Soundcloud up and new audio available!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music are happy to announce a new and improved soundcloud page -- so far we've uploaded 36 tracks of audio from past concerts and festivals, and the page is proving to be a great resource to listen to pieces and excerpts of large works from a tremendous variety of contemporary composers, including Hilda Paredes, Eric Chasalow, John Cage, Reiko Futing, Morton Feldman, Sofia Gubaidulina, Roger Reynolds, David Felder, and may more. All are invited to browse our page here.

Some of the most recently uploaded audio is from June in Buffalo 2012, which was given some very thoughtful press by the The Buffalo News, as well as by our good friend Allan Kozinn at the New York Times, who offered some insightful commentary on David Felder's Rare Air, a four movement work for piano, clarinet, and electronics:

Jean Kopperud performing Felder's Rare Air
photo by Irene Haupt

"Mr. Felder was represented by three movements from Rare Air (2009), a work that explores various aspects of the clarinet or, more properly, the agility of the group’s extraordinary clarinetist, Jean Kopperud. In “Blews” Ms. Kopperud performed on a tube instrument that she and Mr. Felder built for the score. It looks like a boa constrictor; it’s hard to say how it sounds, since the score is heavily layered with electronic timbres and evokes a forest full of banshees. The other movements, “Boxmunsdottir” and “Boxmunsson,” are more conventional, if only by comparison. In both, Mr. Kopperud played a bass clarinet energetically and sometimes with a jazzy tinge, but always enmeshed in Mr. Felder’s evocative electronic scoring." You can read the rest of the review here, and listen to David Felder's "Boxmunsson" from Rare Air, on our soundcloud here.

Brad Lubman from SIGNAL conducting Julia Wolfe's Impatience
photo by Irene Haupt

In a second review, Allan Kozinn offered some thoughts on a few of the larger ensemble pieces at the festival, including Impatience, by Julia Wolfe, "Ms. Wolfe’s Impatience (2005), an insistent, sometimes painterly accompaniment to a peculiar film of that name by the 1920s avant-garde director Charles Dekeukeleire, uses repeating figures and steady, tolling harp, percussion and piano pulses to evoke a tense emotional landscape, and odd touches like eerie accordion chords and sliding violin lines to create an otherworldly atmosphere. If those qualities seem conflicting, they capture the essence of Dekeukeleire’s primitive jump cuts and juxtapositions, and work splendidly on their own." Read the full review here and listen to Julia Wolfe's Impatience on our soundcloud here.

Our first Slee Sinfonietta concert of the 2012-2013 season was a great success as well, and we were happy to be visited by Daniel J. Kushner, who had kind words for the program, and gave a glowing review of Robert Treviño's debut conducting performance with the Slee Sinfonietta, "It felt as if the conductor were prying open the dense orchestration to illuminate the sumptuous yet terse melodies nested inside, waiting to be discovered by the listener." You can read the rest of the review at the The Buffalo News, and listen to Ligeti's Melodien on our soundcloud here.

Tom Kolor gets a bang out of UB (and vice-versa)

UB's music department has a distinguished tradition of percussion teaching. Legendary percussionist Jan Williams arrived in 1964 as a Creative Associate, joined the faculty in 1967, and taught at UB for nearly 40 years, achieving worldwide renown as an interpreter of contemporary music. He is now an emeritus professor.

Assistant Professor Tom Kolor has proven a worthy heir to this tradition. Through performances with the Talujon Percussion Quartet, New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble Sospeso, and others, Kolor has earned a place as one of the top percussionists on the new music scene. As a soloist, he has given dozens of premieres by such composers as Milton Babbitt, John Zorn, Wayne Peterson, Tania Leon, and Jerome Kitzke. He has recorded for Bridge, New World, Albany, Capstone, Innova, Wergo, Naxos, CRI, Koch, Tzadik, North/South Consonance, and Deutsche Grammophon labels. At UB, Kolor directs the Percussion Ensemble, gives private lessons, and is the Principal Percussionist of the Slee Sinfonietta. 


Here are a couple videos of Kolor at work -- one of them serious fun (a Julia Wolfe piece, performed by Talujon), the other simply fun (a restroom sign "concerto" with violinist Todd Reynolds).