Awards, Commissions, Performances: Recent Composer Activities

The fall is a busy time for UB graduate composers, and several have had very eventful semesters.  The past few months have seen many of them composing new works, receiving commissions, and having works performed by top-tier performers around the world.  Here is just a quick sample of what some of the group are up to:

Weijun Chen

Weijun Chen was awarded the prestigious Jacob Druckman Prize by the Aspen Music Festival and School.  The award, offered "in memory of the great American composer who taught at Aspen from 1976 to 1995," is conferred on one student composer each season.  The prize consists of a commission for a new orchestral piece for the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, which will be premiered this summer.  In addition, Weijun has been commissioned by MATA to compose a new work which will be premiered at the 2016 MATA Festival. Finally, Weijun's string-quartet, Canoe, saw three performances in the past months by the Mivos Quartet, and received an honorable mention at the American Prize for Composition.  Congratulations Weijun!

Moshe Shulman

Also, recent UB graduate Moshe Shulman has won the 2015 Fromm Foundation Commission Competition.  Moshe is hard at work on the piece—a chamber work for singer and small ensemble with an original Hebrew text about Jewish prophetesses.  We look forward to hearing about this project as it develops, and we can't wait for the premiere!

Jessie Downs' music was featured on a concert in Chicago late last month, alongside works by Doug Farrand and Ryan Packard.  Streetlights, a string trio originally composed for young musicians was performed, in addition to I did not see it to the end for piano, percussion, and electronics (see below for a recording).  The latter work is a companion piece to work-in-progress, which Jessie is composing for Packard, Farrand, and UB pianist Jade Conlee), we'll look forward to hearing that piece soon.  Also, Jessie's vocal sextet, castings of light, which was performed by Voxnova Italia at their December residency at the Center, will see a performance in downtown Buffalo later this Spring.

Matt Sargent has been keeping very busy, with several commissions in the works, including a trumpet concerto for Jeff Silberschlag and the Chesapeake Orchestra, a piece for tuned gongs and real-time electronics commissioned by percussionist Julie Licata at SUNY Oneonta, and Pillars of Decay, a "multimedia collaborative performance for custom-designed metal/industrial instruments and real-time electronics," designed by Matt, vocalist Amanda Schoofs, percussionist Trevor Saint, and UB-alum Jeff Herriott.  The work will be toured across the Rust Belt next year.  In addition, Matt's Ghost Music, was recorded for a forthcoming album of solo percussion works by Bill Solomon of Signal.  Matt also recently completed two series of works:  More Snow to Fall, seven pieces for glockenspiel and vibraphone for Saint, who will premiere the works on his March 2016 tour, and Tide, three new works for 10 violins, 10 cellos, and 10 basses (i.e., multi-tracked soloist).  The latter saw two recent performances by UB-alum TJ Borden in California (see below for a recording).  Finally, Matt has been presenting a series of concerts with the Electroacoustic Ensemble at Bard College (where he serves as Visiting Professor of Electronic Music and Sound), including two performances with composer Michael Pisaro, who was in residence with the ensemble in November 2015.

Last month, Roberto Azaretto was in Madeira, Portugal, where he took part in the Estalagem da Ponta do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics.  While there, he worked with composers Patricia Alessandrini and Gilbert Nouno,  and had an in-progress work performed by violinist Karin Hellkvist and flutist Richard Craig.

Ethan Hayden

Ethan Hayden's piece for stereo electronics, bats with baby faces in the violet light, saw two performances in the Fall:  at Ljudbio II in Uppsala, Sweden, and also at an electroacoustic music concert at Buff State.  In addition, Ethan's presented "…ce dangereux supplément…", his piece for solo voice, electronics, and animated projections, at the 2015 International Computer Music Conference in Denton, TX.  He'll perform the same work this spring at Narrations contemporaines, a poetics conference in Montreal hosted by bleuOrange, revue de littérature hypermédiatique.  Ethan's large ensemble piece, Let's celebrate our corpse-strewn future! will be premiered by Buffalo's Wooden Cities next month, at a concert which will also feature works by current/former UB composers Zane Merritt and John Bacon.  In addition, his four-voice arrangement of Kurt Schwitters' Ribble Bobble Pimlico was heard last weekend at Hallwalls' Dada centenary event, performed by BuffFluxus.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, there is lots of other music being made here at UB, and we can't wait to hear what's next for these artists in the coming months!

A Busy Summer for UB Composers...

Summer is always a busy and exciting time for UB graduate composers, with many of them participating in conferences, festivals, and seminars in the US and abroad, and having their works performed by some of the most skilled performers in the field.  This past summer was no different, as you can see below:

Weijun Chen had two pieces which received multiple performances this summer.  First, his string quartet, Canoe, was performed by the Rhythm Method quartet at New York's Mise-En Music Festival in June.  As a student composer at this year's Aspen Music Festival and School, Weijun heard an orchestral adaptation of the piece performed twice (in July, and a few weeks later in August).  In addition, his Memos, for pierrot and percussion, was premiered at June in Buffalo by the New York New Music Ensemble, and was performed again at Aspen by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.

Matthew Chamberlain

Also at June in Buffalo, Matthew Chamberlain saw the premiere of his brass quintet, Three Family Photos, by the Meridian Arts Ensemble.  In addition, his string trio, Photo, was premiered by Chartreuse, with performances in Buffalo, Chicago, and New York.  Also a skilled conductor of new music, Matthew conducted at a JiB Performance Institute concert, leading a number of performers in Jacob Druckman's Come Round.  He also participated in a weeklong master course with world-renowned conductor Péter Eötvös in Budapest, where he performed Philippe Manoury’s piano concerto, Passacaille pour Tokyo.

Colin Tucker curated and produced Decay/Reverberate, a four-day festival of site-specific sound works created for presentation at Silo City, a group of historic vacant grain elevators in Buffalo.  The event included performances, installations, and guided listening activities, each of which engaged with the acoustic, social, and historical implications of the site.  Part of the Null Point series, a Buffalo-based platform for experimental arts founded by Colin, the festival featured performances by several artists associated with UB, including composers/sound artists Matt Sargent, Daniel Bassin, and Tom Stoll, and performers Zane Merritt, Crossfire Percussion (Bob Fullex and Jason Bauers), and John Bacon.  Read more about the event here, and check out Matt Sargent's Tide (10+1 Basses), a piece premiered at the event by bassist Zachary Rowden, below:

"I am grateful for the Center for 21st Century Music's financial support of the event," says Colin, who is currently planning a similar event at the same site for next spring.  Colin was also a fellow in the Summer Academy for Young Composers at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, where he studied with Chaya Czernowin, Ming Tsao, and Rebecca Saunders.  At Schloss, Colin presented a lecture on his work, and his engulfed, constrained in a widening gap was performed by friends of the Center, Ensemble SurPlus.

Colin also curated, organized, and performed on Null Point's Virtuosities, a concert program which toured the American midwest, playing eight cities in nine days.  The program featured two of Colin's pieces, distances swarming and encompassing, for prepared electric guitar and the audio installation, voice-dross, in addition to North American premieres of works by Joseph Kudirka, and Eva-Maria Houben.  While on tour, the ensemble was featured on Muddle Instead of Music, a weekly radio show directed by recent UB graduate, Jacob Gotlib.  A video summarizing the tour's stop at Cincinnati's Experimental Music at the Library series, can be seen below:

The two other composers featured on the Null Point tour were Zane Merritt and Ethan Hayden.  In addition to performing Colin's distances swarming and encompassing, Merritt performed his own solo electric guitar work, Double Etude Gizmo Mechanism Device Machine class alpha, set 1, number A, for guitar and fixed media electronics.  Ethan performed his "…ce dangereux supplément…", for voice and electronics, on the Null Point tour, and a version of the same piece with animated projections was performed by the composer at the international E-Poetry festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  This weekend, Ethan will perform the piece at the International Computer Music Conference in Denton, TX.

Dimitar Pentchev wrote, directed, and produced Gleams, an evening-length work featuring live piano, two singer-actors, dancer, and live video projection.  The piece saw three June performances at Toronto's Array Space.  "It is based on my own poetry," Dimitar explains, "and it was produced without any outside help."  An excerpt of the work can be seen below.

Esin Gündüz

ritüellerin yakınlığı (the proximity of rituals), Esin Gündüz's piece for two violas and recorded voice was premiered earlier this month by violists Yuri Gandelsman and Tuba Özkan.  The work was commissioned by the former's viola masterclass at Mersin State Conservatory in South Turkey.  She will soon see the premiere of cura, a new composition for violin, 'cello, and voice, which she will perform with UB's Yuki Numata and Jonathan Golove at the October 11th concert by Friends of Vienna—an organization at which Esin has been composer-in-residence for the past year.

Finally, Roberto Azaretto attended the 2015 MusicArte Festival in Panamá City, where Impasse, his 2011 duo for clarinet and 'cello was premiered by Gleb Kanasevich and Cody Green.

We should also congratulate the composers who, last spring, graduated with their PhDs:  Megan Grace Beugger, Jacob Gotlib, Clint Haycraft, Nathan Heidelberger, and Chun Ting Pang.  We couldn't be more thrilled for them and we know they're already up to new and exciting things!

As the Fall semester begins, each of these composers will begin composing new works and starting new projects, we can't wait to see what's next for them this year!

2014-15 Season Recap

The Slee Sinfonietta plays Ives's Three Places in New England

The Center's 2014-15 season has been an incredibly exciting one with lots of exciting concerts, including numerous premieres of new works by intrepid composers.  We saw several Slee Sinfonietta programs, including memorable performances of Elliott Carter's Triple Duo (with Ensemble SIGNAL), Charles Ives's Three Places in New England, and the production of Doug Fitch's magnificent "How Did We…?".  We had two fruitful residencies with the Mivos String Quartet and the Deviant Septet, and several visiting composers, including Larry Groupé, Rand Steiger, and Daniel Asia.

Last month, we capped off the season with the 40/30 anniversary of the June in Buffalo Festival, a vibrant week of new music that featured 16 concerts with nearly 80 adventurous new works performed—half of those by the 30 emerging composers in attendance.  The festival was a great success, a celebration of many years of great performances.  In a recent Wall Street Journal Article, author Allan Kozinn points out that, "It would be hard to name more than a handful of major composers of the past 30 years who have not appeared on its faculty roster."  Kozinn, impressed with the work of the festival's participant composers, elaborates:

[A] highlight of a Saturday afternoon program devoted to new student works was Mr. [Eric] Huebner's assured account of Music for a Mad Scientist—300+ Microvariations on a Bach Theme, an explosively virtuosic solo piano work by Texu Kim.  Mr. Kim […] hid his Bach theme amid intensely chromatic Lisztian thunder, at first.  But when the invigorating clatter briefly subsided, the score's internal joke became clear:  The work's theme is the gently arpeggiated C major Prelude that opens The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I.  […]  Ying-Ting Lin's The Journey began murkily, with repeated bass tones in the piano punctuated by chordal bursts for bass clarinet and violin, but quickly grew into an engagingly varied, lively piece.  Liliya Ugay played the assertive, steely piano line in her own Third World Fable, but regularly ceded the spotlight, and some lovely, supple writing, to the violin and cello.  The student program's most satisfying work was its opener, Ryan Jesperson's Souvenirs/Miniatures, a tightly focused piano trio that—like Ms. Ugay's work, but with a different accent—juxtaposed tense, sharp-edge keyboard angularity with luminous string writing rooted in 19th-century shapeliness.

SIGNAL and the Slee Sinfonietta perform
David Felder's Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux

Kozinn also took note of Saturday night's stunning performance of David Felder's Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux by SIGNAL and the Slee Sinfonietta, under Brad Lubman's direction.  The chamber orchestra piece set poems by René Daumal, Pablo Neruda, Robert Creeley and Dana Gioia (read more about the work here), and featured vocal soloists Heather Buck and Ethan Herschenfeld, as well as video projections by Olivier Pasquet and 12 channels of electroacoustic sound:

The poems are heard not only in the spiky, emotionally intense vocal writing, but spoken on the recorded tracks, which also include percussion sounds and the sparkle, buzz and variegated growl of purely electronic timbres, all moving around a dozen speakers placed throughout the hall.  Abstract video by Olivier Pasquet added atmosphere rather than commentary.  All this could easily have become an exhibition of gimmickry, but Mr. Felder kept his grand audio-visual fabric focused, sober and often wrenching.

The festival saw not only great performances, but also seminars and masterclasses by its world-renowned faculty composers, which can be invaluable to emerging composers.  As noted in a recent UB Reporter article by this author:

The works of these faculty composers were featured in JiB's evening concerts, while the composers themselves gave morning seminars and consulted with participant composers in master classes.  "I am always eager to show my works to professors and peers, not to find confirmation but to collect 'data,'" says Chen.  "Then, at the end of the day, I sit down and do some 'data mining' for my future projects.  […]  JiB is only a week long, but its impact on me will surely last for years to come. I cannot wait for JiB 2016."

For those interested in learning more about the festival, be sure to check out our series of profiles of JiB artists on Edge of the Center, and visit the UB Music Library for an exhibit commemorating the festival's 40/30 anniversary, which is still on display.

Onward…

The Oerknal Ensemble will visit the Center next year

The gears are already in motion for next year's season.  We are excited that next year's events will include visits from guest composers Kaija Saariaho and Hanna Eimermacher, as well as residencies with several prominent new music ensembles, including Load Bang, Voxnova Italia/Project Isherwood, Ensemble Linea, and the Oerknal Ensemble.  We can also look forward to many spectacular Slee Sinfonietta concerts, and of course, June in Buffalo 2016, which will feature the following resident ensembles:  Arditti Quartet, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble SIGNAL, Slee Sinfonietta, Uusinta Ensemble.

Edge of the Center will announce more details on all of these events in the coming months.  It's already shaping up to be another incredible season featuring some of the most skilled performers in the city and from around the globe.

Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music

2015-16 Schedule of Events

Visiting Lecture Series 

September 2015

Hanna Eimermacher

Visiting composer

October 5, 2015

Kaija Saariaho

Visiting composer

October 5, 2015

Mivos Quartet

[Rescheduled concert]:

Program to include works by 

Brook, Felder, Lachenmann, Stauning

November 2015

Load Bang

Visiting ensemble

Evening performance and composer workshop

December 4-6

Voxnova Italia and Project Isherwood

Visiting ensembles

Two evenings of concerts and composer workshop

April 2016

Ensemble Linea

Visiting ensemble

Evening performance and composer workshop

May 2-5, 2016

Oerknal Ensemble

Visiting Ensemble

Evening performance and composer workshop

Program to include works by 

Felder, Heidelberger, Nielson, Zorn

Slee Sinfonietta

October 6, 2015
Slee Sinfonietta Presents
Ensemble Signal
Brad Lubman, conductor
Camilla Hoitenga, flute
Featuring works by Kaija Saariaho and other Finnish Composers
Part of FinnFest in Buffalo, NY

April 21, 2016
Slee Sinfonietta
Program TBA


June in Buffalo 2016
June 6-13
David Felder, Artistic Director

Faculty Composers
Hanna Eimermacher
David Felder
Joshua Fineberg
Josh Levine

Resident Ensembles
Arditti Quartet
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
Dal Niente
Ensemble Signal
Slee Sinfonietta
Uusinta Ensemble

Special Guests
Magnus Andersson
Brad Lubman

Performances, Commissions, Residencies: A busy Fall for UB Composers

Our composers have been up to really extraordinary things, and the Fall semester saw many of them composing new works, receiving commissions, and having works performed by some of the most skilled performers in the field.  Neither snow, nor rain, nor lake-effect thundersnow stays these composers from constantly creating new and exciting work!  Here is just a sample of what some of the group are up to:

Nathan Heidelberger has been hard at work on his dissertation, an extended single-movement work for string quartet.  The first two sections of the piece were read and recorded last Fall during the Mivos Quartet's residency at the Center, and he was enthusiastic about the results.  In addition, Nathan and pianist Daniel Walden were recently granted a Special Award from the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music (named for the virtuoso pianist who was a professor of music at UB from 1973-1993).  Nathan describes their next project:  "The grant will help support an upcoming collaborative project:  a recital-length program that will combine a new multi-movement piano solo of mine with a complete performance of the Luigi Rossi manuscript, a collection of bizarre 16th-century Italian harpsichord music that includes the only extant keyboard work by Carlo Gesualdo."  You can hear Daniel's performance of Nathan's song cycle Descriptions of the Moon, with vocalist Marine Fribourg ,below:

Robert Azaretto had two new works premiered in the Fall.  His solo piano piece, lago. paisajismo abstracto. 2., was premiered in Buenos Aires by Bruno Mesz in the gorgeous Teatro Nacional Cervantes, Argentina's national theatre.  His flute and bass clarinet duo, paisajismo abstracto. 4., was premiered at the Distat Terra festival in Choele Choel.  The latter piece was commissioned by Musica AntiquaNova for Austria's Duo Soufflé.

Matt Sargent

Matt Sargent has had a very busy Fall semester.  He collaborated on a duo concert of electroacoustic music with turntablist Dani Dobkin, which was presented at the Hartford Art School in November.  Then in December, the Ghost Ensemble performed his work Tide for nine "sliding instruments."  The Undue Percussion Duo (featuring percussionists Nick Fox and Trevor Saint) included Matt's stunning small stones in a program they played on six-city Midwestern tour in October.  Saint is a frequent collaborator of Matt's, and will be performing a new work of his for solo glockenspiel in March.  Matt will see another premiere in March:  he was commissioned to write More Snow to Fall, a work for two electric guitars and 'cello, which will be premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland.

Colin Tucker has received several commissions, and is no doubt hard at work composing new works.  Richard Haynes, clarinetist of ELISION, Weston Olencki, trombonist of Wild Rumpus/Fonema Consort, and Aaron Hynds, a tubist at Bowling Green State University all commissioned new solo works from Colin.  He also had several works performed in the Fall.  His solo saxophone work futures unmade in the boundlessness of the instant was performed at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur by Joshua Hyde, and was taken on a tour of Ohio universities by the New York-based saxophonist, Geoff Landmann.  In addition, his sound installation, voice dross, was commissioned by the Echo Art Fair, where it was installed in September.

Chun Ting Pang's Pulsating Garden—a commission by Hong Kong Composers' Guild—was premiered during the guild's annual new music festival, Musicarama, by Korea's Ensemble Eclat.  In addition, his Vocalize the Voicelessness for trombone, percussion, 'cello, and piano will have its German premiere in March by Ensemble Ascolta.  Chun Ting also became the composer-in-residence of the Hong Kong-based Zheng Quartet, ZhengMusic (the zheng is a Chinese zither).  A new commission for the quartet will be performed during this season.

Zane Merritt
photo by Megan Metté

Zane Merritt had two new works premiered in the Fall:  his chamber ensemble piece Sex-Bot (serial no. 5347) becomes self-aware and falls in love with an Allen wrench was premiered by Wooden Cities in October (read more about that performance here), and his orchestral work Dramatic Individuals was premiered by the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra in November.  This weekend, he and UB 'cello professor Jonathan Golove will premiere his Mercury Aqua Mirage for theremin 'cello and electric guitar at the SUNY New Music and Culture Symposium.  At the same event he will perform solo guitar works by fellow UB composers Nathan Heidelberger, Colin Tucker, and Meredith Gilna, and will premiere a new work by Megan Grace Beugger.  Megan will have two pieces played at this symposium:  in addition to her new guitar piece, her percussion duo Daring Doris will also be performed.  Megan is also gearing up for this year's MATA Festival in New York, which will see a performance of her piece for piano-dancer, Liason.

Several composers attended festivals and conferences in the Fall.  Su Lee was one of of eight composers selected to attend the Goethe-Institut Boston's December symposium.  There, she took part in composition workshops with composers Raphaël Cendo and Isabel Mundry.  Su was also commissioned to write a new piece for the New York-based ensemble mise-en, which the group will premiere during their 2015/16 season.  Weijun Chen's work In Search of a Shore was heard at the Composition in Asia Festival in Tampa, and he is planning on presenting other pieces at several conferences in the Spring, including the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop (Normal, IL), the Mise-En Music Festival (New York, NY), and the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition 30th Anniversary Conference (Louisville, KY), where his string quartet, Canoe, will be performed by TALEA Ensemble.  Just this week, Weijun has been named a composition fellow at this summer's Aspen Festival.

Esin Gündüz recently revised a piece she composed for the Meridian Arts Ensemble (during their Fall 2011 residency at the Center) for performance by the Cleveland-based Factory Seconds Trio.  The revised work will be premiered at Baldwin Wallce Conservatory this spring.  She is also hard at work on a commissioned work for violists Yuri Gandelsman and Tuba Ozkan, which will be performed in September at Turkey's Mersin State Conservatory.  As the composer-in-residence at Buffalo's Friends of Vienna, Esin is writing another trio which will see an October premiere.  Also active with the Buffalo-based ResAUnance, Esin (a skilled vocalist) recently made a debut recording of folksong arrangements and original works with the improvisatory ensemble, which should be mixed and mastered by mid-semester.

Ethan Hayden had several works performed in the Fall, including his percussion quintet Clicks & Beeps, which was performed by the Concert Percussion Ensemble at Florida Atlantic University, and his four-voice arrangement of Kurt Schwitter's Ribble Bobble Pimlico, which was performed by ThingNY at two concerts in November.  He performed his (tRas) for solo voice and electronics at the INTIME symposium in Coventry, UK in October.  Ethan is also the artist-in-residence this year at the Electronic Poetry Center's annual Digital Poetry & Dance concert, at which he'll be premiering a suite of new pieces for voice, video, and electronic sounds called "…ce dangereux supplément…".

Matthew Chamberlain spent his Fall finishing a string trio commissioned by Ensemble Chartreuse, as well as a guitar solo that will soon be premiered by Zane Merritt.  Matthew is also the director of UB's Contemporary Music Ensemble, and is often hard at work preparing new works for performance with that group.

Clinton Haycraft

Several composers have been collaborating with choreographer Melanie Aceto, from UB's Department of Theatre and Dance.  Clinton Haycraft's work, Advocate, for violins, was choreographed by Aceto, and has already seen three performances throughout the Western New York area.  Jiryus Ballan collaborated with Aceto and UB percussionist Alexander Chimienti on a series of works.  After joining Aceto's modern dance class as an accompanist (Jiryus is an accomplished Buzuq player), he and Chimienti began an ongoing collaboration that began with live improvisation and eventually coalesced into 25 tracks of recorded compositions.  For Jiryus, a key part of the project was the intercultural exchange.  "I think the most important thing was the combination of different musical elements from diverse cultures.  For example, I used quarter tones in some of the tracks and employed the Maqam [a system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music]."  He compares this kind of compositional process to the manner in which traditional folk music is created.  "In my culture (Palestinian), the folk music was created by the people.  They repeated melodies and they remembered them by heart and with time these melodies attained their own unique characteristics."  An excerpt of some of these collaborations can be heard below:

With all this activity just last semester, we can't wait to see what's next for these composers in the coming months!

—Ethan Hayden

Deviant Septet: reinvigorating a unique chamber ensemble

Just over a hundred years ago, Arnold Schoenberg composed Pierrot Lunaire for the unconventional instrumentation of flute, clarinet, violin, 'cello, and piano.  This novel ensemble was subsequently adopted by many other composers, and its repertoire expanded from a single collection of 21 darkly expressionistic songs to hundreds of pieces by the century's end.  Several of the era's most important works were composed for this instrumentation—dubbed the "pierrot ensemble"—including Donald Martino's Notturno and Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King; and to this day a good number of contemporary chamber groups are centered on this particular quintet (e.g., Da Capo Chamber Players, Eighth Blackbird, New York New Music Ensemble, Piccola Accademia degli Specchi, etc.).

Stravinsky, ca. 1918

There is another ensemble whose instrumentation is just as unique, just as dynamic and well-balanced as the pierrot ensemble, but for some reason did not catch on in the same way.  Just a few years after Pierrot's composition, Igor Stravinsky (Schoenberg's musical antipode in many ways), designed a septet for his 1918 music-theatre piece, L'Histoire du Soldat ("The Soldier's Tale").  The piece was logically and thriftily scored for a high and low voice from each instrumental family:  violin and bass (strings), clarinet and bassoon (woodwinds), trumpet and trombone (brass), with percussion rounding out the septet.  Stravinsky's intent was partly economical—the First World War and the Russian Revolution had severely impacted his finances, and L'Histoire was designed to be an easily-mobile piece that could be performed with little funding.  Strangely, this particular septet (which lacks even a handy nickname)—despite it's practicality, and its expansive dynamic, registral, and timbral palettes—never became remotely as popular as the pierrot ensemble.

The first week of December, the Center for 21st Century music will host an ensemble whose mission it is to change that fact.  The Deviant Septet is the only new music ensemble consisting solely of the "l'histoire ensemble."  Formed in 2010 by clarinetist Bill Kalinkos and trumpeter Mike Gurfield, the Deviant Septet is seeking to expand the repertoire for this instrumentation, and all the unique challenges it poses.  The ensemble's website points out that "while Stravinsky's contemporaries were seemingly not up to the task, 21st century composers jump at the chance to solve Stravinsky's riddles."

Among those riddle-solving composers are several UB graduate students, whose works will be read by Deviant at a workshop on December 6th.  Roberto Azaretto, Weijun Chen, and Meredith Gilna have all written new works for the ensemble, which will perform the pieces and provide feedback to the composers.  The workshop will thus be a collective "riddle-solving" session in which composers and ensemble will explore new ways to navigate this diverse collections of voices.

Deviant will begin their residency with a concert in Lippes Concert Hall on December 5th.  The centerpiece of their program will be, naturally, Stravinsky's L'Histoire.  Based on a Faustian folk tale, the stylistically promiscuous piece features a tango, a waltz, a chorale, ragtime, dances, marches, and that very idiosyncratic Stravinskian "jazz" (in 1918, Stravinsky had not yet heard jazz, but he was inspired by some piano reductions that the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet had brought back with him from an American tour).  The piece features an unusually prominent percussion part for a work of its time, and is as famous for its disjunct rhythms and rapidly-changing time signatures as it is for its unorthodox instrumentation.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Deviant will complement L'Histoire with Esa-Pekka Salonen's Catch and Release (2006).  Salonen's three-movement work begins with a march-like texture that seems to be inspired by L'Histoire itself, before unfolding into a new terrain of dancing grace notes, florid scalar runs, and playful trombone glissandi.  Rounding out the program is Elliot Cole's Roman de la Rose.  The piece was commissioned by Deviant Septet for their 2012 "Deviant Tierkreis" program, in which the ensemble asked twelve composers to write their own short pieces based on the Zodiac cycle, à la Stockhausen's Tierkreis (Cole's piece is Cancer).  Sparse and ritualistic, Roman's funereal austerity is a nice counterbalance to the rhythmic density and dexterous complexity so prevalent in Stravinsky and Salonen's works.  It's sure to be an exciting program—for a preview, see the video below, which shows the ensemble performing Randos III by Ted Hearne, another Deviant commission that responds to and re-composes Stravinsky's piece, creating something brand new in the process.

The Deviant Septet is working hard to expand the repertoire of its unconventional instrumental makeup.  Through its efforts, it's likely that the "l'histoire ensemble" could be to the 21st century what the pierrot ensemble was to the 20th.  Regardless of whether or not that proves to be the case, we'll be fortunate to witness this "exceedingly fun" and "boisterously entertaining" ensemble perform works new and old with a fresh, enthusiastic vigor!

—Ethan Hayden

Deviant Septet

Concert

December 5, 7:30pm

Lippes Concert Hall

$15 general, $10 seniors, free for all UB students

Composer Workshop

December 6, 10:00am

Lippes Concert Hall

free admission

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