Graduate composers at the
University of Buffalo pursue many professional opportunities both at UB and
outside of the university. We would like to celebrate the achievements of our
current and former UB graduate composers by sharing their recent accomplishments.
Recent
UB graduate
Igor Marques performed
his PhD Dissertation,
Noturno (2018),
with contemporary music ensemble
Elision.
A recording of the performance can be found
here. Dr. Marques is now a
Clinical Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University at Buffalo where
he continues to compose and focus on teaching and research.
Alex Huddleston’s string quartet,
I found a few configuartions//some stripes,
was performed by the
Mivos Quartet
and was the winner of the 2018 Kanter Prize. Alex has received several
commissions including from percussionist Steve Solook entitled
how quickly for forget An Adolescence for
drum set and a commission from trombonist Juna Winston for his duo project
“Blechtrommell” for trombone and percussion. Huddleston is a music critic for
Cambridge University Press’s
TEMPO
and has had several works presented as topics in lecture settings at UB,
particularly of note was his work
ThePreservation III in Musicologist
Seth Brodsky’s
lecture “Is there
music after analysis”.
John Aulich has had several
opportunities to work with contemporary music ensemble Elision. He composed a
piece for lap-steel, Uilleann pipes, and double bass for Elision which was
workshopped last summer and received a request from Elision to compose them a
second piece for bass clarinet, bassoon, cello, trombone, and saxophone. This
new piece will be premiered May 2
nd in Melbourne at the
Melbourne Recital Center which
will be attended by John for the performance and a recording session.
Edgar
Girtain IV was appointed Director of La Casa de las Artes for the Universidad
Austral de Chile in Puerto Montt in June where he conducts the Symphonic and
Chamber Choirs, and maintains a piano and composition studio. In October, Edgar
premiered a four hand piano concerto with Ximena Vasquez on a concert featuring
several new works by North American composers. Edgar’s choir toured Schubert’s
G Major Mass with a full string orchestra and in January Edgar will be doing some
educational programs with a local wind band and performing several premieres
with ensemble Nucleo Experimentacion
Sonora Chiloe directed by Alejandro Lavanderos.
Jessie
Downs's current focus is composing and producing her new opera The Second
Sight. The opera's first performances will be held at the Unitarian
Universalist Church of Buffalo on June 27th 2020 at 7pm, and June 28th
2020 at 2pm. In 2019, Jessie was awarded both a Dissertation Fellowship and
a Mark Diamond Fund
award to help support this project. Additional fundraising is underway. In
November, a piano transcription of a scene from the opera's third act – Diskana’s Lament - was
commissioned by and premiered as a musical offering at the Unitarian
Universalist Church of Buffalo. Jessie was a participant in the 2019 June in
Buffalo Festival, and her ensemble - the Sotto Voce Vocal Collective - presented
performances of her opera's second scene as
well as a new mass by Brien Henderson.
In April, her 2016 duet for piccolo and prepared piano, shadow a thing, was
performed on a UCSD graduate student recital featuring Michael Matsuno. Jessie also
continues performing regularly as a soprano soloist. Recent performances
include Britten's "Ceremony of Carols," Hensel's "For the Feast
of St. Cecilia;" scenes from Verdi's Rigoletto (as Gilda) and La Traviata
(as Violetta) presented on programs hosted by UUCB, Buffalo Master Choral, and
Nickel City Opera; and the soprano duet from Alex Huddleston's "The
Sonnets" with Julia Anne Cordani for the 2019 MUGSA symposium.
During the fall semester, Joel Kirk, wrote a piece -
"Titration" - for the Yarn/Wire Ensemble which was workshopped and
recorded by them during their residency at the University at Buffalo in November. He has
also been working on an acousmatic piece for electronics and multimedia -
"Rust" - with visual artist Eloise Shaw which will
be completed in the coming months. Joel is currently writing a string quartet
for the Arditti Quartet’s Buffalo residency in April and is also in talks with
the UK-based Leyland Brass Band
towards writing a piece for them to perform later in 2020.
Ruixing Wang is a classical music composer and
also works as a pop music producer. Recently he has been collaborating with local
Buffalo musician Carly Beth to create
an original pop song. Back
View was recently published in Chinese media and has over 500 thousand
online plays and downloads.
Alex Buehler conducted a performance of
his work
Z/28 for 16-piece trombone
choir at the
International Trombone
Festival in Muncie, IN, in July 2019. In October, his work
Obsolescense for open instrumentation
and improvised electronics was performed by composer/violinist Dr.
Andrew May at
CEMIcircles
International Electronic and Experimental Music Festival 2019. Recently
Alex was commissioned by the
Amorsima String
Trio as a part of their new music miniatures concert series which will take
place in June 2020.
In Fall 2019, Su Lee’s dissertation composition
"Die Radikalen Tasten", a concerto for organ with keyboard ensemble,
written specifically on our own tremendous Fisk Op.95 organ at UB, received
attention for the innovative and radical aspects of its organ repertoire. It
was premiered at her dissertation fundraiser concert with the support of the
Mark Diamond Research Fund and generous donations from the Buffalo/WNY
community. An audience of approximately 150 attended. (A recording is available
on YouTube).
After successfully completing her defense, she is expecting to receive her PhD
in composition in February 2020.
Matias Homar has performed
in a tour of Argentina in June and July with the Imaymana Duo and was a special
guest speaker at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata for the composition
department and also gave a workshop in composition for the IV Jornadas
Musicales de Formacion Instrumental y Vocal in Salta, Argentina. Homar also
completed new works
Dans av Hjerter fra
Nord for the Norwegian group
Current
Sax and
Metamorphosis for
Ensemble Mise-En. This
year he is recording and producing Imaymana Duo’s 2
nd CD to be
released in July and writing a new work for Ensemble Mise-En and the ECI
Ensemble to be premiered in August in La Plata, Argentina.
Tyler
Adamthwaite is a Presidential Scholar at the University at
Buffalo and a graduate of both Colorado State University and Brandeis
University in Buffalo. In the Fall of 2019 he had a recent composition workshopped
and recorded by New York-based E
nsemble Mise-En.
Posts
