2020 Festival – Page 34

Picture of the Day – July 1, 2012

Another shot of Owen Weaver performing Lisa Coons’s Percussion Sculpture No. 1, because it was just so cool! The metal sculpture was amplified, but no other electronics were added. The lights were dimmed for the piece, and Weaver was illuminated by lamp shown on the left. Toward the end of the piece, serendipity showed its face: the lamp began to flicker in time to the music (perhaps as a result of the vibrations from the sculpture), creating an unplanned but entirely appropriate addition to the atmosphere of the piece.

Picture of the Day – June 30, 2012

In today’s picture, Central Connecticut State University professor Dr. Daniel D’Addio performs My Father Was a Ventriloquist by Festival Associate Director, Jessica Rudman (www.jessicarudman.com). The piece makes use of a text written by the composer read as part of a fixed electronics track that accompanies the live trumpet player. Commissioned by Dr. D’Addio, the composition was premiered in 2011 and has since been performed around the Northeast.

Preparations for 2013

2012 is nearly half over, and unless the Mayans really had it right next year’s festival is right around the corner. Mark your calendars (if they go that far) for the first week of March and stay tuned for updates on guest artists, score calls, and concerts.

Picture of the Day – June 29, 2012

Eunsun Jung performs Eun Sook Baek’s Poverty to Liberty on this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The piece is composed for the gayageum, a string instrument from Baek’s homeland Korea. According to the composer, “the title Poverty to Liberty is used to describe the immigrants arriving on a foreign country, America. When the immigrants arrived at New York, their first encounter was the Statue of Liberty. As these people witness the Statue of Liberty, they start to imagine the American dream. In this piece, the Korean instrument ‘Gayageum’ represents the American land. East Asian Composers usually expressed their own culture and timbres through western instruments. However, for this piece, the western culture was expressed with an eastern instrument, and the immigrants (all ethnic group) with western instruments. This piece includes the sorrowful departure from the immigrants’ homeland, to achieve the American dream every other people aspire. It also includes their harsh journey across the sea, and the arrival to a land of hope.”

Picture of the Day – June 28, 2012

Today’s picture comes from the Electro-acoustic Concert on March 8, 2012. The concert opened with Ryan Ford performing Kirsten Volness’s work for bass and electronics entitled Hints and Hauntings. The composer describes the piece in her program notes:

“Hints and Hauntings is a pastiche paying homage to a long list of influences and experiences that have shaped my musical life. I sought to use sounds I once found far more prevalent in my daily existence, whose absence and possible future obsolescence I’ve noticed. (You’ll find I spent a lot of time as a child listening to records and reading the dictionary.) Formative sonic experiences find their way into the piece as well, like playing in a drumline and discovering electronic music, from early analog sounds to my teenage years dancing in clubs.”

To learn more about Kirsten and her music, visit her website at www.kirstenvolness.com/.