Release (2005/01/21) | American Composers Orchestra

Friday, January 21, 2005 at 7:30 pm
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall

Young Composers Reinvent Symphony
with High-Tech Intuition, Percussive,
Improvisational & Spatial Explorations

Orchestra Underground explores new territory with world premieres by
Jason Freeman, Carlos Carrillo, Dan Trueman, & Eve Beglarian

Steven Sloane, conductor
So Percussion
Dan Trueman, violin & electronics

JASON FREEMAN: Glimmer (World Premiere, ACO Commission)
CARLOS CARRILLO: Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra
(World Premiere, BMI/Carlos Surinach Fund Commission)
DAN TRUEMAN: Traps Relaxed (World Premiere, ACO Commission)
EVE BEGLARIAN: Flaming0 (World Premiere, revised version)

Tickets: $20 & $32
Call the box office at: 212-247-7800
Or visit CarnegieCharge online.

Orchestra Underground is presented with the generous support of
The Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund.

Also funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections Program with the support of ASCAP Foundation, Copland Fund, Ford Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Jerome Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Virgil Thomson Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

ACO’s adventurous new concert series, Orchestra Underground, returns to Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 7:30pm, for a program of new works by young American composers. Seeking out highly innovative and unconventional approaches to the symphonic ensemble and the concert experience, Orchestra Underground reaches deep into technological and spatial elements of composition and instrumentation, as well as new ways to integrate the experimental with orchestral tradition. Featured on this program of world premieres is Jason Freeman’s Glimmer, a work that breaks down barriers between composer, performer, and audience with interactivity and audience participation; Carlos Carrillo’s Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra, featuring So Percussion ensemble, Dan Trueman’s Traps Relaxed, with the composer as violin and electronics soloist, and Eve Beglarian’s improvisational Flaming0, which reconfigures the orchestra into three simultaneous “bands” with eclectic instrumental groupings.

The concert conveys the ever-changing scope of compositional possibility, interweaving interactive technology, improvisation, and high-impact virtuosity, challenging the traditional passivity of the concert experience. By daring to explore the shifting boundaries between advanced techniques and intuitive pathways-from utilizing audience imagination and computer response systems in Glimmer and Traps Relaxed, to re-visualizing soloists and instrumental combinations in Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra and Flaming0-the program leads both audience and musicians into new musical territory, simultaneously breaking and extending concert tradition.

Jason Freeman: Glimmer (World Premiere, ACO Commission)

Jason Freeman’s Glimmer involves the audience in shaping the performance of the piece in a way that is both high-tech and fun. Upon entering the concert hall, each audience member will receive a colored glow stick with which they can signal their suggestions for the piece, according to instructions provided by the composer. Digital video cameras placed around the concert hall capture the on/off activity of these objects and the dispersal patterns of colors throughout the space. This visual data is digitized and then forwarded to a computer, which, in turn, sends performance instructions to the players in the orchestra. Glimmer is part of Orchestra Tech, ACO’s groundbreaking initiative to commission, develop and perform new works that integrate digital technologies and the orchestra.

Jason Freeman is a composer and media artist who employs cutting-edge technology to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. Combining specialized software, unconventional notation, and the excitement of live performance, his works challenge audiences to approach music and sound in new ways, blurring the boundaries between art and technology and between composer, performer, and listener. His music has been performed by Speculum Musicae, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and his interactive installations have been exhibited at the Lincoln Center Festival, and the Boston CyberArt Festival, and featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio. Freeman’s internet-based work N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella, 2003), was described by Billboard as “an example of the web’s mind-expanding possibilities.” Freeman graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and is completing his doctorate at Columbia University, where he teaches computer music. He recently completed a fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, where he worked with sound artist Max Neuhaus to create Auracle, a voice-controlled, networked sound instrument.

Dan Trueman: Traps Relaxed (World Premiere, ACO Commission)

Dan Trueman’s Traps Relaxed is scored for strings and electric violin plus laptop computer, with the composer serving as soloist. Dispersed throughout the ensemble are a series of unique hemispherical speakers that interweave a textural fabric between the strings and electronics. The piece extends work Trueman commenced in March 2003, at the outset of the war in Iraq, exploring the malleability of memory. In the piece, the computer remembers notes played by the soloist at various times in the past, then “traps” them and transposes their pitches to another previously played pitch. Traps Relaxed is also part of ACO’s Orchestra Tech initiative.

Trueman is a composer, improviser, new instrument creator and software designer. He has performed at both contemporary and folk music festivals, including Bang On A Can. His electronic improvisation ensemble, Interface, has recorded with Pauline Oliveros on the Deep Listening label. Trueman has written for his own ensembles, as well as the Brentano, Daedalus, Cassatt and Amernet string quartets, Non Sequitur, and others. He recently completed commissions from American Composers Forum and the Society for New Music. With degrees in physics, composition, and theory, he has taught composition at Columbia, Colgate, and since 2002, at Princeton.

Carlos Carrillo: Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra
(World Premiere, Commissioned for ACO by BMI Foundation, Inc./Carlos Surinach Fund)

Carlos Carrillo is at the forefront of a young generation of composers from Puerto Rico who integrate their island roots with advanced techniques. Algunas metáforas que aluden al tormento, a la angustia y a la Guerra is a brand-new offering of such work and is the second work commissioned for ACO by the BMI Foundation, Inc./Carlos Surinach Fund. Featuring the dynamic, young percussion ensemble, So Percussion, the work is scored for four percussionists and chamber orchestra, and juxtaposes Puerto Rican clave rhythms with contemporary compositional techniques, including special distribution of the percussionists around the concert hall.

Carlos Carrillo studied at Eastman School of Music and Yale, and earned his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His teachers include Tania León, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Roberto Sierra, George Crumb, James Primosch, Jay Reise and Steve Mackey. Carrillo’s music has been performed by ACO as part of its Sonidos de las Américas Festival, as well the Casals Festival, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, his Cantares was featured at the inaugural “Synergy: Composer and Conductor” program presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and American Symphony Orchestra League. In 1998 he received one of the first Aaron Copland Awards from the Copland Heritage Association, and from 2001-2003 he was the Van Lier Emerging Composer Fellow with ACO. In September 2004 he joined the faculty of Indiana’s DePauw University.

So Percussion

Formed in 1999, So Percussion (Douglas Perkins, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Lawson White) has already made a name as one of the most exciting young ensembles in the country. Their performances have been hailed as “consistently impressive” by The New York Times. So Percussion’s goal is to challenge and enable the creation of new music that combines all kinds of musical, theatrical, and artistic elements. The group seeks out composers, collaborators, and audiences who are open to pulling these instruments out of their usual contexts to create new aural and visual experiences.

So Percussion has been featured at the Bang On A Can Marathon, the BAM Next Wave Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Joe’s Pub, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, the Roundtop Festival, and on WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck. Their commissioning project has produced many new works, including David Lang’s the so-called laws of nature, composed in 2002, and will yield new pieces by composers such as Louis Andriessen, Kathryn Alexander, Martin Bresnick, and Muhal Richard Abrams. So Percussion recently received the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Adventurous Programming award.

Eve Beglarian: Flaming0 (World Premiere, revised edition)

Eve Beglarian is a composer, performer, and audio producer whose chamber and orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by the Bang On A Can All-Stars, the California EAR Unit, Relâche, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Orchestra X, Sequitur, Dinosaur Annex, and the New York Festival of Song. Her experience in music theater includes twisted tutu, a performance project with Kathleen Supové;Forgiveness, a collaboration with Chen Shi-Zheng; and Noh master Akira Matsui. Current projects include an opera based on Stephen King’sThe Man in the Black Suit and a song cycle/concept CD with boombox virtuoso and composer Phil Kline.

Beglarian’s FlamingO divides the orchestra into three simultaneous bands: the “wolf chaser” band, named after the whirling Inuit instrument; the “flamingo” band, playing with sampled flamingo honks; and the “metalastic” band, playing canonically inflected music, taking an unidentified bird sample as a departure point. Each band takes a solo, and when they are all playing together things are a complicated cacophony, depending on what the listener chooses to focus on.

Tickets & Information

“Orchestra Underground” is January 21, 2005 at 7:30pm in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Tickets are $20-$32, and may be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by visiting Carnegie Hall’s website at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the Carnegie Hall box office on 57th Street at 7th Ave.

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Orchestra Underground is presented with the generous support of
The Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund.

Major support of American Composers Orchestra is from Alliance Capital Management L.P., Amphion Foundation, The Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, ASCAP, The Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Bodman Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Citigroup Foundation, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Consolidated Edison, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, The Fromm Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, The Estate of Francis Goelet, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Hauser Foundation, Henfield Foundation, Victor Herbert Foundation, Geoffrey Hughes Foundation, Christian Humann Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, The Jerome Foundation, Helen Sperry Lea Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, Meet the Composer, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JPMorganChase, National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Foundation, The New York Times Co. Foundation, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, Oakleigh L. Thorne Foundation, and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.