Barry Seroff’s Quaker Cantata with Anti Social Music
The World Premiere of Barry SEROFF’s Quaker Cantata
Also featuring a performance by Anti-Social Music.
Premiering 9:00pm to 11:00pm, March 25th, 2010 at
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
located at the OA Can Factory, 232 3rd St. in Brooklyn
(By Subway: F to Carroll/Smith or R to 9th St/4th Ave)
$15
ANTI-SOCIAL MUSIC:
Anti-Social Music, Inc., is a non-profit collective of composers and performers created for the purpose of presenting new music by emerging, primarily New York-based musicians. Concerts typically feature music written specifically for the ensemble and are additionally intended to not be so gosh-darn serious. This stuff is supposed to be fun, no? This concert will feature both lighter and larger scale works.
DEMOCRACY and Barry SEROFF:
New York based composer and improviser Barry Seroff’s music has been described as “flirting with progressive rock from the perspective of Stravinsky…. (his work) shows a real mastery of the craft of composition and creative insight into making a piece work for the performers and the audience.” A full-length chamber work for soprano and tenor vox, alto and tenor saxophones, electric guitar, electric bass, double bass, drumset and percussion, Democracy features unlikely instrumentation for what the composer refers to as a ‘Quaker Cantata’.
“The idea was to create a dramatic arc on texts based around the central tenet of Quakerism: ‘All that lives is holy.’ I wanted to follow that idea through to get a clearer understanding of its consequences,” says Seroff. Those consequences are explored through the words and philosophies of Quaker preacher George Fox, trancendentalist Walt Whitman and the existentialism of Fredrich Neitzche.
Though the piece’s text is drawn primarily from 19th century works, the music is thoroughly contemporary. As its title implies, Democracy openly embraces all the music that America has to offer, from innocent folk rock (‘Infant Joy’) to punk-edged modern rock (‘The Mystic Trumpeter’), to grindcore/avant jazz (‘It is Not the Scriptures!’) finally resolving in airy, ambient classical (‘I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’). The sounds are certainly disparate, but the transitions are seamless. The composer tells us that, “by utilizing the toolbox of classical composition to link these musical styles, I am endeavoring to speak a uniquely modern language forged out of America’s evolving and robust musical conversation. In much in the same way that diverse texts are connected by a common idea, I want to illuminate how music, politics, spirituality and philosophy are driven by the overarching motivation of our search for the holy.”
Tonight marks the first complete performance of the full-length piece.
Littoral: Sara Wintz + Dither
Sara Wintz
Sara Wintz is a writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, EOAGH, they are flying planes, ecopoetics, Jacket, and Sustainable Aircraft; at The Zinc Bar, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, at Segue Reading Series, at The Bowery Poetry Club; and on Ceptuetics with Kareem Estefan, on WNYU. She is lead singer of the pretty panicks press, and from 2007-2009 she was co-editor for :::the press gang::: She now curates PoetryTV!, and readings at SEGUE, and writes from various locations on the east and west coast.
Inspired by Peter Garland’s journal, Soundings, and James Tenney’s postcard compositions, the pretty panicks press began as a project documenting the various ways that rock music is represented on the page. In its first year, panicks printed rock compositions on the fronts of five postcards, with artists statements on the backs, and distributed to a mailing list of about 500 physical addresses, and sites including Other Music (NYC), Aquarius (SF), and Amoeba Music (SF/Berkeley). Started while an undergraduate at Mills College, with support from William Winant, and friends in the bay area music community, contributors to the project so far have included John Darnielle, of The Mountain Goats, Sharon Cheslow, Jorge Boehringer, Molly Thompson, Pure Horsehair, and Ches Smith.
Postcards distributed by the pretty panicks press are archived electronically at Deep Oakland (www.deepoakland.org).
DITHER
ISSUE’s Littoral Series is supported, in part, by The Casement Fund and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
(CANCELLED) Travis Johns and Liz Meredith
Liz Meredith (b.1981) is a violinist, violinist, improviser, and
composer originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Her music frequently
moves toward the outer limits of musical genres, being influenced by
rock, electronic, and contemporary instrumental music.
Liz has collaborated with an assortment of individuals, including
songwriters, rock bands, electronic musicians, improvisers, and
composers. She has composed concert music for The Esterhazy String
Quartet, The Opabinia Quartet, and has composed various solo
instrumental pieces as well. Other creative work includes making
electro-acoustic music as both a soloist and collaborator, ambient
music projects, and writing song-based pieces.
Liz received her Bachelor’s Degree in String Performance and Film
Music from The Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA), and her Master’s
Degree in Music Composition from Mills College (Oakland, CA).
Liz studied viola performance with Hank Dutt of The Kronos Quartet and
music composition with Fred Frith.
Liz’s music can be listened to here:
www.lizmeredith.com
www.myspace.com/lizmeredith
Travis Johns (b. 1983) is a composer and sound artist from San Francisco, Ca. Using a combination of processed field recordings, sine
wave oscillators and analog electronics, he attempts to weave textural
tapestries of gestures, thoughts and experiences into a singular mass
of infinite sonic possibilities, often nested somewhere between the
stylistic footholds of free improvisation, dark ambient and harsh
noise – sounding something like the distant swarming of well oiled
mechanical bees woven with fissures of dark tones and noise rips.
He holds a B.M. in Technology in Music and Related Arts from the
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, as well as an MFA in Electronic Music
and Recording Media from Mills College, studies conducted with Chris
Brown, Les Stuck and Hilda Paredes. To date, Johns has participated in
residencies at such places as the Atlantic Center for the Arts and
RPI’s Create @ iEar and is also a founding member of the Thinktank
Collective, a new media arts organization and record label founded in
2004 in Oberlin, Oh.
His music has been performed extensively throughout the United States
and abroad to a wide variety of audiences, including the Santa Fe
International Electronic Music Festival (2005 & 2006), The 2007 Los
Angeles Bent Festival and the 2009 International Live Looping
Festival. Recordings of Johns are available from Thinktank Media, Vox
Novus and Shinkoyo Records, among others. For more sounds and more
information, please go to www.think-tankmedia.net, as well as
myspace.com/thoughtcollection001.
Toomai String Quintet + Dan Joseph Ensemble, with special guest Thomas Buckner
The Toomai String Quintet is an ensemble devoted to performing music from the classical and contemporary repertoire while exploring and arranging music from around the world. Winner of the 92nd St. Y’s 2007 Music Unlocked! Competition for emerging ensembles, the Toomai String Quintet is dedicated to creating engaging interactive concerts for audiences of all ages.
The Toomai String Quintet is an ensemble devoted to performing music from the classical and contemporary repertoire while exploring and arranging music from around the world. Winner of the 92nd St. Y’s 2007 Music Unlocked! Competition for emerging ensembles, the Toomai String Quintet is dedicated to creating engaging interactive concerts for audiences of all ages.
Hailed for their “light-handed authority” on their “magnificently executed” recording of composer Jessica Pavone’s Songs of Synastry and Solitude (Tzadik Records), the Toomai String Quintet is equally at home in concert halls and unconventional performance spaces. The quintet has appeared in venues such as the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd St. Y, Juilliard’s chamber music series at Lincoln Center, and The Kitchen in downtown NYC. They also perform frequently in public schools, hospitals, and alternative care facilities throughout the New York City area as part of the current roster for Carnegie Hall’s “Musical Connections” program. In addition, the quintet has been featured in the Miami Civic Music Association and Con Vivo chamber music series, among others.
Formed in 2007 at The Juilliard School, the quintet is named after Rudyard Kipling’s short story “Toomai of the Elephants” in which a young boy journeys into the jungle to witness the dance of the wild elephants. The Toomai String Quintet aspires to cultivate a similar sense of curiosity and discovery by searching for diverse music and sharing it with their audience.
Personnel: Emilie-Anne Gendron and Nicole Jeong, violins; Erin Wight, viola; John Popham, cello; and Andrew Roitstein, double bass
Issue Project Room Program:
• Huang Ruo: The Three Tenses (String Quintet Version)
• Selections from Jessica Pavone’s Songs of Synastry and Solitude
• Georges Onslow: Quintet No. 27 in D Major, Op. 68
• Arrangements of music by Ernesto Lecuona, Adrian Willaert, and Sapo Perapaskero
photo by Chris Woltman
The Dan Joseph Ensemble was founded in 2001 by New York-based composer Dan Joseph as a vehicle for his growing body of intricate, post-minimal compositions. With a unique instrumentation anchored by hammer dulcimer and harpsichord with a mix of winds, strings and percussion, the ensemble sound is harmonically rich and deeply resonant, evoking a musical world both old and new; ancient and modern. The ensemble includes Tom Chiu (violin), Loren Dempster (cello), Maria Ilic (harpshichord), Leah Paul (flute), Danny Tunick (percussion) and the composer on hammer dulcimer. The program will feature the world premiere of Joseph’s newest ensemble work Tonalization (for the afterlife), and an encore performance of Music Primer for baritone and hammer dulcimer with baritone Thomas Buckner.
This Saturday, March 17, St. Ann's Church will host the second installation of String Theories, the joint partnership between ISSUE Project Room and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn that provides artists with an opportunity to premiere new expe...
