“Pete Seeger in Monte Carlo” (2014) by John P. Hastings (*1977) is a work in 5 short sections which migrated through the 5 different loci of Beutler’s archi-sculpture. The work and its title are an homage to the great American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, and a reference to the “Monte Carlo” method, a set of algorithms that use random sampling to achieve numerical results; as applied, the method helped facilitate the simulations used in the Manhattan Project to create the atomic and hydrogen bombs. According to the composer, “Pete Seeger in Monte Carlo” is an attempt to fuse the power of folk music (and the banjo) with a seemingly benign book of random digits to create a new, abstract piece of 21st century American folk music. The score consists of pages from the RAND Corporation’s book of random numbers and a series of instructions detailing how the performer is to interpret those numbers to become musical material.

Composer Laurie Spiegel (*1945) is known widely for her electronic music, her pioneering work in the development of several early electronic and computer music systems that grew out of research at the famed Bell Labs, and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse. She is also a banjo player. Spiegel composed “New York November 2001” during what she describes as the months of dark intensity following the events which took place that September just outside her window in downtown NYC. The emotional knot of the second trauma – the worldwide public reaction to that event – of compassion having been eclipsed by more hostile reactions, says the composer, is what fed into this piece. “New York November 2001” was premiered by Seth Josel in Vienna in 2002.

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