The Museum of Pop Culture’s annual Pop Conference, first held in 2002, mixes together ambitious music discourse of every kind to bring academics, critics, musicians, and dedicated fans into a collective conversation. Pop Con 2020 is being reimagined as an online conference to be held in September 2020 (exact dates and times to be announced).
Leading up to the virtual event this fall MoPOP will host a series of teaser events. The sixth teaser event, POP TALKS: Holly Herndon with NPR Music, takes place at 12 p.m. PT on Friday, August 14.
NPR Music x Pop Conference in collaboration with the Museum of Pop Culture present:
POP TALKS: Holly Herndon
Friday, August 14, 2020
12 p.m. PT
Instagram Live: @nprmusic
POP TALKS is a new pop-up conversation series on Instagram live. Join NPR Music and Pop Conference for hour-long, thoughtful conversations with today’s most intriguing musicians. Next up is experimental electronic composer and performer Holly Herndon, who talks about her provocative work on Friday, August 14 in an interview with Jason King.
ABOUT HOLLY HERNDON
Holly Herndon operates at the edges of electronic and avant-garde pop and emerges with a dynamic and disruptive canon of her own. On her most recent full-length album PROTO, Herndon fronts and conducts an electronic pop choir comprised of both human and A.I. voices over a musical palette that encompasses everything from synths to Sacred Harp stylings. The sounds synthesized on PROTO by Herndon, her A.I. “baby” Spawn, and the vocal ensemble combine elements from Herndon’s dynamic and idiosyncratic personal journey: the timeless folk traditions of her childhood experiences in church-going East Tennessee (particularly the prismatic layered practice of Sacred Harp singing), the avant-garde music she explored while at Mills College, and the radical club culture of Berlin, all enhanced by her recent PhD in composition studies at Stanford University, researching machine learning and music.
ABOUT JASON KING
Jason King is a professor and the founding faculty member at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, an innovative leadership training program for aspiring music entrepreneurs.
A journalist, musician, DJ, songwriter, curator and producer, Jason was the host and co-producer of NPR’s Noteworthy, a series on the creative process of music superstars like Dua Lipa and Miguel, as well as the curator of NPR’s 24/7 R&B radio channel.
He is currently working on a biography of Freddie Mercury, and producing and directing documentaries.
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