8 p.m.
Georgia Tech Alumni House
190 North Avenue
Directions to the Alumni House (PDF).
Complete program:
George Lewis: North Star Boogaloo for percussion and tape
George Crumb: Vox Balanae for amplified flute, cello, and piano
Daniel Lentz: You Can't See the Forest…Music for three performers and live electronics
Jason Freeman: Graph Theory for solo violin (and the web)
Jennifer Walshe: meanwhile, back at the ranch… for ensemble and image controller
This concert is free and open to the public.
Read the press release (PDF).
Program Notes:
The relationship between music and visual art goes back further than film, musical theater, and opera. When composers render music in written form, the result can be a work of art in its own right, whether it is the florid manuscripts of medieval plainchant or the barely legible sketches of Beethoven.
We recognize the modern multimedia synergy in our generation of Flash, the Internet, and MTV. Therefore, in tonight’s program, we pay tribute to George Crumb, known for his visually arresting musical scores, by accompanying the performance of his work with a real-time, digital visualization by Al Matthews. By using a sophisticated symbolic language centered on comic strips, Jennifer Walshe challenges the ensemble to create musical sounds related to a compelling visual score. And Jason Freeman’s work invites the audience to manipulate a web-based visual representation of his score in order to shape future concert performances of the piece.
Technology has not only enabled composers to create new kinds of scores and take new approaches to multimedia, it has also enabled them to explore new worlds of sound. George Lewis incorporates elements of hip-hop and basketball in the computer-generated sounds that accompany a solo percussionist. George Crumb uses extended instrumental techniques, some of which are only audible with amplification, to imitate the sounds of humpback whales. And Daniel Lentz uses wine glasses and bursts of spoken phonemes to create a live multi-track studio on stage, gradually building up coherent musical textures and phrases over the course of the performance.
George Lewis’ North Star Boogaloo (1996), for percussion and computer, is a setting of a poem of the same name by Quincy Troupe. It was written for percussionist Steven Schick, who explains the title in his book, The Percussionist’s Art: “…the North Star was the singular guiding light that led slaves to freedom as they escaped the plantations of the South and headed north. Basketball as a modern-day North Star beckons to many, especially to young African Americans, who have seen it as a beacon to the kind of freedom that comes from fame and affluence.” The percussion part is completely notated, and the computer program, written by George Lewis using Ron Kuivila and David Anderson's program FORMULA (FOrth MUsic LAnguage), plays samples, beats, and other percussion parts, and delivers the poem's text, using samples from the author's own voice. The computer's delivery of the poem's text serves as Lewis' loving kind of signifying on Quincy's powerful performance persona.
George Crumb writes: “Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), composed in 1971 for the New York Camerata, is scored for flute, cello and piano (all amplified in concert performance). The work was inspired by the singing of the humpback whale, a tape recording of which I had heard two or three years previously. The form of the work is a simple three-part design, consisting of a prologue, a set of variations named after the geological eras, and an epilogue. The opening Vocalise is a kind of cadenza for the flutist, who simultaneously plays her instrument and sings into it. The conclusion of the cadenza is announced by a parody of the opening measures of Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra. The Sea-Theme is presented by the cello (in harmonics), accompanied by dark, fateful chords of strummed piano strings. The following sequence of variations begins with the haunting sea-gull cries of the Archezoic and, gradually increasing in intensity, reaches a strident climax in the Cenozoic. The emergence of man in the Cenozoic era is symbolized by a partial restatement of Zarathustra reference. The concluding Sea-Nocturne is an elaboration of the Sea-Theme. In composing the Sea-Nocturne I wanted to suggest “a larger rhythm of nature” and a sense of suspension in time. The concluding gesture of the work is a gradually dying series of repetitions of a 10-note figure.” Tonight’s performance is complemented by a real-time video, created by Al Matthews, which applies visual effects to live and pre-recorded video based on a dynamic audio analysis of the performance. We hope it enhances and guides your listening of the music.
Daniel Lentz’s "You can't see the Forest…Music" (1971) is scored for "three speaker-drinkers with three wine glasses (with mallets) and red wine." The performers tap occasionally on the glasses, taking sips of the wine from time to time, so that the tapping pitch rises microtonally throughout. Meanwhile, they intone seemingly random phonemes (nt, ee, est, rr, etc.). All of this is recorded and played back as it is performed. As a result, a gradual microtonal cluster builds from the tapped wine glasses, while the spoken phonemes slowly coalesce into familiar aphorisms, such as the one suggested in the title. The piece concludes with the performers slowly draining the glass, while the recording shimmers into a sparkling cluster accompanying comically mundane adages (“you can lead a horse to water…”).
It may seem odd for a solo violin piece to be performed on a concert dedicated to music and technology, but that is part of the point. Just as technology has made it possible to electronically generate and manipulate sounds, to create intelligent machine musicians, and to perform with novel musical interfaces, it has also enabled composers to transform the ways in which they approach the process of creation, interact with performers and audiences, and disseminate their work. Graph Theory
(2006) seeks to connect composition, listening, and concert performance by coupling an acoustic work for solo violin to an interactive web site. On the web site, users navigate among sixty-one short, looping musical fragments to create their own unique path through the composition. The navigation choices which users make affect future concert performances of the work. Before each performance, the soloist prints out a copy of the score from the web site. That score presents her with a fixed path through the piece; the order of the fragments is influenced by the decisions that recent web site visitors have made. Graph Theory, a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts for its Turbulence web site, was created in collaboration with designer Patricia Reed and violinist Maja Cerar. It was made possible with funding from the Greenwall Foundation. It is available at http://turbulence.org/Works/graphtheory and on a kiosk in the lobby.
In Jennifer Walshe’s “meanwhile, back at the ranch…” (2005), for any number of performers and an image controller, the image controller draws and manipulates images projected onto a screen by a video camera. The performers watch the images, which the image controller annotates on the screen. The image controller breaks down the images, designating different elements for each performer. The performers then improvise sounds to represent the images they are assigned according to a sophisticated visual notation system described in the composer’s instructions.
About the Musicians:
George Crumb's reputation as a composer of hauntingly beautiful scores has made him one of the most frequently performed composers in today's musical world. Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1929. He has received degrees from Mason College of Music, the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Crumb's music often juxtaposes contrasting musical styles. The references range from music of the western art-music tradition, to hymns and folk music, to non-Western musics. Many of Crumb's works include programmatic, symbolic, mystical and theatrical elements, which are often reflected in his beautiful and meticulously notated scores. George Crumb is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pulitzer (1968), a Grammy (2001), Musical America’s “Composer of the Year” (2004), and the Prince Pierre de Monaco Gold Medal, grants from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fromm foundations, and 6 honorary degrees. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters as well as the Deutsche Akademie der Kunste.
Jason Freeman’s works break down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. His music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, the So Percussion Group, the Nieuw Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Evan Ziporyn; and his interactive installations and software art have been exhibited at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Boston CyberArt Festival, and the Transmediale Festival and featured in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) (2003), a commission from Turbulence.org, was described by Billboard as “…an example of the web’s mind-expanding possibilities.” Freeman received his B.A. in music from Yale University and his M.A. and D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University. He is currently an assistant professor in the music department at Georgia Tech.
Ted Gurch is Associate Principal/E-flat Clarinetist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1989. Prior to coming to Atlanta, he served for three seasons as Principal Clarinetist with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. He attended the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Stanley Hasty and Charles Neidich, earning a Bachelor's Degree and the Performer's Certificate. While at Eastman he was active as a saxophonist in the school's jazz program, and was a member of the award-winning Eastman Jazz Ensemble. He continues to play saxophone on jazz, pop and classical programs, and has appeared as a concerto soloist with the ASO on saxophone as well as clarinet. An active chamber musician, he is a member of the contemporary music ensembles Thamyris and Bent Frequency in Atlanta, and is a member of Luna Nova, the contemporary music ensemble of the NITLE college association. He is an Artist in Residence at Kennesaw State University, an Artist Affiliate at Emory University and coaches the clarinet section of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Helen Hwaya Kim made her orchestral debut with the Calgary Philharmonic at the age of six, and has gone on to become a respected and sought-after artist. She recently appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops at Boston's Symphony Hall, as well as with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Kim earned her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Cho-Liang Lin and Dorothy DeLay. She is the recipient of more than one hundred national and international awards. In 1992, she won the prestigious Artists International Competition in New York and, as a result, gave debut recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall and the Aspen Summer Music Festival. A native of Canada, Ms. Kim has been engaged by many of Canada's leading orchestras, including the National Arts Center Orchestra, Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, McGill Chamber Orchestra, and the Windsor, Regina, Victoria and Prince George Symphonies. She has also appeared with the Dekalb, New Orleans, Aspen and Banff Festival Orchestras, and with orchestras in the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. Ms. Kim has toured extensively throughout Canada and the United States, including performances at Alice Tully Hall and the Sante Fe and La Jolla International Music Festivals, where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin, Gary Hoffman, Andre Previn, and the Orion String Quartet. She performed Bach’s Double violin concerto with Hilary Hahn at the 2002 Amelia Island Chamber music festival. Ms. Kim has been profiled on national and international television and has appeared on CBC, PBS and CBS networks. Her performances have been aired on NPR and CBC radio networks. Ms. Kim currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia where she served as assistant and associate concertmaster for the Atlanta Symphony for three seasons. She is currently the assistant concertmaster of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and teaches violin and chamber music at Kennesaw State University.
Daniel Lentz is an internationally acclaimed composer and artist who attended St. Vincent College, Ohio University, Brandeis University, and Stockholm University. Lentz's many awards and prizes include five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a D.A.A.D. grant from Germany, and First Prize in the 1972 International Composers Competition (Stichting Gaudeamus) in Holland. Lentz has also received commissions and composed works for other performing organizations, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Meet-The-Composer/Reader's Digest Fund, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Collage Ensemble of Boston, and Japan's Interlink Festival. His music can be heard on Angel-EMI Records and New Albion Records, among others.
Lisa Leong has worked with composers such as John Cage, Mario Davidovsky, Steven Stucky, Gunther Schuller, Alvin Singleton and Chen Yi. Her interest in new music has led to performances with the Auros Group for New Music and Underground Composers in Boston, Ensemble X, Mother Mallard’s Portable masterpiece, Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players, Milwaukee Symphony clarinetist William Helmers, Thamyris, and Soli. As a winner of the Schubert Club’s Young Artist of the Year, she appeared as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In June 2004, she appeared at the Institute and Festival of Contemporary Performance at Mannes College in New York, alongside members of Speculum Musicae. Her performances have been broadcast on Radio France, WGBH in Boston, Georgia Public Radio’s “Atlanta Music Scene,” and recorded by National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”. Ms. Leong is Artist Affiliate at Emory University and adjunct faculty at Clayton State University. She graduated with an MM in Piano Performance at New England Conservatory where she studied with Veronica Jochum and Stephen Drury. She is also the pianist and artistic board member of Atlanta-based ensemble Bent Frequency.
George Lewis is the Edwin H. Case professor of music at Columbia University, having previously taught at University of California San Diego, Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. He has served as music curator for the Kitchen in New York, and has collaborated in the "Interarts Inquiry" and "Integrative Studies Roundtable" at the Center for Black Music Research (Chicago). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis studied composition and trombone at the AACM School of Music. An active composer, improviser, performer and computer/installation artist, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. His artistic work is documented in over 120 recordings and has been awarded by a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship, 1999 Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts, and numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His oral history is archived in Yale University's collection of "Major Figures in American Music," and his published articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes.
Al Matthews is a Master’s student in the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech’s College of Literature, Communication and Culture. A CNN refugee, writer, graphic designer and filmmaker, he returns to school to study music and the digital arts. He is completing for his Master’s thesis a nonlinear documentary of Louisiana independent radio (http://fatmilk.tv). Al is able to pursue this evening’s work thanks to generous support from Prof. Jason Freeman, Prof. Sara Hornbacher, Prof. Celia Pearce, the gracious ensemble musicians, and the encouragement of his partner, Silke von Esenwein.
Brad Ritchie is from Portland, Oregon and is in his eighth season with the Atlanta Chamber Players and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University, where he studied with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Janos Starker. His graduate degree was earned at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, where he studied with Adriana Contino. As a member of the Felici String Quartet, Mr. Ritchie was a winner of the Kuttner String Quartet scholarship at Indiana University and subsequently played in Japan, France and Germany. Prior to coming to Atlanta, he was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. He has twice performed chamber music on Japanese TV and recorded a CD in Tokyo, Chocolate Fashion. In the spring of 2001, he was featured in an ACP performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra. Over the past five seasons, Mr. Ritchie has also collaborated with performers in Mammoth Lakes, Ca. as part of the Chamber Music America Rural Residency Program.
Jessica Peek Sherwood has been Principal Flute with the Cobb Symphony Orchestra since the 2000-2001 season. An active free-lance musician, she has performed with the Atlanta, Alabama, and Charleston Symphony Orchestras, the Atlanta Opera Orchestra, as well as Thamyris New Music Ensemble. Prior to moving to Atlanta, Ms. Sherwood performed extensively throughout the South Florida region, including work with the New World Symphony and the Naples Philharmonic. She held the Principal Piccolo position with the Ann Arbor, Flint, and Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestras while living in Michigan. Chamber music performances include the Renaud Chamber Orchestra (Lansing, Michigan), Michigan Chamber Players (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and the Contemporary Arts Octet (Ann Arbor, Michigan). She currently serves as chamber music coach and woodwind coordinator for the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Dozier Centre for Performing Arts (Kennesaw, Georgia) and teaches a large studio of private flute students. A native of Philadelphia, Ms. Sherwood received her Bachelor of Music from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she graduated a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda Honor Society. Her primary teachers include the late Clement Barone, Kazuo Tokito and David Cramer.
Tom Sherwood is the Principal Percussionist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. A native of Fairfax, Virginia, his musical career began at a young age when he discovered his father’s old drum set packed away in the garage. He graduated with his Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. A student of Tom Siwe, he was the youngest recipient of the Edgar Varese Memorial Scholarship. He went on to earn his Master of Music from Temple University, where he studied with Alan Abel (former Associate Principal Percussionist of the Philadelphia Orchestra). Tom made his solo debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the 2004-2005 season, performing Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Robert Spano. He can be heard with the ASO on Telarc and Deutsche Grammophon recordings. Prior to joining the ASO, Tom performed regularly with the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, and was also a member of the New World Symphony. An active teacher and clinician, he has presented masterclasses at the 2001 and 2003 Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. Tom is an endorser of Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments.
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and graduated from Northwestern University with a doctoral degree in composition in 2002. In 2003-04 she was a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, and from 2004-05 she lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. From 2006 to 2008 she is the composer-in-residence for the In Context 3 project in South Dublin. Her works have been performed throughout Europe, the US, and Canada by groups such as Alter Ego, Ensemble Récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, the Crash Ensemble, ensemble ascolta, Champ d’Action, the Rilke Ensemble, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Bozzini Quartet, Concorde, Ensemble Musica Nova, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Quintet, and Psappha, among others. She has received commissions from Sudwest Rundfunk (SWR), Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Wien Modern, the Dresden Semper Oper, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Project Arts Centre and the Arts Council of Ireland and the Scottish Arts Council.