Serving the San Francisco Bay Area New Music Community

                 
CCRMA
660 Lomita Dr.
Stanford CA 94305  

The Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) is a multi-disciplinary facility where composers and researchers work together using computer-based technology both as an artistic medium and as a research tool.

Pronouncing "CCRMA":
CCRMA is an acronym for the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics it is pronounced "karma" (the first "c" is silent).

Areas of ongoing interest:
Composition, Applications Hardware, Applications Software, Synthesis Techniques and Algorithms, Physical Modeling, Music and Mobile Devices, Sensors, Real-Time Controllers, Signal Processing, Digital Recording and Editing, Psychoacoustics and Musical Acoustics, Perceptual Audio Coding, Music Information Retrieval, Audio Networking, Auditory Display of Multidimensional Data (Data Sonification), and Real-Time Applications.

The CCRMA community:
Administrative and technical staff, faculty, research associates, graduate research assistants, graduate and undergraduate students, visiting scholars, visiting researchers and composers, and industrial associates. Departments actively represented at CCRMA include Music, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Art, Drama, and Psychology.

Center activities:
Academic courses, seminars, small interest group meetings, summer workshops and colloquia. Concerts of computer music are presented several times each year, including exchange concerts with area computer music centers. In-house technical reports and recordings are available, and public demonstrations of ongoing work at CCRMA are held periodically.

Research results:
Are published and presented at professional meetings, international conferences and in established journals including the Computer Music Journal, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and various transactions of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Compositions are presented in new music festivals and radio broadcasts throughout the world and have been recorded on cassette, LP, and compact disk.

CCRMA affiliation:
The Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH), also located at Stanford. CCARH conducts research on constructing computer databases for music, and on creating programs that allow researchers to access, analyze, print, and electronically perform the music. This focus is complementary to research at CCRMA in several ways.

Support for CCRMA:
The late Doreen B. Townsend, Walter Hewlett, the California Arts Council, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation (for artists-in-residence), the System Development Foundation, Apple Computer, ATR Human Information Processing Research Labs, Aureal Semiconductor, Bio Control, Crystal Semiconductor, Digidesign, Dynacord, E-mu, Fast Mathematical Algorithms and Hardware, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, Hewlett Packard, IBM Computer Music Center, Interval Research, ITRI CCL Taiwan, Kind of Loud Technologies, Korg, Matsushita, Media Vision, McDSP, NEC, NeXT Computer, Nokia Group, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Opcode Systems, Philips Semiconductors, Rockwell International, Roland, Sony, Symbolics, Texas Instruments, Universal Audio/Kind of Loud Technologies, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Yamaha, Young Chang R&D Institute, Zeta Music Partners, and private gifts.
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/

Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, September 23 2026 7:30 PM
Streaming and in-person:Click for stream  
Join us for an evening with composer and performer, Seth Cluett! Seth will share a new iteration of his ambisonic work 'a static slice through time' that plays with the tension between the open expansive space of 360° environmental recording and the fictional fabrication of foley sounds under extreme magnification.



Seth Cluett is a composer, artist, and performer whose quiet, patient music explores the territory between the senses, with a compelling attention to perception. His work is driven by themes of ecological collapse and resilience, often expressed through materials found in nature. Cluett's “subtle…seductive, immersive” (Artforum) work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). His work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, CONTEXT Art Miami, GRM, and the Holland Festival. After 8 years at the Computer Music Center at Columbia University, this fall Cluett joined the faculty of Contemporary Creative Practice in the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Friday, October 2 2026 7:30 AM
Streaming and in-person:Click for stream  
CCRMA celebrates the start of the 2026 season with its annual Transitions: two evenings of outdoor, under-the-stars concerts showcasing music from the CCRMA community and beyond. Feast your ears on immersive 3D sounds played on our multichannel system (24.6 speakers!) in the Courtyard outside the Knoll. Each evening’s program will be different and will feature live performances, fixed media electronic music, and audiovisual works.


We encourage everybody to dress warmly and BYOB (blanket/bottle)!
FREE and Open to All | In Person + Livestream
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Saturday, October 3 2026 7:30 PM
Streaming and in-person:Click for stream  
CCRMA celebrates the start of the 2026 season with its annual Transitions: two evenings of outdoor, under-the-stars concerts showcasing music from the CCRMA community and beyond. Feast your ears on immersive 3D sounds played on our multichannel system (24.6 speakers!) in the Courtyard outside the Knoll. Each evening’s program will be different and will feature live performances, fixed media electronic music, and audiovisual works.


We encourage everybody to dress warmly and BYOB (blanket/bottle)!
FREE and Open to All | In Person + Livestream
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Thursday, October 15 2026 7:30 PM
Streaming and in-person:Click for stream  
Stefano Pilia presents solo the compositions of his latest works "Spiralis Aurea" and "Lacinia," the two double albums released by Die Schachtel and SZSugar in 2022 and 2025, in an original adaptation for electric guitar and electronics. The performance, through execution, improvisation and practices inherent to his instrumental and electroacoustic research developed over the years, recontextualizes the poetics of these two works in a broader and more visionary formal polarity: an acousmatic dramaturgy between logos and chaos: a new sonic meditation experience which intertwines "traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and humankind". Pilia continues the exploration of the metaphysical, spiritual, and divine dimensions through number, geometry, and the creation of tonal forms and architectures with properties similar and isomorphic to those archetypal, immutable forms that represent the intersection between the abstract realm of mathematics and the real structures of the physical world: a series of "troubled" sonic meditations that encourage active listening and evoke echoes of ancient liturgical and devotional music through a refined intersection of acoustic and electroacoustic processes, drone, and chamber music.




Stefano Pilia is a guitar player, producer and composer born in Genoa and based in Bologna. His work has become progressively concerned with researching the sculptural properties of sound as well as sound’s relationship with space, memory and the suspension of time. Pilia explores these points of focus through instrumental practice and investigations into the recording and production process. He is one of the founding members (alongside Valerio Tricoli and Claudio Rocchetti) of the seminal group 3/4HadBeenEliminated, a project that synthesises improvisational, electro-acoustical and avant-rock sensibilities. Pilia predominantly plays as a soloist though collaborates extensively. though his multifaceted practice has also led to an active involvement in a host of other wide-ranging projects. Since 2010 Pilia has been a member of psychedelic quartet In Zaire, a focal contributor to the BGP trio, alongside David Grubbs and Andrea Belfi. Additionally, since 2009, Pilia has been a founder member of il Sogno del Marinaio, a trio made up of legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen). He currently plays in Spiralis Aurea ensembles with guitarist Alessanda Novaga, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and the cellists Giuseppe Franchellucci and Mattia Cipolli, in Sulla Lingua a trio with Anthony Pateras and Riccardo La Foresta and with the violinist Silvia Tarozzi quintet, in duo with the sound engineer and producer Marta Salogni.

As well as these myriad projects, Pilia has been lead guitarist for celebrated Malian singer Rokia Traorè (since 2012), of the cult seminal band Massimo Volume (2008-2016) and for the longstanding cult Italian band Afterhours (since 2015). in an impressive range of work and different contexts Pilia has collaborated with several artists and musicians such as Katia and Marielle Labeque, David Tibet, Ka Baird, John Duncan, Zu, Oren Ambarchi, John Parish, Fire Orchestra!, Angela Bullock, Oliver Mann, Gianluigi Toccafondo, Laura Agnusdei, WuMing, Phill Niblock, Z’ev, Starfuckers, Manuel Mota, David Maranha and many others. Since several years he has been involved in silent movies live soundtracking frequently comissioned by Home Movies, Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and Cinema Ritrovato festival of Bologna. His discography, which currently stands at over forty recordings, has been released on a number of well established record labels (Die-Schachtel, Maple Death, Improved, Blue Chopsticks, Black Truffle). He has played extensivly all over Europe, North America, Africa And Australia.
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