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.

Robert Treviño conducts the Slee Sinfonietta to kick off the 2012-2013 season with Berg, Ligeti, and Adams!

The Center is pleased to announce the first Slee Sinfonietta concert of the 2012-2013 season, on Monday, September 24th, at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall. We’ll be welcoming a handful of exciting guests, including conductor Robert Treviño, violinist Yuki Numata, and pianist Daniel Pesca, for a concert of pieces by Alban Berg, György Ligeti, and John Adams.

Robert Treviño

Our guest conductor Robert Treviño has an impressively long resumé for someone who his only 28 years old, and is currently serving his second season as the Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, as well as debuting this year with the California Symphony Orchestra and the Shippensburg Music Festival. He has worked with a long list of ensembles, symphonies, and orchestras, including the Orchestras of Cleveland and Philadelphia, the Symphonies of Cincinnati, Baltimore, Charlotte, Memphis, Napa Valley, New World, the Philharmonics of Chicago, Louisiana, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Suwon Philharmonic of South Korea, Wuppertal Symphony of Germany, Montpellier National Orchestra of France, Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico Philharmonic of Mexico, the Millennium Chamber Players, and the Jusqu’aux Oreilles Festival of Canada. Treviño also served a month-long residency with the Helsinki Philharmonic, where he assisted Music Director Leif Segerstam through a season of the complete symphonies of Sibelius.

Alban Berg

The first half of the program will include Alban Berg's op. 5, Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, featuring UB faculty pianist Eric Huebner and UB faculty clarinetist Jean Kopperud, and Berg’s Chamber Concerto for Violin and Piano with 13 wind instruments, which will feature guest soloist violinist Yuki Numata, whose playing has been described by the New York Times as possessing “virtuosic flair and dexterous bravery,” and guest pianist Daniel Pesca, who was recently in residence at the Aspen Music Festival. The second half of the program will feature some exciting and rarely performed works from the late 20th century: György Ligeti's Melodien, and John Adams' Chamber Symphony.

For information about tickets, contact the UB Department of Music Concert Series.

Announcing the Fall 2012 Season at the Center!

We at The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music are excited to announce our Fall 2012 Season! June in Buffalo 2012 was a great success and a stimulating week of fresh new compositions and performances, as well as, in the words of the great New York Times music writer Allan Kozinn, “an intensive weeklong boot camp for budding young composers.” Allan Kozinn wrote up two great reviews of June in Buffalo 2012 in the New York Times, which you can read here and here.

UB alumn Judith Sherman

Our Fall season already began on August 25, when UB graduate composer Matt Sargent served as the music director for American Grain, a multimedia performance event for the Marine A grain elevator of Silo City, in Buffalo, NY. The event featured, amidst dance performances, an array of art on the walls, and tours throughout the silo, a cello quartet written by Matt and headed by UB faculty cellist Jonathan Golove. Read more about the event at the Buffalo News.

Our next event will be Working in Time: A Celebration of the Arts in Honor of Bruce Jackson on September 21. The event will celebrate the life and works of documentary filmmaker Bruce Jackson, who is the James Agee Professor of American Culture at the University at Buffalo. Working in Time will feature music by UB Birge-Cary Chair in music composition David Felder, and also feature projects by filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, and UB poet and documentarian Diane Christian. Working in Time will take place on Friday, September 21, 1:00-5:00 p.m., in Lippes Hall.  

Our first Slee Sinfonietta concert will be on Monday, Sep. 24, and will showcase two pieces by Alban Berg on the program: his op. 5, Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, and his Chamber Concerto for Violin and Piano with 13 wind instruments, featuring violinist Yuki Numata and pianist Daniel Pesca, under the baton of Robert Treviño. The program will also include Gyorgy Ligeti’s Melodien, and John Adams’ Chamber Symphony.

On Wednesday, October 10, we will be hosting composer Jake Romig from Western Illinois University for a day of composer master classes and workshops, as well as a presentation on his own music.

Our second Slee Sinfonietta concert will be on Tuesday, October 30, and will offer an exciting and dynamic program of late 20th century works, under the baton of Maestro Daniel Bassin, including: Karlheinz Stockshausen’s Kreuzspiel, Gyorgy Ligeti’s Horn Trio, Morton Feldman’s De Kooning, Tristan Murial’s Vues Aériennes, and Witold Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes. Our concert will again include violinst Yuki Numata, alongside horn player Adam Unsworth, and UB faculty pianist and New York Philharmonic pianist-in-residence Eric Huebner.

From November 26th to 28th, violinist Curtis Macomber, from the Manhattan School of Music, will visit the Center, alongside UB alumn and two-time Grammy winner of the award for Classical Producer of the Year, Judith Sherman. For three days they will run a workshop on recording, editing, and producing Classical music.

Norrbotten Neo

On Tuesday, Dec. 4, the expert contemporary music ensemble from Sweden, and longtime friend of the Center, Norrbotten Neo, will join us for a composer workshop. The next day, on Wed., Dec. 5, they will give an evening concert. 

Spring at the Center will be even more active than the Fall. April's Slee Sinfonietta concert will feature bass singer Ethan Herschenfeld, soprano Laura Aikin, and about 30 musicians from SIGNAL Ensemble, for the premiere of David Felder’s Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux (The Four Cardinal Seasons), a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation. Also on the program will be Felder’s Tweener, featuring UB percussionist Tom Kolor. Spring will also include visits from composer Phillipe Hurel, French ensemble Court-Circuit, and Oberlin composer Josh Levine.

New York City’s Talea Ensemble, who were originally scheduled to come in October, will now come for June in Buffalo 2013, stay tuned for details on the upcoming June in Buffalo!