Composer Augusta Read Thomas visits the Center this week!

Amidst the flurry of concerts and workshops going on at the Center in April, as well as the recent residencies by Mario Caroli and the Talujon Percussion Ensemble (see posts below), we will soon be enjoying a visit by composer Augusta Read Thomas, who will give a private master class to composition students in UB’s graduate program as well as present a lecture on her own work on Wednesday, April 25^th. Augusta is the recipient of an Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was recently appointed University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College at the University of Chicago.

Augusta Read Thomas

Augusta Read Thomas is also a long-time friend of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music, and has participated as a faculty composer at the 2006 June in Buffalo Festival, as well as enjoyed many performances at June in Buffalo, including: Blizzard in Paradise, Bubble: Rainbow - (spirit level), Carillon Sky, Red Moon, Rumi Settings, Six Piano Etudes, Sonnet from the field: second movement, and Spirit Musings. 2012 will be an exciting year of premieres for Augusta, as Third Coast Percussion will premiere her Resounding Earth in September, and in December, The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing will give the world premiere of her Harvest Drum for orchestra.

Additionally, this summer, Augusta will be co-teaching, along with Christopher Rouse, the Master Class Composers' Session at the Aspen Music Festival, in Aspen, Colorado. UB’s own Nathan Heidelberger will be particpating with her at Aspen, as he has been selected as one of the few student composers to be given a one-month residency at the Aspen Music Festival this summer. We at the Center will be looking forward to a full report from Nathan next Fall!

You can learn more about Augusta Read Thomas in this video below, where she is interviewed about a recent work of hers, Helios Choros II (Sun God Dancers), performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Talujon Percussion Ensemble performs Gérard Grisey’s “Le Noir d’Étoile” at UB this week!

The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music is looking forward to hosting the Talujon Percussion Ensemble at UB this week for a day of student composer readings and an exciting concert of contemporary percussion music. The New York Times has described Talujon as possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy,” whose “brilliant members” are skilled at producing “frenzied explosions of percussion madness…” Talujon joins us as they wind down their 20^th Anniversary Season with residencies at UB and Brandeis University, as well as a tour of concerts given throughout New York, including at the Manhattan School of Music, Purchase, Brooklyn’s Roulette, and venues all around NYC.

Talujon Percussion Ensemble

On Monday, April 23, at 1:00 p.m. in Lippes Hall the Talujon Percussion Ensemble will read works from five graduate composers in the music composition program at UB, which features an incredibly diverse and original body of composers, with a wide range of aesthetic attitudes and outlooks. The pieces at the workshop include nor nothing towards obstruction or else erasure yet and, by Colin Tucker, Four in the Morning, End of December, by Dan Bassin, Emergence, by David Rappenecker, …in other news, by Dimitar Pentchev, and Detrimento Temporal no. 1 (febrero), by Juan Colón-Hernández.

One of the composers, Colin Tucker, features some rather unconventional percussion instruments in his piece, as he explains in this excerpt from the program notes, “In nor nothing towards obstruction or else erasure yet and, two percussionists scrape surfaces – familiar instruments (drumhead, almglocken) and construction materials (flakeboard, cardboard) – with cardboard and other implements. The score specifies the performers’ efforts in moving implements around surfaces, rather than the sounds that result. “Effort” involves two parameters: pressure directed parallel to the surface, wherein bodily energy produces sound, and pressure directed perpendicular to the surface, wherein bodily energy impedes sound. The latter is therefore a “switch” which mediates the former’s latent energy, cancelling it or allowing it to actualize itself into motion and sound.” More information about Colin and his unique approaches to composition can be found at his website here.

Gérard Grisey

On Tuesday, April 24^th, at 7:30 p.m., Talujon will present a concert in Lippes Hall featuring Le Noir de L'Étoile by famed French composer Gérard Grisey. Le Noir de L'Étoile concerns the death of a pulsar – a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The piece had its genesis when Gérard Grisey was teaching at the University at Berkeley in 1985 and met the astronomer and cosmologist Joe Silk, who introduced the composer to the sounds of the Vela Pulsar, which Grisey incorporated and translated into the piece. The percussionists of Talujon will be stationed around the hall to provide an enveloping sonic experience and communicate live the pulsations and vibrations of the Vela Pulsar.

Check out the video below of an excerpt of Talujon performing Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together.

Flutist Mario Caroli performs Salvatore Sciarrino's "L'opera per flauto" at UB this weekend.

As spring in Buffalo heats up, a whirlwind of activity is taking place at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music – next week on April 23^rd and 24^th the Talujon Precussion Ensemble will be in residency for a composer workshop and concert, and on Wednesday, April 25^th, Augusta Read Thomas will visit to present her latest work and give a master class to student composers. This weekend will kick off the flurry of music with two concerts presented by the renowned Italian flutist Mario Caroli.

Mario Caroli
photo by Piero Colucci

This Friday at 4:00 p.m., at the UB Center for the Arts, in the Lightwell Gallery, Mario Caroli will present a concert of Salvatore Sciarrino’s L’opera per flauto, a crafted collection of Sciarinno’s works for solo flute. Friday’s concert will comprise the first part of the collection, and will be followed up by part two on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., in Baird Recital Hall. Both concerts will be free and open to the public.

Mario Caroli has established an incredible reputation for himself as one of the world's most virtuosic contemporary flutists. The American Record Guide has remarked that, “Mario Caroli has nearly superhuman skill, paired with extraordinary musical intelligence,” and the New York Times has given him glowing reviews, stating about one of his recent performances, that, “he made a sound you wanted to drink in.” Mario Caroli tours incessantly and performs regularly in some of the greatest concert halls in the world, including the Philharmonic Halls of Berlin and Cologne, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Opéra Garnier in Paris, the New York Lincoln Centre, Suntory Hall, Oji Hall and Opera City House of Tokyo, and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Bruxelles. Mario has given stellar performances with the Slee Sinfonietta in the past, and all of us at the Center are thrilled to welcome him back to UB. 

Enjoy a small audio appetizer to prepare for this weekend’s flute feast with a video below of Mario Caroli performing Salvatore Sciarrino’s Canzone di ringraziamento at the 2009 International New Music Week Festival in Bucharest.

J.T. Rinker on his work as a composer, installation artist, and Managing Director of the Center...

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with J.T. Rinker, the Managing Director of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music, and catch up with some of his recent projects. J.T. maintains an active communications network of musicians, ensembles, and composers all over the world, organizes the Center’s concerts all year round, and maneuvers all of the complex logistics of the June in Buffalo Festival. On top of his managerial activities, J.T. is also an accomplished trumpeter, composer, and artist in a wide variety of mediums.

J.T. Rinker

J.T. describes some of his recent pieces and installations, “I’ve been revisiting my piece for crotales and electronics, frigate, for the recent Slee Sinfonietta concert and working it into a more portable version. I’ve also been working on a ten-string guitar piece for Magnus Andersson that has progressed, bit by bit, every time Magnus comes to Buffalo. The piece is tentatively titled trace, and is a continuation of my examination of braiding patterns to create musical materials. In trace, I map out an imagined matrix where the guitar strings, as well as the frets, are intricately braided together, and the intersections of the braided frets and strings create the pitch material for the piece. Even the sequence and the order of activity on the strings are created out of braiding patterns. A premiere of the piece has not been scheduled but Magnus has imagined a program where trace could appear with other recent works by composers with Buffalo connections – including Aaron Cassidy's electric guitar piece and a recently commissioned ten-string guitar piece by Elliot Sharp.

“This year I’ve been doing a lot of composing, in contrast to last year when I was working more on installations. I had a piece that was exhibited at the Burchfield Penney, in response to a request from the curator, Stefani Bardin, who was looking for artists that dealt with senses other than sight. The first of those projects focused on sound, so I decided to create a piece that dealt with the phenomenon of bone conduction, which is another way of experiencing the vibrations of sound. The installation itself was a long thin aluminum bar that was connected to the voice coils of four deconstructed speakers that vibrated the aluminum bar. The way in which you experienced the sound being projected through the aluminum was by placing your forehead against the bar. It’s similar to how you can strike a tuning fork and place it on your cranium to hear the pitch.

Tom Kolor performing J.T. Rinker's frigate

“Managing the Center for 21^st Century Music can be a lot of work, but it also provides fuel for creative projects – the musicians and artists that come through are always inspiring, and of course the concerts the Center produces are deeply stimulating. I love talking with the performers and composers that come for residencies here. The research I do with David Felder for his creative projects is continually educational, and has lead to collaborations with people like Olivier Pasquet. Olivier and I are currently working on a set of MAX patches that deal with algorithmic rhythm generation, which we call “jtol”. It’s a library of MAX patches for generating different types of rhythms, based on tree structures [more information on jtol can be found here].

We asked J.T. about some of the other perks of being at the Center, “Though it is a lot of work to manage and organize all of the various activities, like June in Buffalo and the Slee Sinfonietta, there are definitely some fringe benefits to working at the Center. Such as, for example, when the JACK Quartet, SIGNAL, and Helmut Lachenmann were in residence, I had the opportunity to sit in on the dress rehearsal of Lachenmann’s 2^nd String Quartet with JACK, and it was just the six of us. I remember Lachenmann saying, ‘the audience must not make any sound… Wait, I take that back – they can cough, and rustle around, and make small noises, but they are not allowed to breathe.’ While listening to the run-through, I realized that Lachenmann was right – the piece breathes for you.”

Check out the video below of Ryn Ozaki playing J.T. Rinker’s frigate as part of the “A Musical Feast” concert series at the Albright Knox.

David Felder discusses his work-in-progress, "Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux," his work as the Center's Director, and his many other projects as a composer.

We recently caught up with the many activities of the Director of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music, David Felder, who follows a very demanding schedule as Director of the June in Buffalo Festival, Artistic Director of the Slee Sinfonietta, and University at Buffalo Birge-Cary Chair in Music Composition. As a SUNY Distinguished Professor, David maintains a very active and highly regarded composition studio and keeps up a very impressive output of works as a composer. He has recently completed new works – Funfares, which was written for the inauguration of UB's President and premiered last September, and Nomina Sunt Consequentia Rerum, written for Harold Rosenbaum's New York Virtuoso Singers.  

We asked David about his recent projects, “I’ve been working very hard on a vocal cycle commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, my second Koussevitsky I'm happy to say, which will feature bass singer Ethan Herschenfeld and soprano Laura Aikin, who starred as Lulu in the recent production of Lulu at La Scala. Joining them will be a good-size chamber orchestra of about 30 musicians from SIGNAL, as well as ten channels of electronics. Co-commissioners are the Slee Sinfonietta, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, who will also program the work in subsequent seasons and record it as well. The entire cycle is built on a central poem by René Daumal, Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux (The Four Cardinal Seasons), which is a seemingly simple unpublished poem Daumal composed late in his life that has to do with the seasons, the times of the day, nature, and the life cycle. I’m using other poems to complement the central poem that are of a more personal nature and are more located in a specific place and time than the Daumal verses, which are more transpersonal. Two of the more specific poems, Spring Light and Buffalo Evening, are by Robert Creeley who was a greatly admired former colleague here at UB. Also in the cycle will be a poem from a terrific poet named Dana Gioia, who used to be the head of the National Endowment for the Arts and is now a distinguished chair at USC. His work is entitled Insomnia, which will be one of the companion poems linked to various times of the day. I also include Full Powers, a poem from one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda.

David Felder

“An interesting aspect of the piece is that I have audio recordings of the poets reading their poems, and can use their voices as source material. Most of the readings will be substantially electronically transformed, though you’ll definitely be able to hear Dana Gioia’s voice. Often the phonemes from the spoken poems will be translated into instrumental analogues, or processed into bell sounds or other timbres. The texts will also be carried, to a large degree, by the singers. It’s been a really big project – projecting to be about 40-45 minutes and it’s about halfway done now in draft, with a lot of provisionary electronic cues and processing engines already made. I’ll be doing a substantial amount of work on it during the summer, as the premiere will be April 23^rd, 2013. 

“Many other projects are due soon: a piece for painter Alfred DiCredico, and one for the John Cage Centennial Observation in Washington DC. As well, I’ve got a handful of other commissions to work on from NEO Norbotten, and the Norwegian contrabass clarinetist Rolph Borch, which will feature electronics and must be done by the end of 2013 – and the New York New Music Ensemble, and Talujon too. So lots to do...

“This year has been particularly complicated because I had been asked to co-chair the University at Buffalo Provost search, which required a lot of time and energy. Plus, my composition studio is fuller than it has ever been with 13 Ph.D. students. I’m extraordinarily busy. It’s a very exciting time though. The Center is doing very well and we’re happy to have all of our major donors renewing their commitments. We’ve gotten to the point where we have to plan our activities about three years in advance, and we’re on the air in a very real way. Now it’s time to expand and formalize our activities and to broadcast more effectively what we do." 

You can stay abreast of David Felder’s latest recordings by checking in with Albany Records, who will be releasing a 90-minute portrait disc, on blu ray and in surround sound, by the summer of 2012. High quality audio samples of David Felder’s work can also be found here, and many of his scores have been made available online by the Theodore Presser Company, as well as the new score-publishing intitiative, Project Schott New York .

Below is a strikingly beautiful excerpt from David Felder’s Chasmal, from Shamayim, a recent three-part music/video collaboration with video artist Elliot Caplan, featuring the virtuosic bassist Nicholas Isherwood.

Maestro Dan Bassin debuts with the Slee Sinfonietta!

The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music is delighted to present "UB Graduate Composers: PAST and PRESENT," a concert performed by the virtuosic Slee Sinfonietta next week on Tuesday, April 3^rd, at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall. The program will showcase the finest recent works from UB composers, and feature an epic violoncello quartet from contemporary Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

Daniel Bassin

Wielding the baton for the evening will be well-known friend of the Center and conductor of the UBSO, Maestro Daniel Bassin, who will be conducting the Slee Sinfonietta for the first time next week. Daniel Bassin has come to UB after having been awarded a prestigious fellowship with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and later working for five seasons with the American Symphony Orchestra in New York City. As a passionate advocate of new music, Daniel has led premieres and first performances of over 80 works, and has performed as a conductor and trumpeter in 37 countries. In 2008 he acted as assistant conductor for the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra’s 16-city tour of the American West Coast and Midwest. Maestro Bassin’s work with the UBSO was recently featured in an article in Buffalo’s Artvoice by Jan Jezioro, "A Musical Director With a Mission".

Dan has nothing but glowing words for the Slee Sinfonietta, “I would like to thank David Felder for the opportunity to work with this group. Since my coming to UB two years ago, I’ve been deeply impressed and excited by the concerts, events, visiting artists, and all facets of how the Center contributes to the cultural and musical life of Buffalo. The Slee Sinfonietta is a dynamic group of musicians who are incredibly dedicated to ensuring that each performance features new and rarely heard works, realized at the highest level and in a deeply musical fashion. What this group does is much more than just play the notes of these compositions. Each performance the Slee Sinfonietta gives brings the unique character and musical world of each composer’s work to life.” 

The concert will feature many premieres, including Nathan Heidelberger’s My Hands are Empty, for chamber ensemble, Jacob Gotlib’s Portrait Sequence (Blanching Out) for percussion duet, JT Rinker’s Frigate, for solo percussion and electronics, and David Hanner’s Monologue, for soprano and large ensemble. Each piece is uniquely engaging and demonstrates the tremendous diversity and talent in the UB composition program. Nathan Heidelberger’s piece, has, in the words of Maestro Bassin, “the ecstasy of virtual stillness and transformation.” David Hanner’s Monologue will feature UB vocalist Tony Arnold, who will join the Slee Sinfonietta to create a dense but colorful and floating tapestry of sound, brilliantly orchestrated and full of textural subtlety and nuance. Jacob Gotlib’s Portrait Sequence (Blanching Out) is strikingly masterful, original, and well-crafted, and asks the percussionists to scrape, scratch, and otherwise sculpt a variety of intricate gestures on a kaleidoscopic array of strange and intriguing materials including glass, ceramic, metal, and other unconventional percussion instruments. JT Rinker, an expert in music technology, directs a fresh and dynamic conversation between the crotales and electronics in his Frigate. Daniel Bassin describes Frigate, “[JT Rinker] utilizes very high frequencies with his electronics to create complex difference tones, which partially transmute and color the acoustic resonances of the crotales and interact with the live acoustic space that the crotales would otherwise inhabit. A brilliant piece!”

Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quaternion, an epic 25-minute long work for cello quartet, will be the grand finale of the program, and will be played by Jonathan Golove, Colin Tucker, TJ Borden, and Adriana Pera. Quaternion features a variety of innovative and pioneering performance techniques for the cello, including playing with thimbles on the fingertips, which creates a fresh and evocative timbre. TJ Borden describes his experience rehearsing Quaternion, “two of the cellos are tuned a quarter-tone apart from the other two cellos, which symbolizes the divide between the divine and man. While rehearsing the piece, I was deeply struck by moments where the pairs of cellos seemed to approach complete union but never achieve it. Knowing Sofia Gubaidulina is a devout Catholic, one of the images the piece elicited for me was of Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, of God and Man almost touching.”

As a teaser for the upcoming concert, below is a video of Brad Lubman conducting the Slee Sinfonietta for a performance of David Felder’s Inner Sky, featuring guest flutist Mario Caroli.

The Center welcomes the Antares New Music Quartet to UB!

The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music is excited to be co-sponsoring a visit by the Antares New Music Quartet to the University at Buffalo on March 30^th for an evening concert of some of the finest and most elegant music composed in recent times. We are also looking forward to the composer workshop the day before, on March 29^th, when Antares will perform works by graduate composers selected from the University at Buffalo Department of Music.

 

The Antares New Music Quartet includes violinist Jesse Mills, cellist Rebecca Patterson, clarinetist Garrick Zoeter, and UB faculty pianist Eric Huebner, who specialize in bringing to life contemporary musical works created by today’s living composers, as well as masterpieces from the immediate past. On Friday, March 30^th, at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall, Antares will perform Roger Reynolds’ Shadowed Narrative, a recent piece that uses text written by author Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a model for assembling the individual voices of the ensemble into a complex conversation, with the instrumental phrases resembling the syntax and grammar of spoken language. The program will also feature Igor Stravinksy’s L'historie du soldat Suite, Paul Hindemith’s Quartet, and Maurice Ravel’s Trio for piano, violin and cello. Ticket information can be found at the Slee Hall Box Office. 

Antares New Music Quartet

The composer workshop will showcase pieces composed by six graduate students from UB’s diverse composition program: Clint Haycraft, Zane Merritt, Chun-Ting Pang, Nathan Heidelberger, Kenichi Saeki, and Dmitri Penchev. The first composer on the list, Clint Haycraft, has just recently moved to Buffalo from Switzerland, where he obtained a Masters degree in Music Composition from the Zurich University of the Arts. His piece, American Music, uses advertising jingles as found sound objects which he fuses, mutates, fragments, and puts together again, as he makes them his own and molds them into his own personal style. Clint describes the piece, “I tried to address the intense nostalgia elicited by these commercial jingles – it struck me how powerfully these melodies impacted my childhood and shaped my memory of my teenage years. While researching advertisements and commercial music from the past, I began to feel that these jingles shaped my memory, surprisingly, even more than the music I loved and chose to listen to at the time. American Music is my attempt to address the musical tools that were used on me as I grew up, and recapture them so that I may use them and explore them in a fresh and critical way.”

Zane Merritt, who comes to us after just completing a Masters degree from Butler University in Indiana, has a piece that will be performed by Antares titled Mixed Quartet No. 1 (breakdown), which includes intricate, interlocking rhythms, and tightly coordinated motivic gestures that develop, expand, and stretch throughout the piece, resulting in extreme rhythmic complexity and vibrant physical intensity. Zane says, “I was interested in pushing performers to the outer limits of rhythmic virtuosity so that the piece feels like it is on the brink of falling apart.” The composer workshop will be in Lippes Hall at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29^th, and will be free and open to the public.

The Antares New Music Quartet was originally created to perform Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which the composer, shockingly, composed and had performed while he was a prisoner in an internment camp under the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Below is a video of Antares performing the seventh movement of the Quartet. Absolutely Gorgeous! 

The Center celebrates John Cage's 100th birthday at UB and all around Buffalo

Join us next week and throughout April for a celebration of John Cage’s music for his 100^th birthday. University at Buffalo faculty and graduate students will be performing John Cage’s pieces at UB and around the city of Buffalo for the rest of the spring to honor the man who relentlessly pioneered and innovated in nearly all forms of art, including poetry, film, multimedia installation, theater, and performance art, as well as in a plethora of musical genres and compositional styles. The upcoming John Cage concerts will feature many of Cage’s myriad approaches to composition, and showcase pieces composed during all the various periods of his long and very productive life. John Cage has long been a deeply respected friend of the University at Buffalo Department of Music, as he was a regular June in Buffalo Faculty Composer from as far back as 1975, a frequent collaborator with Lejaren Hiller, and close personal friend of UB Composer Morton Feldman.

John Cage

The celebration begins next week on Wednesday, March 21^st, at 7:30 p.m. in Slee Hall with a free concert of the complete Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano performed by UB Professor and New York Philharmonic pianist-in-residence Eric Huebner. The piano will be ‘prepared’ ahead of time with screws, bolts, pennies, weather stripping, washers, and pieces of rubber, wood, and bamboo, all strategically inserted and threaded into the piano’s strings. The score diligently maps out the placement of the materials within the piano strings to a quarter of an inch, catalyzing the many delicate interactions between the strings’ harmonics and the preparation materials and achieving an astonishing variety of textures and timbres. At the premiere of the Sonatas and Interludes in 1949, the critic for The New York Times wrote that the work, “left one with the feeling that Mr. Cage is one of this country’s finest composers and that his invention [the prepared piano] has now been vindicated musically.” Eric Huebner’s piano students will also showcase their talents throughout the evening and perform certain selections from the Sonatas and Interludes.

The following week there will be a concert of John Cage’s early works at Buffalo’s Hallwalls on Tuesday, March 27^th, at 8:00 p.m., presented by Tom Kolor and the UB Contemporary Ensemble. Some of the works to be performed include Sonata for Clarinet, Solo with obligato accompaniment, and John Cage’s very first percussion piece, Trio, which features Cage’s love for including atypical percussion materials such as wooden planks, bamboo, twigs, and an impressive assortment of drums and other percussion instruments.

The birthday celebration will continue into April with an afternoon concert at Villa Maria College on April 19^th, where UB percussionist Shelly Purdy will perform Cage’s indeterminate work 27’ 10.554”.  The final concert in the John Cage series will be back at the University at Buffalo’s Slee Hall on April 24^th and feature performances by UB Performance Faculty and the UB Contemporary Ensemble, check in next month at the Center’s website for details.

Below is a video of Sonatas VII and XVI from the Sonatas and Interludes, performed by James Tenney at the Schindler House in 2002.

The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music co-sponsors "A Musical Feast" featuring works by Rands, Carter, Heidelberger, Bacon, and Mozart.

Here at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music we are excited to be gearing up for the upcoming March 18^th concert in the continuing concert series presented by “A Musical Feast.” Founded in 2006 by retired Concert Master of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Charles Haupt, “A Musical Feast” ventures to fuse contemporary and classical music with poetry and dance, and features internationally renowned musicians alongside Buffalo’s top performers and music-makers. For this upcoming concert at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, co-sponsored by the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music, we are particularly excited to be showcasing two world premieres from University at Buffalo composers Nathan Heidelberger and John Bacon, as well as works by Wolfgang Mozart, Elliot Carter, and long-time friend of the Center Bernard Rands.

Opening the concert will be UB composer and percussionist John Bacon premiering his new piece, ...wind, water, metal, skin…, for flute and percussion. John Bacon will be joined by UB faculty flutist Barry Crawford for this premiere, which will feature a prepared vibraphone – John logged many hours experimenting and working with different materials (alluded to in the title of the piece) to doctor up the vibraphone and create an exciting blend of textures and timbres to dialogue with the many colors Barry Crawford is able to achieve with his virtuosic flute playing. John describes his thoughts about the work, "the piece started from the idea of wind chime melodies and the way that the notes combine into different orderings and repetitions, along with that is the idea of each of the materials in the title and how to express some of their properties through music. One final idea that is used is how the two players coordinate, sometimes very specifically, and other times, more casually."

Nathan Heidelberger
photo by Megan Metté

The other UB composer on the program, Nathan Heidelberger, will premiere his new work for soprano voice and piano, Descriptions of the Moon, a nine-part song cycle which sets a divergent array of texts on the topic of the moon from authors including Dante Alighieri, Galileo Galilei, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, e.e. cummings, D.H. Lawrence, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Nathan was recently interviewed by Buffalo’s radio station WBFO  on his many recent activities: composing for the upcoming visit of the Antares Quartet, his regular performances with Buffalo’s multimedia improvisation group, Wooden Cities, his upcoming summer residency at the Aspen Music Festival, and his work with mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley, who will be premiering Descriptions of the Moon with UB faculty member and recently appointed principal pianist of the New York Philharmonic Eric Huebner.

Nathan elucidates some of the key compositional issues at play in Descriptions of the Moon, “The piece begins with a first hand account (imagined, of course) of walking on the moon, and it ends with an image of the moon drifting away from the earth, leaving a lone narrator behind. The contrast between these two texts reveals a number of binaries that play out during the piece: proximity/distance, excitement/restraint, declamation/soliloquy, verb/adjective. These binaries are represented through a gradual diminishment (waning) of activity, a process that is enacted twice over the course of the piece, once from the first to the fourth song, and again from the fifth song to the end. Another important binary is the relationship between the voice and the piano, which is carefully controlled throughout the work. While one hopes that most song cycles represent an equal partnership between a singer and a pianist, the singer, as the possessor of the text and thus the sole communicator of semantic meaning, often seems to take on a dominant role. In Descriptions of the Moon I tried to level the playing field as much as possible. In some songs the vocal line propels the music forward, while in others the piano part does.  Sometimes the two performers seem to be on different planes entirely, with little overt connection or synchronization between them.”

Bernard Rands and Julia Bentley

Julia Bentley will also be singing Bernard Rands’ Memo 7, for solo female voice, part of a series of short works for solo instruments Bernard Rands began back in 1971 with Memo 1 for contrabass. We were fortunate to have been visited last fall by Bernard Rands for a screening and discussion of his recent opera in two acts, Vincent, about the life and work of painter Vincent van Gogh. During his visit, Julia Bentley and the Slee Sinfonietta performed Rands' "Now Again"... fragments from Sappho, a collection of songs for voice and ensemble setting the poetry of the Greek poet Sappho. Audio from the concert can be heard on the Center's website.

Eric Huebner will also be performing Elliott Carter’s work for solo piano Night Fantasies. Carter, who celebrated his 103 birthday this past December, describes the work as, "a piano piece of continuously changing moods, suggesting the fleeting thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind during a period of wakefulness at night... In this score, I wanted to capture the fanciful, changeable quality of our inner life at a time when it is not dominated by strong, directive intentions or desires." Carter’s Night Fantasies, which has been informally referred to as ‘an intense act of self-communion,’ will appear fittingly programmed alongside Mozart’s introverted and dark-hued K. 397 Fantasia in D minor, also to be interpreted by Eric Huebner.

Information about the "A Musical Feast" concert series can be found at http://www.amusicalfeast.com/   Details of the concert, location, and how to buy tickets here:

  

Sunday, March 18, 2012

2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Peter & Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium Burchfield Penney Art Center

Buffalo State College

1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo,

NY, 14222

www.BurchfieldPenney.org  

Email: burchfld@buffalostate.edu

Tickets by Telephone: (716) 878-6011 

Tickets Online: https://secure3.ticketguys.com/burchfieldpenney/  

Burchfield Penney members: $10

Students with ID: $10 

Non-members: $20 

Join today. Advance tickets strongly recommended. 

Clarinetist Jean Kopperud pushes musical boundaries with a full schedule of tours, recordings, and commissions.

UB Clarinetist Jean Kopperud has just finished a lengthy recording session for her next CD release, Rated X II, an album featuring recent works she commissioned from some of the top composers in the new music scene. Jean, a Juilliard School graduate whose performances have been called “absolutely smashing” by the The New York Post, has already started premiering the commissions in venues around the country in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Jean Kopperud

As a relentless explorer of the new and unknown, Jean chose five of the most innovative composers alive today to commission for the project. The album’s five new works are:  Louis Karchin’s Evocations, John Aylward’s Twin Suspension, Mathew Rosenblum’s Throat, Jeff Stadelman’s wills & wonts, and Yiorgos Vassilandonakis' X-asti. Jean explains some of her motivations for seeking out and commissioning music that breaks new ground, “I keep trying to get wilder in this conservative time. As a child of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I was influenced by a lot of the experimental and theatrical music going on at the time – I like to keep that sense of boundary-pushing alive.” Famed UB percussionist Tom Kolor joins Jean on the album, which will be released next Fall on Albany Records.

Several other projects are on Jean’s plate at the moment as well. She frequently performs and tours with The New York New Music Ensemble, an ensemble dedicated to finding new audiences for contemporary music that has commissioned over 120 new works from living composers and released over 20 recordings, and has been described by The New York Times as, "admirable for continuing to champion the more rigorous end of the contemporary repertory." Since 1976, they have traveled to Europe, Asia, and South America to perform, teach and record, and throughout their existence have branched out into theatre music, adventuresome electronic music, and readily embraced interactive new technologies. The New York New Music Ensemble has a plethora of exciting concert premieres coming up in April and May at the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Charleston, and Merkin Hall in New York City, which will include world premieres of Eric Chasalow’s On that Swirl of Ending Dust and Zhou Long’s Cloud Earth, as well as some slightly older favorites like Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum and Franco Donatoni’s Ave (visit NYNME’s website for the complete Spring schedule).  

The New York New Music Ensemble

The New York New Music Ensemble is also a veteran of the June in Buffalo Festival and will be returning this year to perform works by participating students and faculty composers: Robert Beaser, Jacob Druckman, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen Stucky, and David Felder. Details about this year’s June in Buffalo festival can be found at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music’s website. NYNME has developed a reputation through the years for working closely with young composers at the festival and being willing to take on daring and experimental projects. After the festival, the ensemble will begin preparing for their tour to Cambodia for a 70^th birthday celebration of the music of Grawemeyer Award-winning Cambodian composer Chinary Ung.

Below is a small excerpt of Jean performing David Felder’s Colleccion Nocturna with UB pianist Eric Huebner in Orlando, Florida, as part of the Timucua Arts Foundation White House Concert Series:

UB Professor Jon Nelson receives inaugural Humanities Fellowship award, tours with the Genkin Philharmonic, and rearranges the 20th century...

Jon Nelson

University at Buffalo Professor and Trumpeter Jon Nelson has been awarded a prestigious Humanities Fellowship this year for his project, “Switching on the Lights: The Early 20^th Century Musical Avant-Garde Goes Electric,” a deeply scholastic and hermeneutic compositional undertaking whereby Jon interprets, orchestrates, and adapts a diverse collection of works by avant-garde composers from the early 20^th century and arranges them for Buffalo’s favorite style-scaping, electroacoustic ensemble, The Genkin Philharmonic. Jon, a seasoned musical veteran with performance and improvisational skills in nearly every genre of music, is currently pouring through the scores of Bartok, Stravinsky, Ravel, Schoenberg, Debussy, Ives, Satie, and Webern, and brewing up creative interpretations for the 10-piece group of musicians trained in everything from Classical, Rock, and Jazz, to the most demanding and complex contemporary music. One of his recent endeavors with the project is the arrangement of several of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, piano pieces that exhibit a strong influence from Eastern European Folk Music. The Genkin arrangement will showcase this Folk aspect of the music by temporarily turning the ensemble into an early 1900s Hungarian wedding band – Jon often talks about how during the 20^th century Folk Music was brought to academia by scholars and musicians and absorbed into academic musical styles. His arrangements return these Folk influences to their origins in what was once called 'lowbrow' music, by adding the energy and dynamism of a large ensemble and incorporating electric guitars and basses, synthesizers, and a dizzying array of miscellaneous electronic and percussion equipment.

The UB Humanities Fellowship supporting this project is particularly special this year, as it is one of only two inaugural fellowships promoted and co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research. The additional support will help Jon and the Genkin keep up a lively schedule of recording and performing into next Fall. The Genkin’s next performance will be free to the public on Monday, February 27th at 4:00 p.m. in Baird Recital Hall and will be the premiere for many of these recent arrangements. Shortly after, the Genkin will kick off a series of 2012 concerts by performing at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on March 2nd. Much of Jon and the Genkin's recent work will bear additional fruit this summer, when the record label 8bells will release an album of the Genkin Philharmonic’s recordings of Jon’s arrangements composed with the support of the Humanities Fellowship.

The June in Buffalo 2012 Festival is proud to have the Genkin taking part this year as one of the resident ensembles, and is excited to offer student and faculty composers the opportunity to have their work performed and recorded by the Genkin. The festival, which begins June 4^th and lasts until June 10^th, will also include performances and workshops by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, SIGNAL, the New York New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Interface, Slee Sinfonietta, and the UB Percussion Ensemble. One of the highlights of the festival will be the Genkin’s faculty concert at the Birchfield Penney on Friday, June 8^th (details of the concert to come on the June in Buffalo 2012 website).

In addition to his arrangements of early 20th century works, Jon Nelson has garnered substantial fame through his many arrangements of pieces by Frank Zappa. Below is a lively performance of the Genkin Philharmonic performing Jon's arrangement of Zappa's Eat That Question/Echidna's Arf at the legendary music venue Nietzsche's, in Buffalo, NY.

World-renowned Mozart scholar Robert Levin performs and lectures at UB next week

Harvard Professor Robert Levin, a pianist and musicologist famous for his contributions to Mozart scholarship, comes to the University at Buffalo next week to lecture on his experiences as a concerto soloist who has performed with orchestras in Berlin, Los Angeles, Vienna, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Melbourne, Montreal, St. Louis, Cleveland and Freiburg. Throughout his career he has developed a reputation for improvising cadenzas and embellishments of Mozart and Beethoven afresh at each concert.

Robert Levin in concert

Author Aryeh Oron describes Levin’s accomplishments, “He has written cadenzas to many of [Mozart's] recordings (including the piano, violin, and horn concertos), published embellishments of Mozart solo parts, and written several reconstructions or completions of Mozart works. His completion of Mozart's Requiem won wide critical acclaim after its premiere by Helmuth Rilling at the European Music Festival in Stuttgart in August 1991. His reconstruction of the K. 297b Sinfonia concertante for four winds and orchestra is now frequently performed. He has published numerous scholarly studies in musical issues, usually concerning performing practice and authenticity, including a world-renowned publication of completions of fragmentary Mozart works. He has recorded on several labels, notably on Sony Classics' Vivarte series.”

Last time Robert Levin visited the music department at UB he lectured to a packed audience in Baird Hall, and artfully wove together lessons in music history with examples he performed on the piano. Professor Levin walked the audience through the ins and outs of improvising in the style of Mozart in clear language that was equally appealing to musicians, academics, guests, and laymen alike. Join us next Wednesday, February 8^th, at 3:00 p.m., in Baird Hall, to listen to this brilliant musician lecture and perform. This time he will be joined by famous violist Kim Kashkashian for a fresh and dynamic tapestry of thoughtful lecture and Classical music performance. 

Below is a beautiful video of Robert Levin performing, on a historically accurate fortepiano, the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15 (K. 450), under the baton of Christopher Hogwood:

June in Buffalo 2012 call for scores announced!

Presented by the Department of Music and The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, June in Buffalo, a festival and conference dedicated to composers, will take place from June 4 -10, 2012 at the University at Buffalo. June in Buffalo offers an intensive schedule 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.

Senior Faculty

Louis Andriessen
Robert Beaser
David Felder
Fred Lerdahl
Steven Stucky

Resident Ensembles

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
Ensemble Interface
Genkin Philharmonic
New York New Music Ensemble
SIGNAL
Slee Sinfonietta
UB Percussion Ensemble

Special Guests

James Baker
Roberto Fabricciani
Brad Lubman 

Application Procedures

Please submit the following materials for consideration as a participant for June in Buffalo 2012. All application materials must be postmarked by: 
February 17, 2012.

1. A résumé or curriculum vitae detailing your education, experience, and creative activity.

2. A letter of reference from someone acquainted with your current compositional activity.

3. A proposal requesting the performance of a recent work for:

a) flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, cello (or subset)

b) flute, clarinet, harp, piano, 2 percussion, violin, viola, cello (or subset)

c) saxophone, 2 trumpets, trombone, percussion (drum set), percussion (mallets), electric guitar, electric bass, violin (or subset)

d) flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, percussion, piano, violin, cello (or subset)

e) 4 percussion (or subset)

f) solo instrument

Proposals with electronics or multimedia will be considered.

Included with the proposal should be a brief description of the work that includes title, duration, full instrumentation, and any technical requirements. Proposals for works in progress will be considered. A portion of the score plus the description listed above must be included with application materials for in-progress works.

4. One or two supplemental scores that demonstrate your recent work and accompanying recordings, if available.

5. A $25 non-refundable processing fee. Checks or money orders should be made payable to June in Buffalo. Foreign applicants must pay by international money order in US currency. Do not send cash.

6. An e-mail address at which you can be easily contacted and a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (optional) for the return of application materials.

To apply as an auditor please send a resume and the processing fee. Auditors attend all June in Buffalo events, but will not have a piece performed.

Materials should be mailed to the following address:

June in Buffalo
220 Baird Hall
Department of Music
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260

Participant Tuition $725
Auditor Tuition $350
On-campus Housing (optional) $325
On-campus housing includes single occupancy room for 7 nights. Food not included.

For general information, contact J.T. Rinker
phone: (716) 645-0624
fax: (716) 645-3824
email: jtrinker@buffalo.edu

Tom Kolor advancing contemporary American percussion music around the globe...

University at Buffalo Faculty member Tom Kolor is quickly becoming one of the country’s top specialists in late 20^th century American percussion music, and regularly commissions and performs repertoire from contemporary American composers at festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Tom has a lot coming up in the months ahead: festivals and performances in Europe, several recordings to be released featuring works by Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Louis Karchin, and Jeffrey Stadelman, and a string of residencies in universities throughout the U.S. and a self-presented concert series in New York City.

Tom is looking forward to being a featured performer this summer at the Sound Res Festival in Leche, Italy, where he will give the European premiere of Marimba Variations by Charles Wuorinen, a sophisticated 15 minute-long Marimba solo he commissioned from the composer. Marimba Variations will be part of a larger program of contemporary American music for solo percussion, which will include works by Babbitt, Shapey, Carter, and Cage. Some of the pieces Tom will perform at the festival will be included on a full-length solo CD recently recorded at Slee Recording Studios. The album will include several percussion works by contrasting American composers Milton Babbitt and John Cage, and weave together their divergent aesthetic outlooks and unique voices – the former being the pioneer of American serialism and the latter the pioneer of American aleatoric music, graphic notation, and a variety of experimental approaches to music that form the foundation of American experimentalism even today. Tom drew inspiration for the repertoire on the album from a quote by John Cage where he remarked that he preferred, “music with too many notes, or music that had not enough notes.” The album will be available on iTunes in Spring of 2012.

Tom Kolor and Jean Koperrud

University at Buffalo clarinetist Jean Koperrud joins Tom on an upcoming CD, entitled Rated X, which consists entirely of commissions the duo commissioned from contemporary composers. The commissions all push the boundaries of contemporary music and demand intense instrumental virtuosity. The CD includes Louis Karchin’s Evocations, John Aylward’s Twin Suspension, Mathew Rosenblum’s Throat, and Yiorgos Vassilandonakis' X-asti, and University at Buffalo composer Jeff Stadelman’s wills & wonts. Check in shortly with Albany Records here for the upcoming release.

Tom Kolor is also a member of the NYC-based percussion septet, Talujon Ensemble, whose concerts have been hailed by the New York Times as "frenzied explosions of percussion madness." Recently Talujon celebrated 20 years of performing contemporary percussion music with two 20^th anniversary concerts at Roulette in New York City. The concerts showcased a world premiere of a new piece by Alvin Lucier entitled For Kettle Drums. Tom met Alvin Lucier when he performed Lucier's Silver Streetcar for Orchestra at the June in Buffalo festival several years ago with the composer in attendance. The encounter led to the commission of For Kettle Drums, which includes four percussionists on timpani with their feet constantly performing on the glissandi pedal to produce ‘beating,’ a fascinating acoustic phenomenon characterized by the shimmering effect of two pitches in a close, microtonal relationship to each other. Alvin Lucier worked closely with Tom and the other percussionists while developing the technique for the percussion genre, perhaps the first time percussion instruments have produced this strange effect.

Talujon Ensemble

This Spring Talujon will present a concert series in New York City for the 100^th birthday of John Cage, check Talujon's website for details on their upcoming events and CD releases. As active as they are commissioning and recording, they will also be touring the U.S. and holding residencies this spring at Brandeis University and the University of Nebraska. The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Center Music is excited to host the Talujon Ensemble on April 23^rd for an afternoon of student composer readings and a concert the following day, featuring Gerard Grisey's expansive masterpiece l'noir de etoile.

Check out the video below, of Talujon Ensemble performing with Steve Reich at the Bang On A Can festival in New York City: