Micah Silver’s work often finds its balance in irreconciliable fascinations with time perception and a closeness to the sensuality of sound. His work is constructed as a site of self-examination, creating frictions between the perceptual bounds of practical society and the optimistically impractical possibilities suggested by the work. Shows have been mounted by the Jersey City Museum in a mini-retrospective called “BE STILL. TAKE UP AS MUCH SPACE AS POSSIBLE,” at Artspace New Haven's outdoor space called The Lot (a municipal bus stop and green space), the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art as part of the “Reverence” exhibition, The Peekskill Project, and The James Joyce Centre, Dublin as part of Wandering Rocks Revolving Doors. Silver’s conceptual work and text has been published in Nuke Magazine (Paris), The Journal of the Valkenberg Hermitage (Berlin), and will accompany a forthcoming DVD by Diapason Gallery for Sound (New York City). Micah has given talks at Eyebeam Gallery, ApexArt, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Wesleyan University, Ford Piano, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. This spring he will speak at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, and the Theremin Centre in Moscow.

In addition to his commission from the MATA Festival, Micah is working on a large scale installation for Mass MoCA (exhibition February 2009) and a series of pieces to be premiered in St. Petersburg and Moscow this summer.

Background Information: Micah Silver was born in 1980 in Sylva, North Carolina but grew up in a small town called New Salem in western Massachusetts. He grew up playing cornet in marching, wind, and jazz bands and began composing with computers and synthesizers in his early teens. He studied at Wesleyan University with Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, and Ron Kuivila and privately with Raphé Malik, Lewis Spratlan, and Earle Brown.

LISA BIELAWA

Composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa often takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and from close artistic collaborations. A graduate of Yale University with a BA summa cum laude in Literature, her music explores the ritual and phenomenological nature of music-making and listening, employing instrumental forces in ways that are both dramatic and intimate in their use of time and space.__Bielawa’s The Lay of the Love and Death, written for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg and based on an epic poem by Rilke, premiered at Alice Tully Hall in March 2006. Hurry, for soprano and chamber ensemble, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered in 2004 as part of Dawn Upshaw’s Perspectives series, and the inaugural season of Zankel Hall included the premiere of The Right Weather by American Composers Orchestra and Van Cliburn prize-winning pianist Andrew Armstrong, prompted by an excerpt from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. This November she will appear as vocalist in unfinish’d, sent at the inaugural concert of her three-year residency with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The residency, which will yield several new works and culminate in a recording of her orchestral music, is part of Music Alive, a joint program of Meet The Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League. She is currently at work on a piece for migrating ensembles and soprano Susan Narucki for performance in public spaces, a multi-year project of Creative Capital.

Lisa Bielawa's new Double Violin Concerto, performed by Colin Jacobsen and Carla Kihlstedt with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, will receive its New York premiere at the MATA festival on April 1, 2008.

KEN UENO

The 2006-2007 Rome Prize recipient, Ken Ueno, is an internationally performed composer who actively involves himself in a wide range of activities in order to evangelize for modern music (including producing and hosting a television show about new music). Informed by his experience as an electric guitarist and overtone singer, his music fuses the culture of Japanese underground electronic music with an awareness of European modernism. In an effort to feature inherent qualities of sound such as beatings, overtones, and artifacts of production noise, Ken’s music is often amplified and uses electronics. The dramatic discourse of his music is based on the juxtaposition of extremes: visceral energy versus contemplative repose, hyperactivity versus stillness. Of a performance in Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has said: “The evening was redeemed by the last work, ". . . Blood Blossoms. . .," composed last year by Boston-based Ken Ueno...a young composer worth following...” The Boston Phoenix described his music as being “hypnotizing.” Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Frances-Marie Uitti, the American Composers Orchestra (Whitaker Reading Session), the Cassatt Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Prism Saxophone Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Atlas Ensemble, Relâche, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, the Orkest de Ereprijs, and the So Percussion Ensemble. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival, where he was guest composer/lecturer. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, continues to be featured in their repertoire, recently being performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons.

Ken Ueno's new work for orchestra, featuring the composer as throat-singing soloist, will receive it's New York premiere on April 1, 2008.