"Woodstock Gamelan"
photo by Anna Rubin
   Lydia Ayers is using algorithms to solve tuning and compositional problems, and is creating Chinese computer instrument designs. She chaired the 1996 International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong. She composes with unlimited just intonation and with a 75-tone Indian/Partch scale on the " Woodstock Gamelan," a tubular percussion instrument built to her specifications by Woodstock Percussion. She has recently co-authored, with Andrew Horner, Cooking with Csound: Woodwind and Brass Recipes, a CD-ROM package which gives wavetable synthesis designs for wind instruments.
She has extensively researched the Partch, Indian, Indonesian and Arabic microtonal systems as well as more experimental tunings, has given workshops in microtonal music and has worked with extended vocal and woodwind techniques, including quarter tones, multiphonics, buzz tones and other unusual flute timbres. Microtonal research has taken her to Indonesia, Spain and Tunisia, and she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Electronic Music in New York in 1990.

Her pieces have been performed at International Computer Music Conferences in Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore and Miami; at the Musicarama Festival in Hong Kong; at the Asian Composer's League World New Music Festival in Thailand; at the Atelier de Recherche Experimentale at IRCAM in Paris, France; by members of the New Music Consort in New York, NY; by Isabelle Ganz at the Ijsbreker in Amsterdam, in Israel and throughout North America; at Composers' Forum concerts in New York, NY; at the Microtonal Music Festival in New York, NY; at SEAMUS; at SCI conferences; at the Fourth Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival; at the NOW Music Festival in Columbus, Ohio; at the International Double Reed Society Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada; at American Women Composers marathons in Boston; by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and in Sweden, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alaska, California, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Alabama and Texas.