Craig Hultgren

Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Craig Hultgren - Occupy Cello

Cellist Craig Hultgren is a long-time activist for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. This year he has performed solo concerts and chamber music in St, Louis, Miami, Atlanta, Memphis and Bowling Green, Ohio. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he is a member of Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta.

A cellist in the Alabama Symphony, he also plays in the Chagall Trio and Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available as podcast downloads on iTunes.

Hultgren is featured in three solo CD recordings including The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book on Living Artist Recordings. In 2004, the Birmingham Sidewalk Film Festival 48-Hour Scramble cited him for the best soundtrack creation for the film The Silent Treatment. Every other year he produces the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlights the best new compositions for the instrument. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Birmingham-Southern College where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble.

The theme for this Fifteen Minutes of Fame is Occupy Cello - Upsetting the Musical Status Quo For acoustic solo cello Criteria for selection: Playable forward-looking concepts that challenge the traditional role of the instrument Resource for contemporary cello techniques

Concert Dates

  • May 19, 2013 - Jan Hus Church, New York City, New York
  • May 29, 2013 - Moonlight on the Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama

15 one-minute selections for Craig Hultgren

Concert program

  • One Minute of Infinite Dadaist Futility Condensed into 59.9 Seconds

    Daniel Arite

    Composer/guitarist Daniel Arite has produced four albums and his music has been featured on television and radio. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico and his awards include grants from Meet the Composer and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

    This one minute of infinite dadaist futility condensed into 59.9 seconds is one of infinite one minute segments of infinite dadaist futility. There is nothing else to say other than, it is visually stunning.

  • THE SUBDUED FEROCITY OF EXILE

    Emanuela Ballio

    Emanuela Ballio (Milan - Italy). At the age of 22 she graduated in Composition with top marks from "G.Verdi" Conservatory in Milan under the guidance of U.Rotondi. She awarded an advanced diploma in Composition with F.Donatoni at the "Accademia S.Cecilia" in Rome. She teaches Composition at "L.Marenzio" Conservatory of Brescia. She has obtained many honours both in international and national composers' competitions. Her works have been played in concerts and festivals all over the world.

    The tenant on the third floor listening to strange and unusual music. She holds us suspended between sublime and torture. Recently I saw slip a note under my door. There was written: the subdued ferocity of exile doesn't change the sound over the centuries.

  • C-Maschin

    David Bohn

    David Bohn received degrees in composition from the University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Illinois. He currently resides in West Allis, Wisconsin, and is the music director at St. John's Lutheran Church in West Milwaukee. He is the President of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers.

    The title is a reference to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which seemed appropriate.

  • träumend

    Dieter Buwen

    DIETER BUWEN (born in 1955) studied music education, church music, music theory and composition at the Musikhochschule of Saarbrücken. Among others, he received a first prize in the Seventh Composition Contest during the Festival of European Church Music.Buwen teaches music theory and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg.

    : "träumend": The emotions underlying this composition - „dream“, „volatility“, „discontinuity“ – lie beyond a classified, linear sense in time. Rather it is a sporadic perception of time: What has been founded is relinquished again immediately. Blurred, indistinct perceptions vis-à-vis crystal clear ones, this juxtaposition is characteristic of a dream.

  • Portrait Miniature #1

    Ross Feller

    Ross Feller is an Assistant Professor of Music at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he teaches classes in theory, composition, and computer music. Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, ASCAP, and the Gaudeamus Foundation. Performances throughout the US and Europe by many soloists and ensembles. www.rossfeller.com.

    With this piece I begin to explore a genre long considered outré, and work within a discarded medium thought to trivialize its subject matter. I beg to differ.

  • (avec nous) Dans la rue

    Matt Horrigan

    Hailing from Ottawa, Ontario, Matt Horrigan is currently completing the third year of his Bachelor's Degree in Composition at McGill University, studying with Brian Cherney. When not making concert music, he deepens his rock'n'roll roots playing drums with the grunge/folk act Sister Island.

    "(avec nous) Dans la rue" aims to capture the chaos of the street protest. Like the student strikes that rocked Montreal last spring, its driving clamour concludes with a dose of mangled Quebecois patriotism.

  • On the Rocks

    Chris D. Burton

    Chris D. Burton lives in New Orleans. A graduate of the Florida State University, he teaches composition at the University of New Orleans and Loyola University. He composes for all mediums, and has found a particular new love for opera. Burton plays the clarinet, piano, and cello.

    On the Rocks is a cellist’s homage to rock music. The piece takes the cello out of its traditional realm and places it in a world of shredding guitars and face-melting solos. It was written for the Vox Novus 15 Minutes of Fame.

  • Diffuse Reflection of Glass

    Magdalena Kress

    Magdalena Kress is a first-year master’s composition student at Bowling Green State University, where she has studied with Dr. Marilyn Shrude and Dr. Christopher Dietz. She has had pieces performed by members of the BGSU violin studio, the Toledo School for the Arts String Quartet, and the Relativity Jazz Quintet.

    Diffuse Reflection of Glass represents the scattering of light that would be reflected through a piece of warped or melted glass. The resulting rays of light would be dispersed unevenly in all directions, due to the irregular surface of the distorted glass.

  • AMAZING GRACE ECHO

    Serban Nichifor

    Serban NICHIFOR (b. 1954, Bucharest-Romania), American Composer, Prizes and Awards: Amsterdam, Tours, Evian, Athens, Urbana-Illinois, Birmingham-Alabama, Toledo, Koln, Karlsruhe, Roma, Trento, Newtown-Wales, Bydgoszcz, Jihlava, Zagreb, a.s.o., Officer of the Order of the Crown, conferred by His Majesty Albert the Second, King of Belgium. Over 200 compositions: Symphonic, Vocal-Symphonic, Concertant, Chamber, Vocal, Choral and Computer Music.

    AMAZING GRACE ECHO. Dedicated to the extraordinary cellist and professor CRAIG HULTGREN, this work is a Tribute In Memory of September 11, 2001.

  • Mitt's Lament

    Douglas Ovens

    Douglas Ovens has performed his works at the Akiyoshidai International Arts Village in Japan and on many festivals around the United States and abroad. He has received commissions from the North/South Chamber Orchestra (NYC), Allentown Symphony and many modern dance companies.

    This piece could be titled, "Mitt's Lament," but in the spirit of bi-partisanship, I decided on "Carried Interest." It's a piece for singing cellist with no particular expectations of the nature of the cellists's singing abilities. The singing part could be dedicated to Harry Partch (for anybody who ever heard him sing!).

  • A Wickedly Dramatic Shakespearean Serenade and Shout

    David Peoples

    David Peoples is originator of ‘Music for Now’ a lecture/performance series at the University of North Georgia (where he teaches) and ‘Music in the Stairwell’ a biennial sound installation. David’s works have been featured internationally from stage to the produce section at his local market.

    I imagine that some cellists may actually talk (or read bedtime stories) to their instrument? I wrote this piece for Craig Hultgren with the intent of allowing him to produce some different sounds and sing into his cello. Please ask him if he talks to his cello and email me.

  • Dispute

    Robert Percy

    Robert Percy is a London-based composer. His music, for a wide variety of idioms, has been performed extensively in the UK, as well as in Europe and the United States. Robert gained his PhD in composition at City University, London, where he currently lectures in orchestral and instrumental studies.

    An altercation between two voices with differing points of view. The voices are formed of two textures: one is of swirling harmonics and the other is a gradually roused bouncing spiccato. A brief, third, plucking idea (another voice?) is derived from the hammering-on and pulling-off of a rock guitarist.

  • Silt and shine

    Alan Shockley

    Raised in Warm Springs, Georgia (population <475), composer Alan Shockley has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center, the Centro Studi Ligure, and the Virginia Center for the Arts, among others. He is currently Director of Composition/Theory in the Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach.

    Silt and shine for solo cello was composed for Craig Hultgren. It is the third work in a series of pieces exploring Richard Wagner's prelude to Das Rheingold, and serves as a study for the fourth work in the series (an as yet untitled piece for laptop ensemble).

  • Sliding High

    Juan Maria Solare

    Juan Maria Solare, born 1966 in Argentina, works currently in Germany as composer, pianist (contemporary & tango) and teaching at the University of Bremen and at the Hochschule fuer Kuenste Bremen. His music has been performed in five continents. Eleven CDs of different performers include at least one piece of him.

    Sliding High - this piece unfolds itself in the uppermost register of the cello (in harmonics) and in ascending glissandi at different speeds. Hence its title.

  • Per Violoncello

    Luca Vanneschi

    Luca Vanneschi’s music was awarded prizes in more than twenty International competitions and it has been performed by some of the more qualified musicians all over the world. Hans Werner Henze said about his music: “… it is an intelligent, non conformist, elegant and full of grace music.”

    Per Violoncello has been written in a notation free from any traditional sign of measure, in order to set the performer absolved from each obligation of metrical parallelism, of symmetry, of synchronization. The musical construction, burnt any narrative or evocative aspect, carries out a dimension, a timeless space in which the pure sound is the only presence and the only voice.