Pamela Z With People: McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT Concert at MIT

Pamela Z with People

Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT Concert

April 19, 2023 / 5:30pm

MIT Media Lab Multipurpose Room
75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

Presence

Summons

An improvised work for gesture-controlled MIDI instruments

A suite of works for solo voice and electronics

Pamela Z, voice and electronics

Sarah Cahill, piano

Kate Stenberg, violin

Evan Ziporyn, conductor

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will welcome interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z this spring for a series of campus visits and performances as part of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. Ms. Z will perform selections from her work in a concert open to the public on April 19, 2023, and will present a public lecture on April 20, 2023. The $100,000 prize will be awarded during her artist residency at MIT in spring 2023. This McDermott residency builds on her prior visits to MIT in 2013 and 2016, during which she worked with students, fellow visiting artists, and other members of the campus community.
 

A pioneering composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist for more than four decades, Pamela Z has toured to major festivals and venues worldwide. Her multilayered compositions are created using her voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. She is known for using custom music technology, activated by physical gesture, to explore deeply personal themes in abstract and evocative ways.

The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recognizes innovative talents and is awarded to artists working in any field or cross-disciplinary activity. The $100,000 prize represents an investment in the recipient’s future creative work, rather than a prize for a particular project or lifetime of achievement. The official announcement was made at the Council for the Arts at MIT’s 49th annual meeting at MIT on September 30, 2022, and Pamela Z will be presented with the award at a gala in her honor on April 20, 2023. Past recipients include Thomas Heatherwick, Audra McDonald, David Adjaye, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Lepage, Gustavo Dudamel, Bill Viola, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Santiago Calatrava, among others.