100 Headphones

Pablo Pringler was a big fan of John Cage’s music, especially those tunes that availed themselves of emerging technologies. At university, he formed an ensemble that played “Radio Music for Eight Radios,” and later conducted “Imaginary Landscape No. 4” for twelve radios. So when he changed his major from train spotting to composition, he can be forgiven for writing music in a similar vein. Alas, his “Music for 100 Headphones” did not impress his professors, as it was audible only to the players – which, they professed, missed the point of a public performance. Pablo soon again embraced a train spotting major which, as it later turned out, benefited everyone (and which is, of course, another story).

David Gunn
www.DavidGunn.org

Upcoming Performances

60x60 on Birmingham New Music Festival

The Birmingham Art Music Alliance announces the inaugural Birmingham New Music Festival, to take place on August 21, 22, and 23 of 2014. Six diverse programs will offer exhilarating newly-composed music by Alabama-based composers, and five visiting composers selected from an international call – including Rusty Banks (Lancaster, PA), Patrick Greene (Boston, MA), Sarah Horick (Washington DC), Joshua Marquez (Iowa City, IA), and Robert G. Patterson (Memphis, TN). Featured performers include Amion String Quartet, Lori Ardovino (clarinet), Adam Bowles (piano), Kathryn Fouse (piano), Alan Goldspiel (guitar), Craig Hultgren (cello), and Laura Usiskin (cello).

The opening event at Moonlight on the Mountain begins with the 60X60 2012 International Mix – sixty one-minute electronic works presented continuously in an hour performance – followed by a set of improvisatory works facilitated by LaDonna Smith. Two Friday concerts at Brock Recital Hall on the campus of Samford University will feature acoustic chamber music appropriate to the intimate space. The final three programs on Saturday will take place at University of Alabama at Birmingham‘s Hulsey Recital Hall, and include acoustic, electroacoustic, and interdisciplinary works.

All festival events are free and open to the public. The Birmingham New Music Festival is made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and New Music USA.

Thursday

60X60 2012 International Mix and
free improvisations featuring LaDonna Smith and friends.

The opening concert at Moonlight on the Mountain begins with the 60X60 2012 International Mix –a one-hour music extravaganza of 60 one-minute electronic pieces run back-to-back, with images by James Willett and butoh by Ashley Muth & Deborah Mauldin. Following 60X60, there will be 2 thirty-minute sets of improv featuring Susan Hefner, Michael Evans, Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Brad Davis, and Si Reasoning.

Composers in the 60x60 2012 International mix include:

Anita Andreis, Ieva Berberian, Steve Betts, Valentino Bosi, Ben Bridges, Warren A Burt, Elliott Butt, Luis Martin Capella, Joel Chadabe, Juan Chattah, Meat Cove Choir, "Dofi", Angel Faraldo, Thomas Gerwin, Murray Gordon Gross, Will Hickl, Lisa Hogan, Yoko Honda, Adam Scott Johnson, Brad Kemp, Mari Kimura, Michael Kinney, Gerard Lebik, HyeKyung Lee, Cyprian Li, John Link, Stan Link, Derck Littel, Mika Martini, Mike McFerron, Angela McGary, Shaahin Mohajeri, Peter Mottram, KO. DO. NA, Julia Norton, Emma O'Halloran, Cezary Maciej Ostrowski, Maggi Payne, Rotem Perach, Michael Peters, Kala Pierson, Diego Felipe Pinzon Garcia, Juan Ramirez, Robert Ratcliffe, Gilberto Assis Rosa, Ronan Rubline, Paul Russell, Paul Scea, Alan Shockley, Nigel Lorimer Simpson, Cris Sirc, SKULFUK, Laurie Spiegel, Captain Thomas Taglienti, Shinichiro Toyoda, Dixie Treichel, Jeremy Van Buskirk, Jane Wang, Greg Winston, and Kristina Wolfe

Friday

Birmingham New Music Festival at Samford University – Concert #1

On the Program: Aurelia Lavette Gooden – Forgotten, clarinet & piano; Matthew Scott Phillips – Circles of Misunderstanding, cello & piano; Kenneth Kuhn – Song of the American Frontier, piano; Alan Goldspiel – The Sword and the Lute, soprano saxophone & guitar; Ron Wray – Affirmation, clarinet, cello & piano; Lori Ardovino – Turning Point, clarinet, trumpet & guitar; Patrick Greene – abstractEXTRACTION, flute, clarinet, cello & piano;

Birmingham New Music Festival at Samford University – Concert #2

On the Program: James A. Jensen – Assorted Departures, clarinet & cello; Bryan Page – The Edith Poems, baritone & piano; Joseph Landers – String Quartet No. 2, string quartet; Brian C. Moon – String Quartet #2, string quartet;

Saturday

Birmingham New Music Festival at
University of Alabama at Birmingham – Concert #1

On the Program: Edwin Robertson – Night Scenes, cello; Duration: 5 minutes (Hultgren) Aubrey Mills, Le Vide, electronic; Michael Coleman – Sonate (2002), piano; Kaija Saariaho – Sept Papillions, cello; Sarah Horick – Looking-Glass Changes, clarinet & electronics;

Birmingham New Music Festival at
University of Alabama at Birmingham – Concert #2

On the Program: Cynthia Miller – Knock Knock, Who’s There, percussion; Wesley Johnson – An Announcement?, electronic; Raphael Crystal – Robert Burns Songs, soprano, baritone, & piano; Mark Lackey – Starscapes, piano; Joshua Marquez – Putrefication, electronics; Rusty Banks – Liquid Fire, ecello, electronics and video; Joel Scott Davis – Theatrical Distances, clarinet, cello & piano;

Birmingham New Music Festival at
University of Alabama at Birmingham – Concert #3

On the Program: William Price – A Southern Prelude (Sans Titre VIII), solo piano; Philip Schuessler – Monochrome Variations, cello & electronics; Robert Patterson – From War’s Alarms, piano; Holland Hopson – Sudden Swan, banjo, voice & live electronics; Monroe Golden – Alabama Places, piano & microtonal keyboard;

Calendar

Persistence is Important for Success
60x60 Composer Statistics

Next year Vox Novus will be 15 years old. It’s a big milestone—old enough to raise some ruckus, but not old enough to legally drive. Anniversaries like this one are good opportunities to take stock and clarify one’s vision for moving forward. There are some exciting plans in the works, which will be announced in due time. I’m here about the look back.

There are several ways to approach looking at an organization’s history. For Vox Novus, I think the important contributions, the substantive achievements, can be illustrated with numbers. There are a lot of impressive numbers to be found when digging through the first fifteen years of work. I have been digging and I am at work putting together a comprehensive fifteen year report. This will include all of the numbers I’m finding in the collected production data. The report will divide the data by project (60x60, Composer’s Voice, Circuit Bridges, Fifteen Minutes of Fame) and will demonstrate the scope of each with careful data analysis.

Over the next several months I will share the graphs I’m making here on NM421.
Click here to see a PDF of 60x60 Composer Graph

The first graphs shows the submission and selection data for 60x60. Each row represents a single composer and each column a single year. The graph covers the first ten years of 60x60 (2003-2012). Light green indicates that the composer was selected for a single mix that year. Dark green indicates that the composer was selected for more than one mix in that year. Orange indicates that the composer submitted music, but was not selected. No color indicates that the composer did not submit this year.

Some composers’ participation is indicated by horizontal black lines. This means that the composer has submitted and been selected every year after their first year in the project. I’m one of these lines. I first submitted in 2006 and was a part of the Midwest Mix that year. Since then I’ve submitted music every year, and am honored to have been selected every year. When I began putting the data together I thought that there would be a lot more continuous participation than there is. Only one composer who was involved in the inaugural 60x60 mix kept submitting every year after that.

There are a couple of other things worth noting in this graph. The growth in terms of composers involved can be clearly seen. There were 96 composers who submitted pieces for the first call. By the end of the tenth call for works, 2950 composers had submitted at least one time. Of these, 1845 (63%) had been selected at least one time.

2010 was a big year in terms of amount of music presented. This was the year that 60x60 was featured at ICMC. It was also the year of the Order of Magnitude Mix, a massive 600 piece mix presented as an installation at a gallery in Canada. All 600 of these pieces were chosen from previously selected works, which can be seen easily on the graph.

The other trend that is very easy to see is that most composers submit only once, regardless of their being selected or not. This is a little obscured by the Order of Magnitude Mix in 2010. But if you ignore that for the moment you can see that most composers only are involved once. This is especially noticeable with the composer who submit and are not selected.

Persistence is important for success. We hear this sentiment often. It’s almost a cliché. Looking at this graph though, it seems that many of us don’t practice persistence. So, if you’re reading this and have only submitted to 60x60 once (or never), consider making this the year that you submit again. There are several different calls for 60x60 pieces, and more to come. http://www.60x60.com/calls/

Stay tuned for the next graph, which will examine the different 60x60 mixes.

David Morneau
http://5of4.com/
David Morneau is a composer of an entirely undecided genre, a provider of exclusive unprecedented experiments.

Announcing results for
Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: with New Thread Quartet

Vox Novus called for one-minute pieces for The New Thread Quartet The premiere will be performed on the Composer's Voice concert series, Sunday January 11, 2015 at the Jan Hus Church in New York City.

Founded in 2011, New Thread Quartet is committed to the creation and performance of saxophone quartet repertoire from New York’s burgeoning new music scene. Members of the ensemble are active as composers, performers, educators and industry professionals within the five boroughs, and share the goal of commissioning, and working closely with, New York City composers to develop impactful new works for the saxophone.

Now in its fourth season, New Thread has performed for a wide range of audiences and venues within the five boroughs, including Dance Theatre of Harlem, Bronx Community College, D’Addario Chelsea/Collective School, Dimmena Center's NYsoundCircuit, Con Vivo’s Mercado Park Concert Series (Jersey City), South Oxford Space, Firehouse Space, JACK (Brooklyn), and Flushing Library in Queens.

The quartet has toured widely in the US and abroad, performing at the 2012 NAVY Band Symposium in Fairfax, Virginia, the NASA Biennial Conference at Arizona State University, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and internationally at the World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland. This spring, New Thread will perform at the University of Illinois and will premiere Erin Rogers' piece Mother Earth for flute and saxophone quartet, at Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall, with support from a JFund grant.

Nearly all works programmed by New Thread have been written for the group by New York-based composers. Commissions and collaborations include composers Richard Carrick, Anthony Gatto, Gilbert Galindo, Miguel Bolivar, Kati Agocs, Roberto Kalb, Marcelo Lazcano, Michael Djupstrom, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Ben Hjertmann, Pat Muchmore and Luke Schwartz.

Geoffrey Landman is a New York City based performer, teacher, and advocate of the saxophone and new music. He has collaborated with ensembles such as Either/Or, Talea Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Argento New Music Project, and is a founding member and soprano chair of the New Thread Quartet. Geoffrey has worked with composers such as Bernhard Lang, Christian Lauba, and Philippe Leroux among others. Geoffrey holds degrees from the University of Michigan (BM), University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (MM), Post-graduate work at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel in Switzerland, and is currently working toward his Doctoral degree at the New England Conservatory as the first DMA candidate for saxophone performance in the school’s history.

Currently residing in NYC, saxophonist, Kristen McKeon, is thrilled to be a member of the D’Addario & Company’s Woodwind Division—working as a Woodwind Product Specialist, Artist Relations Manager, and Product Development Advisor. Appearances include performances at the Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, several North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conferences, and the 2012 World Saxophone Conference in St. Andrews, Scotland. Kristen has enjoyed opportunities to be billed on several concert series and festivals including Carmel Music Society's Summer Subscription Series, thingNY’s Seven Immediacies Series, the New England Conservatory Composers' Series, and the Composers Now Festival in NYC. An experienced clinician, Kristen travels throughout the U.S. giving talks on instrument accessories manufacturing for D’Addario Woodwinds, careers in music, and effective methods for collaboration with the music industry. Kristen is also a founding member of New Thread Quartet (New York, NY). New Thread Quartet is committed to the creation and performance of new music.

Erin Rogers is a Canadian saxophonist and composer based in New York City. Her works have been premiered by performers such as the Gotham Ensemble, Colin Davin, Miranda Cuckson, and the Warszynski Trio, as well as Chicago’s Anubis Quartet and Madrid’s Tribuna Sax-Ensemble. She has performed with ensembles such as IKTUS, Lost Dog Ensemble and Fireworks and is a founding member of performance groups thingNY and the New Thread Quartet. Erin completed undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta and received Masters Degrees in composition and performance from Bowling Green State University. Visit www.erinmrogers.com for more information.

Saxophonist Zach Herchen performs music ranging from classical trios to jazz tone poems, multimedia works, afrobeat, and beyond. He is a 2013 Bang on a Can Summer Festival Fellow, has worked on staff at New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, and has performed as a soloist in Italy, Sweden, Germany, and at various American institutions. Zach holds M.M. and B.M. degrees from The Peabody Conservatory.

Works selected for this Fifteen Minutes of Fame include:
Synthetic Fog by Lauren Buscemi,
I Took the A Train by Masatora Goya,
VRI by Hanan Hadzajlic,
Scatter!/i> by Dillon Henry,
Homonym by Emily Koh,
Movement #001 by Kaori Nakano,
Darvaze by Paolo Pecin,
Fading Glares by Silvia Pepe,
Shigurekana by Richard Pressley,
Ronroneo by Juan María Solare,
1267 Notes by Keane Southard,
Menyan (Incense) by Ivan Tangkulung,
The Conception of Chaos by Maxwell Tfirn,
Dramma breve by Luca Vanneschi, and
Threads by Blair Whittington

Opportunities on Music Avatar

Music Avatar is a great new way to upload works for composer opportunities hassle free! You will be able to submit, update, and modify your submission all the way up to the deadline date of the opportunity. www.MusicAvatar.org

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