SPLICE Institute 2025 Participant Concert 3 Program
Saturday June 28, 2025
11:00am EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Bianca Quigley : risk information
Makayla Rasmussen, Bassoon + Camera processing + CRT TVS
JJ Bushman : Starlorn
JJ Bushman, Piano + Spoken Word
Matthew Yohn : Fnord
Matthew Yohn, Voice
Sam Young : REDIVIDER
Alexis Aguilar, Sax
Collin McEneaney : save the birds
Collin McEneaney, Found Objects
Jacob Frost : ACME
Dan Galow, sax
Lucy Shirley : Footprints in the Concrete
Niayesh Javaheri, piano
Caroline Flynn : Pedestal
Stephanie Bloch, Percussion
Notes
Bianca Quigley : risk information
risk information is about the weight of a decision and the voyeuristic urge to observe the consequences. Written for Bassoon and TVs, the piece investigates the space where they timbrally converge.
JJ Bushman : Starlorn
Starlorn is a piece for solo piano and live, interactive electronics, written to be interpreted differently by any performer making each performance entirely unique. The piece is comprised of different short patterns that alternate between the left and right hand of the piano. These patterns are repeated any amount of times that the performer choses. Once the performer moves on new sounds and patterns come into view, widening the quality of sound, and the process is repeated. As new patterns emerge, the patterns are start to be filled with empty space, until there is nothing at all. This opening of sound is meant to mirror the gradual introduction of stars into our sky as night falls. The night sky fills to the brim with stars as the night goes on and eventually the process reverses. I find myself during this very special time of the night feeling completely content in my solitude welcoming the sun and saying goodbye to the beauty the stars shared with me, excited for the day but missing the tranquility the night brought me.
Matthew Yohn : Fnord
Fnord explores the sonic convolving of performance and space. In many cases performers will learn a score and assiduously rehearse to attain a virtuosic mastery of the piece; after the truck gets unloaded, sound engineers will spend time intricately arraying, timing, and tuning the rig for that day’s show. The musical piece or the loudspeaker system may each come to be thought of as a discrete module that can be deployed from day to day, place to place, with infinite identical repeatability. Often overlooked is that the ROOM, each room, is part of the day’s performance. A performance of Le Sacre du printemps may be immaculately prepared, but the attacks will smear into ear mud if the room happens to be a cathedral; the loudspeaker system that sounded fantastic at an outdoor show last night will make a stalwart heart weep tonight at a show in the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. I have wept there more than once. Fnord is the next station stop on my journey to explore how every room can be celebrated as a contributing member of the performance ensemble rather than merely suffered as a detrimental influence. Instead of slowing a tempo to open up musical attacks, or pretending that “mixing over the reverb” is actually possible, in a performance of Fnord, the vocalist will wander the room seeking spectral nodes and reverberant niches to highlight with improvised singing. A body-worn contact microphone and a room mounted reference microphone will provide audio streams to maxMSP; the patch is designed to use data derived from a spectral analysis from the room microphone to drive processing on the vocal audio. To allow some serendipitous side trips along the way, a choir folder, on which is mounted an array of motion sensors, will be held and wafted around a bit to provide more processing data to maxMSP for use in synthesis and processing. It is also not inconvenient that the folder means I don’t need to memorize the texts I choose……
Sam Young : REDIVIDER
REDIVIDER, for alto saxophone and electronics, is a palindromic piece. The first and last sections are mirror images of each other, i.e., the last section is the first section played backwards, with only a few changes to articulations. The middle section—made up of short melodic fragments drawn from the opening section—is aleatoric and to be played freely, with decisions about tempo, phrasing, articulation, and dynamics left to the performer. The electronic thread of the piece weaves in randomly triggered saxophone samples that create a sonic backdrop, chaotic in the faster moving exterior sections, and slow and hazy in the middle, more introspective section. The title of the piece, itself a palindrome, comes from the literary concept of a word or phrase that can be parsed in multiple ways.
Collin McEneaney : save the birds
I've recently taken up the hobby of birdwatching. While on a walk at a wildlife refuge, I stood and listened to the variety of birds around me, absorbing every tone and rhythm naturally produced by their unique calls. It's incredibly peaceful and sonically satisfying. However, these kinds of experiences are being threatened by oligarchs and politicians who are systematically destroying our planet and defunding organizations that are protecting our parks and wildlife. Our parks and wildlife are one of the few remaining precious things to me in this country by now and I hope we can protect them. (All bird sounds in this piece are from isolated recordings of the ones I heard at the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in Northwest Ohio).
Jacob Frost : ACME
Here at ACME™ Corporation it is our pleasure to meet all your audio processing needs! We pride ourselves on our quality products, built to last and made by hand right here in the United States of America! Upgrade your effects rig TODAY with an ACME™ MAX PATCH perfectly designed to do EVERYTHING you could EVER want a Max patch to do! Get your groove on with our ACME™ Looper, lag-free and meticulously quantized to synchronize to your click track! Soar into the clouds of sonic bliss on top of our ACME™ Reverb, perfect to subtly enhance your sound in ways the audience won’t even notice! Playing through an ACME™ Harmonizer is like having an on-demand duet partner, which we PROMISE will not gain sentience and ruin your set purely out of spite. With ACME™ by your side, you can be ABSOLUTELY sure that NOTHING will go terribly, horribly wrong. That’s the ACME™ Guarantee!
Lucy Shirley : Footprints in the Concrete
The inspiration for Footprints in the Concrete comes from a recent walk I took where I stepped over a sidewalk of freshly set concrete. The pavement's surface was perfectly smooth, save for a set of tiny paw prints where a small critter had made its mark overnight. This piece depicts the scurry of little feet, running, tripping, gliding, and jumping in the pursuit of new paths. The musical material is also inspired in part by Debussy's Footprints in the Snow, with the word "concrete" doubling as a silly pun alluding to 20th century musique concrète.
Caroline Flynn : Pedestal
The pedestal is a cage.
Bios
Alexis (Lexie) Aguilar is a saxophonist currently based in the Twin Cities. In addition to her current studies, pursuing a DMA in saxophone performance at the University of Minnesota, she teaches as an adjunct professor of saxophone at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota as well as privately in the community. Lexie enjoys being an active member of her music communities, and has performed with the Minneapolis Orchestra, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, at North American Saxophone Alliance Regional Conferences, and at the Iowa Saxophone Unite Conferences. Additionally, she loves working with the University of Minnesota’s New Music Ensemble, both as a performer and administrator. Previously, Lexie received a Masters in Music from the New England Conservatory under Ken Radnofsky, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in both French and Saxophone performance at Augustana College, under Dr. Randall Hall.
Stephanie Bloch is a percussionist who came from Latino family who moved from Venezuela to Miami, Florida. Music runs in her family’s bloodline and has always been by her side.
Stephanie is now studying at Oberlin Conservatory studying with Ross Karre, She graduated from Interlochen under Keith Aleo’s teaching. She has performed with many ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic; So Percussion Institute; NYU’s Sandbox Percussion Seminar; Juilliard's Summer Percussion Seminar; and New World, Interlochen, and Oberlin’s ensembles.
Stephanie also studies electronic/acoustic composition and conducting. She’s currently working with Coral Morphologic to write music for a film about the coral life in Miami. Additionally, she’s been chosen to become musical director for musicals in her first and second years at Oberlin. Her goal is to continue pursuing music and inspire others by sharing her and others' art in the form of music and other interdisciplinary media.
JJ Bushman is a composer, pianist, audio engineer, and educator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who excels in writing in various different styles for various different ensembles. He graduated with a bachelors degree in Music Composition from the Peck School of the Arts at UW-Milwaukee. His music serves to share stories of people, things and places, draw attention to these and preserve them. His goal is to provoke the minds of his audience and inspire others towards thinking inwardly about the life they live, the life others live and the world they find themselves in. He hopes to get his audience to appreciate nature and the small things that may go unnoticed around them and pursue community in as many aspects as possible. As a composer he has attended the Brevard Music Institute for Composition, won the Flow Project and written over 40 works.
Caroline Flynn is a composer, songwriter, and performer currently living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her work, while covering a variety of genres and styles, typically has an emphasis on voice and text, glitch, and feelings of uncanny valley that result from the combination of natural and artificial aural elements. Having earned both a B.A. in creative technologies in music and a B.S. in psychology from Virginia Tech, Caroline integrates this academic background to create music that is concerned with human perception, assumptions, reactions, and emotions. Caroline is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Composition, as well as teaching in the Composition and Multimedia Arts Technology departments, at Western Michigan University.
Jacob’s music is steeped in paradox and mystery, the horror and the ecstasy of human experiences of God. Described as “unpleasant but masterful” (Victor Zheng), his compositions wrestle improvisatory gestures from disparate musical traditions into ironic relationships within dramatic structures. Jacob has received commissions from organizations like Opera on Tap – Oklahoma City and the University of Oklahoma Theatre. His music has been performed at national and international festivals like ICMC, New Music Gathering, and NYCEMF. Jacob is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota, where he studies with Sivan Cohen Elias. He earned his Master’s in Music Composition from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied with Marvin Lamb and Konstantinos Karathanasis, and his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Drury University, where he studied with Carlyle Sharpe. In addition to composing, Jacob maintains an active schedule as a teacher, performer, and arts administrator.
Dan Galow's work as an artist and arts administrator stems from a lifelong curiosity and commitment to uplifting others. Exploring new frontiers of sound through chamber music, improvisation, and experiments with modular synthesizers, he is equally comfortable working with classically trained musicians as he is collaborating with noise artists or avant-metal bands. He primarily derives inspiration from literature, poetry, movies, and visual art. Dan holds degrees from The College of New Jersey and Baruch College; he studied saxophone with Kathleen Mitchell and composition with Dr. Robert Young McMahan. When he is not involved with his work as an artist or arts administrator, he enjoys chess, no-limit Texas hold 'em, and wine.
Niayesh Javaheri is a pianist and educator based in Bowling Green, OH, currently pursuing her DMA in contemporary music with Dr. Solungga Liu. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across Iran, Europe, and the US, and has premiered and recorded numerous works, including a piece featured on the album Contemporary Music in Iran. Her performances include the MACCM New Music Festival, NUNC! 6, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, Kunstkreis C Festival, and Fajr International Festival. She received an honorable mention in the Donna Turner Smith Piano Competition in Oklahoma, second prize in the solo section of the Third Biennial of Piano in Tehran, and an honorable mention in its chamber music section. Niayesh earned her MMus in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma and her BMus from the Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Collin McEneaney is a composer and percussionist based in Toledo, Ohio. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in music composition at Bowling Green State University and received his bachelor’s at Baylor University. His music is driven by strong social, political and artistic convictions, functioning as a form of protest and advocacy through sonic experimentation and challenging dominant narratives. Alongside music, Collin explores various artforms with the aim of cultivating a multidisciplinary practice.
Bianca Quigley is an award-winning new music composer and talented violist based in Baltimore. With a decade-long background in solo performance, orchestral music, and chamber ensembles, she actively participates in improvisation and new music performance. Bianca is currently a member of the new music group Bent Wrench, an ensemble dedicated to commissioning works from both emerging and established composers. Within the group, she alternates between playing electronics and viola.
Bianca's artistic identity is largely influenced by electroacoustic music. Her music explores the distinctions between acoustic and electronic sound, often blurring the lines between them. She is committed to evolving the relationship between performer and machine, and she’s inspired by the unique interactions that develop when human expression meets technological innovation.
Bianca has had the opportunity to work with Yarn/Wire in June 2023 and recently collaborated with JACK Quartet in February 2024. Her work was performed by members of Montreal-based ensembles Quasar and Paramirabo in June 2024, and she had her LA premiere in August with the Brightwork Ensemble.
Bianca holds an HBA in viola performance and composition from Westminster University and recently earned her Master of Music in composition from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins, studying under Sky Macklay.
Makayla Rasmussen is a devoted performer and educator with a passion for new music and commissioning new chamber works for bassoon. She frequently performs with orchestras around the midwest including the Champaign-Urbana Symphony, Illinois Symphony, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, and the LaCrosse Symphony. As a champion for new chamber works for bassoon, Makayla performed three new works for bassoon and horn at the 2025 International Double Reed Society Conference.
She holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Northern Iowa and a Master of Music from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Makayla is attending Louisiana State University to pursue a Doctor of Musical Arts studying with Nanci Belmont. Her former teachers include Ben Roidl-Ward, Marcia Martin, Cayla Bellamy, and Josh Carlo.
Lucy Shirley's works are polystylistic and playful, often focusing on personal experiences and aspects of the human voice. Her earliest musical influences were gleaned from long car rides listening to her mom’s mixtapes of showtunes and classic Americana, and she often finds herself still incorporating aspects of theatricality and folk melody into her current music-making. Shirley’s awards include IAWM’s 2024 Call for Scores, SOLI Chamber Ensemble’s 2024 30x30x30 Project, and a 2022 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She has worked with artists such as the JACK Quartet, the Imani Winds, The Crossing, the mdi ensemble, the Mammoth Trio, Carrie Koffman, LIGAMENT, and Don-Paul Kahl. Shirley is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa.
A professor once told the undergraduate Matthew Yohn, “You are a generalist, and generalists go nowhere.” So wrong; generalists clearly get to go to Kalamazoo. Matthew has generalized, onstage and backstage, but within a focused exploration of sound. Early experience in a touring boychoir gave him a taste for making vocal sounds onstage; he eventually completed a Master of Music degree which enabled him to suffer through a teeny tiny opera “career.” Meanwhile, his offstage self had been pursuing audio engineering and sound design. Mixing many bands in many rooms whilst being pummeled by many decibels for many hours has been a bit of a theme, as has mixing theater and corporate events. Theater sound design and audio system design and installation have offered opportunities for a more considered approach to sonic endeavors. Matthew recently completed an MFA in Sonic Arts at Brooklyn College, just to keep things…..general.
Composer Sam Young’s work explores the soundscapes of both natural and urban environments, and ranges from music for wind ensemble and chamber groups to experimental electronic music and synth pop. He has been a featured composer at festivals such as the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, California Summer Music, and the International Summer Academy of Music in Germany, and his music has been performed by artists such as Jose Menor, wild Up!, Alaria Chamber Ensemble, and the Adelaide Wind Ensemble. An avid collaborator, he often works across disciplines with choreographers, filmmakers, and animators to create compelling multimedia experiences.
Before he began composing, Sam enjoyed a career as a professional drummer, performing and recording with bands Devotchka and the Samples. Drawing on his experience as a drummer, he creates music that is rhythmically driven and spacious in texture, finding intersections between popular and classical music traditions.