Karen Bentley Pollick: New Works for Violin/Viola and Electronics | Listening Party
Join us in Zoom for a virtual listening party of new works for violin/viola and electronics performed and recorded by Karen Bentley Pollick. Mantautas Krukauskas will send live electronics from his home studio in Vilnius (LT) and Karen will join us from San Pancho, Nayarit (MX) along with composer John Henry Kreitler (KY) to answer questions at the end of the session.
REGISTER HERE or WATCH/LISTEN HERE
PROGRAM
Mantautas Krukauskas: Mirroring (2019-2020) for violin and immersive live electronics by Mantautas Krukauskas
*WORLD PREMIERE*
John Henry Kreitler: Conversations Beyond the Stars (2020) for flute, violin and electronics
Karen Bentley Pollick, violin
Klaus Liebetanz, flute
World Premiere at Incanto Theatre in Puerto Vallarta (MX), January 19, 2020
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė: KALBA (2020) for viola, electronics and video
*WORLD PREMIERE*
PROGRAM NOTES
Mirroring for violin and immersive live electronics by Mantautas Krukauskas
Dedicated to Karen Bentley Pollick
"World and us are entangled. We mirror, we resonate, we form reality from here and now to infinity, within and outward. How we will come to pass, or maybe pass to come?"
Inspired by thoughts on polarization, ecology and consciousness, creation process of this composition involved performer recording and supplying composer with field recordings spontaneously taken to represent associations with the concept of the piece. Composition is set into seven scenes inspired by field recordings, while heavily transforming them into interactive immersive live electronic part. Performer interacts with audio soundscape in various levels of aleatoric and musical freedom. This first performance of the piece was creatively adapted to fit physical limitations of human internet networks and speed of light.
Conversations Beyond the Stars for flute, violin and electronics by John Henry Kreitler
Conversations Beyond the Stars was inspired by various published accounts of astronomical discoveries of different forms of radio transmissions reaching earth. One such phenomenon is known as FRB, or Fast Radio Burst. An FRB is a radio pulse caused by some kind of astrophysical process not yet understood. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then over 70 more have been discovered.
The first movement of Conversations is entitled FRB 121102, the name given to the first FRB discovered to repeat itself at intermittent intervals, raising speculation about its origin. Scientists have identified the source of FRB 121102 as coming from a galaxy more than 3 billion light years from earth.
Movement 2 is titled “LGM-1 (CP1919)”. In 1967 two astronomers in Australia discovered the first ‘pulsar’, an incredibly dense ball of material formed when a star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself. Pulsars spin rapidly and radiate beams of radio waves out into space. When the first pulsar was discovered, the repeating nature of the beams of radio waves caused the astronomers to consider they might be artificial in origin – that is a form of communication from another species. They initially labeled their discovery LGM, for “Little Green Men”.
Movement 3 is titled “Pulsars”, and incorporates into the accompaniment actual recorded sounds of pulsars (slowed down to a range human beings can perceive).
Movement 4 reflects on this incredible body of scientific research that has identified and even recorded sounds emanating from billions of light years away, and wonders with the astronomers, ‘are you there’?
KALBA for viola, electronics and video by Žibuoklė Martinaitytė
Dedicated to my beloved Mother who is the source of everything
The title is the Lithuanian word that stands for language. Quite naturally I turned to my mother tongue, which also happens to be one of the oldest among living languages on our planet. Throughout the duration of the piece, an imaginary evolution and learning of language is revealed in electronics - from various vegetative sounds such as glottal cracks and imitative animalistic sounds to words and sentences and eventually to a song. The video of the piece also simulates a metaphorical journey of the birth of language from primal drawings to organized syntactic formations.
The linguist Roman Jakobson writes that the babbling of infants consists of phonemes, "which are never found within a single language or even a group of languages - consonants of any place of articulation, palatalized and rounded consonants, sibilants, affricates, clicks, complex vowels, diphthongs, etc.". It is known that during their age of "tongue delirium", infants are capable of uttering all conceivable sounds before they learn to use stable phonemes. This amazing array of sounds was produced by the Japanese vocal artist Ami Yamasaki who I met and recorded during our collaborative creative residency at the Pocantico Center, NY. The choral voices heard in Parts II and IV are excerpts from my piece "Chant des Voyelles" (2018) (Incantation of Vowels) performed by VOLTI, San Francisco.
KALBA is a very personal piece if not to say an autobiographical one not only because of my native language. In a way it is a sonic portrait of a few generations of my family. The electronics contain recordings of my mother's voice, my little niece and nephew and also my own. In the last section I sing a lullaby that my Mom used to sing to me when I was a baby. It was an invented melody with only one stanza of lyrics she composed using my name as a character in the song. In my memory it sounded differently from day to day. Sometimes my mother sang it in a bright major key, other days - in a minor key. Yet most often she was meandering melodically as though there was no key or point of reference at all! For this piece I used fragments in a minor key. Maybe because I would have chosen this slightly darker harmonic mode myself if I was to sing it to a baby... or maybe it is simply related to the notion of not continuing my family bloodline and the ensuing sadness...
KALBA has 4 parts that are performed without a break.
Part I. Birth. Vegetative sounds [in the womb...] Part II. Syllables. Babbling [in the world...] Part III. Words. Sentences.
Part IV. Lullaby [in the dreams...]
Duration - 19'
Premiere by Karen Bentley Pollick on May 31st, 2020 on CCRMA@HOME series hosted by Stanford University
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Karen Bentley Pollick is one of America’s leading contemporary musicians, performing a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian Hardanger fiddle(hardingfele) to extend the boundaries of the concert experience, from the Baroque to cutting-edge contemporary music and live improvisations. She currently serves as concertmaster of Valse Café Orchestra in Seattle, and Principal Second Violin and Festival Artist with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in Boulder. She plays on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee. Karen was awarded a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’ and subsequently launched ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’ that now comprises dozens of videos projected onto the violinist. Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers.
In May 2014, while she was residing in Vilnius, Lithuania she premiered ‘Resonances from Vilna’ with the pianist Jascha Nemtsov and, in December 2015 that of ‘Nothing is Forever’ with actor Aiste Ptakauske; and in August 2016 she premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra conducted by Maestro Robertas Šervenikas. Karen’s recent recording for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, recorded with Maestro Gottfried Rabl in Kiev in June 2018, and winner of a Silver Medal in the 2019 Global Music Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the album and instrumental solo performance categories. Karen has performed at San Pancho, Chacala, and Sinergiarte Music Festivals in the state of Nayarit. A founding member of Virtuosos de Cámara in Puerto Vallarta, she collaborates with Peruvian guitarist Alfredo Muro in Duo KarMu.
Mantautas Krukauskas (b. 1980) – composer and sound artist, teacher at the Department of Composition of Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius, where he is also a co-founder and Head (since 2016) of Music Innovation Studies Centre, academic lab for studies, art and research, with a focus on music technology, innovation in music and music education, interactive arts, immersive media, and interdisciplinarity. His compositions, including chamber music, sound art and other works, music for theatre and dance productions have been performed in Lithuania, Austria, Germany, France, Canada, USA, and other countries. Professional profile also includes electronic music performance and work within creative industries sphere with music production and arrangement. Mantautas Krukauskas has been actively involved in diverse field of activities, including coordination and management of international artistic, research and educational programmes. His interests comprise interdisciplinarity, creativity, music and media technologies, and a synergy of different aesthetic and cultural approaches.
John Henry Kreitler is an Emmy-winning American composer of contemporary classical, film, TV, and theatre music. He holds a B.A. in Composition from Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, where he studied violin, composition and conducting before continuing his studies towards an M.M. in Composition from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where he also taught theory.
His concert compositions include Symphony No. 1 – the Psalms for orchestra, chorus & schola cantorum, the two-act opera, Stefan-the Young, two string quartets, and numerous works for chamber orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, mixed-media and electronics. His recent commissions include “Canciones de Vallarta” a suite for cello and orchestra commissioned by Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist Don Moline; and “Behold My Servant” for choir, organ, brass & percussion, commissioned by First Christian Church of N. Hollywood, CA. His “Perpetua” for a cappella chorus was a finalist in the 2019 Tokyo International Choral Competition. His Conversations Beyond the Stars for violin, flute and electronics - inspired by an astronomical phenomenon known as ‘fast radio bursts’ - was premiered in December, 2019, by American violinist Karen Bentley Pollick and German flautist Klaus Liebetanz at the XIV Festival International de Arte in San Pancho, Mexico.
He is a founding member/composer-in-residence of Virtuosos de Cámara, a new chamber ensemble comprised of performers from Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Canada and America. The ensemble’s home base is Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and is focused on presenting new chamber music, cross-cultural performances and music by Mexican composers. 2020 performances by members of the ensemble will include premieres of several new works by Kreitler, including Sonata Andalusia for two violins - a work that draws its inspiration from the music and culture of Gitanos Béticos, or Andalusian gypsies, and calls on the violinists to not only play classically, but also to perform traditional palmas (claps) and baile (percussive footwork). Virtuosos de Cámara will also premiere his “Poets End Up Living Their Madness” a suite for piano, violin, viola, flute, clarinet/sax, percussion and electronics inspired by poems from Mexico, as well as his arrangement for the ensemble of the classic Mexican song by Manuel Ponce, Estrellita.
Kreitler’s theatre works have been performed on stages all over America and his film and tv music has been heard by audiences in over thirty countries internationally. His credits for underscore, songs and/or source music include numerous prime-time series such as Law and Order, Friends, Homicide, and Saturday Night Live, as well as the daytime dramas Passions (NBC) and Guiding Light (CBS) and films such as Material Girls (MGM) and Tribute (Lifetime). He has won ten EMMYs, and has been awarded the prestigious BMI TV/Film Award ten times. He and his wife, percussionist/vocalist Patsy Meyer, live in Northern Kentucky and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
"If this music transports you into a haunting, mysterious dream world, don’t worry about it – it’s only doing its job.” – Ingram Marshall wrote about New York-based Lithuanian born composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s solo CD In Search of Lost Beauty.... Released on the Starkland label in 2019, it received 2 gold medals at the Global Music Awards for Best Composer and Best Album. In 2020 Žibuoklė was awarded The Guggenheim Fellowship and granted the prestigious Lithuanian Government Award for her creative achievements.
Described by WQXR a “textural magician”, composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė has a growing reputation for her chamber and orchestral music. Although she began her career in Europe, the last decade of her activity has been gaining momentum in the USA. In 2008 she was commissioned by MATA festival on their 10th anniversary premiering her piece “Polarities“ by The Knights Chamber Orchestra. She received commissions from the Barlow Endowment (2012), Look+Listen festival (2017), Volti (2018), a fellowship for the Other Minds festival (2011) and the New Works residency at Harvestworks, NY (2016). Her first USA orchestral performance of Horizons took place at the Composers Inc. concert in Berkeley, California (2015). She received the “Look+Listen” Composers Competition Prize (NYC), the Copland House Sylvia Goldstein award and the Composers Now award for residency at the Pocantico Center. She was also awarded a number of fellowships for creative residencies at the MacDowell Colony for Artists in New Hampshire (2009, 2011, 2019), Aaron Copland house (2010, 2019), Millay Colony for Artists (2012), Wildacres (2014), Djerassi Artists Residency (2017) and Willapa Bay Residency (2018).
Martinaitytė studied composition at the Lithuanian Music Academy (BM, MA) with Bronius Kutavičius and Julius Juzeliūnas. Constantly attempting to broaden her horizons and advancing her compositional technique after completing formal studies, Martinaitytė has been taking part in various composition workshops and courses in Europe. She attended the Darmstadt New Music Summer Courses, Centre Acanthes/Ircam, Royaumont, The 6th International Academy for New Composition and Audio Art in Schwaz, Tirol and Stavanger studying with Brian Ferneyhough, Boguslaw Schaffer, Magnus Lindberg, Tristan Murail and Jonathan Harvey. In 2001 she was granted her first creative residency at Künstlerhaus Lukas der Stiftung Kulturfonds, Germany. Martinaitytė’s music has been performed throughout Europe, The USA and Asia by Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Canada), The Smith Quartet (UK), ERGO Ensemble (Canada), The Orchestra of Mons Royal Conservatoire (Belgium), TILT Brass (USA), Volti (USA), Yarn/Wire (USA), The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and others. Her work for symphony orchestra A Thousand Doors To The World (2009), a commission of the Lithuanian Radio on the occasion of “Vilnius – Culture Capital of Europe 2009” was broadcast by Euroradio – one of the “largest virtual concerts halls” with 4 million listeners. Four of her orchestral pieces received the Lithuanian Composers Union Award as Best Orchestral Performances for 2019, 2018, 2013 and 2009.
