- Date:
- 2019-10-09
- Main contributors:
- McIntire Department of Music
- Summary:
- Blue Desert (video installation presented in the OCH Lobby) Peter Swendsen, music; Rian Brown Orso and Geoff Pingree, video Migration Patterns (part 1) Leah Barclay Eroding Fjóla Evans, composer Eighth Blackbird >19980 Lemon Guo and Mengtai Zhang Festival of Whispers - Matthew Burtner, composer Eighth Blackbird ~Intermission~ Migration Patterns (part 2) Leah Barclay The Clarity of Cold Air Jonathan Bailey Holland, composer Eighth Blackbird Migration Patterns (part 3) Leah Barclay Under the Sea Ice Christopher Luna, composer Rivanna String Quartet Inlets John Cage, composer group performance Program Notes Blue Desert (2012) Peter Swendsen, music; Rian Brown Orso, and Geoff Pingree video A multi-channel video installation (seen here in triptych) shot with high- resolution cameras, BLUE DESERT was created during a two-week expedition to Antarctica in November of 2009 aboard the National Geographic Explorer by Geoff Pingree and Rian Brown-Orso. The team worked with Peter Swendsen to create the installation’s soundscape using field recordings from Antarctica as well as Swendsen’s library of sounds from Arctic Norway. The three first installed the work, for three-channel video and four-channel sound, at the Laconia Gallery in Boston in November of 2011. Antarctica is a uniquely vast and haunting panorama of ice, water, and sky. To visit this place is to glimpse a world without human beings, to observe a planet in its most primitive and elemental state, to witness the mysteriously beautiful and fearsome power of the earth. Although any attempt to represent the Antarctic is, in some sense, futile – an exercise in framing the unframeable—BLUE DESERT provides a provisional window onto a wondrous landscape that embodies, paradoxically, the ancient permanence and never-ending flux of our physical environment. Migration Patterns: Saltwater (Queensland Coastline) (2019) Leah Barclay Aquatic ecosystems are complex acoustic environments, where species are reliant on sound to communicate and survive. Sound propagates underwater at different speeds, affected by temperature, pressure, and salinity. The impacts of climate change are often visible in terrestrial environments, yet dramatic changes in aquatic ecosystems go unnoticed simply due to visibility. Increased anthropogenic noise and rising temperatures cause ecological disruptions that are dramatically transforming the acoustic ecologies of our oceans, rivers, and wetlands. This work explores the fragility and complexity of life in a world of sound and vibration. Drawing on a large database of hydrophone recordings from the Queensland coastline, this work traces sonic migration patterns and shifting ecologies from the smallest micro crustaceans to the largest marine mammals on the planet. The recordings focus around the Great Barrier Reef and K’Gari (Fraser Island), a major transitory point for humpbacks. The whale song adapts in response to changing environments and the recordings contribute to ongoing scientific research on the value of aquatic acoustic ecology in climate action. This sound work immerses listeners in the depths of aquatic ecosystems alongside the coastline of Queensland and transposes infrasonic and ultrasonic recordings into perceptible ranges for humans. >19980 - Into Silence They Appear (2017-2019) Lemon Guo, music; Mengtai Zhang, video “Ten thousand things are heard when born, But the highest heaven’s always still. Yet everything must begin in silence, And into silence it vanishes.” -Wei Yingwu, On Sound In Taoist macroscopic ideology, the richest sound cannot be heard, but felt. Human hearing is limited to a narrow frequency range between 20Hz and 20kHz, which split the sound not only from the maker but also from its nature. The sound exceeding this range would not be heard by the ear, but felt by the body. In this universe, infinite things are producing ultrasonic and subsonic waves around us all the time. While it has been an ancient source of poetic inspiration, the inaudible world is far from being innocent, having been exploited for its physical potential as weaponry and for surveillance since World War I. Then, what is this inaudible world really like? Driven by this question, “>19980” is an ongoing series of audiovisual exploration following the idea of the inaudible soundscape. As the first piece that started this project, “Into Silence They Appear” explores the inaudible world underwater through the call of the orca, while incorporating computer-generated imagery as an imagination of such sound world. During the EcoSono Institute in Alaska in 2013, we collectively recorded the orca vocalization, which is much wider than the human hearing range, with hydrophones and portable recorders. While listening to bird calls in New York one day in 2017, out of curiosity, I time-stretched the inaudible frequencies from the orca recording. Incredible things happened quickly. Chords and melodies emerged. I felt like I had stumbled into an entire sound world in those perceived silence. So I simply layered the sounds, hoping to convey the sense of wonder that struck me at that moment. The visual projection employs algorithmically generated imagery, utilizing techniques such as fractal noise, geometric distortion, and particle systems. The work extends the Taoist ideas on music, reimagining sound unheard, that transcends the human experience, transforming with time and space. Fjóla Evans: Eroding (2017) Over thousands of years the glacial river Hvítá in Iceland has carved a deep gorge into the surrounding landscape. At one particular twist in the river, the erosion has left several huge pillars of hyaloclastite rock, which look as they were flung haphazardly into the riverbed. In fact they were revealed slowly over time from the process of the river carving away their surroundings. In Eroding, the players create a dense mass that gets worn down over time in order to reveal the spiky formations beneath the surface. Festival of Whispers (2017) Matthew Burtner, composer performed by Eighth Blackbird Festival of Whispers was commissioned by the Athenaeum Library of Art and Music in La Jolla, CA as a sound installation for the SoundON Festival of Modern Music. The piece is about coastal erosion as cultural erosion. It includes a chamber ensemble work (expanded in 2019), a multichannel sound installation, and a series of headphone listening stations, any part of which can be presented independently. Listeners hear the sound of the coast through the walls and floor, as if the ocean is pushing up under the building, pulling it out into the sea stone by stone. Whispered texts drawn from the music library stacks (the writings of composers) wash off the shelves and drift out to sea. As the ocean erodes the performance space, the musicians and audience members spread whisper chains around the hall, creating a festival of whispers. The ensemble music, while evoking the collapse of culture through coastal erosion, also develops its own musical content and community, contributing to that culture even as it too is washed away. Festival of Whispers explores the quiet loss of rare cultural artifacts, an outcome of climate change often overlooked in the face of the humanitarian and economic devastation global warming brings. Note to the audience: The musicians will cue you to whisper to your neighbor, according to the individual audience-member scores included in your program. The audience will create “whisper chains” that they pass around the hall by whispering to their neighbors. These whispers mix with the oceanic sounds projected through the speakers, a sea of water and whispers. The Clarity of Cold Air (2013) Jonathan Bailey Holland, composer performed by Eighth Blackbird Jonathan Bailey Holland’s works have been commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, and Philadelphia Symphony Orchestras, as well as numerous chamber groups and soloists. A recipient of a 2015 Fromm Foundation Commission, he has received honors from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, American Music Center, ASCAP, the Presser Foundation, and more. He has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota, Ritz Chamber Players, Detroit and South Bend Symphony Orchestras, and the Radius Ensemble. Recent highlights include the premiere of Equality for narrator and orchestra for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the premiere of Forged Sanctuaries by Curtis on Tour, commissioned to commemorate the centennial of National Park Service. Holland is Chair of Composition, Theory and History at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Faculty Chair of the Music Composition Low Residency MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Previously he served as Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music. About The Clarity of Cold Air, Jonathan writes: Inspired by many a cold, Northern Midwest or New England day, this work is primarily atmospheric, focusing on the sonorities achieved by blending the instruments of the ensemble in various ways. There are many stark sounds - high, glassy harmonics from the strings, bowed metallic percussion instruments, harsh multi-phonics from the winds, airy cymbal rolls. Under the Sea Ice (2015) Christopher Luna-Mega, composer performed by Rivanna String Quartet Few sounds I have found to be as fascinating as those of the bearded seals from the Chukchi sea in the Arctic Ocean. My first encounter with them was a recording by Ray, Watkins and Burns. It came to me that the sounds of the bearded seals would be ideal material for strings – the constant glissandi and the high resolution microtonal nuances characteristic of seal songs can be performed by no other acoustic instruments as idiomatically. All the music performed by the string quartet derives from transcriptions of several bearded seal songs, which were generously provided to me by Joshua Jones, researcher at the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab, University of California, San Diego. Variations of the transcriptions (mainly in pitch and duration) were based on statistics of the bearded seal repertoire from 2008-2009, included in the Jones et al. article: Ringed, Bearded, and Ribbon Seal Vocalizations North of Barrow, Alaska: Seasonal Presence and Relationship with Sea Ice. The electronics for this piece consist of a hydrophone recording of sea ice from the Chuckhi sea, also a contribution of the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab. John Cage, Inlets (1977) John Cage’s Inlets for water-filled conch shells is a listening meditation to consider your personal relationship with your environment. Cage instructs that the sound of burning pine cones be played as an interlude, a sound with renewed meaning in the context of our climate crisis. Notes on Ensembles The Rivanna String Quartet brings vibrant concerts to Central Virginia on the grounds of the historic University of Virginia. Quartet members are dedicated to promoting collaboration, quality performances, and education throughout the community. The Rivanna String Quartet looks to find the balance between the old and new, bringing a fresh look to the string quartet’s robust and varied repertoire through collaborations with living composers and guest artists. Rivanna is the resident quartet for the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia, where the members serve as faculty and as principal musicians of the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia. Individually each musician maintains an active teaching and performing schedule within the community collaborating with such organizations such as the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Ash Lawn Opera, Monticello, Charlottesville and Albemarle school systems, and the Richmond Symphony. Members of the quartet include Daniel Sender (violin), David Sariti (violin), Ayn Balija (viola), Adam Carter (cello). Eighth Blackbird’s mission is to move music forward through innovative performance, advocate for new music by living composers, and create a legacy of guiding an emerging generation of musicians. Eighth Blackbird, hailed as “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly became “a brand-name defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality” (Detroit Free Press). Over the course of more than two decades, Eighth Blackbird has continually pushed at the edges of what it means to be a contemporary chamber ensemble, presenting distinct programs in Chicago, nationally, and internationally, reaching audiences totaling tens of thousands. The sextet has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by composers both established and emerging, and have perpetuated the creation of music with profound impact, such as Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, which went on to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The ensemble’s extensive recording history, primarily with Chicago’s Cedille Records, has produced more than a dozen acclaimed albums and four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance, most recently in 2016 for Filament. Longstanding collaborative relationships have led to performances with some of the most well- regarded classical artists of today from heralded performers like Dawn Upshaw and Jeremy Denk, to seminal composers including Philip Glass and Nico Muhly. In recent projects, Eighth Blackbird has joined forces with genre-fluid composers and performers including The National’s Bryce Dessner, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Perry, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Brightest Diamond frontwoman Shara Nova, Will Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Iarla Ó Lionáird of The Gloaming, among others. Eighth Blackbird’s most recent album, When We Are Inhuman, a collaboration with Oldham and Dessner, was released on August 30, 2019 on 37d03d/Secretly Canadian. Singing in the Dead of Night, written for the ensemble by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, will be released on Cedille Records in spring, 2020. Eighth Blackbird first gained wide recognition in 1998 as winners of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Since 2000, the ensemble has called Chicago home, and has been committed to serving as both importer and exporter of world class artistic experiences to and from Chicago. A year- long pioneering residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago in 2016, during which the ensemble served as a living installation with open rehearsals, performances, guest artists, and public talks, exemplified their stature as community influencers. Receiving the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award, and being named Musical America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year have supported Eighth Blackbird’s position as a catalyst for innovation in the new music ecosystem of Chicago and beyond. Eighth Blackbird’s impact extends beyond recording and touring to curation and education. The ensemble served as Music Director of the 2009 Ojai Music Festival, has held residencies at the Curtis Institute of Music and at the University of Chicago, and holds an ongoing Ensemble-in-Residence position at the University of Richmond. In 2017, Eighth Blackbird launched its boldest initiative yet with the creation of Blackbird Creative Laboratory, an inclusive, two-week summer workshop and performance festival for performers and composers in Ojai, CA. The name Eighth Blackbird derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” Nathalie Joachim is a Burkart Flutes & Piccolos artist. Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist. Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives.
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- Date:
- 2019-04-29
- Main contributors:
- McIntire Department of Music
- Summary:
- AUTODIVA’S ROOM - Susan Grochmal Vestigial Wings - Eli Stine The Gate is Open - Aiman Khan Integration - Daniel Arvelo-Perez Rain Shadow No. 2 - Ben Luca Robertson Quotation d0419: “Franco, Christian. “Victor Huerta”, Mexico 2009” - Omar Fraire Complicated - Kaiming Cheng Icarus - Ryan Kann godtrash - Becky Brown Squash - 3 LB Program Notes AUTODIVA’S ROOM Hey what’s up welcome to my room have a good time —Susan Grochmal AUTODIVA is currently working on her second album, DIVA PARTY, scheduled for release this summer, a followup to her first album DUAL- ITY. She explores important topics such as the Internet and Computers and are we Real. Vestigial Wings “At the boundary of the desert Beneath the telescopic sky I stopped to take the world in As it went on rushing by I thought ten hundred futures Of what could and would become As the dark of night got closer Slipping disk of orange sun I thought of all I’d loved and lost: Of dropped, forgotten things Of books with unread pages Broken roots, vestigial wings I thought of names gone unremembered, And of places never seen, Of the last of every species, Silent forests, noiseless seas And as dusk made way to nightfall Black sky pricked with yellow light I had not moved a single muscle And so doing lost my life Because in thinking and not doing All I did was just compare What could and would become of Rather than what was really there” —Eli Stine Eli Stine is a composer, programmer, and educator. Stine is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies as a Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia, and is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory with degrees in Technology In Music And Related Arts and Computer Science. Stine’s work explores electroacoustic sound, multimedia technologies (often custom-built software, video projection, and multi-channel speaker systems), and collaboration between disciplines (artistic and otherwise). Festivals and conferences that have programmed Stine’s work include ICMC, SEAMUS, NIME, CMMR, NYCEMF, the Third Practice Festival, CubeFest, the Muestra Internacional de Música Electroacústica, the International Sound Art Festival Berlin, the Workshop on Intelligent Music Interfaces for Listening and Creation, and the International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and De- sign. Currently, his sound design for the virtual reality installation MetamorphosisVR, a virtual reality adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, is touring around the world, with installation locations including Prague, Berlin, Madrid, Cairo, Oslo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. The Gate Is Open With the guidance of Professor Leah Reid, I wrote this piece this semester. It reflects my recent experience of finding unprecedented happiness and depth in my life and learning to become familiar with joy without worrying about the future. I hadn’t previously composed music with a specific personal event or feeling in mind, so this has been a fun change. The piece begins with just horn alone, and several layers of sound periodically enter and leave throughout, interacting both with each other and with the solo horn. —Aiman Khan Aiman Khan is in her fourth year at the University of Virginia, studying Music and Economics. She is in the Performance Concentration within the Music Department, and she is a member of the horn section of the Charlottesville Symphony. In the summer of 2018, she spent five weeks in Greensboro, NC at the Eastern Music Festival, and this coming sum- mer she will participate the in National Music Festival in Maryland. Aiman is also a composer, primarily of electro-acoustic music. In November 2018, her piece Fluid Awareness was performed at the UVA Fall Dance Concert, and she performed her piece Ragged Call at the 2019 National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME) in February. Integration Integration is a piece that brings together and takes apart harmony, form, and texture of acoustic and electronic sound. Its inspiration has come from UVA faculty guidance and “integration” of self-inspired ideas and synthesis. Rojo also wants to thank Kevin Davis, Heather Mease, Akin Odeleye, Robert Kaufman, Karidan Mavericks, and Leah Reid for their time and patience in the completion of Integration. —Daniel Arvelo-Perez Daniel “Rojo” Arvelo-Perez is a non-traditional 2nd year who was accepted into the music department last semester. He has been working with DAWS for over the past ten years and has a deep appreciation for the opportunities UVA has brought to him this current semester. His hobbies outside the music department include juggling, martial arts, and blacksmithing. Rain Shadow No. 2 Rain Shadow No. 2 is part of a continued exploration of textural and spectral topologies. This iteration focuses on tonal flux as a property of intersecting overtone (“Otonal”) and undertone (“Utonal”) structures afforded by 7-limit just intonation. Using a pair of hand-held transduc- ers and amplified strings, the performer probes different surfaces to capture minute impulse signals. These impulses are transformed using a variation of Karplus-Strong synthesis, with all synthesis parameters controlled via a secondary tactile interface. The resultant sonorities retain the textural quality of each surface encountered, while imbuing a microtonal ‘haze’ across the spectrum. -Ben Luca Robertson Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-found- er of Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems—often supplant- ing narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scab- lands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biologists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chinook Salmon in the Snake River watershed. Quotation d0419: “Franco, Christian. “Víctor Huerta”, México 2009” -No, we are against any kind of pedagogic device, we have no message to convey, we are artist, we make artwork, not propaganda. On our use of quotes we expect to be close what _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ wrote: “A quote must be like a bandit who assaults passersby.” —FdC Omar Fraire Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher - Fraire’s work is inserted into reality by transducing it, and functions as an act of resistance. Fraire enjoys collaborative work, and his energies oscillate across disciplines. After having deserted from two universities in México, Fraire has gone on to specialize in Sonology (Koninklijk Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art as auditor (Aguascalientes). He is the creator of Punto Ciego Festival, and artist of the Guggenheim Aguascalientes. Fraire is mostly self-taught, though he holds an M.A. from Wesleyan, having studied under R. Kuivila, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at UVA. Complicated Complicated is a future bass electronic music piece written for MelodyPainter, a virtual reality-based composition software that transforms the user’s motion into corresponded MIDI notes. Future Bass is a genre that heavily applies modulated synthesized sounds in its composition. With MelodyPainter, one can fully utilize the capacity of different synthesizers. Complicated has a strong rhymic feeling accompanied by beautiful vo- cal lines. In this piece, I hope to explore the potential of blending MelodyPainter into somewhat mainstream music and see how it goes. -Kaiming Cheng Kaiming Cheng is a musician, programmer, and instrument designer. Cheng is currently a fourth year student pursuing a B.A. in Music and Computer Science as a J.Sanford Miller Arts Scholar at the University of Virginia. At a very young age, Cheng began to play drum and was actively involved in different music groups and bands in both China and America. After also developing a keen interest in technology, he tried to combine his two best interests - music and computer science together. Icarus “This is my final project for MUSI 4547 - Composing with Electronics. The goal was to make something Lofi-inspired. Although that’s how it started, it branched off into something much more dynamic.” -Ryan Kann Ryan Kann “I have been composing primarily orchestral and piano music as a hob- by for a few years; however, MUSI 4547 was my first formal composition course. I am really excited to show off everything that I’ve learned, and I feel I have expanded a lot as a musician over the course of this past semester.” godtrash You really screwed up this time, huh? Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.” She is a 2nd year graduate student in composition at UVA. Squash Squash is an exercise in exercising (exorcising?) for the sake of body, mind, spirit, and art. Object impact reveals the (un)evenness of space as compositional process questions our (im)perception of time. -3LB 3LB was formed in Charlottesville, VA on April 1st, 2019 at 2:11 PM.
- Date:
- 2019-10-04
- Main contributors:
- McIntire Department of Music
- Summary:
- Fred Frith Trio: Fred Frith, guitar Jason Hoopes, bass Jordan Glenn, drums Special Guests: Susana Santos Silva, trumpet Heike Liss, video Friday, October 4, 2019 8:00 pm Old Cabell Hall Auditorium University of Virginia The Fred Frith Trio began life almost by accident in 2013. A couple of low key local gigs gave rise to a European tour, a debut record on Intakt, and then another tour a couple of years later. By now the group has created an identity that seems to revolve around memories of a bygone psychedelic era filtered through the lens of razor-sharp improvisation. Whether this will remain the prevalent focus remains to be seen. Their last Intakt CD, Closer to the Ground, has been described as “a gripping piece of spontaneous timelessness,” “a vital statement from a singular artist and his inventive crew,” and “a magical, transcendent world.” The trio regularly cooperates with musical guests such as trumpeter Susana Santos Silva or saxophonist Lotte Anker, and visual artist Heike Liss. Fred Frith is a songwriter, composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist best known for the reinvention of the electric guitar that began with Guitar Solos in 1974. He learned his craft as both improviser and composer playing in rock bands, notably Henry Cow, and creating music in the recording studio. Much of his compositional output has been commissioned by choreographers and filmmakers, but his work has also been performed by Ensemble Modern, Hieronymus Firebrain, Arditti Quartet, Robert Wyatt, Bang on a Can All Stars, Concerto Köln, and Rova Sax Quartet, among quite a few others. Fred enthusiastically records and performs all over the place with icons of contemporary music, younger players you may never have heard of, and everyone in between. He is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s award-winning documentary film Step Across the Border. Jordan Glenn, drums, spent his formative years in Oregon drawing cartoons, taking dance classes from his aunt, and putting on plays with his sisters. As he got older, he began making movies with his friends and studying lots of jazz, classical, and rock music. In 2006, he relocated to the Bay Area where he has since worked closely with Fred Frith, William Winant, Zeena Parkins, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Dominique Leone, Lisa Mezzacappa, Karl Evangelista, Michael Coleman, and the bands Jack O’ The Clock, Arts & Sciences, Beep!, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. Jordan leads and conducts the long-standing trio Wiener Kids—and its ten piece expansion, The Wiener Kids Family Band—and directs the conduction ensemble Beak. Jason Hoopes, bass, was born and raised in the mountains of Northern California. He began teaching himself to play guitar and bass in high school after discovering thrash-metal, and eventually found himself at Mills College where he met Jordan Glenn and studied with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, and Joëlle Léandre. Since graduating from Mills, Jason has become a highly sought after bassist in the Bay Area’s diverse and explosive music scene. Primarily recognized for his work with the critically acclaimed avant- rock band Jack O’ The Clock, as well as with Annie Lewandowski’s powerdove and Dominique Leone, he also improvises in a wide range of contexts. Susana Santos Silva is a Portuguese trumpet player, improviser, and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden. In the last years, she has been considered by the international press as one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvised music, “one of the most exciting improvisers in the world” (Downbeat). With a singular approach/voice that comes out of a comprehensive spectrum of influences, from classical and contemporary music to jazz and textural sound art, she is interested in stretching the boundaries of the instrument and exploring new ways of expression within music. Her music has been described as “startling, intoxicating, ecstatic, stoically intense, beautiful, overwhelming, mesmerizing, innovative, bold and creative.” She leads her projects Impermanence and Life and Other Transient Storms and co-leads duos with Kaja Draksler and Torbjörn Zetterberg—also in trio with Hampus Lindwall, Child of Illusion and Hearth. In 2018, she released her first solo album, All the Rivers, on Clean Feed Records. Much in demand, she has played, among many others, with Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Joëlle Léandre, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Paul Lovens, Mats Gustafsson, and Hamid Drake. Heike Liss has been developing and refining tools that allow her to mix and digitally draw over personal video footage in response to and in dialogue with improvised live music. Drawing Sound is a collaboration with her partner and traveling companion Fred Frith. Together they have performed with musical improvisers such as Lotte Anker, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Chris Cutler, Susana Santos Silva, and Shelley Hirsch among others. Heike also performs live visuals with skratchklang, her duo with violinist/composer Thea Farhadian. Heike takes her cues from the people and the world around her and works in a variety of media, including video, photography, drawing, sculpture, site specific installation, and public intervention. Her award-winning work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and at film and music festivals. She has collaborated with choreographers Sonsherée Giles and François Verret; musicians Ellen Fullman, GAW, Marcus Weiss, Caroline Penwarden, and Theresa Wong; multi-media artists Ellen Lake, Nomi Talisman, and Michael Trigilio; painter Soffia Saemundsdottir; and poet Lyn Hejinian, to name a few. She lives and works in Oakland and Basel and teaches Transdisciplinary Art at the Universidad Austral de Chile.
- Date:
- 2019-02-01
- Summary:
- Program 5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines - Omar Fraire Triac - Ben Luca Robertson Musings - Aaron Stepp Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez Centrifuge - Alex Christie in the event of my - Becky Brown Night Music - Christopher Luna-Mega About the Ensemble Splinter Reeds is the West Coast’s first reed quintet, comprising five innovative musicians with a shared passion for new mu- sic. The ensemble is committed to presenting top tier performances of today’s best contemporary composition, showcasing the vast possibilities of the reed quintet, commissioning new works, and collaborating with fellow musicians and artists. As a relatively new chamber music genre, the reed quintet is an evolutionary detour from the traditional woodwind quintet with the advantages of a more closely related instrument family. With approximately 20 professional reed quintets worldwide, Splinter Reeds is explicitly dedicated to cutting edge com- position and expanding the existing reed quintet repertoire through the development of new works by emerging and established composers. Splinter Reeds formed in 2013 with the coming together of five col- leagues highly active in multiple facets of the Bay Area’s vibrant music scene: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Bill Kalinkos (clarinet), David Wegehaupt (saxophone), Jeff Anderle (bass clarinet), and Dana Jessen (bassoon). The sum of their wide ranges of experience – in settings including free jazz, improvisation, electronic music, pop, punk and metal as well as classical – has enabled them to rapidly zero in on a distinct aesthetic identity. Recent concert engagements have included performances at Chicago’s Constellation, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Switchboard Music Festival, FeNAM (Sacramento), April in San- ta Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and the Presidio Sessions series. Additionally, they have held residencies at Stanford, Chapman, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, UC- Davis and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The ensemble has received grant awards from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University, the Zellerbach Fam- ily Foundation, and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. Splinter Reeds is fiscally sponsored through the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. www.splinterreeds.com Program Notes 5_aerify arid conduits | InlandOutlines – Omar Fraire “ It is truly no feat to blow a tube, and therefore no one would think to gather an audience for the purpose of entertaining them with tube blowing. But if he should do so, and if he should succeed in his aim, then it cannot be a matter of mere tube blowing. Or alternatively, it is a matter of tube blow- ing, but as it turns out we have overlooked the art of tube blowing because we were so proficient at it that it is this new tube blower who is the first to demonstrate what it actually entails, whereby it could be even more effective if he were less expert in tube blowing than the majority of us. “ FDC oegf. Human as an artist, inventor, magician, curator, teacher, performer. After having deserted from two universities in México, he specializes in Sonology (Koninklijk Conservatorium - Holland) and holds a Master’s de- gree in Contemporary Art as auditor (Aguascalientes). His work is inserted into reality by transducing it and functions as an act of resistance. Enjoys collaborative work and his energies oscillate across fields of knowledges/arts. Creator of Punto Ciego Festival and artist of the Gug- genheim Aguascalientes, mostly self-taught although he holds an M.A. with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan and studies Ph.D. at UVA. Triac – Ben Luca Robertson “Triac” investigates self-regulating sonorities and the intersection between tuning and timbre. Through a recursive process of real-time analysis, re- synthesis, and intuitive mapping, the combinatory spectral attributes of the wind quintet and accompanying electronics guide both the tuning and temporal structure of the piece. Applying a mathematical model developed by Pantelis Vassilakis, the composer defines cumulative roughness between harmonic partials—an important feature in how we perceive consonance/ dissonance—as a deterministic function for designing a microtonal tuning system that is sympathetic to the most indelible qualities of each instrument. Guided by software programmed by the composer, the ensemble manipulates the intensity of individual partials, thereby minimizing or maximizing the listener’s perception of roughness as the piece unfolds. Akin to a “spectral thermostat,” this self-regulating system continually analyzes current conditions (e.g. cumulative spectral roughness), defines new roughness thresholds, calculates what conditions must change to match these thresholds, and directs performers to adjust pitch and dynamics accordingly. Ben Luca Robertson is a composer, experimental luthier, and co-founder of the independent record label, Aphonia Recordings. His work addresses an interest in autonomous processes, landscape, and biological systems— often supplanting narrative structure with an emphasis on the physicality of sound, spectral tuning systems, and microtonality. Growing up in the inland Pacific Northwest, impressions of Ponderosa pine trees, channel scablands, basalt outcroppings, and relics of boomtown decay continue to haunt his work. Ben holds an M.A. in Music Composition from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from the Evergreen State College, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In the Summer of 2015, he was appointed to a guest research position at the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interactions (TAUCHI) in Finland and recently collaborated with biolo- gists from the University of Idaho to sonify migratory patterns of Chi- nook Salmon. Ben’s work has been featured at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Sound & Music Computing (SMC) Conference (Ireland), New York Re-embodied Sound Symposium, Third Practice, Magma, and Olympia Experimental Music Festival. Musings – Aaron Stepp “Musings” is an exploration of a piece of music that I love deeply, the Bach’s WTC, Book I, C Major prelude. It is an elegant, clean, and beautiful piece of music that I have a deep connection with. Witold Lutosławski describes listening to music as a composer being “schizophrenic,” listen- ing to and exploring the piece at the same time. I try to bring you along for that journey in my head (through the lovely performers on stage), and compose using the materials of the Bach. Think of the piece as a theme and variations, except the theme is a piece, and the variations occur as the piece unfolds. Aaron Stepp is a composer from Kentucky. He has completed commissions for TrioArsenal, Orchestra Enigmatic, Merrilee Elliott, KMEA 7th District Honors Band, Eva Legene, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, Second/Cycle, and Duo Passionato. He has received performances at SEAMUS, the KMEA Conference, and in Berlin, New York City, Chicago, Riverside, Washington D.C., Quito, and at various universities across the country. He recently finished a significant song cycle for Soprano and Flute named Stone Walls, based on the poetry of Charlottes- ville native Rebecca Morgan Frank. Upcoming projects include a collaboration with poet Annie Kim, a piece for American Trombone Quartet, a documentary score about women in India, and another collaboration with Rebecca Morgan Frank. Convection - Juan Carlos Vasquez “Convection” is a piece for ensemble and electronics that features a transference of spectral energy from one state of white noise into a final state featuring a single sustained pitch, in a way that resembles bulk displace- ment of sonic elements. This composition was written specially for the Splinter Reeds ensemble. Juan Carlos Vasquez is an award-winning composer, sound artist, and researcher from Colombia. His electroacoustic music works are per- formed constantly around the world and have been premiered in 28 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Vasquez has received creation grants and/or commissions by numerous institutions, including the Nokia Research Center, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, AVEK (Promotion Center for Audiovisual Culture in Finland), the Finnish National Gallery, the University of Virginia, the Sibelius Birth Town Foundation, Aalto University, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland and the CW+ in partnership with the Royal College of Music in London, UK, among others. Vasquez received his education at the Sibel- ius Academy (FI), Aalto University (FI), the University of Virginia (USA), and has taken courses with Andy Farnell, Miller Puckette, Marco Stroppa, Steven Stucky and Jonty Harrison, among others. As a researcher, Vasquez’ writings can be found at the Computer Music Journal and the proceedings of conferences such as the International Computer Music Conference, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the International Sound and Music Computing Conference, and the International Conference on New Inter- faces for Musical Expression. Official website: www.jcvasquez.com Centrifuge – Alex Christie “Centrifuge” is about mass and gravity. The instruments exert force and pull on each other. Some exert more force than others, continually pulling the rest of the ensemble back to a center. This gravity creates an internal motion within the ensemble that in turn produces the slow, heavy motion of the full group. We simultaneously feel the weight of stasis and force of motion. Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference, absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition. He is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Recently, Alex’s work has explored the ecology of performance in intermedia art and interactive electronic music. Through real-time audio processing, instrument building, light, video, and theater, Alex expands performance environments to offer multiple lenses through which the audience can experience the work. Alex has performed and presented at a variety of conferences and festivals whose acronyms combine to spell nicedinsaucesfeemmmmmogscabsplot. Alex serves as faculty, Director of Electronic Music, Director of Composers Forums, and Academic Dean at the Walden School of Music Young Musicians Program. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and Mills College and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia. Other interests include baseball and geometric shapes. in the event of my – Becky Brown When I was in high school, there was a block near me that had a Chinese restaurant, a big craft store, and a shoddy movie theater. When the Chinese place shut down, I realized none of the kids in the area after us would share the memory of trying to bring too many people to sit at one table, ordering the wrong thing off the menu, and then stressing about getting to a movie on time. That’s when I realized what aging felt like. The craft store and the movie theater shut down not long after. Becky Brown is a composer, harpist, artist, and web designer, interested in producing intensely personal works across the multimedia spectrum. She focuses on narrative, emotional exposure, and catharsis, with a vested interest in using technology and the voice to deeply connect with an audience, wherever they are. Depending on who you talk to, her music is “honest, direct and communicative,” “personal and raw,” or “took me to a place I didn’t want to go.” Brown has been the Technical Director of the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and Assistant Technical Director for Third Practice and SPLICE Institute. Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, SCI National/Regional, Third Practice New Music Festival, Ball State New Music Festival, and in Beijing, China. Hold Still, her work for live art and electronics, was released on the New Focus Recordings label in 2017. Night Music – Christopher Luna-Mega All the musical materials performed by Splinter Reeds are derived from direct transcriptions and arrangements of recordings of the summer dusk and night sounds of insects and other creatures in a Virginia forest. Every movement in the piece is a fragment taken from the 40-minute original recording. The striking increase in density and loudness as dusk becomes night is the guiding formal principle of the piece. The recordings, featured in the electronics, were made with five simultaneous microphones in a pentagonal formation, at a distance of ~30 meters between each mic. Each of the five microphone analyses and transcriptions was assigned to an instrument (mic 1 to ob.; mic 2 to cl., etc.), rotating the pairings in each movement. The multi-channel recording sought an expanded listen- ing field resulting from the different microphone responses and placings. Among the various features of the night sounds, one particularly caught my ears: constantly microtonally morphing triads and their aggregates resulting from the superimposition of the multitude of crickets. Christopher Luna-Mega is a composer and improviser from Mexico City. He studied Composition at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México –UNAM (B.M.) and Mills College (M.A.), as well as Film/Com- munication Theory at the Universidad Iberoamericana –UIA, Mexico City (B.A.). His work analyzes sounds from natural and urban environments and translates them into notated music for performers and electronics. His music has been performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, New Thread Quartet, Arditti String Quartet and JACK Quartet, among others. His music has been featured in festivals such as the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Gwanju), AgelicA (Bologna), Tectonics (Reykjavik), Tectonics (Glasgow), L’Off (Montreal), Avant X (Toronto), Mills Music Now (Oakland, CA), and the International Forum for New Music “Manuel Enriquez” (Mexico City). Luna-Mega is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia.
