Audio / Video Work
- Music Mixing, Production, Aggregated Media -
SRG Soundwalk (2022)
35”, Digital Collaboration with the New York Civil Liberties Union and their campaign to disband the SRG.
Seven location-based sound pieces about the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, and their brutalization of protesters. Through mediums of music, testimony, and protest audio footage, New Yorkers are able to hear firsthand accounts of police brutality and pressure those in power to hold the SRG accountable.
Members of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee have the ability to hold an oversight hearing and remove the unit’s $90 million dollar budget.
The soundwalk is available digitally, as well as in-person later in the year. Protest details are located in each track’s description.
“When police play soldier, everybody loses.” - Stuart Schraeder
“Unity As Fragile As A Spark”
Digital Collaboration with Lauren Fields and VOICES 21C, 2020-2021. Poetry: "Smoking Car: After Frances Ellen Watkins Harper" by Lauren Fields. Creative Facilitation, Audio Production, and Video Design: Michael Genese. V21C Artistic Director: André de Quadros
Using Zoom, SoundTrap, and OBS, VOICES 21C was privileged to collaborate with poet and spoken word artist Lauren Fields on a musical response to her poem, "Smoking Car: After Frances Ellen Watkins Harper." VOICES 21C composed a piece around the poem (digitally in SoundTrap), and submitted video work that culminated into this final product.
The eight minute work explores several interconnected themes, among which the idea of being simultaneously bound to something, while also being bound for something else. Body hierarchy, racism, and modern manifestations of slavery and segregation such as mass-incarceration and American policing, together paint an intersectional picture of “progress that isn’t really progress” that we must reconcile with as a nation.
“Reconciliation Continuum"
Multimedia Open Improvisation spotlight on Sound Off: Music for Bail, Feb ‘21
Improvisation + Video Design: Michael Genese
Text: Dr. Angela Davis | “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
Prompt for Actualization: 4884 | Union Sq, Nov ’20
Hand-Video AR: Denis Rossiev, Siberia
For information on cash bail and the Prison Industrial Complex: https://musicforbail.com/learn-more
“Adinu"
Collaboration with Muslim Choral Ensemble of Sri Lanka, 2021-2022.
Project Facilitator: Michael Genese
“Adinu” arr. Shireen Abu Khader and André de Quadros
MCE Co-Founder and Executive Director: Haadia Galely
The Muslim Choral Ensemble aims to increase understanding of Islam by making music in pursuit of peace building. MCE’s multimedia performance of “Adinu” is an effort to engage with people of all faiths and backgrounds with open hearts and minds.
أداؤنا ل"أدينُ" هو محاولة للتواصل مع الناس من جميع الأديان والخلفيات بقلوب وعقول منفتحة. تهدف الجوقة الأسلامية إلى زيادة فهم الإسلام من خلال جعل الموسيقى بمثابة وسيلة لبناء السلام.
Improvisations for Black Women’s March
-Composer, Organizer, Audio / Video Engineer: Michael Genese
-Vocalists and Dancers: Eugenia Conte, Jamilla Dartley, Olivia de Geofroy, Heather Jones, Ali Lane, Naya Lovell, Krystal Morin, Joie Yvonne
-NYC Protest Footage: Aaron Costa Ganis, Michael Genese
"Improvisations for Black Women's March" was broadcast on August 25, 2020, as an improvisation-based fundraiser for an organization that draws attention to the systemic oppression of Black women, and assist in the establishment of an emergency fund for Black women in need. With the use of cross-platform streaming and multi-disciplinary curation, the broadcast included several layers of musical improvisation, composition, physical movement, and multimedia design.
This compounded display of artistic practices through several different mediums of production technology evoke the real and surreal impressions of social movements, struggle, resilience, and radicalization, fully actualized in a manner that is both revealing and undeniably compelling.” Donate to Black Women’s March, here.
The Socially Distanced Art Song Project
Britten | Dear Harp of My Country
Featuring Michael Genese as the tenor pianist, and audio / video engineer, The Socially Distanced Art Song Project is an aggregated collection of art songs being recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Audio Mixing and Production for et al’s first virtual project, “Immortal Bach,” by Knut Nystedt:
-Sopranos: Hailey Fuqua, Sarah Rhode, Carey Shunskis
-Altos: Wee Kiat Chia, Caroline Olsen, Celia Russo
-Tenors: Sydney Mukasa, Michael Genese, Michael Bennett
-Basses: Michael Garrepy, Stephan Griffin, Kevin Neel
Creative Leader and Co-Producer, The Choral Commons
[Ekphrasis (n) - art produced as a rhetorical exercise]
The Choral Commons is a podcast and meeting place, examining choral music’s intersections with the refugee crisis, ableism, mass incarceration, multiculturalism, gender expression, the climate crisis, and more. The podcast serves as an arts incubator with creative partners VOICES 21C, fostering creative responses alongside the podcast’s conversations.
Genese led the creative process for Ekphrastic Song #1, concerning choral music and the refugee crisis. Genese also helps guide every incoming creative leader with their project’s audio mixing responsibilities for The Choral Commons.