(photo credit: José Pita Juárez)
Program will be streamed at https://www.facebook.com/SPLICEorg/live_videos/
Concert 5 Program
SPLICE Ensemble
Douglas Osmun : stasis patterns (2018)
Jeff Herriott : eyes, sewn, await the sun (2008, rev. 2018)
Brittany Green : ...to experience life. (2019)
SPLICE Ensemble with guest Christopher Biggs: improvisation
Valeria Jonard : Deep Down (2018)
Lauren McCall : Markov Miniatures (SPLICE Festival IV Commission) ★
Elliott Lupp : []\6][]\][2][]\][][4\] (SPLICE Festival IV Commission)★
Video credit for all works, Christopher Biggs
★world premiere
SPLICE Festival IV is supported by a State-of-the-Art Conference Grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.
Bios
SPLICE Ensemble is a trumpet, piano, and percussion trio focussed on cultivating a canon of electroacoustic chamber music. Called a “sonic foodfight” by Jazz Weekly, SPLICE Ensemble works with composers and performers on performance practice techniques for collaboration and integrating electronics into a traditional performance space, and they were recently awarded a Chamber Music America grant for a commission of a new 25-minute work with composer Caroline Miller. The resident ensemble of both SPLICE Institute and SPLICE Festival, SPLICE Ensemble has been a featured ensemble at M Woods in Beijing, SEAMUS, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, SCI National, Electronic Music Midwest, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music 10. They have recorded on both the SEAMUS and Parma Labels.back to program
Douglas Osmun is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, and whose acoustic works are informed by electroacoustic aesthetic frameworks. Osmun was the recipient of the 2014 Ron Nelson Composition Award for Restful Music and the 2016 Sinquefield Composition Prize. His music has been heard at the BGSU Graduate Conference in Music, the SEAMUS National Conference, the SCI National Conference, NYCEMF, and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. He has recently written works for Alarm Will Sound, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and SPLICE Ensemble, in addition to a performance of soliloquy with Timepoint Ensemble and an upcoming performance of that same work with Verdant Vibes. Osmun holds degrees from Western Michigan University (B.M. in Music Composition) where he was named a Beulah and Harold McKee Scholar, and the University of Missouri (M.M. in Composition). Former private teachers of his include Lisa Renée Coons, Christopher Biggs, Stefan Freund, and Carolina Heredia. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Composition at UC San Diego. back to program
Jeff Herriott is particularly attracted to sounds that shift and bend at the edges of perception, creating unhurried music, using slow-moving shapes and a free sense of time. His compositions have been described as “colorful…darkly atmospheric” (New York Times), “hypnotic” (mainlypiano.com), and “incredibly soft, beautiful, and delicate” (Computer Music Journal). He is active as a collaborator in a range of musical styles, including with his sleepy rock/ ambient project Bell Monks; with the heavy metal band Realmbuilder; with synth-duo Binary Reptile; as a laptop composer/ improviser with Skewed and Such and Sonict; and most recently as co–composer with S. Craig Zahler for the music and songs in his films, Bone Tomahawk, Brawl In Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. He is a Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, where he isthe coordinator of the Media Arts and Game Development Program and teaches courses in music composition, audio, multimedia, and music technology. back to program
Brittany J. Green (b. 1991) is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Described as “cinematic in the best sense” and “searing” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music is centered around facilitating collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. Her research and creative interests include mapping aural gestures to gestural recognition technology and exploring virtual reality platforms as a tool for experiencing immersive, intimate musical moments. Her music has been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the Society of Composers National Conference, New York City Electronic Music Festival, SPLICE Institute, the West Fork New Music Festival, Music by Women Festival, and Electroacoustic Barn Dance Festival. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week, Darkwater Women in Music Festival, and the Intersection@ Art and Science Symposium. Brittany holds a BM in Music Education from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a MM in Music Composition and Theory from East Carolina University. She is currently in residence at Duke University, pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition as a Deans Graduate Fellow. back to program
A native of Michoacán, Mexico, Valeria Jonard is a composer, sound artist, and educator. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition in 2009 from the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Mexico. She continued her studies abroad with Christopher Biggs at Western Michigan University where she earned her Master of Music in Composition in 2012. During this time, she was awarded the Ron Nelson Award for her composition ‘The Whales’ Lethargy.’ In 2013, she was accepted into the graduate Sound Art program at Columbia University in New York City where she studied under the guidance of Douglas Repetto. Her music has been performed around the world by ensembles such as the FonemaConsort, Liminar, Birds on a Wire, SPLICE Ensemble, and Supercluster, among others. She has also participated in music festivals such as the Foro de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez, Internationale Ferienkuse für Neue Musik, Visiones Sonoras, SPLICE, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and Punto Ciego. In 2019, Valeria was a recipient of the prestigious FONCA grant, one of Mexico’s highest recognitions in the arts. She is presently a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas where she also directs Ramificaciones, a festival dedicated to music and multimedia. back to program
Lauren McCall is a composer, musician, and educator from Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her bachelor’s degree in music education at the University of Georgia and for her master’s degree in music composition at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has had compositions performed around North America and in Europe. This includes her piece for piano, Shake the Earth, which was performed in Morehead, Kentucky at Morehead State University’s Contemporary Piano Festival, along with being performed in Eugene, Oregon at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium. Recently Lauren was a music theory and composition teaching artist for the Atlanta Music Project, and she is currently an educational research assistant in music technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Along with composing Lauren enjoys playing clarinet and piano, along with spending time in nature, and spending time with family and friends. back to program
Elliott Lupp is a composer, improvisor, visual artist, and sound designer whose work often invokes images of the distorted, chaotic, visceral, and absurd. This aesthetic approach as it relates to both acoustic and electroacoustic composition has led to a body of work that, at the root of its construction, focuses on the manipulation of noise, extreme gesture, shifting timbre, and performer/computer improvisation as core elements. Elliott has received a number of awards and honors for his work, including a 2019 SEAMUS/ASCAP Commission, the 2019 Franklin G. Fisk Composition Award for Chamber Music, and Departmental and All-University awards in Graduate Research and Creative Scholarship. He completed his BM at Columbia College Chicago, his MM at Western Michigan University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in composition and music technology at Northwestern University. back to program
[]\6][]\][2][]\][][4\] (six-two-four) is the musical product of a year that brought with it a number of good, bad, but simultaneously fast psychological, physical, and artistic changes to my both my personal and professional life. Throughout the creation of the piece, I developed a case of anxiety and a severe case of excoriation disorder, a disorder that is characterized by incessantly and compulsively picking at one's own skin which results in drawing blood, scarring, and significant disruption in one's life. In my case, it is my scalp and face. This was most likely a result of a failed attempt to quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey, combined with a number of personal and world events that 2020 has brought with it.
Musically speaking, the piece is a combination of overlapping acoustic and electroacoustic material inspired by watching, listening to, and learning from the SPLICE ensemble over the last few years, combined with other sonic material inspired by the subjects discussed above. The result is a virtuosic piece that, in a way, attempts to sonically mirror my recent experiences with anxiety and excoriation disorder.
The number 624 is not meant to have any literal correlation to the structure/materials of the composition. Rather, the number is simply the street address for a childhood home that brings with it strong and oftentimes conflicting emotions/formative memories that pertain to harsh change, comforting stability, but in most ways, simpler times. back to program