Marathon Concert
Program notes below
A video about «Five Out of Six» by C. Trapani & Things Happen
Saturday, March 24, Miller Theater, 7pm FREE
2960 Broadway (at 116th Street), entrance on Broadway, New York, NY 10027
4 “Classics”, 11 World Premieres, including a work with sculpture, and two with video
Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi Spatio intermisso (temporis) (2005) (duration: 7’30)
for oboe and electronics
Pierre Boulez Anthèmes II (1997) (duration: 18’)
for violin and electronics
Taylor Brook Marionnette (2012) (duration: 10’)
for percussion, violin, cello, live electronics and video
Zosha Di Castri Akkord I (2012) (duration: 10’)
for flute, piano, electronics and sculptural articulation
Natacha Diels y = rx ( 1 - x ) [strange attractors] (2012) (duration: 7’30)
for flute and percussion and electronics
William Goutfreind Palpitatio Cordis (2012) (duration: 8’)
for percussion and electronics
Bryan Jacobs Compact Scecenes (2012) (duration: 8’)
for two Silent Drums controllers
Matthias Krüger Festinger’s Færce (2012) (duration: 7’30)
for baritone saxophone and live-electronics
Chris Pitsiokos Detritus (2012) (duration: 4’)
for violin, cello, baritone saxophone, grand piano, percussion and live-electronics
Örjan Sandred Ice Fog (2010) (duration: 7’)
for alto saxophone, piano and live electronics
Jaime Oliver 9 Gardens: A Garden (2012) (duration: 10’)
for MANO controller
Christopher Trapani Five out of Six (2012) (duration: 15’)
for oboe, saxophones, violin, cello, piano, percussion, live electronics, & video by Things Happen
Hans Tutschku Zellen-Linien (2007) (duration: 18’)
for piano and live-electronics
Julien Vincenot Esprits-Animaux (2012) (duration: 11’)
for violin, cello and live computer
Nina Young Sun Propeller (2012) (duration: 8’30)
For violin and electronics
performed by Ensemble de Musique Interactive (France):
P. Bouveret sax, R. Gleize cello, B. Monneret percussion,
V. Ngo Sach-Hien piano, C. Schmitt oboe, S. Wu violin
& T. Kigawa, piano, M. Lancaster flute, E. Westell, violin
***
Program notes in alphabetical order by composer’s name
Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi Spatio intermisso (temporis) (2005) (duration: 7’30)
for oboe and electronics
How much time can a note of music take today? How long can you devote to listening to music known as “new”, or a “new sound”, or to discover a “new” artistic creation? Speed and rapidity are the paradigms of perception of a creative work today. What if the time required for the assessment of a new music was compressed into a few minutes, sometimes reduced to a few seconds... What if we were to aim towards the opposite of this? To resist the trend – not writing surface sounds, but rather getting to the depth of this so-called “new” music.
In this way, Spatio intermisso (temporis) is a possible answer to these kinds of questions. The use of electronics (or live computer) aims to create a vast sonic universe and report interactivity between performers while broadcasting sounds in space. Spatio intermisso (temporis) explores “new” instrumental virtuosity between the oboist and the live computer. This virtuosity is based on the interactivity between the musician and the machine, through the capture, processing, and diffusion of sound. Who does what? In this case it is hard to get at the “correct answer”.
Jacopo Baboni Schilingi was born in Milan on April 4, 1971. He studied composition with I. Fedele and conducting under V. Parisi at the Civica Scuola di Musica of Milan. In 1994 he received his diploma in composition in Bologna and a diploma in contemporary music in Milan. In 1992 he was selected for the "Cursus de Composition et d'Informatique Musicale" held at IRCAM in Paris; and in 1996, he did his Master’s with K. Huber and B. Ferneyhough. He obtained his PhD with distinction (summa cum laude) in "Music and Research" at the Paris8 University under the guidance of G. Vinay.
His music has been performed in Europe, South America, Canada, China, and the United States. He has received several commissions from institutions such as IRCAM, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, CICV of Belfort, Orchestre d’Île de France, Centro Tempo Reale, GRM, various commissions from the French state, MARCO in Mexico, Radio France, Saarländischer Rundfunk, "Settembre Musica" Festival, etc. His compositions are performed in the most important international festivals by ensembles such as Ensemble InterContemporain, CourtCircuit, Klangforum Ensemble, Collegium Ensemble, Arditti String Quartet, Les Pléiades. He also collaborates regularly with musicians like C. Delangle, N. Isherwood, A. Quentin, C. Schmitt, P. Contet.
Since 1996 he has created interactive installations, such as for: A.I.M.T.R. with the architect P.L. Copat (IRCAM, Paris 1996); Daphné with E. Quinz (Anomos, Bolzano 1999); Instruments à gonds with the sculptor Arman and the writer T. Reut (ISEA, Paris 2000); Metapolis, Crossborder, Terra Incognita with the multimedia artist M. Chevalier (MARCO, Monterrey 2002); and Lenteur with esc-group (Intrusion, Ars Numerica 2004). Together with J.P. Balpe, he has created several performances including: Trois mythologies et un poète aveugle (IRCAM, 1997); Syntax Error! (CICV, 2000); and …nographie (Biennale de Poésie, 2003). In 2007 he won the Prix Italia with a composition based on Yannick Liron’s poems. Since 2001 Baboni Schilingi has composed various soundtracks for films directed by A. Fleischer, O. Mille and H. Colomer.
Since1988 he has been developing a personal theory concerning the writing of music, which he has formally been called Hyper-Systemic Music: its theoretic foundations have been published in 2007 by Edition Mix – Paris (www.editionsmix.org). The results of such theories have led him to collaborate with different research centers such as: Agon, Centro Tempo Reale and MM&T, in Italy. Later, from 1995 to 2000, he was appointed research composer at the IRCAM. In 1998, together with E. Quinz he founded the Cultural Association "anomos" in Paris; and in the same year Luciano Berio asked him to create the Department of Education, within the Centro Tempo Reale in Florence, where he was then appointed head of the department from 1999 to 2004.
In 2001 he founded PRISMA, a group of composers who work in the field of musical aesthetics and technology. Moreover, Baboni Schilingi has created some software (external libraries) for the PatchWork, Max-MSP, OpenMusic and PWGL, under the nomenclature of Profile, Morphologie, Structure, JBS-CMI and JBS-Constraints and JBS-Tools. He teaches composition in the Conservatoire of Music in Montbéliard (France) where he was appointed head of the department from 2004. Baboni Schilingi gives lectures in many universities and major music centers in Europe, South America, Canada, China, and the United States. His music is published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni – Milan: http://www.esz.it/it/extra/autore/jacopo-baboni-schilingi.
See also: http://www.baboni-schilingi.com
Pierre Boulez Anthèmes II (1997) (duration: 18’)
for violin and electronics
The original version of Anthèmes for unaccompanied violin was performed for the first time on the 19th of November 1991 during a concert in honor of Alfred Schlee, former director of Universal Edition and long-time friend of Pierre Boulez. The score of this version of the piece was published by Universal Edition and corresponds to a version slightly modified in May 1992.
The musical origin of Anthèmes is to be found in an unused part of one of the earliest versions of ...explosante-fixe... . If one compares portions of the score of Anthèmes (the “rapide” pizzicato section towards the beginning of the piece, for example) with the violin part of the Originel movement in ...explosante-fixe... , one can find traces of Anthèmes. In Originel the musical texture of the writing is somewhat uniform and therefore unsuitable as material for a solo piece. Therefore, one of the aims in modifying this initial material was to make a score where the writing was more “differentiated” and the “figures more characteristic” according to Boulez. If one examines the score of Anthèmes in its totality one finds little resemblance with the Originel violin score. The habit of taking a small fragment of an existing score and developing it, frequently beyond recognition, can be found elsewhere in Boulez’s work : Derive I is derived from Répons which in turn is related to Messagesquisse ; parts of an early version of Notations found their way into Pli selon pli. This practice is in keeping with Boulez’s more general approach to musical composition, which involves taking a small musical idea and making it “proliferate”.
Typical also in Anthèmes is Boulez’s habit of creating a small number of families of musical writing from which the piece is created in a sort of braided fashion. A musical family will typically be based on a type of writing (based on rules, a method of proliferation, or a principle of generation) which guarantees the family’s musical identity and cohesion. Strands of the material corresponding to a given family can be then found woven throughout the composition. This approach is very clear in ...explosante-fixe... , for example. All of the material in the first movement of the piece (Transitoire VII ) is based on seven families each of whose identities can be easily heard. In Anthèmes this practice is less obvious due mainly to the brevity of the piece but present nonetheless.
In 1995 Pierre Boulez decided to compose an electro-acoustic version of the piece called Anthèmes 2. The realization of this version was confided to Andrew Gerzso who had already done the electro-acoustic realizations for Répons (1981), Dialogue de l’ombre double (1986) and ...explosante-fixe... (1991). In keeping with the spirit of these three compositions, Anthèmes 2 also takes a “live” approach, that is one in which all the electronic material is generated in “real time”, during the performance. (In other words, there is no pre-recorded material which is simply played back during the concert.)
The point of departure for this new project was the May 1992 version of the score. The first question that needed to be dealt with was how to coordinate the performance of the soloist with that of the computer. In Répons this coordination is done manually with the computer operator following the score and conductor and starting the appropriate program at the right time. In ...explosante-fixe... the coordination is completely automatic using what is called a “score follower”. With this approach the computer “listens” to the soloist and compares what the soloist is playing with the score (which has been previously stored in its memory) in order to establish the precise moment for triggering modifications of the sound, using modules which affect the pitch, timbre, timing and spatial location of what is played by the soloist. Therefore, in the preparatory work for Anthèmes 2, a number of experiments were made to establish the different musical parameters of the violin (pitch, dynamics, time, etc.), which could be detected for use in the score following.
Then followed a large number of sketches aimed at choosing the types of interaction that could exist between the violin and the computer. A natural consequence of this was that as the work advanced section by section, the piece was progressively re-written to varying degrees in order to take advantage of the new musical possibilities offered by the inclusion of electronics. It soon became clear that the electronics would fulfill three roles: 1) to modify and extend the structure of the sound of the violin, 2) to modify and extend the structure of the families of musical writing mentioned above, 3) to create a spatial element which enables the musical material to be projected in space.
One example of the first role can be found in the treatment of the harmonics played by the violin. Viewed in its simplest form, the principle of the harmonic relies on the specific resonance pattern of a string in order to produce the desired harmonic. In the electronic treatment, the harmonic sound of the violin is first transposed, then sent through a module to enrich the spectrum which, in turn, is then sent through a resonant structure whose main resonance pitch is the same as the desired harmonic. In this way the electronics is used to enrich the spectrum of the instrument while respecting the basic principle of the harmonic on the violin.
An example of the extension of the musical families can be found in the pizzicato section near the beginning of the piece. This section, written in the form of a canon, is based on the idea of shifting a musical structure over time in a very precise way. The electronic part extends this principle by using transposition modules combined with time delay modules which together multiply the number of musical lines, each of which is transposed and shifted in time (just as in a canon). Furthermore, the transposition and delay patterns are composed in such a way as to clarify or blur the original musical line.
The use of space in Anthèmes 2 goes beyond Boulez’s use of space in Répons, Dialogue de l’ombre double or ...explosante-fixe… . In these pieces spatialization is used, for example, to articulate the structure of a musical phrase (as in Dialogue), a chord (as in Répons) or a musical process (as in ...explosante-fixe... ). In all cases the role is that of articulation, that is, outlining, describing and clarifying the structure of a musical idea. In these pieces there is also a very literal correspondence between the spatial location of the sound one hears and the position of the speaker itself. Anthèmes 2 on the other hand uses a system based on a perceptual approach to spatial hearing, which enables the listener to hear sounds clearly in this or that position in space, independently of the position and number of speakers used. The system can also be used for creating foreground/background effects. This latter feature is particularly useful for clarifying or blurring the musical material by projecting the sound to the foreground or the background of the musical listening space.
The first performance of Anthèmes 2 took place at the Donaueschingen Festival in October, 1997. In 1999 and 2000 the composition was recorded and mixed by Deutsche Grammophon in the presence of the composer. Both the premiere and the recording were played by the violinist Hae Sun Kang of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
(Andrew Gerzso)
Pierre Boulez, Born in Montbrison/Loire on 26 March 1925, is a composer, conductor, thinker, a motor of international musical life, an emblematic figure in post-war European, indeed, world culture. Ever since the 1950’s, composers around the world have followed with curiosity what he was writing, to see if they could adapt his ideas in their own music or to reject them in their search for an idiom they could call their own. In 1957, György Kurtág arrived in Paris with the goal to compose something he could show to Boulez (in the end, he left without a work worthy of being presented). The music the French composer has written ever since the late 1940’s was a conscious act of rebellion against tradition as represented by Schönberg or Stravinsky but also his teacher, Messiaen, whose influence has nevertheless left its mark on Boulez’s music. In his compositions but also in his writings, Boulez was initially an angry and rebellious young man (see his scathing obituary Schönberg est mort). With the passage of time as he became an established figure, with France inviting him back to found IRCAM and the Ensemble InterContemporain and his career as a conductor also taking off, there has probably been less to rebel against and Boulez has mellowed and broadened his horizons to conduct a wide range of repertoire including Bruckner and Mahler.
Boulez has also been a highly influential teacher, beginning in Darmstadt in the 1950s and continuing right up to the present, primarily in Lucerne where he passes on his immense knowledge to fledgling conductors at the Festival Academy. New compositions emerge and become straight away an integral part of the repertoire. It is as if orchestras and ensembles could not wait for a new work to leave his desk: after the premiere, a Boulez novelty is taken up – snatched up – by performing bodies all over the world. Boulez – a living classic. (From Universal Edition)
Taylor Brook Marionnette (2012) (duration: 10’)
for percussion, violin, cello, live electronics, and video
Marionette was written for the Ensemble de Musique interactive during the winter of 2012. Marionette is a work for mixed percussion, violin, cello, live electronics, and video. The source of the video is a short solo dance piece by dancer/choreographer Jane Osbourne of Vancouver. I commissioned the video specifically for this project in order to have a video where the movement of the dancer is highly manipulable: where the figure becomes something of a marionette. The video processing, like the electronic sound, is a mixture of live manipulation by the acoustic instruments and predetermined processes triggered by a pedal given to the percussionist. I have on purpose limited myself to very basic manipulations of the image in order to concentrate on the exploration of the relationship between the movement of the dancer with the music in many different ways.
Taylor Brook (b. 1985) is a composer based in New York City, currently in his first year of doctoral studies at Columbia University. His music draws on a broad range of forms and styles, having composed chamber music for ensembles of all kinds, with and without electronics, as well as music for art film, installation, and dance. Although not exclusively so, his music is often extremely microtonal, drawing the microtonal intervals from just intonation (untempered intervals) while eschewing the standardized twelve-tone equal temperament of the piano. Taylor is currently working on a new piece for the JACK Quartet (New York), the Quatuor Bozzini (Montréal), as well as smaller pieces for soloists Mira Benjamin, Ben Duinker, and Shawn Mativetsky.
Zosha Di Castri Akkord I (2012) (duration: 10’)
for flute, piano, electronics, and sculptural articulation
Akkord I is the first part of a cycle of pieces that I plan on developing for musicians and electronics, with the theatrical incorporation of sculptural installations. I was interested in making visible the connection between musicians, while also exploring the tension that exists in such intimate collaborations (note "accord", in French, means a treaty or agreement between two or more parties). A kinetic sculptural articulation links the two performers via giant tapered bellows, extending from around the body of the piano to the back of the flautist across the stage (reminiscent of an accordion or camera bellows). Like an accordion, the keys protrude from one side, and the "buttons" from the other, connected by a channel of air which courses through the hollow interior. Both ends must cooperate to pump sound into existence. Dramaturgically I envisioned this process initially as a struggle - the sculpture creates a chimerical creature, a fierce two-headed entity, in which both sides resist cooperation. The electronics involve distorted grungy sounds, howls, roars, and bellows. Eventually though, this gives way to moments of clarity, a different sense of space, opening corridors of communication where movement is free and flowing. The closed form of the sculpture suggests a hidden inner landscape, a world that only the performers know, and that the electronics perhaps hint at. Finally, while writing this piece, the following quote by Calvino informed certain aspects of the form:
"it is not linear. It starts at any point, skips, repeats itself, goes backward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous and divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost. A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends toward a climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scansions, recurrence of motives. But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward that end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against the moments, recovering time?"
Many thanks to Kathleen Mulder and David Adamcyk for their help and support in building the sculpture, and to Carly Rouault who helped render the design. Infinite gratitude to my wonderful New York collaborators Margaret and Taka, and to Jess Smith, our director with a vision.
Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist living in New York, where she is pursuing a doctorate at Columbia University. After completing a B.Mus. at McGill University, Zosha moved to Paris. Her teachers have included Brian Cherney, Philippe Hurel, Fabien Lévy, Tristan Murail, and Fred Lerdahl. Zosha’s compositions have been performed in Canada, the US, and Europe by such ensembles as the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie, l’Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, the NEM, JACK Quartet, the Orchestre national de Lorraine, and Talea Ensemble. She has participated in residencies at the Banff Center, Domaine Forget, and the National Arts Centre’s summer program. She was named a laureate of the 3rd International Composer’s Competition for the Hamburger Klangwerktage Festival, won two SOCAN Foundation awards for her chamber music in 2011, and is currently composer in residence for Ensemble Portmantô of Montreal. Upcoming projects involve a percussion duo for Talujon (New York), an electronic piece for the ZOO Contemporary Dance Company choreographed by Thomas Hauert (Paris), a piece for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s forum (Montreal), and a commission for the Banff Center.
Natacha Diels y = rx ( 1 - x ) [strange attractors] (2012) (duration: 7’30)
for flute and percussion
A footnote to chaos:
curious interminglings of impossibly aerial voices performing cyclic beat patterns, exchanging oneself for the other from A to hmmmm, engaging in melodramatic waltzes sprinkled with glamour or glum, allowing order to poison the abrasive mischief, melting into its final geometry.
Natacha Diels (b. 1981) grew up watching the skies in New Mexico. She composes music, performs as often as possible, teaches electronic and computer music to children and adults, and works closely with other composers to ensure that they continue to write exquisitely demanding music for her. She has commissioned and premiered dozens of works, performing them at spectacular venues all over the United States and Europe. She is the Executive Director of Ensemble Pamplemousse, a New York-based group of uniquely talented, virtuosic, and creative musicians, whose primary goals are to shatter artistic borders and produce great music.
Natacha’s music has been presented around the US by the MATA Festival in New York; Subtropics XXI and Twelve Nights in Miami FL; the Austin Museum of Digital Art; the Darmstadt Series at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn; and various academic institutions across the country. She has participated as a performer and composer in new music and art festivals worldwide, and has held residencies at STEIM in Amsterdam, Rensing Arts Center, Soaring Gardens in Pennsylvania, and received a Emerging Artist Commision from Issue Project Room (Brooklyn) in 2011, which she fulfilled with the production of a monodrama entitled Uncanny Valley. Natacha can be heard as a flautist on New World Records (with Christian Wolff) and as flautist and composer on Carrier Records (with Pamplemousse). In addition to Pamplemousse, Natacha also performs as one-half of the performance art duo On Structure and freelances.
Natacha is in her second year of working towards a DMA in composition at Columbia University, where she currently teaches MIDI.
William Goutfreind Palpitatio Cordis (2012) (duration: 8’)
for percussion and electronics
The main idea in Palpitatio Cordis is that heart rhythms and its defects are strong materials to create a musical language. This piece is for live electronics and a percussionist using five temple blocks, three toms, a snare drum, and a bass drum.
Every rhythm in the body, from organs' cycles to muscles' periodicities, is studied by medical professionals. They sharpen their perception of bodily noises to understand and identify eventual pathologies. For instance, cardiologists use various measuring instruments such as the electrocardiogram to locate functional anomalies. No matter if the cardiac pathology exists or not, those rhythmic pulses are a very connoted musical material that composers may use and extrapolate from.
Being interested in this natural phenomenon in a global way, and in its possible relationships with music, I extracted four typologies of known cardiac disorders (bradycardia, tachycardia, extrasystole, and fibrillation) into musical figures. The expression of fibrillation is the articulation of tremoli, or any composite figure close to this notion. The expression of extrasystole is an anticipation of a figure or the omission of a locatable rhythmic element. From there, by avoiding voluntarily changing the tempo – ninety beats per minute-, the effects of slowing down (corresponding to Bradycardia) or accelerating (Tachycardia) result in the only management of both rhythms and metrical measures. This composition, by the dialog of live electronics and the instrumental performance, suggests a sublimated path around these disorders.
William Goutfreind, born in 1988, William Goutfreind lives in France. At the age of eight, he began to study the bassoon (German system) at l’Ecole Nationale de Musique in Montbéliard (France). His passion for music led him to write music early on, then, from 2001, to study composition at the same school, with Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Hans Tutschku, Giacomo Platini, Frédéric Voisin, and Lorenzo Bianchi. He graduated with a degree in Musicology from the University of Besançon (France) in 2008, and then obtained in 2011 his Master’s degree in Musique, Recherche et Création from the University Paris 8, under the direction of Anne Sèdes. From that time on, he has been focusing on research and composition.
As a member of the Unmapped collective (dedicated to electroacoustic and instrumental improvised music), the Ensemble of Interactive Music, and the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra, he's actively evolving into musical creation in multiple directions, and also on its pedagogy. His works show an increasing interest in the relation between music and computers, and consequently in the domain of computer-assisted composition.
Bryan Jacobs Compact Scecenes (2012) (duration: 8’)
for electric guitar and electronics
An esotropic voice inside the tumult. Written earlier this year, Compact Scecenes plays with ideas of synchronicity and asynchronicity between the performer and the computer. A scrolling score displayed on the computer changes predefined harmonizations, distortions, and auto-tunes which effect the live sound of the guitar.
Bryan Jacobs is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University where he studies music composition with Fred Lerdahl, Fabien Lévy, George Lewis, and Tristan Murail. His music has been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, The McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, The Greg Smith Singers, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and the pianist Xenia Pestova. He has had performances at Festival Ai-maako (Chile), La Muse en Festival (Paris, France), Festival Archipel (Geneva, Switzerland), Domain Forget (Québec), St. John’s Church (Limerick), as well as numerous other music festivals in Canada and the United States. His acoustic and electroacoustic compositions have earned him national and international awards and scholarships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art competition, Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music, RTÉ Lyric FM and McGill University among others. He recently participated in residencies at La Muse en Circuit in Paris and Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany. In addition to his artistic endeavors, Bryan serves as the General Manager for the Association for the Promotion of New Music and has worked as a research/technical assistant for Denys Bouliane, John Rea, and McGill University.
Matthias Krüger Festinger’s Færce (2012) (duration: 7’30)
for baritone saxophone and live-electronics
“The core of the theory of dissonance […] is rather simple. It holds that:
1. There may exist dissonant or “non-fitting” relations among cognitive elements.
2. The existence of dissonance gives rise to pressures to reduce the dissonance and to avoid increases in dissonance.
3. Manifestations of the operation of these pressures include behavior changes, changes of cognition, and circumspect exposure to new information.”
(Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, 1957)
Matthias Krüger was born in 1987 in Ulm, Germany, and grew up in Brussels and Trier. He studied music composition at the Cologne University of Music (HfMT Köln) as well as French literature and linguistics in Cologne and at the Sorbonne University in Paris. His principal composition teachers include Richard Carrick, Krzysztof Meyer, and Johannes Schöllhorn. Matthias is currently enrolled at Columbia University as a Graduate Visiting Student, where he studies with Fabien Lévy. He has participated in the festivals and courses at Darmstadt (International Summer Course for New Music) and Graz (impuls) where he attended master classes with Georges Aperghis, Mark André, Peter Ablinger, and Georg Friedrich Haas, among others. In addition, Matthias has been awarded numerous scholarships, from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), and the Fulbright Commission (declined). His music and audiovisual works (including the collaborative documentary "TonBandMaschine") have been shown and performed at numerous festivals such as Soundtrack_Cologne 8.0, Acht Brücken - Musik für Köln (Cologne), Ars Electronica Linz (Austria), and ljudOljud (Stockholm, Sweden), as well as in Portugal and the United States.
Chris Pitsiokos Detritus (2012) (duration: 3’)
for violin, cello, baritone saxophone, grand piano, percussion, and live-electronics
In biology, detritus is non-living particulate organic material (as opposed to dissolved organic material). It typically includes the bodies or fragments of dead organisms as well as fecal material. Detritus is typically colonized by communities of micro-organisms which act to decompose (or remineralize) the material. (Definition from wikipedia)
Chris Pitsiokos is a human being who lives on planet Earth. He often performs on the saxophone, electronics, or both, either in groups of other human beings or as a soloist. One of these groups of human beings is his current band, which is called Bob Crusoe. Occasionally he writes down music for others to play. He also likes building things such as sound emitting sculptures, weird instruments, and electronics that expand the possibilities of conventional instruments. He is currently an undergraduate at Columbia University, and will hopefully graduate in the Spring of 2012.
Jaime Oliver 9 Gardens: A Garden (2012) (duration: 10’)
for MANO controller
A garden provides us with a powerful metaphor. We provide a fertile ground, we plant seeds, we water, we trim; we shape part of the process. Other parts of the process we don't control, we set them in motion, then see them grow, evolve.
A garden is also a personal space; a refuge; a sanctuary: our enactment of nature.
9 Gardens is a work in progress by definition. This does not mean it is unfinished, but that it will change. From the initial state presented in this Festival, I expect to derive and develop 9 sections that can be played independently or in different combinations. As these sections emerge, the MANO controller keeps evolving as do the interactive systems it controls.
These sections are all based on complementing beliefs of what an instrument is: a timbre, a system, an object, a source of sonic unity. These instruments exist in the liminal space between composition and instrument design. They work as open scores that enforce a bounded space of action for the performer to explore.
Jaime Oliver (Lima, 1979) is currently a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in composition at Columbia University in New York. He obtained a PhD in Computer Music from the University of California, San Diego (2011) where he studied with Miller Puckette.
Oliver’s music and research explores the concept of musical instrument in electronic and computer music, designing instruments that listen, understand, remember and respond. His open source Silent Drum and MANO controllers use computer vision techniques to continuously track and classify hand gestures.
His work has been featured in many international festivals and conferences, collaborating with several composers, improvisers and artists in a field of action that spans sound performance and installation, composing and performing music, and programming open source software.
Some recognitions include scholarships and grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the University of California, Meet the Composer and the Ministry of Culture of Spain, and composition and research residencies awarded by ZKM and IRCAM. He obtained the 1st prize in FILE PRIX LUX 2010, a GIGA-HERTZPREIS 2010 special prize from ZKM and the 1st prize in the 2009 Guthman Competition from the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. http://www.jaimeoliver.pe
Örjan Sandred Ice Fog (2010) (duration: 7’)
for alto saxophone, piano and live electronics
Ice fog appears when humidity in very cold air freezes into small ice crystals to form a thick fog. Suspended in the air, the ice crystals are delicate, and will only remain as fog if there is no wind. Ice fog can therefore only exist on very calm and cold winter days (with a temperature below -‐30 degrees Celsius). If there is an air movement, the ice fog dissolves.
This composition attempts to create the same feeling of a frozen and fragile moment of magic stillness. The piano plays a sparse music around the saxophone’s sustained multiphonics. The live electronic part suspends the timbres and creates a slow moving fog around which the instruments move.
Ice Fog was written for Allen Harrington and Laura Loewen.
Örjan Sandred is a Swedish composer and is currently a Professor in Composition at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, McGill University (Montreal), and at IRCAM (Paris). Among his teachers are Sven-David Sandström, Pär Lindgren, Magnus Lindberg, Daniel Börtz, Bill Brunson and Bruce Mather.
Many of Sandred’s compositions are the result of his search for new methods of composition. These methods use computerized rule-based systems (a sub-branch of artificial intelligence) to formalize the musical structure.
Sandred was teaching composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm for 7 years and he has been a guest lecturer at IRCAM, Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris, at the Bartok Seminar in Szombathely in Hungary, at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, at McGill University in Montreal, at Harvard University, at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and other places. Recent performances of Sandred’s music include several performances of Ice Fog (by performers in France, China, and Canada). In 2009 the CD “Cracks and Corrosion” was released. The CD features 5 of Sandred’s compositions.
Christopher Trapani, Five out of Six (2012) (duration: 15’),
for oboe, saxophones, violin, cello, piano, percussion, live electronics, and live video
Video by Things Happen
A video about «Five Out of Six» by C. Trapani & Things Happen
I. Lightness
II. Quickness
III. Exactitude
IV. Visibility
V. Multiplicity
This multimedia work is the product of a long-distance collaboration that began months ago, building on an interactive language we first developed at the ENPARTS campus in Venice in 2009. Christopher composed a score and constructed the electronics patch in New York City, while Itzi and Iván shot video footage in Madrid. We then met up in New York three weeks before the concert to share our discoveries and to look at the best way to interweave our ideas, from both an aesthetic and technical perspective.
To assure a degree of coherence to our project, we agreed on a common literary starting point from which we'd draw our inspiration: Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino's collection of lectures about the qualities he most hopes will be embraced by the art of the future. Our work is divided into five short but seamless movements (because Calvino died before completing his sixth "memo") with contrasts in sound, image, and character. We allowed ourselves to be influenced by Calvino's vibrant and light prose, his economy of language and precision of detail, seeking out sonic and visual parallels for his ideas.
On the technical side, the electronics involve a carefully controlled stream of real-time concatenative synthesis, where samples of pre-recorded sound are strung together according to predetermined parameters using the CataRT module developed at IRCAM by Diemo Schwarz. The major innovation of this project is the addition of a precise pitch control, allowing samples to be retuned according to a specified harmonic grid before they are played back. The images are controlled with several live video tools, such as Modul8, Quartz Composer, and Vdmx, connected together via Syphon, allowing real-time manipulation of multiple layers of video and generative graphics that interact with various musical parameters.
We would like to thank the Computer Music Center at Columbia University for technical support, and above all Jean-Baptiste Barrière for his vision and encouragement.
Christopher Trapani was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard, where he studied composition with Bernard Rands and poetry under Helen Vendler, and a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Music in London, where he worked with Julian Anderson. He then spent four years in Paris, where he held a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts and worked with the French composer Philippe Leroux. As the recipient of a Fulbright grant, Christopher spent the 2007/08 academic year studying microtonality in Ottoman music in Istanbul, before returning to Paris to study electronic music for two years on the composition and music technology courses at IRCAM. Since September 2010 he has been based in New York City, as a doctoral fellow at Columbia University.
Christopher is the winner of the 2007 Gaudeamus Prize, the first American in over 30 years to win the international young composers’ award. He has also won the ASCAP Leo Kaplan Award (2009) as well as a BMI Student Composer Award (2006), three Morton Gould Young Composers Awards from ASCAP (2005, 2006, 2009), the Bearns Prize from Columbia University (2006) and the Wayne Peterson Prize from Earplay (2005). His scores have been performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Nieuw Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Ensemble L’Itinéraire, Earplay, qanûn virtuoso Julien Jalâl Eddine Weiss, the Brussels Philharmonic, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. His music has been featured in international festivals such as the Venice Biennale and IRCAM’s Agora festival in Paris, and he has received commissions from the FleetBoston Celebrity Series (for pianist Sergey Schepkin), as well as the National Endowment for the Arts (for The Providence Singers).
Recent and upcoming projects include a song cycle for soprano Margot Rood and the Argento Ensemble, a new work for voice and eight instruments for the Talea Ensemble (commissioned by the Jerome Foundation), and a new piece for Ensemble dal niente to be premiered at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse in July 2012.
THINGS HAPPEN is a duo composed of Itziar Arriaga and Iván Gómez-España, working in the area of live-video and new visual performance structures in real time.
Both members graduated in New Media Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and Kuvataideakatemia, Art Academy of Helsinki. After several years working in the art scene, they formed Things Happen to dedicate themselves exclusively to live video and live cinema. A common interest in image, communication, art, new forms of entertainment and events, and the application of new technologies was the starting point for their research in this medium and the underlying principle that drives each project.
Some examples of recent work include live video sessions in several festivals such as Experimentaclub or Rec, live cinema performances for PyR at the Reina Sofia National Contemporary Art Museum, and at film festivals like Visual. They have also worked in live video for the stage in works produced by operadhoy or the Music Venice Biennale, and have also designed graphics and live video events for several television channels.
Things Happen often give courses about real time visual expression, including seminars and workshops in the Media lab of Madrid, Complutense University of Fine Arts, and Artenet. http://www.thingshappen.es/
Hans Tutschku Zellen-Linien (2007) (duration: 18’)
for piano and live-electronics
studio : Klang Projekte Weimar /commissioned by DAAD Berlin / first performance by Sebastian Berweck on June 9, 2007 at the TU Berlin
Zellen-Linien uses all the research I undertook on prepared piano and live-electronics over the past years. I wanted to create an "electronically prepared" piano. There is no physical preparation on the instrument at all. Since 1999 I have experimented with the real-time analysis of the instrumental gestures of the pianist, and with the possibilities to control the live-electronics through the gestures of the player. A first result was the composition "Das Bleierne Klavier". Since then, many performances of that piece enriched my experience and led finally to this new work.
Hans Tutschku was born in 1966 in Weimar. He has been a member of the "Ensemble for intuitive music Weimar" since 1982. He studied electronic music composition at the college of music Dresden and since 1989 has had the opportunity to participate in several of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s concert cycles to learn the art of sound direction. He completed further studies in 1991/92 studying Sonology and electroacoustic composition at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague (Holland). In 1994 Tutschku followed a one-year study stay at IRCAM in Paris. He taught electroacoustic composition in Weimar in 1995/96 as a guest professor. In 1996 he participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. During the period between 1997-2001 Tutschku taught electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris, and from 2001 to 2004 taught at the Conservatory of Montbéliard. In May 2003 he completed a doctorate (PhD) with Professor Dr. Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham. During the spring term 2003 he was the "Edgar Varèse Gast Professor" at the TU Berlin.
Since September 2004 Hans Tutschku has been working as a composition professor and as the director of the electroacoustic studios at Harvard University (Cambridge, USA). He is the winner of many international composition competitions, including among others: Bourges, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Hanns Eisler Prize, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Noroit and Prix Musica Nova. In 2005 he received the Culture Prize of the city of Weimar.
Julien Vincenot Esprits-Animaux (2012) (duration: 11’)
for violin, cello, and live computer
This piece, commissioned by the EMI, is intended as an hommage to the electric musics of the XXth century, and as a contradictory study on the concepts of saturation and distortion in music. It takes its source as a metaphor with the “animal-spirits” image. This is an ancient medical concept used to explain, in a naive way, the nervous system and the electric currents passing through it, necessary (but not sufficient) as a basis for the emergence of the spirit. The image of an inert animal, which, under the control of the current is taken by violent convulsions and seems to come back to life, was used as an impulse for the piece itself and its development. The myth of Frankenstein and his creature is not so far… Those who, beyond the cinematic cliché, have read the original work of Mary Shelley, know that the initial shock of electrical energy, though it leads the creature to exaltation and savagery, also invites it ultimately to meditation and liberation.
The piece aims to recall such a torrent of primordial energy, and its various forms of “resonance”. The electronic part is mainly built upon “electric” sound materials, in a broader sense, as well as real-time transformations of the instruments, referring to the characteristic distorted sound of rock, electronic, or noise musics. The computer allows here a new way of writing the distortion, as a process, interpolating between different pre-defined sound "colors". The computer also served to formalize the writing process of the score itself, through different techniques: chord spectralization, morphological analysis and musical transposition of non-musical materials, morphing, constraint-based systems, etc.
Julien Vincenot was born in 1985, and lives in Paris. He is a composer and a musician-researcher. After various instrumental studies since 1995 (latin harp, piano, jazz, improvisation), he started in 2005 to study musicology, XXth century music, and electroacoustic composition at Université Paris 8 with H. Vaggione, A. Sèdes, G. Carvalho and J.-M. Lopez Lopez. He holds a Master’s degree in Théorie, Recherche, et Création de la musique. Since 2008, he has been studying instrumental composition and computer-assisted composition at the Conservatory of Montbéliard, with J. Baboni Schilingi, F. Voisin, G. Platini, and L. Bianchi.
His musical production includes instrumental music for ensembles and soloists (with or without live computer), electroacoustic music, film music, live computer improvisation, etc. In 2007, he co-founded the Unmapped collective. Now composed of around ten composers and instrumentalists from all over the world, its purpose is to produce a large variety of projects (improvisation, performances, interactive installations, music for video, dance and theater, etc) and to promote the music of each of its members.
His research now explores the field of morphological analysis applied to non-musical materials (video, gestures...), musical morphogenesis, and constraint-programming within computer-aided composition. Since 2010, he is also a member of the international research group PRISMA.
In 2011, he attended the impuls academy in Graz, Austria. There, he took part in master-classes with B. Furrer, G. F. Haas, R. Saunders, and E. Furrer. On this occasion, some of his music was selected and performed by student soloists and the Ensemble Interface (dir. S. Voyles). He also attended the International Electronic Music Week at the Shanghai Conservatory as a guest composer. His piece Ascidiacea II, for alto flute and live computer, was performed there along with works by J. Baboni Schilingi, G. Platini, O. Sandred, T. Murail, Chen Q., and Xu S..
Nina Young Sun Propeller (2012) (duration: 8’30)
The title, Sun Propeller, refers to the propeller-like rays of light that occur when sunbeams pierce through openings in the clouds. Scientifically, these columns of light that radiate from a single point in the sky are known as crepuscular rays. The actual phrase “sun propeller” is a literal translation of the Tuvan word for these sunbeams: Huun-Huur-Tu (also the name of a famous Tuvan folk singing group).
The idea for this work came while I was researching the music of Tuva, a culture in southern Siberia. Their music, particularly the practice of throat singing, is a vocal imitation of natural surroundings (the sounds of babbling brooks, wind resonating against mountains, etc.) and is used to pay respects to the spirits of nature. This type of Tuvan music is built up upon a low drone-tone with overtones floating above. The music values timbre and vertical intervals over traditional melodic and harmonic principles. While Sun Propeller does not attempt to imitate Tuvan music in anyway, it borrows the concept of the static drone and timbre preference in the language used to write for the violin and electronics.
Nina C. Young (b.1984) is a New York based composer who writes instrumental, mixed, and purely electronic music. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University, studying with Fred Lerdahl. In 2011 she earned a Master’s degree in music composition from McGill University, studying with Sean Ferguson. While in Montreal she worked as a research assistant at the Centre for Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) and as a studio and teaching assistant at the McGill Digital Composition Studios (DCS). Nina completed her undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) receiving degrees in ocean engineering and music. While at MIT she held a research assistantship at the MIT Media Lab. Her strengths in both music and engineering have led to research and music compositions that concentrate on merging acoustic and electronic music together.
Nina’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Canada, France, and the Netherlands by ensembles including the Orkest de ereprijs, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Yarn/Wire, Independent Orchestra and Chamber Players at McGill, EAMA Resident String Quartet, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Henschel Quartet, Time Table Percussion Trio, UNESCO Fusion Arts Ensemble, MIT Symphony Orchestra, artists affiliated with the Live@CIRMMT Concert Series, and numerous independent musicians. Awards include a 2010 BMI Student Composer Award, IAWM’s 2011 New Music Competition, McGill Composer-in-Residence program (2009, 2010), and the Philip Loew Memorial Award. She has participated in festivals and conferences including the 17th International Young Composers Meeting, SEAMUS 2011, N SEME 2012, Domaine Forget’s Rencontres de musique nouvelle, European American Musical Alliance at the École Normale in Paris, and the US State Department’s Fusion Arts Exchange. She will spend this summer in Maine as the Composition Fellow of the Atlantic Music Festival.
Performers
in alphabetical order
The Ensemble de Musique Interactive (EMI)
EMI is an ensemble with a scalable number of musicians, re-definable according to particular projects. EMI is financed by the Ministère de la Culture (DRAC Franche Comté) and belongs to the French “scenes nationales” network, through its local position at the Scène Nationale de Montbéliard in France. Founded by the Italian composer living in Paris, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, the ensemble is specially dedicated to the creation and interpretation of interactive works, with the target of constituting a repertoire for the 21st century. EMI is aimed at developing and maintaining sustained relationships with involved composers interested by interactivity and the creative uses of technologies, in order to promote original works with them. EMI is also trying to redefine the ritual of classical concerts by designing innovative schemes of concert conceptions and forms.
Monneret Bertrand percussion
graduated from Conservatoires de Besançon, Dijon, Lyon, and Paris.
Philippe Bouveret saxophones
graduated from Conservatoire de Besançon, plays jazz and contemporary music, and played with l’Orchestre National de Lyon, l’Orchestre National de France, l’Ensemble National de Saxophones, etc.
Rachel Gleize cello
graduated from Conservatoire de Lyon, plays in the Orchestre de Besançon-Montbéliard Franche-Comté.
Véronique Ngo Sach Hien piano
graduated from Conservatoire de Paris, the Royal College of Music (London), Francfort’s Musikhochschule, and is especially interested in chamber music.
Christian Schmitt oboe
graduated from Conservatoire de Paris, Karlsruhe’s Musikhochschule, plays in many European orchestras, is oboe soloist for the Basel Symphony Orchestra, and professor at Stuttgart’s Musikhochschule.
Szu-Hwa Wu violin
graduated from the Juilliard School and Harvard University (literature), played with
New Juilliard Ensemble, the Juilliard String Quartet, Christoph Eschenbach, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, etc.
All the musicians of EMI participating in the Musical Interactivity Festival are also professors at the Conservatoire de Montbéliard (France).
Taka Kigawa piano
Critically acclaimed pianist Taka Kigawa has earned outstanding international recognition as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber music artist since winning First Prize in the prestigious 1990 Japan Music Foundation Piano Competition in Tokyo, and the Diploma Prize at the 1998 Concurs Internacional Maria Canals De Barcelona in Spain. He has received such accolades from The New York Times as: “Mr. Kigawa’s feat deserves the highest praise, especially since it was combined with such alacrity and sensitivity to the musical material ... brilliantly done … a careful and serious-minded musician, quietly poetic and considerate”, and from The New Yorker: “Unbelievably challenging program. Kigawa is a young artist of stature.” Also Kigawa's New York City recital in August 2010 was chosen as one of the best concerts in the year 2010 by The New York Times.
He has performed extensively as a recitalist and soloist in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Cleveland, Paris, Milan, and Barcelona, with appearances in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Kosciuszko Foundation, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Gaveau in Paris, and Plau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. He frequently tours in his native Japan, appearing in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagano, and Kyoto, both as a recitalist and a soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music groups. He has been a featured artist on many television and radio networks throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
His repertoire is extremely large and varied, ranging from the baroque to avant-garde compositions of today. He has collaborated closely with such renowned musicians as Pierre Boulez, Myung-Whun Chung and Jonathan Nott. Mr. Kigawa grew up in Nagano, Japan, where he began piano studies at the age of three, winning his first competition at the age of seven. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Shinsyu University, and his Master of Arts degree from Tokyo Gakugei (Liberal Arts) University, graduating with honors in Piano Performance. During both his undergraduate and graduate years, he also studied composition and conducting, receiving high honors in both disciplines. He furthered his studies in the United States at The Juilliard School in New York, where he studied with Josef Raieff, was the recipient of the distinguished Alexander Siloti Award, and earned his Master of Music degree. Mr. Kigawa currently lives in New York.
Margaret Lancaster flute
“New-music luminary” (The New York Times) and “leading exponent of the avant-garde flute” (Kyle Gann, Village Voice), interdisciplinary performer Margaret Lancaster has premiered well over 100 pieces and built a large repertoire of new works written specifically for her that employ extended techniques, dance, drama, multi-media, and electronics.
Lancaster is a member of Either/Or, Glass Farm and Fisher Ensemble, a guest of the Argento Ensemble, Sequitur, Ne(x)tworks, Counter)induction, and Talujon, and a recurring performer at Spoleto Festival USA and Santa Fe New Music. Performance highlights include Lincoln Center Festival, Ibsen Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Whitney Museum, Tap City Festival, New Music Miami, Festival D’Automne, HERE Arts Center and Bremen Musikfest with Absolute Ensemble. She has appeared as a lecturer/soloist at many sites including Stanford, Dartmouth, Princeton, Bennington, and the National Flute Association, has recorded on New World Records, OO Discs, Naxos, Innova, and Tzadik, and was selected for Meet the Composer’s New Works for Soloist Champions project. Noted for her inter-disciplinary performances, Lancaster, who also works as an actor, choreographer, dancer, and amateur furniture designer, presents solo and chamber music concerts worldwide and acts in Lee Breuer’s OBIE-winning Mabou Mines Dollhouse. http://www.margaretlancaster.com.
Emily Westell violin
Canadian violinist Emily Westell made her debut as soloist with the Calgary Philharmonic at age 15, and since then has performed as soloist with the Banff Festival, University of Calgary, and Tanglewood Conductor’s Orchestras. Selected for the 2012 Prussia Cove master classes in the UK, she has given solo recitals in the Netherlands for the International Holland Music Sessions and has been broadcast on CBC and Radio-Canada. An advocate for new music, Emily has performed with the Harvard Group for New Music, Yale’s Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, Boston’s Callithumpian Consort, at the 2009 International Computer Music Conference in Montreal, and on the Land’s End Chamber Ensemble’s award-winning CD, Rollin’ Down #1. She gave the world premiere of concertos by Shane Fage and Chun-Ting Pang, and has had the privilege to work with composers Allan Gordon Bell, Elliott Carter, Osvaldo Golijov, and Steve Reich on performances of their works. A frequent performer with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Emily holds a Doctor of Music degree from McGill University (where she was a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow and Instructor of Violin and Chamber Music), a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, and the Fine Arts gold medal from the University of Calgary, studying with Jonathan Crow, Miriam Fried, and Edmond Agopian respectively. She is currently pursuing Professional Studies with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec in the Manhattan School of Music’s prestigious Zukerman Performance Program on a President’s Award. Emily is grateful for ongoing support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.