Wooden Cities and Aaron Staebell premiere new music at Pausa

Wooden Cities, photo by Megan Metté

Next weekend, Pausa Art House will host an evening of new music—very new music. On October 25, Rochester-based drumset virtuoso Aaron Staebell will join forces with the Buffalo new music collective, Wooden Cities, to present a concert of newly composed works. With more than half of the pieces being world premieres, the program is sure to delight those interested in hearing what local composers are up to in 2014.

A Buffalo native, Aaron Staebell is a percussionist in high-demand. A graduate of the Eastman School, Staebell has played with such visionaries as Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, Rick Braun, and Wycliffe Gordon. His jazz ensemble, Bending and Breaking, released an album of Staebell-penned compositions in 2011, and his playing can also be heard on Dave Chilholm's Calligraphy and Ben Thomas's Endless Mountain Regions (below is an excerpt from the latter, with saxophonist Tony Malaby).

For this program, however, Staebell will present works commissioned for his soloDRUMsolo project, part of an endeavor to generate "art music for drumset". His set will feature Baljinder Sekhon's The Sounds of My Drums, along with premieres of pieces by Whitney George, Daniel Adams, and Wooden Cities' Zane Merritt. With the drumset often being typecast as a groove-based instrument, Staebell sought out composers who could expand on the instrument's lexicon, treating it more like a multi-percussion setup. "I'm trying to generate some more pieces for drummers that are not just 'drum solos' in the traditional sense." He points out that while classical percussionists often play works for marimba, snare drum, timpani, et al., and sometimes use the drumset, there are very few works that give the instrument equal focus.  

Aaron Staebell

"My hope is that I can spark a movement to develop more music of this kind, so that 'classical' percussionists are encouraged to play more drumset, and so that the drumset is more accepted as a viable instrument in the percussion world." The pieces in the soloDRUMsolo project bypass genre-stylizations (latin, rock, jazz, etc.) in favor of new ways of directly interfacing with the instrument. For some of these composers, this means creating a brand new language for drumset—indeed, Merritt's piece goes by the evocative title "Counter-Esperanto", name-checking that most famous invented language.

Jeffrey Stadelman
photo by Irene Haupt

For their set, Wooden Cities will present a collection of works by Buffalo composers, continuing the ensemble's localvore-ist predilection for featuring music created in their midst. The collective will be joined by two guest performers:  electric bassist and composer Meredith Gilna will assist in the premiere of her piece Jack Green, while the Buffalo Philharmonic's principal bassoonist Glenn Einschlag will join a performance of Robert Phillip's Larghetto Rubato—a piece premiered at the Center in 2010 during the residency of Magnus Andersson, Pascal Gallois, and Rohan de Saram. The program will also feature Sea Change by UB faculty composer, Jeffrey Stadelman, an intensely detailed work with references to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, featuring cellist (and recent addition to the group) Katie Weissman and oboist Megan Kyle. Wooden Cities premiered two other works by Stadelman earlier this year at the Inaugural Muriel Wolf and Albert Steiger Endowment Concert, a program which also saw performances of works by Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller (a video of Merritt's Burning City, premiered at this event, can be seen below).

The program will conclude with a performance of John Zorn's famous game piece, Cobra, featuring both Wooden Cities and Staebell. The performance will be a reunion of sorts, as Wooden Cities' director, Brendan Fitzgerald, originally formed the group in 2011 specifically to perform Zorn's piece, and their first performance featured Staebell on drums. The ensemble has since become one of the foremost interpreters of this piece, which uses a strict set of rules to guide free improvisational activity. This tense push-and-pull between control and freedom often erupts in complex social dynamics which take shape on stage as the performers fight for control of the music. With Staebell behind the drums and Fitzgerald directing his band of skilled improvisors, there's no telling what will happen.  Only that it will be…new.

soloDRUMsolo / Wooden Cities+

Pausa Art House

Saturday, October 25, 2014, 8:00pm

$7, $5 students

Edge of the Center covered Wooden Cities' December 2012 concert, read about it here.

—Ethan Hayden

UB Composers have been up to Great Things!

Summer is often a very exciting and active time for composers, and that's especially true for those here at UB.  This past summer saw many of our composers having works performed, and participating in conferences, festivals, and seminars in the US and abroad.

Colin Tucker

Colin Tucker had a particularly busy summer.  While attending the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, he presented a lecture recital with renowned Australian saxophonist Joshua Hyde.  The lecture dealt with issues of notation, interpretation, and performance practice in the solo pieces that Colin wrote for him (including futures unmade in the boundlessness of the instant).  In May, Colin had his newest piece, not this (2014) for bass flute, bass clarinet, saxophone, piano, percussion, mezzo-soprano, and strings premiered by the French ensemble, soundinitiative, in Paris.  Finally, his chamber piece, engulfed, constrained in a widening gap (2013), which was premiered at last year's June in Buffalo festival, saw three performances this summer, including two by the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble.

Su Lee also traveled to Europe, as her Melting Crystal for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and 'cello was a winner of the Kazimierz Serocki International Composers’ Competition in Warsaw, Poland.  In addition, her exciting large ensemble piece, Soundless Cry, was performed at the Mise-en Music Festival in New York. 

Chun-ting Pang was also at this festival, which saw the US premiere of his Vocalize the Voicelessness for trombone, percussion 'cello, and piano.  On the festival’s last day, Chun-ting flew to Finland to attend Sävellyspaja 2014, an annual composition masterclass in Porvoo. While in Finland, he studied with Jukka Tiensuu, Jouni Kaipainen, and Tomi Räisänen, and heard the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra perform his piece, The Flowers Appear on Earth. Later, Chun-ting was privileged to be one of the fellows at the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, a course led by Mario Davidovsky, Steve Mackey, and Augusta Read Thomas.  At Wellesley, Chun-ting revised Vocalize the Voicelessness, which had a successful performance at the conference’s final concert. 

For the past year, Nathan Heidelberger has had the honor of being the first ever composer-in-residence for Oerknal!, a new music collective based in The Hague. The culmination of this partnership took place in June, a portrait concert of Nathan’s music called Lunatics!, featuring his pieces, My Hands Are Empty (which was premiered by the Slee Sinfonietta in April 2012), Descriptions of the Moon (his epic song cycle for soprano and piano), and Breather, a brand new sextet composed for Oerknal!. You can hear some live audio from the performance here.  “It was deeply rewarding to work closely with such a phenomenal great of young performers,” Nathan said, “and I'm looking forward to future collaborations with them.  I was grateful to received support from The Center to help cover my travel expenses.”

Juan Colón-Hernández traveled to Valdeblore, France for the Zodiac Festival, where his trio for clarinet, 'cello, and piano, Sobre el camino y otras cosas, was performed.  While there, he took master classes with composer Andrew List.  Later, Juan's string quartet, A Discontinuous Flux, was awarded third prize at the Malta International Music Competition where he participated in master classes with composer/performer John M. Kennedy.  Finally, Juan's solo guitar piece, Tropos, was selected as part of the 12th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music in San Francisco.

Weijun Chen

Weijun Chen's Canoe for string quartet was premiered by the Freya Quartet at the Charlotte New Music Festival.  Inspired by the poem 'I Am a Canoe' by the Misty Poet, Cheng Gu, Canoe won 2nd prize in the University of Louisville's Frank Robert Abell Young Composer Competition for New Chamber Music.  The reviewer, Perry Tannenbaum, said of Weijun's piece, "Strands of melody broke loose from the quartet harmonies as the score replicated the drift, the loneliness, the longing, the emotion, and the despair of the poem. Toward the end, there were ethereal passages that jumped beyond the template of the poetry and showed that Chen, unlike many of his contemporaries, is unafraid of lingering in intense expression."  Weijun's music was also celebrated when his wind ensemble piece, Distance, won the Hat City Music Theater's American Prize.

Wooden Cities prepares to perform in Cleveland, OH

Other UB composers packed up and took their works on the road.  Buffalo's up-and-coming new music collective, Wooden Cities—which features a number of UB composers among its members—played a five-city DIY tour across the Rust Belt that included performances in university concert halls, experimental theaters, indy bookstores, and even a dive bar. In addition to performing works by Berio, Eastman, Ives, and Zorn, the ensemble's performances were bursting with new music from UB composers, including Ethan Hayden's (tRas), Nathan Heidelberger's Occasionally, music, Zane Merritt's The Reputation, and Matt Sargent's Tide, in addition to UB faculty composer Jeffrey Stadelman's Koral 8.

Megan Beugger

Several other UB composers had eventful summers.  Matt Sargent's large-scale glockenspiel solo, Saint, was premiered by its namesake, percussionist Trevor Saint at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  Matt also began an appointment as visiting lecturer in composition and electronic music at the Hartt School of Music.  Megan Grace Beugger spent the summer working on a new piece for her dissertation, as well as editing her Liason for piano-dancer, which was performed by Melanie Aceto at Hallwalls in late July (many of you will remember this intriguing piece from June in Buffalo 2013).  In addition to a performance of his bats with baby faces in the violet light at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and performances with Wooden Cities, Ethan Hayden saw the publication of his book on Sigur Rós's ( ) by Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series.

All in all, a remarkably busy summer for our composers!  We can't wait to see what's next for them this year!

—Ethan Hayden

Jeffrey Stadelman: "Meaning is sedimented form"

On the eve of the opening of June in Buffalo 2011, we conclude our series of posts on this year's Senior Faculty with composer Jeffrey Stadelman, Associate Chair of UB's Music Department. 

Stadelman's music -- once described by a Los Angeles Times reviewer as "painterly . . . , deftly dispersed in time and glazed with a dry wit" --  has been performed in the U.S and Europe by a number of the leading groups active in contemporary music performance. This list of ensembles -- including the New York New Music Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, the California Ear Unit, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Het Trio, 175 East Ensemble (New Zealand), Earplay, the New World and Cassatt String Quartets, the League/ISCM and the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Conference Players, among others -- continues to grow as Stadelman's work attracts increasing attention in the U.S. and abroad.

Originally from Wisconsin, Stadelman studied composition as an undergraduate with Stephen Dembski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and went on to receive the Ph.D. in Music from Harvard University, where his principal teachers were Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim, Donald Martino and Stephen Mosko. Stadelman has since received commissions and invitations for compositions from, among others, the Fromm Foundation and Boston Musica Viva, Nuove Sincronie, Concert Artists Guild, Trio Italiano Contemporaneo, Phantom Arts, Bernhard Wambach, Elizabeth McNutt, Jon Nelson and UW-Madison. Grants and awards include those from Meet the Composer, Harvard University, Friends and Enemies of New Music, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses.

The composer taught at Harvard University during the 1992-93 academic year, and currently serves as Associate Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he teaches composition and twentieth-century music. Stadelman's music is published by APNM and BMG Ariola. Recently completed and ongoing projects include Eight Songs, a collection for bass-baritone and piano; House Taken Over for the flutist Elizabeth McNutt, with and without electronics; a quintet for a University at Buffalo faculty quintet; and a violin concerto, entitled Pity Paid, for Movses Pogossian with the Slee Sinfonietta. The latter work was released as the centerpiece of an eponymously-titled CD in 2008 on the Centaur label. 

A number of recent electroacoustic works have been performed at June in Buffalo 2004, SEAMUS conferences (Ball State and University of Oregon), ICMC 2004 Miami, the University of North Texas/CEMI, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, COMA 2005 (Vaxjo, Sweden), and other venues.

Also active as a writer on musical subjects, Stadelman has authored a number of analytic papers since 1986, and made presentations on Babbitt and Schoenberg at universities and festivals in the U.S. and Europe. 

Stadelman is a cogent thinker whose forthright remarks on composition are laced with wit in this interview by James Gardner of Radio New Zealand. Responding to a question about recent compositional paradigms, Stadelman says, "I tend to prefer the choral model, imagining not reflection and amplification of the lone voice—but instead repetition and massing of plural voices in a social context. That's what's so compelling about the origins of classical polyphony to me. A kind of splitting of the solo song, and then its multiplication..."

Recent grad Leah Muir on UB: "a rare mix of performance, intellect, and experiment"

Leah Muir completed her doctoral studies in composition at UB in 2008, and is now living in Berlin. She reports:

"My doctoral study at Buffalo was a huge enrichment to my musical life and experience, and continues to be so -- in fact I think it is one of the few organizations in the US that could prepare me for the European musical life I found myself suddenly in. Right now, in fact, I am preparing for a Morton Feldman concert for the Crescendo concert series on June 10, of which I am in charge of musical direction and conducting. Morton Feldman seems to be around every turn I take.

"It was Amy Williams who first introduced me to the University at Buffalo at 19; she brought a group of composers from Bennington College to June in Buffalo. There I met David Felder, and never forgot him or my amazing musical experience during the program. I applied later to Buffalo for my Doctoral degree and was accepted on a Presidential fellowship, where I was able to gain four years of teaching experience. There I made extremely close musical relationships with musicians and composers in the program, and had many compositional breakthroughs with David as my teacher. David Felder demands excellence from his students, and I was pushed very hard to go as far as I possibly could with my own talents, and then maybe even farther. For that I am very grateful.

"Beyond my work at the Institut für Neue Musik, I have also some commissions to write this year. The first is my Doppelkonzert für E. Gitarre und Akkordeon, dedicated to Krassimir Sterev, Yaron Deutsch, Ajtony Csaba and the Mitteleuropäisches Kammerorchester to be premiered in Vienna, Austria in 2011. The second for the Münchener Biennale, is a 25 minute music theater piece to be premiered in May of 2012. Last year, I had a couple of important premieres, on Märzmusik and Wien Modern, and a slight foray into video brought on a sudden premiere at Soundtrack Cologne.

"Buffalo, where American experimentalism is still cherished, was instrumental to my development in these musical directions. David Felder, Cort Lippe and Jeff Stadelman provided an excellent scope of what is out there that is most intellectually stimulating in music, and also what reality is and could be for a composer in our current musical landscape. Beyond this, an idealistic and utopian approach to music is also coveted at the university, where experiment is fully encouraged and when followed, given free reign of the imagination. I find this mixture to be quite unique. Charles Smith and Michael Long are also an extremely important part of the program for me, because the sort of analysis they teach is rare and hard to find. In other departments, with Tony Conrad and Elliot Caplan also in the wings of the greats teaching there, I had the possibility to participate in some transmedial collaborations. Hallwalls, Soundlab and the Burchfield-Penney, beyond the University, provided yet another platform to branch out into a wider community, together with self-organized group of composers, we were able to play music and have a public." Here's Leah's unsettling and inventive Sound Bandage, scored for the offbeat combination of soprano and bass saxophones, cello, and "tape."

A student looks back

Moshe Shulman, PhD candidate in composition at UB, recently shared some observations about his music.

"2011 is my last year in Buffalo, NY. Since 2007 I was studying music composition mainly with David Felder but also with Cort Lippe and Jeffrey Stadelman one semester each. During these years I wrote for brass, woodwind, and percussion ensembles, two string quartets, mixed ensembles including voice, a little piece for piano and a couple of solo pieces. Some of these were successful, some came to be tryouts, one of these even received third prize in a Composition contest in Russia in 2009.


"When the time for writing dissertation piece came, writing for a larger ensemble with a soloist was an obvious choice, mainly because I don’t have anything like that in my portfolio. Another reason for writing a piece for solo violin with orchestra was personal. I started to play violin at the age of five and writing a dissertation piece 28 years later seems like a circle that has been completed. Thanks to David Felder, this project was approved, well-advised and will be realized on April 18th, 2011 in a recording with the Slee Sinfonietta and most talented musician and a friend, violinist Yuki Numata.

"Before getting to what I wanted to achieve in the dissertation work I will try to remember what aspects of music concerned me during these years. One of the first pieces I wrote within the walls of Buffalo University was Frozen Moments for flute, violin, cello and piano. Here are the program notes of that piece:

Frozen Moments is a piece about different states of motion and motionlessness. The piece introduces different musical moments of those states as well as arrivals and departures from them. First movement deals with the sound as motion and silence as static process. Second movement is concerned with repetitions as motionlessness and the motion between the repetitions. The third movement can be actually called anything but Frozen Moment. This movement is full of energy and motion however the static quality is present on a new level. The motionlessness is present within the motion as if one runs down the street and suddenly stops for a second. Beyond that, the motion-motionlessness states are in counterpoint in that movement which gives the listener an option to hear both actions at the same time.

"Another musical aspect that concerned me was writing for a certain instrument as if it were another instrument - for example, treating brass instruments like strings. “Subito” for Brass Quintet is the outcome of that idea. My Second String Quartet was written for the Copland House Project during November 2009. My thought was to create a set of short movements that would exist within a margin of extremes (whatever those extremes might be: speed, dynamics, motion, etc.). Some movements contrast in their extremes with other movements, while others contain their diversities within.

There were many other issues during the years, of course, but these made their way into the dissertation piece that, for now, is titled Kivunim.

"Kivunim is a Hebrew word and it can have multiple meanings. But the ones I am referring to can be translated as directions, movements, goal-oriented processes. Here, in some sense, I come back to the issue I was resolving in Frozen Moments. The soloist and the ensemble arrangement distribute naturally the roles of motion and motionlessness.

"The dissertation defense will take place on May 3^rd and everyone is welcome to attend, to listen and hopefully to enjoy."

Trevor Bjorklund: developing one's own identity

Continuing our series of posts on recent and soon-to-be graduates of UB's composition program, here are some remarks by Trevor Bjorklund, who graduated in 2010 and is currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Pittsburgh.

Trevor's musical background is eclectic, to say the least. From the ages of eight to ten, he sang in the San Francisco Boys' Choir and performed in several productions of the San Francisco Opera. In the years that followed, he began composing while playing guitar, trumpet, euphonium, and percussion. He attended San Francisco State University as a composition major, winning the Theodore Presser Fellowship, and studied trombone with with McDowell Kenley. He graduated summa cum laude from SFSU with a Bachelors of Music in Composition while taking part in an exchange program in Trossingen, Germany. He stayed in Germany to compose and perform as a trombonist and drummer for the next 3 years.

His music has been performed in the United States, Germany, Korea, The Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, France, and The Netherlands, and at major festivals including June in Buffalo and the Darmstadt Ferienkurse. It has been played by internationally renowned groups and artists including the Arditti Quartet and Valerio Fasoli, and has been conducted by James Avery, Manfred Schreier, Christian Hommel, and Christian Baldini.

In addition to his activities as a composer of contemporary music, he continues to perform traditional and modern repertoire as a trombonist, and plays drums for the international funk band, Blind-Ass Chicken, in which he is a founding member and songwriter. These diverse interests and influences are reflected in his dissertation work for UB, Deus Ex Machina, which is scored for "large chamber ensemble and heavy metal trio." You can hear it here.

Says Trevor, "I arrived in Buffalo after having spent several years in the new music scene in Germany and was more than a little unsure about my role as a composer in general. What I found at UB was an entirely open environment that had no preconceived notions about what "good" or "real" music is (or isn't), and I found a small community of musicians developing their own identities in a variety of ways.

Trevor Bjorklund

"My composition teachers there (Jeffrey Stadelman for my first year and then David Felder) whole-heartedly supported the exploration and development of my own unique artistic personality. They were also extremely patient with me as I went through the shock of re-entery into the States after having lived abroad. I was provided with opportunities to hear my own creations performed by some stunningly talented and dedicated musicians. In fact, without David's gentle but consistent encouragement, I could never have even begun composing some of my most successful pieces... not necessarily successful because they are masterworks of the 21st century, but because they form an honest reflection of my own particular musical perspective. For me, creating honest work is the single most important thing an artist can do.

"Although Buffalo is a small city, seemingly remote from the larger American new music community, it is a place of where astounding musical events transpire. In my humble opinion, June in Buffalo has become one of the best, if not THE best, festivals for new music in America and trumps some of the more well-known European festivals. During my tenure as a graduate student and since, David Felder continually ups the ante, bringing in some of the best performers in the world to perform contemporary masterworks, read and perform student pieces, and lecture about their work.

"Another important aspect of my UB education was an excellent platform for professional development. I had the opportunity to teach a variety of important courses that prepared me (and qualified me!) for the post-graduate school world of American Academia. The constant and continued support and advice I received from my teachers and especially my advisor, David Felder, have led me to opportunities for performances and employment that would never have happened had I chosen a different path.

"I recently visited Buffalo and the feeling of walking into Baird Hall was like coming home. There is a family there, my family, and UB and I will remain lifelong friends."

Kudos for UB's composition department

Though it ran a few months ago, we think that The Spectrum's Oct. 17 story about UB's composition program, titled "A Department with National Renown," makes good reading anytime.

Assistant News Editor Brendon Bochacki interviewed David Felder, Trevor Björklund, Cort Lippe, and Jeffrey Stadelman, spreading the word about the department's international prominence to the entire UB community. Reports Bochacki, "Unknown to many students, the music department in Baird and Slee Halls is one of the most highly respected graduate composition programs in the nation." That may not be surprising, given the sheer size of the school -- 29,000+ students in nearly 300 undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and professional degree programs -- but it certainly bears repeating.

One of the reasons that the program attracts so many top students from around the world is its nurturing, undogmatic approach. Bochacki quotes Björklund as saying, "The composition faculty members are very interested in helping young composers bloom on their own... A lot of places tend to push people in a particular direction but UB doesn't. It tends to attract people who have a slightly different take on things."

June in Buffalo: a timely reminder

If you're reading this blog, you're no doubt aware of June in Buffalo, the annual festival and conference that offers a select group of rising composers the opportunity to study with leading teachers in the field, and have scores performed by top ensembles. For those interested in applying, the deadline is Friday, February 25. Application and program details can be found here. 

Presented by University at Buffalo's Department of Music and the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, June in Buffalo features an enticing of seminars, lectures, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics. Each of the invited composers will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music. Here's the rundown on this year's luminaries:

Senior Faculty
Edmund Campion
Eric Chasalow
David Felder
Hilda Paredes
Brice Pauset
Jeffrey Stadelman
 
Resident Ensembles and Special Guests
Magnus Andersson
Irvine Arditti
Roberto Fabbriciani
Ensemble Linea
Brad Lubman
SIGNAL
Slee Sinfonietta