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Some of the Bay Area's finest composer-performers, playing a program which collages pieces inspired by classic avant-garde music (including Cage, Ligeti, and Varese), with compositions and improvisations by members of the group. Featuring David Bithell, Chris Froh, Matt Ingalls, John Ingle, Christopher Jones, Hugh Livingston, David Ryther, John Shiurba, and Toyoji Tomita. Refreshments served. This concert is part of Music From the Edge, the Stanford Spring festival of contemporary music. Matt Ingalls (b. 1970) is a composer, clarinetist, improviser, concert producer, computer music programmer, and new music advocate from Oakland, California. He has written works for acoustic instruments, voices, computer generated tape, interactive electronics, dance, theater, and freely improvising jazz orchestra. His compositions have been recorded and performed in the United States and abroad, receiving many awards and recognitions, including 1st Finalist in the Bourges, France Electroacoustic Music Competition [Categorie Humor - Puy], recipient of the First Annual ASCAP/SEAMUS Commission and Recording Prize, recipient of New Langton Art's "Bay Area Award", an A.H. Miller Award, Two Meet the Composer Fund Grants, Three ASCAPlu$ Awards, and a residency at the Djerassi Artist Program. Mr. Ingalls is the director of Berkeley's ACME Observatory Contemporary Music Series, a founding member of the "New" San Francisco Tape Music Center, and director of the sfSoundGroup. He has been a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, served on the jury panel for the 2000 SEAMUS Electro-Acoustic Music Conference, and has papers published by MIT Press. http://sfsound.org/matt.html Hugh Livingston has degrees in contemporary music from Yale, California Institute of the Arts, and UC San Diego. He performs modern music on the cello and is active as a composer and improvisor. He has collaborated with visual artists, electronic musicians, composers, and improvisors all over the world. Dr. Livingston has performed in all major cities in the US, Japan and China, and many in Europe. He regularly attends conferences on electronic and Asian music, performing and presenting papers. His CD of electronic music, Strings and Machines, is available on the EMF label. He has done extensive research in China with the support of the Asian Cultural Council. His article on digital string instruments appears in the April 2001 Cambridge University Press journal Organised Sound. Hugh's collaboration with Xu Bing, Book from Sky, is an interpretation of 4000 imaginary Chinese characters. Hugh is the executive director of The ARTSHIP Recordings, a revolutionary project producing 3-inch CDs of improvised music from the 591-foot art deco cruiseliner known as the ARTSHIP. His website is www.stringsandmachines.com. Toyoji Tomita studied trombone at the Juilliard School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, and studied the didjeridu with Stuart Dempster. In 1976 he won the First Prize in the Gaudeaumus International competition for Interpreters of Modern Music in Rotterdam, Holland. Living in Paris, France for the next three years, he toured Europe extensively both as a soloist and as a member of the Ensemble Musique Vivante, Diego Masson director. He received an M.F.A. in electronic composition from Mills College in 1986. He is a co-founder of the Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble. Guitarist John Shiurba is a composer and guitarist whose musical pursuits include improvisation, art-rock, modern composition and noise. Shiurba has recorded and toured the U.S. and Europe as a member of the bands Eskimo, The Molecules and Spezza Rotto, as a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the SFSoundGroup, and in various improv settings. Shiurba has composed works for his own Triplicate and 5x5 ensembles, for the SFSoundGroup, and for various soloists. As a guitarist Shiurba has developed a unique and personalized approach to the guitar. Through the use of extended techniques and unusual preparations, he expands the traditional sound range of the instrument, producing stunning, often unrecognizable results. Cadence Magazine calls Shiurba a "wildly creative guitarist... anti-jazz, anti-everything else, yet utterly compelling." Shiurba was invited to play at the Seattle Improvised Music Festival in 1998 and at the High Zero Festival in Baltimore in 1999, and the Olympia Experimental Music Festival in 2002, as well as being featured at New Langton Arts in 2002, premiering his work "Triplicate" He has played with internationally acclaimed musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne and Jack Wright, as well as many of the finest West Coast improvisers-- Gino Robair, Dan Plonsey, Scott Rosenberg, Myles Boisen, Matt Ingalls, Tim Perkis, and Matthew Sperry to name a few. In 1998 Shiurba formed the improvised music label Limited Sedition, which has released 28 CDs documenting the diverse and lively Bay Area improvised music scene. Since 1999, Chris Froh has resided in San Francisco where he has performed with the contemporary chamber music groups Earplay and Big Bang and has recorded at Skywalker Ranch and the Ex'Pression Center for New Media. This past spring he performed composer Larry Delinger's solo percussion score for the Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of Aeschylus' "The Oresteia." Froh currently freelances in the Bay Area and performs with the new music ensemble SFSound Group. He has appeared at two previous PASICs: in 1993, Froh performed with the percussion ensemble Rhythmaxis, and in 1998 he appeared in the role of Grandfather East in Michael Udow's percussion opera "The Shattered Mirror." Froh toured to Japan in 1999 to perform solo marimba concerts as an outreach function of the Second World Marimba Competition, Okaya and in 2000 and 2001 to perform with marimbist Mayumi Hama. strictly Ballroom | CCRMA home | Christopher Burns home Copyright © 2003 Christopher Burns. All rights reserved. |