A Luigi Nono U.S. premiere, a Gregory Cornelius world premiere, and works by Giacinto Scelsi

The Italian Academy at Columbia University presents

AMP NEW MUSIC

Gregory Cornelius and Adam Mirza, Co-Directors


EKMELES VOCAL ENSEMBLE

Jeffrey Gavett, Director


May 9, 2012 at 8 PM


Hô (excerpts) - 1960 - Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)

Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano


Maknongan - 1976 - Giacinto Scelsi

Michael Ibrahim, saxophone


Pwyll - 1954 - Giacinto Scelsi

Ashley Addington, flute


Friction (Premiere) - 2012 - Gregory Cornelius (b. 1977)

Carl Bettendorf, conductor

Ashley Addington, flute

Leah Asher, violin

Laura Barger, piano

Michael Ibrahim, saxophone

Mariel Roberts, cello

Fred Trumpy, percussion

Gregory Cornelius, sound engineer


Quando stanno morendo, diario polacco n.2 (US Premiere) - 1982 - Luigi Nono

(1924-1990)

 Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble:

Jeffrey Gavett, conductor

Megan Schubert, soprano

Christie Finn, soprano

Amirtha Kidambi, mezzo-soprano

Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano

Ashley Addington, flute

Mariel Roberts, cello

Gregory Cornelius, sound engineer


In collaboration with the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Harvestworks Digital Media

Arts Center and the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono, Venice.


PROGRAM NOTES


In 1959, Luigi Nono delivered a polemical lecture to his colleagues at the

Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the epicenter of European post-war

musical modernism. In the lecture titled “Historical Presence in the Music

of Today”, Nono claimed that his fellow composers of the avant-garde were

succumming to an ultimately nihilistic temptation in their newfound

fascination for the instancy of the now. He saw this as a blind rejection of

the critical role of history and dismissed the “evangelical talk” of “those

who thought themselves able to to begin a new era ex abrupto, where are all

would be programmatically ‘new’, those who would like to give themselves the

convenient possibility of being both principle and end.” The “Darmstadt

School” (an affirmative label originally coined by Nono) was turning into an

aesthetic free-for-all.


In retrospect it is not surprising that the high-mindedness of the early

Darmstadt years would eventually come down to Earth. However one interprets

the post-war modernist aesthetic, Nono’s invocation of history as the

necessary awareness through which the avant-garde project must face its

cultural reality was a prescient insight into the demands of the modern

situation.


First: sounds have histories. Sounds are not simply acoustic phenomena but

are products or results of actions, natural or human, in various contexts

and always for the sake of something important in those contexts. Sounds

carry with them the history of their production as the trace of the

performance through which they arise. Second, the organic relationship

between process and result (history and presence) becomes an issue in

modernity due to the technology question: is modern technology the source or

cure to modern alienation? (Does Facebook™ connect us or ‘make us lonely’?).

In the audio realm, recording technology dissociates the ‘acoustic’ sound

from its production, but it also draws our attention to the immediacy of

sound, its inner-life and fluid variability.


The three composers on tonight’s concert have sought new means to musical

sound via a personal engagement with its production. This engagement is

physical, between the composer and the instrument, as well as collaborative,

between composer and performer.


All three make various uses of technology to access the immediacy of

improvisational action and to develop spaces of interaction and tradition.

In these ways, they attempt to develop through modernism the possibilities

of local empowerment.


THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR WORKS


There are not too many details about the life of Italian composer Giacinto

Scelsi (1905-1988). He came from a family of southern Italian nobility which

afforded him financial independence throughout his life. In the 1930’s and

40s he traveled around Europe and became close with surealist and symbolist

artists in Paris. After a personal crisis and psychological breakdown in

1948 that placed him in a mental institution for several years, Scelsi

returned to composition under the guidance of a confluence of spiritual

philosophies. Working closely with a small circle of performers, he devised

methods of recording and transcribing improvisations that allowed him to

hone in on nuances in timbre and microtonal melody. His music only came to

broader attention a few years before his death when his works were performed

at the Darmstadt Festival in 1982 (the same year, incidentally, as the

premiere of Nono’s Quando stanno morendo).


About his piece, Amp co-director Gregory Cornelius (b. 1977) writes:


"Friction is only present when two surfaces touch.

The greater the friction between surfaces, which correlates directly to the

material nature of the surfaces, the more movement is inhibited and the more

force is required to move one surface against the other. When movement does

occur, sound waves radiate with the mechanical forces involved in their

creation encoded within. Thus, while unseen, friction is easily felt.


Last spring, while glued simultaneously to the television and my laptop, I

sat stunned by the emotional scenes broadcast from the Middle East and North

Africa. The energy and emotion emanating from both the crowds and the

individual voices was captivating, and the friction between the oppressors

and those seeking freedom intense. I wanted to react, but instead of writing

a piece on a subject of which my only experience was as a remote observer, I

ended up writing a more personal piece. I began with a series of recording

sessions where I explored the interaction of surfaces. Not only was the

amount of friction present between the surfaces frozen in the recordings,

but also the physical exertion (often my own) involved in the gestures.

Through these experiments and reflecting on the resulting sonic artifacts,

the intimate and constrained sonic space of the work bloomed."


Following his critique of the new directions at Darmstadt, Italian composer

Luigi Nono (1924-1990) became active in anti-fascist and anti-imperialist

liberation movements around the world, and during the 1960s he sought ways

to explicitly integrate his dual commitments to artistic abstraction and

political engagement. Later in life, Nono turned inward to face the elusive

and fragmentary moments of experience. The featured composition on our

program, Quando stanno morendo: diario polacco n. 2, is a reflective work

from this final period. Like many of these works, the composition involved a

process of ‘hands-on’ experimentation with musicians and technicians at one

of Europe’s leading music-technology laboratories, the Experimental Studio

in Freiburg, Germany. This collaborative working process became itself so

woven into the fabric of the resulting works that their scores retain the

living fluidity of an oral tradition.


In Quando, the central dimension is vocal: four singers share a sober

monody, a quiet lament parsed into its component outbursts, tremors and

hesitations. The voices interweave and their ramifications are projected by

an elaborate interactive electroacoustic setup into a multi-dimensional

acoustic space. Singers and instrumentalists use microphones and live

electronic processing techniques to shape and color each other’s sounds.

Here, repercussions and reverberations acquire their own density, sonically

materializing the frustrated political roar behind the composition.


Seven texts by five poets were selected and edited by Nono’s friend and

fellow Venetian, Massimo Cacciari. The poems were arranged into two groups

of three that surround a single text by Russian Futurist, Velemir

Chlebnikov. The outer movements meditate past despair and future hope, while

Chlebnikov’s central text, which accuses Moscow of having lost its way,

becomes a protest against the authoritarian eastern bloc regime that imposed

martial law in Poland on the 13th of December, 1981, just months after Nono

had been invited to compose a new piece for a festival in Warsaw. The title

of the composition was taken from the final lines of a poem by Chlebnikov

which concludes the piece: “quando stanno morendo, gli uomini cantano...”

(when they are dying, men sing...).


EKMELES VOCAL ENSEMBLE

Megan Schubert (soprano)

Megan Schubert, soprano, is a devoted ambassador of new and experimental

music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She recently created the role of Saint

Francis in a world premiere of Sasha Zamler-Carhart’s opera I Fioretti at La

Mama E.T.C., the role of Scientist/Athena in Likeness to Lily’s COMMAND

VOICE at TPAC, sang in the New York Premiere of Robert Ashley’s That Morning

Thing at The Kitchen, in Denman Maroney's new opera Claudius Smith at Dixon

Place, and performed and produced the NY premiere of Georges Aperghis's

Sextuor: L'origine des espèces with Avant Media, and again at Joria

Productions.  Upcoming performances include Jason Cady’s opera, Happiness is

the Problem (5/10/12) at Roulette, and a program of all premieres at

Symphony Space produced by Inhyun Kim's Ear to Mind (6/16/12).  Schubert

co-curates Avant Media's annual Avant Music Festival with Randy Gibson at

Wild Project.


Schubert has performed music by Stockhausen for an audience under umbrellas

in a torrential downpour for Make Music New York; world premieres at

Carnegie Hall; with robots while locked inside a Van de Graaff Generator at

Boston’s Museum of Science; on a bike flying by the audience in an

installation piece at McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn; in a giant potato sack

while video was projected onto her frontside at Webster Hall; for inmates at

a maximum security prison in Ossining, NY; with puppets at E 4th Street Fab!

Fest; for Elliot Carter at a celebration of his 100th birthday; and with

many ensembles championing art music and experimental jazz of today.

Schubert holds degrees from Bennington College and Manhattan School of

Music.


Christie Finn (soprano)

A two-time winner of an interpretation prize at the International

Stockhausen Concerts and Courses (Kürten, Germany), Christie Finn, soprano,

performed the role of Soprano II in the New York premiere of Georges

Aperghis’ Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces. In the past year, Finn has sung

with VocaalLAB (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Haarlem Opera Theater

(Netherlands), the Hezarfen Ensemble (Istanbul, Turkey), and several

ensembles in New York City.  Finn is a founder and member of the

experimental music duo NOISE-BRIDGE, collaborating with clarinetist Felix

Behringer.  She has been an active member of ekmeles since the group’s

founding concert in September 2010. Finn made her recording debut with the

release of the album The Year Begins To Be Ripe (Sonic Arts Editions) in

works of John Cage and Stuart Saunders Smith.  Upcoming performances include

Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix Sopranica (Apeldoorn, Netherlands), the premiere of a

new opera by Koka Nikoladze (Stuttgart, Germany), and Sofia Gubaidulina’s

Hommage à T. S. Eliot with the Asko-Schoenberg Ensemble (Amsterdam,

Netherlands). She holds graduate degrees in performance from Manhattan

School of Music (Contemporary Performance Program) and Southern Methodist

University.


In addition to her career as a professional singer, Finn is also an active

poet.  Composer Matt Aelmore has set her poetry to music, and current

projects include a libretto for a new opera by Brooklyn-based composer Jason

Cady and a collaboration with Chicago-based composer Christopher

Fisher-Lochhead.  More information about her performance and poetry can be

found on <http://christiefinn.com/>   <http://christiefinn.com/> http

<http://christiefinn.com/> :// <http://christiefinn.com/> christiefinn

<http://christiefinn.com/> . <http://christiefinn.com/> com.


Amirtha Kidambi (mezzo-soprano)

Amirtha Kidambi is invested in the performance and promotion of new and

innovative music across a diverse array of styles and genres. As a

performer, songwriter, educator, and curator, she strives to draw

connections between seemingly disparate musical areas and communities. As a

soloist and ensemble member in projects such as the The Sweat Lodge, the

early music inspired band Seaven Teares and the Ekmeles contemporary vocal

ensemble, Amirtha has performed in a variety of venues from DIY spaces to

concert halls in Brooklyn and Manhattan including Le Poisson Rouge, ISSUE

Project Room, Roulette, St. Mark’s Church, Death by Audio, Silent Barn,

Galapagos Art Space and The Kitchen.  Recent performances include a November

premiere of Robert Ashley’s WWW III (Just the Highlights), a premiere of

Charlie Looker’s song cycle “Eve’s Prayer” with the Brooklyn Philharmonic

String Quartet, Robert Ashley’s 1969 opera That Morning Thing at The

Kitchen, and the New York premiere of George Aperghis’ Sextuor: L’Origine

des Especes.


Amirtha serves on the advisory board for Performers Forum, a monthly series

at Exapno that connects performers, composers and music makers of any kind

to engage in non-threatening discussion and dialogue. She also acts as an

organizer and performer for The Sweat Lodge, the concert series arm of the

forum that allows musicians a free range of expression in a casual and

inviting atmosphere.  In January 2012, Amirtha joined the staff at ISSUE

Project Room in Brooklyn as the Operations and House Manager.



Silvie Jensen (mezzo-soprano)

A vocalist of great versatility, hailed by the New York Times as

"marvelous," Silvie Jensen enjoys a wide-ranging career, which includes

early and contemporary music, opera and musical theater, and ethnic,

improvised, and experimental music. She has performed at London’s Barbican

Centre with Ornette Coleman, Teatro Comunale Ferarra with Meredith Monk,

Carnegie Hall with Philip Glass, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. She sang in

the New York premiere of Georges Aperghis’ Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces.

Ms. Jensen has also appeared at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Ash Lawn Opera,

Stonington Opera House, Riverside Opera, American Chamber Opera, One World

Symphony, Miller Theater, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Voices of

Ascension, Bang on a Can Marathon, Clarion Society, in Handel’s Messiah at

Trinity Wall Street, and with the Broadway Bach Ensemble singing Mahler’s

4th symphony and Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne.


Her performance in Hildegard von Bingen's chant opera Ordo Virtutum, as well

many of her performances as a vocal soloist with the Christopher Caines

Dance Company, have been critically acclaimed by the New York Times. She has

commissioned and premiered works created for her, and has presented solo

recitals at Weill Hall, Steinway Hall, Symphony Space, Americas Society,

Liederkranz Club, the Stone, Bonhams, Nicholas Roerich Museum, and the Cell

Theater.  She has recorded for ECM, London, Koch, Helicon, MSR Classics, and

Soundbrush Records labels.



Jeffrey Gavett (conductor)

Jeffrey Gavett, baritone, is dedicated to the creation and presentation of

new music as composer, performer and improviser. He has performed with a

broad range of collaborators, from the indie rock group Clogs to new music

groups Ensemble de Sade, ICE, New Juilliard Ensemble, SEM Ensemble, Signal,

Talea Ensemble, and Wet Ink Ensemble. His own mixed ensemble loadbang has

premiered more than 40 new works in the past three years. In 2010 he founded

the contemporary vocal ensemble Ekmeles, lauded by Alex Ross as

“virtuosically adventurous”. He has worked with composers such as Nick

Didkovsky, Reiko Füting, Liza Lim, Somei Satoh, Steven Takasugi, David Lang,

and Terry Riley, performing the music of the latter two at the 2008 Bang on

a Can Summer festival, where he was a fellow.


Mr. Gavett has sung many premieres, including Somei Satoh's The Passion and

Matt Marks's The Adventures of Albert Fish; US premieres of Liza Lim's

Chang-O, Philip Maintz's Fluchtlinie, and Steven Takasugi's Strange Autumn;

and works by Nils Vigeland and Susan Botti in a performance at Zankel Hall.

He has performed at Merkin Hall with Signal, under the direction of Brad

Lubman. In this performance he sang the US premiere of Harrison Birwistle's

scena The Corridor and the premiere of Nico Muhly's Stabat Mater, and was

praised for his "attractive" voice by the New York Times.


Mr. Gavett holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School

of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program, where he studied with Lucy

Shelton.



PERFORMER BIOS

Ashley Addington (flute)

A versatile and engaging performer, flutist Ashley Addington performs

regularly with ensembles throughout the Boston area, most recently with Cape

Cod Symphony, The Orchestra of Indian Hill,  the contemporary sinfonietta

Sound Icon, and as a Guest Artist on Composer’s Concerts at Tufts

University.  Ashley holds a Master of Music degree in Flute Performance and

a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Butler School of Music at The

University of Texas at Austin. Her primary teachers are Marianne Gedigian

and Robert Willoughby.



Leah Asher (violin)

Violinist and visual artist Leah Asher is an avid performer of contemporary

music and creator of new artistic works. As a recipient of the Jacob K.

Javits fellowship, she is currently studying with Curtis Macomber in the

Contemporary Performance program at Manhattan School of Music.  Leah has

performed with the Grammy award-winning ensemble, eighth blackbird, soloed

with Oberlin Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, and participated in

the Lucerne Festival Academy under the direction of Pierre Boulez.  She has

premiered chamber works by such composers as Frederic Rzewski, Rebecca

Saunders, and Lewis Nielson. Leah bridges her two artistic worlds as a

member of the interdisciplinary ensemble SoundPlay, and is sought out as a

collaborator in other cross-genre work.



Laura Barger (piano)

New York-based pianist Laura Barger is increasingly sought after for her

dedication to contemporary music and for her energetic and committed

performances. She has performed internationally both as a soloist and

chamber musician at The Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), The National Gallery

of Ireland, Västerås Konserthus (Sweden), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

(San Francisco), and the Darmstadt International Summer Festival for New

Music (Germany). Active in New York's new music scene, she can be heard

performing everywhere from John Zorn's downtown experimental mecca The Stone

to the Kaufmann Center's Merkin Hall. Laura is also one of the founding

member of Yarn/Wire, a piano and percussion quartet committed to exploring

and expanding the body of works for that instrumentation since Bartok.



Carl Christian Bettendorf (conductor)

Carl Christian Bettendorf is a New York-based composer and conductor.  Born

in Hamburg, Germany, he studied composition with Hans-Jürgen von Bose and

Wolfgang Rihm in Munich and Karlsruhe before moving to New York, where he

received his doctorate from Columbia University under Tristan Murail.  His

works have been played at many prestigious venues and festivals on four

continents, and he has received numerous awards, among them a six-month

residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and a Fromm

Foundation commission.


As a conductor, Mr. Bettendorf has worked with new-music ensembles in

Germany and New York and served as assistant conductor for the Columbia

University and American Composers orchestras, Miller Theatre, and the Munich

Biennale.  He has recorded for Albany and Carrier Records, ArtVoice, Cybele,

and Tzadik and his music was broadcast on German, Swiss, Canadian, U.S. and

Australian radio.



Gregory Cornelius (composer, sound engineer)

Gregory Cornelius is an emerging composer who is fascinated by the nature in

which technology can expand and transform musical expression. Whether using

software he has developed to aid in performance and composition or using a

mixture of microphones, loudspeakers, and audio editors to listen into the

sound, Gregory strives for clarity of idea and a sense of vitality in his

creative work. His works often incorporate aspects of both acoustic and

electroacoustic music.


Some of the recognition that Gregory has received for his works include a

residency prize in the 34e Concours Internationaux de Bourges in 2007 and an

honorable mention in the 2008 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition,

which were both received for his electroacoustic composition Earth and Green

(available on Volume 18 of the Music of SEAMUS CD series). In 2007, he also

was invited to participate in the Composers Conference at Wellesley College,

which included the premiere Handwoven for fourteen players.



Michael Ibrahim (saxophone)

Michael Ibrahim is a Canadian saxophonist based in West Virginia and New

York City. His performances of concertos, recital repertoire, and new music

have attracted much attention in North America and Europe. Noted for his

"sheer virtuosity and musical intensity" (Calgary Herald), he has performed

throughout North America, Austria, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy,

and Russia. In praise of his solo Bach recording, Saxophone Journal wrote,

"The listener is in for an exciting musical ride."


As a freelance performer at the center of New York City's contemporary

classical scene, Ibrahim has worked with Amp Music, Either/Or, Fireworks

Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Manhattan Sinfonietta, PRISM

Quartet, Red Light New Music, SEM Ensemble, and Wet Ink. His solo and

chamber music performances have taken place in venues such as Carnegie Hall,

Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, Miller Theater, Symphony Space, and the

Kitchen. In New York, Ibrahim gave the US Premiere of solo pieces such as

Stockhausen's Edentia, Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double, and Robin

Hoffmann's Birkhahn-Studie for black grouse hunting call.



Mariel Roberts (cello)

New York-based cellist Mariel Roberts is quickly gaining recognition as a

deeply dedicated interpreter and performer of contemporary music. She holds

degrees from both the Eastman School and the Manhattan School of Music,

where she specialized in contemporary performance practice while studying

with Alan Harris and Fred Sherry. Mariel has performed with a variety of

ensembles in venues around the world as a champion of living composers,

including TACTUS ensemble, SIGNAL ensemble, Wet Ink, the Eastman Broadband,

and NouveauClassical. Furthermore, she has been a participant in the Bang on

a Can Festival, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and the Lucerne Summer

Festival led by Pierre Boulez. This spring Mariel just recorded her first

solo album, a record of all new pieces for solo cello which she commissioned

from some of New York's most promising young composers, which will be

released in June of 2012.



Fred Trumpy (percussion)

Fred Trumpy attended the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College

where he earned Bachelors of Music in Percussion performance, graduating

Magna Cum Laude. He has performed with groups such as Talujon Percussion

Quartet, Time Table Percussion, Iktus Percussion, LoadBang, Ursula Oppens,

Lucy Shelton, Marcy Rosen, Antonio Hart, Michael Mossman, David Berkman,

Face the Music, One World Symphony, Merrick Symphony, Merrick Choral,

Astoria Symphony, Creative Ministry Performing Art Center, the Airport

Playhouse, and has performed on the award winning film score Body/Antibody.

Fred is a member of the Indy bands The Marine Electric and Living Room, and

New York’s Most Dangerous Big Band.



COLLABORATING PARTNERS


Amp New Music is a new music group based in New York City that focuses on

the experimental and avant-garde in the context of musical modernism.

Without fixed ensemble, we draw from the rich new music scene in New York to

organically develop a few concerts each year, each usually featuring a

particular composer or nexus of compositions. Amp is directed by Adam Mirza

and Gregory Cornelius.