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October 4, 11 & 18
October
4, 2008
Saturday 2 pm
Jennifer Walshe
Nature Data
Voice and electronics:
Jennifer Walshe
Nature
Data is composed of
over 200 different animal sounds, ranging from various species of birds,
monkeys, dogs, cats, fish and dolphins to worms, maggots, flies, cicadas and
frogs. It was originally commissioned for a performance in the Butterfly House
in the Royal Winter Palace in Vienna.
Martin Sebastian Loyato
El Jardin del Poeta
Cello: Fanny
Nemeth-Weiss, Electronics: Martin Sebastian Loyato
“El
Jardín del Poeta (2007)…, is based on a poem I wrote in
Spanish and English at a particular moment in my life. Though it functions as
one integrated unit, the poem is in fact three poems in one. The three poems
serve as the basis for the piece, and are manifest as a dialogue between a man
– in the electronics - and a woman – the cellist. The male poem and
the female poem weave together to create the third, complete poem, whose
dialect structure is underscored by the interplay between the electronics and
the cello.” –Martin Loyato
Douglas Wadle
Logos Prior Logos 4 + Logos Prior Logos 6
Violin:
Andrew Tholl, Bass: Laura Steenberge, Harmonium: Tashi Wada, Spoken word: Douglas
Wadle
Logos
prior Logos, no. 4 with Logos prior Logos, no. 6: Logos prior Logos, no. 4 consists of a
ground and several transparencies, two or three of which are to be arranged
according to rules derived from the formal logic statements of the ur-score,
Logos prior Logos, oil on canvas, score for performance, and which govern the
performance
of musical formulae printed on the ground. Logos prior Logos, no. 6 is a text
piece in which those same formal logic statements are used to create rules for
the editing of two texts together, in this case the rules, themselves, and the
original natural language statements from which the formal logic statements of
the
ur-score
were derived.”
Bruce Friedman
O.P.T.I.O.N.S.
(Optional Parameters to Improvise Organized Nascent Sounds)
Flute:
Ellen Burr, Cello: Isabel Castellvi, Violin: Eric Clark, Bass Clarinet: Phillip
Everal, Clarinet: Jason Mears,
Guitar:
James Moore, Trumpet: Bruce Friedman
"OPTIONS is a process
designed to encourage musical creativity through improvisation. It utilizes a collection of graphic musical
notation symbols which may be interpreted and organized in any way the
musicians choose. For this
rendition, the ensemble will create unified sonic tapestries with overlaid
improvised solos."
INTERMISSION
(MOVE TO 3RD FLOOR FOR 2ND HALF OF
CONCERT)
Ellen Burr
InkBops
Flute: Ellen Burr, Bassoon: Sara
Schoenbeck, Percussion: Andrew
Drury, Soprano: Adrian Coburn
InkBops, a deck of cards with directional ink
lines that loosely denote pitch, volume and character, can be
put
together in a multitude of ways to create many individual parts in an
improvised structure. Tonight’s
performance
is a rondo form interspersing the cards’ realization with improvised canons.
William Hellermann
Music Sweeps Up
Flute: Karl Kraber,
Clarinet: Daniel Goode, Brush & Dustpan: William Hellermann
William
Hellermann's Music Sweeps Up is from his extensive collection of pieces known variously as Visible
Musics,
Eye Scores or Still Lives. All the works from the series involve everyday
objects on which a musical score is meticulously notated. The performance often
involves the sculpture as an active ingredient in the performance as this work
does.
Daniel Goode
Stamping in the Dark
“I am the performer with everyone
else, performers and audience. With our eyes closed ("...in the dark") we count the tempo
together out loud, then mentally, stamping on our own count of "one." The stamping does not stay together. We
get an arhythmic percussion orchestra, with the floor as a big drum!” –Daniel
Goode
Meet the Composers
Jennifer
Walshe was born in
Dublin. Her works have been
performed throughout Europe, the U.S., and Canada by groups such as Alter Ego,
Ensemble Récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, Ensemble Intégrales,
Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, the Crash Ensemble, ensemble ascolta, Champ
d'Action, and the Rilke Ensemble. She has received commissions from RTÉ, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR),
Sudwest Rundfunk (SWR),
Internationale
Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the Project Arts Centre and the National
Concert Hall, Ireland, as well as commission awards from the New Music Scheme
of the Arts Council of Ireland and the
Scottish
Arts Council. In 2000 she won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale
Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt; in July 2002 she returned to Darmstadt
to lecture in composition. During 2004-2005 she lived in Berlin as a guest of
the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the
Foundation
for Contemporary Arts, New York. In addition to her activities as a composer,
Jennifer Walshe
frequently
performs as a vocalist, specializing in extended techniques.
Martín
Sebastian Loyato –
composer, trumpeter, improviser, poet, conductor, and visual artist – was
born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He completed his early studies at the
Conservatory Superior of Music in Buenos Aires, received his B.F.A. in
Composition and Trumpet Performance at the California Institute of the Arts
(CalArts), and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at Stony Brook
University. He studied trumpet with Arturo Sandoval, Edward Carroll, Eric
Aubier, and Howie Shear, and has worked with composers including Lucky Mosko,
Anne Lebaron, Bunita Marcus, Ivo Medek, and Daria Semegen. Among many private commissions from Europe,
New Zealand, North and South America, he has been commissioned to write a
children’s musical, En el Fondo de Mar, to benefit poor children in Buenos Aires. As an educator,
Mr. Loyato was part of Morton Subotnick’s team in Los Angeles, contributing to
the development of a series of programs that introduce music and technology to
children of all ages. His anthology of poetry, Helechos del Alma, was published in Argentina in 2006. He
is
currently
working towards the release of his first solo album, Syncretism, in which he explores the colors of the
Gamelan ensemble, Big Band, electronics, Middle Eastern and Latin rhythms, jazz
and poetry. Mr. Loyato
currently
resides in New York.
Douglas
C. Wadle studied composition
with James Tenney, Marc Sabat, and Christian Wolff. His work has
followed
two dominant streams: manipulations of harmonic pitch space (as defined by
James Tenney) and experiments in notational practice. Wadle's interdisciplinary interests extend to the other
arts, as well. He
actively
performs as a member of a quartet of research-oriented improvisers under the
direction of
choreographer/poet
Simone Forti, in which all members take on the roles of mover, sounder, actor,
and writer. Wadle holds an MA in
Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, where his work
focused on creative models for cross-cultural aesthetic dialogue, and an MFA in
Music Composition from the California
Institute
of the Arts.
Bruce
Friedman has been
performing in a variety of musical settings since High School. While at
Humboldt State University, he divided his interests between Trumpet and
“Experimental Music”. After earning his Bachelors
Degree
in Music there, he earned a Teaching Credential in Instrumental Music at CSU
Los Angeles. He has
gigged
or recorded with Free Improv musicians including Rich West, Scott Fraser, Ben
Rosenbloom, Motoko Hondo, and the group Surrealestate. His own projects have
included the O.P.T.I.O.N.S. ensemble and the trio Junk Science, which includes
Jeff Schwartz on bass, and David Martinelli on drums. An extremely flexible and
open-minded musician, Mr. Friedman has not limited his performances to
experimental improvisation. His Jazz group has done numerous gigs at bookstores,
coffee shops, restaurants and shopping malls. He's done
countless
Brass Quintet gigs. He played two seasons in the Pacific Palisades Symphony.
He's done Musical
Theater
in Los Angeles. At the Stella Adler, he did Stephen Sondheim's "Saturday
Night". At the Odyssey, he did "Archie and Mehitabel – A Back
Alley Opera", (Don Marquis/George Kleinsinger). He did a few seasons of
Lili
Barsha's "Haunted Cabaret" (a theatrical Halloween spoof) at Club
Fais Do Do and Al's Bar. A recording of his O.P.T.I.O.N.S. project is scheduled
for release in 2008 on the pfMentum label.
Ellen
Burr, composer and
flutist, has been improvising and composing almost as long as she's been
playing. Ellen’s music for film, radio, dance and theater has been played
worldwide. In Los Angeles, this
past spring, she presented her one-act opera Five. Having made her solo debut at 16 with
the Topeka Civic Symphony, Ellen has gone on to create music in all
styles. She has played with new
music luminaries, premiered works of many living composers and recorded over
seventeen CDs. Ms. Burr holds a BM in Flute Performance from
Wichita
State University a MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the
Arts, and the Certificat de Stage at the Academie Internationale D’Ete in France.
Ms. Burr was the subject of a feature article (Flute Talk, vol.17, no.2), is a
Smart Music clinician and a Yamaha Performing Artist. In addition to playing
and writing music, she creates jewelry out of instrument parts.
William
Hellermann was born in
1939 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His compositions have received frequent
performances
by such organizations as The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia Foundation,
Roulette,
Sounds
Out of Silent Spaces, Creative Time, The Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble, World
Music Institute,
The
Group for Contemporary Music, Evenings for New Music, Aspen Music Festival,
Tanglewood, Utrecht
Symphony
Orchestra in Holland, RAI Symphony Orchestra in Rome, Nuova Consonanza in Rome,
Biennale
de
Paris, L'Itineraire, Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine de Paris,
Festival D'Orleans in France, Studio Musique Contemporaine in Switzerland, and
the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires. There are several
commercial
recordings of Mr. Hellermann's music currently available: Turnabout Records
(VOX), Electronic
Music
Vol. IV with Ariel, CRI with Ek-Stasis II, Nonesuch Records, The New Trumpet
with Passages 13 - The Fire, and Edipan Records with At Sea. His works are
published by Theodore Presser (Merion Music), Media Press, and American
Composers Edition (ACE). In addition to his work as a composer, Mr. Hellermann
is active as a
classical
guitarist, specializing in the performance of New Music. He has premiered
numerous works for the
guitar,
many employing new instrumental techniques that he has developed. His solo
recital appearances have taken place principally in Europe in Paris, Rome,
Berlin, Baden-Baden, Stockholm, Bern and Munich.
Mr.
Hellermann is also well known for his work in music sculpture and has exhibited
frequently in the New York City area.
Daniel
Goode, composer and
clarinetist, was born in New York, 1936, studied philosophy, and then music
with Henry Cowell, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros and Kenneth Gaburo.
Innovative music for solo clarinet includes CIRCULAR THOUGHTS (1974), Theodore
Presser; cassette: Frog Peak Music) and CLARINET SONGS (1979-91),
released
in 1993, on the XI label. Performer and composer with Gamelan Son of Lion since
1976 his gamelan works are recorded on Folkways (Gamelan in the New World vol.1&2).
A book of writings, FROM NOTEBOOKS, and of music, ONE PAGE PIECES are available
from Frog Peak Music (Lebanon, NH). Solo, ensemble and
intermedia
works have been performed throughout the U.S., in Canada, England, Australia,
western and
eastern
Europe, and Japan. Scores and essays are published in many anthologies and
magazines of new
music.
THE THRUSH FROM UPPER DUNAKYN for solo bass recorder is recorded on Opus One
records. He is
Director
of the Electronic Music Studio of Rutgers University, and co-director of the
DownTown Ensemble that he co-founded in New York in 1983. TUNNEL-FUNNEL, a 35
minute piece for 15 instruments was performed at the NEW MUSIC AMERICA 1989
Festival. He was represented in the 1991, 1992, and 1996 BANG ON A CAN
festivals and at the 1994 Pfeifen im Walde festival in Berlin. A recording of
his ensemble music is to be released on CRI. In July of 1996 he was part of
Gamelan Son of LionUs tour of Java, playing in his EINE KLEINE GAMELAN MUSIC at
the Second Yogyakarta International Gamelan Festival, and in other concerts in
Java. In September, as an
ArtsLink
Fellow, he performed with musicians of the Belgrade Philharmonic and
traditional folkloric musicians of Serbia, his thirty-minute piece, EIGHT THRUSHES,
BAGPIPE AND ACCORDION.
October
11, 2008
Saturday 2 pm
Will Redman
Book
Solo Percussion: Will
Redman
“Book is a collection of 98 graphic compositions. Each is rendered in black ink on a
sheet of white 8.5x11 inch paper. The compositions represent extensions and extrapolations of conventional
music notation. Book is available for interpretation (however
radical) by any performer(s) in any place at any time in any part for any duration”. - Will Redman
Katherine Young & Jonathan Zorn
Untitled for Bass, Bassoon and Electronics
Bassoon: Katherine
Young: Double bass and Electronics: Jonathan Zorn
This
piece is the second in a series of collaborative transcriptions between
Katherine Young and Jonathan Zorn, in which, working from a recording, they
graphically re-notate an earlier piece of theirs. This time the composers
passed the score back-and-forth long distance for 6 iterations (3 each),
building up a transcription and then excavating and defining a new piece from
the sedimented layers. (The projected image is a pre-compositional image done
by Zorn.)
INTERMISSION
David Means
Folding Music II for solo wind instrument
Wind controller and
live processing: David Means
“Folding
Music II for soloist
is from a series of three-dimensional scores which combines traditional and
graphic notation into folded segments which the performer can use to maximize
his/her instrument's extended tonal resources and performance techniques.”
Anthony Ptak
Insistentia.08
Copper pipe,
Ekphonetic Instrument, Theramin Antenna: Anthony Ptak
“Insistentia.08 is a composition written for any
instrument, object, or action. It should be performed without any sense of
rhythm or metered time. Performers should not listen to, nor respond to
anything going on around them. Decisions should be forthright, made in spite of
everything, including any interference, or disruption. When an incident takes
place, it is far more important than what takes place. The performance is
labor. If a
performer
becomes tired, this is part of the labor. Be on time. Pay attention or a
tension may collect its debt. What does it mean to insist? To stay upon: to
lean upon: to rest: stop or stand still: to pause as would speak no more: to
persist: to continue: to enforce: to labor earnestly: to pursue diligently to
abide fast and firmly: to
endeavor:
to provoke or solicit”. - A.J. Ptak
Stuart Saunders Smith
Transitions and Leaps
Percussion ensemble:
The Sylvia Smith Percussion Duo - Sylvia Smith and Ayano Kataoka
Transitions
and Leaps is about
moving from one category of information to another, by either a gradual
transition or a sudden leap. The first task of the performers is to
choose four categories (A, B, C, and D) of
actions/sounds
that can be modified. Some
examples of categories are walking, reciting a text, xylophone rags, wearing
hats, playing Bach on the piano, serving tea.
The
score makes use of ideograms that symbolize a task to be done while making the
transition or the leap. These are
modifications that apply to any of the performing arts, for example: higher,
slower, imitate, change the speed, etc. Performers work together over many weeks or months, by improvisational
trial and error,
eventually
coming up with a performance that is repeated verbatim with each performance.
Meet the Composers
Will
Redman is a composer,
improviser, and educator. He has a
BA from the University of Maryland at
Baltimore
County, an MA from the University of Southampton (England), and a PhD in
composition from the University at Buffalo, where he was a Dean’s Fellow and adjunct
lecturer. He has studied percussion with Tom Goldstein and Kevin Norton;
composition with Stuart Saunders Smith, Michael Finnissy, and Jeffrey
Stadelman; and computer music with Cort Lippe. Mr. Redman has taught classes in music theory, composition,
and music history (including Rock ‘n’ Roll, Punk, and Hip-Hop) and was the
initiator and facilitator of OpenLab, a monthly free improvisation workshop in
Buffalo sponsored by Big Orbit’s Soundlab and the Open Music Foundation. Some
of Mr. Redman’s recent projects include a drama for solo pianist, Wilderness
and Self-Sufficiency, the first act of which was premiered by Ian Pace at June
In Buffalo 2005; Eyes and Ears: Sound Needs Image, a gallery exhibition at the
Carnegie Art Center co-curated with Joanna Raczynska and featuring the Open
Music
Ensemble’s
interpretations of moving graphic scores made by film and video makers; a sound
installation, Book: Speaker Ensemble, featuring contributions by members of the
OME; 10th Lesson, a film/video/sound
collaboration
with Joanna Raczynska, which has been screened in Buffalo, Karlsruhe, London,
and Baltimore; and Book, a collection of graphic compositions to be performed
in any part, by anyone, anywhere.
Jonathan
Zorn is a composer/sound
artist/performer from Middletown, CT. He likes to make sounds using his voice,
double bass, accordion, modular synthesizer, and computer. His compositions
involve systems of
interaction
that exceed the control of any single participant, creating surprises for
performers, audience, and composer. He has studied with Alvin Lucier, Anthony
Braxton, Ron Kuivila, and Jon Barlow. Mr. Zorn recently
finished
recording a CD of solo bass compositions. The pieces on this recording range
from memorized
structures
that explore his personal approach to the instrument, to complex notated pieces
that involve
structures
based on recursion and reorganization of standard thought patterns involved in
music. A large part of Mr. Zorn’s work thus far has been to deconstruct
structures, anything from pressure gauges to musical
compositions
to myself, and reconstruct them, testing the limits of recognition and the
possibilities of new forms. This area has been the ground for new combinations
and organizational possibilities.
Composer
and bassoonist Katherine Young writes acoustic and electro-acoustic music, often using open forms and
expressive, non-traditional notations. Katherine improvises, performs new
chamber music, and plays with rock bands. Projects past and present include:
Anthony Braxton's Falling River Quartet, Architeuthis Walks on Land with Amy
Cimini, slyo with bassist Nat Slaughter, Wilde Turkey, Michael Pestel's
ensembles, the trio Civil War, Jason Ajemian's Who Care How Long You Sink, and
Roommate. She is a founding member of
contemporary
chamber music collective Till by Turning. Katherine collaborates with the likes
of Emily Manzo, Adam Sonderberg, Jessica Pavone, Jonathan Zorn, Carol Genetti,
James Falzone, Andrew Lafkas, Andrew Raffo Dewar, and others. She studied
bassoon performance and comparative literature at Oberlin College and Conservatory.
She completed her composition masters at Wesleyan working with Anthony Braxton,
Ron Kuivila, and Alvin Lucier and is currently living in Brooklyn.
David
Means was born on the
same day the sound barrier was broken. He studied architecture at the University
of Illinois at Urbana where he participated in the original (1967) "Music
Circus" event staged by John Cage.
After
compulsory military service in Vietnam, he returned to Illinois and the formal
study of music, integrating aspects of invented notation into sculptural scores
and performance installations for a variety of architectural and environmental
settings. His music has been presented at such places as the New Music America
Festivals, (Minneapolis, Hartford,Houston), Dance Theater Workshop,
Experimental Intermedia and the Roulette
Performance
Series, (New York City), and the Stuttgart Graphic Music Festival. His graphic
scores, installations and performance systems have been exhibited and presented
by the Walker Art Center, IRCAM (Paris),
Documenta
IX (Kassel), the Xi An Conservatory of Music (China), Het Stroomhuis (Holland),
Logos Foundation (Belgium) and the Arts Council of Great Britain. He is a
three-time recipient of the McKnight Composer
Fellowship
and has received fellowships and grants from the Bush Foundation, the Minnesota
Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation's Composer Commissioning Program, and Meet
the Composer, Inc. He has taught music and performance art at the University of
Illinois, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the MacPhail Center for
the Arts. He is currently an Associate Professor of Media and Fine Arts and
producer of the Strange Attractors Festival of Experimental Intermedia Art at
Metropolitan State University.
Anthony
Jay Ptak is an artist and
composer who has studied under Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, Lydia Kavina, and
Herbert Brün, and had technical consultations with Robert Moog, and he spent
time with composer John Cage in 1991 at the North American New Music Festival
in Buffalo, N.Y. He performed at the First International Theremin Festival in
1997, and has been a guest artist at the historic Experimental Music Studios
directed by Scott Wyatt at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from
2000 to 2007. Mr. Ptak was
appointed visiting
researcher
at UIUC in 2001, and taught sound for new media artists in the School of Art
and Design until 2007. He has given presentations, designed site-specific
compositions, and performances on the theremin, invented
instruments,
and electro-acoustics at Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United
States (SEAMUS), School of the Art Institute, Chicago Cultural Center, St.
Louis Art Museum, Krannert Art Museum, FFMUP Princeton
University,
Issue Project Room, Millennium Film Workshop, Media Lab Madrid, Calart Actual
LaGranja, Roulette Intermedium, The Kitchen, IMEB Bourges, Miguel Abreu
Gallery, and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He is a founding
member of the New York Theremin Society. An inviolable auto-didacticist, he
uses simple means to produce complex results. Anthony Ptak currently resides in
New York City.
Stuart
Saunders Smith (born 1948
in Portland, Maine, USA) is a confessional composer who focuses on revealing in
his music the most personal aspects of his life, in the belief that the
revelations of the particular speak to the universal. Stuart Saunders Smith’s
music is performed regularly on an international basis. He has been awarded grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the
Pittsburgh Film
Forum,
as well as the Hartt College of Music Distinguished Alumni Award, and a
Percussive Arts Society Citation for Distinguished Editorship. Stuart Saunders
Smith’s music is published by Sonic Art Editions and is recorded on 11 West
Records, Centaur Records, Opus One Records, oodiscs, Cadenza, BV Haast, and GAC
Sweden. He has authored two books:
Twentieth Century Scores, Prentice-Hall; Words and Spaces, University Press of
America;
as well as many articles published in Perspectives of New Music, Percussionist,
IS Journal, Percussive Notes, Ear Magazine, etc. Stuart Saunders Smith has been
on the faculty of the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Darmstadt Musikinstitut
(Germany), Percussion Workshop Poland, the University of Maryland at Baltimore
County. Residencies include
University of California -San Diego, Yale University, Documenta 1992 (Kassel,
Germany), the University of Gothenberg
(Sweden), and the University of Akron. The Music of Stuart Saunders Smith by
John Welsh is published by Excelsior Music Press, (New York, NY).
The
Sylvia Smith Percussion Duo,
founded in 1998, is a women’s percussion duo centered around music that
integrates
percussion, spoken language and theater. Sylvia Smith is
the founder, owner and editor of Smith Publications/Sonic Art Editions,
publishers of serious American art music. She is extremely rigorous in her
selection
of music and therefore her publishing house is looked to as a leading source of
new American music. The recipient
of six Paul Revere Awards for graphic excellence, her publications are thought
of as particularly handsome editions. Her scholarship includes publishing several articles on music notation,
and curating many concerts of John Cage’s music. As a percussionist, Sylvia Smith has performed at Merkin
Hall in New York, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and
with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. She tours North America with the Sylvia Smith Percussion Duo. Her performances are recorded on
oodiscs and Eleven West Records. The recipient of numerous honors, Dr. Smith was awarded the American
Music Center Letter of Distinction in 1988.
Ayano
Kataoka recently became
the first percussionist to be accepted into the Chamber Music Society Two residency
program in New York. She has
appeared with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, given a
debut recital at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall in Japan, and performed with
Emanuel Ax at Lincoln Center. More
recently, she gave the US premiere performance of “…As If time Would Heal By
Its Passing” by Stuart Saunders Smith at the 2005 Percussive Arts Society
International Convention. A
leading marimba
specialist,
Ayano Kataoka is a graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and
Music, the Peabody
Conservatory,
and earned an Artist Diploma degree from Yale University. She is recorded on Respect
Records. She describes her approach to
percussion performance, “I think of percussion performance as
essentially
theatrical. I am particularly
drawn to compositions that involve the whole person, using standard percussion
instruments along with spoken voice, singing and acting, and elegant props.”
October
18, 2008
Saturday 2 pm
Ken Silverman
Speaker, topic - John Cage
Kenneth
Silverman is Professor
Emeritus at New York University, where he taught American literature. His
books about the history of the
arts in America include A Cultural History of the American Revolution; The Life and Times of Cotton Mather; Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and
Never-ending Remembrance; HOUDINI!!!.; and Lightning
Man: The Accursed Life
of Samuel F. B. Morse. A
fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has
received
the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the
Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America, and the Christopher Literary
Award of the Society of American Magicians. Currently, he is writing a biography
of John Cage.
Keren Rosenbaum
Inbetween
Reflex ensemble
Members, Violin: Olivia De Prato Cello: Reenat Pinchas
Inbetween is written for Violin and Cello, both
reacting to pre-recorded soundtracks. The soundtracks are played through earphones during the performance and
heard only by the performers – each performer
hearing
only his or her own soundtrack. www.ReflexEnsemble.com
Victor Adan
The Draftmasters
Computer and two
Penplotters: Victor Adan and Jeff Snyder
The
Draftmasters is a
media art duo formed by VÌctor Adan and Jeff Snyder. Using custom-built software
and hardware, The Draftmasters control antiquated pen plotters, originally
intended for engineering and
architectural
drafting, to simultaneously create real-time drawings and sound. While robot
arms apply pigments on paper, the work of motors and solenoids inside the
plotters is made audible using electromagnetic
transducers.
As sounds collide, visual patterns emerge...
Joan La Barbara
Circular Song
Voice: Joan La Barbara
Circular
Song was inspired by
the circular breathing technique used by wind players. In adapting the
technique
for singing, I chose to vocalize both the inhale and exhale, designing a
circular mirror-image graphic score that displayed the directionality and
breath changes on a progression of descending and ascending glissando patterns.
The repeating patterns, broken at specified points, progress through a series
to the mid-point figure, an ascending set of inhaled and exhaled multiphonics
(double-stops for the voice), returning in reverse order to the beginning
figure. Circular Song is included on the double CD-set Voice is the Original
Instrument/Joan
La Barbara: Early Works (Lovely Music LCD 3003) and was one of three
compositions on the 1976 LP (RVW 2276) of the same title on my self-produced
label, Wizard Music. On the cover
of that LP, my
photograph
is surrounded by the graphic score for Circular Song.
Daniel Schnee
Chollobhat
Tenor Saxophone:
Daniel Schnee
Chollobhat is a meditation on
human nature, utilizing Persian quartertones and techniques from Japanese Noh
theater music as mediated by the graphic score. This performance is dedicated
to the mothers of American soldiers serving in Iraq.
INTERMISSION
(MOVE TO 3RD FLOOR FOR
2ND HALF OF CONCERT)
Steve Roden
Pavilion
10 toy glockenspiels
(staged from seats within audience)
“The
scores for this work were derived from architectural drawings by Alvaro Siza
for a pavilion at the serpentine gallery in London, where the piece was
originally performed. The pavilion design was made up of small squares which I
colored in various sequences to correspond to colored bars of small
glockenspiels. Each performer has a score made from a different elevation, and
the piece is essentially mapping a structure in sound”. –Steve Roden
Malcolm Goldstein
Hardscrabble Songs
Violin, Voice: Malcolm
Goldstein
Hardscrabble
Songs for
violin-voice solo as reflections on the USA with four songs beginning with the
house I live in and those without, the hysteria of stock markets, living on the
street and "oh can you see"; as all for in these times".
(Malcolm Goldstein was inspired by the words of civil rights activist Rosa
Parks in the creation of this violin solo, which premiered at a concert
celebrating the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1986.)
Chris Chalfant
Looking Through Trees
Soprano saxophone: Joe
Giardullo, Percussion Ken Yamazaki,
Prepared piano, voice
and ocarina: Chris Chalfant
Looking
Through Trees by
Chris Chalfant is a visual and sonic interpretation of the feeling of joy and
tranquility while lying on the ground taking in the different shades of green,
the depth of filed and the luminosity of the light shining through the swaying
leaves in the slight breeze.
Meet the Composers
Keren
Rosenbaum is a
multi-faceted composer, video artist, and interdisciplinary creator and
performer. Born
in
Israel, 1970. A prolific composer and talented flautist from a very young age,
Ms. Rosenbaum studied with
renowned
Israeli composers Arie Shapira and Leon Shidlovski during her studies at Tel
Aviv University. She
continued
developing her distinctive style at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague, where
she studied
composition
and electronic music with Giljius Van Bergeijk Diderik Wagenaar, Roderik de
Man, Clarence Barlow and Louis Andrissen. After directing and producing "New
Voices", the first interdisciplinary festival in Israel, she founded the
body that would become the main vehicle for her musical and artistic vision
– the Reflex
Ensemble,
a unique collective of classical musicians (including players from the Israeli
Philharmonic and the Tel Aviv Opera), jazz musicians and actors, as well as
lighting, sound, photography and video artists, from Israel and Europe. The Reflex Ensemble embodies the vision
of “the new orchestra”, which challenges the old-school classical music tradition
in its focus on performance, openness to new technologies, incorporating
lighting and sound artists as equal members, and choosing not to stage its
performances in concert halls. Ms. Rosenbaum’s work with Reflex, as well as
with other acclaimed performers, have established her as a prominent force in
the Israeli and European contemporary music scene. In recent years, Rosenbaum’s
music has been performed by the Czeck Philharmonic Ostrova, the Israeli
contemporary ensemble Musica Nova, the Maarten Altena
Ensemble,
and others.
Victor
Adan - “I have been
interested in music, visual arts, and computer programming since childhood. My
first
musical experiments took place during the late 1980s, when my parents acquired
two new pieces of
furniture
for our home: an upright piano and a personal computer. Both machines
fascinated me, and I spent many hours pressing the keys of these two wondrous
devices. After a few disappointing first years in college, I
discovered
the uncompromising music of composer Julio Estrada and, in 1997, I joined his
deschooling
"Musical
Creation Lab" at the Universidad Nacional AutÛnoma de Mexico. Then I
shifted focus. In 2005 I earned an MS in media technology and digital
communications from MIT, working with Barry Vercoe on such things as music structure
modeling, automation and classification. I am currently pursuing a DMA at
Columbia University in New York City. I typically spend my days composing,
writing software and teaching robots how to draw.”
–Victor
Adan
Jeff
Snyder is a composer,
instrument designer, electronics performer and sound artist working in New York
City. His works, which often employ combinations of acoustic, electric, and
electronic instruments, have been
performed
by a variety of ensembles, including the Timetable Percussion Trio and
L'Ensemble Portique. In
addition
to his concert works, he often collaborates with artists from other mediums,
most frequently with the modern dance group Fivefour, the choreographer/video
artist Nora Stephens, and the visual artist Gandalf Gavan. Jeff is an active member of the Wet Ink
Ensemble, the analog synthesizer duo exclusiveOr, and the pen-plotter duo The
Draftmasters.
Joan
La Barbara, composer,
performer, sound artist, has been hailed as "one of the great vocal virtuosas
of our time" (San Francisco Examiner). Her multi-layered compositions
often utilize her signature extended vocal
techniques,
garnering awards including DAAD Artist-in-Residency in Berlin, Guggenheim
Fellowship in Music Composition, 7 NEA grants, and numerous commissions. Recent recordings include
"ShamanSong" (New World) and "Voice is the Original
Instrument" (Lovely Music. "73 Poems" was presented in The American Century Part II: SoundWorks
at The Whitney Museum. Interactive media performance work "Messa di
Voce" premiered at ars electronica 2003. La Barbara composes sound scores for film, video and
dance, including a score for voice with electronics for a "Children's
Television Workshop/Sesame Street" animation, broadcast worldwide since
1977. Live Music for Dance commissions include scores for “Fleeting Thoughts”
and “An American Rendition” (Jane Comfort & Company) and “Deserts” (Nai-Ni
Chen Dance Company). La Barbara is currently composing an opera. http://www.joanlabarbara.com
Daniel
Schnee is a saxophonist /
composer based in Toronto who has performed internationally with a number of
American Music, and Grammy Award winning musicians. He has studied with several
renowned Arab and Japanese masters, as well as with jazz legend Ornette
Coleman. After several years of freelance composing in
Japan
while undertaking Soto Zen monastic training, Daniel went on to become the
woodwind and jazz history instructor at the Edward Said National Conservatory of
Music in Jerusalem. Currently he is pursuing doctoral studies in
ethnomusicology at York University.
Steve
Roden is a visual and
sound artist from Los Angeles. His work includes painting, drawing, sculpture,
film/video, sound installation, and performance. Mr. Roden's working process
uses various forms of specific
notation
(words, musical scores, maps, etc.) and translates them through self invented
systems into scores; which then influence the process of painting, drawing,
sculpture, and sound composition. These scores, rigid in terms of their
parameters and rules, are also full of holes for intuitive decisions and left
turns. The inspirational source material becomes a kind of formal skeleton that
the abstract finished works are built upon. In the visual works, translations
of information such as text and maps, become rules and systems for generating
visual
actions
such as color choices, number of elements, and image building. In the sound
works, singular source materials such as objects, architectural spaces, and
field recordings, are abstracted through humble electronic processes to create
new audio spaces, or 'possible landscapes'. The sound works present themselves
with an aesthetic Mr. Roden describes as "lower case'' - sound concerned
with subtlety and the quiet activity of
listening.
Malcolm
Goldstein, renowned
composer/violinist, has been active in the presentation of new music and dance
since the early 1960's, in New York City, as co-founder of the Tone Roads
Ensemble and as participant in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival
of the Avant Garde and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Since then he
has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, presenting solo
violin concerts and appearing as soloist with new music and dance ensembles.
His "soundings" improvisations have received
international
acclaim for having "reinventing violin playing", extending the range
of tonal/sound-texture
possibilities
of the instrument and revealing new dimensions of expressivity. Collecting the
thoughts and
perceptions
that have evolved from his past twenty-five years of music making and
observation of the natural world, Malcolm Goldstein offers a very particular
view of improvisation: "the musician as one centered in the process of discovery,
unfolding moment to moment, that is realized in the gesture of
enactment/sounding." Through articles, previously published in various
periodicals, interspersed and embellished with excerpts from journals, interviews,
letters, and music scores, the author touches on social, political,
educational, aesthetic and economic considerations as he explores the
"expression of the wholeness of our humanity."
Chris
Chalfant is a composer,
director, pianist, vocalist, artist, author, choreographer, poet and spatial
alignment
consultant; Noted for her unique and broad style as a creative artist, Chalfant
has explored various mediums of expression with openness, connection to form,
sense of design and search for truth. Her work has been performed around the globe
and recorded for over twenty years. In 2006 she published “Book of
Unstandards”,
a collection of thirty years of her short works. Chalfant’s biography was
entered in the
“Encyclopedia
of the 21st Century, Vol. I” published by Maximillien de Lafayette. In 2003 she
was one of nine solo pianists from around the world to perform in Prague for
the Mezinárodni Festival Jazzového Piana.
Chris
Chalfant was a member of the Longy Improvisation Ensemble, directed by Anne
Farber from 1985-1992, and co-led the Lifetime Visions Orchestra with Joseph
Jarman from 2001-2005. Chris Chalfant studied piano and African Music at Kent
State (BA in Music ‘83), Jazz and composition with George Russell and William
Thomas McKinley, as well as an independent study in “aleatoric” music (non-jazz
improvisation) at New England
Conservatory
(MM ‘88). She also studied improvisation with Connie Crothers from 2001-2004.
Yamaha Disklavier is the official piano of Performing Arts at CAM
Tickets $15/$10 Students, Seniors / free CAM Members.
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