Today, we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Vitiello.

Stephen is an electronic musician and media artist. His sound installations are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. He's worked with Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Joan Jonas. By day, he teaches Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Stephen’s latest project is Trinity, a collaborative album with Lawrence English, who you heard on last week's show. Each of Trinity's five tracks brings in a different third musician: Brendan Canty from Fugazi, Chris Abrahams from The Necks, Marina Rosenfeld, Aki Onda, and the late Steve Roden. The album came out last November.

Stephen shares how this project came together, what it's like to work with each of these artists, and how he's built a career turning everyday sounds into sonic experiences.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello’s album Trinity)

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Dig Deeper

Artist and Album

Visit Stephen Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com and follow him on Soundcloud, Instagram, and Bandcamp
Purchase Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello’s Trinity from American Dreams, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
Previous collaborations: Acute Inbetweens (2011) and Fable (2014) with Lawrence English
Stephen Vitiello & Brendan Canty: Second (with Hahn Rowe)

Trinity Collaborators

Lawrence English and Room40 Records
Brendan Canty - drummer (Fugazi, The Messthetics)
Chris Abrahams - pianist (The Necks)
Marina Rosenfeld - turntablist and composer
Aki Onda - electronic musician and sound artist
Steve Roden - late sound artist and visual artist

World Trade Center Project

World Trade Center Artist Residency - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999)
Bright and Dusty Things - album featuring WTC recordings
Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent - documentary by ABC-TV Australia

Educational Institution

VCU Kinetic Imaging - Virginia Commonwealth University
Kinetic Imaging Graduate Program at VCU

Influences and Collaborators Mentioned

Nam June Paik - video art pioneer
Pauline Oliveros - composer and accordionist
Ryuichi Sakamoto - composer and musician
Fred Frith - guitarist and composer
Ikue Mori - drummer and electronic musician (DNA)
Maryanne Amacher - sound artist and composer
R. Murray Schafer - composer and writer on acoustic ecology
Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) - electronic musician
Colin Newman - Wire guitarist and vocalist
Taylor Deupree - 12k Records founder

Key Venues and Institutions

The Kitchen - New York performance space
Electronic Arts Intermix - video art distributor
Anthology Film Archives - New York cinema
MASS MoCA - Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
The High Line - New York elevated park
Whitney Museum of American Art - 2002 Biennial
Museum of Modern Art - Soundings exhibition (2013)

Punk and No Wave References

Fugazi - influential post-hardcore band
DNA - no wave band
The Clash
No Wave movement - late 1970s NYC

Music Theory and Practice

Fluxus movement - experimental art movement
John Cage and prepared piano
Ambisonic audio - spatial sound format
Dolby Atmos - immersive audio format

Articles and Interviews

Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello conversation in Bomb magazine
The Collaborative Recent History of Stephen Vitiello - Fluid Radio interview

Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com

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Stephen Vitiello: The Punk Attitude of Collaborative Sound Art