May 16, 2024 @ 7:00PM
Fotografiska New York
281 Park Ave South, New York, NY 10010

 CHANGING VOICES

Danae Venson – Atlas

Vasiliki Krimitza – Streichquartett No. 1 [World Premiere]

Giuseppe Gallo-Balma – Ornitomaquia [New York Premiere]

Angela Elizabeth Slater – Eye o da hurricane [New York Premiere]

Leo Chang – Topic of Discussion [World Premiere]

Daniel Sabzghabaei – At any rate II. باقی مانده "what remains"

Annie Aries Ruefenacht – Fragments [World Premiere]

Christian Quiñones – Artifacts [New York Premiere]

Paul Swartzel - Music for Mental Health [New York Premiere]
(Music for Mental Health is an audio/visual work that will be played on loop as a prelude to this evening’s program)

     Bergamot Quartet

MATA Mavens
Yuma Uesaka, saxophone
Vicky Chow, piano

     Christian Quiñones, laptop/MIDI

     Annie Aries Ruefenacht, mod-synthesizer

Danae Venson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Houston, Texas. Starting as a singer in church at four years old, Danae pushed forward in her attempts to harness the power of music, ultimately culminating in her current studies at The Juilliard School under the guidance of Dr. Amy Beth Kirsten. In 2020, Danae closely examined the troubling events of a worldwide pandemic and racial violence and concluded that she wanted to find a way to “speak without words.”  Since then, she has developed a broader understanding of composition and has afforded the attention of collaborators and commissioners nationwide.  Venson is a recipient of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Honorable Mention and has gained the experience of working with the New York Youth Symphony, the Houston Ballet Academy, Castle of our Skins, and up-and-coming film and play directors in New York City. Danae draws inspiration from Jazz and Gospel music.

Vasilikí Krimitzá is a composer of instrumental, vocal and acousmatic music. Her works have been performed in Festivals such as the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin, ACHT BRÜCKEN Festival in Cologne, the Darmstaedter Ferienkurse fuer Neue Musik (Open Space), June in Buffalo, Next Generation concerts in ZKM Karlsruhe, SICPP in Boston, IMPULS Festival, Aspekte Festival, Dialoge Festival, by the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, JACK Quartet, Talea, ICE, Da Capo Chamber Players, œnm, Signal, soloists of the Bavarian State Orchestra, der/gelbe/klang, David Fulmer, Cory Smythe, Carlos Cordeiro and broadcasted by BR Klassik, WDR 3, rbb Kultur and DLF Kultur in Germany, ORF in Austria and Radio Nacional Argentina. Commissions have come from ACHT BRÜCKEN Festival, the City of Munich, Fédération des Sociétés de Musique d'Alsace Strasbourg, Salzburg Museum, Hofhaymer Gesellschaft, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Aspekte Festival, Dialoge Festival, IMPULS Festival. Vasiliki studied composition with Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail, Wolfgang Rihm and Louis Karchin.

Giuseppe Gallo-Balma (b.1994), a Dominican Republic native and a Kansas City-based composer, began his musical studies at age eleven on flute. After his studies at the National Conservatory of Music of Santo Domingo, Gallo-Balma pursued studies in the United States at the Schwob School of Music. Furthering his education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, he obtained a Master’s in Music Composition where he studied with Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Paul Rudy and Yotam Haber. Gallo-Balma’s music has been performed by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Transient Canvas, Re(a)d trio, NewEar, Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, and has been featured on the radio show Sound Currents (KCUR/NPR). As the son of Haitian and Italian immigrants, and raised in the Dominican Republic, Gallo-Balma's music seeks to bring an amalgamation of these three distinct cultures to the foreground, with special interest in the musical aspects of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Dr Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer, whose compositional voice focuses on musically mapping aspects of the natural world into the fabric of music. Nominated for an Ivors Classical Award for her work, Through the Fading Hour, her music has been described as ‘intricate...and often ravishingly scored’ and making ‘deft and vivid use of instrumental colour’.. Slater collaborates with performers, ensembles, and initiatives worldwide to musically explore sounds, colours, and textures. Slater’s recent creative projects include fellowships at the Modern Music Festival, with performances of Glass dominoes and Gathering the tide; Hong Kong Intimacy of Creativity Festival, working with Viano Quartet on Distorted Light; Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, for a commission of Where skies aflame, written for Flux quartet; and Creative Dialogues Festival, for the world premiere of a tulip, iron. She has previously held Composition Fellowships at Tanglewood Music Center, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Society, Royal Scottish National Orchestra Composers’ Hub, Stockholm Chamber Brass Academy, Impulse Festival, Young Composers Meeting.

Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer, performer, and scholar of experimental music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to various cultures and thereby cultivating an irreverence towards rules and norms from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music. Leo traces the origins of his fractured identity-formation to colonial legacies that continue to this day. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo's projects have been supported by Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn Arts Council, Korea Foundation, Arts for Art, Center for Performance Research, EMPAC at Rensselaer, Chashama, and the Tank, among others.

Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei (سبزقبایی رضا دانیال) is a creator who is interested in looking at time  through different lenses: unpacking notions of tradition, exploring memories of those past, and  investigating nostalgic frameworks that lean forward. His music has been commissioned and  presented by organizations including: the GRAMMY-winning New York Youth Symphony, JACK Quartet, National Sawdust, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Proton  Bern, loadbang, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Intimacy of  Creativity Festival, the American Composers Orchestra, TAK Ensemble, Beth Morrison  Projects, the New York Festival of Song, bassist Robert Black, the Banff Centre,  Contemporaneous, Guerilla Opera, the Moab Music Festival, Chorus Austin, the Young New  Yorkers Chorus, Pro Coro Canada, The Esoterics, OPERA America, and VocalEssence among  others. Daniel recently completed his doctorate at Cornell, where his dissertation focused on Persian Choral Music. Outside of music and interdisciplinary projects, Daniel also translates Persian poetry.

Annie Rüfenacht (aka Annie Aries) is a Swiss-Philippine composer and musician based in Bern, Switzerland. She holds an M.A. in Music & Media Arts from Bern University of the Arts, and studied historical musicology at the University of Bern. Since 2019 Annie has been a faculty member in the Sound Arts department at Bern University of the Arts. She has shown her works at Mis-En Music Festival in Brooklyn NY, NYCEMF in New York City, Center for Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe, IGNM Bern, ICMC in Shenzhen, Gray Area San Francisco, Heroines of Sound in Berlin, among others. Annie produces music with her instrument, a modular, custom-made synthesizer and focuses on how her instrument fosters the interplay between generative musical approaches and improvised live performance. In her work she aims at a minimal, reduced, yet complex textural sound world. She combines contemporary electronica music with club and synthesizer influences with the experimental approach of contemporary and experimental music.

Christian Quiñones is a Puerto Rican composer who explores personal and vulnerable stories through the lens of cultural identity. From sampling to auto-tune, interactive multimedia, Christian is interested in interacting with existing music to create intertextual narratives. His music has been performed by ensembles such as the  Alarm Will Sound, New York Youth Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, American Composer Orchestra, Jack Quartet, Yarn-Wire, the icarus Quartet, the Bergamot String Quartet, Hub New Music, and Dal Niente. Recently Christian was selected as a fellow for the Aspen Music Festival and as a composer in residence at the Copland House. Other fellowships include the Cabrillo Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Earshot Underwood Orchestra Readings, and the Eight Blackbird Creative Lab. Christian holds degrees from the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico (B.M.) and the University of Illinois (M.M) and currently, Christian is a Ph.D. President’s fellow at Princeton University.

Paul Swartzel is a composer, pianist, and teacher. His music has been described as “incredibly awesome and super disturbing.” Writing in various genres, he often plays all of the instruments in his recordings even if unable to keep a steady beat or play the instrument, attempting to find joy and meaning in his life. Paul developed schizoaffective disorder in his late teens and found it weird how academic music writers describe passages as ‘schizophrenic’ when it’s just a shitty flute solo. He won two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and received a PhD in composition from Duke University. His dissertation, Barbeque Man Unleashed, was a professional wrestling ballet filmed with action figures. He likes pinball, making music videos, and writing music for Me2/, the world's only orchestra for people with mental illness.

Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning. Their 2023-24 season includes the premiere of an evening-length work at Lincoln Center by percussionist Samuel Torres for Bergamot and Latin jazz sextet, collaborating with The Crossing Choir for a premiere of David T. Little’s SIN-EATER commissioned by Penn Live Arts, a performance of Dan Trueman’s “Songs That Are Hard To Sing” with Sō Percussion at Public Records in Brooklyn, an evening exploring Hildegard von Bingen with the New York Choral Society, and a collaboration with composer/percussionist Susie Ibarra and her Talking Gong trio. Bergamot operates the monthly concert series “Bergamot Quartet Extended”, happening at Sisters (Brooklyn) this spring, as a medium to showcase their many inspiring collaborators.

Based in New York City, Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. The Bergamot Quartet recently completed their residency as Graduate String Quartet at the Mannes School of Music, where they were mentored by the JACK Quartet, and the Klangspuren Chamber Music Lab in Innsbruck, Austria.

Japanese-American saxophonist and clarinetist Yuma Uesaka (b.1991) engages with the world of jazz, creative improvised music, and new music. Active in New York City since 2014, he came to wider attention with Streams, a duo recording with pianist Marilyn Crispell, and Ocelot, a record with his collaborative trio with Cat Toren and Colin Hinton. He has performed with Anna Webber, Jessie Cox, Lesley Mok and at venues such as The Jazz Gallery, Roulette, The Stone and National Sawdust, and has recorded for Pi, New Focus, NotTwo, and Polyfold Records. He’s received grants/recognition from the ASCAP Foundation, Chamber Music of America, Metropolis, and Either/Or Ensemble for his work as a composer-improviser.

Hong Kong/Canadian pianist Vicky Chow (she/her) has been described as “brilliant” (New York Times) and “one of our era’s most brilliant pianists” (Pitchfork). Since joining the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 2009, she has collaborated and worked with artists such as Tania León, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, John Zorn, George Lewis to name a few. She has toured to over 40 countries and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms in London, Teatro Colón in Argentina and others. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she is based in Brooklyn, NY. She serves as faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, Nief-Norf summer festival, and has been on faculty at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Ms. Chow is a Yamaha Artist.

PROGRAM NOTES

Atlas is the musical embodiment of an abstract art series completed by Thierry Feuz (1968–) of the same name. An entropy of flowers and light, Feuz’s art installation appears as beautiful chaos. Atlas combines elements of jazz and classical music to create a beautifully chaotic body of work.


Streichquartett No. 1 was written in 2021. One of the work’s influences was the idea of “space in time” - how certain types of motion allow us to enter into an expanded temporal and spatial dimension, perhaps even into a different, compound dimension. An example of such motion is a liquid substance droplet’s fast speed as it is dropped into water, and its contrasting extremely slow dissolution. This continuous motion in two separate and contrasting spaces, one focusing on gravity (air) and the other on upthrust (water), creates for me the notion of space in time.


Ornitomaquia (2021) is a non-narrative sound impression of a cockfight. My maternal grandfather was very passionate about cockfights and according to my mom, it was this passion that gave him the anxiety that eventually led to his death. The piece expresses my personal feelings after watching the cockfighting scenes myself. Cocks would have their natural spurs removed and long, sharper, metallic spurs would be tied to their legs. For the piece, I used string extended techniques to represent the different sounds heard during a fight along with a driving truncated yanvalou rhythm from Haitian-vodou drumming.


Eye o da hurricane was written for a colloborative workshop with writers and the Gildas quartet at the St Magnus composition course (2017). The piece takes inspiration and imagery from Christian Tait’s poem ‘Fae da Journal o a Crofter’s Wife’. The piece particularly draws on imagery from certain lines within the poem including: Sae here I am ida eye o da hurricane while a aathing crashes an roars an birls aboot me. Destructive an oot o control. … ta read atween da lines, or hoo my hert vibrates laek fiddle-strings in tune wi der black despair … sood cry my name A’ll hear him sammas he wis in da nixt room … But ivvery meenit o ivvery day I bargain wi da Mellishon, o!erin him my sowl if he’ll bring dem safely hame … Dis is what its laek, aa bi me lane trapped ida eye o da hurricane


Topic of Discussion is a relational string quartet: the score largely dictates how each string player should interact with one another’s playing. Musicality is embedded within the tensions that arise between the specific relationship dynamics I have designed.


At any rate is a set of studies on vinyl records, each exploring a different record of cultural and historical significance, as well as the accompanying (and ubiquitous) noise inherently present with every type of record (33s, 45s, and 78s). What classifies certain records as “popular?” If the materials found on these records are taken apart, stretched, slowed, chopped, and reconstituted, do the parts still come together to make a whole “popular” work? What artifacts from these records manifest themselves in this process? Which are lost? What new artifacts are gained through this reconstitution? How much of a work is essential in realizing it as its original itself? Is timbre just as important to these recordings as melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic contours in this recognition and appreciation? This second work in the set باقی مانده “what remains” explores one of the earliest releases of traditional Persian moosiqi sonnati, a record called Volkstümlicher Gesang – Persia collected by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1877-1935) and put out by Decca Records and Parlophone Co in 1931. Within this group of a few players and a vocalist heard on the disk, an entire world of intimate connections exists between those captured on this recording. I became obsessed with repeated listening to this record—at all difference speeds and attention levels—and the way in which this repeated listening drastically affected the way I heard and understood the music held within. This reminded me of the way that I listen to and consume music from Houston’s Chopped and Screwed scene, a codeine-influenced genre of Hip-Hop created by DJ Screw (RIP) which takes popular songs, chops them up, and slows them down through pitch-shifting. We listen to things over and over, but the moments that excite me the most are those when something makes me change the way I listen, a moment I never noticed, or a new way of looking at something—a love letter. Commissioned by National Sawdust for the JACK Quartet as part of their 2020 New Works Commissions.


Central to Fragments is the textural, reciprocal relationship of sound which are generated by a modular, custom-built synthesizer. Through the process of analysing the overtone structures of a sound the continuous shift in timbre are made audible. Field recordings provide the sonic foundation for the composition and are juxtaposed with generative, sequenced patterns. This creates organic transitions that are constantly shifting, growing into new drones and then receding from each other again. The piece aims at a minimal, reduced, yet complex textural sound world and combines contemporary electronica music with club and synthesizer influences with the experimental approach of contemporary and experimental music.


Artifacts examines the idea and role of the virtuoso through different musical and physical artifacts. In the piece, the performers are examined, challenged, and pushed to their limits via a series of notated and typing tests. The piece features live electronics and live visuals that adapt to the performer's input and unravel the overarching narrative of the piece. The keyboard acts as a sampler that contains snippets of music that are widely regarded as virtuosic, from standard piano repertoire, to pop, to singer-songwriters. This directly mirrors the percussionist's instrument, a laptop keyboard that acts as a percussion instrument to type in, and as the second artifact. The utilized samples and the quoted text in the piece slowly unfold an intertextual narrative that deals with my own issues of self-doubt, scrutiny, and ultimately vulnerability and self-forgiveness.


Music for Mental Health: Daniel Jackson photographed five musicians of Me2/ Orchestra, the world's only orchestra for people with mental illness. I arranged/edited the photos into a video and wrote music for each musicians' profile, based on their interests and suggestions. The photos of my friend Ronald, conductor and co-founder of Me2/, were taken once when he was depressed, and also months later when he was feeling better. The music I wrote combines a sorta C major march in 4/4 with a 3/4 waltz in sorta A minor. They alternate at first to create sharp contrasts, ultimately reducing to smaller fragments, creating a new, functional progression, which I find more interesting. Then I stack the two pieces on top of another in loop-like, obsessively repetitive patterns. The project was fun to make.