Interval 3.2 – Web Resources
February 8, 2010 – 10:44 pmWeb Resources
MATA Interval 3.2 – poweRed Line
(scroll down to view bios and multimedia work samples)
Red Line Sax Quartet
February 8, 2010 – 6:20 pm
The Red Line Sax Quartet is comprised of students from the Eastman School of Music, a school of the University of Rochester and America’s “Hottest School for Music” according to the 2008 Kaplan/Newsweek How to get into College guide. Since the group began playing together in the Spring of 2008, Red Line has made a splash at the nation’s top chamber music competitions, winning 1st prize in the 2009 Fischoff and MTNA National Chamber Music Competitions, as well as making their orchestral debut alongside heralded saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra. In addition, RLSQ was recently given Eastman’s 2009 John Celantano Award for Excellence in Chamber Music. Today, the Red Line Sax Quartet is one of the world’s only chamber music groups to perform full programs from memory, making their live performances uniquely engaging and communicative. They have collaborated with numerous composers, included composer Frank Ticheli who describes their quartet as “among the very best.”
Andy Akiho
February 8, 2010 – 6:15 pm
Andy Akiho is an award winning composer and performer with a broad range of interests that stretch from steel pan to western classical music. Akiho was recently featured as a composer on PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and as a percussionist at Carnegie Hall in New York City. His compositions have been recognized by numerous organizations including ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and Bang On a Can. Recent commissions include those for string quartet from ETHEL, a duet for violin and viola from Katherine Fong and Dov Scheindlin of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and a new chamber work entitled No one To kNOW one for The Playground to be premiered at The 2010 Mile High Voltage Festival. Akiho recently studied composition at MSM with Julia Wolfe, and percussion with Jeffrey Milarsky and John Ferrari. He currently studies composition at Yale University School of Music with Christopher Theofanidis and Ezra Laderman.
Matt Barber
February 8, 2010 – 6:14 pm
Matt Barber (b. 1980 in Denver, Colorado) is a composer, performer, and teacher currently residing in Rochester, NY. His music has been performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Arapahoe Philharmonic, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Ossia New Music Ensemble, Musica Nova, and other ensembles around the U.S. He has successfully avoided adopting a particular style of composition, and every new piece represents a different and original compositional interest. Matt is an engaging performer specializing in bassoon and recorder, and is in demand as a conductor for music from Bach to Xenakis. He is pursuing a PhD in Composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught composition and computer music courses. He completed his undergraduate work at the Juilliard School studying with Milton Babbitt, and is currently completing his dissertation in the PhD program at the Eastman School of Music.
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Barber: Work Samples
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Excerpt from Interface Chapel, “Body and Aether” (below)
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Barber’s Dozen for Metallophones and Electronic Bells (below)
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Mu for Violin + Piano (below)
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Andrew Colella
February 8, 2010 – 6:12 pm
Andrew Colella is a master’s student in the Music Technology program at Georgia Tech, where he is focused on integrating the creative applications of music with the current revolutions in technology. He seeks to expand the methods in which computers interact with music and in turn, how humans interact with computers. Andrew completed his undergraduate composition degree at the Eastman School of Music and his music has been performed around the world with performances in Italy and Japan. His most recent artistic interests have led him to the exploration of the line drawn between surrealism and art that mimics reality, primarily dealing with the computer and its artistic applications.
Robert Pierzak
February 8, 2010 – 6:11 pm
Robert Pierzak is a composer and has written music for small instrumental chamber combinations, electronics, voice, and large numbers of homogeneous instruments. He studied composition at Ithaca College and the Eastman School of Music and is currently in the PhD program in composition at UC San Diego. Recently, Mr. Pierzak has been interested in integrating phonetic art, abstract literature, and archetypal musical elements into his works, creating a type of musical theater. He has spent the better part of the last couple of years finishing a cycle of five primarily vocal-based works entitled Endangered Banana, whose themes explore processes of how ideas can come to have meaning within a community. Pierzak’s numerous awards include the BMI Student Composer Award (including the Carlos Surinach Prize for being the youngest recipient that year), the Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize, the Smadbeck Composition Award, and the Yale College Composer’s Group High School Composition Award.
Baljinder Sekhon, II
February 8, 2010 – 6:09 pm
Baljinder Sekhon, II is an active composer, percussionist and teacher whose works range from ensemble to solo pieces to electronic music. His recent awards include the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2007 and 2009), Audio Inversions Composition Contest, Brian M. Israel Prize, Percussive Arts Society Composition Competition, Belle Gitelman Award, and a Morton Gould Young Composers Award from ASCAP. Baljinder has received fellowships to the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at the Eastman School of Music where he has taught in the Eastman Computer Music Center, private Composition Lessons, Orchestration, Electronic Music Engraving, and served as President of the OSSIA New Music Ensemble. His works have received nearly 200 performances around the world and are distributed internationally by Steve Weiss Music (USA), Southern Percussion (UK), and Keyboard Percussion Publications.
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Sekhon: Work Samples
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Red Line’s Doug O’Connor performing Sekhon’s “Gradient” (below)
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Colored Windows, Tempered Rooms for percussion ensemble (below)
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Curatorial Statement: poweRed Line
February 7, 2010 – 9:03 pmIn a society riddled with the sounds of technology, from ring tones to car alarms, the sonorities of our environment have become increasingly diverse. Over the past 50 years, this growing collection of assorted sounds has slowly permeated the classical music scene; it is perhaps one of the most obvious areas in which to adapt new and unfamiliar sounds and, with such an established tradition and defined identity, also one of the least expected. Throughout history, composers have been quick to utilize new means of sound production as it has become available. Mozart’s employment of woodwind instruments was new and adventurous in his day, as was Varèse’s masterwork Ionisation which is scored solely for percussion instruments and siren. The redefinition (or expansion) continued when Lou Harrison employed found objects, such as flower pots and washtubs, as instruments that were equivalent to violins and french horns, and John Cage conceived of any sound that occurs as being a sound with musical potential (or one that is already music ). Composers continue to change the identity of classical music and expand the listener’s expectations through the application of modern technology and new sounds that would not otherwise exist.
Needless to say, works which utilize technology during the composition or performance process are relatively young in comparison to the 1,500+ year old classical music tradition. As a result, all electronic music that takes place in the “classical” music realm tends to be lumped together into its own genre. Often referred to as “electronic music,” “computer music,” or “electro-acoustic music,” this categorization only describes one aspect that all pieces in this “genre” have in common; that is, some kind of electronic device is employed during the composition and/or performance. Of course, these labels tell us nothing about what this music might sound like and there are no unifying characteristics which exist among all pieces of “electronic music” that might aid in their experiential identity. This is the case with any new art form in which a single factor is responsible for it being deemed “new” by its spectators. In the discourse of many contemporary musicians, the term “serial music” is still used as though it were a genre of music. As with “electronic music,” the title merely refers to some kind of technique or the composer’s use of a particular system/device. This is dissimilar to many other categorizations of classical music types; when one refers to “minimalism” or “march” there are some musical characteristics that a listener might expect and receive, even in a somewhat twisted way. Well, in the age of Facebook and Twitter, it is no longer a surprise when a composer uses some kind of electronics for a piece of concert music and the focus is gradually drifting away from the fact that electronics are used and back to the actual musical experience.
Labels aside, poweRED Line consists of five stylistically different pieces by composers who have their own reasons and goals for their use of electronics and this concert will demonstrate five of the countless ways in which electronics are utilized in today’s concert music scene. Throughout the night, each composer will speak briefly about what his piece consists of, how it is made, and how the electronics function during the process of performance and composition. Andy Akiho’s work Amalgamation, is a work for CD playback and saxophone quartet and the electronic sounds are all derived from from recorded samples of the actual Red Line performers. Amalgamation presents a super-human saxophone quartet alongside the acoustic quartet in a way that blurs the boundary between live and prerecorded sounds while featuring the virtuosic ability of the Red Line Sax Quartet. Matt Barber’s work Parallel Circuit employs electronics in order to magnify the sound world of the saxophone quartet, for instance by amplifying and altering the saxophone sounds, allowing a saxophonist to play in dialogue with himself, and even using the saxophone to create sounds usually associated with other instruments. Andrew Colella’s dmhs is inspired by the idea of Stan Brakhage’s film Delicacy of Molten Horror Synapse which is based on moving shapes and colors one sees when his/her eyes are closed. There is a video component to Colella’s piece that the performers interact with. As the saxophonist perform the work, a video including a variety of film fragments is responding to their sounds. In addition, thin and brittle processed sounds radiate into the room and mimic Brakhage’s idea with one that includes distant sounds that may be internal to any given individual. Red Bird, by Robert Pierzak, was inspired by an Agnes Martin painting of the same name. Martin’s work consists of a subtle off-white polymer paint that covers a six by six foot canvas. Over this base is a grid of incredibly faint red horizontal lead lines spaced about a quarter inch apart. If looked at from a distance, only a subtle red tint appears on an empty canvas. If viewed up close, the lines become visible and gain their own personalities, as Martin retained small “flaws” and unmistakable traces of her hand drawing them. Pierzak’s piece lends itself to exploring the border of presentation, and representation. The electronics simply draw from Martin’s taste for the indiscernible (presentation), while the sax quartet’s music was written as an abstract melody first, then arranged into sound with all its imperfections (representation). During my own work, Secret Corners, the saxophone quartet is placed at four points around the audience which are complementary to the four points created by a quadraphonic speaker array. The electronics serve multiple purposes throughout my piece; to create an encapsulating and meditative environment of sounds, to process and extend the sound of the acoustic saxophone and to provide an interactive and responsive “fifth performer.” Each of these works are brand new and were composed specifically for Interval 3.2 and the Red Line Sax Quartet. As the premiere will demonstrate, no two works on this concert belong in the same stylistic category; yet, they are all examples of “electronic music.”
Baljinder Sekhon, Curator
Resonant Sound
December 31, 2009 – 4:13 pmIt is often overlooked that music is embedded in the physical world. Sound is a thoroughly physical phenomenon, the oscillation of pressure through matter—the vibration of air, water and wood. The sounds that our ears are capable of hearing oscillate between 20 and 20,000 cycles per second, with wavelengths on the human scale—from 56 feet to just fractions of an inch. In a very physical sense, our music inhabits the same spaces we do.
When sounds combine, some parts of the sound are reinforced while others are attenuated. In air, sound waves are the variation in the density of air molecules above and below the average atmospheric pressures. When these waves pass through one another, the crests and troughs of density interfere, reinforcing one another when positive densities combine with positive densities, and attenuating one another when positive densities combine with negative densities.
The walls and objects in a room reflect sound about the room. As sounds are reflected off of the objects and surfaces of a room, they recombine with their sources in constructive and destructive interference. Surfaces can also change the character of a sound. Different materials reflect sounds in different ways. Some materials reflect certain frequencies more strongly and absorb other frequencies. Others affect the orientation of waves, causing them to interact destructively with their sources.
Certain frequencies fit in certain rooms. These frequencies have wavelengths that correspond to the dimensions of the room. When these frequencies are reflected about the room, they line up with themselves, causing constructive interference that reinforces the sound. Frequencies that do not fit in a room reflect onto themselves out of phase, causing destructive interference that weakens and alters the sound.
When we experience sound in a room, we are also hearing the numerous reflections of the sound off of walls, objects and other surfaces. These reflections interact with one another, with the original sound and with other sounds in constructive and destructive interference. The shape, dimensions, angles, surfaces, objects and material of the room affect how waves travel about the room, determining its acoustic character.
These are the conditions that the artists will be working with in residency throughout early January:
Architectures of Sound, the site:
a rectangular prism, 56 feet long, 17.5 feet wide and 17.5 feet high
constructed of wood, stone and metal
built between 1865 and 1901
set in the Old American Can Factory, a six-building industrial complex
Old American Can Factory
ISSUE Project Room
ISSUE’s future home
It is often overlooked that music is embedded in the physical world. Sound is a thoroughly physical phenomenon, the oscillation of pressure through matter—the vibration of air, water and wood. The sounds that our ears are capable of hearing oscillate between 20 and 20,000 cycles per second, with wavelengths on the human scale—from 56 feet to just fractions of an inch. In a very physical sense, our music inhabits the same spaces we do.
When sounds combine, some parts of the sound are reinforced while others are attenuated. In air, sound waves are the variation in the density of air molecules above and below the average atmospheric pressures. When these waves pass through one another, the crests and troughs of density interfere, reinforcing one another when positive densities combine with positive densities, and attenuating one another when positive densities combine with negative densities.
The walls and objects in a room reflect sound about the room. As sounds are reflected off of the objects and surfaces of a room, they recombine with their sources in constructive and destructive interference. Surfaces can also change the character of a sound. Different materials reflect sounds in different ways. Some materials reflect certain frequencies more strongly and absorb other frequencies. Others affect the orientation of waves, causing them to interact destructively with their sources.
Certain frequencies fit in certain rooms. These frequencies have wavelengths that correspond to the dimensions of the room. When these frequencies are reflected about the room, they line up with themselves, causing constructive interference that reinforces the sound. Frequencies that do not fit in a room reflect onto themselves out of phase, causing destructive interference that weakens and alters the sound.
When we experience sound in a room, we are also hearing the numerous reflections of the sound off of walls, objects and other surfaces. These reflections interact with one another, with the original sound and with other sounds in constructive and destructive interference. The shape, dimensions, angles, surfaces, objects and material of the room affect how waves travel about the room, determining its acoustic character.
These are the conditions that the artists will be working with in residency throughout early January:
Architectures of Sound, the site:
a rectangular prism, 56 feet long, 17.5 feet wide and 17.5 feet high
constructed of wood, stone and metal
built between 1865 and 1901
set in the Old American Can Factory, a six-building industrial complex
Michael Winter
December 11, 2009 – 7:25 pmMichael Winter is a composer, curator, music theorist, and software designer. He co-founded and co-directs (with fellow composer Eric km Clark) the wulf., a non-profit arts organization that presents experimental music free to the public in Los Angeles. Michael is a firm believer in music making as an experimental process and free information; e.g. open source code, free music, etc. In keeping with this, all his scores, software, writings, recordings, and related work are typically easy to obtain from his website.