Ensemble Mise-En
will be in residence at the Center for 21st Century Music at the University at
Buffalo from Friday, December 6 through Sunday, December 8 for a graduate
composition workshop and two rehearsals of David Felder’s Jeu de Tarot 2. Ensemble Mise-En is a New York-based contemporary
music collective led by composer Moon Young Ha. Comprised of talented young
musicians, their personnel strives to bring a repertoire of challenging new sounds
to diverse audiences. Mise-En wishes to impart an experience that is
simultaneously multicultural and intellectually and aesthetically pleasing. As
a collective, the multinational personnel has coalesced around a real aesthetic
agenda, crystallized in the name “mise-en”: “mee,” in Korean, means “beauty,”
and “zahn,” “to decorate,” and the group unabashedly promotes “beautiful”
artwork to increasingly diverse audiences of contemporary sounds.
Ensemble Mise-En
The ensemble promotes large-scale, dynamic performances of contemporary
music featuring the works of established and budding composers. Since its
inception in 2011, Ensemble Mise-En has collaborated with such esteemed
partners as Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, International Alliance
for Women in Music, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Open Meadows Foundation,
New York University, New York Foundation for the Arts, I-Park, Goethe-Institute
Boston, Villa Gillet (FR) and others. To date, the ensemble has presented a
total of 281 pieces, including 114 works written for the group, and 86 US/NY
premieres. The ensemble has performed at exciting venues such as (le) poisson
rouge, Bohemian National Hall, Italian Academy, the DiMenna Center, Tenri Cultural
Institute and the cell.
Mise-En will read, workshop, and record new compositions by PhD. students Tyler
Adamthwaite, Matias Homar, Kenneth Tam,
and Richard Wang during their residency.
Adamthwaite’s composition for alto flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano is titled Silent Embers. The work is based on a poem that he wrote:
Adamthwaite’s composition for alto flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano is titled Silent Embers. The work is based on a poem that he wrote:
“The process of node flowing to path.
The feeling of
ruminating.
A particular image.
Emotion. Idea. Identity.”
Homar’s composition is Metamorphosis,
based on Kafka’s homonymous text.
He has used the text to derive the musical elements, from the formal structure
to the motivic ideas both in the melody/harmony as well as in the rhythms. The
three sections of the piece develop the idea of metamorphosis by transforming
the elements from more ’simple’ to more ‘complex.' The use of the live effects,
as well as the way in which the sonic objects accumulate throughout the two
thirds of the piece, is a way to represent the idea of metamorphosis following
his own interpretation of the story being told by the author of the text. It is
scored for flute, clarinet, percussion, and electronics.
Cover of Kafka’s short story, The Metamorphosis
Tam has written his
composition, Path of Earth, for a
large chamber ensemble of flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola,
and cello. Tam’s program notes for his piece are,
“People
seek for an ideal world. We hope for peace and freedom. We hope to live a calm
and simple life. For that, people fight. Riots are all over the world, using
aggressive and complicated means to achieve the ideal living conditions. There is
no real utopia. Humans themselves are the subject of complexity. Where there
are people, there are problems. We try to fix those problems, but we should
also admit there is no way that we can reduce the world into an ideal
simplicity. Most of us recognize the nature of the world. Why do we still hope
for utopia? Why don’t we try to embrace the complexity? Why should we have to
frame the world into simple forms and structures? The world needs a variety of
people to maintain its function. If we could truly accept the nature of the
world, we might be able to find at least a path to a temporary utopian moment among
the complexity.”
The North Side of Li Mountain,
written by Richard Wang, is composed using multi-tonal scales and neo-romantic
stylings. Wang is a Chinese composer who was raised in northwestern China and
has always had an interest and passion for mixing folk and historical music in
his works. His piece tells stories of the Li Mountain from the Qin Dynasty to
present day. The composition is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, viola,
cello, percussion, and piano.
All four works will be
workshopped on Friday, December 6th and then recorded by Mise-en on
Saturday, December 7th. Mise-en’s residency at UB will conclude on Sunday
morning.
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