Princeton Sound Kitchen presents

Ensemble Three

New works by

• Chen Yihan

• Wally Gunn

• Rudresh Mahanthappa

• Anna Meadors

• Lawrence Wilde

Performed by

• Ensemble Three

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall at Princeton University
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: February 21, 2019
Start time: 8:00 pm

Program

Chen Yihan
Steps to Unconsciousness

Fay Wang
―still―

Wally Gunn
Pinwheel

Rudresh Mahanthappa
Magically Delicious

Requiem for Indigo
Lucky Charms
Bagels
Some Say the World Will End in Sherbet. Some Say in Ice
Rise Up Indigo

INTERMISSION

Anna Meadors
Of latitude & light

Ken Murray
Sketches

Waltzing
798

Lawrence Wilde (also publishing as Yuri Boguinia)
Triptych

crawl
fate
stun

James Ledger
Voodoo Sonnets

Ensemble Three: Joel Brennan, trumpet; Don Immel, trombone; Ken Murray, guitar

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

Escher String Quartet

Performing New Works by:

• Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade

• Christopher Douthitt

• Florent Ghys

• Wally Gunn

• Pascal Le Boeuf

Performed by:

• Escher String Quartet

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents ESCHER STRING QUARTET performing new works by Princeton composers Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Christopher Douthitt, Florent Ghys, Wally Gunn and Pascal Le Boeuf at Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall on Tuesday, March 22, 2015, 8pm.

Dan Trueman, Director (on sabbatical 2015 – 2016)
Dmitri Tymoczko, Acting Director
Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

Read an article about the concert by clicking on the link below
PSK Q&A Interview with composers

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

The Well-Seasoned Iron Pan

Performing New Works by:

• Courtney Bryan

• Elliot Cole

• Quinn Collins

• Wally Gunn

• Paul Lansky

• Steve Mackey

• Dave Molk

• Juri Seo

• Gabriella Smith

• Jason Treuting

Performed by:

• The Well-Seasoned Iron Pan

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents THE WELL-SEASONED IRON PAN: new works by Princeton composers Courtney Bryan, Elliot Cole, Quinn Collins, Wally Gunn, Paul Lansky, Steve Mackey, Dave Molk, Juri Seo, Gabriella Smith and Jason Treuting at Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall on Tuesday, March 31, 2015, at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

American Modern Ensemble

Performing New Works by:

• Viet Cuong

• Cenk Ergün

• Wally Gunn

• Noah Kaplan

• Juri Seo

Performed by:

• American Modern Ensemble

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents American Modern Ensemble with guests performing new works by Princeton composers Viet Cuong, Cenk Ergün, Wally Gunn, Noah Kaplan and Juri Seo at Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall on Tuesday, February 10, 2015, at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

PROGRAM

WALLY GUNN AND SCOTT BRENNAN
Long Distance

CENK ERGÜN
Something, Something Else, Something

JURI SEO
#three

NOAH KAPLAN
Penetralium

VIET CUONG
Nothing If Not

WALLY GUNN AND SCOTT BRENNAN
Long Distance

Not Long Now
Counting
Mimicking Proximity
Four Cities
Absence Is A Well

Wally Gunn, tenor
Spencer Evans, actor
Laura Sheedy, actor
Terrence Hunt, filmmaker
Performance devised by Nothing To See Here

In 2008, I moved from Melbourne, Australia, to New York, USA, leaving family, friends, a lover. While the excitement of being in a wild, new city prevailed most of the time, homesickness was ever-present, a low hum in the background. Naturally, I noticed others who felt the same way. Expat friends from all over the globe described to me the same curious feelings of elation tempered with sadness that marked the experience of living so far away from home.

Back in Australia, Scott Brennan, a comedian, actor, and writer, was himself experiencing the same trials induced by long distance relationships. I asked him to collaborate on a musical project about the topic by writing some poetry which I could use as the text for a song cycle. His first poems—beautifully spare and yet still heartbreaking—began to trickle into my email inbox over the next few months, and I wrote some drafts. Since then, I have worked on the piece in fits and starts; needling Scott for another poem here, tinkering with some music there... And now at last there is something to show: five songs stitched together into some kind of narrative. For this performance, I have roped in more talented friends—my Nothing To See Here actor colleagues Laura Sheedy and Spencer Evans, and filmmaker Terrence Hunt—to add action and vision to bring life to the story. Long Distance is part pop record, part song cycle, part music video, part theater show. We hope you enjoy it.

Special thanks to Scott Brennan, Spencer Evans, Terrence Hunt, and Laura Sheedy for their inventiveness, resourcefulness and generosity throughout the making of this project.

CENK ERGÜN
Something, Something Else, Something

Bass flute, bass clarinet, piano…all of these instruments on stage amaze me. I just wanted create a piece that focuses on their sounds in isolated contexts. The winds are a group. Piano, bass, and percussion are special visitors. Something happens, then something else happens, then the first something happens again.

JURI SEO
#three

Despite my meager experience with jazz, I have always been drawn to its spontaneous beauty and easygoing virtuosity. #three is the fourth piece I composed in jazz style. I started with a couple of small musical materials I stumbled upon on my piano and lived with them for several months. They took some surprising turns: from espressivo to scherzo, from romantic piano flourishes to clamorous rock beats. The collage-like progressions probably resulted from my struggle to compose piano licks while my husband Mark was banging away rock grooves in the basement (which I found terribly distracting). Somehow, everything worked out in this music. I love such moments when conflicts dissolve in one giant stockpot of musical structure!

NOAH KAPLAN
Penetralium

The most salient feature of Penetralium is a dichotomy between quarter-tone chromaticism and very tonal 12-tone equal-tempered music. The quarter tones have a corrupting effect on the purity of the familiar intervals, and for me, the driving element of the piece is this contrast between dark and light, dirty and clean. As the piece grew, I became more and more interested specifically in the juxtaposition of quarter-tone harmonies with 12-tone equal-tempered melodic material, which could be easily doubled by various winds or winds and bass. The “main theme” is almost always stated with 12-ET, but the context surrounding it continually shifts, changing the expressive potential of this simple motive: alternately lyrical, comic, dark, sad, or disfigured. The form is basically a long, slow crescendo to something more expressive, varied, inward, and pure, the Penetralium.

VIET CUONG
Nothing If Not

Nothing If Not embellishes monophonic lines by stacking and staggering the many colors of the ensemble, including a vast array of overblown flute harmonics. Heartfelt thanks to the American Modern Ensemble.

MEET THE PERFORMERS

American Modern Ensemble is marking its 10th anniversary in 2014-2015 which spotlights American music via lively thematic programming, performing the widest possible repertoire, particularly by living composers. Founded in New York City in 2005 by Robert Paterson and Victoria Paterson, AME is a dynamic, creative force in the modern music scene. With a world-class ensemble made up of NYC’s finest, AME is “simply first-rate” (The New York Times). AME has performed over 150 living composers in venues ranging from Lincoln Center to The Roulette, and has "consistently demonstrated a flair for inventive programming" (Steve Smith, Time Out New York). AME programs both cutting edge and traditional works, presenting unique, engaging events that encourage dialogue between artists and audiences. Sold out crowds at Merkin Hall, Dimenna Center, the Rubin Museum, SubCulture and many other venues are a winning testament to AME's tremendous fan base and ever expanding popularity. AME has and continues to perform educational and outreach concerts and residencies at universities such as the CUNY Graduate Center, Princeton, Yale, Adelphi, James Madison, Lafayette, and many more. Recent collaborations include the Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, Prototype Opera Festival, American Opera Projects, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and the Talujon percussion ensemble.

MEET THE COMPOSERS

Viet Cuong’s (b. 1990) works have been performed internationally in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, International Double Reed Society Conference, Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, Midwest Clinic, GAMMA-UT Conference, and several CBDNA conferences. He is a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Award, Walter Beeler Memorial Prize from Ithaca College, Boston Guitarfest Composition Competition, Dolce Suono Ensemble Competition, Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association Grant, Peabody Alumni Award, Gustav Klemm Award, Prix d'Été Competition, and National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project. Viet has held artist residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was a scholarship student at the Copland House’s CULTIVATE Emerging Composers Institute and the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals. He is currently a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Doctoral Fellow at Princeton, and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Peabody Conservatory. Please visit www.vietcuongmusic.com to learn more.

Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists including Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Laboratorium, and Joan Jeanrenaud. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, Grey McMurray, and Jeff Snyder.

Wally Gunn is a composer living and working in New York who writes rock music, concert music, and music for theater, film, and visual art. Growing up in a rural town in Australia’s southeast, Wally first began making music in his early teens, writing on a Casiotone for his electronic dance band, which never played a gig. After high school, he moved to Melbourne to join rock bands, and spent several years writing songs and gigging around the country, then enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts composition program. After graduating with honors, Wally worked with friends and fellow composers Kate Neal and Biddy Connor in Dead Horse Productions to stage concerts of their own and other composers’ new music in warehouses, underground parking lots, cinemas, and other unusual spaces. He also composed original music for several Melbourne theatre companies. Wally moved to New York in 2008 to begin a master’s degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Julia Wolfe. Since relocating, Wally has composed original music for Manhattan-based The Actors Company Theatre and has become a company member of Brooklyn-based theater Nothing To See Here, under the artistic direction of Laura Sheedy. Wally's concert music has been performed in Australia by The Dead Horse Ensemble, Three Shades Black, Speak Percussion, Atticus String Quartet and Silo String Quartet, and in the US by Riley Lee, Mobius Percussion, Sō Percussion, Dither Guitar Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, futureCities, and Red Shift. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University.

Noah Kaplan is a second-year composer at Princeton.

Juri Seo is a composer & pianist based in New Jersey. She loves to write music that is full of energy, often incorporating contrasts, deceptions, humor and lyricism imbued with contemporary quirkiness and experimental spirit. Juri has received a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship from the University of Illinois, and Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She holds a D.M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has also studied at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome) and Yonsei University (Seoul). She joined the composition faculty at Princeton University in 2014.

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

Black Box Project

Performed by:

• Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade

• Florent Ghys

• Wally Gunn

• Dave Molk

• Josh Quillen

• Jason Treuting

Location: Class of 1970 Theater, Whitman College
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents composers Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Florent Ghys, Wally Gunn, Dave Molk, Josh Quillen and Jason Treuting showing newly devised performance works in a black box theater with director Laura Sheedy on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

THE BLACK BOX PROJECT

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Florent Ghys, Wally Gunn, Dave Molk, Josh Quillen and Jason Treuting showing newly devised performance works in a black box theater.

Director: Laura Sheedy

Producer Manager, Princeton Sound Kitchen: Wally Gunn

Production Manager, Department of Music: Henry Valoris

PROGRAM

NINFEA CRUTTWELL-READE

Marionettes

Spencer Evans, performer

SPENCER EVANS, WALLY GUNN & LAURA SHEEDY

It’s me, me, pistol optional

Spencer Evans, performer

Wally Gunn, composer

Laura Sheedy, performer

Sō Percussion

FLORENT GHYS

Brandi Loves Todd

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, cello

Florent Ghys, double bass

Wally Gunn, voice

Dave Molk, guitar

DAVE MOLK

More Time For Coffee

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, performer

Spencer Evans, performer

Florent Ghys, performer

Wally Gunn, performer

Dave Molk, performer

Ryan Sarno, performer

Sō Percussion

JOSH QUILLEN

Redacted Interludes 1, 2, 3

Sō Percussion

DANIELLE AUBERT, KATY DIDDEN & JASON TREUTING

BASED ON DOUBLE MUSIC BY JOHN CAGE & LOU HARRISON

Continuously Festive

Katy Didden, text

Danielle Aubert, images

Sō Percussion

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Danielle Aubert is a graphic designer and a Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Lewis Center

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade is a second-year graduate student in Composition at Princeton University. She studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she produced music for theater, and later completed postgraduate studies in cello performance at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Spencer Evans is very pleased to be a part of the Princeton Black Box Project. As a company member of Nothing To See Here, he very much enjoys creating work with Ms. Sheedy and Mr. Gunn. He was recently seen in San Francisco based BrickaBrack’s production of Never Fall So Heavily Again.

Florent Ghys is a French composer and double bass player from Bordeaux, France. His music has been described as “post-minimal chamber music” by John Schaefer. The label Cantaloupe has released two albums of Florent’s music, and a third one Télévision is in the works for November 14. Florent likes collecting hair dryers and would like to be a weather man.

Wally Gunn is from a rural town in Australia’s southeast. He first began making music in his early teens, writing on a Casiotone for his electronic dance band, which never played a gig. After high school, he moved to Melbourne to join rock bands, and spent several years writing songs and gigging around the country, then enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts composition program. After graduating, Wally worked with friends and fellow composers Kate Neal and Biddy Connor in Dead Horse Productions to stage concerts of their own and other composers’ new music in warehouses, underground parking lots, cinemas, and other unusual spaces. He also composed original music for several Melbourne theatre companies, including The Eleventh Hour, The Shrimp Company, Itch Productions and Platform Youth Theatre, and contributed songs to cabaret star Wes Snelling’s autobiographical show Kiosk. Wally moved to New York in 2008 to begin a masters degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Julia Wolfe. Since relocating, Wally has composed original music for Manhattan company The Actors Company Theatre and has become a company member of the Brooklyn-based Nothing To See Here, under the artistic direction of Laura Sheedy. Wally’s concert music has been performed in Australia by Atticus String Quartet, The Dead Horse Ensemble, Silo String Quartet, Speak Percussion, and Three Shades Black, and in the US by Mobius Percussion, Red Shift, Roomful of Teeth, and Sō Percussion. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. www.wallygunn.com

Dave Molk is in his 4th year at Princeton. He writes mainly for pitched and non-pitched percussion, combining an energized rhythmic propulsion, sinuous chromaticism, and a love of glitch. His current research efforts are in software coding and EDM. He previously studied composition at Berklee College of Music under John Bavicchi and at Tufts University under John McDonald.

Josh Quillen has forged a unique identity in the contemporary music world as all-around percussionist, expert steel drum performer (lauded as “softly sophisticated” by the New York Times), and composer. His collaborations with other composers frequently incorporate the steel drums as a core element. A member of the acclaimed ensemble Sō Percussion since 2006, Josh has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, and dozens of other venues in the United States. In that time, Sō Percussion has toured Russia, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Scotland. He has had the opportunity to work closely with Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Paul Lansky, David Lang, Matmos, Dan Deacon, and many others. Josh started performing on the steel drums at Dover High School in Ohio, an interest that continued at the University of Akron, where Dr. Larry Snider founded one of the first collegiate steel bands in the United States. He traveled to Trinidad & Tobago in 2002, performing with the Phase II Pan Groove ensemble under Len “Boogsie” Sharpe. This interest in the traditional steel drum music of Trinidad ran in parallel with Josh’s education in western music, first at Akron, and then at the Yale School of Music with marimba soloist Robert Van Sice, where he received his Masters degree in 2006. These parallel interests led Josh to break ground in the use of the steel drums in contemporary classical music. To date, he has commissioned over a dozen pieces for steel drums from composers such as Stuart Saunders Smith, Roger Zahab, Dan Trueman, and Paul Lansky. In 2010, Steven Mackey’s quartet It Is Time—commissioned for Sō Percussion by Carnegie Hall and Chamber Music America—featured Josh on a new microtonal lead pan in its Carnegie Hall premiere, receiving rave reviews in the New York Times. Josh’s compositions for Sō Percussion are featured in Imaginary City, an evening length work that appeared on the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival, as well as the site-specific Music for Trains in Southern Vermont. Other ensembles to play his pieces and arrangements include Matmos, PLork, The Janus Trio, Adele Meyers and Dancers, The University of Akron Steel Band, and the New York University Steel Band. An avid educator, Josh is co-director of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive workshop for college-aged percussionists on the campus of Princeton University. He is also co-director of a new percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where Sō Percussion is ensemble in residence beginning fall of 2011, and is the director of the New York University Steel Band.

Ryan Sarno is a musician, DJ, and more famously, a coffee maker at Small World in Princeton. You can follow his projects on Ananalog Records’ bandcamp and tumblr pages.

For over a decade, Sō Percussion has redefined the modern percussion ensemble as a flexible, omnivorous entity, pushing its voice to the forefront of American musical culture. Praised by The New Yorker for their “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” Sō’s adventurous spirit is written into the DNA passed down from composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, as well as from pioneering ensembles like the Kronos Quartet and Nexus Percussion. Sō Percussion’s career now encompasses 13 albums, touring throughout the USA and around the world, a dizzying array of collaborative projects, several ambitious educational programs, and a steady output of their own music. When the founding members of Sō Percussion convened as graduate students at the Yale School of Music, their initial goal was to present an exciting repertoire of pieces by 20th century luminaries such as Cage, Reich, and Iannis Xenakis. An encounter with David Lang, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of New York’s Bang on a Can organization, yielded their first commissioned piece: the 36 minute, three movement the so-called laws of nature. Since that first major new work, Sō has commissioned some of the greatest American composers of our time to build a new repertoire, including Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Paul Lansky, Martin Bresnick, and many others. Over time, an appetite for boundless creativity led the group to branch out beyond the composer/interpreter paradigm. Since 2006 with group member Jason Treuting’s amid the noise, the members of Sō Percussion have been composing in their own right within the group and for others. In 2012 their third evening-length work Where (we) Live premieres at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, travelling to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 30th Next Wave Festival and the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, MT. Where (we) Live follows on the heels of 2009’s Imaginary City, a fully staged sonic meditation on urban soundscapes. In 2011, Sō was commissioned by Shen Wei Dance Arts to compose Undivided Divided, a 30-minute work conceived for Manhattan’s massive Park Avenue Armory. Sō Percussion’s artistic circle extends beyond their contemporary classical roots. They first expanded this boundary with the prolific duo Matmos, whom The New York Times called “ideal collaborators” on their 2010 combined album Treasure State. Further projects and appearances with Wham City shaman Dan Deacon, legendary drummer Bobby Previte, jam band kings Medeski, Martin, and Wood, and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche drew the circle even wider. In 2011, the rock band The National invited Sō to open one of their sold-out shows at New York’s Beacon Theater. Sō’s recording of the so-called laws of nature became the cornerstone of their self-titled debut album on Cantaloupe Music (the record label from the founders of Bang on a Can) in 2004. In subsequent years, this relationship blossomed into a growing catalogue of exciting records. In 2011, Sō released six new albums, ranging from their definitive recording of Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet¾composed for them in 2009¾on Nonesuch Records, to Steve Mackey’s epic quartet It Is Time on Cantaloupe, to their collaborative album Bad Mango with jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas on Greenleaf Music. The BBC raved of Sō’s performance of Mallet Quartet that they “have it nailed, finding both the inner glow and the outer edge, and never letting the tapestry lapse into the flat or routine.” Sō Percussion is heavily involved in mentoring young musicians. Its members are co-directors of a new percussion department at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. This top-flight undergraduate program enrolls each student in a double-degree (Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts) course in the Conservatory and Bard College, equipping them with elite conservatory training and a broad liberal arts education. In 2009, they created the annual Sō Percussion Summer Institute on the campus of Princeton University. The Institute is an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for college-age percussionists featuring the four members of Sō as faculty in rehearsal, performance, and discussion of contemporary music for students from around the world. During the 2011-2012 academic year, Sō was an ensemble-in-residence at Princeton University, teaching seminars and collaborating extensively with talented student composers. Sō has been featured at many of the major venues in the United States, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Stanford Lively Arts, Texas Performing Arts, and many others. In addition, a recent residency at London’s Barbican Centre, as well as tours to Western Europe, South America, Russia, and Australia have brought them international acclaim.

Laura Sheedy is a director from Melbourne, Australia, now living in New York. Laura has directed work for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Melbourne Fringe and Adelaide Fringe, La Trobe and Princeton Universities and Manhattan School of Music. Laura has directed solo works by Miss Behave, Captain Frodo, Amy G and Kurt Braunohler. She has been a directorial advisor to such companies as Circus Oz, La Clique, Suitcase Royale and composers Kate Neal and Wally Gunn. In February 2012, along with SITI Company’s Barney O’Hanlon, she presented a creative development showing of a new work, The Weight of Distance, for the World Theatre Festival, Australia. Most recently, Laura directed Charles Mee Jr’s, Big Love, was Anne Bogart’s Assistant Director on the SITI Company’s Steel Hammer for the Humana Festival of New American Plays, and created two new works for the Princeton Sound Kitchen with her theatre company, Nothing To See Here.

Jason Treuting is a performer and composer. He plays with and writes most often for his quartet Sō Percussion and now lives in Princeton as one of two inaugural Lewis Center Fellows in the Arts.

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

Physical Geography: New works by Princeton composers

Performing New Works by:

• Gilad Cohen

• Elliot Cole

• Quinn Collins

• Wally Gunn

• Noah Kaplan

• Emma O’Halloran

• Gabriella Smith

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY: New works by Princeton composers Gilad Cohen, Elliot Cole, Quinn Collins, Wally Gunn, Noah Kaplan, Emma O’Halloran, and Gabriella Smith on Tuesday, May 20th, 2014 at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

Stream this concert live

on Tuesday, May 20th, 2014 at 8:00pm EDT, GMT - 4:00

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

Dither and Mivos

Performing New Works by:

• Leila Adu

• Andy Akiho

• Quinn Collins

• Cenk Ergun

• Amanda Feery

• Wally Gunn

• Jeff Snyder

Performed by:

• Dither Guitar Quartet

• Mivos String Quartet

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents Dither Guitar Quartet and Mivos String Quartet, with guests, performing works by Princeton composers Leila Adu, Andy Akiho, Quinn Collins, Cenk Ergun, Amanda Feery, Wally Gunn, and Jeff Snyder on Tuesday, February 18th, 2014 at 8:00pm. Streaming here.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

DITHER GUITAR QUARTET
MIVOS STRING QUARTET
YUMI TAMASHIRO, marimba
IAN ROSENBAUM, marimba
SUSAN ALCORN, pedal steel guitar
SIGAN MAGEN, harp

PROGRAM

JEFF SNYDER
Substratum
Mivos Quartet with Susan Alcorn, pedal steel

LEILA ADU-GILMORE
Alyssum
Mivos Quartet with Sivan Magen, harp

CENK ERGÜN
8 Voices
Mivos Quartet

ANDY AKIHO
LIgNEouS 1, 2 & 3
Mivos Quartet with Yumi Tamashiro, marimba, and Ian David Rosenbaum, marimba

- INTERMISSION -

WALLY GUNN
Archaean Eon
Dither with Jason Treuting, drum set

AMANDA FEERY
The Little Woman Wanted Noise
Dither

QUINN COLLINS
Near the Knuckle
Dither

JEFF SNYDER

Substratum
Mivos Quartet with Susan Alcorn, pedal steel

Substratum (2013) came to be through my association with Susan Alcorn, for whom the piece was written. She performed as the pedal steel guitarist in my electro-country band, Owen Lake and Tragic Loves, and we started talking about how interesting it would be to write a concert music piece that features this unique instrument. Almost exclusively associated with the country and western genre, the pedal steel guitar dates from the mid 1950s, when slide guitarists began to add pedals (similar to those on a harp) to adjust the tuning of their open strings. The instrument that Susan plays is a descendant of this tradition, expanded from 10 strings to 12, and from a small handful of pedals to 8 foot pedals and 5 levers operated by the knees, giving an unusual amount of control over pitch for a slide guitar. It’s one of my favorite instruments, and Susan is an incredible player who took on the challenge of learning a difficult piece and basically trying something that has never been done before. The instrumentation is something of a reference to the traditional country music pairing of the pedal steel guitar with twin fiddles, often trading back and forth between who embellishes the verses of a song. It also reflects my desire to write a piece for the Mivos Quartet, who have been playing the crap out of beautiful and challenging music for several years. The piece itself evokes a kind of non-human internal logic. It aims at a structure that belies an anthropomorphic or emotional characterization. I imagine capturing the thoughts of tree roots finding their way in the earth, winding around their siblings and the natural impediments to their path, searching for water. Or possibly the hive mind of an ant colony busily creating a network of tunnels. The piece seeks to look under the surface at those natural processes, tensions and harmonies in the systems that surround us or exist wholly indifferent to us.

LEILA ADU-GILMORE
Alyssum
Mivos Quartet with Sivan Magen, harp

for my mother, Alison

If anyone was ever deserving of a piece of being written in her honor, it is my mum. Alyssum is the starry, white plant that grows in rocky beds: it sounds like her name, moreover, hardy and beautiful are qualities that suit her. Of course, like most mothers, she took care of my needs and went through, in our case, a particularly horrid birth process. Aside from that, my mother seems to have befallen many a tragedy; her spirit, however, rather than being dampened by this, has remained strong, calm and relatively light-hearted! In the past few years, an earthquake destroyed the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, in which she still lives and we found that she has had increasing brain damage, due to Alzheimer’s. Mum’s darkly sharp wit interpreted me writing this piece for her now, as being whilst she was still compos mentis (Latin: of sound mind). In fact, she is right, I wanted to write Alyssum while she could fully appreciate it¾though she stays in touch with new arts and loves music so much that I imagine she will get a good bit of enjoyment out of it yet. Mum recently sent me an email with a YouTube video of the scene from Pedro Almaldovar’s film Talk To Her, where Caetano Veloso sings Cucurrucucú Paloma: I had been really getting into Antonio Jobim around the same time. Therefore, upon finding our shared love of bossanova, I decided to add the theme of common tones to my cantus firmus, as well as harmonies descending by semi-tone and bossa rhythms, especially in the final section. The high A could show my mother’s enduring spirit, and her initials - Alison Barbara Gilmore - are heard as a theme. She loves nature and the sea, which she lives by; accordingly, there are themes and expression directions of waves, pools and waterfalls. Finally, thanks to Sivan Magen and Mivos String Quartet for indulging me in this gift to my mum!

CENK ERGÜN

8 Voices
Mivos Quartet

8 Voices was originally composed for the vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, and was premiered in Princeton last year. The music is a series of reiterations of a single chord, interrupted by silences. As I was listening to the rehearsal recordings of the vocal version, I heard people talking, coughing, and walking around in the rehearsal space. These sounds were especially pronounced during the silences, and I liked the effect they created. For the string quartet version, I wanted to see what happened if I replaced the silences with a kind of composed “noise.”

ANDY AKIHO

LIgNEouS 1, 2 & 3
Mivos Quartet with Yumi Tamashiro, marimba, and Ian David Rosenbaum, marimba

LIgNEouS, adjective: of the nature of or resembling wood (from the Oxford Dictionary).Ingredients: string quartet, 5 octave marimba, extremely large rubber band, moleskin-tipped birch mallets, & perseverance.Disclaimer: NO MARIMBAS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS COMPOSITION.

LIgNEouS 1 was commissioned by John and Astrid Baumgardner for the 2010 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and LIgNEouS 2 was commissioned by Yumi Tamashiro in 2012. These works are dedicated to Ian Rosenbaum, Yumi Tamashiro, and all of my inspiring friends of the Yale Percussion Group and the Manhattan School Percussion Department who inspired me to write for marimba. Tonight’s performance is a world premiere of the LIgNEouS Suite. Movements 2 and 3 are world premieres, and Movement 1 has been shortened and modified from the original version to work with the entire piece. The order in which the pieces are played can vary: tonight, the suite will be performed in reverse order. In the spring of 2010, I attended an exhibit of composer and architect Iannis Xenakis’s original architecture sketches at The Drawing Center in NYC. When I left, I was inspired to sketch out a pitch world with color-penciled “LI-NE—S” by connecting vertical rows of chromatic pitches, expanding the full range of the 5-octave marimba, with geometric diagonal lines and collapsing triangles. These visually linear note combinations became the foundational scales for the piece. Then, I intuitively worked at the marimba, improvising on these scales, and these improvisations became the fundamental building blocks, or rhythmic and melodic cells, of this work. “LIgNEouS” means “made, consisting of, or resembling wood.” This title was chosen because the marimba, violin, viola, and cello are all primarily made of wood. Also, the sticks/mallet shafts really bring out the wooden sound world that I was striving for in the marimba. I decided to only use marimba mallet shafts, without the mallet heads, in order to capture an extremely woody sound and to articulate the highest overtones. I also wanted to use industrial timbres in addition to the melodic bars, accomplished through glissandos and strikes to the metallic resonators. To mimic snap (‘Bartók’) pizzicatos, a string technique produced by vertically snapping/plucking a string to rebound off the fingerboard, I used an extremely large rubber band on the low D of the 5-octave marimba. Finally, the string parts feature non-pitched scratch tones, a technique adopted from Xenakis's string quartets.

- INTERMISSION -

WALLY GUNN
Archaean Eon
Dither with Jason Treuting, drum set

The Archaeon Eon began 4,000 million years ago and ended 2,500 million years ago. That’s 1,500 million years. This piece is only 6 minutes, but hopes to illustrate a glimpse of explosive volcanism and exponential reproduction of single-celled organisms; events which define that time. Many thanks to Dither and Jason Treuting for premiering this piece tonight.

AMANDA FEERY
The Little Woman Wanted Noise
Dither

The title of the piece comes from a children’s story book of the same name. A woman, who lives in a cacophonous city between a shoemakers and a printers, then inherits a farm and moves there, but cannot sleep for the silence. So she buys a pig, a dog, a rooster, and a “rattley bang car with a loud horn”, which she drives to the loudest place she can find; an orphanage, where she adopts two boys … that sort of thing. “And the little woman had no rest. But she had peace of mind.” I can relate to the headcase protagonist of our story, not in the sense of adopting loud orphans, but in the sense of the peace of mind ‘not silence’ brings me. In a relatively silent environment I tend to latch onto sounds that are constant, but come in and out of aural focus¾anything from a refrigerator motor to a humming streetlight bulb. The idea around this piece was to establish little “constants,” little refrigerator motors at work, sometimes in the foreground or background, but always chattering away, smoothing over any dead air.

QUINN COLLINS
Near the Knuckle
Dither

Near the Knuckle is about acoustic beating, fuzzy points of focus, and hazy memories. It was written for Dither in 2013, and this evening’s performance is the premiere.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Susan Alcorn is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer and musician who has received international recognition as an innovator of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument whose sound is commonly associated with country and western music. Having absorbed the technique of C&W pedal steel and refined it to a virtuosic level, her original music reveals the influence of free jazz, 20th Century classical music, Indian ragas, folk and indigenous traditions, as well as other musics of the world. The UK Guardian describes her music as “beautiful, glassy and liquid, however far she strays from pulse and conventional harmony.” In addition to frequent tours throughout North America and Europe, Susan has performed in the UK at the London Festival of Experimental Music, the On The Outside Festival in Newcastle, and the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra Improvisation Festival; Cafe Oto and The Vortex in London; in France at the Musique Action Festival in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, Ateliers Tampon and Instants Chavires in Paris; in Germany at the Leipzig JazzTage and with the ICI Ensemble in Munich; The Stone, New York at CBGBs, and Issue Project Room ; Rome at Il Continiere; Israel at Levontin 7 and Uganda; and at Arsenic and Cave 12 in Switzerland. Though mostly a solo performer, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne, the late Peter Kowald, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Maggie Nicols, Joe Giardullo, Joe McPhee, Mike Cooper, Lê Quan Ninh, Ellen Fullman, Evan Parker, Michael Formanek, Ellery Eskelin, and John Butcher. New releases include the solo album Touch This Moment (Uma Sounds) and Mirage with Ellery Eskelin and Michael Formanek (Clean Feed).

Dither, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed music, improvisation, and electronic manipulation. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed across the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, improvisations, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. The quartet’s members are Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore and Gyan Riley. Dither has worked with a wide range of artists, including Eve Beglarian, Elliott Sharp, David Lang, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Lois V. Vierk, Larry Polansky and Phill Niblock. Past performances include the Performa Biennial, The MATA Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Amsterdam Electric Guitar Heaven Festival, Hong Kong’s Fringe Theater, and the Bang on a Can Marathon. Dither produces their annual Extravaganza, a raucous festival of creative music and art, which has been called an “official concert on the edge” by The New Yorker. Their critically acclaimed debut album was released on Henceforth Records in 2010.

Praised by the press as “a magician” (New York’s WQXR), of “unheard of depth of colors, range of expression and rhetorical flow” (American Record Guide), Sivan Magen is the only Israeli to have ever won the International Harp Contest in Israel, a recent winner of the Pro Musicis International Award and the 2012 Award Winner of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Recent performances include recitals in NY (Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall), London (Wigmore Hall), Amsterdam (Musiekgebouw) and solo appearances in the US, South America, Europe and Israel including the world premiere of Haim Permont's Aviv concerto with the Israel Philharmonic. Debut performances for the 2013-2014 season will include concerto appearances with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony, and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus. He has also been invited by Carnegie Hall to return for a recital in fall 2014 to celebrate the American release of his new solo CD for Linn records, Fantasien. This recital will also include the world premiere of the Carnegie Hall commissioned Fantasy for Solo Harp by emerging American composer Sean Shepherd. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Magen has appeared throughout Europe, Israel and the US, at the Marlboro, Kuhmo, Giverny, and Jerusalem International Chamber Music festivals, and with Musicians from Marlboro. He is a founding member of the award winning Israeli Chamber Project and of Trio Tre Voci with flutist Marina Piccinini and violist Kim Kashkashian, and has collaborated with artists such as Nobuko Imai, Tatjana Masurenko, Shmuel Ashkenazi, Gary Hoffman, Michel Letiec, Charles Neidich, Emmanuel Pahud, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets. This past season he released his new CD with the Israeli Chamber Project for Azica Records as well as an all-Britten CD Still Falls the Rain with tenor Nicholas Phan for Avie (listed in The New York Times’ “Best recordings of 2012”); both to great critical acclaim. Next season will see the release of his second solo CD for Linn Records as well as a recording with Tre Voci for ECM. His performance of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro is featured on Marlboro’s 60th Anniversary CD.

The Mivos Quartet, an “accomplished, admirably broad-minded young string quartet” (The New York Times), is devoted to performing the works of contemporary composers, presenting new music to diverse audiences. Since the quartet’s beginnings in 2008 they have performed the works of emerging and established international composers who represent varied aesthetics of contemporary classical composition. Mivos is invested in commissioning and premiering new music for string quartet, particularly in a context of close collaboration with composers over extended time-periods. In the upcoming 2013-2014 season, Mivos will collaborate on new works with Sam Pluta (Lucerne Festival Commission), Dan Blake (Jerome Commission), Mark Barden (Wien Modern Festival Commission), Richard Carrick (Fromm Commission), Eric Wubbels (CMA commission) and Kate Soper. Mivos also regularly performs the works of composers including Alex Mincek, Helmut Lachenmann, Anna Clyne, Wolfgang Rihm, Samson Young, Luke DuBois, Philip Glass, Felipe Lara, Mario Diaz de Leon, and Tristan Perich. Mivos has appeared at venues including The Guggenheim Museum, Kennedy Center, Zankel Hall, MoMA, The Stone, Issue Project Room, and Roulette, and on concert series including Wien Modern (Vienna, Austria), Asphalt Festival (Düsseldorf, Germany), Concerti Aperitivo (Udine, Italy), HellHOT! New Music Festival (Hong Kong), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Edgefest (Ann Arbor,MI), and Aldeburgh Music (UK), where Mivos was invited to work with the Arditti Quartet and Helmut Lachenmann. Mivos returned to Aldeburgh Music in January 2013 for a two-week residency, where they performed two concerts and recorded their debut solo album, Reappearances, featuring works by Alex Mincek, David Franzson, Felipe Lara, and Wolfgang Rihm (Carrier Records, Nov. 2013 release). Mivos was one of five groups selected for the Young Ensembles Fellowship at the 2012 Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt, DE), where they were awarded a Fellowship Prize for Interpretation and invited back for the next Darmstadt Festival in 2014. In addition to their work as interpreters, Mivos is committed to collaborating with guest artists, exploring multi-media projects involving live video and electronics, creating original compositions and arrangements for the quartet, and performing improvised music. Mivos’ work as improvisers has led to collaborations with artists including Dan Blake, Ned Rothenberg, Chris Speed, Timucin Sahin and Nate Wooley. Mivos has made several recordings in the free-jazz/improv realm, including Ned Rothenberg’s acclaimed Quintet for Clarinet and Strings on John Zorn’s Tzadik label (“played with spontaneity and dexterity” -The Strad Magazine), and Bojan Vuletic’s Atemwende, with trumpeter Nate Wooley. Mivos is also active in education, and looks forward to upcoming residencies at Princeton University and the Shanghai Conservatory. Past engagements have included workshops at CUNY Graduate Center, Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, SUNY Fredonia, Royal Northern College of Music (UK), Shanghai Conservatory (China), University Malaya (Malaysia), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Hong Kong Art Center, and MIAM University in Istanbul (Turkey). The quartet also runs the annual Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize, established to support the work of emerging and mid-career composers and to encourage continued interest in new compositions for string quartet. The winning composer, selected from over one hundred and fifty applicants, receives a performance of their work in New York City on the Mivos Quartet concert season and a cash prize. In 2013, Mivos initiated a second competition in a similiar format for composers of Chinese descent, called the ICreation Prize. The members of Mivos are: violinists Olivia De Prato and Joshua Modney, violist Victor Lowrie, and cellist Mariel Roberts, each of whom are recognized individually as extraordinary voices in contemporary music.

Praised for his “excellent” and “precisely attuned” performances by The New York Times, percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. He made his Kennedy Center debut in 2009 and later that year garnered a special prize created for him at the Salzburg International Marimba Competition. Last season, Mr. Rosenbaum joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program as only the second percussionist they have selected in their history. Mr. Rosenbaum has performed with the acclaimed Sō Percussion group and has appeared at the Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Chamber Music Northwest and Music@Menlo festivals. Highlights of the 2013-2014 season include a tour of Southern California performing Christopher Cerrone’s Memory Palace, a recital at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and a solo performance on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse series. Continuing his passionate advocacy for contemporary music, this season Mr. Rosenbaum will premiere new works for percussion by Andy Akiho, David Crowell, Tawnie Olson and Paola Prestini. Mr. Rosenbaum is a member of Sandbox Percussion, Le Train Bleu, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Novus NY and Time Travelers. He has recorded for the Bridge, Innova and Naxos labels and is on the faculty of the Dwight School in Manhattan. Mr. Rosenbaum endorses Vic Firth sticks and mallets.

Yumi Tamashiro trained as a pianist but was “converted” to percussion, drawn by the allure of teaching high school drumline. And it was her undergraduate 20th Century Music History class that turned her on to contemporary music. Soon after participating in a masterclass with Sō Percussion, a group based in Brooklyn, NY, she fell in love. Ms. Tamashiro has performed at the Banff Center of Arts, The Kennedy Center, Symphony Space, The Stone, The Bohemian National Hall, and Le Poisson Rouge among others. She has performed with a range of projects including Carnegie Neighborhood Series, Ecstatic Music Festival and Make Music New York. Her repertoire includes works by Elliot Carter, Steve Reich, Jacob Druckman, Karlheintz Stockhausen, Andy Akiho, Roshanne Etezady, Iannis Xenakis, Michio Kitazume, and Jason Treuting. Yumi has had the privilege of performing with groups such as Nexus, Opera Moderne, and Sō Percussion. Rooted in New York City, Yumi has become a member of many ensembles: Mobius Percussion Quartet, Ensemble sans Maître, and Tempus Continuum Ensemble. With Mobius Percussion Quartet, a NYC based percussion quartet, she is commissioning a new work from composer Jason Treuting.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS

Leila Adu-Gilmore is the Wellington Orchestra’s Composer in Residence for 2014. Based in New York, she will write a large-scale piece for a touring orchestral performance in September 2015. Leila has released four acclaimed albums and performed her original songs and improvisations of voice accompanied by piano alongside international artists, at festivals and venues in the UK, mainland Europe, the US, Australasia, Russia and Indonesia. Her latest releases were recorded for RAI/Tracce, the Italian National Radio label. Leila has been voted as MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week, performed on the BBC World Service, composed and produced a documentary soundtrack for the BBC Knowledge TV channel and the NZ Film Festival. Leila completed post-graduate studies in composition at Victoria University of Wellington, where she wrote pieces for gamelan and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She is currently a doctoral fellow in music composition at Princeton University and has recently composed for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Brentano String Quartet and Sō Percussion.

Described as “mold-breaking” and “vital” by The New York Times and as “a young composer to watch” by The LA Times, Andy Akiho is an eclectic and contemporary composer/performer whose interests run from steel pan to traditional classical music. Recent engagements include a commission by Carnegie Hall premiered by Ensemble ACJW, a world premiere commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, a performance with the LA Philharmonic, a tour in Taiwan, and three shows at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, featuring original compositions. His rhythmic compositions touch a wide spectrum of listeners and continue to increase in recognition: selected from an initial pool of over 500 applicants, Akiho won the grand prize for the 2011 Make Music National Composition Competition hosted by the Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird. Other recent awards include the 2011 Woods Chandler Memorial Prize, a 2011 Music Alumni Award, and the 2010 Horatio Parker Award at the Yale School of Music, a 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, a 2008 Brian M. Israel Prize, and three ASCAP Plus Awards. His 2011 debut CD No One To Know One on innova Records features innovative compositions that pose intricate rhythms and exotic timbres around his primary instrument, the steel pan. A graduate of the University of South Carolina (BM, performance), the Manhattan School of Music (MM, contemporary performance), and the Yale School of Music (MM, composition), Andy is currently a graduate student at Princeton University. andyakiho.com

Quinn Collins is a third year student in composition at Princeton University.

Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists such as Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Laboratorium, and Joan Jeanrenaud. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, and Jeff Snyder. Venues that have featured Ergün's music include New York's Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, The Roulette, The Stone; Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw, Zurich's Tonhalle, and Istanbul's Babylon. Some events Ergün has participated in are Gaudeamus Music Week, MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, WNYC's New Sounds Live, Peak Performances at Montclair University, Stanford Lively Arts, and San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Records Ergün appears on include The Art Of The Fluke with Alvin Curran and Sō Percussion's Cage 100 Bootleg Series. His first solo composition record, Nana, will be released in 2014. Ergün's music has been described as “haunting”, “ominously throbbing” (The New York Times), “psychedelically meditative” (New Music Box), and showing “conceptual rigor” (The Wire).

Amanda Feery keeps fortune cookie-sized slips of paper and poorly labeled audio files around her desk and computer, which she eventually sews together to make a piece. Through her musical studies she has met and worked with inspiring teachers and peers in the realms of composition, improvisation, theatre, and film. Current work includes a vocal/multimedia work based on the diary entries of Donald Crowhurst, and Spells from the Ice Age, an EP of improvisations recorded on neglected pianos. www.amandafeery.com

Wally Gunn is an Australian composer living and working in New York. He writes concert music, rock music, and music for theater, film and visual art and is currently a doctoral fellow at Princeton University.

Jeff Snyder is a composer, improviser and instrument-designer living in Princeton, New Jersey, and active in the New York City area. As founder and lead designer of Snyderphonics, Jeff designs and builds unusual electronic musical instruments. His creations include the Manta, which is played by over 150 musicians around the world; the JD-1 Keyboard/Sequencer, which was a custom commission, and the custom analog modular synthesizer on which he regularly performs. Jeff is a member of the experimental electronic duo exclusiveOr, the avant jazz group The Federico Ughi Quartet, improvisatory noise trio The Mizries, and laptop ensemble Sideband. He fronts the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves as his electro-country alter-ego, Owen Lake. He also composes alternate-reality early music for an ensemble of his invented instruments. In 2009, Jeff co-founded an experimental music record label, Carrier Records, which continues to release strange and exciting experimental music. In 2011, he received a doctorate with distinction in music composition from Columbia University. He is currently an associate research scholar of electronic music at Princeton University, and the director of PLOrk , the Princeton Laptop Orchestra.

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

The Black Box Project

Performing New Works by:

• Alex Dowling

• Amanda Feery

• Wally Gunn

• Dave Molk

• Jason Treuting

Performed by:

• The Black Box Project

Location: The Black Box Theater at Wilson College
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Start time: 8:00 pm

____

PSK presents composers Alex Dowling, Amanda Feery, Wally Gunn, Dave Molk and Jason Treuting showing newly devised performance works in a black box theater with director Laura Sheedy on Tuesday, November 5th, 2013 at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Curator
Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

THE BLACK BOX PROJECT
Princeton composers Alex Dowling, Amanda Feery, Wally Gunn, Dave Molk and Jason Treuting showing newly devised performance works in a black box theater

Director: Laura Sheedy
Producer: Andrew Lovett
Production Manager: Wally Gunn

PROGRAM

ALEX DOWLING
1. Birds
2. My Joy
World Premiere

Leila Adu-Gilmore, vocals
Elliot Cole, vocals
Alex Dowling, vocals
Emma O’Halloran, vocals

AMANDA FEERY
Tide Over, Tide Over
World Premiere

Leila Adu-Gilmore, vocals
Amanda Feery, vocals
Rosalie Kaplan, vocals
Emma O’Halloran, vocals

WALLY GUNN
By The Time You Get This
World Premiere

Devised by Nothing To See Here Theater, Laura Sheedy, Artistic Director
Danielle Brustman, deviser and designer
Ryan Drickey, violin
Spencer Evans, deviser and actor
Wally Gunn, deviser and composer
Laura Sheedy, deviser, actor and director
Jason Treuting, percussion

DAVE MOLK
Time for Coffee
World Premiere

1. down
1a. head in hands
2. a pitter of patterns
2a. the quiet one
2b. #1 groove
3. waiter, reader, sugar, sleeper (who is she, and can we keep her?)
3a. #2 groove brew
4. cupuccino forte!

Quinn Collins, percupsion
Wally Gunn, percupsion
David Molk, percupsion
Jason Treuting, percupsion

JASON TREUTING
Interludes 1, 2, 3 and 4

Jason Treuting, percussion
Beth Meyers, viola

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND PERFORMERS

Leila Adu travels the spaceways of music without limits. From tours of the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East, London’s Time Out says, “Avante-garde pop that recalls Nina Simone and Tim Buckley,” and Italy’s popular music mag Blow Up describes her last album Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker as “splinters of folk and blues but also hypnotic and ghostly prog.” Steve Albini who produced her second album dubbed her ‘Spooky Adu.’ In 2013 Leila Adu has recorded improv with Daniel Carter, Jeff Henderson, Federico Ughi, with Quinn Collins and Jeff Snyder as part of The Miz'Ries, as well as singing in renowned NZ composer, John Psathas's audio visual composition Between Zero and One and as part of Alex Dowling's electronic accapella group. Adu has performed and composed for dance, theatre, film, gamelan, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Brentano String Quartet and So Percussion. She completed post-graduate studies in 2003 at Victoria University of Wellington, majoring in composition and specialising in Electro-acoustic Music, Ethnomusicology and Orchestration. Adu is currently a Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University.

Elliot Cole is a composer, singer, programmer and producer. His musical activities are wide-ranging. As a singer, he has performed at Merkin Hall, in the premiere of Sarah Snider’s Unremembered, at the Berkshire Fringe Festival, as soloist with the Princeton Chamber Choir, and with his book-club-band Oracle Hysterical in tours across Germany and Texas. Most recently, he sang the roles of Jupiter and Deucalion in Doug Balliett's newest Ovid cantata, The Flood. This winter he will sing his bardic epic Hanuman’s Leap with percussion ensembles across the midwest, and the role of Mercury in Monteverdi's Poppea at Princeton. Also committed to exploring territory between traditional storytelling and hip hop, he has performed his rap lecture about the history of the world, De Rerum, with the Chicago Composers Orchestra and at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, where he was Spotlight Artist in 2011. Deeply interested in the music of the past, he was a member of the Princeton Georgian Choir and sings regularly in a working group devoted to 14th and 15th century repertoire from original notation.

Usually, Quinn Collins asks other people to make a racket. But tonight, David Molk has asked him to make a racket in his debut as a mugger.

Alex Dowling makes music for real and imaginary instruments.

Ryan Drickey is a violinist who specializes in contemporary and traditional musical dialects. His influences range from the 20th century classical virtuoso tradition to the rural old-time fiddling of Appalachia, from the formidable traditions of Scandinavian dance music to the wild intricacies of American Jazz. He spent the 2011 - 2012 academic year in Sweden studying traditional Swedish fiddle styles with the support of a Fulbright grant. He won the Rockygrass fiddle competition in 2007 in Colorado, and has played and taught across the US as well as in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Ryan currently plays with the bluegrass/americana/honky-tonk outfit known as Finnders and Youngberg (FY5), as well as with Cahalen Morrison and Eli West, and others. He holds a Masters of Music in violin from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently living in New York City, Ryan has performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and has worked with artists such as Matt Morris, Darrell Scott, Matt Flinner, Opera Colorado, The Denver Philharmonic, and many others.

Spencer Evans is very pleased to be making his debut with Nothing to See Here. He was most recently seen in the Players Theatre productions of The Traveler and Famished in New York. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Theatre Arts, he has lived primarily between New York and San Francisco creating critically acclaimed experimental theatre. Over the years he has collaborated with: Sens Productions, Z Plays, Zaccho Dance Theater, ESP/Erica Shuch, Torque, Ensemble 6150 and The Sisyphus Project. Special thanks to Varian.

Amanda Feery is a musicmaker from Ireland, working with acoustic, electronic, and improvised music. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2006, with a B.A in Music. She completed an M.Phil in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin in 2009. Her work has been performed by Orkest de Ereprijs, Fidelio Trio, Lisa Moore, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Dublin Guitar Quartet. She was the winner of the West Cork Chamber Music Composer Award (2009) and the recipient of the Music Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland (2011/2012). She has participated at a number of festivals and residencies including the International Young Composers Meeting (2009), Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival (2010), soundSCAPE Festival (2011) and Ostrava Days (2011). She is currently a graduate fellow at Princeton University. Current and ongoing projects include a vocal work based on the diary entries of Donald Crowhurst, a bass clarinet work based on motet cadences, and an EP recorded on neglected pianos.

Wally Gunn is an Australian composer living and working in New York. He writes concert music, rock music, and music for theatre, visual art, and other media, and enjoys collaboration with artists in other fields. He is interested in the sciences - especially natural history - as well as modern history and contemporary literature, and these themes often make appearances in his work. Wally is currently a Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University.

Rosalie Kaplan is a singer. She studied at the New England Conservatory and graduated from NYU’s Gallatin School. She co-leads the Brooklyn-based art song rock band Dollshot, whose forthcoming album Lalande, will be released in 2014. Her duo with guitarist/improviser Marco Cappelli recently recorded an EP of arrangements of Britten’s Songs from the Chinese which will be released this fall. She has performed at (le) Poisson Rouge, Galapagos Art Space, and The Stone among other venues.

Violist Beth Meyers is a founding member of janus flute, viola and harp trio whose debut album i am not was called “gorgeously subtle” (Studio 360). She is also a member of the band, QQQ (viola, hardanger fiddle, acoustic guitar and drums) whose debut album Unpacking the Trailer (also New Amsterdam Records) was hailed “a bold statement of purpose disguised as an unpretentious lark” (Time Out New York). She has performed with ensembles and artists including ACME Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Antony and the Johnsons, Chromeo, Clare Muldaur Manchon, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble ACJW, Kishibashi, Matmos, Meredith Monk, Pierre Boulez, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, Rochester Philharmonic, Signal, Regina Spektor, So Percussion, Steve Reich and Musicians, Sufjan Stevens, Theo Bleckman and the Ying Quartet. Beth is a graduate of the University of Rochester (BA English ’00) and Eastman School of Music (BM ’00, MM ’02) where she studied with George Taylor. Her principal teachers also include John Graham (Aspen Music Festival), Christophe Dejardins (Lucerne Festival Academy), Garth Knox (formerly Arditti String Quartet), and Melissa Micciche (Rochester Philharmonic). Beth spends a good deal of her playing in NYC on the Broadway scene where she can be heard in various pit orchestras. She lives with her family in Princeton, NJ and enjoys riding her road bike and fiddling on fiddle.

Dave Molk is in his 3rd year at Princeton. He previously studied composition at Berklee College of Music under John Bavicchi and Tufts University under John McDonald.

Emma O'Halloran is a composer and musician from Ireland. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in composition at Princeton University. She also likes to sing.

Laura Sheedy is a performer and director from Melbourne, Australia currently based in New York. Laura was a founding member of The Other Tongue performing in Face2Face (Melb. Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and Speaking in Thongs (Melbourne Comedy Festival). She also co-founded physical clown duo A Scam and a Strongman, making the shows A Scam and a Strongman, Spoilt and Short Straw (Melb. Comedy Festival and the Melbourne Fringe Festival Green Room Award nomination). Laura has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York since 2000 (Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant) and has been teaching Viewpoints, both in Australia and New York, since 2001. She has a solo show, Undercover (Melb. Fringe Festival) and has directed solo works by Kirsty Fraser, Miss Behave, Captain Frodo, Amy G and Kurt Braunohler. Laura has been a directorial advisor to such companies and artists as Circus Oz, La Clique, La La Parlour and Suitcase Royale, Kate Neal and Wally Gunn. Laura has performed with the Wau Wau Sisters both in NY and at the Sydney Opera House. In February 2012, Laura along with SITI Company’s Barney O’Hanlon, presented a creative development showing of a new work, Communication Over Distance, at the World Theatre Festival in Brisbane. In May 2012, Laura directed Chuck Mee Jr’s Big Love for La Trobe University and in December, she performed in Adrienne Truscott’s Too Freedom at The Kitchen and in Ann Hamilton’s The Event of A Thread at the Park Ave Armory. Laura is founder and Artistic Director of the theater company Nothing To See Here.

Jason Treuting is a performer and composer. He plays with and writes most often for his quartet So Percussion and now lives in Princeton as one of two inaugural Lewis Center Fellows in the Arts.