category: MATA Interval Event

INTERVAL 6.2 SOLOS, DUOS, & TRIOS: ALEX MINCEK CURATES

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Hailed by the New York Times for combining “technical finesse with a palpable commitment,” The Wet Ink Ensemble has a long and distinguished record of presenting new and adventurous work. The group will present an evening of ambitious works for solo, duo and trio combinations, featuring a wide variety of instrumental virtuosity, technical precision and aesthetic daring.

Program:
Study for String Instrument(s) #1 – Simon Steen-Andersen
Open End – Ben Hackbarth
Noise + Mobile – Sam Pluta
Vessels – Ted Hearne

The Wet Ink Ensemble is a New York-based new music collective. Its repertoire is diverse, ranging from scores of rigorous notational complexity to indeterminate and improvisational music; from the American experimental tradition to the contemporary European avant-garde; from acoustic to amplified to electronic works to works for homemade instruments. The Wet Ink Ensemble has performed works by composers such as Ablinger, Feldman, Ferneyhough, Furrer, Hurel, Bernhard Lang, Lucier, Murail, Nono, Reich, Rzewski, Sciarrino, Tenney, and Wolff, and premiered works by emerging artists like James Fei, Hikari Kiyama, Alex Mincek, Randy Nordschow, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, James Saunders, Oliver Schneller, Kate Soper, Charlie Wilmoth and Eric Wubbels.

INTERVAL 6.1 OBJECTS FOUND

Friday, October 26th, 2012

We are pleased to announce that MATA INTERVAL 6.1 will be curated by Owen Weaver, who will present an evening of music found objects intensified and complemented by electronics and non-musical artistic disciplines.

Music by Ian Dicke, Lisa Coons, Steven Snowden, Christopher Cerrone

Choreography by Rosalyn Nasky

Photographs by Lucas Foglia

Tigue (percussionists Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody)

October 26, 2012

160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201

7.30 PM

Beaubourg to Brooklyn: Electro-Acoustic Music from Paris Christopher Trapani, Curator

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

MATA INTERVAL 5.3

Beaubourg to Brooklyn: Electro-Acoustic Music from Paris

CHRISTOPHER TRAPANI, CURATOR
Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 8:00pm

$10/ticket

 

ABOUT THE CURATOR

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 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) and three Morton Gould Young Composers Awards from ASCAP (2005, 2006, 2009). His scores have been performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Nieuw Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Ensemble L’Itinéraire, Wet Ink, Argento Ensemble, Earplay, 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 Jerome Foundation (for Talea Ensemble), FleetBoston Celebrity Series, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

composers

Christopher Trapani (USA, 1980)
Recession for accordion and electronics (2009)
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Aaron Einbond (USA, 1978)
Temper for bass clarinet and electronics (2006)

Aaron Einbond’s work explores the intersection of instrumental composition, sound installation, field recording, noise, and technology. From 2009-2011 he was Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 at The University of California, Berkeley where his teachers include Edmund Campion, David Wessel, and Andrew Imbrie.

He was born in New York in 1978 and has studied at Harvard with Mario Davidovsky, at the University of Cambridge with Robin Holloway, at the Royal College of Music, London with Julian Anderson as a British Marshall Scholar, and in Paris with Philippe Leroux as a Fulbright Scholar. He participated in two years of the Cursus in Music Composition and Technologies at IRCAM in Paris where he studied with Yan Maresz as a recipient of Berkeley’s Georges Ladd Prix de Paris.

He has received performances and commissions from Yarn/Wire, L’Instant Donné, L’Itinéraire, Mosaik, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Festival MANCA, and IRCAM/Centre Pompidou for the Festival Agora.

Upcoming projects include a Fromm Music Foundation commission for Ensemble Dal Niente in 2012. Awards for his compositions include a Charles Ives Scholarship, two BMI awards, two ASCAP awards, and the Staubach Honorarium for the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse.

Paul Clift (Australia, 1978)
Boundary Markers for bass clarinet and electronics (2008)

Paul Clift (b. 1978) is an Australian composer currently living in New York. At present he is a doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University. He obtained a Master of Music (M.Mus) at King’s College, London and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A. hons) at Monash University Conservatorium. He also participated in the New Music Technology & Composition Cursus at IRCAM; this culminated in the premier of a new work, With my limbs in the dark, composed in collaboration with French choreographer Alban Richard. His principal teachers have been George Benjamin, Jean-Luc Hervé, Fred Lerdahl, Philippe Leroux, Fabien Lévy & Tristan Murail.

Paul’s music is characterized both by its abstract associations with literature, visual-arts & linguistics, and concretely by rich harmonic micro-tonality, textural heterogeneity and a manipulation of temporal perception. His works have been performed in festivals such as Agora, Royaumont, IMPULS, June in Buffalo, Centre Acanthes, Domaine Forget & Darmstadt Ferienkursen. He has collaborated with ensembles such as Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Instant Donné, Contrechamps, Itnéraire, Lontano, ICE, Linea & Klangforum Wien. Current projects include new works for Argento Ensemble, guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, and Areon Flutes. For more information visit www.paulclift.net

Ann Cleare (Ireland, 1983)
I am not a clockmaker either for accordion and electronics (2009)

Ann Cleare is from county Offaly in Ireland. In 2005, she graduated with a B.mus from University College Cork. In 2008, she received an M.Phil in Composition from UCC, where she also worked as a tutor for two years. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Composition at Harvard University under the supervision of Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.

Her music has been performed in various venues across Europe, New Zealand and America by ensembles such as Ensemble SurPlus, 175 East, The Crash Ensemble, and The Callithumpian Consort. Recent and future projects include new works for clarinettist Carol McGonnell and The Argento Chamber Ensemble, ELISION Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, ICE (Harvard residency 2011), and Collegium Novum Zürich (Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik Commission 2012).

Honors and awards include a research grant at The EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Freiburg des SWR during 2011, as well as various grants and bursaries from The Arts Council Ireland. Her piece, “I am not a clockmaker either”, was recently short listed for the 2010 Gaudeamus prize.

In 2007, she attended The International Summer Course for Composers at Akademie Schloss Solitude, where she worked with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, and Ole Ludwig Holm. From 2008 to 2009, she attended the Cursus for Composition and Music Technologies at IRCAM. Ann worked as a resident composer with The Cork International Choral Festival from 2005 to 2008.


Andrea Agostini (Italy, 1975)
Gli atorni che s’accendevano e radiavano for baritone saxophone and electronics (2009)

Andrea Agostini has studied piano, composition and electronic music. He has composed several works of instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed music. He has obtained prizes and qualifications in several international competitions (Musica Viva, Prix Noroit, 3rd Seoul Competition for Composers, Gaudeamus, Nuova Consonanza, …). His works have been commissioned by several ensembles and institutions (among them a Commande d’état Français in 2007), and performed in many important international festivals: Musica in Strasbourg, MiTo and Sincronie in Milan, REC in Reggio Emilia, IMEB in Bourges, MIA in Annecy, Spark in Minneapolis… His curiosity for the totality of the contemporary musical languages brought him to work in the domains of rock, jazz and folk musics. He currently teaches Musical Informatics at the Turin Conservatory and is Composer in Research at IRCAM.


Juan Camilo Hernández Sánchez (Colombia, 1982)
Introspecciones Móviles for baritone/alto saxophone and electronics (2010)

Juan Camilo Hernández Sánchez is a Colombian composer who began playing traditional music and jazz which led him to avant-garde music composition. His work often represents a fragmented musical situation, where sound parameters are treated independently rendering a complex mosaic. He studied composition with Jean-Luc Hervé, Philippe Leroux, Stefano Gervasoni and Luis Naón. Inroled in composition workshops, he receives advise from Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Pierluigi Billone, Liza Lim, Philippe Hurel and Peter Ablinger. His pieces have been played in music festivals in Europe and south-america, by ensembles such as L’instant donné, Ensemble Caïrn, Ensemble Abstraï and the KNM Berlin. He also participated in multimedia projects at ZKM and the Royaumont Abbey. His work received several awards (Mincultura 2002, Köln Trienale 2010, BBVA 2012)

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Dublin-born Carol McGonnell was recently hailed as “an extraordinary clarinetist” by the New York Times. She is known for the expressive power of her playing of standard repertoire, and also enjoys exploring cutting-edge developments in new music. She recently performed as soloist in both John Adam’s “In Your Ear Festival” at Carnegie and in LA’s “Monday Evening Concerts”, curated by Esa- Pekka Salonen. She has also participated at the Marlboro Music Festival, Vermont and performed at the inaugural concert of Zankel Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.

Carol has performed as soloist with the Ulster Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTE Concert Orchestra, the Knights Chamber Orchestra and with ensembles including the Zankel Band, Ensemble Modern, Camerata Pacifica and the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert. She has been broadcast on Irish national television and radio, Lyric FM, BBC 3 and American national public radio. Carol is a founding member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and is on the advisory board of the Argento New Music Project.

http://www.carolmcgonnell.net/

Ryan Muncy is a performer, curator, educator, and arts entrepreneur dedicated to contemporary music. He is the executive director of Ensemble Dal Niente, a Chicago- based contemporary music ensemble and non-profit arts organization, a founding member of Anubis Quartet, a modular saxophone ensemble committed to reshaping the saxophone quartet genre, and has given world premieres of over 100 new works for saxophone. He has performed and/or recorded with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Talea Ensemble, Grant Park Symphony, and Chicago Civic Orchestra Chamber Ensemble, and has appeared as a featured performer at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (Darmstadt Summer Courses, Germany). Ryan was the 2010 winner of the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists and is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Music degree at Northwestern University where he studies with Frederick L. Hemke.

http://www.ryanmuncy.com

Bill Schimmel is a virtuoso accordionist, author, philosopher and composer. He is one of the principle architects in the tango revival in America, the resurgence of the accordion and the philosophy of Musical Reality (composition with pre-existing music). He received his diploma from the Neupauer Conservatory of Music and his BM, MS and DMA degrees from the Juilliard School. He has taught at the Juilliard School , Brooklyn College CUNY, Upsala College, New School University, Neupauer Conservatory (dean) and has lectured on accordion related subjects at Princeton , Columbia , Brandeis, University of Missouri , Duke University, Manhattan School of Music, the Graduate Center CUNY, Santa Clara University, The Janacek Conservatory in Ostrava, Czech Republic and at Microsoft.

Regarded as the world’s greatest accordionist by National Public Radio, he has performed with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America (and the Kirov) including a longstanding relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra, as well as virtually every chamber music group in New York including Ensemble Sospeso and the Odeon Jazz Ensemble. Pop star colleagues range from Sting to Tom Waits, who has made the legendary statement: “Bill Schimmel doesn’t play the accordion, he is the accordion”.

http://www.billschimmel.com/

 

 

Thruline by James Holt

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Thruline by James Holt

Part 1: The Origin of the Idea

 

I know someone who used to work for a New York City-based orchestra.  A year or two ago, this orchestra was debating a new programming idea with the working title of “Subway Series.”  My understanding of this title is that it comes from baseball, and is usually in reference to the annual New York Yankees / New York Mets series against each other.

This got me thinking: if I worked for a music performance organization, what would I do with the idea of a subway series?

Maybe it would be cool to divide up all the pieces on a program into their individual movements, and hear each of the movements of a piece at designated subway stops.  For example, you could be told ahead of time that on a certain day at a certain time, that you could hear all five movements of Philip Glass’ fifth string quartet at each of the five Manhattan stops on the L-train.  The first movement at the 8th Avenue stop, the second movement at the 6th Avenue stop, the third at Union Square, etc, etc.

Wait.  Wait!  I think I have a better idea: what if you could hear a single short piece at every subway stop?  We often see musicians playing music in the subways, we’ve even seen Joshua Bell performing Bach in a train station, but what if you heard the same piece at every single stop.  And what if that piece was something that literally everyone would recognize, even if they didn’t know the name of the piece or the composer?

What if…

What if I could have a single cellist on every single subway platform performing the Prelude of the G-major solo cello suite by Bach?  With this, an idea was born… but the question remained: is it even possible to make something like this happen?

Part 2: The Idea of Simplicity


I always try to find ways to simplify things in my life.  My ideas never seem to work out the way I think they will, but I’m always looking for simple solutions.  One of the challenges to making this simple idea come to life is sorting through all of the logistical complications and decisions.

Complication #1: Which subway line should I chose?  There are 22 lines in the New York City subway system, but only a handful that reach more than two boroughs.  It would be really cool for this project to reach out into Queens and Brooklyn as well as Manhattan.  Considering these options, I was reminded of a choral piece that Michael Gordon had written with an accompanying video by Bill Morrison called Every Stop on the F Train.  That was it: the F-line would be perfect for this project and would simultaneously be a nice tip-of-the-hat to Michael Gordon.

Complication #2: It turns out that about a dozen of the stops on the F-line are above ground, and this project is supposed to take place in December on the longest night of the year.  Assuming I could actually find enough cellists to cover every single F-line platform, I couldn’t ask them to play outside on what could be a sub-zero evening.  Why not invite other musicians to perform the Bach as well – maybe a trombonist would be willing to play outside in December?  Maybe there could be an arrangement for toy piano, or even a melodica?  Luckily, the fantastic and adventurous musicians of The Knights agreed to supply musicians at every stop, and I agreed to make sure that everyone had a proper arrangement of the music.

Complication #3: How important is it that the unassuming public who happen to ride the F-line on the evening of December 21 actually know what’s going on?  There’s no way to notify everyone, and I decided not to even try.  One of the things that I love about this project is that it turns the public into accidental participants.  The only question that remains is, what will their reactions be?

 

Part 3: So What?

 

The last question to address before this whole idea comes to life is: what do I hope will be the public’s reactions?

I love that this is a simple idea being implemented in a simple way.  Fortunately, my goals for this piece are just as simple as the idea: I want people to smile.  Easy.  Lots of people much smarter than I could come up with fancy metaphors or aesthetic objectives for a performance piece like this, but I just want people to smile.

I want people to slowly realize, after stepping onto the train and making several stops, that something out of the ordinary is happening and that it is a kind of gift from us to them.  I want people to look around at others on the train and wonder if they notice what’s going on as well – are they in on it?  Are they paying attention?  I want them to smile when the doors to the train open at every stop and they get to hear bits and pieces of one of the most beautiful compositions ever written.  I want people to get to their destinations and tell the people they are meeting that they just experienced something unique and special.  I want to give the people who ride the F-Train tomorrow night an adventure, a pretty low risk adventure, but one where they will be left wondering what’s around the next corner.

There are lots of people to thank for making this idea come to life.  The Knights, Make Music New York, MATA, David T. Little, Phil Kline, and Rose Bellini.  Thank you so much for helping me realize this project, I could not have done it without you.

From Curator James Holt:

Most MATA curatorial statements describe a live performance that will take place in a traditional performance space. Normally, these projects follow a fairly straightforward formula: the curator plans a concert;  invites and coordinates composers, musicians, ensembles, rehearsals, writes program notes, etc.  This process is very valuable, especially to a young composer or future presenter.

My project, however, came about through a slightly different process than most Interval productions. After undergoing a competitive application process, a formal public presentation, and a discussion with MATA’s guest composer/mentor Phil Kline, Thruline was selected for development and presentation by the collaborative partnership between MATA and Make Music New York.

Notice that I’ve used the word “project”, a word that I will choose to use over and over again in my writings about this experience.  I feel it is important to make the distinction between what can be called a piece or composition, and what is in essence, just an idea.  I didn’t compose anything for Thruline: I came up with an idea. That idea is, at its basic core, a performance of Bach throughout the New York City subway system.

In this installation, cellists (and in some cases, alternate instruments) perform the Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G major on every Coney Island bound F-train subway platform.  The Prelude lasts approximately 3 minutes, and musicians will play the movement continuously for the duration of the installation, repeating as many times as necessary.

Of all the pieces I could have chosen, I decided on this Bach Prelude because of the way that the general public so often recognizes it, and is drawn in immediately; it is a work that subway riders would notice as they hear it again and again at each subway stop.  In addition, the texture of the piece remains consistent throughout, with a pattern that non-musicians tend to recognize without needing to know whether the piece is at the beginning, middle or end.  These properties create the experience that the title refers to, no matter where a person begins and ends.

As an “accidental” participant in this project, the public initially hears the music as they wait on a subway platform, and then again as they ride the train, every time the doors open at a station. With each subsequent stop, the listeners develop an experiential “thruline” that starts and ends wherever they enter and leave the subway system.  The ideal public experience is one where a subway rider hears fragments of the piece every few minutes, recognizing that, at each stop, the same piece has continued, but perhaps in slightly different contexts.

Time: 7:00-8:00pm
Date: Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Place: Every Coney Island bound F-Train platform

INTERVAL 5.1: Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux) on Ryan Lott

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Son Lux – WEAPONS II from anticon. on Vimeo.

Wednesday night I’m performing in a show I co-curated with composer/multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver. The night features the work of two artists, Terran Olsen and Joshue Ott, and is sponsored by MATA as part of their Interval Series.

Joshue designed this video (full-screen that) for Weapons II (from the Weapons EP) using a visual instrument he designed called superDraw. During Wednesday night’s show he and I will perform custom arrangements of Son Lux material, syncing superDraw with my audio performance environment over a closed network. superFun.

Joshue also built the iPad app/audio-visual instrument Thicket with co-creator Morgan Packard, and he’ll perform “with” it Wednesday, as well. Thicket will simultaneously generate sound and picture using a combination of custom algorithms, its own inscrutable whim, and Joshue’s guiding hands.

I’m also excited about a premiere of Terran Olsen’s “Cid’s Craft,” for clarinet and piano, that “explores various ways in which meter, and rhythmic relationships between instruments, can be bent.”

C’mon erbody.