Robert Janeway graduated with the Music Composition emphasis in the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Experiments with digital audio and ensemble writing led him to the top prize among other californian high school composers in a competition sponsored by the College of Creative Studies, and he was thus introduced to the Santa Barbara campus.
His work with choreographer Nicole Helton spans three collaborative efforts in the last year, and has given way to pieces that have experienced an honest conversation between the worlds of music and modern dance. Music for their newest collaboration Within Layers is an assemblage of improvisations and percussive experiments at the piano. Robert would like to thank the help of Kevin Kelly at Sound Recording for assistance in preparing the source material. He has thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative process which has given way to a newfound enthusiasm for dance and looks forward to continuing work in the field and with Ms. Helton.
He writes for solo instruments and ensembles, and electronic music with an emphasis in microsound/micromontage and musique concrete. In 2005, a collaboration with computer engineer (and roommate) Kurt Kiefer explored the possibilities of Max/MSP/Jitter as a 3-D environment wherein prepared sample libraries were triggered upon collision detections between virtual cubes adhering to a gravity engine; in addition, live processing of bass guitar in the Max/MSP realm was used as counterpoint. His first solo installation work Phase Strata was displayed in January of 2006, meant to highlight similarities between the abstract concept of the Modular System and sonographic images. In June of 2006 he held a recital of composed work at Contemporary Arts Forum, a gallery in downtown Santa Barbara, featuring live acoustic performances and a display of his assembled electronic work. In addition to music, his creative interests lie in photography, digital art, record packaging and contemporary design across media.
