UNESCO protected, pristine location for the whales to breed and feed. There are boats present in the waters. These boats are necessary for whale monitoring, and the number of boats are strictly limited in the water. In Breach, The recorded presence of the quiet boat sound from the lagoon evolves into loud electronically-produced din of noise seemingly underwater which covers the natural sounds. This moment is a representation of the sonic world outside of the lagoon's protected waters, where sounds from large sea vessels disrupt the lives of marine animals. As we imagine ourselves swimming, flying, feeding and breathing in the imaginary sound space in Breach we are interrupted by the presence of anthropogenic noises.

The University at Buffalo's Department of Music has unveiled a new immersive audio space equipped with a full Meyer Sound system featuring NADIA audio processing and the Spacemap Go spatial sound design and mixing tool. The project creates a state-of-the-art environment for composition, performance, and research.

Part of the State University of New York system, the University at Buffalo has long been known for its leadership in contemporary composition and experimental music. The new installation builds on that legacy, positioning UB at the forefront of spatial audio exploration.

"It's something we'd wanted to do for years," says Eric Huebner, professor of piano and chair of the Department of Music. "UB has a long history in experimental and 21st-century music, and this project finally gives those efforts a permanent home for immersive sound." The Meyer system allows advanced sound spatialization similar to that used in stadium concerts; major performance halls, like Jazz at Lincoln Center; and venues like National Sawdust in Brooklyn."

Hallwalls Music Program is made possible through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and a generous grant from the Cullen Foundation https://www.thecullenfoundation.org/