June in Buffalo 2025: Meridian Arts Ensemble

We are pleased to welcome the Meridian Arts Ensemble as a resident ensemble at June in Buffalo 2025.

For nearly four decades, Meridian Arts Ensemble (MAE) has been redefining what a brass quintet can be. With a fearless approach to new music and an insatiable appetite for collaboration, the ensemble has expanded the brass repertoire in ways few could have imagined, including by adding percussion to the standard two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba instrumentation. At June in Buffalo 2025, they bring their signature mix of precision, adventurousness, and sonic firepower.

From early collaborations with composers like Elliott Sharp and Milton Babbitt to their more recent work with David Sanford (June in Buffalo 2025 Senior Faculty), MAE has built a repertoire that defies expectation. Their performances seamlessly shift between rigorously notated complexity
and serene beauty, often pushing brass instruments into uncharted territory. Their discography—spanning eleven albums—includes works that fuse contemporary classical music with jazz, rock, and the avant-garde, all delivered with the ensemble’s unmistakable edge.

Beyond their experimental leanings, MAE is a seasoned performer on the international stage. With appearances across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, they have established themselves as a leading force in chamber music, equally at home in concert halls, jazz clubs, and festival stages. Their dedication to commissioning and premiering new works has ensured that the brass quintet remains a vital and evolving format.

At June in Buffalo, their role as resident ensemble means they will be both interpreters and guides—working closely with composers, shaping new pieces, and demonstrating firsthand the potential of brass music. For audiences and participants alike, Meridian Arts Ensemble promises performances that challenge, excite, and redefine the sound of brass.

 

Credo by David Sanford will be featured on MAE's June in Buffalo program.
Take a listen here!

 

June in Buffalo 2025: Slee Sinfonietta

We are excited to announce that the Slee Sinfonietta will continue its annual residency at June in Buffalo 2025. The Sinfonietta is the professional chamber orchestra in residence at the University at Buffalo and the flagship ensemble of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music. The ensemble presents a series of concerts each year that feature performances of challenging new works by contemporary composers and lesser-known works from the chamber orchestra repertoire. This year, programming includes a concert of four premieres by the University at Buffalo PhD composers, including a dissertation work which features the novel sixth-tone tuning system devised by James Falzone and three (three!) pianos tuned to different pitch levels.

Founded in 1997 by composer David Felder and comprised of a core group including UB faculty performance artists, visiting artists, national and regional professionals and advanced performance students, the group is conducted by leading conductors and composers. This ensemble has produced world-class performances of important repertoire for over 25 years, and its activities include touring, professionally produced recordings, and unique concert experiences for listeners of all levels of experience.

The ensemble has been conducted by major figures including Brad Lubman, Case Scaglione, Charles Wuorinen, Matthias Pintscher, Jim Baker, Harvey Sollberger, Robert Treviño, and Gil Rose. Featured soloists have included, among many, sopranos Laura Aiken, Julia Bentley, and Lucy Shelton; bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood; bass Ethan Herschenfeld; violinists Jaime Laredo, Tim Fain, and Viviane Hagner, Yuki Numata Resnick, and Irvine Arditti; pianist Ursula Oppens; flutists Pierre-Yves Artaud, Mario Caroli, and Tara Helen O'Connor; and French hornist Adam Unsworth. UB faculty member performers have included Jon Nelson (trumpet), Tom Kolor (percussion), Eric Huebner (piano), Tiffany DuMouchelle (soprano), and Jonathan Golove (cello, current Artistic Director of the Center for 21st Century Music). Music recordings include releases on Mode Records, Coviello Records (recently here), and Albany Records.

The Slee Sinfonietta is an ensemble of flexible size. For June in Buffalo 2025, the Slee Sinfonietta will present programs mixing solo works, chamber music, and larger groupings.

June in Buffalo 2025: [Switch~ Ensemble]

The June in Buffalo Festival is thrilled to welcome back [Switch~ Ensemble], who have been regular performers in the Festival and at the Center. They last visited the Center for 21st Century Music for a terrific residency from February 27 to March 2, 2023 and for June in Buffalo 2024.

A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation of new works for chamber ensemble: they bring bold new acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia projects to life. At the core of each performance is their commitment to the total integration of technology and live musicians. They 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. They 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.

Founded in 2012 at the Eastman School of Music, the [Switch~ Ensemble] looks toward the future of contemporary music. They are dedicated to performing high-level chamber music integrated with cutting-edge technology and supporting emerging and early career composers. They are passionate about helping to build a diverse canon of 21st century works that leaves space for all voices—especially those that have historically been excluded from our field.

 The bends by Kelly Sheehan, premiered 2021

Alejandro Rutty Residency

Alejandro Rutty’s compositional output includes orchestral, chamber and mixed-media music, arrangements of Argentine traditional music, and innovative outreach musical projects.

A unique feature of Rutty’s music is its affection for textures suggested by modern recording processing techniques, and the use of Tango - a genre he performs as a pianist-and other South American genres as part of the music’s surface.

Rutty’s compositions and arrangements have been played by the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, National Symphony Orchestra of Brazil, Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Linköping Symphony Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet, and the Cassatt String Quartet among other groups. Rutty’s music has been published by Effiny Music, SCI/European American Music, and Ricordi Sudamericana.

Recordings of his music have been released by Navona Records, Capstone Records, Arizona University Recordings, and ERM Media, PAI Records. 

Alejandro Rutty (PhD SUNY Buffalo) is currently Associate Professor of Music Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Steven Kazuo Takasugi Residency

Steven Kazuo Takasugi, born 1960 in Los Angeles, is a composer of electro-acoustic concert music. This involves the collecting and archiving of recorded, acoustic sound samples into large databases, each classifying thousands of individual, performed instances collected over decades of experimentation and research, mostly conducted in his private sound laboratory. These are then subjecting to computer-assisted, algorithmic composition, revised and adjusted until the resulting emergent sound phenomena, energies, and relationships reveal hidden meanings and contexts to the composer. Against this general project of fixed-media is the addition of live performers, described as an accompanying project: "When people return . . ." This relationship often creates a "strange doubling" playing off the "who is doing what?" inherent with simultaneous live and recorded media: a ventriloquism effect of sorts.


Takasugi received his doctoral in music composition at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently an Associate of the Harvard Music Department. He is a 2022 Creative Capital Awardee, 2017 Civitella Ranieri Fellow, the 2016 Riemen and Bakatel Fellow for Music at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and is the recipient of awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, four Ernst von Siemens Foundation Commissions, and a Japan Foundation Artist Residency in Tokyo. His work has been performed extensively worldwide. Takasugi is also a renowned teacher of composition associated with masterclasses in New York City, Singapore, Stuttgart, Tel Aviv, Darmstadt, Bludenz, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has taught at the University of California, San Diego, Harvard University, California Institute for the Arts, and the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. Takasugi is also an extensive essayist on music and was one of the founding editors of Search Journal for New Music and Culture. He has organized numerous discussion panels and fora on New Music including colloquia and conferences at Harvard Music and the Darmstadt Forum.

 

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.

 

 

 

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: