Matthew Schrebeis Residency

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to announce the residency of the composer Matthew Schreibeis!

Matthew Schreibeis is an American composer based in Hong Kong. His compositions, which span orchestral, chamber, and vocal music and include a series of works for traditional Korean instruments, represent a personal musical vision characterized by vivid color, imagination, and a clear sense of drama. A recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his works have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia by the Albany Symphony and David Alan Miller, New York New Music Ensemble, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, soprano Tony Arnold, and members of eighth blackbird and Alarm Will Sound, among others.

The 2020-21 season includes premieres of Parallel Lives by ensemble mise-en in New York and Tree of Life for solo violin, along with the release of his Albany Records portrait CD, Sandburg Songs, featuring soprano Tony Arnold and Zohn Collective.   

Honors include commissions from the Hanson Institute for American Music, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; grants from the Ditson Fund of Columbia University and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Copland House, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Camargo Foundation in France. American Composers Forum sponsored a portrait concert of his chamber music in Philadelphia, and his music has been recorded on the Synnara label in South Korea.

An artist of wide-ranging interests, he has published (with Jiyoon Lee) on the role of music in second language teaching and is the author of a forthcoming article on the orchestral works of Bernard Rands. Most recently, he was awarded a major grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong to support a multi-year study of the music of his former teacher, the late Steven Stucky, including archival work at the Library of Congress.

Matthew Schreibeis began his musical studies in Pittsburgh and received degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M.) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). He studied composition with Samuel Adler, David Liptak, Eric Moe, James Primosch, Jay Reise, Christopher Rouse, Steven Stucky, Anna Weesner, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. He also studied orchestration with Augusta Read Thomas and violin with Lynn Blakeslee. His mentors also include composers Robert Beaser, Bernard Rands, and George Tsontakis.

A committed educator, he taught composition at the soundSCAPE Festival in Italy and served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and Visiting Professor at Korea University’s International Summer Campus in Seoul. Currently he is Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Switch Ensemble Residency March 27-29, 2022

[Switch~ Ensemble]

A new music ensemble for the 21st century

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to announce a residency by Switch~ Ensemble from March 27-29, during which they will workshop new works by UB student composers and perform in concert at (UPDATED) 7:30 pm on March 29, 2022. For more details and to purchase tickets ($10), click here. Follow on Facebook here.

Concert (Updated Program):

Heather Stebbins, Among Arrows (2021)

*David Felder, A Garland (for Bruce) (2012)

Santiago Diez Fischer, perpetual green switch (2022)

Anna-Louise Walton, Crossing (2022)

Forbes Graham, Inflection: Beacon Hill/Roxbury

 

*UB professor

About Switch~

A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, the [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation of new works for chamber ensemble: we bring bold new acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia projects to life. At the core of each performance is our commitment to the total integration of technology and live musicians. We strive for compelling artistry achieved through the seamless creation, production, and execution of new music, and believe that working directly with composers—in a medium where the score is a point of departure rather than a finish line—allows for new and thrilling musical possibilities.

[Switch~] contributes to the future of the genre by strongly advocating for and commissioning the music of a new generation of emerging young composers. We have enjoyed fruitful collaborations with both emerging and established composers, with commissions and premieres of works by composers including Anna-Louise Walton, Alican Çamci, Igor Santos, Katherine Young, Stefano Gervasoni, Stefan Prins, Wojtek Blecharz, Anthony Vine, Rand Steiger, Philippe Leroux, Timothy McCormack, Tonia Ko, James Bean, Matt Sargent, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Esaias Järnegard, Sivan Eldar, Julio Zúñiga, Zeynep Toraman, Alexander Schubert, Adrien Trybucki, Elvira Garifzyanova, Santiago Diez-Fischer, Lisa Streich, Anthony Pateras, and many others.

Recent engagements include performances and residencies at Cornell, Bard College, University of Chicago, Ithaca College, Buffalo State, UC Berkeley,  the VIPA Festival (Spain), Eastman School of Music, and Avaloch Farms Music Institute, as well as concerts at the Image/Sound Festival, San Francisco Center for New Music, MATA Interval Series, NYCEMF, Vanguard New Music Series at Kent State University, the Queens New Music Festival, the CD release of Christopher Chandler’s Smoke and Mirrors on the SEAMUS label, and more.

Student Works

Lihuen Sirvent

Thomas Little, Signed Distance Field - Flute, clarinet (doubling bass), saxophone (alto + tenor), violin, violoncello, percussion, piano (doubling celesta)

Computer graphics use the “signed distance field” (or “signed distance function”) to efficiently render 2D images in 3D space, and blur said images at increasing distances. In a musical adaptation of this function, the “image” is a central E Major triad, and the function uses various musical “yardsticks”—including the circle of fifths, the harmonic series, and distance in quarter-tones―to determine seven discrete levels of “blurriness,” indicated by dynamic level. Signed Distance Field moves through a warped, funhouse-mirror version of tonality as it navigates and juxtaposes these dynamically-determined pitch fields to bring various sonorities into and out of focus.

Brian Caswell

James PA Falzone

Matias Homar

Jonathan Rainous, Homeward - Flute, clarinet, saxophone (soprano + baritone), violin, violoncello, percussion, piano.

A fusion of non-classical styles using classically-enabled musical form and recombinant musical techniques to evoke a half-remembered roadtrip playlist.

 

 

 

Jeu de Tarot 2 Rehearsal

 

The Slee Sinfonietta rehearsing Jeu de
Tarot 2 on March 7, 2022

The view from the percussion section

Irvine Arditti Residency, Jeu de Tarot 2, and Student Composer Recordings

Irvine Arditti

Irvine Arditti Residency

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to announce a residency by Irvine Arditti on March 6-10, 2022. He will be joined by the Slee Sinfonietta, conducted by Daniel Brottman, to perform David Felder's violin chamber concerto Jeu de Tarot 2.

 Jeu de Tarot 2

 Jeu de Tarot 2 was commissioned by Ensemble Mise-En, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts. Like its predecessor, Jeu de Tarot (details below), the work is a violin chamber concerto based on selected cards from the Tarot. The work is scored for flute (doubling), oboe (doubling), B-flat clarinet (doubling), F Horn, Bass Trombone, Percussion, Harp, Piano (with sampler), violin, viola, cello, contrabass, and the solo violin. The composition is in 6 movements, numbered 8-13, in this way contiguous with the first Jeu. The movements are:

The Chariot, from the Tarot

8. Death

9. Judgement/Resurrection

10. Temperance

11. The Wheel

12. The Tower

13. The Chariot 

Student Composer Recordings

In addition, these four students will have works recorded:

Alex Buehler - Diffraction Grating 

With this piece I wanted to combine the individual instruments into larger meta-instruments and approach the piece as if I was writing for a contemporary jazz combo. I was particularly inspired by the sounds of Matana Roberts and her album “Coin Coin Chapter two: Mississippi Moonchile”. I was also interested in a sound I was introduced to by trombonists David Whitwell and Kalun Leung in which they used an individual karaoke mic to generate feedback that  could be controlled with the left hand and the trombone. By using the trombone sound as a type of filter, the sounds of the meta-instruments and the combo are altered and replace each other.

  

Tyler Adamthwaite - Jesture

 

Ka Shu (Kenneth) Tam - Path of Earth

"Path of Earth" is one of the three pieces in my "Cosmic Trinity" series. The trinity includes the Heaven, the Earth and the Mankind. This three ideas form the skeleton of the Taoist philosophy about the universe. In these pieces, I attempted to articulate the irresistible nature (force majeure) of the universe with an entropic composition process derived from the western scientific concept "entropy," a quantity of disorder in a system.

(Richard) Ruixing Wang - TBA

 

Jeu de Tarot

 

Jeu de Tarot is a chamber violin concerto commissioned by Ensemble LINEA, and its conductor J.P Wurtz, with solo violinist extraordinaire Irvine Arditti, and is dedicated to these musicians. The work was composed in 2016-17, and is in seven movements. It is scored for flute, doubling, oboe doubling, clarinet doubling, horn, percussion, harp, and keyboard (piano, harpsichord, keyboard controller for electronic samples), solo violin, violin (doubling mandolin optionally), viola, cello, and contrabass.

The composition is in seven movements titled after seven selected cards from the twenty-two major arcana of the Tarot deck. They are:

The Juggler

The Fool

The High Priestess

The Hermit

The Empress (Whorld)

The Hierophant 

Moonlight 

Performance:

 

Matt Sargent

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to welcome Matt Sargent (website) to campus for a masterclass followed by a lecture on his compositions.

Matt Sargent (b. 1984) is a composer, guitarist, and music technologist based in upstate New York. His work grows from interests in resonance, computer models of intelligence, and the making/breaking of long-form patterns.

His compositions have been described as “bringing a sharpened sense of the transcendental into the 21st century.” (Paul Muller, Sequenza21) On his 2018 album, Ghost Music, Bill Meyer writes, “this music isn’t about following in anyone’s footsteps; it uses bare resources to establish a bounded and essential place.” (The Wire Magazine)

His albums include Tide (A Wave Press), Separation Songs (Cold Blue Music), Tide (for ten basses) (Marginal Frequency), and Ghost Music (Weighter Recordings).

In demand as an audio engineer and technical producer for contemporary music, Matt recently recorded Alvin Lucier’s Ricochet Lady (Black Truffle), Sarah Hennies’s Spectral Malsconcities (New World Records), Ensemble Signal / David Felder’s Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux (Coviello Contemporary), and Paul Catanese’s Century of Progress / Sleep, among others. He developed networked scoring software for Alvin Lucier and the Swiss-based Ever Present Orchestra, which facilitates performance of numerous large ensemble works composed by Alvin Lucier. In 2021, he co-composed A Murmur in the Trees, for twenty-four basses, with Eve Beglarian and bassist Robert Black. Praising his work on Robert Carl’s album, Splectra (Cold Blue Music), Fanfare Magazine writes, “he could find no better collaborator than composer and sound designer Matt Sargent.”

Matt is a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College.