Meridian Music: Composers in Performance presents Country Western, a multimedia performance that involves an ensemble of musicians playing an array of instruments, spoken word, interactive computer processing of the acoustic instruments as well as interactive real-time video animation. The string instruments tune to a unique twenty-two-tone just intonation scale. An electronic component creates a digital feedback loop between audio and video software/hardware, which then becomes an instrument in performance. The interactive system receives input data from microphones and is analyzed for control data for the video being synthesized in real-time. Abstract imagery and color fields projected in the room transform it with changing light, accentuating the physical environment, a technique recently dubbed augmented sculpture or object-based video art.

The ensemble of musicians includes Shayna Dunkelman (percussion), Kanoko Nishi (koto), Noah Phillips (prepared guitar), Marielle Jakobsons (violin/electronics), Emily Packard (violin), Theresa Wong (cello), Aram Shelton (woodwinds/electronics), Jen Baker (trombone), Dennis Somera (voice/poetry), Zachary James Watkins (laptop/network), and Joe Gray (video/network).

Zachary James Watkins has studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith and Alvin Curran. Zachary has received commissions from Clarinetist Beth Fleenor, pianist and composer Tiffany Lin, Cornish College of The Arts, The Microscores Project, The Beam Foundation, and the Somnubutone Radio Series. His piece Suite for String Quartet was awarded the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for Composition. He has performed at the 2006 International Computer Music Conference and the 2007 Bent Festival in Los Angeles with his band The Pink Canoes. Zachary recently designed sound and composed new music for the play "I have loved Strangers" produced by Just Theatre, which was listed as one of the "top ten of 2007" in the East Bay Express. His sound art work entitled Designed Obsolescence, "spoke as a metaphor for the breakdown of the dream of technology and the myth of our society's permanence," review by Susan Noyes Platt in the Summer 05 issue of ARTLIES. During October of 2006, Zachary was an artist in residence at the Espy Foundation.