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Publication Date

Winter 3-5-2010

Year of Release

2010

Note(s)

Dr. Şölen Dikener, violoncello

Dr. Mark Zanter, guitar

Issac Winland, Briana Blankenship, trumpet

William Holderby, horn

Austin Seybert, trombone

John Arthur, tuba

Saxophone Quartet

Jason Mitchell, soprano saxophone

Sarah Vorac, alto saxophone

David Hamilton, tenor saxophone

Zack Merritt, baritone saxophone

Phoenix Saxophone Quartet

Elena Pedersen, soprano saxophone

Trevin Little, alto saxophone

Chris Spivey, tenor saxophone

Harrison Atzinger, baritone saxophone

Fixed Media

Mark Zanter, conductor

Adam Rhodes, clarinet

Andy Oneal, trombone

Kristen Alves, violin

Ezgi Karakus, violoncello

James Lykens, double bass

Aaron Statler, percussion

David Schoening, media

Composers and Program Notes:

James Bunch was born in 1981 in Monroe, Michigan where his interest in composing was encouraged at a young age. He began his formal education at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan studying with James Hartway and James Lentini. He also studied piano with Dr. Robert Conway (of the Detroit Symphony) and Catherine Wilson and theory with Dr. Karl Braunschweig. He has been fortunate enough to have had his music presented in master-classes with a number of artists including David Lang, Chen Yi, Roberto Sierra, John Corigliano, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Eighth Blackbird, Samuel Adler, Morton Subotnick, Kotoka Suzuki, and others. His music has been commissioned by the UIUC New Music Ensemble, the Hi-Def Sax Quartet, and the Richard and Jana Mason Piano Commissioning Program, and the UIUC Symphony Orchestra. He is also active as a conductor (having conducted several premieres); teacher, guest lecturer, concert organizer, and performer.

His principle teachers at the University of Illinois have been Keeril Makan, Heinrich Taube, Stephen Taylor, Erik Lund, Philipp Blume, and Zack Browning. He has also studied electronic and computer music with Scott Wyatt, Stephen Taylor, and Heinrich Taube. He lives in Urbana, Illinois where he is in the midst of his doctorate in music composition with a special cognate in musicology.

mackerel sky

Commissioned by the Hi-Def Saxophone Quartet for the UIUC saxophone studio-recording project. According to Wikipedia, a mackerel sky is an indication of atmospheric instability; a kind of sea chanty that the site quotes sums it up:

"mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry"

The image for this piece came from an experience of running in the countryside in Champaign Illinois. Illinois may be as flat as be, but it boasts some of the most beautiful skies I have ever seen. One kind of cloud cover is called commonly, the mackerel sky (because the distinctive pattern looks somewhat like the back of a mackerel). The piece is structured around natural multiphonics taken from the instruments and forming a progression that gradually morphs from very quiet dyads to very loud massive chords and back. The piece begins with breath only, and gradually pitch emerges and becomes more important. Listening closely, one may begin to hear the striations of the altocumulus clouds as they stretch across the horizon. The work is concerned with change, instability, and growth - not as a fault, but as a natural process.

Matthew Dotson (b. 1981) is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at the University of Iowa where he has studied with Lawrence Fritts, John Eaton and David Gompper in addition to assisting in the operations of the Electronic Music Studios. Recent performances of his music include New York City (New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival), Evanston, Illinois (Midwest Graduate Music Consortium), Cambridge, Massachusetts (Wired for Sound), Belgrade, Serbia (Art of Sounds Festival), Mexico City (Circuito Electrovisiones), and Santiago, Chile (Festival Ai-Maako). More info can be found at www.matthewdotson.com

Left Unsaid (2008) An exercise in taking motivic-development to its extremes, the majority of this piece was generated by a 10-second sound object comprised of an electric bass being played percussively. This source material was cut into very small fragments and manipulated in various ways in order to construct monophonic, gestural lines. These lines were then either cut-up and recombined (similarly to phonemes in language) or warped beyond recognition to facilitate the creation of a whole new sound-palette. This spurred the addition of contrasting sonic material consisting of bowed electric bass. The dialogue between these two elements (percussive and pitched) is the main dramatic focus of the work.

Jacob Gotlib was born and raised in Louisville, KY, and has written music for instruments, electronics, dance, and multimedia. His musicis regularly played at festivals around North America and Europe, most recently at the Small Music Theatre (Athens, Greece), SEAMUS 2009 (Ft. Wayne, IN), The New York City Electronic Music Festival, SPARK 2009 (Minneapolis, MN), and Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany).

In October 2007, Jacob worked with renowned Kansas City choreographer Jennifer Medina on lnnerworkings, a piece for dance and electronic sounds, which was premiered at UMKC's 2007 Choreofest. Earlier that year, his work Embers was a finalist in the ASCAP /SEAMUS Student Commission. In 2009, his work Filaments, for flute and tape, will be featured on flutist Rebecca Ashe's debut CD, Vortex Street (Centaur Records).

Jacob was a co-founder of the Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance (KcEMA), whose mission was to promote electronic and experimental music of all types and genres across the Kansas City area. The group continues to be a vital force in the Kansas City arts community, collaborating with such organizations as the Kansas City Art Institute and The Charlotte Street Foundation. Jacob has studied at the Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and currently at SUNY University at Buffalo.

Gravity's Self-Portrait (2009)

It is often easy and natural for us to live as if we're at the center of our universe, or the lead actors in a film chronicling our daily lives. From this perspective, it seems that we are stationary objects; that forces, events, and people act upon us, orbit around us. As I was writing this piece, I was imagining this perspective inverted - what if we are the active bodies, the supporting actors, reacting to and against a giant other force? The feeling of weight, of gravity pushing upon us, is a familiar one. But what is gravity feeling as we act upon it? Gravity's Self-Portrait was written for Alexandros Drymonitis, and was premiered by him in Athens, Greece in 2009.

Brandon Hendrix received his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Southeastern Oklahoma State University and his Master of Music degree in composition from the University of Oklahoma. His composition teachers include Christian Asplund, Jason Bahr, Kenneth Fuchs, Donald Grantham, and Yevgeniy Sharlat. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas at Austin.

His music has been performed by notable performers and resident ensembles throughout the United States, including the Queens College Brass Ensemble, the Stone Fort Wind Quintet, Quintet Attacca, Central Brass Quintet, and the University of Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra. His music has been featured at many prominent conferences of new music, including those held at the University of Alabama (Huntsville), Oklahoma City University, Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, Texas), Georgia State University (Atlanta), Queens College (Flushing, New York), Clarke College (Dubuque, Iowa), University of Central Missouri (Warrensburg), Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro), and Arizona State University (Tempe). His Fanfare (for brass quintet) can be heard as the theme music for the weekly broadcast of "Music from UT," a radio program on KMFA Classical FM in Austin, Texas.

He has received numerous awards for his music, including the John Kirkpatrick Award in Music Composition at the University of Oklahoma (2004) and the Intermediate Composition award for the Solo String Music Competition at the University of Texas at Austin (2006). In 2007, he was awarded a grant from the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund. He is a member of the American Music Center (AMC), the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the College Music Society (CMS), and the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI). His music is published by HoneyRock Publications and Imagine Music Publishing.

Brass Quintet was composed from August of 2005 to March of 2006. The three movements are in typical fast-slow-fast form, with the middle movement making up the bulk of the work. The first movement is fast and exciting with alternating meter and sudden rhythmic twists. The middle movement is slow and expressive, reflecting on several themes presented in the first movement. The final movement is very mischievous, with interesting interplay between the instruments.

Sarah Horick

Winner of the 2009 Region IV SCI/ASCAP Student Commission Competition, Sarah M. Horick has been commissioned to write pieces for the Erie Saxophone Quartet, Furman University's Wind Ensemble, soprano Tamara Matthews, The Belltower Boys, mezzo-soprano Wanda Brister, saxophonist Matthew Olson, bass trombonist Jonathan Warburton, clarinetist Jeffrey Brooks, and trumpeter Gary Malvern. Most recently, Ms. Horick was commissioned to write a new opera for the Hispanic-American Lyric Theatre in Miami, FL.

Ms. Horick's works have been performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe on the programs of international music festivals such as the Asolo Song Institute (Paderno del Grappa, Italy) and the Schlern International Music Festival (Völs am Schlern, Italy) and on a number of collegiate festivals and recitals including La Salle University's War and Peace concert, Delta State University's· Electroacoustic Juke Joint, Grand Valley State University's FreePlay 10, Florida State University's Festival of New Music, Florida International University's FEASt FEST, and the University of South Florida's Women Composers' Symposium where she served as a guest composer. Ms. Horick was also recently featured on a concert at the Chequer Mead Arts Center in Sussex, UK. In addition to being a finalist in the Vancouver Chamber Choir's Young Composers Competition, Ms. Horick was also a finalist in the 2007 Schlern International Music Festival Competition in voice, received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award nomination for her classroom teaching at Florida State University, and is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda.

Deleted Scenes, a set of miniatures, was commissioned by the Erie Saxophone Quartet. The work is a collaboration with the visual artist Matthew Horick, and each movement is paired with a single photograph. All images are used by permission for this performance.

Rafael Valle was born in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1985, where he began his musical career as a rock guitar player and audio engineer. In 2009 he earned his Bachelor’s Degree with Magna Cum Laude distinction in Orchestral Conducting from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the studies in conducting, Valle studied with composers Ricardo Tacuchian at UNIRIO and Rodrigo Cichelli at UFRJ, and with Joey de Oliveira and João Guilherme Ripper in the International Campos do Jordão Winter Festival.

Valle has been recently admitted for the Master's program in Composition at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart in the class of Prof. Marco Stroppa, and in Composition and Orchestral Conducting at the East Carolina University in the United States, where he studies with Prof. Edward Jacobs and Prof. Jorge Richter and is Assistant Conductor of the ECU Symphony Orchestra.

His oeuvre is published by the Spanish Periferia Sheet Music and has been recently performed in Brazil, Chile, Germany, and the United States of America, in festivals dedicated to contemporary music, such as Brazilian Music Panorama, Tsonami festival, UNCG New Music Festival, ECU New Music Festival and SCI Student National Convention.

As a supporter of contemporary music, Valle co-directs the international Criação Dois Hum contemporary music series, founded in 2006, and has conducted premieres of works by Brazilian and American living Composers. Valle meditates and works in Greenville.

Memories of my dear father who left his human body years ago by a stroke of destiny.

Kyle Vegter is originally from Ormond Beach, Fl. He recently graduated from the University of Florida where he studied English Literature, Electronic Music Composition, and Mandarin Chinese. He performs the upright bass and cello in a variety of contexts, and now resides in Chicago, IL. He enjoys Sam Cooke and peanut butter almost exclusively.

vernacular

ver·nac·u·lar

noun

1) the native speech or language of a place.

2) the language or vocabulary peculiar

3) a vernacular or express

4) use by ordinary people.

5) of an hay or as distinguished from name.

6) exemplifying the commonest features, and historical region of people.

7) mode of expression reflects indigenous styles.

Note

Smith Recital Hall

Keywords

recitals, student composers, new music

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Music | Music Performance

Marshall University Music Department Presents the 2010 SCI National Student Conference: Concert Two

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