Composer Jorge Grossman visits the University at Buffalo on November 17

The Center for 21st Century Music is pleased to announce a visit to the University at Buffalo by composer Jorge Grossman, hailing from Ithaca College where he currently teaches. On November 17th, 2022, he will give a lecture on his own music and give a masterclass to University at Buffalo graduate composers. 

Have a listen to his Siray III Concentric Squares performed by Klangforum Wien:

A little more about Jorge Grossman from his bio:

Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann (b. 1973) is a composer whose music reveals an innately lyrical vein within a texturally and formally complex modernist framework. His musical interests are multifaceted, and his pieces often reflect his passion for revisiting classical models. From hockets, troped passacaglias and variation forms to works for electronics or Peruvian indigenous instruments, his oeuvre is as diverse as his cultural background. The son of a Peruvian scientist and a Brazilian teacher and visual artist of Austrian extraction, he was born in Lima, Peru. When the terrorist organization, the Shining Path, became stronger causing massive unrest in Peru, his family emigrated to Brazil in 1989. Initially intending a career as a violinist, he stopped playing due to the effects of focal dystonia. After moving to the United States in 1998, he completed his graduate degrees studying composition with Orlando García, Fredrick Kaufman, John Harbison and, with whom would become his greatest influence, the American composer Lukas Foss. 

His music has been performed by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, São Paulo Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Sinf+onica Nacional de Colombia, Peruvian National Symphony, New England Philharmonic, Kiev Camerata, Klangforum Wien, Boston Musica Viva, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Da Capo Chamber Players, Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Wien®, Seattle Chamber Players, Talea Ensemble, ALEA III and the Amernet, Borromeo, Mivos and JACK quartets. A two-time Fulbright Scholar  (2016, 2022), his awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Fromm Music Foundation Commission, the Aaron Copland Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from Vitae – Associação de Apoio à Cultura. He has been in residence at the Copland House, MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts. He teaches music composition at Ithaca College and is the director of the Ithaca College Contemporary Ensemble. In addition, he is Head of Composition at VIPA, Valencia International Performing Arts Summer Festival.

Composer Sally McCune visits the University at Buffalo on November 3

We at the Center for 21st Century Music are excited to welcome composer Sally McCune to the University at Buffalo on Thursday, November 3rd, 2022, to give a lecture on her own music, and to host a masterclass where UB graduate composers will share their works. She will be here in-person traveling from Ithaca College, where she currently teaches. Have a listen to her High Water Rising for Wind Ensemble (2018), performed and recorded by the University of Michigan Wind Ensemble, with Courtney Snyder conducting, here on soundcloud.

Check out her biography below:

Composer Sally McCune

Born in Detroit, McCune was educated at University of Toronto, California Institute of the Arts, and earned an MFA and DMA from Cornell University. Her principal teachers have included Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra and Mel Powell. McCune’s music continues to gain national and international recognition with performances across North America and Europe.

Awards include a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Whitaker New Reading Session from the American Composers Orchestra, grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Fund Creation Grant, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, and the Aaron Copland Recording Fund. She has received numerous commissions, including those from the New York State Music Teacher’s Association, Society for New Music, Cornell University Chorus, University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, Ensemble X, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Ariadne String Quartet, Eason Trio and Melodia Choir of NYC. Her work is published by G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard and Heritage Music Press.

McCune has taught at Cornell University, Syracuse University and is currently on the faculty at Ithaca College. She has served as guest composer at institutions and festivals including Eastman School of Music, University of South Carolina, The College of New Jersey, South Shore Conservatory, Seal Bay Festival and Songfest and as Composer-In-Residence in regional public schools in Syracuse and Ithaca.

Ensemble Court-circuit residency at the University at Buffalo

The Center for 21st Century Music is excited to announce the return of Ensemble Court-circuit to the University at Buffalo on October 26th and 27th. Court-circuit joined us back in 2018 for a residency where they rehearsed and recorded UB graduate composer works and gave a concert of contemporary music, and we've been looking forward to having them back ever since. 

Court-circuit at the University at Buffalo in 2018
photo credit: Irene Haupt

Some background on them from their website: 

The composer Philippe Hurel and conductor Pierre-André Valade created the ensemble Court-circuit in 1991, following a meeting with the founders of Analix Gallery in Geneva. « Created by a composer for composers », Court-circuit from the outset was a place of experimentation, an art project promoting intense risk-taking in a spirit of total freedom. A strong commitment to contemporary music is the real cement of the ensemble. Court-circuit owes its nervous, rhythmic, incisive identity, as well as its banner-like name, to the musicians and their leader Jean Deroyer, who animate it with determination and virtuosity. A sought- after partner for composers, the ensemble cheerfully plays its role of agitator in the international contemporary scene.

Court-circuit was invited by highly dynamic international programming (Maerzmuzik festivals, Ultima, Printemps des Arts, Musica Electronica Nova, Traiettorie, Gaïda) and haunts the high places of French creation and dissemination: Agora festivals, Manifesto, Novelum, Aujourd’hui Musiques in Perpignan, Messiaen in the Land of Meije, the Reims Opera, the Metz Arsenal, the Caen and Besançon theaters, and the Paris Opera.

Court-circuit is also involved in interdisciplinary projects that go beyond the sphere of contemporary music. After working with the Paris Opera for choreographic creations (Preljocaj, Lagraa),the ensemble had a fruitful partnership with the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris), where it created two chamber operas (The Second Woman – Grand Prize of Critics 2011 – and Mimi – 2014 – both composed by Frédéric Verrières and staged by Guillaume Vincent, before beginning a collaboration with the Opera Comique (Paris) where it participates in the opera La Princesse légère composed by Violeta Cruz and directed by Jos Houben (premiere in 2017).

In parallel, Court-circuit created several ciné-concerts such as Paris qui dort (a René Clair film, with music by Yan Maresz) and Les hommes le dimanche (a Robert Siodmak film, with music by Alexandros Markeas).

Court-circuit asserts its pedagogic mission by regularly working with the Paris Conservatory and the Ile- de-France conservatories. In 2012, it settled in the Hauts-de-Seine, where it conducts numerous projects with music institutions and national distribution structures.

The ensemble is regularly invited to participate in European programs, like Integra (2006-2011) dedicated to mixed music, and Re: new music project (2009-2011). Court-circuit’s discography features about twenty records that accurately reflect his extensive repertoire: Reynolds, Bertrand, Blondeau, D’Adamo, Fineberg, Grisey, Hervé, Hurel, Leroux, Matalon Monnet, Murail, Schneller, Buchala, Jodlowski…

Named several times “Favorite” by the Académie Charles Cros, these CDs were recognized by numerous awards (Le Monde de la Musique, Diapason d’Or, 10 de Répertoire).

Ensemble Court-circuit

Throughout the day on Thursday, October 27th, they will rehearse and record works by University at Buffalo graduate composers: Francisco Courthey, Lihuen Sirvent, Joel Kirk, and Thomas Little. 

On Wednesday, October 26th, at 7:30 pm in Lippes Concert Hall, Court-circuit will give a concert of contemporary works, including those by UB Distinguished Professor and Birge-Cary Chair in Composition David Felder, as well as by UB Alumna Diana Soh. 

The program is free and open to the public:

Sky Macklay, Fastlowhighslow for vn and pno 

Anthony Cheung, Ebbing Flow for cl, vn, vc, and pno  

David Felder, Rare air for cl and electronics

David Hudry, Impulses for fl, cl, vl, vc, and pno  

Diana Soh, Smaller things for ensemble (version for fl) 

Philippe Leroux, Postlude à l’épais for fl, cl, vl, vc, and pno 

No ticket purchase at the Slee Hall box office is necessary -- just show up and looking forward to seeing you there!

Lukas Foss Centennial Celebration!

The Center for 21st Century Music is pleased to announce our co-production with the UB College of Arts & Sciences Dean Robin Schulze and the UB Department of Music: Lukas Foss Centennial Celebration, Sunday, September 18th, at 3:00 pm in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall. We are also excited to bring this program to New York City, where we will offer the same program at the Dimenna Center in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, October 5th. 

Some background and context about this exciting program has been offered by Prof. Jonathan Golove, UB Music Department faculty specializing in Music Composition and Cello Performance, who will be performing on cello throughout the program:

Lukas Foss, whom we celebrate on the 100th anniversary of his birthyear, was a brilliant, exploratory and multifarious musician. His output as a composer, to say nothing of his efforts as a conductor and pianist, ranged widely over a significant variety of major trends from the second half of the 20th century. In some of those trends, indeed, he can be seen an important pioneer. Today’s program presents by no means the widest possible survey of his output in terms of these compositional directions, but it does offer chamber works from a broad swath of time, with works composed in five decades. These works represent some of his principal interests and stylistic tendencies, including the so-called “Americana” sound from his early period, his take on minimalism in the 1970s and 80s, and his career-long engagement with literary texts. The works are organized in two groupings: the first begins with Americana pieces and concludes with the minimalist-flavored Solo Observed, which itself, in its concluding section, brings back the Americana style decades after he had moved off in other composerly directions. After this grouping of shorter works, we perform one of Foss’s masterworks, Time Cycle, in the chamber version he created following Leonard Bernstein’s triumphant 1960 premiere of the original version for soprano and orchestra with the New York Philharmonic. Of that premiere, critic Allen Hughes wrote, “The composer... has surely produced the most beautiful and most significant work of his career.”

- Prof. Jonathan Golove

Lukas Foss 
photo credit: Irene Haupt

The concert is free and open to the public, please see the complete program below:

University at Buffalo

Lippes Concert Hall

Sunday, September 18, 3:00 pm

https://calendar.buffalo.edu/event/center-for-21st-century-music-lukas-foss-tribute-concert/

Elegy for clarinet and piano (1949, arr. Richard Stoltzman 2014)

Michael Tumiel, clarinet

Michael Serio, piano

Capriccio for cello and piano (1948)

Jonathan Golove, cello

Eric Huebner, piano

Solo Observed (1982)

Eric Hueber, piano

Tom Kolor, vibraphone

Jonathan Golove, cello

Michael Serio, electric organ

Time Cycle (1960) for soprano, clarinet, cello, piano/celesta, and percussion 

Tiffany Du Mouchelle, soprano

Michael Tumiel, clarinet

Jonathan Golove, cello

Tom Kolor, percussion

Eric Huebner, piano

This concert will be performed again on October 5th:

The Dimenna Center 

450 W 37th St, 

New York, NY 10018

Wednesday, October 5th

6:30 p.m. - Viewing of Lukas Foss documentary and performance

8:00 p.m. - Reception with light fare

Admission is free, but registration is required:

https://ubcas.formstack.com/forms/lukas_foss_centennial_celebration_nyc

Arditti Quartet residency at the University at Buffalo

The Center for 21st Century Music at the University at Buffalo is pleased to announce an upcoming residency of the Arditti Quartet during August 19 - 22, 2022. The Arditti Quartet was scheduled to be a resident ensemble at June in Buffalo 2022 where they were to rehearse, workshop, and record the works of June in Buffalo participant composers, as well as give a concert of works featuring the works of June in Buffalo senior composers. Unfortunately, the Arditti Quartet was not able to join June in Buffalo 2022 due to complications of Covid. 

On August 19, the Arditti Quartet will rehearse and record the works of participant composers from the festival, some who will travel to the University at Buffalo to work with the quartet in-person, and some who will rehearse via zoom. 

During August 20 - 22, the Arditti Quartet will join the Slee Sinfonietta to rehearse and record June in Buffalo senior composer David Felder's violin concerto Jeu de Tarot 2, featuring violin soloist Irvine Arditti, which was also postponed from June in Buffalo 2022 due to complications of Covid. Jeu de Tarot 2's predecessor, Jeu de Tarot, was recorded by Irvine Arditti and Ensemble Signal and released on Coviello Contemporary.

The Arditti Quartet with David Felder in Spring of 2018

David Felder Interview and Premiere

 West Coast Premiere: Die Dämmerungen  

University at Buffalo alumnus Christian Baldini made the trek to Buffalo to premiere David Felder's For CW in September of 2021 (details here). Baldini is director of the UC-Davis Orchestra, and in that position will be giving the west coast premiere of Felder's Die Dämmerungen.

UB Alum Christian Baldini

On May 21, 2022, it will be my honor to conduct the West Coast première of Felder’s work Die Dämmerungen with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra at the Mondavi Center. I had the chance of asking David some questions, which he responded to via voice memos, and below is the transcription of these informal but extremely illuminating exchanges.

Christian Baldini: Your music is often inspired by external sources, such as literature, painting, or even a tarot deck of cards. For this piece you utilized poetry by William Carlos Williams, Dana Gioia, and also a quote from Psalm 130, and a direct reference to Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols. Can you tell us how this fits into your creative process? Are there any particular ideas that come to mind first, and that inspire you to make references to these works through your music?

David Felder: Each one of the texts is set to instill an atmosphere for each one of the movements. In fact the texts were not picked first, but the music was conceived first. As I began working on the music I started searching for texts that would in some way tie the movements together but also create an atmosphere across the music.

I have a personal relationship with one of the poets. That is Dana Gioia. I have worked with his poetry before. We’ve been associated together and I very much enjoy his poetry. In this poem, he refers to Jacob and the Old Testament story. Jacob’s ladder. The ladder which angels used to ascend and descend to/from heaven.

There is a sadness and lack of awareness in terms of the opportunity. The heavenly and the mundane...

...

CB: To me this piece seems very spiritual. Not only do you have these trajectories of descending and going into the depths of the human soul, but you also have these “impossible distances”, as referenced in the beautiful poem by Dana Gioia. You make a reference to “the Goddess of Dawn and a sense of personal rather than collective place in the second piece. Over the course of the first three of the four pieces the music is quite dark, intense, slow evolving, extremely beautiful and expressive. And in your final movement somehow it all seems to click into place, with bursts of energy that most composers could only dream of. You also make references to the “age of shrill” and the “incessantly repetitive propaganda.” How do all these musical materials come into place for you? How do you balance out purely musical material from all these external elements that are clearly influencing you and inspiring you?

DF: This balance of programmatic and musical elements is always a challenge for any composer. Programmatic ideas come in a pre-compositional way – I know what I want to say and I find the technical means to say that.

Simple binary forms make it much easier for the listener to understand the material presented in the piece – These forms rhyme much like the poets have a relationship in this piece – from a technical point of view, music is meant to complement and reinforce itself through self-similarity.

...

CB: Besides your extremely successful and busy career as a composer you have been a remarkable teacher to so many great composers. Your influence and your legacy mentoring and reaching out to the future generations is invaluable. How have you balanced your life as a Distinguished Professor and Birge-Cary Chair in Composition at SUNY Buffalo, and as the Artistic Director of the “June in Buffalo” Festival since 1985, with your life as a composer?

DF: For almost 50 years I’ve been producing concerts. I felt very strongly that it’s very important for young composers to have their music produced at a very high level.

balance: I’ve never only wanted to do just one thing – It became very interesting and important for me to create musical opportunities for audiences, composers

Now, reverse engineering. There’s been a cost. It’s taken enormous energy to put this into place and maintain it. It comes at some expense to the creative work that you do.

I’m coming now to what I consider to be the end of my creative moment. I recently finished a second cycle of Jeu de Tarot. 14 movements.

After that I’m going to take a hiatus. That hiatus will continue until I have a good idea.

For more of this interview, visit Baldini's blog. 

David Felder For CW

 

 

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.

June in Buffalo 2022 Senior Composer: David Liptak

We are pleased to welcome David Liptak as one of the senior composers at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo! 

David Liptak's music has been described as “luminous and arresting,” “richly atmospheric,” and having “transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness.” His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and abroad by the San Francisco Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, EARPLAY, the Ying, Cassatt, and JACK String Quartets, the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble, the 20th-Century Consort, baritone William Sharp, soprano Tony Arnold, and by many other soloists and ensembles. 

In 1995 David Liptak was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize, given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of distinguished achievement in the field of chamber music composition. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, both in 2002; he has also received the 2006 Lillian Fairchild Award; and commissions for new music have included those supported by the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the California Music Center, and the Hanson Institute for American Music.  Recordings of David Liptak’s music can be found on Bridge, Innova, Albany, Centaur, and other recording labels. 

He is President of the American Composers Alliance, and his music is published by several publishers, including Keiser Classical, Alfred Music - Donald Hunsberger Wind Ensemble Library, and the American Composers Edition. Much of his music written very recently has explored the poetry and magical quality of stars and starlight, imagined and real.  A dedicated teacher of composition students for the past three decades, David Liptak is Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught since 1986.

 Full Biography

 

June in Buffalo 2022 Senior Composer: David Felder

We are pleased to welcome David Felder as one of the senior composers at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

David Felder has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international festivals for contemporary music, and earn continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs. Felder's work has been broadly characterized by its highly energetic profile, through its frequent employment of technological extension and elaboration of musical materials (including his Crossfire video series, and the video/music collaboration Shamayim), and its lyrical qualities.

Felder has received numerous grants and commissions including many composer's awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Council commissions, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim, two Koussevitzky commissions, two Fromm Foundation Fellowships, two awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer "New Residencies" (1993-1996), composer residency with the Buffalo Philharmonic, two commissions from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, and many more.

In May 2010, he received the Music Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a career recognition award. Shamayim was awarded a Silver Medal in Music from the Park City Film Festival in Spring, 2011.

Felder serves as Birge-Cary Chair in Composition at SUNY Buffalo, and has been Artistic Director of the "June in Buffalo" Festival since 1985, when he revived it upon his arrival in Buffalo. Since 2006, he has been Director of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music at the University. From 1992 to 1996 he was Meet the Composer "New Residencies," Composer-in-Residence to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and WBFO-FM. In 1996, he formed the professional chamber orchestra, the Slee Sinfonietta, and has been Artistic Director since that time. In 2008, he was named SUNY Distinguished Professor, the highest rank in the entirety of the SUNY system. In 2015 he was named Co-Director of the University at Buffalo's Creative Arts Initiative, a plan to bring major international creative artists to the region as guest artists.

Felder recently released a CD on Coviello Contemporary featuring Jeu de Tarot (2016-2017), a chamber concerto recorded by Irvine Arditti and Ensemble Signal, and conducted by Brad Lubman. The disc also features his string quartet Netivot (2016), recorded by the Arditti Quartet, and Another Face (1987), recorded by Irvine Arditti. His recent orchestra piece, Die Dämmerungen, commissioned by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, will receive its complete world premiere at Kleinhans Music Hall on October 5^th and 6th, 2019, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta.

A dedicated teacher and mentor, he has served as Ph.D. dissertation advisor and major professor for over eighty composers at Buffalo, many of whom are actively teaching, composing and performing internationally at leading institutions. Nearly 900 'emerging' composers have participated in June in Buffalo, the festival Felder pioneered and dedicated to younger composers upon his arrival in Buffalo in 1985. Felder served as Master Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in February-March, 2010. His works are published by Theodore Presser, and Project Schott New York, and portrait recordings are available on Albany, Bridge, Coviello, BMOP/sound, Mode, and EMF. Two recording projects were recently completed, both of Les Quatres Temps Cardinaux in surround sound, with one being released on BMOP/sound, and the other on Coviello Contemporary.

 

June in Buffalo 2022 Senior Composer: Kevin Ernste

We are pleased to welcome Kevin Ernste as one of the senior composers at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

Kevin Ernste is a composer, performer, and teacher of composition and electronic music at Cornell University where he is Director of the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center (CEMC). He did graduate work in Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music (MA, PhD). He is a founding member of the Cornell Avant-Garde Ensemble (CAGE, http://digital.music.cornell.edu/cage/). He was the Acting Director of the Eastman Computer Music Center and Co-director of the ImageMovementSound festival. 

His recent music includes Nisi [nee-see] (“Island” in Greek) for hornist Adam Unsworth released on Equilibrium Records,  Numina for Brooklyn-based Janus Trio (flute, viola, harp) presented recently at the Spark Festival in MN, Seiend for brass quintet premiered by Ensemble Paris Lodron(Salzburg, Austria, Roses Don’t Need Perfume for guitarist Kenneth Meyer (gtr. and electronic sounds, 2009) recently presented by Dr. Meyer on a Hungary/Romania tour, a piece for saxophone and electronics called To Be Neither Proud Nor Ashamed (released on Innova Records), and Birches for viola with electronic sounds for John Graham performed on Mr. Graham’s recent China tour (Beijing, Wuhan, Xiamen, Hong Kong) as well as at the Aspen Summer Music Festival.  Mr, Graham presented Birches again in August 2011 at the International Computer Music Conference  (ICMC) in Huddersfield, UK.

Ernste’s recently commissioned works include Chorale for chamber ensemble and electronics (after Stucky on Purcell), Palimpsest for the JACK Quartet,  and a half-evening-length work in progress for viola, percussion, and “unmanned” prepared piano.

Links of interest:

Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center (CEMC)
Cornell Avant-Garde Ensemble (CAGE)

June in Buffalo 2022 Senior Composer: Chen Yi

We are pleased to welcome Chen Yi as one of the senior composers at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

Born in Guangzhou, China, Dr. CHEN YI* transcends musical and cultural boundaries in her blending of Chinese and Western traditions. She holds a BA and an MA in Composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a DMA from Columbia University, and has studied composition with Wu Zuqiang, Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. She has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and currently holds a professorship at the University of Missouri Kansas City, where she has been on faculty since 1998.

Dr. Chen’s music has been performed and commissioned by the world’s leading musicians and ensembles, including Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Evelyn Glennie, the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC and Singapore Symphony Orchestras, the Seattle, Pacific, and Kansas City Symphonies, the Brooklyn, NY, and LA Philharmonics, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Her music has also been recorded on many labels based in the US, Europe, and Asia, including Naxos, Albany, Teldec, and the China Record Company, among others.

Chen has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Charles Ives Living Prize, First Prize in the Chinese National Composition Contest, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Stoeger Prize, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, the Herb Alpert Award, the Eddie Medora King Award, and the Nissim Prize.

Some of Chen’s recent premieres include Four Spirits for Piano and Orchestra, commissioned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pearl River Overture, commissioned by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Southern Scenes for Flute, Pipa, and Orchestra by the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, Totem Poles for Solo Organ, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists, and Happy Tune for Violin and Viola, commissioned and premiered at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival 25th anniversary concert. Other premieres include Fire for 12 Players, commissioned by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Music, Introduction, Andante, and Allegro by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Plum Blossom, which debuted at the Fifth Hong Kong International Piano Competition, Bamboo Song for Solo Piano at the China National Center for Performing Arts, and Elegy for Oboe by members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.

A strong advocate for new music, American composers, Asian composers, and women in music, Chen Yi has served on the advisory or educational board of the Fromm Foundation, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, New Music USA, the American Composers Orchestra, the League of Composers/ISCM, the International Alliance of Women in Music, and the Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy. She has supported many composers, conductors, musicians (including dozens of excellent performers on Chinese traditional instruments), educators, and students through her tireless work over the past three decades.

Prof. Chen was appointed to a Cheung Kong Scholar Visiting Professorship at the Central Conservatory in Beijing by China’s Ministry of Education in 2006, where she established the first Beijing International Composition Workshop, and later to a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Tianjin Conservatory.  Through her academic positions, lectures, workshops, residences with arts organizations, and collegiate and pre-collegiate institutions throughout the United States and China, Dr. Chen has made significant contributions to the field of music education. Many of her students have been recognized around the world with national and international composition awards and professorships.

Dr. Chen is a cultural ambassador who has introduced hundreds of new compositions and a large number of musicians from the East and the West to music and educational exchange programs in the US, the UK, Germany, and Asian countries through programs including the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Beijing International Composition Workshop, the Shanghai Spring Festival, the Tianjin May Festival, the China-ASEAN Music Festival, and the Thailand International Composition Festival. She believes that music is a universal language, improving understanding between peoples of different cultural backgrounds and helping to bring peace in the world.

* Chen is family name, Yi is personal name. Chen Yi can be referred to as Dr. Chen, Prof. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi, but not Dr. Yi, Prof. Yi, or Ms. Yi.

June in Buffalo 2022 Senior Composer: Olivier Pasquet

We are pleased to welcome Olivier Pasquet as one of the senior composers at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

Olivier Pasquet is a composer, music producer and visual artist. His work is based on the writing of audio visual compositions and synesthesia. His generative pieces are minimalistic and maximalistic at the same time and contextualized within rationalist theory-fictions. The latter can be deciphered through singular pieces or the overall artistic research. The formal and plastic value of his work provides strong links with geometry, architectural and algorithmic designs. His compositions can be sound-based, visual or material. Olivier Pasquet first practices music writing on his own. After composition studies in Cambridge with Richard Hoadley, lectures with Trevor Wishart and Iannis Xenakis, he works in several popular music studios and does a short visit at INA-GRM. 

He got his PhD in musical composition and non-standard architecture at Huddersfield University with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. He orientates his work toward staged, contemporary music and media art. He collaborates with a wide variety of other artists mostly at IRCAM-Centre Pompidou for several decades. He confronts his sonic compositions with reality thru performance art; dance, opera, music and contemporary theatre. His pieces also materialize themselves under the form of plastic installations and purely electronic music. They are played, sometimes danced, in concert halls, galleries, clubs, or specific sites worldwide. 

Olivier Pasquet taught interactive arts and computational design at Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, theater-music at Théâtre National de Strasbourg etc. He also has been, or is, guest professor at the National Taiwan University of the Arts, the Hochschule der Künste Bern or NY Buffalo University. He has been a researcher at Tokyo University with Philippe Codognet, Keio and Buffalo with David Felder. He worked at Sony CSL and Ableton as a consultant. He received several prizes and residencies such as Villa Médicis, Tokyo Wonder Site, Arcadi, residencies both in Chili and Taiwan. He received the Creative Art Initiative for Frank Lloyd Wright and Toshiko Mori’s buildings in 2018, the FB price for “Momemtum of AI Creation” in 2021. Besides commissions, he is currently research associate at the Zurich University of the Arts’ Institute for Computer Music and part of the European Flucoma research project.

Olivier Pasquet's work can be found here.

June in Buffalo 2022 Resident Ensemble: Slee Sinfonietta

We are pleased to welcome the Slee Sinfonietta as one of the resident ensembles at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

The Slee 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 Sinfonietta 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.

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 Slee Sinfonietta is conducted by leading conductors and composers. This ensemble has produced world-class performances of important repertoire for fourteen years, and its activities include touring, professionally produced recordings, and unique concert experiences for listeners of all levels of experience.

 

June in Buffalo 2022 Resident Ensemble: Ensemble Signal

We are pleased to welcome Ensemble Signal as one of the resident ensembles at the 2022 edition of June in Buffalo!

Ensemble Signal is a NY-based ensemble dedicated to offering the broadest possible audience access to a diverse range of contemporary works through performance, commissioning, recording, and education. Since its debut in 2008, Signal has performed over 350 concerts, premiered numerous works, and co-produced ten recordings.

Signal was founded by Co-Artistic/Executive Director Lauren Radnofsky and Co-Artistic Director/Conductor Brad Lubman. Described by the New York Times as "one of the most vital groups of its kind” and “A new-music ensemble that by this point practically guarantees quality performances,” Signal regularly performs with Lubman and features a supergroup of independent artists from the modern music scene. Lubman, one of the foremost conductors of modern music and a leading figure in the field for over two decades, is a frequent guest with the world’s most distinguished orchestras and new music ensembles.

The Ensemble has appeared at concert halls and international festivals including Lincoln Center Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, BIG EARS Festival, Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, Lincoln Center American Songbook, The Library of Congress, Washington Performing Arts, Cal Performances, Tanglewood Music Festival of Contemporary Music, Ojai Music Festival, the Guggenheim Museum (NY), NPR Tiny Desk Concerts and the Bang on a Can Marathon. They regularly work directly with nearly all the composers they perform in order to offer the most authentic interpretations, a list that includes Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, Michael Gordon, Georg Friedrich Haas, Oliver Knussen, Helmut Lachenmann, David Lang, Hilda Paredes, Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho and Julia Wolfe.

Recent highlights include the world premiere and 130 performances of Reich’s Reich/Richter for large ensemble, with artwork and film by Gerhard Richter for the inaugural season of New York’s multi-arts venue, The Shed (spring 2019), and the US premieres of Reich’s Runner at venues across the US (2017-18). Upcoming highlights in 2022 include the US premieres of music by Luca Francesconi and George Lewis, the world premiere of a new work by Darian Donovan Thomas, a concert of music curated by Julia Wolfe at Carnegie Hall, as well as workshop performances with the next generation of composers.

Among Signal’s recordings are Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which was released in May 2015 on harmonia mundi and received a Diapason d’or and appeared on the Billboard Classical Crossover Charts. Additional recordings include a CD & DVD of music by Lachenmann, with the composer as soloist in “…Zwei Gefühle…” (Mode) and Gordon/Lang/Wolfe’s Shelter (Cantaloupe).

Signal’s passion for the diverse range of music being written today is a driving force behind their projects. The Ensemble’s repertoire ranges from minimalism or pop-influenced to the iconoclastic European avant-garde. Signal’s projects are carefully conceived through close collaboration with cooperating presenting organizations, composers, and artists. Signal is flexible in size and instrumentation - everything from solo to large ensemble and opera, including film or multimedia, in any possible combination - enabling it to meet the ever-changing demands on the 21st century performing ensemble.