The Twin Cities Loudspeaker Orchestra event was from May 28th to 30th, 2026, at the Southern Theater right by the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis.
<Picture of the event>
The venue was set up with a 16.2 channel loudspeaker system consisting of 16 <speaker brand> and two subwoofers. The event included four <five?> concerts over three days featuring work by over 30 composers from the US and around the world.
<Picture of the room>
The Orchestra Loudspeaker tradition is one that dates back to the early days of electronic music in France and England. “Orchestra” here refers to how the loudspeakers (typically) are onstage, akin to a standard human-based orchestra, and like the range of instruments in the orchestra (piccolos, cellos, tubas), each of which covers a particularly tessiturae, contains (typically) loudspeakers with different frequency responses (tweeters, midrange speakers, subwoofers).
<Picture of the loudspeaker layout>.
Thoughts:
This music is intense and demanding. Can range from dream-like explorations of sound in space to quite angry and dense impositions of sound. The hallucinatory effects and story-telling potentials are aways there.
Analysis of the works?
Opener by Ellainie with a focus on text, not all of which were audible. Some processing on them.
A/R/C by Jon Fielder - bombastic, interesting mega gesture at the end. EMTG wham bam.
Carolyn Borchdering piece had glitchy motifs but was ultimate terrible except for the end.
My piece - beautiful soundscape using tonality.
Otto piece - lovely and slight, flitting. Some lovely moments of slight resonance, as though shouting in a space with low RT60 and hearing the room resonate slightly.
Finisher - almost monophonic, Adam stanovic, like Mad Max with metal guitars and big clanging booms, some interesting layering, though.