SPLICE Institute 2021 Concert 1 Program
featuring guest ensemble
Popebama
Monday June 28, 2021
7:30pm EDT
https://youtu.be/y6kmgTcp4tU
Erin Rogers : Light-On-Light (2018)
Jenna Lyle : Technically, yes (2018)
Alex Christie : Operating Manual (3rd ed.) (2021), world premiere
Chin Ting Chan : Fuse (I) (2019)
Christopher Biggs : an infinite sea of particles (2019), world premiere
Notes
Erin Rogers : Light-On-LightLight-On-Light is a journey through time and transport. An immersive atmosphere of mass transit is disrupted by dialogue, bright lights and sounds of moving trains. At times, both performers execute hybrid vocal techniques through-the-saxophone, delivering text, and triggering electronics with midi instruments, fx pedals, and close-mic’d “found” percussion. back to program
Jenna Lyle : Technically, yes
Moving between states of inquiry, action, and exchange, Erin and Dennis navigate the apparatus of a single instrument with multiple components and bodies. The interconnectedness of the instrument's circuitry is paralleled in the duo's persistent, albeit unintelligible conversation with the audience, with each other, and with the ethereal, ever-present character of invited feedback.
back to program
Popebama : Showdown
Showdown is a Rogers-and-Sullivan collaborative special, based on a multi-task competition prompted by famous sports calls. Levy Lorenzo's MaxMSP controlled joystick instrument, the Modified Attack, is used to manipulate the sample rate of the sportscasters voices. Speech rhythm of the sportscasts are transcribed and are applied as the rhythmic backdrop of the instrumental material. Showdown encourages ample space for performer interpretation and offerings. back to program
Alex Christie : Operating Manual (3rd ed.)
Excerpt from Operating Manual (3rd ed.): “When presented with abandoned technology, the user must reconfigure their relationship with the equipment in order to allow it to function and speak in its native mode. This process takes time and patience and a willingness to relinquish control. The technology will communicate more clearly once it is thoroughly understood on its own terms. Delays in communication between users are inevitable. Study the processes that drive inputs and outputs. Actuate transmissions. Open channels for reception. Allow for interventions from all actors. Do not assume a syntax. When engaged with in these ways, the equipment will operate as intended and broadcast its multiple modes of existence into multiple spaces.”
Operating Manual (3rd ed.) was developed by The Institute for Reconfigured Intervention and Spatial Modalities (TIRISM). The exact history of the manual is unclear. It seems to have been written by multiple authors over the span of multiple decades. Eventually, the document was abandoned and has been left permanently unfinished.
TIRISM itself seems to have disappeared from the field, most likely due to lack of funding and the alienating nature of its projects. TIRISM’s mission was always a bit unclear, shrouded in impenetrable language that frequently felt like intentional misdirection. Operating Manual (3rd ed.) is the perfect example of this lack of clarity. It contains unlabeled diagrams that could represent either new technologies or theoretical concepts. It’s technical descriptions are interrupted by poetic musings. It explains incredibly specific maintenance procedures but provides no context for what is being maintained. In the end, both TIRISM and Operating Manual (3rd ed.) seem primarily concerned with communication within what the manual refers to as “a constellation of multiplicities”. back to program
Chin Ting Chan : Fuse (I)
Commissioned by and written for Popebama (Erin Rogers, saxophone; Dennis Sullivan, percussion), fuse is a controlled aleatory composition that explores the idea of fusing different timbral materials into one entity. The performers are given non-pitched, notational but sometimes graphical rhythmic guidance in a timed improvisation. They are also given the freedom to choose the specific saxophone and percussion instruments, while amplification or live electronics can be added as an augmentation as well. Each performing duo will eventually find their own way to “fuse” the materials. back to program
Christopher Biggs : an infinite sea of particles
an infinite sea of particles for tenor saxophone, percussion, and live electronics was written for and is dedicated to Popebama (Erin Rogers and Denis Sullivan). The work draws inspiration from the concept that there is an infinite sea of particles with negative energy. back to program
Bios
Popebama
Erin Rogers and Dennis SullivanPopebama is a New York-based experimental duo that focuses on exciting performances of unconventional works. Described as “Noisily Virtuosic” (clevelandclassical.com), Erin Rogers (saxophone) and Dennis Sullivan (percussion) are composer-performers who apply text, electronics, and high-energy instrumental writing to freshly-squeezed sounds.
Erin Rogers (b. 1980) is a saxophonist and composer based in New York City. She is co-artistic director and core member of thingNY, Popebama, New Thread Quartet and Hypercube. Her music has been performed at the Prototype, Ecstatic, and MATA Festivals (NYC), Celebrity Series (Boston), Edmonton Fringe Festival, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), and NYmusikk Bergen (Norway). Rogers is a member of WildUp and performs with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, and Wet Ink. She is a D’Addario Woodwinds Performing Artist and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Teaching Artist. Rogers can be heard on New Focus Recordings, New World Records, Edition Wandelweiser, Gold Bolus, Love Records, New Amsterdam, and Relative Pitch labels. back to program
Born in Akron, Ohio, Dennis K. Sullivan II is a percussionist and composer based in Queens NY. Dennis explores cross-genre coalescence between acoustic, electronic and timbral based noise music. As a percussionist, Dennis is a founding member of the performance duo, Radical 2 with percussionist/engineer, Levy Lorenzo and Popebama, a high octane experimental percussion/saxophone duo with composer/saxophonist Erin Rogers. In addition, Dennis has shared the stage with ICE, Ensemble ECCE, Ensemble Court Circuit, Either/Or, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Ensemble Mise-en and others. As an improviser he shares the stage with artists such as Brandon Lopez, Levy Lorenzo and Peter Evans. His compositions have recently been featured on the International Contemporary Ensemble's OpenICE series, SPLICE Festival, Ball State Festival of New Music, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, Times Two, VU Symposium and the North American Saxophone Alliance National Convention. Upcoming commissions/performances include works for the New Thread saxophone quartet, The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire and the Decoder Ensemble (Hamburg, DE) as well as a European tour with Popebama. Dennis holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) from Stony Brook University. He currently serves as adjunct professor of percussion and director of the wind ensemble at Adelphi University. back to program
Composer, performer, and installation-builder, Jenna Lyle (b. 1984) has worked with various ensembles and specialized in the performance of works by living composers. She has presented her own works as well as those of her colleagues throughout the U.S. and abroad, with performances recently by Spektral Quartet, Mocrep, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Loadbang, D U C K R U B B E R, and The Riot Ensemble, of London. As a performer, Lyle takes on long-term collaborations drawing upon her background in theater and vocal performance. Her latest projects include an international tour of choreographer Erica Mott and composer Ryan Ingebritsen's 3 Singers, a dance and multi-media opera; a collaborative duo work for bodies, voices, hanging speakers, and electronics with Australian mezzo Jessica Aszodi entitled Grafter; and a one-woman adaptation of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat. Lyle is also a member of the performance art ensemble Mocrep and a co-founder of Parlour Tapes+, a New Music cassette tape label and media/performance collective based in Chicago. She holds degrees in composition from Northwestern University (DMA), Cleveland State University (MM), and Birmingham-Southern College (BM) and curates and coordinates programming at The Arts Club of Chicago as Programs Manager.
As an artist, Lyle explores how the physical body, and in turn the culture in which it functions, adapts to its semiotic or "data-based" representation. Magnifying the relationship between sonic output and physical process and separating it from the second nature, she often places performers in physical arrangements that force a heightened awareness of body while they execute a set of instructions for sound production. Performer configurations may highlight interpersonal dynamics, the connection between a sonic object and movement, or the production of sound as contingent upon the perception of one's own bodily processes, among other things. As a result, movement and corpus become increasingly significant as musical material, fueling a discourse of movement as motive in Lyle's work. back to program
Alex Christie makes acoustic music, electronic music, and intermedia art in many forms. His work has been called “vibrant”, “interesting, I guess”, and responsible for “ruin[ing] my day”. He has collaborated with artists in a variety of fields and is particularly interested in the design of power structures, systems of interference, absurdist bureaucracy, and indeterminacy in composition. He is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. back to program
Hong Kong-American composer Chin Ting CHAN has been a fellow and guest composer at festivals such as IRCAM's ManiFeste (Paris, 2013/2018), the ISCM World Music Days Festival (Tongyeong, 2016; Tallinn, 2019), and UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (Tallinn, 2015). He has worked with ensembles such as Ensemble intercontemporain, ensemble mise-en, Ensemble Signal, eighth blackbird, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Mivos Quartet, with performances in more than twenty countries. His works are published with ABLAZE Records, Darling's Acoustical Delight, New Focus Recordings, PARMA Recordings, Phasma-Music, RMN Classical, BabelScores, SCI Journal of Music Scores, and Unfolding Music Publishing (ASCAP). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Ball State University. He holds a D.M.A. degree from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, as well as degrees from Bowling Green State University and San José State University. 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. Biggs is the Director of SPLICE Institute. His first album, Decade Zero, was released on Ravello Records in the fall of 2017. back to program