The University at Buffalo is presenting its extraordinary annual music festival "June in Buffalo" this week. Now in its thirty-third year, "June in Buffalo" has established itself as a premier music festival that celebrates some of the most innovative composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by hosting performances of these composers' most challenging works.

Always looking to explore the cutting edge in composition and performance, this year June in Buffalo is focusing on the interaction between music and computers. Composers Morton Subotnick, Charles Dodge, Roberto Morales, Ben Thigpen, Hans Tutschku and Cort Lippe will explore this interaction through a combination of lectures and then a performance of each these composers's works.

The lectures that will discuss the theoretical and technical aspects of theses intriguing works will take place Monday through Saturday late in the morning at the north campus Baird Recital Hall. Then in the evening, performances of these composers' works will take place in the various theaters throughout the Center for the Arts.

The performances of works by Roberto Morales, "Remembrance" and "Historia de Culebras" and Cort Lippe's "Music for Marimba and Computer" and "Music for Snare Drum and Computer," took place Tuesday night. These compositions were given excellent treatments by skilled musicians that performed sometimes solo and sometimes in groups, and usually in tandem with computers to create incredibly futuristic sounding works.

Unlike most performances seen at UB or Kleinhans, the music at this concert consisted of much more than what was simply being performed on stage. For each performance, a technician of sorts stood ready at a computer next to the mixing board and manipulated the performance on stage with incredible electronic effects to give the performances an other-dimension like sound. At the end of each performance, it was the not only the musician, but the technician that took a bow for the incredible performance. UB music major James Wakeman noted, "It really is a completely different kind of concert. Not only are you left in awe of the performance, but the technical aspect of it is pretty cool too."

"June in Buffalo" attracts more than just UB music students though. During the intermission, Grace Sampieri explained how she started coming to the June in Buffalo festival with her daughter when she was a music student at UB in the early-1990s, "and have been coming ever since." Obviously, the festival's broad focus has been successful in reigning in a diverse crowd with eclectic and open-minded musical tastes.

There are still four days left of lectures and performances, so head to "June In Buffalo's" website for a complete listing of the events and a more detailed information of the what the festival has to offer.