[silence] S.E.M. Ensemble - February 11 - Performance

[S.E.M. Ensemble]

PERFORMANCE OF NEW WORKS
AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE READINGS OF NEW COMPOSITIONS WORKSHOP
 
Wednesday, February 11, 8 pm
Willow Place Auditorium
26 Willow Place, Brooklyn Heights
Admission Free (Donations accepted)
                   
S.E.M. ENSEMBLE 
                   
G. Douglas Barrett            Derivation VIII            (2009)
Christian Wolff                  Trio for Robert Ashley  (2009)
Michael Winter                 rooms and seams    (2008)
Petr Kotik                           Quartet No. 1 (Erinnerungen an Jan)
(2007-09)
 
 
Douglas Barrett (b. 1981) is a composer, performer, and writer. His work has
been presented in numerous festivals, galleries, concert halls, academic
conferences, and street performances throughout North America and Europe. He
studied with James Tenney, Michael Pisaro, and Sara Roberts at CalArts.
Performers of his music have included The Barton Workshop, The S.E.M.
Ensemble, The Sonar Streichquartett, Tobias Liebezeit, Kerstin Fuchs,
Ensemble SurPlus, Johnny Chang, and Mark So, among others. He has
participated in festivals such as Ostrava Days (Czech Republic),
Wandelweiser Festspiel (Düsseldorf), Visiones Sonoras (Mexico City), June in
Buffalo, and the CEAIT Festival (Los Angeles); and has appeared at venues
such as the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre (New York), Listen/Space (New
York), the Wulf (Los Angeles), among others. He is currently a Ph.D. student
at SUNY at Buffalo. More information at
http://synthia.caset.buffalo.edu/~gbarrett/
 
Derivation XIII b. is part of an ongoing cycle of pieces derived from
transcriptions of performances, a process of recording > listening >
transcribing > performing > recording (and so on). Barrett use various
methods and technologies to derive his score. These have included written
acoustic descriptions notated in the form of text scores, Œmachinic¹
processes involving automatic transcriptions of recorded performances using
custom computer software, and indeterminate notation in which the
performers¹ decisions become an important component of the piece.
 
Trio for Robert Ashley by Christian Wolff is a work-in-progress. It is a
continuing work in the direction of his earlier string trio from the 1950s.
 
Michael Winter (b. 1980) is a composer, music theorist, and software
designer currently residing in southern California. Among his mentors and
influences are James Tenney, Larry Polansky, Nick Didkovsky, Mark So,
Madison Brookshire, Raven Chacon, Taylan Susam, Gyorgy Ligeti, John Cage,
Christian Wolff, Alvin Lucier, and Harris Wulfson.  His music follows an
experimental process, and his scores, software, writings, recordings, and
related work are currently accessible online at www.unboundedpress.org
<http://www.unboundedpress.org> .
 
room and seams is derived from a mathematical structure first explored by
N.G. de Bruijn (to whom the piece is co-dedicated). It is the shortest
string constructed from a given alphabet that spells all words of a given
size because the last n ­ 1 characters of any word always overlaps with the
first n ­ 1 characters of the next word. (For example, laced spells lace and
aced). For the case of room and seams, the alphabet size and the word size
are both 4. Each character is assigned a distinct group of instruments
occupying a unique location within the performance space representing a
Œseam¹ in the room. One at a time, the various groups rearticulate a tone of
the same pitch in an order based on the sequence. Thus, a performance of
room and seams enumerates through all possible sequences of size 4 of
movements and/or non-movements of a given sound throughout the space.
 
Quartet No. 1 by Petr Kotik was inspired by attending the FLUX Quartet
concert at Ostrava Days 2007 Festival. While it has been performed in an
earlier version, the current workshop can still be regarded as a
work-in-progress. 
 
The S.E.M. Ensemble¹s Reading of New Compositions was initiated in 1997 by a
grant from the Greenwall Foundation. SEM has continued to produce these
workshops every season, focusing on new pieces, or works-in-progress.  In
the past, readings have included works by Udo Kasemets, Philip Mantione,
Alvin Singleton, Rain Worthington, Frances White, Alex Mincek, Henry
Threadgill, Virgil Moorefield, Akemi Naito, James Fei, Leroy Jenkins, Roscoe
Mitchell, Sinan Savaskan, Robin Haller, and Phill Niblock. During the
workshop, each composer is given a chance to work with the musicians and
possibly modify his/her work. The workshop culminates in a public
performance, recorded for the benefit of each composer. Works initiated in
these workshops have been often performed at later S.E.M. concerts in New
York and Europe.
 
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This Concert is possible thanks to support from New York State Council on
the Arts, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, NYC Department of Cultural
Affairs, Argosy Foundation, The Amphion Foundation, Phaedrus Foundation and
individual contributions. Special thanks to the Brooklyn Borough President,
Marty Markowitz, for his support.
 
 
 

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