Featured performers at the Intermedia Festival, part 1

Descriptions come from the Festival website


Saturday, April 24 9:00 pm Concert 8, Library: Big Robot with guests Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon
Sunday, April 25 4:00 pm, Concert 10, Library: Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon

Bora Yoon is an experimental multi-instrumentalist, composer and performer, who creates architectural soundscapes from found objects, chamber instruments, digital devices, and voice. Featured in WIRE magazine and on the front page of The Wall Street Journal for her musical innovations—Yoon has presented her original soundwork ( (( PHONATION )) ) internationally, at Lincoln Center, the Nam June Paik Museum in Seoul, Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok, the Bang on a Can Marathon, BAM, and John Zorn’s Stone. Her music has been presented by Samsung and the Electronic Music Foundation; commissioned by the Young People’s Chorus Chorus of NYC and SAYAKA Ladies Chorale of Tokyo; awarded by Billboard, BMI, and Arion Foundation; and published by Swirl Records, MIT Press, and the Journal of Popular Noise. Website: http://www.borayoon.com


Friday, April 23 7:00 pm, Concert 1, Library: Pamela Z.
Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, and gesture activated MIDI controllers. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She’s created installation works and has composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. Website: http://www.pamelaz.com/



Saturday, April 24 3:30 pm IUPUI: Lecture by Luke Dubois; 9:00 pm Concert 8, Library: Big Robot with guests Luke Dubois and Bora Yoon

R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. Website: http://www.music.columbia.edu/~luke/



Saturday, April 24 7:00 pm Concert 7, Library: World Premiere (concert version) of “Auksalaq”, a telematic drama. Music composed by Matthew Burtner, with Jordan Munson, IUPUI Telematic Ensemble, Morris Palter, Ensemble 64.8 and Mabel Kwan.

Auksalaq is a live, telematic, multimedia opera composed by Matthew Burner performed simultaneously in multiple venues worldwide. Using distance technology, live music, dance, movement, visual arts and commentary, the work creates a rich counterpoint of media linking great distances. Auksalaq, the Inupiaq Eskimo word for “melting snow”, will integrate artistic expression, scientific information and social/political commentary to present an interactive, multi-dimensional experience that embodies relevant complex cultural and empirical processes. The piece illuminates scientific analysis as well as cultural and political issues surrounding global climate change.

Matthew Burtner’s music has been described by The Wire as “some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I’ve heard,” and 21st Century Music writes “There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive.” First prize winner in the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition, his music has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, American Music Center, Hultgren Biennial, and others. His music has been commissioned by Spectri Sonori , Musik i Nordland, Phyllis Bryn Julson and Mark Markham, the Peabody Trio, Augsburg Kulturburo der Stadt, Heidelberg Ministerium of Arts/ Trio Ascolto, and Ensemble Noise among others. Burtner is currently Associate Professor Music at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center.
Abstract | Website: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/

Illustrated program notes for Jim Beckel's "In the Mind’s Eye: Images for Horns and Orchestra"

In the Mind’s Eye: Images for Horns and Orchestra


Program Notes

In the Mind’s Eye is a Konzertstuck for horns and orchestra inspired by visual art. Visual artists and composers have often collaborated or have been influenced by each other’s work. A famous example of this is Stravinsky and Picasso working together on ‘Pulcinella’.

Impressionistic music occurred during the same period as impressionistic art. In a similar vein, this piece has been greatly influenced by visual art, and employs the use of musical effects that replicate various brush stroke techniques. Five paintings were used as inspiration for this three-movement work for horns and orchestra.

Movement I – Random Abstract

The first movement is dedicated to abstract expressionism artists. The specific painting that I used as inspiration in this movement is from the contemporary artist Ingrid Calame, who has used some of the concepts of abstract expressionism in her painting entitled ‘From #258 Drawing: Tracings from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the L.A. River’. This painting uses tire tracks from the Indianapolis 500 as its basis.

This first movement is written from two perspectives. Part of the music reflects the perspective of the artist, while other moments in the movement represent the perspective of the viewer. The opening of the first movement is a good example of the brush stroke imitation mentioned earlier. The opening glissando of the harp, followed by the fast scalar passages in the woodwinds, represent the fast, broad, stroke of a paint brush on the canvas. Jackson Pollack was known to actually paint to music and there was often a rhythm to his brush stroke. Throughout this first movement the listener will also hear short, chromatic chords that are meant to represent an abstract artist randomly throwing paint onto the canvas.

In this opening movement, the first entrance of the horns is my musical representation of a patron’s first impression upon viewing such an abstract painting. The music of the horns is meant to portray curiosity, interest, and questioning. The main second theme is music representing the painter’s perspective. The euphoria of an artist totally submerged in his or her creativity can be heard as the music grows in animation and intensity. This music, still in the voice of the artist, becomes more calm and ethereal as the artist’s mind searches for inspiration. After the artist’s inspiration is realized, the music intensifies with the return of the second theme. This pure adrenalin increases to a final climax of frantic brush strokes portrayed in the fast scalar passages now heard in strings, woodwinds, harp, and xylophone. The voice of the viewer at the art museum, who is pondering the final product of the visual artist’s work, is heard next in the solo entrance of the horn. The first movement ends from the consumer’s perspective, relishing the vivid colors and shapes on the canvas from the abstract artist’s mind.

Movement II – Daniel in the Lion’s Den

A painting of the above title by Robert E. Weaver inspires this movement. This biblical subject has been a favorite choice for many artists over the centuries.  For me, Robert Weaver’s work is the most stunning of those I have seen. The music, as well as the painting, addresses the concept of faith. The movement opens quietly with the horns in a quasi-Gregorian chant, setting the stage for Daniel’s overnight trial in the den of lions where his belief in God is tested. The trials and tribulations associated with man’s faith over the millenniums are reflected in this dialogue between horns and orchestra throughout this movement in G Minor. At the end of the movement you will hear a tremolo in the strings, taking us to a moment of Eb Major, which represents the answer to Daniel’s prayers as morning arrives and Daniel has been spared from the jaws of the lions.

Movement III - Reflections

The third and final movement is meant to deal with artists’ fascination with light’s reflection, particularly on water. There are three paintings chosen as inspiration for this movement. They are ‘Roussillon Landscape’ by Georges-Daniel DeMonfried; ‘The Channel of Gravelines’ by Georges Seurat; and ‘The Regatta Beating to Windward’, by Joseph M. W. Turner. Each painting is reflected in different parts of this third movement.

The movement opens with an exciting, heroic horn call from all of the horns, representing the excitement of a sailing contest as portrayed in Turner’s painting of the Regatta.

An orchestra tutti follows this opening fanfare, where the music is very secco, representing the pointillist brush technique of Seurat’s neo-impressionistic painting.

The excitement of an ocean adventure is continued when the horns re-enter. The solo entrance of the harp transitions the music into a more tranquil section that is meant to represent the beauty of sunlight reflecting off the ocean as seen in DeMonfried’s seashore landscape.

Horn calls abound in the next section, depicting the adventure and pure beauty of water and light in these paintings. As viewers looks at these paintings, their imagination brings their own images of the ocean and reflected light. These images are heard in the music. A final return to the opening horn call signals the end of this movement climaxing in a robust celebration of life as portrayed in visual and aural art.

Instrumentation

1 Piccolo 1 Trumpet in C
2 Flutes 1 Timpani
2 Oboes 3 Percussion
1 English Horn in F 1 Harp
2 Clarinets in Bb
2 Bassoon 5 Solo Horns
Strings

Duration: Approx. 17 minutes

Mvt I (4 min 15 sec)

Mvt II (5 min 15 sec)

Mvt III (7 min)

Philosophical roots of Know No Stranger's "Thrift Store Music"

Made for Each Other: A Series of Interactive, Community-Inspiring Events will be presented through May in the Clowes Auditorium at Central Library, 40 E. St. Clair Street. It’s sponsored by Big Car Gallery and Know No Stranger.

Thrift Store Music

Wednesday, April 28 at 7 p.m.
Sunday, May 2 at 2 p.m.

This two-day event invites local bands to explore, create and share self-made musical instruments. On April 28, musicians will meet at Central Library, be given a budget, and sent to thrift stores to find objects that can be used as musical instruments. For the next four days the musicians will create songs with their self-made instruments. On May 2, the musicians will return to Central Library to perform music created from their thrift store finds.  

Recycling, small scope, community engagement. Negligible carbon footprint. Bill McKibben would love this event. This is from his "Deep Economy":

You can make a strong economic argument, even in conventional terms, for more localized economies… Tangible commodities such as timber and apples are not the only ones that might be localized. Take entertainment, for instance. During almost all of human history, people provided it for themselves: music (like food) was something you produced, and the pleasure was as much in the production as the consumption. With the advent of recording, and then of broadcasting, all that changed; the new technologies allowed us to be more efficient and single out the best musicians and let everyone else listen to them simultaneously, much as factory farming allowed 1 percent of Americans to feed the rest of us. We began to take it for granted that music came from somewhere else: Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood, Nashville. Now, of course, new technology is beginning to undermine that century-old system: file-sharing allows listeners to, in essence, wander onto the big farmer’s fields and glean what they like. The recording industry’s short-term solution was to sue file sharers, and the slightly longer-term fix was to sell their music over the Web; if they can’t protect the profit margin, they argue, there will be a “reduction in creative activity” because without the possibility of growing rich, fewer people will write songs.


Perhaps. But people wrote songs for millennia before they had any chance of making big money at it. At most, you could make a decent living as a wandering bard – a profession that seems to be coming back into style. The New York Times rock critic Jon Pareles wrote recently that while “selling pop music on expensively produced and promoted CD’s is a paradigm under siege,” “jam bands” in the tradition of the Grateful Dead and Phish ‘have flourished as concert mainstays and as an alternative to canned music,” and in the process bring “music’s ancient business model – the roving troubadour – to the interconnected modern world.” Imagine, he says, “current pop turned inside out. Playing concerts would be a living rather than a promotional tool, bands would take music chances nightly, wardrobe would be an afterthought… Music’s past would be a foundation rather than a scrap heap.” Such changes aren’t only only taking place in America. In England, government figures showed “a live music renaissance underway across the country,” with half of pubs, clubs, and restaurants featuring at least occasional live acts. Bands still sell recordings, but more and more, they sell them to the people who come to the shows, audiences that are interested in a shared community at least as much as virtuosity.

It’s as if musicians were suddenly, like the new wave of farmers, able to grow smaller quantities of more interesting crops and find reasonable profitable markets for them. The live shows that provide more of their revenue are the equivalent of farmer’s markets, places that customers love not only for the product, but for the experience. No one gets superrich, a la Mariah Carey or Archers Daniels Midland or Exxon Mobil; but plenty more people get to do something lovely, whether it’s grow berries for their neighbors or write songs for their region. This parallel musical universe may not replace the centralized global one, but it’s clearly gaining. How far might it go? Here’s a statistic that gives some small indication: in 1900, in the state of Iowa alone, which was then crowded with small farmers, there were also thirteen hundred local opera houses, all of them hosting concerts. “Thousands of tenors,” writes Robert Frank, “earned adequate, if modest, livings performing before live audiences”.