Concert 1 – 1pm – Hart Recital Hall
- Kory Reeder – Dance for Princess Charis Grant, for Piano and Electronics
- Kennedy Dixon – Pretty on Paper, for viola and improvised electronics
- Kristian Twombly – Interplait, for voice and metal singing bowl
- Ralph Lewis – MOXtube, Interactive YouTube Video with audience and clarinet ensemble
- Peyton Hennager – The Human Voice, for Push 2 and electronics
- Neil Rolnick – Messages, for solo laptop performance
- Joe Basile, Brendan Betyn, and Alex Smith – Painting Pirates; Translucent, for Percussion, other instruments, and electronics
*****
Dance for Princess Charis Grant
Kory Reeder, Composer
Kory Reeder, Piano
Written as a dance, this piece is an invitation for
choreographed energy, excitement, and experimentation. Because of
this, the notation is an invitation to improvise within the boundaries
described, and within the color pallet laid out in the score and
electronics.
Kory Reeder is American composer and performer whose music draws on ideas of objectivity, place, immediacy, and stasis, and is heavily inspired by the visual arts. Kory’s music has been released on Edition Wandelweiser Records, and he has been artist-in-residence at Arts Letter and Numbers, and the Kimmel, Harding, Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Everglades National Park. His music has been performed, recognized, and awarded internationally and he is a frequent collaborator with theater, dance, and opera programs, having been awarded by The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Records. Kory is currently pursuing a PhD. in composition at the University of North Texas. Please visit www.koryreeder.com for more.
*****
pretty on paper (2019)
Kennedy Taylor Dixon, Composer
Kennedy Taylor Dixon, Viola
Kris Bendrick, Electronics
pretty on paper (2019) was written originally as a solo viola piece that focused on the use of overpressure with simple harmonic material. After pairing it with improvised electrics, the piece has since expanded and developed to produce a continuous wall of sound that is determined by specific gestures and elements that are enhanced by the electronics.
Kennedy Taylor Dixon is a violist, composer, and collaborator based out of Kalamazoo, MI. She often composes for herself and other string instruments, because of her comfort and pedigree within the string family. Her music frequently works with long formed trajectories and slowly evolving sound worlds. Inspired by post-minimalistic qualities, Kennedy uses indeterminacy to create long droning passages that allow performers to give their own input, while also implementing her own voice. The intended effect of this is to create a warm and meditative environment where the audience is able to ponder the intimacy of the sounds themselves.
Kennedy is currently studying at Western Michigan University pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in viola performance and composition under the direction of violist Igor Fedotov, and composers Christopher Biggs, Lisa R. Coons, and Richard Adams.
*****
Interplait
Kristian Twombly
Stacey Mastrian, Voice
The circular and obsessive thoughts that accompany anxiety can be calmed by clearing one’s mind, through meditation or by focusing one’s attention on an unrelated task. Interplait (2019) makes use of sonic materials such as improvised voice sounds and a singing bowl as a type of sonic meditation. The shimmering sounds of the bowl are enhanced by the voice, and the movement of this destructive interference is mimicked as the vocal gestures move in space.
Kristian Twombly is currently Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. His music has not been performed in most major cities, although he is delighted to take Warrensburg off of that list with today’s performance. www.kristiantwombly.com
Stacey Mastrian, a “manifestly courageous” (Boston Globe) soprano and Fulbright grantee, specializes in 20th- and 21st- century Italian vocal works. She has sung at the Konzerthaus (Berlin), Kennedy Center (DC), Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center (NY), Teatro La Fenice (Venice), in Mexico, and in more than half of the U.S. states. Dr. Mastrian has recorded for NAXOS, Neuma, and Stradivarius. www.staceymastrian.com
*****
MoxTube
Ralph Lewis, composer, Robin Meiksins, video editing
Dr. Elisabeth Stimpert, clarinet UCM Clarinet Ensemble
MoxTube is an interactive YouTube piece inspired by Dr. Elisabeth Stimpert. It continues to explore the terrain from the earlier DuoTube, a collaboration with flutist Robin Meiksins, now with the focus on Dr. Stimpert and the University of Central Missouri Clarinet Ensemble.
Audience members are invited to join in and play along with their laptops (the link needed will be available on www.ralphlewismusic.com). Follow the instructions from the projected video. Press and hold the number keys as indicated to manipulate the link’s YouTube video and contribute to the piece’s gentle soundmasses. In addition to the laptop part, the clarinet ensemble will be interacting with the video score.
After the concert, you are invited to continuing exploring the piece yourself on Ms. Meiksins’ YouTube channel either as a solo laptop work, with many laptops, and with different groupings of wind instruments.
Ralph Lewis is a composer whose works seek meeting points between sonorous music and arresting noise, alternative tunings and timbre, and the roles of performer and audience. Lewis’s music has been presented at festivals and conferences including SEAMUS, International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), SCI National Student Conference, Boston Microtonal Society, College Music Society, Electronic Music Midwest, MOXsonic, N_SEME, Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp, New Music on the Point, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Etchings Festival, and the Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival, as well as on radio broadcasts throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Robin Meiksins is a freelance contemporary flutist focused on collaboration with living composers. While Chicago-based, she uses the Internet and online media to support and create collaboration, as well as more traditional means of performance. In 2018, Robin launched the 52 Weeks of Flute Project. This project builds on the ideas of internet performance and collaboration from the 365 project. Robin has premiered over 100 works by living composers and has performed at SPLICE Institute, SEAMUS, Oh My Ears New Music Festival, and Frequency Festival. In 2018, she was a guest artist at University of Illinois’s first annual ‘24-Hour Compose-a-thon.’
Is there a standard bio for Beth and the UCM Clarinet ensemble?
*****
The Human Voice
Peyton Robert Hennager, Composer
Peyton Robert Hennager, Push 2
Every instrument that appears in the piece is a vocal sample taken from a wide variety of genres. I wanted this to be a song with a constant rise until it hits its peak, using this form, I keep building the soundscape until the climax. I use a 4-channel output to help make the sounds more open and make the listener feel immersed.
Peyton is a current music technology student at UCM, where he is focusing on creating his own music while also working with and producing for other musicians. He works in a variety of different styles and genres, constantly trying to expand the variety of what he can do.
*****
Messages
Neil Rolnick, laptop computer
N/A
My wife Wendy passed away in August 2018. Two days later, in a panic that I couldn’t remember the sound of her voice, I found that I could un-delete voice messages on my phone. I found about a dozen messages from her there, dating from the beginning of her long illness until her final days. Messages is made of samples of those messages, and some of the music she mentions in them. It gives testament to her strength, graciousness, cheerful outlook, and ultimate acceptance of her fate.
Composer Neil Rolnick pioneered the use of computers in musical performance, beginning in the late 1970s. Based in New York City since 2002, his music has been performed world wide, including recent performances in France, China, Mexico and across the US. His string quartet Oceans Eat Cities was performed at the 2015 UN Global Climate Summit in Paris. In 2016 he was awarded an ArtsLink residency in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2017 he was a fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, and received a New Music USA Project Grant. In 2019 he received a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant. He has released 20 CDs of his music.
His work ranges from digital sampling and interactive multimedia to acoustic vocal, chamber and orchestral works. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s he was responsible for the development of the first integrated electronic arts graduate and undergraduate programs in the US, at Rensselaer’s iEAR Studios, in Troy, NY.
Though much of his work connects music and technology, and is therefore considered “experimental” music, Rolnick’s music has always been highly melodic and accessible, and has been characterized by critics as “sophisticated,” “hummable and engaging,” and as having “good senses of showmanship and humor.”
*****
Be Present At…
Joe Basile, Technology
Brendan Betyn, Drumset and technology
Alex Smith, Vibraphone and technology
Joe Basile, Technology
Brendan Betyn, Drumset and technology
Alex Smith, Vibraphone and technology
“Be Present At…” is a re-imagination of an 18th century Moravian hymn by John Cennick for vibraphone, drumset, and technology.
Same as originally submitted.