Vic Rawlings (cello/ electronics) employs a still and unstable sound language ranging from visceral excess to extreme austerity. He uses an amplified cello augmented with extensive and invasive preparations of his design, adapted from Baroque-era designs. On this instrument he has developed a vocabulary of extended techniques, approaching near-total abstraction from the cello. As an entirely separate unit, he uses and continually develops an electronic instrument with a highly unstable interface, acoustically realized by an array of exposed speaker elements. Rawlings primarily presents improvised music in the predictable settings and durations. Exceptions to this are installation-length performances and a series of performances in standard music venues that suspend concepts of site, context, and content.
Longtime collaborators include Greg Kelley, Liz Tonne, James Coleman, Bhob Rainey, Mike Bullock, Tim Feeney, Bryan Eubanks, Chris Cogburn, Tatsuya Nakatani, Ricardo Arias, Jake Meginsky, Jason Lescalleet, and Laurence Cook. He has collaborated with Ikue Mori, Eddie Prevost, Jaap Blonk, Daniel Carter, Donald Miller, and Andrea Neumann. He has performed the works of Christian Wolff (with the composer), Michael Pisaro (with the composer), Stockhausen, Cage, and Cardew. He has toured extensively and has appeared at: Victoriaville (Quebec), Musique Action (Nancy, France), Vision (NYC), Cha'ak'ab Paaxil (Merida, Mexico), Improvised and Otherwise (NYC), Festival of New Trumpet Music (NYC), and No Idea (Austin, TX). His recordings are on: Grob, RRR, Sedimental, Absurd, Emanem, Intransitive, Boxmedia, Semata, YDLMIER, Cathnor, and Rykodisc, among many others. His writings on music/ instrumentation and contemporary music education have been published in Leonardo Music Journal and Intransitive Magazine.
He has authored sound-based music and listening curricula that engage students at all levels in participatory experiences in which they often encounter unfamiliar experiential/ aesthetic territory. He presents in settings ranging from Ivy-League Universities to juvenile detention facilities. This has included an extended residency teaching collective improvisation to Electronic Music Composition to students at Harvard University as well as multiple residencies (ranging from single-day to an 8-week intensive course) in sound and electroacoustic instrument-making in elementary- and secondary-school settings ranging from suburban Massachusetts to a rural village in Yucatan, Mexico. Other visiting artist/ teaching residencies have included Oberlin Conservatory, MIT, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Wesleyan University, and Tinicum Art and Science High School, among many Universities, elementary- and secondary-schools in many states.