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

MATA INTERVAL 5.3
Beaubourg to Brooklyn: Electro-Acoustic Music from Paris
CHRISTOPHER TRAPANI, CURATORThursday, 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)
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.ne

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/