2016 NHMF Gallery Installation Concert Order
- Lucas Marshall Smith – Talos – 5:12
- Charles Norman Mason – Murmurs – 6:54
- William Price – Triptych: Three Studies in Gesture and Noise – 9:16
- Matthew Greenbaum – 23 Skiddoo – 3:00
- Kyong Mee Choi – In the midst of – 3:00
- Arthur Gottschalk – Borborygmus – 6:58
- Joseph Bohigian – Marimba Extraction – 3:40
- Kyong Mee Choi – Tranquility – 7:01
- Anna Terzaroli – Polyphonic N – 5:34
- Traix Heiden – Epiphany, or Culture Shock – 5:17
- Kala Pierson – Borroso – 4:00
Composer Biographies and Program Notes
1. Talos
In Greek mythology Talos was a giant, bronze automaton forged by Hephaistos and sent by Zeus to protect Europa on the island of Krete. Talos patrolled the island daily, driving pirates and invaders from the shore with volleys of rocks or a fiery death-embrace. According to the Argonautica, Talos attempted to prevent Jason and the Argonauts from landing on Krete with the newly acquired Golden Fleece. Unable to land, Jason called on the enchantress Medea, who summoned spirits of death to torment Talos. In a confused state, Talos was finally defeated when he scraped his ankle on a sharp rock, allowing his life-giving icor to drain from his veins. Weakened, Talos fell with a tremendous crash and died. Talos (2014) was inspired by this general program. Talos relates to the theme “Dialogues in Color” in that it deals heavily with sonic colors or timbres. Everyday objects are recorded and broken down into their component parts or most basic colors and then recombined and assembled to create fantastic coloristic combinations not possible in everyday life—bridging the gap between the mundane and the spectacular.
Lucas Marshall Smith (b.1989) is a composer who hails from New London, Ohio. He holds degrees from Bowling Green State University (B.M. 2012) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.M. 2014). Smith is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Illinois where he is working as the Operations Assistant in the Experimental Music Studios. During his studies, Smith has also served as choirmaster at the Maumee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregational Church and as a teaching assistant for Aural Skills and Music Theory courses at the University of Illinois. Active as a composer of both acoustic and electroacoustic music, Smith has had his music performed at the 30th and 31st Annual SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) National Conferences (2015-16), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2015-16), the 46th Annual Ball State Festival of New Music and the 2016 RED NOTE New Music Festival. Smith has also received premieres and commissions from numerous new music groups including the New York based ensemble loadbang, the Illinois Modern Ensemble, the Heartland Sings chorale, and ensemble mise-en. Some of Smith’s prominent composition teachers have included Burton Beerman, Carlos Carrillo, Christopher Dietz, Erin Gee, Marilyn Shrude, Stephen Taylor, Reynold Tharp, and electroacoustic studies with Elainie Lillios and Scott A. Wyatt.
2. Murmers
I composed and realized Murmurs in 2006 as while at the American Academy in Rome as a Samuel Barber Rome Prize recipient. Murmurs for the Cortile is one of three layers of a piece called Murmurs done in collaboration with artists Richard Barnes and Alex Schrader. The sound source for all three pieces was the song of a starling. The premiere of this piece took place in Rome. Since the premiere, the work has appeared at Yerba Buena in San Francisco and The Howard House in Seattle.
Charles Norman Mason is recognized for his originality and attention to color. “Additions” offered a nearly seamless integration of electronic and acoustic sound (The New York Times), Mason’s music speaks in a boldly, original voice (Fanfare ) His music is full of invention… funky and colorful… consistently ingenious. (High Performance Review), Mason’s Senderos Que se Bifurcan… is, without doubt, one of the finest new clarinet chamber works of the past twenty years. (Upstate Music (NY))“Mason’s brilliant From Shook Foil occupies a class of its own… it is charged with creativity” (Birmingham News).Awards include 2006 Prix de Rome, Dale Warland, ACO’s “Playing it Unsafe” FETA Cellotronics audience favorite, guest composer, Visiones Sonoras, Mexico. His music performed throughout the world such as Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva, Quirinale Rome, and Aspen Music Festival and featured on “Performance Today” on NPR. Mason is chair of composition, Frost School of Music
3. Triptych: Three Studies in Gesture and Noise
Inspired by the abstract paintings of Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon, Triptych: Three Studies in Gesture and Noise is a two-channel electroacoustic composition that explores and develops artifacts found in the space between recorded sounds. It is a three-part, cyclical assemblage based primarily on noise, musical remnants, and studio debris. Each part focuses on two to three main gestures: Part I uses as its source material sounds usually associated with the pre-concert ritual (warming-up, tuning, moving stands, and the scrape of a piano bench sliding across a stage floor); Part II unfolds slowly and juxtaposes long, high pitched granular threads with low pitched glissandi, all of which were extracted from the previous bench scrape; and Part III focuses on sculpted noise, sweeping gestures, and extreme changes in timbre and texture.
William Price‘s music has been performed at numerous international and national events, including the World Saxophone Congress, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, the International Clarinet Association Conference, the International Computer Music Conference, the Musica Viva Festival in Portugal, the Musinfo Journées Art & Science in France, the Engine Room International Sound Art Exhibition in London, the Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Colombia, and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chamber Music Festival in Singapore. Price serves as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where he teaches courses in music theory and composition.
4. 23 Skiddoo
23 Skiddoo is a brief electronic work that forms the sound portion of a video animation of the same title, also by the composer. There, sound, color, and shape contribute to a shared narrative. The video can be seen at: https://vimeo.com/178643246
MATTHEW GREENBAUM was born in New York City in 1950. His awards, fellowships and commissions include the Serge Koussevitzky Music Fund/Library of Congress, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund and NYFA. Performances of his works include the Darmstadt Summer Festival, the Leningrad Spring Festival, the Jakart Festival (Indonesia), Hallische Musiktage, Ensemble SurPlus (Freiburg), Nuova Consonanza (Rome), Ensemble 21 (Odense), the Da Capo Chamber Players, Cygnus, Parnassus, the Momenta Quartet, Network for New Music, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Group for Contemporary Music, Riverside Symphony, and the Houston Symphony. Recordings are available from Antes and CRI. All-Greenbaum recordings are available on the Centaur and Furious Artisans labels. He is professor of composition at Temple University
5. In the Midst of
In the midst of portrays a moment of being in nature with what might go through someone’s mind at that time. The piece represents the composer’s interpretation of “Sonic Haikus”, the theme of the SEAMUS Electroacoustic Miniatures Series in 2015.
Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo among others. Her music was published at CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). She is the Head of Music Composition and an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. Samples of her works are available at http://www.kyongmeechoi.com
6. Borborygmus
Borborygmus -noun:bor·bo·ryg·mus; a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines. In 1989 I acquired a very small hydrophone, shaped more or less like a pill, which gave me an idea. I swallowed the hydrophone, and recorded the results. In my enthusiasm, I had neglected to consider the effects associated with removing the hydrophone from my stomach, and the next hour was painful, for myself and for my unfortunate lab assistant. Nonetheless, I was successful; I labeled the results DzStomach Musicdz and filed them for future use. I then promptly lost them. Last year, while reviewing the contents of a number of boxes of material to be considered for my archives in the Woodson Research Library at Rice University, I came across an old reel of Ampex tape. It turned out to be my missing stomach music. I had my engineer of many years, Andrew Bradley, apply his patented method of Dzbakingdz old magnetic tape, in order to restore the media long enough for one last playback and subsequent digital recording. I took that digital file with me this summer to the American Academy in Rome, where I was a Visiting Artist. Envisioning a piece that not only captured sounds of the body’s internal processes, but also imagined hearing external sounds filtered through skin, muscle, and digestive fluid, I recorded sounds from outside my window, high upon Rome’s famed Janiculum Hill. Taking my cue from the 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, I created a piece that allows us to Dzheardz an imaginary trip through one’s innards –Borborygmus.
Rapturous, argumentative, and pricklydz (Gramophone), and Dzfascinatingly strangedz(BBC Music), Arthur Gottschalk is Professor of Music Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He founded and directed the university’s electronic music laboratories, and chaired the department from 1997-2010. The Association of Rice Alumni honored him with its Meritorious Service Award in 2016; Other awards include First Prize in the XXV Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Originale (Italy), the prestigious Bogliasco Fellowship for further work in Italy, in 2011, the Charles Ives Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2014 Gold Medal for his Sonata for Cello: In Memoriam, and the 2015 Gold Medal, Best of Show, and Recording of the Year from the Global Music Awards. Residencies include the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and the American Academy in Rome. He is published and recorded internationally.
7. Marimba Extraction
Marimba Extraction begins with a block of sound, from which elements are gradually taken away, exposing the inner parts that made up the whole. This process shows the different colors one can get out of the marimba, both by acoustic and electronic means.
Joseph Bohigian is a composer, percussionist, and pianist whose music has been heard around the world at the Oregon Bach Festival, Festival Internacional de Música Contemporânea (Brazil), New Music on the Point Festival (Vermont), Australian Percussion Gathering, University of Bremen (Germany), Aram Khachaturian Museum Hall (Armenia), and more. His works have been performed by such acclaimed artists as the Argus Quartet, members of New Thread Quartet, flutist Robert Dick, violinist Eva Ingolf, and pianist Guy Livingston and featured on NPR’s Here and Now and The California Report. Bohigian is currently a graduate student at Stony Brook University and received his BA degree in composition from California State University Fresno. His primary teachers include Perry Goldstein, Matthew Barnson, Kenneth Froelich, Benjamin Boone, and Matthew Darling. He has also studied with Artur Avanesov in Yerevan, Armenia and curates concerts for the Composer’s Voice Concert Series in New York City.
8. Tranquility
This piece is inspired by the image of a tranquil pond at dawn. It starts with mystic and hazy scenery of the pond represented by a relatively wet sound. Gradually, dry and more transparent sonic material is introduced. While the essence of the piece, tranquility, is presented, subtle tension is still achieved through dynamics and articulations of sonic gestures. The majority of sound samples are processed by CLM (Common Lisp Music); utilizing instruments such as expandn, grani, expsrc, ring-modulate, vkey, fullmix, and nrev.lisp.
Kyong Mee Choi, composer, organist, painter, and visual artist, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo among others. Her music was published at CIMESP (São Paulo, Brazil), SCI, EMS, ERM media, SEAMUS, and Détonants Voyages (Studio Forum, France). She is the Head of Music Composition and an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Roosevelt University in Chicago where she teaches composition and electro-acoustic music. Samples of her works are available at http://www.kyongmeechoi.com
9. Polyphonic N
The sonic material is continually transformed in this acousmatic piece through articulation and gestures. Moreover, great emphasis is placed on the polyphony among the source materials of the piece. These environmental sounds are approached in a meta-narrative way in order to produce a sense of faraway reality. Acousmatic music hides the source of sound, creating better opportunities for concentration on the sound itself. Thus, it is possible to appreciate those characteristics and peculiarities of sound that often remains unheard.There is a match and a close relationship between the polyphony of sounds from the soundscape and the polyphony of colors from the landscape related to the soundscape. The correlation between sound and color has its roots in the works of artists such as Klee and Kandinsky who strived to match the sounds of music to the world of fine arts, at the second half of the 19th century.
Anna Terzaroli holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Electronic Music under the supervision of Nicola Bernardini from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory (Dept. of New Technologies and Musical Languages) in Rome, where she is currently completing her Composition studies with Francesco Telli. As a composer she is dedicated to contemporary acoustic and electroacoustic music. Her musical works are selected and performed in many concerts and festivals in Italy and abroad while her research works inthe field of Computer music and Electroacoustic Music are presented in international conferences. Since 2009 she collaborates with the EMUfest festival (Electroacoustic Music Festival of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory). She is a member of the AIMI (Italian Computer Music Association) board.
10. Epiphany, or Culture Shock
Epiphany and culture shock are normally seen as distinct terms; however, they share a particular meaning. That is, one’s perspective widens and encompasses a new idea, system of ideas, or even something as vague as a notion. Both may be quiet and slow in realization, or as jarring as someone dumping ice water on you, waking you from a dream. Before studying in Tokyo, I had preconceived notions about how the experience would be. I had a way of living life. Then I went there. First living in a megalopolis. Attempting to reform my (new?) identity in the wake of great change. Being in a place grounded in history and tradition, yet steeped in technology and adaptations to Western culture. Identity and culture grate against themselves and each other. Thankfully, realization and peace can be found in locations such as coffee shops and churches.
The music and literature of Traix Heiden reflect varied interests, especially those of interdisciplinary and collaborative nature. Myriad styles and genres influence his work, notably the Western and Japanese classical traditions, metal, and literature from the science fiction, fantasy, and horror traditions. Ongoing is an umbrella project codenamed “Saralied,” which seeks to encompass many genres of both music and literature, including a one-act solo opera and a novel in progress. Traix has studied under Dr. Warren Gooch and Dr. Mara Gibson, and is currently studying composition at Truman State University under the tutelage of Dr. Charles Gran.
11. Borroso
I made Borroso (“blurred” in Spanish) for a concert in the Zeppelin 2012 festival at the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture. For this concert, composers were asked to use source sounds recorded in Barcelona. Borroso is based on a brief recording by Dutch composer Hans Timmermans, of a woman “presenting her love letter to Barcelona” – in relaxed, slurred speech after a night of drinking – which he kindly shared in a processed version for other composers to modify and use. I further processed his already-resonant version of her voice, creating more and more ‘blurred’ and abstract versions, finally layering elements from those versions into a piece based on slow shifting colors and mystery.
The featured guest artist for the 2016 edition of the New Horizons Music Festival, Kala Pierson is an American composer and sound artist. Vivid, expressive, and full of bold colors, her music has been performed in more than 30 countries on six continents, widely awarded and commissioned, and published by Universal Edition. She’s held season-long composer residencies with American Opera Projects, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and San Francisco Choral Artists. With deep interests in non-western musics, she’s initiated many cross-cultural projects. Born in 1977, she studied composition at Eastman School of Music and now lives in Philadelphia with her spouses and son. Connect with her on social networks or at kalapierson.com