SCI 2014 National Conference
Virtual Concert
Clifton Callender is Associate Professor of Composition at Florida State University, and holds degrees from the University of Chicago, Peabody Conservatory, and Tulane University. His solo piano work Patty, My Dear has been recorded by Jeri-Mae Astolfi for Capstone and Point and Line to Plane has been recorded by Jeffrey Jacob for New Ariel. Recent commissions include Hungarian Jazz, invited work for the Bridges Conference on the Arts and Mathematics, gegenschein, for Piotr Szewczyk’s Violin Futura project, Reasons to Learne to Sing, for the 50th Anniversary of the College Music Society, and Metamorphoses II, for the Florida State Music Teachers Association. His music has been recognized by and performed at numerous venues, including the Spark Festival, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Boston New Music Initiative, Composers, Inc., Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, National Association of Composers USA Young Composers Competition, the Northern Arizona University Centennial Composition, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States, the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen, and the ppIANISSIMO festival in Bulgaria. Also active in music theory, Callender’s articles have been published in Science, Perspectives of New Music, Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Online, and Intégral.
Time travel is a perennial subject of novels and films. OCT 21 2015 is a musical exploration of time travel, represented by such musical expressions as variation, extreme register shifts, and the constant disruption of regular meter. This piece also explores textural counterpoint--superimposing various textures over the steady pulse of the piano, which is usually treated as a non-harmonic, percussive instrument here.
In another sense, the perceived flow of time is different for each of us. If we could travel to a place outside of time and watch time as it is per- ceived by different individuals, the effect might be something like the quirky, stuttering pulse in this work.
This work was commissioned and premiered by Nova at the University of North Texas (Elizabeth McNutt, director).
Joshua Harris is a composer from Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. He currently teaches music theory courses and conducts the University Singers at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. He holds degrees from Appalachian State University, where he studied composition with Scott Meister, and Brigham Young University, where he studied with Steve Ricks and David Sargent, and the University of North Texas, where he studied with Joseph Klein. His music is grounded in a fascination with visual art, textures, sound spectra, and extreme temporal manipulations and has been heavily influenced by studio techniques of electroacoustic composers. He has been commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Nova Ensemble at UNT, and many amazing performers. His work has been performed throughout the United States as well as South Korea, and is available on the SEAMUS record label. When he is not composing he writes about art and music, enjoys traveling with his wife and two daughters, and thinks about the formal structure of sitcoms.
Cosmic Dust explores densities in sonorities from simple notes to complex clusters. The macro form reflects the same concept. A combination of rhythms and different chords and clusters depict the composer's concept of the "star dust."
Orlando Legname is a composer, conductor, theorist and Avid Certified Pro Tools Expert. He received his degree of Doctor of Music Arts in Composition from University of Maryland and has taught in the Music Technology program at New York University. Currently, he holds a position of Professor and Chair of the Music Department at SUNY Oneonta where he started the Audio Production program and the Chamber Orchestra. Legname received several research grants and awards for his excellence teaching and creative activities. Legname’s numerous compositions are frequently performed in the United States and Europe. He has published articles, book chapters, textbooks, and one instructional video.
Voice of Dong, written for saxophone quartet, expresses my strong impressions and feelings of Dong nationality, a Chinese iminority located in southwest of China. This work is inspired by my own experience of visiting Dong villages in Guizhou province in 2001. One of the villages I visited is Xiao Huang, which has been named “hometown of Dong folk songs”. Their clearly layered multi-voice folk songs, passionate dance accompanied by mouth organ ensembles, as well as their landmark architecture Drum Towers greatly shocked me! I can deeply feel how
much they love music, how energetic their lives are, and how important it is for them that their
music and lives are an organic integration.
In this work, I use Dong folk music’s characteristics, such as the la pentatonic scale, grace notes, imitation among voices, and call and response between a soloist and the rest of the ensemble. The first movement “Dance of Mouth Organs” depicts women and men’s vivid dance accompanied by men’s mouth organ ensemble; the second movement “Nocturne” depicts a night view in Dong village, including birds and crickets’ chirping, a flowing creek, and tree leaves rustling in the breeze.
Xinyan Li was born and grew up in Qiqihar, China. She received her Doctor’s degree at University of Missouri-Kansas City, after earning her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at China Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She is currently teaching at New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s Very Young Composers Program. Dr. Li’s works have been featured at Aspen Music Festival(U.S.), National Center for the Performing Arts (China), Sveriges Radio (Sweden), Gamle Logen (Norway), Septembre musical de l'Orne (France), among others. Her music has been performed by American Composers Orchestra, Members of Eighth Blackbird, PRISM Quartet, Bergen Woodwind Quintet, and Quintet of The Americas etc. Her honors and awards include American Composers Orchestra New Music Readings, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2011, Tsang-Houei Hsu International Music Composition Award, Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship, grants from National Endowment for the Arts (U.S.) and New York State Council on the Arts, and commissions by Music From China, Bergen Chamber Players, and Bang on a Can All-Stars cellist Ashley Bathgate etc. Dr. Li's teachers include professors Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Zhou Long, Paul Rudy, Jin Xiang and Yang Tongba.
Boundaries can be liberating and productive, but they can also be restrictive. Defending the usefulness of constraints, Stravinsky famously wrote, "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit." Maybe he was engaging in some hyperbole. But his point has an appeal. A routine can be a kind of boundary, one that can cut both ways. In response to the question of "routine", someone once said, that. at first, the discipline of a new routine typically increases productivity; but later the routine becomes old hat and productivity falls off. Another concept about boundaries comes from epistomology, the study of how we know anything. Philosophers speak of the necessity of boundaries as being essential for knowing: an object cannot be perceived until it is distinguishable from its background, until its boundaries (at least in some sense) are comprehended. To know what something is, you have to know its bounds. Or consider the idea of personal boundaries. These are necessary to constitute a self image and sense of integrity, but (to get a little dramatic here) personal boundaries by definition separate the self from the Other. This piece was composed in a prosaic manner, familiar to many of us: material was developed; boundaries were set, then one's personal sense, informed by experience, training, childhood trauma, whatever... takes over and fashions the whole thing together. The work then becomes a cyclical process of (mostly) listening, reconsidering, and rearranging, giving shape to the whole. Hopefully it works for the listener too.
Jim McManus is currently an Professor at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. He enjoys playing music as well as ccomposing, and continues to perform informally.
Cross’d for two soprano saxophones, was commissioned in 2011 by the Ogni Suono Saxophone Duo. The title of the work, taken from the introductory monologue from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, draws on the idea of being "star cross’d" or thwarted by fate. In this case, the performers aggressively push towards an unstable, unsustainable, and frequently interrupted peace. Both the large form and individual gesture shapes are based on the word ‘cross’d,’ the shape of each letter, and the sound of that letter sustained or repeated. There are six sections to the work, each based on a different letter, or punctuation, and separated by transitions that are rhythmic variations of identical pitch sets.
Jamie Leigh Sampson (b. 1984, Syracuse, NY) has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including Ensemble Dal Niente, the Ogni Suono Saxophone Duo, the Aurea Silva Trio, and the Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestras. She has written two one-act operas and plans to finish a third in 2014. Sampson is the author of Contemporary Techniques for the Bassoon: Multiphonics, in which she presents the results of her extensive study of over 350 unique multiphonic fingerings. As co-founder of the Toledo, OH based ADJ•ective New Music, LLC, Jamie coordinates the publication of contemporary music scores and books as well as the production of a concert series, while maintaining a private composition and performance studio. She currently serves as the bassoonist for the ADVerb Trio, a trio d’anches based in Michigan and Ohio that specializes in music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Anim•ans –antis n. a being, creature, or an organism (other than human) Anim•ans –antis adj. living, animate, or having life (other than human) This trio was commissioned by The Color Field Ensemble and premiered during the summer of 2011. It is designed to be performed by a single, theoretical instrument, whose component parts consist of both vocal and woodwind timbres. These timbres interact in ways that occasionally obscure their distinctiveness, creating a unique sonic entity.
Andrew Martin Smith (b. 1984, Sharon, CT) is a doctoral student in Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University, where he studies composition with Mikel Kuehn. He has received degrees in music composition from the State University of New York at Fredonia (B.M. 2007) and Bowling Green State University (M.M. 2009). His primary instructors have included Elainie Lillios, Burton Beerman, Andrea Reinkemeyer, Donald Bohlen, and Karl Boelter. Andrew's compositions have been performed at several contemporary music festivals and conferences, including Electronic Music Midwest (2011), the International Computer Music Conference (2011), the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music's 31st Annual New Music Festival (2010), and the Region 8 Conference of the North American Saxophone Alliance (2011). He has been a participant in reading sessions with acclaimed new music ensembles, such as the Miklos Quartet, Dark in the Song // Contemporary Bassoon Collective, and Alarm Will Sound.
As the title of the piece suggests, in writing Tethered Within I was searching for a music that would sonically represent the turmoil that exists when one repeatedly attempts break past a threshold or a tether that is causing physical or psychological restriction. The piece is filled with small, tense motives (such as the exasperated waving motion in the flute and clarinet that begins the work, or the fast staccato rhythms in the upper strings). The musical lines desire to break away from their restrains, but rather the music is violently halted by silences or abruptly sprung back to more incessant material. The final attempt occurs towards the end of the piece as the strings transcend into a more lyrical music, but once again this is cut off and eventually only noise remains.
Tethered Within was written for and premiered by the 2013 New Fromm Players of the Tanglewood Music Center as part of the “Composer as Conductor Workshop”.
New York-based composer Nina C. Young (b.1984) composes instrumental and electronic music with a particular interest in mixing these two. Her music has been performed internationally by ensembles such as the American Composers Orchestra, Orkest de ereprijs, Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, JACK Quartet, and Yarn/Wire. Her works have received honors from ACO, BMI, IAWM, and ASCAP/SEAMUS. She has been awarded fellowships to the Atlantic Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s 2014 Forum.
With a unique voice that draws from spectralism, minimalism, romanticism, and Russian folklore, Nina's pieces incorporate her research into blending amplification and live electronics with instrumental ensembles, always with a view toward creating a natural and cohesive sound world. A graduate of McGill and MIT, Nina is currently pursuing her DMA in composition at Columbia University under the supervision of Georg Friedrich Haas and Fred Lerdahl. She has worked as a research assistant at the MIT Media Lab and CIRMMT (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology) and she currently teaches electronic music at the Columbia Computer Music Center.
In addition to concert music Nina composes music for theater, dance, and film. She also works as a concert organizer and promoter of new music; Nina currently serves as General Manager for the publisher APNM (Association for the Promotion of New Music) and as a board member of Columbia Composers.