Connected – Brittany J. Green | Ashleigh Gordon, viola; Anthony R. Green, piano; Castle of our Skins, videography
Connected is a short, rhythmically driving interlude for viola, piano, and fixed media. The work is inspired by the revelation, at the onset of COVID-19, of just how connected we all are to one another.
Brittany J. Green (b. 1991) is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Described as “cinematic in the best sense” and “searing” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music is centered around facilitating collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. The intersection between sound, movement, and text serves as the focal point of these musical spaces, often questioning and redefining the relationships between these three elements.
Her research and creative interests include mapping aural gestures to gestural recognition technology and exploring virtual reality platforms as a tool for experiencing immersive, intimate musical moments. Her music has been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the Society of Composers National Conference, New York City Electronic Music Festival, SPLICE Institute, the West Fork New Music Festival, and Music by Women Festival. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week, Darkwater Women in Music Festival, and the Intersection@ Art and Science Symposium. From 2018-2019, Brittany served as composer-in-residence for the PCS/ECU Young Composers Project. Current projects include commissions from Mind on Fire and the JACK Quartet as an inaugural member of JACK Studio Artists, along with an artist residency with TimeSlips and consultant work for PBS’s SoundField. Brittany is currently pursuing a Ph.D in music composition at Duke University as a Dean’s Graduate Fellow. www.brittanyjgreen.com
Described as a “charismatic and captivating performer,” Ashleigh Gordon has recorded with Switzerland’s Ensemble Proton and Germany’s Ensemble Modern; performed with Grammy-award winning BMOP and Grammy-nominated A Far Cry string ensemble; and appeared at the prestigious BBC Proms Festival with the Chineke! Orchestra. Comfortable on an international stage, Ashleigh has performed in the Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls (London), Konzerthaus Berlin and Oper Frankfurt (Germany), Gare du Nord and Dampfzentrale Bern (Switzerland), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Lee Hysan Concert Hall (Hong Kong), and throughout Sofia, Bulgaria as part of the multi-disciplinary 180 Degrees Festival.
Ashleigh is co-founder, Artistic/Executive Director and violist of Castle of our Skins, a Boston-based concert and educational series devoted to celebrating Black Artistry through music. In recognition of her work, she has presented at IDEAS UMass Boston Conference and 180 Degrees Festival in Bulgaria; has been featured in the International Musician and Improper Bostonian magazines as well as the Boston Globe; and was awarded the 2016 Charles Walton Diversity Advocate Award from the American Federation of Musicians. She is a 2015 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award recipient, a 2019 Brother Thomas Fellow, a nominee for the 2020 “Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities,” and named one of WBUR’s “ARTery 25”, twenty-five millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene. http://www.violashe.com
The creative output of Anthony R. Green (composer, performer, social justice artist) includes musical and visual creations, interpretations of original works or works in the repertoire, collaborations, educational outreach, and more. Behind all of his artistic endeavors are the ideals of equality and freedom, which manifest themselves in diverse ways in a composition, a performance, a collaboration, or social justice work.
As a composer, his works have been presented in over 20 countries by Gabriela Díaz (violin), Wendy Richman (viola), Ashleigh Gordon (viola), Gregory Williams (viola), Hayk Melikyan (piano), Eunmi Ko (piano), Amanda DeBoer Bartlett (soprano), ALEA III (conducted by Gunther Schuller), The Playground Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Ossia New Music Ensemble, Access Contemporary Music, counter)induction, BLY, NOISE-BRIDGE, Tenth Intervention, Chartreuse, and Alarm Will Sound, to name a few. He has received commissions from Community Music Works, Make Music Boston, Celebrity Series Boston, the Robert McCormick Percussion Group, and various soloists and ensembles. He has been a resident artist at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Escape to Create (Florida), Visby International Centre for Composers (Sweden), Space/Time (Scotland), atelier:performance (Germany), and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Nebraska).
As a performer, he has appeared at venues in the US, Cyprus, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, and South Korea, working with student and emerging composers, as well as established composers such as David Liptak, Renée C. Baker, Steve Reich, and George Crumb. https://www.anthonyrgreen.com
Born out of the desire to foster cultural curiosity, Castle of our Skins is a concert and educational series dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music. From classrooms to concert halls, Castle of our Skins invites exploration into Black heritage and culture, spotlighting both unsung and celebrated figures of past and present.
After the Floods – Mark Phillips | Lisa Ford Moulton, choreographer; Karen Benda, clarinet; Jason Smith, tuba; Lisa Ford Moulton and Travis Gatling, dancers; Jill Bateman, Keith Newman, and Mark Phillips, video
After the Flood is an excerpt from Turning Two Hundred — a 50-min work for orchestra, jazz band, soloists, electronic music, video, and dance, commissioned by Ohio University to commemorate its bicentennial. Before the Army Corps of Engineers were called in to reroute the river in 1969, floods routinely inundated Ohio University. It wasn’t so much a question of if, but when and how deep. The purely electronic introduction is subtitled Springtime on the Hocking. The duet itself is entitled After the Flood, though a more accurate but completely unwieldy title would be “After the Storms Have Ended and Floods Have Arrived, But Before the Waters Have Receded.”
Mark Phillips (Ohio University Distinguished Professor Emeritus) won the 1988 Barlow International Competition for Orchestral Music, leading to collaborations with conductor Leonard Slatkin. His Violin Power appears on the SEAMUS 2015 conference CD. The World Saxophone Congress commissioned and premiered his What If for 101 saxophones. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Wigmore Hall, the Festival Internacional de Música de Bogotá, the Blossom Music Festival, and numerous other festivals and conferences around the world. Commissioned for a Memphis premiere, his Dreams Interrupted has received performances across the country. He has received orchestra performances by groups such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the NHK Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra — and has been recorded by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lark Quartet, and several solo artists. More information is available at www.coolvillemusic.com
Jason Roland Smith, Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Ohio University, has presented performances at conferences, festivals, and universities internationally. As a founding member of OhioBrass, Ohio University’s faculty-artist brass quintet in residence, he has toured nationally and also performed at the Music Teachers National Convention and the Ohio Music Educators Association Conference. As an orchestral tubist, he has performed with many orchestras in the region and currently serves as principal tubist with the Ohio Valley Symphony. From 2002-2011, was Chief-Editor for the ITEA Journal, quarterly publication of the International Tuba Euphonium Association, and currently, he serves on the organization’s Board of Directors as Publications Coordinator.
Clarinetist Karen Benda is an avid chamber musician, recitalist and artist-teacher who plays with a “well-defined sound and nuance of phrasing.” (Cincinnati Enquirer). She is also an Alexander Technique instructor in the Lawrence, Kansas area teaching private and group classes. During the summers, Benda is Instructor of Clarinet and Alexander Technique at the renowned Interlochen Center for the Arts. She has presented numerous chamber music concerts at the Interlochen Arts Camp while also being featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Benda has held teaching residencies at the University of Costa Rica and in Colombia, South America as an artist-faculty member of the Youth Philharmonic of Colombia. She also performs and gives masterclasses with her chamber group, Trio Amical.
Lisa Ford Moulton was trained at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. She was a member of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City before joining the faculty at Ohio University in 1995. She was an associate professor until 2004, and continues there as a guest artist and adjunct faculty member. Moulton was commissioned to choreograph Turning Two Hundred to the music of fellow faculty member Mark Phillips. Since 2006, she has been a choreographer at the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York. Moulton has received two Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Awards and the Ohioana Citation for Dance. She is currently a Very Special Arts Ohio visiting artist, and teaches in two multi-handicapped schools. Moulton presented at the annual Department of Dance Dee R. Winterton Lecture at BYU on February 20, 2015, as the Honored Dance Alumni.
Travis Gatling trained in Ballet, Modern and Jazz at the Virginia Ballet Theatre. He attended Ohio State University as a Fellowship student where he earned an MFA in Dance Performance. Gatling’s performance credits include lead roles in works by Donald McKayle, Merce Cunningham and Doris Humphrey, as well as solo works by Ronald K. Brown and Earl Mosley and several others. He has been commissioned to create new works and set existing repertoire for the University of Akron, the Cherokee Ballet in Woodstock, GA, Middle Tennessee State University, Full Circle Dance Co. in MD, and Urban Soul Dance Company in TX. He currently serves as the Artistic Director and Head of the School of Dance at Ohio University.
Jill Bateman is currently the Digital Accessibility Coordinator at Ohio University. Over her 18-year career at Ohio University, she has held numerous titles, including Social Media Manager and Video Producer, Digital Accessibility Coordinator, University Communications and Marketing, Web UX Designer, Associate Producer, University Communications and Marketing for University Communications and Marketing, Web Administrator, Web Developer II.
Keith Newman recently retired from being an adjunct professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies at Ohio University. He developed a class in Television and Film Comedy that has been one of the more popular classes at OU. He also teaches Basic and Advanced Multi-Camera production and Producing for Film and Video.
Groundwater – Flannery Cunningham | Elizabeth Wesche, mezzo-soprano; Erin Busch, cello; Ania Vu, piano; Flannery Cunningham, electronics; Rec.Today, video and audio recording
Groundwater is the first incarnation of what I hope will become a longer work in which sounds leave visual echoes that are in turn manipulated and fed back into new sonic processes. This recycling is important to the narrative arc of the piece: I treat the emergence of core materials from the piano as a kind of visual metaphor for groundwater and groundwater itself as an investigation of memory. I’ve drawn inspiration here from the “Fable for Tomorrow” from Rachel Carson’s seminal Silent Spring, which describes groundwater as a hidden ocean beneath us that carries traces of everything the water has encountered. To this end, I’m interested in transforming the work’s materials in ways that make obvious the impossibility of any true erasure or undoing (which I find a simultaneously disturbing and comforting idea).
A huge thanks to Beth Wesche, Erin Busch, and Ania Vu for working together to flesh out the details of the structure I brought to the table. Groundwater is above all a product of their generous collaboration. Many thanks as well to the Eric Stokes Fund, which supported the piece’s development through their “Earth’s Best in Tune” grant.
Flannery Cunningham is a composer and musicologist fascinated by vocal expression, text, and auditory perception. She aims to write music that surprises and delights. Her work has been performed at festivals such as Aspen, June in Buffalo, TCML, SPLICE, and Copland House’s CULTIVATE and by performers such as International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK, and Music from Copland House. Her current projects include commissions for National Sawdust as a winner of the Hildegard Competition, PRISM Quartet, Musiqa Houston, and New York New Music Ensemble. In vocal writing, Flannery often writes her own texts and finds crafting words and music to be tightly intertwined processes. She is attracted to the very old and very new; she has presented on 14th-century master (and fellow poet-composer) Guillaume de Machaut at the International Medieval Congress and has performed at the International Computer Music Conference. Flannery writes for both acoustic ensembles and for players and singers with real-time electronics, always striving to foreground the musicality of the human performer. She holds a BA from Princeton University, an MA from University College Cork as a Mitchell Scholar, an MA from Stony Brook University, and is currently a PhD candidate in composition and musicology at the University of Pennsylvania. http://flannerycunningham.com
Beth Wesche is a Seattle-based singer, harpist, and songwriter in the critically-acclaimed modern folk group March to May. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English, where she also studied classical voice. Her musical interests run the gamut from pop to contemporary composition, and she is particularly passionate about experiments with text and form. An avid collaborator, she is interested in how music, other media, and the audience experience can shape and inform one another in live settings. When not recording music or performing, you can find her taking on projects as a social impact strategist, dancing, and learning how to be a good aunt. https://www.marchtomay.com
Erin Busch is a composer, cellist, and educator residing in Philadelphia. She is a second year Ph.D composition student at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the founder and Artistic Director of the Young Women Composers Camp, a two–week music composition camp for young women ages 14–19 at Temple University. She has been commissioned and performed by the Albany (NY) Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra String Quartet, the TAK Ensemble, The Philadelphia Charter – A String Theory School, and members of the Arcana New Music Ensemble. Upcoming projects include a string quartet commission from cellist Yumi Kendall of the Philadelphia Orchestra and a new work for Sō Percussion. Erin currently serves on the board of the American Composers Forum – Philadelphia Chapter, and performs as a cellist with the Arcana New Music Ensemble, Symphony in C, and the Philly Pops. http://www.erinbusch.com
Born in Poland, Ania Vu is currently in her third year of her Ph.D. in composition at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently studies with Marcos Balter. Her music explores varied notions of time, musical energy related to form, and sound properties of Polish in vocal and instrumental music. Recently, she has been commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to write a piece for their 2019-20 concert season, “Music & Migration”. Ania is a two-time finalist and recipient of an Honorable Mention from the ASCAP Morton Gould Competition Young Composers Awards, and a finalist of the 2019 Kaleidoscope Call for Scores. Aside from being a composer, Ania is also a dedicated pianist, and enjoys performing both standard and contemporary repertoire. Her main piano teachers are Vincent Lenti, Irina Rumiancewa-Dabrowski, and her mother Hong Anh Dang, and she has taken lessons and masterclasses with Dang Thai Son, Wojciech Świtała, Thomas Rosenkranz, and Amy Yang. As a pianist, she has won several awards in national and international competitions in Europe, and has performed in Hungary, Spain, Italy, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, Vietnam, and Poland. http://ania.vu
Your microphone appears to be noisy! – the Higgs whatever
In this improvisation, we use the acoustic signals from instruments as control signals for coupled oscillators. This video recording is from a live networked performance on 29 Oct 2020. Although the cat was locked out of the room, there may be some bleed-through from a neighbour’s drill.
Long-time friends, Puckette and Hagan began focused collaborations on academic and musical projects in 2014. Together their duo has performed in North America and Europe. They have introduced novel synthesis algorithms through new performances. Their work explores timbre, spatialization, real-time computer processes, algorithms, interaction design, performance practice, and performance systems. http://www.kerrylhagan.net/puckette-hagan
Still Shining – Linda Antas
Still Shining The visuals in this piece are created from a single source object until the very end.
Dr. Linda Antas is a composer and flutist whose compositions have been performed around the world. She has been recognized by the Musica Nova International Competition of Electroacoustic Music, the Fulbright Foundation, the Bourges Electroacoustic Composition Competition, the Fifth International Congress on Synesthesia, and the International Computer Music Association. Her works have appeared on festivals including the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the Città di Udine International Composition Competition (Taukay Edizioni Musicali), Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and the Sound and Music Computing Conference.Her current research interests are sonification, visual music, real-time signal processing, and physical computing. She is an Associate Professor at Montana State University, where she teaches music technology, interdisciplinary multimedia courses, and composition. In addition to—and sometimes in combination with—musical activities, she spends as much time in the wilderness as possible. Her life and music are heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophy and the natural world. She lives in the Gallatin Range just outside Bozeman, MT with her husband Mike, two highly amusing Labrador Retrievers, and as many freshwater tropical fish as healthily fit in 100 gallons of water. https://www.lindaantas.com
