Dear MATA community,
I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe during these uncertain times. I’m writing today to share an important update regarding the MATA Festival. Following the implementation of new and necessary quarantine measures in New York, MATA is postponing the 2020 MATA Festival, originally planned for April 17-20.
While this is a sad development, it is not an unexpected one, and MATA has been working closely with both ICEensemble and the New School over the last few weeks to prepare for this outcome. MATA has also been working to ensure that our musicians and other creative partners are taken care of during this difficult time. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely, and look forward to rescheduling the Festival for a time when our audience, composers, performers, and production team can safely participate.
While the Festival won’t take place as intended this spring, we remain committed to furthering MATA’s core mission: to promote and support early-career composers. To this end, we are working with our partners to develop digital content that we can share in the interim. We hope to share more news about this in the coming days. MATA is also moving forward with our 2021 Call for Submissions, and encourages all composers and sound artists to apply.
The music community is as resilient as it is compassionate, and I am confident we will emerge from this crisis stronger and more creative than ever. In the meantime, please stay safe and stay healthy.
Sincerely,
Loren Loiacono
Executive Director, MATA
On Friday April 17, the 22nd annual MATA Festival opens with Memory L00Ps, featuring “America’s foremost new music group” (Alex Ross), the International Contemporary Ensemble. ICEensemble will give the world premieres of two new large-scale works exploring themes of memory, technology, and legacy. Lise Morrison’s Herinneringe (Afrikaans for “keepsakes” or “recollections”) looks to the past, “salvaging” cassette players and medieval counterpoint to create something wholly personal and new. Jason Thorpe Buchanan’s The End of Forgetting uses live electronics and real-time processing of performer movements to ask: how can we define our present amid constant cyber echoes of our past selves? The audience will also be invited to experience (six (channels)), a sound installation by Nolan Lem which recycles and repurposes audio data from server farms to create “undulating drones of dense sonic mass”.
8:00 PM | The New School, Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall (55 W 13th St, NYC)
POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Ft. the International Contemporary Ensemble
Jason Thorpe Buchanan (USA/Thailand)
The End of Forgetting (2020) MATA Commission/WP
Lise Morrison (South Africa/Netherlands)
Herinneringe (2020) MATA Commission/WP
Nolan Lem (USA) (six (channels)) (2015) NYP
On Sunday, April 19, guitarist Jordan Dodson, percussionist Colleen Bernstein, and “daredevil” soprano Charlotte Mundy join members of ICEensemble for Vox Populi, Vox Machina, which reimagines the garage band aesthetic for an age of technological anxiety. Voice, guitar, and drum set are deconstructed and remixed with autotune, PVC pipes, and more, exploring the struggle of human individuality in a digital world. This intimate evening includes the American premiere of Maurizio Azzan’s Geometrie nelle mani, a performance of Her Disappearance by Mundy and composer-vocalist Bethany Younge, and excerpts from Alex Dowling’s Reality Rounds, performed by the composer alongside vocalists Annika Socolofsky, Emma O’Halloran, and Chris Douthitt. Additional works by Lawrence Dunn, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Anna Korsun.
8:00 PM | The New School – Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall (55 W 13th St, NYC)
POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Ft. ICEensemble with Charlotte Mundy, Colleen Bernstein, + Jordan Dodson
Maurizio Azzan (Italy) Geometrie Nelle mani (2016) AP
Lawrence Dunn (UK) While we are both (2016/17) NYP
Anna Korsun (Ukraine/Germany) Tollers Zelle (2017)
Alex Dowling (Ireland/USA) Excerpts from Reality Rounds (2019) NYP
Bethany Younge (USA) Her Disappearance (2015)
Yvette Janine Jackson (USA) Deliberate (Afraid of Nothing) (2019) NYP
MATA 2020 comes to a close on Monday April 20, with Vanishing Geometry, a program exploring the ephemeral and the illusory. ICEensemble is joined by the Bergamot Quartet and the Mannes American Composers Ensemble (MACE) for an evening of music that asks what’s tangible, what’s imagined and what might be in between. Highlights include the New York premiere of Israeli composer Maayan Tsadka’s Partial Patterns on a String and ICEensemble saxophonist Ryan Muncy’s take on Evan Williams’s virtuosic Rock Steady. The evening will be capped by a performance by ICEensemble alongside members of MACE in the American premiere of Dahae Boo’s tour-de-force whirlwind, Blink! Additional works by Fernanda Aoki Navarro and Nicholas Morrish.
8:00 PM | The New School – Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall (55 W 13th St, NYC)
POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Ft. ICEensemble with Bergamot Quartet and MACE
Fernanda Aoki Navarro (Brazil/USA) Impermanence (2019) NYP
Maayan Tsdaka (Israel) Partial Patterns on a String (2017) NYP
Evan Williams (USA) Rock Steady (2015)
Nicholas Morrish (UK) Life of Lines II (2018) AP
Dahae Boo (South Korea/France) Blink! (2015) AP
Music at the Anthology’s (MATA) mission is to present, support, and commission the music of early career composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA has since developed into the world’s most sought-after performance opportunity for young and emerging composers.
MATA presents an internationally-recognized festival each spring in New York City of new music by early career composers selected from a free global call for submissions; MATA Presents, an acclaimed series of occasional concerts held at venues throughout New York; and MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by emerging composers, and performed by an ensemble of their peers.
PIECE
Blink! (2015) – US premiere
BIO
Born in 1988 in South Korea, Dahae Boo has a lot of experience in various countries: South Korea (Seoul National University), France (CRR de Boulogne-Billancourt, CNSM de Paris), Germany (Hochschule für Musik Stuttgart, Hochschule für Musik Freiburg), Japan(Tokyo University, Kunitachi music college). Currently she is a freelancer composer based in France. During the 2016-2017 academic year, she studied composition and computer music at IRCAM. Her music has been performed by Ensemble InterContemporain, Divertimiento Ensemble, Berliner Ensemble Essenz, Quartuor Prometeo, Béla Quartet, Mivos Quartet and Debussy Quartet etc. In 2017, Dahae Boo did a residency as a composer at the Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2019 she got Prix de Sacem (Fr) and Prix de Fondation Salabert (FR).
PIECE
Partial Patterns On a String (2017) – NY premiere
BIO
Maayan Tsadka, composer, sound artist, improviser, sound explorer and teacher. At the root of all my works is an attempt to grasp some understanding about the nature of sound, its behaviour, acoustic ways of organization, and its environmental and social roles. I am interested in uncovering and amplifying layers and musical patterns—hidden, inherent structures— which occur acoustically, as well as in an exploration of the ways in which the sonic phenomena meets the physiology of the ear and the psychology of listening. Often, my work incorporates a dimension of imaginary and speculative sonic worlds, on the line between crypto-zoology, crypto-botany and futuristic folklore.
Current fields of research and creative work include: prehistoric harmony, sonic taxonomy, sound as a museal exhibit, tuning systems, sonic botany, underwater sounds, field recordings and echo/resonance in musical, political, and social contexts. I completed a DMA in music composition from UC Santa Cruz, with a dissertation titled Persistence, Resistance, Resonance: a research and musical works exploring different connections between music and politics, from the rhythms of protest chants, to a series of site-specific pieces which call for active participation, challenging common musical hierarchies, and blurring the boundaries between composer, performer, and audience. Currently resides in Jaffa and teaches at the School of the Arts in Haifa University and in Sapir College. Research fellow at the Morris-Kahn Marine research station, Charney School of Marine Sciences, Haifa University. Co-artistic director/composer/performer at the Tel-Aviv based ensemble Musica Nova. http://maayantsadka.net
PIECE
While we are both (2016-17), NY Premiere
BIO
Lawrence Dunn is a composer, improviser, pianist, and percussionist, presently based in Manchester. Recent pieces have been written for and performed by Quatuor Bozzini, Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Apartment House, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Slagwerk den Haag, Philip Thomas, Sarah Saviet, and the Set Ensemble. Performances have been given at Tectonics Festival, Glasgow; Sound Festival, Aberdeen; Klangspuren Schwaz; the London Contemporary Music Festival; Gaudeamus Musicweek, Utrecht, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Dutch national radio NPO 4. Shortlisted for the 2018 Gaudeamus award, he was recently profiled in The Wire magazine.
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The End of Forgetting (2020) – World premiere
BIO
Jason Thorpe Buchanan is an American composer of operatic, orchestral, chamber, and intermedia works that explore multiplicity, intelligibility, and the integration of live performance with technology. He is Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble], and Department Chair/Lecturer in Composition, Music Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at the College of Music, Mahidol University in Thailand. He has been commissioned and widely sought internationally as a guest composer and lecturer by ensembles and institutions such as Alarm Will Sound, Talea Ensemble, Interface (DE), Nikel (Israel), Linea (FR), Insomnio (NL), EXAUDI (UK), Slagwerk Den Haag (NL), Eklekto Percussion (CH), Mivos, Iktus, Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, wild Up, the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, TACETi (Thailand), the University of Chicago, Stanford University, UT Austin, TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), Portland State University, Tzlil Meudcan (Israel), University of Northern Colorado, Chamber Music Campania (Italy), and the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst (BEK) in Norway. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger received performances at Darmstadt, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE (L.A.), and MATA (NYC) with the [Switch~ Ensemble]. Honors include a Fulbright Fellowship (Hamburg, Germany), nomination for the Gaudeamus Prize, fellowships, residencies, and commissions from Royaumont (2016 & 2017), the International Horn Society, AiR USF Verftet Bergen (Norway), American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva (Switzerland), Earle Brown Music Foundation, ASCAP Morton Gould Award (2014 & 2015), Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize, and winner of Iron Composer. He served for three years as Executive Director of the VIPA Festival (Spain), and holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music. www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com
PIECE
(six (channels)) – 2015, NY Premiere
BIO
Nolan Lem is an artist and researcher whose work reflects a broad range of influences and mediums particularly those related to the dynamics of emergent systems, kinetic motion, and the synchronization of auditory phenomena.
He has premiered exhibitions at a number of diverse spaces including the Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), L’HOSTE Art Contemporain (Arles, France), and the Danish National Museum of Music (Copenhagen). He has held residencies at IRCAM, MassMoCA, Cité Internationale des Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He holds degrees in saxophone performance, electrical engineering, and received his MFA at Columbia University. Nolan is currently a PhD candidate at Stanford University where he studies at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
PIECE
Rock Steady (2015)
BIO
The music of Evan Williams has been performed across the country and internationally by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, and at festivals such as SEAMUS, the New Music Gathering, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and the New York City Electronic Music Festival. He has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra. His work can be found on recordings by The Namaste Ensemble, Levels, and soprano Katherine Jolly.
Williams has received a number of awards and honors, including serving as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural Classical Roots Composer-in-Residence in 2018. Williams holds a DMA in Composition with a cognate in Orchestral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where he also served as a teaching assistant in electronic music. He also holds degrees from Bowling Green State University and Lawrence University.
Williams serves as Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Instrumental Activities at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, where he teaches composition, music technology, and leads the Rhodes Orchestra. He previously held teaching positions at Lawrence University, Bennington College, and at the Walden School.
PIECE
Deliberate (Afraid of Nothing) (2019) – NYP
BIO
Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer of electroacoustic, chamber, and orchestral musics for concert, theatre, and installation. Building on her experience as a theatrical sound designer, she blends various forms into her own aesthetic of narrative soundscape composition, radio opera, and improvisation. Her works often draw from history to examine relevant social issues.
Yvette is a recipient of San Francisco’s Dean Goodman Choice Award for Sound Design and Theatre Bay Area’s Eric Landisman Fellowship. She was selected by the American Composers Orchestra to participate in the third Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute in conjunction with the The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Yvette studied music at the RD Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia University in the City of New York, and a Ph.D. in Music-Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the history of production techniques and aesthetics which link radio drama and electroacoustic musics; multichannel composition; and immersion.
PIECE
Herinneringe (2020) – World premiere
BIO
Lise Morrison is a South African composer based in The Hague. Her instrumental and electroacoustic works deal with repetition, extended form, and the effects of material and pacing change in a fragile environment of carefully exposed sounds. Her work has been presented in events in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Notable performances and collaborators include the Ives Ensemble, Slagwerk Den Haag, Orkest de Ereprijs, New European Ensemble, Ensemble Modelo62 (NL), Ensemble Mise-En(USA), Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (RUS), and the Bozzini Quartet (CA) in festivals/venues such as the Unyazi Electronic Music Festival, Moscow Philharmonic, Orgelpark Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival Academy, and Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Lise holds a B.Mus (Hans Roosenschoon) from Stellenbosch University and an M.Mus (Calliope Tsoupaki, Huba de Graaff, Mayke Nas) from the Royal Conservatory The Hague.
PIECE
Life of Lines II (2018) – US premiere
BIO
Nicholas Morrish (1989) is a composer working with acoustic ensembles and electronics in increasingly multimedia situations. His most recent pieces explore the grain, spectrality and atmospherics of media and sound surfaces that render time as an audible materiality. He is interested in noisy breakages in signal and the interiors of tone, alongside the bodies that transmit them. Nick is the holder of the Mendelssohn Scholarship (2018-20), a Gaudeamus Award 2019 nominee, and a Styria-Artist-in-Residence Scholarship in 2019. He has been awarded prizes and residencies by LSO Soundhub, NCI (LA Phil), The RSNO Composer’s Hub, The Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, Sound and Music’s New Voices, New Dots and Inspired by Digital. His pieces have been performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, ICE/LAPhil, Ensemble Intercontemporain, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, United Instruments of Lucilin, Schallfeld, Nikel, Catchpenny, Insomnio, Ensemble Offspring, Divertimento, The Philharmonia, Workers Union, Kokoro, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Chamber Orchestra amongst many others, with performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall (L.A, USA), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Neth.), Manifeste (Fr.), Rainy Days Festival (Lux.), Rondo (It.), Impuls (Aust.) Huddersfield Festival, Cheltenham Festival, London Ear Festival, LSO St. Luke’s, The Barbican, The RSNO Centre, NonClassical, Henry Wood Hall (U.K.). Nick spent 2018-19 as a fellow at Harvard University Music Department (with Chaya Czernowin), is completing a doctorate at the Royal College of Music (supervised by Jonathan Cole) and previously studied at Oxford University and Trinity Laban. He was a member of the Professorial Staff at Trinity Laban in 2017-18, and was a graduate teaching assistant at the RCM from 2016-18.
PIECE
Geometrie nelle mani: three studies for amplified guitar (2016) – US premiere
BIO
Maurizio Azzan is an Italian composer and sound artist. He studied composition at Conservatories of Milan (with A. Solbiati) and Paris (with F. Durieux and Y. Maresz), at IRCAM and with Salvatore Sciarrino. He has received a bachelor and a master in Philology and Ancient Literature from the University of Turin. His interest in visual and performing arts, as well as in ancient and contemporary literature, has deeply influenced his concept of music as a dynamic space-time network, in which instability is the pivoting existential condition. His music has been performed in festivals and venues such as Biennale Musica di Venezia, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Wien Moderne, MITO SettembreMusica, Mozarteum Salzburg, Milano Musica, ManiFeste, IRCAM Concert Season, Budapest Music Center, Romaeuropa Festival, Teatro La Fenice Concert Season, Dampfzentrale Bern, Impuls Graz, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Time of Music Viitasaari, Gare du Nord Basel, Biennial Festival of the European Recorder Players Society, Open Recorder Days Amsterdam. Ensembles and soloists who have performed his works include Ensemble Intercontemporain, Divertimento, Nieuw Ensemble, Mdi, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, Schallfeld Ensemble, Proton Bern, Fractales, Airborne Extended, Anna D'Errico, Antonio Politano, Ruben Mattia Santorsa, Susanne Fröhlich, Cameron Crozman, Emanuela Battigelli, among others. Winner of the Italian National Prize of Arts, Maurizio Azzan has been artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris and composer in residence in the framework of the residence-program offered by the Austrian Federal Chancellery in cooperation with KulturKontakt Austria. His works are published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milan.
PIECE
Tollers Zelle (2017)
BIO
Anna Korsun (1986, Ukraine) is a composer, sound artist and performer based in Germany. She studied composition in Kiev and Munich with Moritz Eggert. Anna combines in her creativity musical composition, installation, performance and sound art. She works for different formations from solo to orchestra, including acoustic instruments, voice, electronics and sounding objects. She collaborates with visual arts, dance, theater and literature. Anna involves into her works both professional and amateur musicians, as well as non-musicians. Anna performs contemporary music as vocalist/keyboard instruments, directs musical projects and teaches composition at Amsterdam conservatory, as well as at international courses.
She participated at international festivals such as eclat, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, ISCM, Warsaw Autumn, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, worked with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, SWR Vokalensemble, ensemble mosaik, ascolta, ensemble modern, AskoSchoenberg, Camerata Silesia, Silbersee, Bavarian Academy of Theater August Everding, Ludwik-Solski-Academy for performing arts in Krakow, LOH-Orchester, Thüringer Sym-phoniker. She was artist-in-residence at Villa Massimo in Rome, Residency for New Music Goethe Institute Canada, Academy Schloss Solitude, Cité internationale des arts in Paris and others. Anna was awarded Prize of Christoph-and-Stephan-Kaske-Foundation, Gaudeamus Award, Kunstpreis Berlin and Open Ear of Trillende Lucht Foundation.
PIECE
Impermanence (2019) – NY premiere
I. Mestiça II. Uprooted III. Permanent Alien (and native friends)
BIO
Fernanda Aoki Navarro is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music who develops intermedia works, performance art, and installations. She is interested in sound, the idiosyncratic relationship between the corporeality of the performers and the physicality of their instruments, the exploration between music and language, and the transformational power that experimental music can exert on issues related to feminism and social otherness. She’s currently a fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, at Harvard University.
PIECE
Reality Rounds (excerpts) (2019) – NY premiere
BIO
Alex Dowling is an Irish composer and producer based between New York and Dublin. His current work involves repurposing autotune and other vocal effects to create strange and otherworldly extensions of the voice. Recent work includes the release of an album of electronic vocal works, Reality Rounds, on Carrier Records and a collaboration with director Blanka Zizka and visual artist Rosa Barba for the show ‘There’ at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2019. His music has been performed by the Irish RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, orkest de ereprijs, and Mivos String Quartet, and has been featured at festivals including Bang on a Can and the Young Composers Meeting, Netherlands. He has also written music for theater and laptop orchestra, and his audiovisual installation Bodysnatcher was exhibited at the Eyebeam Gallery, NY and toured many other countries. Dowling was recently named a MacDowell 2020 Fellow and an artist-in-residence at the UCross Foundation in Wyoming. Awards include the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Jerome Hynes Composer Award, and the West Cork Chamber Music Composition Award. He has an MPhil in Music & Media Technology from Trinity College, Dublin and studied composition as a PhD fellow at Princeton University.
PIECE
Her Disappearance (2015)
BIO
“The music of Bethany Younge is raw. It deals with the body, the unique vocal expression and physicality of Younge herself—questions of identity when as much conditioning is stripped away as possible, and the bizarre theater that is born of all this. It is music that becomes desperately personal to the performer, as Younge composes with the essence of specific humans in mind. The brilliance of it all is its uroboric quality: in the end, Younge’s creations always circle back to be a representation of themselves.” -Nina Dante
Younge is currently pursuing her DMA in Music Composition at Columbia University in New York. She has received a Master’s degree in Music Composition from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, The Netherlands and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Her works have been featured in the 2016 and 2018 International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt, Resonant Bodies Festival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, The 16th International Young Composers Meeting, and many other festivals. She has worked with ensembles including JACK Quartet, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, Dal Niente, TILT Brass, KLANG, Ereprijs Orkestra, Fonema Consort, AndPlay, Chartreuse, Gyre Ensemble, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Inversion Ensemble, Mocrep, and others throughout Europe and the USA. In 2016, she was awarded the Stipend Prize at the International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt. Younge’s work has been mentioned in both The New York Times, The Chicago Reader, and has been listed in The New Yorker.
Soprano Charlotte Mundy is known for applying her precise, kaleidoscopic vocal control and unaffected stage presence to performances of the most complex and ambitious new music. She has been described as “preternaturally focused”(NYTimes) and a “daredevil with an unbreakable spine” (SF Classical Voice). Mundy recently performed John Cage’s Songbook and Julius Eastman’s Macle with SEM ensemble in Poland, Iannis Xenakis’ Akanthos with Ensemble Échappé in New York City, and Henning Christiansen’s fluxus-era opera Delijt Ver i Dag with Apartment House in Copenhagen. She has given critically acclaimed performances Pierrot Lunaire, Le Marteau sans Maître and Morton Feldman’s Three Voices.
Mundy regularly “slays the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (WQXR) with TAK, a mixed quintet whose debut album, ‘Ecstatic Music,’ was named one of the 10 best classical recordings of 2016 by the Boston Globe. TAK has performed at venues such as the Library of Congress, Roulette and Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall, and given residencies at Columbia University, Stanford University and Boston University, among others. With Ekmeles vocal ensemble – a “brilliant young ensemble… defining a fresh and virtuosic American sound” (The New Yorker) – Mundy sings stratospheric microtonal lines in venues such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Kitchen, Skaneateles Music Festival, and Music Mondays.
Mundy has performed in music theatre and multidisciplinary works on the BAM Next Wave Festival, Under the Radar Festival, Park Avenue Armory, St. Ann’s Warehouse and Abrons Arts Center, working with theatre makers Paul Lazar, Cynthia Hopkins, Katie Brook and Rachel Chavkin, and visual artist Martin Creed. In several collaborations with choreographer Miro Magloire, Mundy danced while performing the works of Saariaho, Feldman and Cage.
BIO
The Bergamot Quartet is dedicated to cultivating music for string quartet and beyond as a living and blooming entity, taking a format with a deeply important history in western classical music and continually expanding its limits. They work primarily with living composers, with a priority given to music by women, and aim to place this new, genre-bending music in meaningful dialogue with the histories that precede it. Started in 2016 and currently based in Baltimore, Bergamot Quartet will be relocating to New York City in the fall of 2020 as the inaugural Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet in Residence at Mannes School of Music. The group is regularly featured on Baltimore’s Evolution Series and has also participated in many local projects, including the premiere of Oscar Bettison’s Presence of Absence for Ensemble Klang + string quartet, George Crumb’s Black Angels everywhere from a living room in South Baltimore to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and performances of Anthony Cheung’s Real Book of Fake Tunes with flutist Claire Chase. This season includes a visit to El Paso, TX for a weeklong residency, a series of workshops and performances at Towson University, UMBC, and University of Baltimore, and participation in TRIADS: Arrangements in Sight and Sound, a visual and sonic installation conceptualized by MICA student Hannah Davis. They have completed programs at the Banff Center for the Arts, Quatuor Diotima’s Academy in France, and the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, and all studied at the Peabody Conservatory.
The Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irene Han, cello.
BIO
Performance Today describes classical guitarist Jordan Dodson as “one of the top young guitarists of his generation.” A winner of Astral’s 2013 National Auditions, he is an active soloist and chamber musician based in New York and Philadelphia. He has also received awards from the 2011 Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition, the 2010 Indiana International Guitar Competition, and the 2008 American String Teachers Association Competition. In 2013, he was a Young Artist in Residence on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
An advocate for contemporary music, Mr. Dodson has commissioned and premiered dozens of pieces internationally, including works by Lewis Nielson, Elliot Cole, Robert Sirota, and Gabriella Smith. He performs in several New York City chamber ensembles including Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and Contemporaneous, and he recently collaborated with such acclaimed artists as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Ransom Wilson. He can be heard on the album Subject on Tzadik Records.
In the fall of 2011, Mr. Dodson was one of two students selected to inaugurate the Curtis Institute of Music’s classical guitar studio, bringing to the school not only a new instrument, but also new repertoire and new possibilities for music-making. Curtis Dean John Mangan said Dodson fulfilled the school’s need for “ambassadors for the instrument and its repertoire who could create interest among their peers, along with a desire to collaborate.”
Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Jordan Dodson started playing music at a young age. He holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Cincinnati College- Conservatory of Music, and his teachers have included Clare Callahan, David Starobin, and Jason Vieaux. He plays a Gary Lee guitar.
BIO
NIOKA WORKMAN is an innovative cellist from a family of celebrated bassists, uncle Arthur Harper (J.J. Johnson) and father Reggie Workman (John Coltrane). Nioka has developed a distinct, original style of her own on acoustic and electric cellos. She performs regularly with her band, Firey String Sistas. Appearing most recently at the Schomburg Center’s Women’s Festival 2020 featuring Dyane Harvey and Women Of The Calabash. Their recent CD, “That’s What She Said” is still receiving national and international acclaim. Her work can be heard on the CDs of R & B artist India Arie, Joe, Beyonce and DJ Rogers, to name a few. She has TV and film credits on Oxygen, Good Morning America, Saturday Night Live and for the Maid of Manhattan soundtrack. Nioka has a wide range of Jazz experiences from traditional to new music. She has recorded with Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Miguel Zenon, Avery Brooks/Craig Harris and David Murray. On the new music scene, she has performed the work of Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Kitty Brazelton. Other highlights include a rare concert appearances with Butch Morris “Conductions” Turkey/Japan/NYC, AACM performances and at the Sons d’Hiver Festival, France with Cooper Moore’s Keyboard Project, voted Best Project in All About Jazz. Nioka has received several commissions to create live music for dance and theater. Most recently, the 2019 Bronx Council of the Arts, Art Fund Award, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, to compose music for the gHEM.in.I by Germaul Barnes. www.niokakworkman.com
BIO
The International Contemporary Ensemble is an artist collective that is transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, the Ensemble explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The Ensemble’s 36 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.
A recipient of the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The International Contemporary Ensemble was featured at the Ojai Music Festival from 2015 to 2017, and at recent festivals abroad such as gmem-CNCM-marseille and Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Mexico City. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.
OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, offers free concerts and interactive, educational programming wherever the Ensemble performs. As the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology, the International Contemporary Ensemble advances music technology and digital communications as an empowering tool for artists from all backgrounds. Curricular activities include a residency and coursework at the New School College of Performing Arts, along with a summer intensive program, called Ensemble Evolution, where topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion build new bridges and pathways for the future of creative sound practices. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at digitice.org.
BIO
Paul Pinto is a composer, writer and multi-disciplinary performer. He founded the music collectives thingNY and Varispeed with whom he creates immersive, durational and dramatic chamber and electronic music. His latest albums include Patriots with Jeffrey Young, Empty Words with Varispeed and Robert Ashley’s Improvement. As a vocalist, Paul works on a diverse array of new projects, including performing Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, originating the role of “Balaga” in the Broadway musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and in his own work including the opera Thomas Paine in Violence with Joan La Barbara, and the Resonant Bodies Festival commission of 15 Photos. This year: commissions for Iktus Percussion, Colgate University, Quince, Bard College, The Rhythm Method, HERE Arts, and Shepherdess, guest artistic curator for the MATA Festival, directing thingNY’s remount of the opera ADDDDDDDDD, performing 15 Photos at the Look AND Listen Festival, and Robert Ashley’s eL/Aficionado at New York Live Arts. pfpinto.com
