Jessica Meyer, viola and Boss Loop Station

Iris Garrelfs

Jorge Sosa, electronics

Michelle Rampal, saxophone

Helen Dennis, video

Mei-Fang Lin

Mike McFerron

Amy Campbell, dance

Amy Campbell, dance

Philosophising

Sheena Hong

Heartbeat Sutra

Jerod Sommerfeldt

Mother Earth

Erin Rogers

New Thread Quartet: Zach Herchen, Geoffrey Landman, Kristen McKeon, Erin Rogers

Paul Pinto, electronics

Andrea Lee Smith, flute

Hailed for her "polish, focus, and excitement" (The New York Times), Jessica Meyer is a versatile violist and composer whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility, generosity, fun and clarity. As a soloist, Jessica has premiered pieces for solo viola around the country, and is committed to expanding the repertoire for viola by commissioning new works while also composing her own. Ms. Meyer's compositions explore the wide palette of expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Last season included premieres at the DiMenna Center, the Firehouse New Music Series, Spectrum NYC, the Tribeca New Music Festival, and at the Cornelia Street Cafe. In August 2014, she was featured on Q2′s marathon of Emerging Women Composers and was recently awarded a grant from the Jerome Fund for New Music to write a new work for cello, piano and countertenor.

Source of Joy
Here I play with the kinds of sounds that go against the typical "viola" stereotype: instead of its moody and dark persona, the instrument is transformed into a lighter version of itself to capture fleeting moments of pure happiness.
Duende
"Duende" is a concept the poet Lorca wrote about – the moment when someone is inhabited by a mysterious and powerful force that everyone around them can feel, but no one can explain. This last piece is the quest for that moment; when the spirits rise up from the soles of your feet, and you don't give a damn about anything anymore...and you just play.

Iris Garrelfs is a London based sound artist active across performance, installation and fixed media. In performance she often uses her voice as raw material for conjuring multilayered listening experiences where voice is transmuted into machine noises, intricate rhythms, choral works, pulverised into granules of electroacoustic babble and glitch, generating animated dialogues between innate human expressiveness and the overt artifice of digital processing as the Wire magazine put it. Her new album Breathing Through Wires is just out on Pan Y Rosas Discos.Moulding complex aural collages, her work has been compared to artists such as Yoko Ono, Henri Chopin, Joan La Barbara or Meredith Monk. Works have featured at Tate Britain, Science Museum London, Royal Academy of Arts and more. Elsewhere she is a lecturer at London College of Communication and commissioning editor of Reflections on Process in Sound."Garrelfs' work further points toward a flow of sonority that leaves us further tuned to all that hovers in and around the voice. in doing so, she fully locates sound as an important route for reimagining the time and space of the contemporary environment" (Brandon LaBelle, 2014, sleeve notes to bedroom symphonies). http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/pyr137-iris-garrelfs-breathing-through-wires/

Sofa Surfing USA is a composition from Garrelfs' recent album "Bedroom Symphonies" made from voice practice sessions during a number of tours and residencies. Imagine her sitting on a hotel bed, or friend's sofa, laptop on the night table with a head microphone plugged straight into it and you won't be too far from reality. In that way you can hear the materiality of the situation within the recordings, from the quality of the equipment used, Garrelfs' response to it, the occasional keyboard sound that creeps into a rhythm. The result is a rather curious, private set of pieces, performances entirely without an audience. The original material for Sofa Surfing USA was recorded during a US tour in 2007 whilst the piece itself was constructed in 2014.

Jorge Sosa is a Mexican born composer currently residing in New York. Jorge’s first full-length opera, “La Reina,” commissioned by the American Lyric Theater has been recently selected for the Fort Worth Opera 2015 “Frontiers Festival. “La Reina” was performed in a concert version during ALT’s Insight Festival in 2013. In 2014 Jorge’s works “Enchantment” and “Stray Birds” for chamber ensemble and live electronics were premiered at the Difrazzione festival in Florence. In 2014 Jorge’s operatic setting of Man Ray’s film “L’Etoile de Mer” was premiered in Kansas City by the Black House Collective, receiving critical acclaim. In 2013 Jorge was the Composer in Residence with the NYU New Music Ensemble collaborating in improvisatory, multimedia works, with live electronics. Jorge’s Psalm of David was premiered in 2013 by acclaimed clarinetist David Krakauer and pianist Kathy Tagg at The Stone in New York City. In 2012 Jorge was commissioned to write his “Song of the Last Crossing”, which was included in the “Opera America Songbook”. Jorge’s CD’s “Plastic Time” and “Enceladus” are available on all the major music download sites and through the website www.jorgesosa.com. Jorge is currently Assistant Professor of music at Molloy College in Long Island.

Unveiled Cities, 2014 was inspired by the work of British artist Helen Dennis. The piece uses an iPad to mix images and audio in real time. The interface allows the performer to create a soundscape by choosing from a collection of sounds and controlling their volume and panning in real time. Helen’s beautiful images depict an idyllic New York City, a type of dream town that is gradually unveiled by the performers. Sound and images work together to create a moving, living painting. For tonight’s performance we are thrilled to have saxophonist Michelle Rampal improvising with the electronic track. The piece thus becomes a multidimensional real time composition that will be unique to tonight’s performance.

Michelle Rampal is an instructor of music education at Molloy College and a doctoral student in music education at NYU Steinhardt. She holds degrees in Saxophone Performance and Literature (M.M.) from the Eastman School of Music and Music Education/Saxophone Performance (B.M.) from Ithaca College. Michelle has performed with the Brooklyn Wind Symphony, Grand Street Community Band, Brooklyn Jazz Rebellion, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Walt Disney Collegiate All Star Band, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and the Eastman Jazz Ensemble in notable venues around the world, including Lincoln Center, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the Midwest Clinic in Chicago Prior to joining the faculty at Molloy College, Michelle served as director of bands at Baldwin Senior High School in Baldwin, New York and a community jazz ensemble director in Chicago. She is also the Co-Founder and Director of the Molloy College Summer Music Institute. Her research interests include community music, social justice pedagogy, and alternative contexts for music education.

Mei-Fang Lin received her Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at Berkeley and her master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she also taught as Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition from 2007-2009. From 2002-2005, she lived in France and studied composition with composer Philippe Leroux and participated in the one-year computer music course “Cursus de Composition” at IRCAM in Paris on a Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship and Berkeley’s George Ladd Paris Prize. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Composition at the Texas Tech University in 2009. Lin’s music has won awards from the Musica Domani International Competition, American Composers Forum, Seoul International Competition for Composers, Fifth House Ensemble Composer Competition, Bourges Competition, Look & Listen Festival, Pierre Schaeffer Competition, SCI/ASCAP Student Commission Competition, Luigi Russolo Competition, Prix SCRIME, NACUSA, Music Taipei Composition Competition…etc. Her music has received performances and broadcasts internationally in over 30 countries.

Internal Landscape represents a sonic landscape consisting of various natural sounds used as acoustic symbols deliberately organized in a way to break their normal context. Ideas drawn from “stream of consciousness” and “surrealism” heavily influenced how these sounds/images are sequenced together. The identity of individual sounds and their connotations are kept intact with the aim to arouse certain emotions and expectations from the listeners. These sonic symbols, however, are given a new context through a sequence of events happening out of one’s expectation. The result simulates a state of a dream or hallucination that presents itself in a sort of post-modern sonic cinema where one finds oneself surrounded by familiar objects but in a strangely twisted context.

Mike McFerron is professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University and he is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest (http://www.emmfestival.org). A past fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Ucross, June in Buffalo, and the Chamber Music Conference of the East/Composers’ Forum, honors include, among others, first prize in the Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, first prize in the CANTUS commissioning/residency program, recipient of the 2005 CCF Abelson Vocal Music Commission, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “First Hearing” Program. He serves on the board of the directors for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra and also as the Chair of the Executive Committee for the Society of Composers, Inc. McFerron’s music can be heard on numerous commercial recordings as well as on his website at http://www.bigcomposer.com.

Morneaumix: my husband is a remix of composer David Morneau’s My Husband. Utilizing a three-note {016} motive found in Morneau’s work, the core of this remix are layers of a degrading 31 beat iso-rhythm. This short 8-channel fixed media composition was completed in 2014.

Composer Melissa Grey’s projects include concert works, electroacoustic performances, installations, food+music events and collaborations with artists and architectural designers. Grey is currently Artistic Director of Circuit Bridges, a monthly electroacoustic concert series held at Gallery MC in New York City. Previous curatorial work includes 60x60 New York Minutes Mix (2012), Transrevelation (2007) and Sonic Channels (2006). www.melissagrey.net

Behind Corneal Gates: air – I played the original track of vocalist Mary Hubbell into the space of the studio and recorded it, at Gramercy Post Studio with recording engineer Allison Casey, and then played and recorded the new iteration back into the studio again, fifteen times, reinforcing the resonant frequency to create a blurry ringing halo. I substituted this for the original vocal track. This approach recalls early experiments by Nicola Tesla and Alvin Lucier’s piece I am sitting in a room.

Sheena Hong is a Singaporean composer who is currently based in New York City. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, she has been writing music that taps on her skills as a pianist, singer, songwriter, composer and sound designer. She is passionate about finding the balance between experimenting with techniques and keeping a connection with her listeners. Philosophising is her first electroacoustic piece to be played for the public.

Philosophising is a setting of a short poem by Singaporean writer Amalina Jamaludin. The poem reflects an English major’s frustration with interpreting literary and philosophical works and subtexts. The text is read out, the words and syllables chopped and manipulated to create interesting effects. Some words are repeated, jumbled and stumbling upon one another, others melt into environments and walls of sound. These sounds are derived from field recordings. ‘Noises’ like water crashing on a shore and oil sizzling in a pan were selected and blurred into one another to create textures that go in and out of context when juxtaposed. The piece itself experiments with vocal manipulation set against textures.

Fourteen in the afternoon
Coffee, Cake and Camus for company
in that order or another
whichever rhymes
I don't care.

Jerod Sommerfeldt’s music focuses on the creation of algorithmic and stochastic processes, utilizing the results for both fixed and real-time composition and improvisation. His sound world explores digital audio artifacts and the destruction of technology, resulting in work that questions the dichotomy between the intended and unintentional. An active performer as both soloist and collaborator in interactive digital music and live video, he currently serves as Assistant Professor of Electronic Music Composition and Theory at the State University of New York at Potsdam Crane School of Music, and as director of the SUNY-Potsdam Electronic Music Studios (PoEMS).

Erin Rogers is a Canadian saxophonist and composer based in New York City. Her works have been performed by the Gotham Ensemble, IKTUS, guitarist Colin Davin, and violinist Miranda Cuckson as well as Chicago’s Anubis Quartet and Madrid’s Tribuna Sax-Ensemble. She has played with ensembles such as the Lost Dog Ensemble, Fireworks, and PRISM, and is a founding member of experimental performance ensemble, thingNY, and the New Thread Saxophone Quartet. In 2013, Erin was awarded a Jerome Fund Commission from the American Composers Forum for Mother Earth, a work for flute, sax quartet and electronics, that premiered at Carnegie Hall in June 2014. Erin completed undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta and received Masters Degrees in composition and performance from Bowling Green State University. In 2006, Erin joined the publishing team at Peermusic Classical, located in midtown Manhattan. Visit www.erinmrogers.comfor more information.

Mother Earth (2014) for flute, saxophone quartet, and electronics was inspired by the Isaac Asimov short story of the same name. It is divided into 4 main sections – a series of rising gestures in the upper voices, followed by a blend between the upper and lower voices, moving into a high-speed surge of extreme range and volume, that falls off in a series of plunging lines.

Based in New York City, saxophonist Zach Herchen performs contemporary, jazz, and rock music. He has premiered dozens of pieces ranging from Japanese noise rock to jazz tone poems to multimedia works. Recently Zach released his first CD, Emerging Voices, featuring commissioned works for voice and sax with opera singer Elisabeth Halliday. He performs with First Construction, New Thread Sax Quartet, Emerging Voices Project, Rhymes With Opera, Quiet City, and Man Down. Zach has served on staff at NEC’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and was an artist-in-resident at Wildacres Retreat. He has performed at BU’s Spectral Summer Professional Performance Workshop, the SEAMUS National Conference, Third Practice Electroacoustic Festival, the 4th International Master-Class for Classical Saxophone, and the Look & Listen Festival. Zach holds a MM and BM in Saxophone Performance (and BM in Recording Arts Engineering) from The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. www.zachherchen.com

Originally from the greater Philadelphia area, Kristen McKeon currently resides in New York City. She performs primarily as a concert saxophonist, chamber musician, and clinician, and is thrilled to be working as a Product Specialist and Artist Relations Representative for D’Addario and Company’s Woodwind Division.Major field appearances include performances at the Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, the New England Saxophone Symposium, the Aeolus International Wind Competition in Düsseldorf, Germany, a world premiere of Gabriel Lubell’s He Guards the Vision of the Sunset Sky for Solo Saxophone and String Quintet at the 2010 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, and the 2012 World Saxophone Conference in St. Andrews, Scotland. Kristen holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Master of Music & Pedagogy degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she worked as renowned saxophonist, Otis Murphy’s, Associate Instructor of Saxophone.

Concert Program