Seth Parker Woods: asinglewordisnotenough | Listening Party
Date:
Thu, 05/14/2020 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location:
Zoom
Event Type:
Concert Please join us in a virtual listening party for cellist Seth Parker Woods’s debut album asinglewordisnotenough! We will gather in a Zoom meeting and listen to the album together (54 minutes). Seth will be there with us to answer questions at the end of the session.
REGISTER HERE
PROGRAM
Edward Hamel
Gray Neon Life (2012)
for solo cello
Michael Clarke
Enmeshed 3 (2013)
for cello & electronics
George Lewis
Not Alone (2014 - 15)
for cello and electronics
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
asinglewordisnotenough3 (invariant) (2015)
for cello and electronics
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Company is a state of being here, on an album which speaks in worlds.
In Edward Hamel’s Gray Neon Life the cellist is his own companion, uttering words which are not so much spoken over the music as sprayed on and under it, made both surface and core: adornment and essence. This double figure – cellist and voice in one – is Seth Parker Woods, and the piece in both concept and execution is a vehicle for his co-creative input, ranging from the precise choice of pitch material to the derivation of the texted component from the SAMO© tag of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s and Al Diaz’s New York street art, of which Woods is an aficionado. What Hamel makes from it is a sort of manifesto for city life and city art, summoned into existence by a harmonic double stop which, recurring as a fourfold refrain, finally offers a tentative way out ... or on.
On, at first, into a hall of mirrors.The three remaining works on this album – two of them, like Gray Neon Life, written for Woods – surround the cello with electronically produced sounds, and in the first two, by Michael Clarke and George Lewis, these sounds are derived in real time from the cello’s own material. In Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s asinglewordisnotenough3 (invariant) the sound sources are more diverse, and yet the work’s worlds are again conjured forth by this lone yet multiple figure. Here he is at the centre of it all: muse and master of ceremonies, devising it all for company.
© 2016 John Fallas
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Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” cellist Seth Parker Woods has established a reputation as a versatile artist straddling several genres. In addition to solo performances, he has appeared with the Ictus Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), New York City Ballet, Ensemble LPR, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s (US). A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the likes of Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos to Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata to such visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini.
In the 2019-20 concert season, Woods will make debuts at EMPAC, Walt Disney Hall, the National Gallery in Washington, the Moss Arts Center and the Spoleto Festival. This season of performances will also include premiere performances of concertos by Tyshawn Sorey with Thomas Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony and the late Fausto Romitelli with John Kennedy and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. Additionally, his performance installation, Iced Bodies, will receive its international premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the West Coast premiere at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Power to the People! Festival, curated by Herbie Hancock.
In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall—BBC Proms, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge and the Bohemian National Hall, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), among others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours [Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.
His debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.
Woods serves on the performance faculty at the University of Chicago as a Lecturer/Artist in Residence for Cello and Chamber Music. He previously served on the music faculties of Dartmouth College and the Chicago Academy of the Arts, and holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Academie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. At present, he is the Artist in Residence with the Seattle Symphony and the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.
In the 2019-20 concert season, Woods will make debuts at EMPAC, Walt Disney Hall, the National Gallery in Washington, the Moss Arts Center and the Spoleto Festival. This season of performances will also include premiere performances of concertos by Tyshawn Sorey with Thomas Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony and the late Fausto Romitelli with John Kennedy and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. Additionally, his performance installation, Iced Bodies, will receive its international premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the West Coast premiere at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Power to the People! Festival, curated by Herbie Hancock.
In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall—BBC Proms, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge and the Bohemian National Hall, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), among others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours [Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.
His debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.
Woods serves on the performance faculty at the University of Chicago as a Lecturer/Artist in Residence for Cello and Chamber Music. He previously served on the music faculties of Dartmouth College and the Chicago Academy of the Arts, and holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Academie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. At present, he is the Artist in Residence with the Seattle Symphony and the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.
FREE
Open to the Public