BEER Live at the Akou Festival in Corfu, 2014
BEER, the Birmingham Ensemble for Electroacoustic Research, was founded by Scott Wilson in 2011 as a project to explore aspects of realtime electroacoustic music making. Particular interests include networked music performance over ad hoc wi-fi systems, and live coding (programming music in real time using algorithms that can be altered while they are running). In keeping with post-free jazz developments in improvisation (e.g. Zorn, Braxton), we create structures in software that impose limitations and formal articulations on the musical flow (with networked software systems serving as intervention mechanism / arbiter / structural provocateur par excellence). Musical influences run the gamut from Xenakis to Journey. Past and current members include Konstantinos Vasilakos, Norah Lorway, Erik Nyström, Emma Margetson, Tim Moyers, Martin Ozvold, Luca Danieli, Winston Yeung, Roz Coull, Visa Kuoppala and Scott Wilson.