May 17, 2024 @ 7:00PM
Fotografiska New York
281 Park Ave South, New York, NY 10010

EARTHING

April Dawn Guthrie – ToyToyToypurina [New York Premiere]

Henryk Golden – Sprechen Sie Musik? [New York Premiere]

Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh – Permeating Through the Pores of Shifting Planes [New York Premiere]

Marco Adrián Ramos – Altar with pines and bread from Acámbaro (Music with my grandma)

Qiujiang Levi Lu – Before It Gets Too Late [New York Premiere]

Bobby Ge – Doppelgänger Streets [New York Premiere]

Jane Sheldon’s – I am a tree, I am a mouth [World 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)

     MATA Mavens
Azalea Twining, voice
Titilayo Ayangade, cello
Dennis Sullivan, percussion
Laura Cocks, flute
Jennifer Choi, violin

     Jane Sheldon, voice

     Henryk Golden, speaker

April Dawn Guthrie is a composer/cellist/vocalist and Cherokee Nation citizen originally from Kansas City. Guthrie’s creative practice strives to highlight injustices and pay homage to dissenters. In 2019 her music for “so go the ghosts of méxico” won Best Original Music/Songs of 2019 by Theatre Jones. “ToyToyToypurina” was recently commissioned and premiered, as part of her suite “Our Founding Foremothers” which celebrates women who shaped American history. Guthrie’s upcoming Arts Capacity commission will premiere in several prisons across the country and reflects on relationships with incarcerated siblings. In February 2024 her music for the play “a home what howls” premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre.

Henryk Golden (1999, Warsaw) works in the field of contemporary performance art. He specializes in music composition, as well as uniting musicians and performers of different backgrounds and skill sets. He focuses on juxtaposing and harmonizing different elements of musical and non-musical nature. Thereafter, playing with and humorizing the relationships that are created. He works intensely with classical and jazz musicians, dancers, video artists and art scientists. He enjoys working with a wide variety of musicians, by participating in open improv initiatives with the tuba. He studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Richard Ayres and Maya Verlaak, as well as in the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague. His work has been performed in numerous prestigious international venues such as the Wigmore Hall in London and the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as by renowned ensembles such as the Quartetto Prometeo, the Bergamot Quartet and the Ensemble Mulitlatérale.

Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh is a Taiwanese-Australian composer  currently based in the United States. Her music has been  presented internationally at events including Lucerne Festival,  Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, WasteLAnd Music  Series (LA), Tectonic Festival, ISCM World Music Days,  International Rostrum of Composers, SEAMUS, New York City  Electroacoustic Music Festival, Sonic Matters (Zurich), Pittsburgh  Festival of New Music, and Bendigo International Festival of  Exploratory Music. She received her doctorate from the University of California, San  Diego, and is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor of  Electronic Music Composition at Carnegie Mellon University.

Marco-Adrián Ramos is a Mexican-American composer whose potent and eclectic music spans a variety of media including works for voice, instrumental and electroacoustic ensembles, and dance. His work has been sought and performed by a variety of institutions and ensembles including the FLUX Quartet, the Juilliard Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Emmanuel Music, the Aspen Music Festival, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music. Recognitions include multiple ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, an artist grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the William Schuman Prize from the BMI Foundation. Marco-Adrián holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University’s School of Music; cherished mentors have included artists like Mari Kimura, Derek Bermel, Gabriela Lena Frank, and David Lang.

Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, NYC-based performance artist, vocalist, experimental improviser, composer, and lecturer. As a composer, Lu writes instructed improvisation pieces for acoustic and electronic performers and improvisers. Lu’s commissioned works often take a meta, unorthodox approach to music technology, exploring human-machine relationships, audio-visual interactivity, mind-body connection, and the phenomenology of musical performance. Previous commissions have included Popebama, Luke Helker, and Ensemble Decipher. Lu’s works have been performed and featured at festivals, conferences, and venues such as DiMenna Center, IRCAM Forum, Jazz Showcase, SEAMUS conference, High Zero Festival, Elastic Arts, Spencer Museum of Art, NIME conference, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Oberlin MMG, Rhizome DC, and NowNet Arts conference. Lu currently works as a lecturer and audio engineer in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bobby Ge is a Chinese-American composer and avid collaborator who explores the vivid beauty of the ephemeral. His work, often collaborative in nature, focuses on themes of home, communication, and hybridity. Winner of the 2022 Barlow Prize, Ge has received commissions and performances by groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the U.S. Navy Band, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra, the Sioux City Symphony, Music from Copland House, the Bergamot, Tesla, and JACK Quartets, and Mind on Fire. He has created multimedia projects with the Space Telescope Science Institute, painters collective Art10Baltimore, the Scattered Players Theater Company, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D at Princeton University, and holds degrees from UCBerkeley and the Peabody Conservatory.

Jane Sheldon is an Australian-American soprano and composer who creates and performs exploratory chamber music. Praised by the New York Times for singing “sublimely” and the Washington Post for “a stunning performance,” Jane has established an international reputation for highly specialized contemporary opera and art music for voice. She has performed at Lincoln Center Festival, Sydney Festival, Holland Festival and Tokyo Festival. Recent performances include the world premieres of Dylan Mattingly's Stranger Love for the LA Phil, and Mary Finsterer’s Antarctica at Holland Festival with ASKO|Schönberg and Sydney Chamber Opera, where she is an Artistic Associate. Described as “riveting” (New York Times), Jane’s compositions focus on the experience of altered or transformative states. Her latest album is I am a tree, I am a mouth (“conceptually brilliant… a vocal and compositional triumph” - Limelight Magazine). It was listed in the New Yorker’s Notable Recordings of 2022.

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.

Azalea Twining (she/her) is an eighteen year old soprano and composer. As a 2020-2021 fellow of the Luna Composition Lab at Kaufman Music Center, Azalea studied composition with Ellen Reid and composed “Under Her Voices” for piano trio, which was the winner of the 2021 G. Schirmer for Luna Lab Prize. She has continued to study composition and create pieces with a focus on singing her own work. Azalea’s most recent and current projects include “Echo” for solo flute commissioned by Intersection, “The Red House” for saxophone quartet commissioned by Second Stage and Composers Now, and “Evelyn: Four Bodies One Life”, a dance opera created and performed by her family, Ensemble InterTwining. Azalea has studied voice with Eileen Clark from 2014-2023 and is an alumni of the WNO Opera Institute, Eastman Summer Classical Studies programs, and NYU MPAP Summer Classical Voice Intensive. She is currently a music major at Columbia University where she studies voice with Josephine Mongiardo-Cooper and is a member of the early-music choral ensemble, Collegium Musicum. She is also honored to work outside of university—premiering works by composers Elizabeth Hoffman and Cecilia Olszewski. Azalea hopes to foster a career as a composer/performer.

With over two decades on the cello, Titilayo Ayangade has gracefully navigated classical music's landscape. A recent recipient of the Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant, as the cellist of Duo Kayo, Titilayo continues her history of excellence in chamber music preceded by awards at Fischoff and tours spanning China to Brazil. This season features performances with Sphinx Virtuosi, collaborations with MAD Museum, Caramoor, Newport Classical, Lincoln Center and more. Titilayo champions BIPOC musicians through commissioning new works and performance, advocating for an inclusive musical tapestry. Off-stage, she's a successful photographer, working with Grammy-nominated artists and renowned orchestras. Explore her journey at [www.titilayoandco.com].

Dennis Sullivan II is percussionist, improviser, composer and sound artist based in Queens, NY. He is a founding member of Popebama, with saxophonist/composer Erin Rogers, Radical 2, with percussionist/sound artist Levy Lorenzo, Blood Luxury, with violinist/improviser Erica Dicker, and Wavefield ensemble. As a contemporary percussionist he has worked with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Either/Or, Argento and others. As an improviser he shares the stage with Brandon Lopez, Erin Rogers, Dana Jessen and more. His music has been played by Yarn/Wire, ICE, Hypercube, New Thread, Dal Niente and others. He and Erin Rogers work, "Fight Songs," an evening length music/theater happening written for and performed with Decoder premiered at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie in March 2020. Dennis enjoys an active schedule as a performer and clinician across the US and Europe. He is a recipient of the Darmstadt Stipendium Prize and is a D'Addario/Evans/ProMark/Sensory Percussion artist.

Laura Cocks (they/she) is a flutist with “febrile instrumental prowess” (The New York Times), who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music and “creates intricate, spellbinding works that have a visceral physicality to them” (Foxy Digitalis). Laura is the executive director and flutist of TAK ensemble as well as a member of Talea Ensemble. As a soloist, improviser, and chamber musician, they have performed with musicians such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Sun Ra Arkestra, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in NYC and abroad. Laura can be heard on labels such as ECM, Denovali Records, Catalytic Sound, TAK editions, Tripticks Tapes, Carrier Records, Chambray Records, Double Whammy Whammy, New Focus Records, Sound American, Orange Mountain Music, Supertrain, Gold Bolus, Hideous Replica, Sideband Records, and many others. Laura has also been in residence at institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and many others, and has served on the faculty of The New School and The Washington Heights Conservatory. Laura holds a doctorate from The Graduate Center and continues their writing and research in corporeal analyses of art and musical praxis. They studied with Michel Debost, William Bennett, Kate Hill, Kathleen Chastain, and Tara Helen O’Connor at The Oberlin Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Music (London), Manhattan School of Music, and The Graduate Center.

Violinist Jennifer Choi has been hailed by The New York Times as "soulful, compelling", and by Time Out New York as "passionate," and "adventurous".  Since giving her recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in 2000, she has performed in venues far and wide, including WQXR's Cafe Concerts, Roulette, the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., RAI National Radio in Rome, and Cite de la Musique in Paris.  Merging her classical background with the world of experimental jazz, creative improv, and the avant-garde, she has premiered and recorded numerous works by cutting-edge composers like John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Orlando Garcia, and Susie Ibarra.  An award-winning chamber musician, she was a founding member of the Miro String Quartet, a member of ETHEL, the Sirius quartet, and performs regularly with the Either Or Ensemble.  As guest soloist and chamber musician, she has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Guggenheim Museum, MOMA, Ravinia, Caramoor, and numerous festivals across North America, Europe, and Asia.  Upcoming solo engagements include the Sofia Symphonic Summit in Bulgaria, and a residency at The Stone.

PROGRAM NOTES

Toypurina was a Kizh/Tongva/Gabrieliño medicine woman born of the Kumivit tribe, who led a rebellion against the Spanish missionaries at the Mission San Gabriel in 1785, fighting against the abuse and enslavement of her people, and seizure of their land. In this piece, we call by her imagined nickname ToyToyToypurina through a ballad rooted in heavy metal; we call for her, scream for her, and rage for her...all in hope of raising her from her grave, healing her into peace, and allowing Toypurina to walk once again through her homeland.


Sprechen Sie Musik? is conceived for two performers: mezzo-soprano and speaking voice. The piece is lightly staged to convey a podcast environment with the two performers sitting in profile at either side of a table. The work primarily uses the text of four different podcasts and talk shows in English and German. The speaker is speaking in a half musical and half theatrical manner, changing the approximate pitch they’re speaking with, as well as the approximate speed. By hybridizing speech and singing voice the piece plays with the relationship of the two, as well as how we understand them and their relationship to language, testing whether the speaker is closer to singing, or the singer is closer to speaking.


My interest in music and sound practice has been focusing on exploring the corporeal expressivity of live musical performance, specifically, in finding the potential fissures between visual and auditory experiences. This work, Permeating through the Pores of Shifting Planes​, commissioned by Australian percussionist Louise Devenish, is an installation-performance piece that synthesizes this continual unfolding in the co-dependent partnerships between body, gestures, sound, and space. Conceptually, Permeating is a commentary on shifting landscapes and collapsing borders under the larger context of climate change. The reflection and refraction patterns produced by the silver acetate sheets cast an oceanic atmosphere around the performer to embed an atmosphere of being underwater and drifting, on a quest to find resonances on the new planes one comes across.


This piece was written shortly after the death of my paternal grandmother, María Teresa Ruíz de Ramos, who died in January of 2018. The electronic playback consists of manipulated iPhone recordings of my grandmother, who loved to sing, and also a recording of the band that played during her funeral procession in rural Michoacán, Mexico. The instrumental duo, evocative of the aerophone and percussion musics of Mexican indigenous groups, alternates with the electronic interludes; even when the live musicians and electronics occasionally overlap, there is a feeling of separation. The title Altar with pines and bread from Acámbaro makes reference to the offerings put out for the departed around the time of Día de muertos; my metaphorical altar includes the pine trees that cover the hilly landscape of Michoacán where my family hails from, and bread from the bakeries of Acámbaro, Guanajuato (my grandmother’s favorite)- we would always pick some up on our way to see her.


Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late. Destroy the laptop before it gets too late.


Doppelgänger Streets draws its inspiration from China Miéville’s smoky noir, The City and the City. Ostensibly a murder mystery, the novel explores a peculiar world in which two different cities quite literally occupy the same physical space, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to perceive one another. The idiosyncratic setting and intoxicating prose left a strong impression, stylishly evoking the paradoxical dualities of urban environments. To explore these themes, I wanted violin and electronics to feel dimly related yet foreign to one another, occasionally intertwining with analogous gestures. The violin plays searchingly through chiaroscuro soundscapes, drifting in and out of focus as it explores fragments of a melody. Halfway through the piece, crackling glitches begin to break up the sound, suggesting sights of things that should have remained unseen. Eventually, the violin manages to realize its ruminative melody, bringing a touch of warmth to a world otherwise coldly aloof. This piece would not have been possible without the dedication of Dr. Wendy Case, whose humor, kindness, and enthusiasm made her a wonderful collaborator to work with.


This performance is the first live realization of I am a tree, I am a mouth, an album I composed and released in 2022. It is a work for two voices and electronically processed gong resonances, setting seven poems from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours, a work of ardent odes to the ineffable first published in 1905. Rilke’s book is sometimes subtitled "Love Poems to God", but I construe them as love poems to an obscured self; for this reason, these songs are performed as duets for solo singer, with one voice live and one recorded. These songs bring my love of drone music into gentle collision with seemingly remote vocal idioms like 19th-century lieder and the medieval chant of Hildegard von Bingen. The gongs were processed in several ways, but the two devices most used were to slow them down, in order to magnify the instability of the various frequencies present, and to then remove certain regions of the frequency profile to further focus our attention. These bendy gong tones are brought into contact with the voices to create tender, microtonal blurs. In this work I have tried to capture both Rilke’s ardour and his restraint. The vocal lines’ gentle tendency toward microtonal embellishment has been guided both by the behaviours found in the gong resonances and the very fine grain of Rilke’s attention to the rapturous, erotically-charged strangeness of being.


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.