The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library and San Diego New Music present
A Festival of Modern Music featuring NOISE
June 13-16, 2007
The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library
1008 Wall St., La Jolla, California
Festival Program
Biographies
Tickets and Local information
Download program (16 pages, pdf)
KPBS 'These Days' Preview interview, June 6, 2007
San Diego Union Tribune Preview article June 10, 2007
Review by David Gregson in SanDiego.com, June 17, 2007
Live blogging articles by Cathy Robbins in VoiceOfSanDiego.org:
1. preview 2. opening night 3. open rehearsal 4. community workshop 5. Friday night 6. streetside concert 7. final concert
See pictures from the festival
FESTIVAL COMPOSERS
We are very excited to have many composers attending the festival, including Edward Top, Orlando Jacino Garcia, Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Matthew Burtner, Christopher Burns, Joseph Waters, Franklin Cox, and Christopher Adler.
Composers whose works will be featured in the festival include:
Winners of NOISE’s first annual international call for scores: Edward Top (Netherlands), Bill Ryan (USA), Orlando Jacinto Garcia (USA), Moiya Callahan (USA/Canada)
Emerging and San Diego-based composers: Sidney Marquez Boquiren (Philippines/USA), Christopher Burns (USA), Matthew Burtner (USA), Joseph Waters (USA), Jerod Sommerfeldt (USA), and NOISE composer-in-residence Christopher Adler (USA)
Modern masters: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Tom Johnson, Steve Reich, Joseph Celli, Michael Nyman, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Harvey Sollberger, Iannis Xenakis, George Hamilton Green and more
featured performers
NOISE (Lisa Cella, Colin McAllister, Morris Palter, Christopher Adler) and guests Mark Menzies, violin and Franklin Cox, cello
Wednesday, June 13
7:30 PM soundON openingCONCERT featuring NOISE and guest performers Mark Menzies and Franklin Cox
Petit Hommage à Jehan Alain, by Christopher Adler
Hunem-Iduhey, by Iannis Xenakis
Met him pike hoses, by Harvey Sollberger
Magnify, by Moiya Callahan (West coast premiere)
Ghosts of the Evening Tides, Joseph Waters
Blurred, by Bill Ryan (West coast premiere)
Stride, by Jerod Sommerfeldt (West coast premiere)
Xylophone rags by George Hamilton Green
9:00 PM Opening reception
Thursday, June 14
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Performer’s Forum with NOISE percussionist Morris Palter
"Find It / Make It / Play It Percussion"
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Performer’s Forum with NOISE pianist and composer-in-residence Christopher Adler
“Composing for the Northeast Thai/Lao Mouth Organ, Khaen: the Ethics and Mechanics of Cross-cultural Creation”
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Composer’s Roundtable
Discussion and interaction with guest composers Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Edward Top, Christopher Burns, Matthew Burtner, Joseph Waters and NOISE composer-in-residence Christopher Adler
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM Open rehearsal with NOISE and guest performers
Gain insight into the process of learning new music when NOISE opens its rehearsal to the public. NOISE will work with guest composers in the preparation of their works, and rehearse other festival repertoire.
9:00 PM – 10:30 “chill-out ONE” Concert and wine reception
featuring a performance of Morton Feldman’s epic and contemplative Crippled Symmetry by NOISE
Friday, June 15
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Community new music workshop
NOISE members guide community members and students through the preparation of experimental and indeterminate compositions of the twentieth century, including experimental and unconventional works by composers such as John Cage, Earle Brown, Steve Reich, David Koblitz, Alvin Lucier, and others. Works will be performed on the soundON People’s Concert at 7:00 PM. Please note that all participants in the workshop should be available to participate in the evening performance.
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Performer’s Roundtable, discussion and interaction with members of NOISE and guest artists Mark Menzies and Franklin Cox
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM soundON People’s Concert
Community members join NOISE for the performance of experimental and indeterminate compositions prepared during the morning workshop. In addition, NOISE performs other experimental, minimalist and indeterminate works.
9:00 PM – 10:00 PM “chill-out TWO” Concert
Tom Johnson’s algorithmic and minimalist deconstruction of 1000 years of harmony, The Chord Catalogue, performed in a new arrangement by NOISE pianist Christopher Adler
Saturday, June 16
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Performer’s Forum with NOISE flutist Lisa Cella
“A low impact introduction to the extended language of the modern flute”
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Performer’s Forum with NOISE guitarist Colin McAllister
“Grammars of Creation: New Sights and Sounds for Guitar”
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM soundON streetsideCONCERT
NOISE takes new music to the streets with adventurous and wacky music for unconventional instruments. Compositions by Steve Reich, Joseph Celli, Michael Nyman, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Hugo Ball, Christian Bok, Charles Amirkhanian and more. (Location: Athenaeum vicinity. No charge for this event.)
soundONsale: New music CDs and scores by festival participants and much more, for sale at discount prices during the Streetside performance!
7:00 PM – 7:30 PM Pre-concert discussion with guest composers
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM soundON finaleCONCERT featuring NOISE and guest performers Mark Menzies and Franklin Cox
Four, by Edward Top (world premiere)
el silencio después de la lluvia, by Orland Jacinto Garcia (USA)
angel music, by Sidney Marquez Boquiren (world premiere)
Iris, by Christopher Adler (USA)
Snowprints, by Matthew Burtner
Tangle, by Christopher Burns
9:30 PM – 10:30 PM soundON finalePARTY
Composers
Sidney Marquez Boquiren (Philippines/USA)
Born in Manila, Philippines,Sidney Marquez Boquiren studied composition with Michael Schelle, Stephen Jaffe, and Scott Lindroth. His music has been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe, and USA, including at the Asian Composers League Festival in Manila, Philippines and twice at the Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Amsterdam. Past completed projects include commissions from the male vocal quintet ensemble amarcord (Leipzig, Germany), the instrumental quintet NOISE (San Diego, California), and the Scandinavian choral ensemble, Voces Nordicae (Stockholm, Sweden). Premieres scheduled for the spring of 2007 include commissions from the New York-based new music group Orchestra of Our Time, Tufts University New Music Ensemble, and Queens College Choirs. His next large-scale work is an evening-length staged production for Anne La Berge, Ayelet Harpaz, and members of Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), scored for amplified flutes, amplified voice, percussion ensemble, and electronics, to be premiered in 2008. He was recently awarded a STEIM Residency Project, to develop the electronics component of this composition and to work with musicians in Amsterdam. His arrangement of Three Philippine Folksongs for unaccompanied women’s choir has been selected for publication by Boosey and Hawkes. Sidney Marquez Boquiren is an Assistant Professor of Music at Adelphi University.
Christopher Burns (USA)
Christopher Burns composes chamber and electroacoustic music. His works explore simultaneity and multiplicity: textures and materials are layered one on top of another, creating a dense and energetic polyphony. Christopher’s work as a computer music researcher is a crucial influence: these pieces are written with pitch and rhythmic structures which are created and transformed using custom software. Beyond algorithmic composition, his research interests include the application and control of feedback in sound synthesis, and the study and preservation of sketch materials produced by electroacoustic composers.
Christopher teaches composition and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Previously, he served as the Technical Director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, after completing a doctorate in composition there in 2003. He has studied with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Jonathan Berger, Michael Tenzer, and Jan Radzynski.
Christopher is also active as a concert producer. He co-founded and produced the strictly Ballroom series at Stanford University, presenting 37 programs of contemporary music from 2000 to 2004. He is currently a co-director of the San Francisco-based sfSoundSeries, and he has recently launched the Unruly Music concert series in Milwaukee. These concerts are also an outlet for Christopher's interest in the realization of classic music with live electronic or mechanical components: recent projects include the creation and performance of new versions of works by Cage, Ligeti, Lucier, Nancarrow, and Stockhausen.
Matthew Burtner (USA)
Matthew Burtner’s music has been described by The Wire as “some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I’ve heard,” and 21st Century Music writes “There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive.” First prize winner in the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition, his music has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, American Music Center, Hultgren Biennial, and others. His music has been commissioned by Spectri Sonori , Musik i Nordland, Phyllis Bryn Julson and Mark Markham, the Peabody Trio, Augsburg Kulturburo der Stadt, Heidelberg Ministerium of Arts/ Trio Ascolto, and Ensemble Noise among others.
Burtner's instrumental and electroacoustic music explores ecoacoustics, interactive media, extended rhythmic, and noise-based musical systems. His music has been recorded for DACO (Germany), The WIRE (U.K.), Centaur Records (USA), Innova (USA), and the Euridice Label (Norway). Two solo CDs, Metasaxophone Colossus (2004) and Portals of Distortion (1999) are available from INNOVA Records. His original computer music research is presented regularly at international conferences, and has been published by journals such as Organized Sound, the Journal of New Music Research and the Leonardo Music Journal. He has been composer-in-residence at Musikene in San Sebastian, Banff Centre for the Arts, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and the IUA/Phonos Institute in Barcelona.
Burtner is currently Assistant Professor of composition and computer music at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center. A native of Alaska he studied philosophy, composition, saxophone and computer music at St. Johns College, Tulane University (BFA 1993), Iannis Xenakis's UPIC Studios, the Peabody Institute of JHU (MM 1997), and Stanford University's CCRMA (DMA 2002). At Stanford he studied and worked closely with Max Mathews, Jonathan Harvey, Brian Ferneyhough and Jon Berger. In 2005 he is an Invited Researcher at IRCAM in Paris, Artist in Residence at the Cite International des Arts, and Composer-in-Residence at Musikene.
Orlando Jacinto García (USA)
Through more than one hundred works composed for a wide range of performance genres, Orlando Jacinto García has established himself as an important figure in the new music world. The distinctive character of his music has been described as “time suspended- haunting sonic explorations” with “a certain tightness and rigor infrequently found in music of this type” - qualities he developed from his studies with Morton Feldman among others. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1954, Garcia migrated to the United States in 1961. In demand as a guest composer and lecturer at national and international festivals, he is the recipient of numerous honors and awards from a variety of organizations and cultural institutions, most recently including the Nuevas Resonancias, ACF Sonic Circuits, Salvatore Martirano, Bloch International Competition, and fellowships, residencies, and other awards from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, Dutka, and Cintas Foundations, as well as the State of Florida Council for the Arts. With performances in most of the major capitols of the world by numerous distinguished soloists, ensembles, and orchestras, his works are recorded on New Albion, O.O. Discs, CRI (Emergency Music and eXchange labels), Albany, North/South, CRS, Rugginenti, Capstone and Opus One Records and are available from Kallisti Music Press, the American Composers Alliance, BHE and North/South Editions. He is the founder and director of several international festivals including the New Music Miami Festival and the Music of the Americas Festival, as well as being the founder and artistic director of the NODUS Ensemble and the Florida International University (FIU) New Music Ensemble. Garcia is Professor of Music and director of the Composition Program for the School of Music at FIU.
Edward Top (Netherlands)
The music of Edward Top is characterized by extreme contrasts. His works the Stillpoint (1995) and Double Smooth Disaster (1996) are, for example, musical interpretations of an introverted dreamscape. On the other hand, his String Quartet No. 1 (1998) and Silk Execution (1999) for ensemble are raw and primeval, with an atmosphere of collective ecstasy. Top first explored the idea of placing these two elements alongside one another in the Overwhelming Blankness of the Ultimate Meaninglessness of Tragedy (1996) for soprano, actor and two ensembles. In this work, the two ensembles represent polar opposites. In the piano trio ...and he wept bitterly (2001) and Why Elsewhere? (2002) for chamber orchestra, he approaches this harsh black-against-white concept with more refinement, integrating the disparate sound colors without sacrificing the contrasts. This is also the case in his composition Marble Sparks (2004) for orchestra, a work with improvisational character.
Top won the 2004 Henriette Bosmans Prize during the Dutch Music Days 2004 for his work Marble Sparks, performed by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Eötvös. He also won first prize at the 2003 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition (University of Illinois , USA) for his String Quartet No. 1.
Edward Top graduated with honors (Composition Prize) from the Rotterdam Conservatoire in 1999. Alongside his composition studies with Peter-Jan Wagemans, he worked regularly with composer Klaas de Vries and also majored in violin. He has participated in masterclasses with Pierre Boulez (in 1995 with ‘The Stillpoint’), Luciano Berio, Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Eötvös and Paulheinz Dittrich.
Joseph Waters (USA)
Joseph Waters (b. 1952) is a member of the first generation of American classical composers who grew up playing in rock bands. Since childhood he has been intrigued by the confluence and tensions that bind the music of Europe and Africa. These frequently inspire his electro-acoustic compositions. His interests also include the investigation of physiological, sub-cultural pattern seeking mechanisms. He is working on a theory of cognition based on fractals and pattern recognition, with applications in music theory and composition.
Waters is the founder of NWEAMO (New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization). NWEAMO presents composers and musicians from around the world in concerts that unite the worlds of avant-garde classical and experimental electronica. He performs and composes for the Waters_Bluestone_Duel, a collaboration with percussionist Joel Bluestone that explores the combination of live electronics and percussion, as well as SWARMIUS the virtuoso interdisciplinary quartet in residence at San Diego State University.
His work has been performed at venues which include: Australasian Computer Music Conferences Melbourne & Perth (Australia), Beethoven-Haus (Bonn Germany), Bomb the Space Festival Wellington (New Zealand), Composer's Hall Moscow Conservatory (Russia), Festival Internacional Cervantino Guanajuato (Mexico), Hong Kong Cultural Center, Hungarian Radio hosted Budapest & Nadasdy Castle (Hungary), Ljubljana Cultural Center (Slovenia), Rosario & San Martin de los Andes (Argentina), SEAMS Fylkingen Stockholm (Sweden),SoHo Apple Store performance stage New York City, Southern Theater Minneapolis, Theater Kikker (Utrecht Netherlands), Tsing Hua University (Beijing China), UNAM (Mexico City), University of Cadiz & Conservatorio Superior de Musica Valencia (Spain), Univ of Chile (Santiago), Wellington (New Zealand), Venetto Jazz Festival & Acadamia di Canto (Venice Italy), Warsaw Electronic Festival (Poland), and other locations.
Waters studied composition at Yale University, the Universities of Oregon and Minnesota, as well as Stockholms Musikpedagogiska Institut. Primary teachers were Jacob Druckman, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds, Dominick Argento, and Martin Bresnick. Recordings are available on iTunes, as well as Albany Records and North Pacific Records.
Performers
Mark Menzies, violin
Residing in the United States since 1991, Mark Menzies has established an important, world-wide reputation as a new music violist and violinist. He has been described in a Los Angeles Times review, as an "extraordinary musician" and a "riveting violinist." At 39 years, his career as a viola and violin virtuoso, chamber musician and advocate of contemporary music, has seen performances in Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and across the United States, including a series of appearances at New York's Carnegie Hall. Mark Menzies is renowned for performing some of the most complex scores so far written and he has been personally recommended by composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Roger Reynolds, Michael Finnissy, Vinko Globokar, Philippe Manoury, Jim Gardner, Elliott Carter, Liza Lim, Christian Wolff, Richard Barrett and Sofia Gubaidulina for performances he has given of their music. First violinist of New York's Ensemble Sospeso he organized a joint venture with the California Institute of the Arts to present the first professional concerts in the US dedicated to Brian Ferneyhough's music in December 2002. Mark Menzies has a considerable reputation as a chamber music performer. He is the director of a collective ensemble based in Los Angeles, called inauthentica; with members drawn from the Southern California area, including young musicians and recent graduates from CalArts, inauthentica has been featured on an innova CD release of Mark Applebaum's recent compositions. In the spring of 2007, he led a newly formed string quintet belArtes Quintet (formely Ensemble du Monde) in a rapturously received tour in Germany, France and Poland. Mark Menzies is viola and violin professor at the California Institute of the Arts where he also coordinates their chamber orchestra, new music ensembles and conducting studies.
Franklin Cox, cello
Dr. Franklin Cox received B.M. degrees in cello and composition from Indiana University, as well as composition degrees from Columbia University (M.A.), and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D.), where he also served as adjunct faculty member from 1993 to 1995. He studied cello with Gary Hoffman, Janos Starker, and Peter Wiley, and composition with Steven Suber, Fred Lerdahl, Brian Ferneyhough, and Harvey Sollberger. Dr. Cox has received numerous fellowships, prizes, and commissions from leading institutions and festivals of new music, including fellowships from the Schloss Solitude and the Sacher Stiftung, the Kranichsteiner Prize for both composition and cello performance from the Darmstadt Festival (also serving on the Komponistforum in 1994), and commissions from the 1998 Berliner Biennale and 2001 Hannover Biennale. He has performed with many leading new music groups, including SONOR, the Group for Contemporary Music, Exposé, Surplus, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and Ensemble Köln. Since 1993, he has presented a solo recital entitled “The New Cello,” focused on original new works for the cello, more than 100 times throughout Europe and North America. In January 2006 he formed the duo C-squared with flautist Lisa Cella. Together they have commissioned numerous new works from composers and have performed throughout the United States and in Mexico. In 2002 he began teaching on the faculty of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as Assistant Professor of Music, and in 2007 he joined the faculty of Wright State University. He is co-editor of the international book series, New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century. His works are published by Rugginenti Editions and Sylvia Smith Publications, and his works can be heard on Rusty Classica, Neuma Records, Solitude Edition, and Centaur Records.
NOISE
See the NOISE website
Daytime admission (includes all events beginning at 1:00 PM on earlier on a given day):
$5 for members of the Athenaeum or San Diego New Music and students with ID / $10 for nonmembers
Evening admission (includes all events beginning at 6:30 PM or later on a given day):
$15 for members / $10 for students with ID / $20 for nonmembers
Festival pass for all events
$50 for members / $65 for nonmembers
*** 10% discount on all prices for guests of the La Jolla Village Lodge
To reserve call (858) 454-5872
The soundON Festival is funded in part through Meet The Composer's Creative Connections program
San Diego New Music is funded in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture