Mad Arts
481 S Federal Hwy, Dania Beach, FL 33004
This live audiovisual performance by Maria Finkelmeier will serve as a preview of her upcoming album “Former Self.” It will feature original music inspired by notes, encouragement, and cautionary tales she likes to share with her former existences. Combining marimba, electronics, voice, and percussion, the interactive experience will capture and transform the motion in the artist’s movements, producing a mixture of captivating visuals and fixed media created by Finkelmeier and glitch artist Allison Tanenhaus. Watch as this unique musical composition vividly springs to life in the spaces around you. Come get lost in the melody, rhythm, and movement of the music, as the visual web grows and breathes in response to simple gestures.
Special guest performer Graham Viegut will open the event with “Mourning Dove Sonnet,” composed by Christopher Deane. This wordless art song for the vibraphone is inspired by literal transcriptions of mourning dove calls and the expansion of these themes with extended performance techniques. Double bass bows, pitch-bending mallets, and material placed over the keyboard augment the sonic possibilities of the vibraphone and allow for the phantom mourning dove to sing.
First presented in 2023 during IGNITE Broward, the interactive installation Melody Figments was created in collaboration with MadLabs, our in-house team of creative technologists.
About Maria Finkelmeier
Named a “one-woman dynamo” by The Boston Globe, Maria Finkelmeier is a percussionist, composer, new media artist, and Associate Professor of Creative Entrepreneurship at Berklee College of Music. Obsessed with making noise, she transformed Fenway Park into a percussive playground and turned the Roebling Bridge into a sound and light instrument. She's used AI to investigate gender bias through music, flipped a bus into a mobile electronic bucket drumming program, and performed at iconic global venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian, and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Her cutting-edge work has been featured in The Boston Globe, National Parks Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vulture, Sun Sentinel, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, and on WGBH, WBUR, and CBS. She is the founder of the experimental music, art, and technology studio, MF Dynamics, and is a Yamaha Performing Artist.
About Graham Viegut
Graham Viegut is an American performer, creative, and educator whose art is driven by the insatiable curiosities of sound. As a percussionist with an extraordinarily diverse skill set, Graham’s performing output ranges wildly, crossing genre, location, and culture. He is an international performer and clinician, performing at festivals as varied as GroundUP Music Festival and Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend, in venues ranging from concert halls and Carnival parades to a battleship, and playing music stretching from orchestral standards and contemporary multimedia improvisations to traditional Balinese Gamelan. Recent highlights include performing at the Bang on a Can Long Play festival, going on a European chamber percussion tour with the World Percussion Group, performing with New World Symphony, winning first place at the Miami-Broward Panorama steelband competition with Lauderhill Steel Ensemble, and producing independent concerts ranging from solo cafe shows to multimedia gallery happenings.
