Post-Concert Hang
The O Pub
10 W Park Pl, Oxford, Ohio 45056
https://www.facebook.com/OPubOxford/
Concert 1 Program
Michael Flynn : Tourmaline
Grace Cross, harp
Max Hundeshausen : (this sentence here fills the) AIR
Emily Thorner, soprano
Alex Lough & Mark Micchelli : Improvisation
Alex Lough, electronics; Mark Micchelli, piano and electronics
Peter Van Zandt Lane : Hydromancer
Peter Van Zandt Lane, bassoon
Yuqian Yang : Ice and Fire
Yuqian Yang, piano
Christopher Biggs : Imprints in Time
Noa Even, saxophone
Gemma Peacocke : In a Snowstorm of Moths
Adrianne Munden-Dixon, violin
Notes
Michael Flynn : TourmalineTourmaline is a gemstone that exists in a wide variety of colors, from cloudy grey-black to a bright blue-to-pink gradient. The more colorful varieties of the mineral were the inspiration point for this piece, which features electronic sounds evocative of the sparkling, tactile nature of gemstones. This bright and colorful imagery is reflected in the harp, whose dance-like rhythms and pop-music- inflected harmonies are sonically augmented (you might even say “bedazzled”) by the electronics, creating a shimmering super- instrument. The piece begins sparsely, gradually building a single, rapidly arpeggiating harmony. This is followed by a series of asymmetrical grooves featuring energetic rhythmic interplay between the harp and the electronics. The piece culminates in an extended section featuring cascading harp-glissandi augmented by the electronics, evoking a massive shower of sparkling gemstones. back to program
Max Hundeshausen : (this sentence here fills the) AIR
STATE OF BEING is a touring concert experience for voice and (mostly) electronics featuring commissions by composers from the United States, UK, Germany, and Norway. This music deals with themes of looking within, illusion, distortion, the inner-most self, and the challenge of questioning what is real vs. what is imaginary. The music follows the journey of one woman questioning and exploring her own reality, both within herself and through the stories of others. As a result, the audience is brought into a unique sound world and new reality, where they must also begin to question their own perspectives about life both in terms of what they see on the outside, and who they are internally. The vocalist will primarily be singing with electronics, although one piece will have her accompany herself on music box, which evokes a certain nostalgia, bringing her back to herself. The programmed pieces range from the journey of the soul to looking at reality through the perspective of another. ""What do we discover if we look at life from a new angle?"" ""What happens if we look more deeply within ourselves than we have before?"" Experience says that if you flip a coin, there are only two possibilities, but, what if the coin never comes down at all? (this sentence here fills the) AIR is one piece from the rotating set of STATE OF BEING and explores what happens if you explore the deepest part of who you are. It contains five small sections which take us from the opening preparation and meditation and through the finished act of exploring our truth. Through the process of this internal searching, the singer comes across the darkest parts of herself which she then must face. 99% of the electronics come from recordings of the vocalist, and we continue to explore distortion and questioning what is real while we can’t always tell what comes from electronics and what comes from the vocalist, nor when can we be sure what is real from what discovers, or if it is only real to her. back to program
Alex Lough & Mark Micchelli : Improvisation
Driven by a shared passion for adventurous music for piano and electronics, Alex Lough and Mark Micchelli founded Teeth and Metals in early 2017. The duo performs fully-notated works, completely improvised works, and everything in between; their repertoire is unified by the philosophy that electronicist and the pianist be equal partners in every performance. In this performance, Alex and Mark will draw on their unique improvisatory language, involving a set of predetermined aural cues, as well as a gradual breaking down of the barrier between piano sounds and electronic ones. back to program
Peter Van Zandt Lane : Hydromancer Hydromancer (2011) is the second in a set of four pieces for bassoon and electronics (Manteia: Aeromancer, Hydromancer, Pyromancer, and Chronomancer). Each interpolates processed sounds of the instrument with other ‘elemental’ samples. Some these elements tap in to tried-and-true sampling tropes in the electroacoustic tradition. Hydromancer makes use of the water droplet sample, giving a nod to the piece that started it all, Hugh LeCaine’s Dripsody (1955). All of the pieces in Manteia, in some way, grapple with my compositional impulse to embrace the influence of EDM, while also exploring the timbral, expressive, and virtuosic capabilities of the bassoon as a solo instrument in an electroacoustic setting. back to program
Yuqian Yang : Ice and Fire
This piece was inspired by a trip to New York City during winter of 2012. There is a big contrast between wealthy and poor in New York City. The piece also Inspired by the poem Fire and Ice. The first section will describe Ice. The second section will describe fire. This piece will answer the question of “how the world will end.” Fire and Ice "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for Destruction ice is also great and would suffice." -Robert Frost back to program
Christopher Biggs : Imprints in Time
Imprints in Time for alto saxophone, thunder tube, and computer was written for and is dedicated to a consortium of saxophonists consisting of Noa Even, Drew Whiting, Zach Shemon, Henning Schröder, and Justin Massey. The work abstractly reflects on how people are connected through their interactions. The title comes from an article by Michael Tze-Sung Longnecker that posits that we can think of objects as creating a curve in time, just as objects curve space, and he refers to these curves as imprints in time. I imagined personal interactions as having an analogous mass- energy to objects and that interactions imprint on our personal histories similar to how objects bend space and possibly time. The audio consists of three, interactive sonic layers – the saxophone, live processing of the saxophone, and fixed media files. The visuals for the work are generated in real time: the energy in the low, mid, and high frequency regions of the three audio layers is extracted and mapped to control the parameters of visual events. back to program
Gemma Peacocke : In a Snowstorm of Moths
Lullabies are private songs between mothers and babies, yet in every culture there are well-known, enduring, lullabies that are shared generation after generation, some for hundreds of years. There is a darkness to many lullabies- with their mournful melodies and macabre lyrics- and a shared understanding between women, perhaps, that in this private space it is possible to speak of the unspeakable, "to sing the unsung". back to program
Bios
Michael Flynn is a composer of acoustic and electronic music whose works present familiar musical ideas in inventive sonic and structural contexts. To this end, his music juxtaposes timbral exploration and metric complexity with stylistically referential harmony and beat-driven groove. During the 2018-19 school year, Michael held a part-time faculty position at Western Michigan University, teaching courses in music theory and electronic music. Currently, he is pursuing a DMA in composition at the University of Georgia, studying under Dr. Emily Koh. back to programGrace Cross is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in harp performance under Kathy Kienzle at the University of Minnesota, exploring psychology’s function in pedagogy and contemporary arts’ role in community engagement. Ms. Cross co-founded the Achelois Collective: an organization dedicated to opening up creative involvement in contemporary arts to local communities. After training at SPLICE Institute and the Fresh Inc. Festival, she collaborates with current composers, offering harp composition seminars throughout the country. Before relocating to Minneapolis, Ms. Cross studied with Yolanda Kondonassis at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received a Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, sharpening her performance and comparing pedagogy and psychology in an interdepartmental study. Additionally, she was principal harpist of the Tuscarawas Philharmonic and performed as guest principal with the Akron Symphony Orchestra, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and Blue Streak Ensemble. back to program
International "ultra-soprano" (Second Inversion, WA, USA) and "new music rising star," (The Stranger, WA, USA) Emily Thorner is known known for her unusual command of stratospheric high notes and fearless virtuosity. Emily Thorner aims to push the limits of what is vocally possible and bend, reshape, and change the way that the voice is considered an instrument. Recent and upcoming engagements include: Guerilla Opera on Navona Records, Boston Musica Viva, Bang on a Can (USA), Acht Brücken Festival (Germany), Britten-Pears Young Artist Festival (UK) as the first soprano chosen in 20 years for the new music program, Hans Zimmer Live Tour (USA), Chorwerk Ruhr with the Duisberg Philharmonic for the The Ruhrtriennale Festival (Germany), a solo and orchestra performance in the Aldeburgh Festival (UK), and the Soprano Soloist in Hotel Paradiso (Italy) conducted by Clement Power. An advocate for promoting the works of living composers, she is frequently sought-after for world premieres. back to program
Alex Lough is a composer, performer, and multimedia sound artist. His work focuses on implementing experimental technology in order to discover new performance contexts with particular attention given to the body and the physicality of sound. His research is primarily concerned with the new taxonomic distinction of "performed electronics" and embodied performance practices as an electronicist. He is currently a PhD candidate at UC Irvine in the new Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program where he studies with Mari Kimura, Nicole Mitchell, Simon Penny, and Chris Dobrian. back to program
Mark Micchelli (b. 1991) is a pianist-composer equally active in the fields of jazz and new music. He is a member of the piano-electronics duo Teeth and Metals, which has performed a variety of fully-composed and freely improvised works throughout the United States and internationally. Mark’s compositions have been featured at ICMC, the Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Oh My Ears Festival, and New Music on the Point; he also also performed other people’s compositions at the SPLICE Institute and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Mark is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where he splits his time between the Jazz Studies and Composition/Theory departments. back to program
Peter Van Zandt Lane is a recipient of a 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2017 Aaron Copland House Award, and a 2015 Composers Now residency at the Pocantico Center. Other composer residencies include MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He has been commissioned twice by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition (2011 and 2014), the Atlanta Chamber Players, American Chamber Winds for a concerto for trombonist Joseph Alessi, the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley College, the Sydney Conservatorium Wind Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Emory Wind Ensemble, and Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. His music has been played by International Contemporary Ensemble, New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cleveland Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, Talea Ensemble, Freon Ensemble (Rome), and Triton Brass. He is currently composition faculty at the University of Georgia. back to program
Yuqian Yang is a DMA student in composition at the University of Arizona. She received a B.A. from the China Conservatory of Music and a M.M. from the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, where she was a member of Project 21. Her teachers have included Jia Guoping, Quan Jihao, Edward Knight, Daniel Asia, Kay He and Lendell Black. Her work, which range from solo pieces to large-scale works for orchestra, earned third prize in the New Generation Contest in 2010. Important previous performances include White Sands and White Snow for Orchestra (2019), Tornado (2017-18), String Quartet (2015), DuBa (2015), the Symphony No. 1 (2014), “Farewell My Concubine” (2013), and Ice and Fire in 2013. back to program
Christopher Biggs is a composer and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs’ recent projects focus on integrating live instrumental performance with interactive audiovisual media. back to program
Noa Even is a Cleveland-based saxophonist dedicated to sparking deeper interest in the arts of today through the performance of contemporary music. She is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP), a non-profit organization aimed at strengthening the artistic engagement of the Northeast Ohio community by championing the creation and performance of new music. back to program
Adrianne Munden-Dixon is a New York City-based violinist praised for her “animated and driven” performances (Connect Savannah). She is a founding member of Desdemona (“an excellent young quartet”, The New Yorker) and has appeared recently as a soloist and chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Mass MoCA, and Princeton University. As an active performer of new music, Adrianne has commissioned and premiered works by Gemma Peacocke, Peter Kramer, and Finola Merivale. back to program
Gemma Peacocke is a US-based composer from New Zealand. She combines acoustic instruments and voices with electronics, and her work often has a sociopolitical focus. Her multimedia song cycle, Waves + Lines, premiered in June 2017 at Roulette Intermedium with the support of a commission from the Jerome L Green Foundation. A 2018 finalist for the Beth Morrison Next Generation Project, a 2018 Eighth Blackbird Lab composition fellow, and Mizzou International Composers’ Festival composition fellow, Gemma was the Creative New Zealand Edwin Carr Scholar for 2014 and 2015 and a 2015 Bang on a Can composition fellow. She is currently a Mark Nelson Ph.D. Fellow in composition at Princeton University. back to program
Max-Lukas Hundelshausen (b. 1991 in Germany) is a tonmeister, sound director and composer. After finishing his precollege studies, he continued to study at the Erich-Thienhaus-Institute at Hochschule für Musik Detmold with Minas Borboudakis, Fabien Lévy, Mauro Lanza, Carola Bauckholt and Gilbert Nouno. After his Master’s degree he continued to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe in 2018. In 2019 he started writing a doctoral thesis in musicology regarding conservation techniques for electronic music. To widen his perspective he visited masterclasses with Brian Ferneyhough, George Aperghis, Johannes Kreidler, Hans Tutschku and many more. Max received multiple regional, national and international awards for his compositions, including the audience’s and jury’s Carl-Orff-Awards, the ad libitum Award, the federal award for composition (five times) and the Young Talents’ Award issued by the Berlin Philharmonics. Additionaly, he is the founder of Studio Maximedes in the region of Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
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