Tag Archives: BAMA

Carrier Hotel Victoria

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Carrier Hotel Victoria Quartet score excerpt

My new string quartet will be premiered at Chamber Music @ AEIVA. Carrier Hotel Victoria was written in response to Irene Grau‘s exhibit. Her work and mine both reference Alphonse Allais’ collection of monochromes, Album Primo Avrilesque. The quartet unfolds with each musician proceeding independently, as if reading through Allais’ book of colors—the resulting mixtures generating subtle variations of the monochromes.

Chamber Music @ AEIVA
Thursday February 21
5:00 Reception
5:30 Concert
Free and open to the public

Performers:
Sarah Nordlund Dennis, violin
Pei-Ju Wu, violin
Zak Enikeev, viola
Laura Usiskin, cello
Christopher Steele, piano

…about the size of a… Birmingham New Music Festival

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I’ll be performing …about the size of a fist and located slightly to the left of… at the Birmingham New Music Festival electroacoustic concert.

Thursday October 18 7:00pm
Birmingham New Music Festival
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Hulsey Recital Hall
950 13th Street South
Birmingham AL

The piece is an improvisation (composed instrument?) using a custom mapping of an off-the-shelf MIDI fader box (the Korg nanokontrol2 pictured above). The typical position information of each fader/knob is ignored in favor of gestural information about how the control is manipulated over time. This transforms the controls into virtual bellows on a pump organ or springs in a wind-up toy.

I’ll also share the stage with Geni Skendo and LaDonna Smith for an improvisation.

Worldlines Premieres at AEIVA

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Worldlines, my brand-new piece for three or more sustaining instruments, gets its premiere tonight at the Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts in a concert of chamber music inspired by Jessica Angel’s site-specific installation Facing the Hyperstructure.The program features three other world premiere compositions by Monroe Golden, Kyle McGucken, and Tom Reiner.

The pieces will be performed by Hillary Tidman, flute; Diana Dunn, oboe; Kathleen Costello, clarinet; Tariq Masri, bassoon; and Kevin Kozak, french horn. The event begins at 5pm with a reception and time to take in the artwork, followed by the concert at 5:30pm.

Friday April 7 5:00pm
Chamber Music at AEIVA: Air in a Loop
University of Alabama at Birmingham Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts
1221 10th Avenue South
Birmingham AL 35205
5:00pm Reception and art viewing
5:30pm Concert

Like many of my recent scores, the musicians performing worldlines determine the moment-to-moment shape of the music. In this case, all of the musicians share the same written material and use hand-signals to determine how they navigate through it. One hand signal may cue players to repeat their current phrase, while another may cause them to read backwards through the score.

Here I am trying out a pair of ChromaDepth glasses surrounded by Jessica’s artwork. The glasses add a sense of depth to Angel’s vividly-colored environment.

DIY Concert Review

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Edward Forstman reviewed the BAMA DIY concert for ArtsBham writing:

And, a new and wonderful discovery for this reviewer, Holland Hopson set his haunting vocals about a desolate landscape with “no road lead[ing] straight home” against layers of clawhammer banjo woven together via computer processing and a foot pedal.

BAMA DIY & DIT

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Tomorrow I’ll be joining friends in the Birmingham Art Music Alliance for a DIY Composers Concert featuring composer/performers playing their own compositions. I’ll be performing music for banjo, live electronics and voice. Also on the program are Raphael Crystal and Gaines Brake, Monroe Golden, Kenneth Kuhn, Kyle McGucken and area newcomer Geni Skendo.

Tuesday August 9 7pm
BAMA “DIY” Concert
Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham
4300 Hampton Heights Dr
Birmingham AL 35209

DIY = Do It Yourself, of course
DIT = Do It Together (and in this case, Do It Tuesday)

Iron Giant Revives Metronome Quartet

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Iron Giant Percussion will perform my work Quartet 60x88x120x208 for four metronomes  at the Hoover Library Theatre tomorrow. The concert is part of a 20th anniversary celebration of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. Quartet 60x88x120x208 was performed during BAMA’s first season of concerts (January 22, 1996). It’s one of my more widely performed compositions, but I don’t think it has been heard in Birmingham since then.

Thursday April 28 7:30pm
BAMA presents Iron Giant Percussion
Hoover Library Theater
200 Municipal Drive
Hoover AL 35216Free Admission

The program will also include music by Drew Pendergrass, Tom Reiner, Mark Lackey, Jody Landers, Monroe Golden and works by Iron Giant Percussion.

Download a .pdf score for Quartet 60x88x120x208

Carefully Unfolded Premiere by Wind Quintet Unfolds Sunday

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carefully unfolded II image
My piece …then carefully unfolded and placed in… receives its premiere performance tomorrow at 2:30 pm. It’s a big work: 6 movements that each function as a kind of canon, a dronal piece that moves from sunny lydian to spacey locrian. The work is scored for any 5 sustaining instruments and is being performed by

  • Barbara Harrington, flute
  • Jim Sullivan, oboe
  • Brian Viliunas, clarinet
  • Tariq Masri, bassoon
  • Kevin Kozak, horn

For readers keeping track, I posted about this piece in progress earlier.

 

Sunday April 10 2:30pm
BAMA presents An Afternoon of Music for Wind Quintet and Piano
Brock Recital Hall at Samford University
800 Lakeshore Dr
Homewood AL 35209

Follows From Hummingbird Premieres at AEIVA

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follows from hummingbird image

Follows From Hummingbird, my brand-new piece for three or more sustaining instruments, gets its premiere on Thursday at the Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts in a concert of chamber music inspired by the visual art of Enrique Martínez Celaya. The piece will be performed by Hillary Tidman, flute; Laura Usiskin, cello; and Brad Whitfield, clarinet. The event begins at 5pm with a reception and time to take in the artwork, followed by the concert at 5:30pm.

Thursday March 10 5:00pm
BAMA presents Chamber Music at AEIVA
University of Alabama at Birmingham Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts
1221 10th Avenue South
Birmingham AL 35205
5:00pm Reception and art viewing
5:30pm Concert

Follows From Hummingbird is one of a series of pieces I’ve completed recently that uses a circular structure to organize musical modules. The middle section of this piece employs a spirograph-style traversal of the points around the circle which generates a charming flower shape in the score; a welcome side-effect of the process.

Bridging Circuits and Cities

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Tomorrow night I’m performing a new work on Circuit Bridges concert 37.

Thursday October 22, 8pm
Gallery MC
549 W 52nd St, Fl 8th
New York, New York 10019

This concert is part of the Vox Novus Festival celebrating 15 years of work. Vox Novus and Circuit Bridges have teamed up with BAMA in a composer exchange (kind of like hostages, only composers are somewhat more demanding—requiring better food, more liquor—and not as susceptible to audio torture). The exchange began a few weeks ago with the Birmingham Art Music Alliance welcoming a contingent of NY-based composers for the Birmingham New Music Festival. This weekend Monroe Golden, Mark Lackey, Brian Moon, William Price and I are being hosted by Circuit Bridges.

I’ll be performing Alap Catfish Impala,  a new piece for banjo voice and live electronics. It’s a mashup (or maybe a medley?) of clawhammer blues and just-tuned modal improvisations.

Check out the wonderfully eclectic program.

Feeney/Richman Melt Glacier

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glacial_erratics_image

Wendy Richman and Tim Feeney will play my work Glacial Erratics Friday on the second concert of the 2015 Birmingham New Music Festival.

Friday October 9 at 7:30pm
The Dance Foundation
1715 27th Court South
Homewood AL

Friday’s program includes music by Andrew Dewar, Marvin Johnson, Davey Williams; guest composer David Morneau; and fellow founding members of BAMA Rusty Banks and Charles Mason.

The 2015 festival includes 6 concerts throughout the city. All events are free. Check out the program for the whole festival. Read preview articles at ArtsBham and B-Metro.