Congratulations to UB graduate composers for a remarkably productive year!

This year has been a very active and productive one for all of the members of the PhD program in music composition at the University at Buffalo. Our graduate composers have been racking up prestigious fellowships, residencies, commissions, and performances all across the globe and winning awards and receiving accolades from some of contemporary music’s most respected programs and institutions. Below is a very brief and selected summary of what some of our graduate composers have been up to this year:

Joe Lake, currently studying in Germany through a Fulbright Scholarship, has received a D.A.A.D. award for residency in Berlin for 2012-13.

Nathan Heidelberger has been named a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival Summer Composition Program, one of the most prestigious composition programs in the U.S.

Diana Soh is in residence at IRCAM, in Paris, France, as a recipient of a rare year-long residency program, and has been selected as one of 5 composers from around the globe to be commissioned for a new work by IRCAM and to have a full year residency at IRCAM to prepare her new work. Diana also received artist-in-residence awards from Royaumont, Aix-en-Provence, and the Recontres Festival among many others.

Robert Phillips has been selected to be a participant in Harvard University’s Summer Composition Institute, and has been commissioned by Ensemble SurPlus to write a new work for their upcoming 20^th anniversary concert in Freiburg, Germany.

Jacob Gotlib has been selected as one of 10 international composers to be in residence at the prestigious Wellesley's Composers Conference. His percussion quartet, Scape After Louise, won the Act Percussion First Prize and received a performance in Koln, Germany.

Megan Beugger was selected as a resident composer in the Akademie Schloss Solitude Summer Program  in August, 2011, and had her Expanse – String Quartet No. 2, performed several times in Germany throughout 2011 and 2012.

Chun Ting Pang has had a work selected for performance at the Hong Kong Contemporary Music Festival and at Musicarama. Additionally, he was selected to be the national representative for the Asian Composer's League in Tel Aviv, Israel. Chun Ting was also named as a composer participant at Royaumont, in France, for the 2012 Fall Season.

Juan Colón-Hernández, Dimitar Pentchev, Clint Haycraft, Zane Merrit, and David Rappenecker have been selected to be participants in June in Buffalo 2012, among 25 selected participants from over 80 international applications.

Matt Sargent was commissioned for an installation work, no where I’m bound, by the Hemphill Gallery, which ran March-May 2012, and went on to receive additional performances throughout the U.S.

Welcome Julia Wolfe to June in Buffalo 2012!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music are thrilled to welcome Julia Wolfe to the faculty of June in Buffalo 2012. Julia Wolfe is a prolific composer who, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, has "long inhabited a terrain of [her] own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock." She is an original co-founder of Bang on a Can, an ambitious NYC-based music organization that plays, according to the New York Times, “a central role in fostering a new kind of audience that doesn’t concern itself with boundaries. If music is made with originality and integrity, these listeners will come.” Julia Wofe was recently nominated to be a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for her work Steel Hammer, which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and written for the Bang On A Can All-Stars and Trio Mediaeval, and recently received its Boston premiere at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology.

Julia Wolfe

Julia Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her quartets, as described by the New Yorker magazine "combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes." Wolfe's Cruel Sister for string orchestra, inspired by a traditional English ballad of a love rivalry between sisters, was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its US premiere at the Spoleto Festival, and was recently released (along with her other string orchestra piece, Fuel) on Cantaloupe Records. Written shortly after September 11, 2001, her string quartet concerto My Beautiful Scream, written for Kronos Quartet and the Orchestre National de France (premiered in the US at the Cabrillo Festival under the direction of Marin Alsop), was inspired by the idea of a slow motion scream.

The influence of pop culture can be heard in many of Wolfe's works, including Lick and Believing for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Lick, based on fragments of funk, has become a manifesto for the new generation of pop-influenced composers. The raucous My Lips From Speaking for six pianos was inspired by the opening riff of the Aretha Franklin tune Think. Wolfe's Dark Full Ride is an obsessive and relentless exploration of the drum set, beginning with an extended hi-hat spotlight. In LAD, Wolfe creates a kaleidoscopic landscape for nine bagpipes.

Her most recent works include Combat Du Boxe for the Asko-Schoenberg Ensemble (using another film by De Keukeleire), a solo (with 8 pre-recorded parts) called With A Blue Dress On for violinist Monica Germino, and a new solo for percussionist Evelyn Glennie called Iron Maiden. Upcoming works include an evening-length piece for Celtic singer and the string quartet Ethel, a concerto with orchestra and the percussionist Colin Currie, and a chamber concerto for German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser.

Check out the great performance below of Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride, as interpreted by longtime friends of the Center for 21^st Century Music, the Talujon Percussion Ensemble.

June in Buffalo 2012 Concert Schedule Announced!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music are excited to present the concert schedule for June in Buffalo 2012. From June 4-10, composers Robert Beaser, David Felder, Fred Lerdahl, Steven Stucky, and Julia Wolfe will join Ensemble Interface, the Genkin Philharmonic, the New York New Music Ensemble, SIGNAL, the Slee Sinfonietta, the UB Percussion Ensemble, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for a week of lectures, master classes, and concerts, featuring special guests James Baker,  Roberto Fabricciani, Eliot Fisk, and Brad Lubman . The incredibly active schedule for the week follows:

UB Percussion Ensemble
Monday, June 4
Lippes Concert Hall, 4:00pm
Program to include works by JiB participants Colon-Hernanadez, Kolm, Rappenecker, and Schouten


Roberto Fabbriciani, flutes
Monday, June 4
Baird Recital Hall, 7:30pm
Program to include works by Cavallone, Ferneyhough, Nono, and others


Signal
Tuesday, June 5
B1 Slee, 4:00pm
Program to include works by JiB participants Capp, Diaz Infante, Meurant, Naeff, Popeney, and White


Slee Sinfonietta/UB Percussion Ensemble
Tuesday, June 5
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 7:30pm
Program to include works by Felder, Wolfe, and Xenakis


New York New Music Ensemble
Wednesday , June 6
Baird Recital Hall, 4:00pm
Program to include works by JiB participants Ianni, Labadie, Merritt, Saeki, Schreibeis


Ensemble Interface
Wednesday, June 6
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 7:30pm
Program to include works by Andriessen, Feldman, Furrer, Lerdahl


Ensemble Interface
Thursday, June 7
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 4:00pm
Program to include works by JiB participants Chandler, Huffman, Kang, Kelly, Schaul, and Yildrim


New York New Music Ensemble
Thursday, June 7
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 7:30pm
Program to include works by Beaser, Druckman, Felder, Lerdahl, Stucky


Eliot Fisk/Genkin Philharmonic
Friday, June 8
Burchfield-Penney Art Center, 7:00pm
Program to include works by Beaser, Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinksy and others


Chamber Music
Saturday, June 9
Baird Recital Hall, 4:00pm
Program to include works by JiB participants Carrizo, Chen, Lee, and Pentchev


Signal
Saturday, June 9
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 7:30pm
Program to feature works by Andriessen and Wolfe


Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Sunday, June 10
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, 2:30pm
Program to include works by Beaser, Felder, Lerdahl, Stucky



Additionally, our readers are invited to check out the brief video preview for June in Buffalo 2012:

Fred Lerdahl at June in Buffalo 2012, "Music as Language"

Continuing through our list of Senior Faculty composers at June in Buffalo 2012 we arrive at Fred Lerdahl, who is currently a professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a music theorist well-known for his writings which describe compositional systems as languages with musical grammar and syntax, particularly in the influential book, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, co-authored with linguist Ray Jackendoff, published in 1983. As a composer, three of his pieces have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music, including the recent Arches in 2011. A terrific summary about the relationship between Fred Lerdahl’s compositions and theoretical writings can be found at newmusicbox.

Fred Lerdahl

Fred Lerdahl, originally from Madison, Wisconsin, has been not only prolific as a composer and theorist, but also as a teacher – he has taught at UC/Berkeley, Harvard, and Michigan, and since 1991 he has been Fritz Reiner Professor of Music at Columbia University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and among his other honors are the Koussevitzky Composition Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Classical Recording Foundation’s Composer of the Year Award. Commissions have come from the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Spoleto Festival, National Endowment for the Arts, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, Chamber Music America, and others. Among the organizations that have performed his works are the New York Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, eighth blackbird, Speculum Musicae, Collage, Antares, the Juilliard Quartet, the Pro Arte Quartet, the Daedalus Quartet, Ensemble XXI, Lontano, and the Venice Biennale. He has been in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival, IRCAM, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the American Academy in Rome, the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 2001, Lerdahl authored Tonal Pitch Space, which models musical listening from the perspective of cognitive science, and in 2011, the Oxford University Press published his article, Art and the Senses.

Below you can find a video of Joanna Chao offering a beautiful performance of Lerdahl’s Three Diatonic Studies, for piano solo.

Maestro Christian Baldini on life since UB...

We recently tracked down University at Buffalo alumnus Christian Baldini and asked him to fill us in on his career since completing his doctorate in music composition here in 2009. Christian is currently on faculty at UC Davis and serves as the Music Director of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, and keeps up a busy schedule fulfilling invitations to guest conduct with ensembles and orchestras around the world. We asked Christian about what he’s been up to since leaving UB, his main interests as a composer and a conductor, and what projects he has on the horizon.

Christian Baldini

“I was very fortunate to be offered a tenure-track position at a really wonderful university, right before I left UB. So I spent the summer traveling to two really great music festivals in Europe, the S. Magnus Festival, which is run by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and conductor Martyn Brabbins, who was for me a great mentor. And then I was off to the course that Peter Eötvös runs in Germany, where I got to work with the Ensemble Modern and I had a performance of a chamber work of mine. After that, I arrived in California, where I have been now for three years the Music Director of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.

“I have just returned from Salzburg, where I guest conducted a concert with the Munich Radio Orchestra. Before then I was also in Spain where I took my orchestra from California on tour. We performed four concerts in Madrid, Granada, Valencia and Barcelona. It was a phenomenal experience for everyone involved, and we had the luxury of performing in some of the world's most beautiful venues. It was a great learning experience to have to adjust our performances of several works for many concert venues with completely different acoustic realities. They were all excellent, but the sound behaved differently in each of them. Our last concert was sold out (2,000 people) at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona. I will never forget this concert.

“One of the things that I care the most about is to collaborate with living composers. I find it fundamental for the future of music that we as performers take on the responsibility of securing excellent performances of works by our contemporaries. Over the last 15 years, ever since I started conducting, I have been fortunate to collaborate closely with some excellent composers, and have conducted first performances of dozens of works. I also have a wide range of interests, and I think it is important to find a good balance between innovation and tradition. I don't consider myself a specialist in only one field, but rather a curious musician who feels equally at home conducting Brian Ferneyhough or Brahms or Sibelius. I also enjoy very much conducting opera and symphonic repertoire, as well as music for ensembles. As a composer, I feel close to a language that is never settled and secure, but rather always looking for new horizons. I believe in a constant exploration of the materials and their envelopes and vehicles. I admire composers who have developed their language up to their very last days.

“There are always projects coming up. I will be traveling to South Africa this summer to conduct three concerts with the South African National Youth Orchestra. I will also be conducting a CD recording in England with the English Chamber Orchestra. And there are a few more things in the melting pot, which are exciting and I always look forward to continue collaborations with musicians across different continents.

“UB was truly a wonderful experience for me. I had the privilege to study with a wonderful composer who is also really an extraordinary teacher. David Felder was a great mentor, and he was someone who opened my ears to many different worlds, and somebody who taught me in a very natural way to be even more self-critical. I will be always very grateful to UB for all of the opportunities that I received while I was there. I arrived as a Ph.D. composition student, and shortly afterwards I was hired as a lecturer in the Music Department, and was assigned to serve as the music director of the UB Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Contemporary Ensemble, while I was also teaching a course in conducting.  All of this made me grow a lot as a young professional, and the work that I did conducting concerts and recordings with the Slee Sinfonietta was also invaluable for me. I loved working with the faculty members, who were always very supportive. We performed together with many faculty performers, and I was also given the opportunity to conduct works by all three composers on the faculty, as well as many graduate students works. I could not think of a better place to have pursued graduate studies and to have started my career.”

Below is a video of a concert with Christian Baldini conducting the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and giving a breathtaking performance of Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 7.

Steven Stucky comes to June in Buffalo 2012!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music are gearing up for June in Buffalo 2012 and are looking forward to having Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky on as a faculty composer. Steven Stucky is remarkably active as a composer and is having his works performed with increasingly dizzying speed. Last February, Stucky’s Silent Spring received both its world and New York premieres by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he currently serves as Composer of the Year, and in the upcoming September, Maestro Gustavo Dudamel will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the world premiere of a recently-commissioned symphony. Later in 2012, Stucky’s Son et lumière will be performed by both the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alan Gilbert and Leonard Slatkin respectively. We are very excited to have Steven in town for a week of master classes, lectures, workshops, and concerts, which will culminate on Sunday, June 10^th, with a performance of his Jeu de timbres by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

Steven Stucky

Steven is ferociously busy: he is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, a director of New Music USA, a board member of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also active as a conductor, writer, lecturer, and teacher. In 2005, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, which was commissioned and premiered in 2004 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The New York Times called the Second Concerto for Orchestra, “an electrifying piece: three movements that explore an orchestra’s potential in much the way Bartok’s and Lutoslawski’s concertos for orchestra do, but in ways that sound fresh and exciting. It alludes to works by other composers without losing its own focus, … stands apart from academic disputes about style and language, and strives for direct communication.”

For over 20 years, Stucky enjoyed the longest relationship on record between a composer and an American orchestra: in 1988 André Previn appointed him Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Later, as the ensemble’s Consulting Composer for New Music, he worked closely with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen on contemporary programming, the awarding of commissions, and programming for nontraditional audiences. He founded the orchestra’s Composer Fellowship Program for high-school-aged composers. He also hosted the New York Philharmonic’s acclaimed “Hear & Now” pre-concert programs for several seasons, introducing important works and premieres to Philharmonic audiences. His other residencies include the American Academy in Rome; Princeton University’s Composition Colloquium; James Madison University; University of South Carolina; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Eastman School of Music; and Grinnell College in the US. Internationally, they include the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia; the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies; the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing; the Shanghai Conservatory; and the Taipei National University of the Arts. In March of 2012, Stucky will take up a residency at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and in the 2012-13 season, he will be the Music Alive Resident Composer at the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.

He has also written commissioned works for many of the other major American orchestras, including those of Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Florida West Coast (Sarasota), Minnesota, Philadelphia, St. Louis, St. Paul, and Washington (National); as well as for Chanticleer, the Boston Musica Viva, the Camerata Bern, the Raschèr Quartet, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Howard Hanson Institute of American Music, Carnegie Hall, the BBC, the Aspen Music Festival, the Singapore Symphony, the Percussive Arts Society; and for such celebrated solo artists as pianist Emanuel Ax, recorder soloist Michala Petri, guitarist Manuel Barrueco, baritone Sanford Sylvan, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and cellist Elinor Frey.

Check out the video below of the LA Piano Quartet offering a gorgeous interpretation of Steven Stucky’s Piano Quartet.

June in Buffalo 2012 participants announced!

We’re excited to announce this year’s June in Buffalo participants! We received 78 proposals from countries all over the world, including Turkey, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland. Below are the 26 composers getting ready for June in Buffalo 2012:

David A. Dominique, Brandies University

David Rappenecker, University at Buffalo

Juan V. Colón-Hernández, University at Buffalo

Jonathan Kolm, University of Texas-Austin

Duncan Schouten, McGill University

Onur Yildirim, Istanbul Technical University 

Christopher Chandler, Eastman School of Music

Jason Huffman, Boston University

Nissim Schaul,  Universite de Paris

Nathan Kelly, University of Southern California

Jonghee Kang, University of Pittsburgh

Tyler Capp, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Ruben Naeff, New York University

Liza White, Northwestern University

Mark Popeney, University of Southern California

José Julio Díaz Infante, University of Louisville

Cyrus Meurant, University of Sydney

Davide Ianni, Boston University

Kenichi Saeki, University at Buffalo

Zane Merritt, University at Buffalo
Matthew Schreibeis, University of Pennsylvania

Colin Labadie, University of Alberta, Edmonton

Eun Young Lee, University of Chicago

Yeung-Ping Chen, University of California, San Diego

Dimitar Penchev, University at Buffalo

Andres Carrizo,  University of Chicago

The Genkin Philharmonic at June in Buffalo 2011

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 Monday, June 4th, to Sunday, June 10th, 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.

Check out the details of the ensemble roster and the full concert schedule at the June in Buffalo website, as well as peruse audio samples and materials from previous June in Buffalo Festivals. 

Composer Robert Beaser and Guitarist Eliot Fisk come to June in Buffalo 2012!

We at the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21^st Century Music are gearing up for the upcoming June in Buffalo Festival and are excited to have Robert Beaser as a Senior Faculty Composer this year. June in Buffalo 2012 will begin on Monday, June 4^th, and culminate in an exciting orchestral finale by the  Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 10^th, at Lippes Concert Hall at the University at Buffalo. Sunday’s concert will feature the Guitar Concerto by Robert Beaser, with soloist Eliot Fisk, as well as works by David Felder, Fred Lerdahl, and Steven Stucky.

Robert Beaser

Robert Beaser has garnered tremendous admiration amongst a wide variety of audiences, and has been described as “one of this country’s huge composing talents, with a gift for vocal writing that is perhaps unequaled,” by The Baltimore Sun. Gramophone magazine has given his music tremendous accolades and called it, “masterly... dazzlingly colorful, fearless of gesture... beautifully fashioned and ingeniously constructed.” He has received myriads of commissions by some of today’s top ensembles and orchestras, including The New York Philharmonic, The Chicago Symphony, The Saint Louis Symphony, The American Composers Orchestra, The Baltimore Symphony, The Minnesota Orchestra, Chanticleer, and New York City Opera. Some exciting premieres in China will be coming up for Robert Beaser this month, including his Piano Concerto, and his Song of the Bells, to be performed on May 19^th, and May 21^st, respectively, at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing (English-language website available here).

Below is a video of Eliot Fisk offering a dynamic performance of an excerpt from the final movement of Robert Beaser’s Guitar Concerto.

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!