New album “Hinterlands” out now on New Focus Recordings

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David Bird's compositions explore the impact of technology on our world, both musical and beyond, both from the past and into the future. Featuring performances by lovemusic, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, cellist Isidora Nojkovic, Grossman Ensemble, and Mivos Quartet, Bird delivers once again with music that challenges, conjures a fantastical sci-fi-esque sonic environment, and interrogates the human experience in a shifting era.

Download Here:
https://david-bird.bandcamp.com/album/hinterlands

Hinterlands is an intermission between the past and future of technology; yet, we are unable to be present, too spent on excavating the lingering effects of industrial modernity. Shifting between microtonal shimmer, dense counterpoint, and immersive electronic textures, the album treats sound like a form of “sonic metallurgy”: metallic resonances, harmonic artifacts, and layered noise evoke processes of extraction, production, and decay. The album unearths geographic, psychological, and technological disruption, the sounds of machines working with and against each other in entropy. Like the emerging co-existences between humans and artificial intelligence, David Bird and collaborators articulate the subtle yet severe realities of technological change. Inspired by sources ranging from William Gibson’s speculative fiction to the industrial histories of American and Soviet cities and the rise of white-noise machines, the album reflects on systems of control and alienation through immersive listening.

Each work on the album approaches these tensions from a distinct vantage point. The opening track, Hinterlands, performed by lovemusic, explores a space that is both geographic and psychological, drawing on William Gibson’s story of travelers returning from deep space to shape its speculative sonic terrain. Ambient Machine, performed by Ben Roidl-Ward and Isidora Nojkovic, turns to the present, juxtaposing dense multiphonic and overpressure textures with resonant harmonic tones to reflect the hum of technology and the paradox of noise as comfort. Chroma, performed by the Grossman Ensemble, treats timbre as material, unfolding from unisons into increasingly rich, overtone-based sonorities. American City, performed by Mivos Quartet, translates the history of industrial labor into mechanized textures, inspired by the Soviet–American collaboration behind Magnitogorsk. Together, these works form a collection that reflects on the sonic and psychological consequences of the technological age.

Festival Mixtur 26/27 Open Call Commission Winner

The Festival Mixtur Open Call 2026/2027 has closed with an exceptional response. More than 400 proposals were received from over 50 countries, confirming both the strongly international character of the call and the high level of interest and artistic quality of the submitted projects.

Following a rigorous and detailed evaluation process, the selected projects in the different categories of the call are as follows:

Category 1 – Commissioned works (Modalities A and B)

Alex Vaughan (AU)

David Bird (US)

Krzysztof Wołek (PL)

Luz González (Galicia / CH)

https://mixturbcn.com/en/open-call-26-27/

PRIX CIME Electroacoustic Music Competition 2025 - Honorable Mention “Dark Ethnography”

422 submissions in Prix CIME – Open to all composers regardless of age

The Prix CIME 2025 has been awarded to Giulio Colangelo for Hyperion

Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mention goes to David Bird for Dark Ethnography

Honorable Mention goes to Loise Bulot for Blooms

Honorable Mention goes to Jon Christopher Nelson for The Persistence of Time and Memory

"Iron Orchid" Video Album featured on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN

"Kaleidoscopic images of a pianist’s hands are interspersed with exaggerated shots of empty interiors. A flower emerges from a milky substance; another is submerged in violet water, its petals fleshy and viscous. The music moves from expansive to pointed; piano and electronics blend and contrast, creating satisfying articulations and sandpapery tension.

Thanks to the collaborative approach of pianist Ning Yu and composer David Bird, their music video for Iron Orchid embodies an organic seamlessness between sound, sound-producing tools, and visuals that is startlingly effective. This is a musical narrative that irritates as it mesmerizes, less balanced than enhanced and complementary, keeping the listener locked in to what could possibly come next."

https://icareifyoulisten.com/2025/07/video-premiere-ning-yu-plays-david-birds-iron-orchid/

Chicago Tribune Previews "Hypochondriac" for Frequency Festival

"What differentiates man from machine? In this percussion duo’s set, the distinction gets slippery. John Corkill and Adam Rosenblatt debut two new pieces by composers Julie Zhu and David Bird, who both use cutting-edge technology to dramatic effect. Zhu, a painter before she turned her focus to music, previously trained an AI model to predict shapes based on the sound they made as they’re drawn. Her Frequency Festival premiere, “amanuensis,” takes the same cues. The performers draw and write on a 4-by-4-foot wooden plank with charcoal; all the while, contact mics at each corner of the plank amplify the surface sounds on four correlating speakers in the Constellation space. “The audience will hear it like they’re sitting on top of the board,” says Corkill. Meanwhile, Bird’s “Hypochondriac” casts Rosenblatt as a Frankensteinish automaton and Corkill as his surgeon. Sensor pads hidden under Rosenblatt’s clothes allow both musicians to trigger Bird’s sound design through movement and touch. “There’s a sequence of actions we have to take, but we have a little bit of flexibility in how we pace it,” Rosenblatt says."

Performing on a bill with pianist Mabel Kwan, 8:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave.; tickets $20.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/12/frequency-festival-2025/

Assistant Professor of Music Technology & Digital Media at The University of Notre Dame

“The Department of Music welcomes David Bird to O'Neill Hall of Music as Assistant Professor of Music Technology. "I am thrilled to join Notre Dame," he says. "I look forward to working with the school's excellent students and developing curricula and facilities that will foster the creation of vibrant work in composition, electronic music, and multimedia art on campus. "

Bird, who joins the Department of Music Faculty this Fall will focus on electroacoustic music, intermedia composition, and interactive media. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and multimedia environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual. Bird's compositions have been performed at venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as well as festivals including the Gaudeamus Festival, Wien Modern, SPOR Festival, MATA Festival, Musica Electronica Nova Festival, Festival Mixtur, and more.

Bird received his DMA. from Columbia University. Previously, he has taught courses in composition and computer music at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Hamilton College, and the Stevens Institute of Technology.

“We are excited about David raising our profile and diversifying our offerings,” said Department Chair Berthold Hoeckner, noting that “twenty years after Professor Ken Dye, Director of University Bands, taught his pioneering ‘Music through Technology’ course for the first time, David will provide Notre Dame students from across campus with opportunities to study the history of electroacoustic music and learn how to compose with the rapidly developing tools and techniques in digital music, audio production, and multimedia.”

https://music.nd.edu/news-events/news/new-music-faculty-member-focuses-on-innovation-and-music-technology/