**CDs housed in beautiful Old-Style Gatefold Stoughton Tip-On jackets with 12 page booklet

Medusae is a symbol for a multitude of concepts which we bring together with our present album of electroacoustic improvisation. Merging modern creative music and computer music, we explore the intersection of human and machine musical creativity. Like medusae, this interaction can be both frightening and fascinating.

The musical improvisation features Video Interactive VST Orchestra (VIVO), an innovative computer system capable of responding musically to an interplay, without it having musical knowledge. VIVO is simple yet effective, like a medusa.

It’s an exploration of dialogue between Italian and African American, between man and
woman, between computer scientist and intuitive improviser. The project creates sonic realms for intellectual and spiritual challenges and discoveries.

Nicole M. Mitchell is an award-winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator. She is perhaps best known for her work as a flutist, having developed a unique improvisational language and having been repeatedly awarded “Top Flutist of the Year” by Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association (2010-2017). Mitchell initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, and her music celebrates contemporary African American culture. She is the founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Sonic Projections and Ice Crystal, and she composes for contemporary ensembles of varied instrumentation and size, while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. The former first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Mitchell celebrates endless possibility by “creating visionary worlds through music that bridge the familiar with the unknown.”

Dr. Fabio Paolizzo investigates and teaches new methods and forms of expression for human and computational music creativity. As a musical artist, his creative work encompasses composition, improvisation, and interaction with the autonomous musical agent VIVO, which he developed in 2005. VIVO has served as a platform for collaborating with other artists, such as Nicole Mitchell and Giancarlo Schiaffini; has been adopted by research and industry enterprises; and is in permanent exhibit at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca.