6/2009
June in Buffalo came to a close on Sunday, June 8 with a concert by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in Lippes Concert Hall. BPO resident conductor Robert Frantz led the ensemble in skillful performances of works by Donald Erb, Toru Takemitsu, David Felder, Bernard Rands, and Center founder Lukas Foss. Noted Buffalo News reviewer Garaud MacTaggart, “Members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra get to play great music every season, but it isn’t often that the musicians get a shot at performing something that isn’t part of the popular canon of classical scores…” MacTaggart’s review: "BPO Romps with different genre."
6/2009
The well-read new music website Sequenza21 has spotlighted June in Buffalo in a pair of posts by JiB alum Christian Carey, who attended the festival in 1998 and '99. Writes Carey, "Two of the happiest experiences I've had as a composer were back to back summers at June in Buffalo. Held at SUNY Buffalo in upstate New York, the weeklong festival is a chance for ‘emerging’ composers to hear their music performed by top notch musicians and to have it critiqued by master composers.
"By the end of the festival, they’re likely to have gotten a good tape of their piece, met performers and new music ‘movers and shakers,’ listened to nigh a hundred hours of contemporary fare, gathered tons of ideas for new works of their own, and made some lifelong chums among the other emergent creators. To this day, I keep in touch with many folks I met at JiB." The entire post can be read here.
In a second post, Carey recounts how a performance of his music at JiB was rescued by noted cellist Christopher Finckel.
5/2009
June in Buffalo was cited in The New York Times's "Summer Stages" supplement as a highlight of the summer festival season: "Composers have flocked to this festival since 1975, when Morton Feldman founded it as an American version of the Darmstadt festival in Germany. A bevy of young composers will hear their works performed alongside those of established masters like Martin Bresnick, David Felder and Harvey Sollberger."
5/2009
June in Buffalo participants have been announced for 2009. Applicants came from ten countries, with 47 universities and conservatories represented. The 25 composers chosen represent Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Korea, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, and the U.S., and study at Juilliard, Curtis, Eastman, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Indiana, Duke, Chicago, USC, and eleven other schools, including UB. Alphabetically, they are:
Travis S. Alford
Eleanor Aversa
John Bacon
Jennifer Bellor
Sarah Carvalho
Janet Jieru Chen
Mark Fromm
Christian A. Gentry
Brian Griffeath-Loeb
Joseph A. Lake
Elizabeth Lim
Eric Lindsay
Andrew Ly
Helena Michelson
Chun Ting Pang
Kye Ryung (Karen) Park
Bruce Pennycock
Christopher Rogerson
Matthew Schreibeis
Diana Soh
Moshe Shulman
Todd N. Tarantino
Jason Thompson
Alexander Weiser
June in Buffalo 2009 participants are a diverse group, with a wide range of musical styles and aesthetic viewpoints. The Center is pleased to welcome these gifted young composers to Buffalo for a lively and stimulating week of musical exploration.
4/2009
June in Buffalo is back for 2009, taking place June 1 – 7 at the University at Buffalo. The festival offers an intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, master classes with selected faculty composers, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public. Each of the invited composers will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music.
The exciting concert lineup features programs by the Meridian Arts Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, VERGE Ensemble, and the Slee Sinfonietta, culminating in a performance by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on June 7. Solo and duo recitals include appearances by Philippe Manoury and Christophe Desjardins (computer and viola), Mikko Luoman (accordion), and Stefano Scodanibbio (contrabass). Many of the concerts are free. A full schedule and ticket information can be found at our June in Buffalo page.
4/2009
Clarinetist Jean Kopperud, a member of the Center’s Departmental Advisory Board, maintains an active schedule of performances, both as a concert soloist and a chamber musician. She’s often heard in the latter capacity as a member of the New York New Music Ensemble, an ensemble called by The New York Times “...player for player, perhaps the best new music group in the country.” On Monday, April 27 (8 pm), the NYNME presents a concert titled “Premiere Premieres” at Merkin Hall in New York City. Appropriately enough, the program includes world premieres by John Harbison and Chou Wen-Chung, and a NYC debut by Yiorgos Vassilandonakis.Chou’s The Eternal Pine is dedicated to Elliott Carter in commemoration of the elder composer’s 100th birthday; Harbison’s The Seven Ages features mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal. Yiorgos Vassilandonakis’s Réfractions d’une trajectoire sans but augments the NYNME’s “Pierrot-plus-percussion” lineup to include violist Lois Martin. Tickets are $20 ($10 for students and seniors), and can be purchased through Merkin Hall’s website.
4/2009
On Saturday, April 25 (1 pm), the Lydian String Quartet will give a Composer Workshop at Baird Recital Hall, reading works by graduate students in UB’s composition program. The workshop is free and open to the public. (The previous evening, the Lydian will be heard at Lippes Hall in the Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle, offering the Beethoven’s Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4; Quartet in F Major, Op. 135; and Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2.)
One of the composers whose music will be read by the Lydian is doctoral student Aubrey Byerly, who has been working with the ensemble since last fall, when she wrote two short passages of music for a previous reading by the quartet. Says Byerly, “The reading was very informative – as a young composer I need experiences like this to build up a reservoir of experience to draw upon to finish this piece and for future pieces… Since their visit to University at Buffalo last fall, I have spent several months filling out the piece from its original fragments and revising. There have been many emails between the performers and myself, emphasizing their dedication to music and a desire to realize my ideas. I am already looking forward to the next revision, in order to integrate the knowledge and many insights they will bring with them. Through University at Buffalo's unique Center for 21st Century Music, the Lydian Quartet has provided me with a unique opportunity, which I could not have anywhere else, for which I am grateful.”
3/2009
Owing to artistic affinities as well as location, the Center has had longstanding connections to the Canadian music scene. Canadian flutist and composer Robert Aitken has been an important link since the 1970s, when he came to UB to lecture on orchestration. Aitken is the founder of Toronto’s New Music Concerts series, an important fixture in the city’s musical life for more than 35 years.
On Sunday, March 29, New Music Concerts presents “Roger Reynolds and his Proteges” at the Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles St. W. in Toronto, honoring a composer with strong ties to both New Music Concerts and the Center for 21st Century. In addition to performing two of Reynolds’s works, imagE/flute and The Angel of Death, the NMC Ensemble will play David Felder’s partial[dist]res[s]toration (2002), scored for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, viola, cello, and eight-channel electroacoustic support. Felder, who counts Reynolds as an important mentor, wrote the six-movement piece for the New York New Music Ensemble. Partially referring to the process of distressing new furniture to resemble antiques, the title also describes his manipulations of the musical materials throughout the work. The program will also include pieces by Chaya Czernowin, Juan Campoverde, and Antonio Borges-Cunha.
For more information, call 416/961-9594 or visit www.newmusicconcerts.com.
3/2009
Distinguished composer Virko Baley is visiting the Center on Wednesday, April 1 to give a seminar on his music and a master class for composition students.
Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938, but has spent his creative life in the United States and considers himself a citizen of the world. Shirley Fleming, writing in the New York Post about a concert of his works given by CONTINUUM, called his music "vibrant, dramatic, communicative, much of it framed by extra-musical allusions that place it in a solid context." Village Voice critic Kyle Gann, reviewing Baley’s Concerto No. 1, quasi una fantasia for violin, given its New York premiere by the New Juilliard Ensemble, lauded the piece and its "sonic images memorable enough to take home".
A composer, conductor and pianist, he is the recipient of the 1996 Shevchenko Prize for Music, awarded by the Ukrainian government, and also the 1996 State of Nevada Regents' Creative Award. As composer, Mr. Baley has received grants and commissions from numerous organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, New Juilliard Ensemble, Kiev Camerata, Project 1000 and the Winnipeg Symphony, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, Nevada Symphony, Continuum, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, California E.A.R. Unit, and from many individual artists. His extensive discography includes recordings on the Cambria, TNC, and Arsis labels. A founder and, for many years, the conductor and music director of the Nevada Symphony Orchestra in Las Vegas, Virko Baley is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
2/2009
ARDITTI QUARTET / BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH / HILDA PAREDES
Among string quartets specializing in contemporary music, the Arditti Quartet looms large. In fact, it has been known to loom overhead, performing in four separate helicopters to execute Karlheinz Stockhausen’s visionary Helicopter Quartet. Whether in mid-air or on the concert stage, the Arditti is unsurpassed in its command of daring, technically demanding modernist repertoire, including music by “New Complexity” master Brian Ferneyhough and rising Mexican composer Hilda Paredes.
As part of UB’s Slee/Visiting Artist Series, the Center for 21st Century Music is proud to host the Arditti Quartet, Ferneyhough, and Paredes in a three-day residency, February 25 - 27.
On Friday evening 2/27 at 8 pm, the Arditti performs at Lippes Concert Hall (Slee Hall). The program includes two U.S. premieres: Ferneyhough’s Dum Transisset I-IV and Paredes’s String Quartet No. 2 “Cuerdas del destino.” Other works include David Felder’s Stuck-stücke, James Clark’s String Quartet, and in honor of the composer’s 100th birthday, Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 5, a piece commissioned by the Arditti Quartet. Program notes (pdf) can be found here.
Four of the composers – Brian Ferneyhough, Hilda Paredes, David Felder and James Clarke – will be present at the concert, and will give a pre-concert talk at 7:15pm.
Brian Ferneyhough is one of England’s most honored and influential composers. Closely associated with the “New Complexity” school of composition, he is known for composing works that make extraordinary technical demands on the performer, as in his Time and Motion Study II for solo cello and electronics. While he employs elaborate formal systems in creating his works, Ferneyhough uses them to create energy, excitement, and a sense of dramatic tension rather than as an embodiment of an abstract schema. His first opera, Shadowlines, inspired by the life of philosopher/literary critic Walter Benjamin, premiered in 2004 at the Munich Biennale to great acclaim. Ferneyhough joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2000; in 2007, he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement.
Hilda Paredes, firmly established as one of the leading Mexican composers of her generation, has made her home in London since 1979; her music is now performed widely around the world. She has taught composition and lectured at Manchester University, the University of California at San Diego, and was recently the 2007 Darius Milhaud Visiting Professor at Mills College. Distinguished ensembles that have performed her music include the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Sospeso, and the Arditti Quartet, among others. Reviewing Listen How They Talk, a portrait CD on Mode Records, Andrew Clements of The Guardian wrote, “Paredes is a composer with a fresh aural imagination, while her Carter-like use of instrumentalists as dramatic protagonists gives her music an extra dimension.”
Master classes with Paredes, Ferneyhough, and the Arditti Quartet have been scheduled as follows:
Wednesday, February 25
12 – 2:30 pm: master class with Hilda Paredes
3:30 – 5 pm: lecture/presentation by Hilda Paredes
Thursday February 26
11 am – 1:30 pm: Graduate Composer Reading Session with Arditti Quartet
Friday February 27
12 – 2:30 pm: master class with Brian Ferneyhough
3:30 – 5 pm: lecture/presentation by Brian Fernyhough
2/2009
LUKAS FOSS
The world has lost a unique voice and a vital figure in the development of American music. On February 1, composer Lukas Foss died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 86. His life and achievements were detailed by Allan Kozinn in an extensive obituary in The New York Times.
Wrote Kozinn, “Mr. Foss preferred to explore the byways of the avant-garde, focusing at different times on techniques from serialism and electronic music to Minimalism and improvisation. But as he moved from style to style, his voice remained distinctive, partly because he distrusted rules and never fully adhered to those of the approaches he adopted, and partly because a current of mercurial wit ran through his work.”
Among his many vital accomplishments, he founded University at Buffalo’s Center for Creative and Performing Arts – the predecessor to the Center for 21st Century Music – in 1963, helping to establish the city as an international center of musical experimentation. That year also marked the beginning of his tenure as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he held until 1970.
A long-planned concert on February 8 at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo –originally intended as a retrospective of Foss’s music – served as a fitting memorial event. Buffalo-based ensemble A Musical Feast presented the event in partnership with the Center for 21st Century Music.
A Musical Feast founder Charles Haupt had a long association with Foss: he originally came to the city at Foss’s invitation to serve as concertmaster for the Philharmonic. He was joined by UB Music faculty and students past and present in several of Foss’s most notable scores, including Renaissance Concerto, performed by flutist Carol Wincenc and pianist Claudia Hoca, and Solo, played by pianist Amy Williams. The concert culminated in a Foss signature work, Time Cycle, featuring soprano Amanda DeBoer and an ensemble under the direction of Jan Williams. A panel discussion followed, in which Jan Williams, Haupt, Wincenc, and others were joined by David Felder, the Center’s Artistic Director. Buffalo News writer Garaud MacTaggart’s thoughtful review can be read here.
1/2009
RATED X!
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Center presents clarinetist Jean Kopperud and pianist Stephen Gosling in Rated X: A Recital of Premieres, taking place at the Lippes Concert Hall at Slee Hall on Thursday, February 12. UB faculty member Kopperud, a founder of the renowned New York New Music Ensemble, has joined forces with Gosling, a fellow member of NYNME, to introduce seven new works from a coterie of noted composers: David Felder (UB), Eric Moe, Paolo Cavallone, Steve Ricks, James Primosch, Jason Eckhardt, and Harvey Sollberger.
Kopperud is known internationally as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary music for the clarinet, with recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, Bridge Records, G M Recordings, Koch, Musical Heritage and Centaur records. Reviewing a 1982 recital, New York Times writer Edward Rothstein stated, “After each composition that Jean Kopperud played in her clarinet recital at Merkin Concert Hall on Tuesday night, there was an afterbreath – a pause in which applause seemed an intrusion. Each performance was woven tightly, each phrase played just so – clearly defined, yet supple and warm.”
Stephen Gosling is a ubiquitous presence on the New York new music scene, and has also performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia. His playing has been hailed as “brilliant,” “electric,” and “luminous and poised” (New York Times), possessing “utter clarity and conviction” (Washington Post), and “extraordinary virtuosity” (Houston Chronicle). Gosling has been a member of the New York New Music Ensemble since 1999. He is also a member of Ensemble Sospeso and Ne(x)tworks, a group dedicated to the realization of aleatory scores.
The morning after the Rated X concert, Friday, February 13 at 11 am, Kopperud and Gosling will give a Contemporary Performance Techniques master class at Lippes Hall. It is free and open to the public. Information on both events is available here.
Kopperud and Gosling have been touring the country with Rated X since November 2008. Following their performance in Buffalo, the duo will bring the program to Merkin Concert Hall in New York City on Monday, February 23. They will then record the seven new pieces with Grammy Award-winning producer Judith Sherman. Program notes are available here
1/2009
JUNE IN BUFFALO
Applications for June in Buffalo, the Center’s annual festival and conference dedicated to composers, are being accepted through February 16, 2009.
Presented by the Department of Music and The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, June in Buffalo will take place from June 1-7, 2009 at the University at Buffalo. June in Buffalo offers an intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, master classes with selected faculty composers, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics.
Six distinguished composers comprise this year’s senior faculty: Martin Bresnick, David Felder, Bernard Rands, Mathew Rosenblum, and Harvey Sollberger. Resident ensembles include the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Meridian Arts Ensemble, The New York New Music Ensemble, Slee Sinfonietta, and the Verge Ensemble.
Each of the invited composers will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival (please see application procedures below). Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music.
Randy Nordschow, a composer and writer who attended the festival in 1998, visited again in 2008, this time observing June in Buffalo as a journalist for Newmusicbox.org. “There is no singular way to define the June in Buffalo experience,” wrote Nordschow. “Instead there’s always a palpable sense of discovery in the air.”