Composers OutFront! Erin Gee and Colin Gee
Presented by American Composers Orchestra
and Whitney Live

A performance and discussion by siblings Erin Gee (composer & vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director & actor) Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC

FREE with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission (begins at 6 pm)
Information: 212.570.3676 or www.whitney.org/live

York, NY — American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and Whitney Live will present ComposersOutFront! featuring siblings Erin Gee (composer and vocalist) and Colin Gee (writer, director, actor, and Whitney Live Artist-in-Residence) on Friday, October 30, 2009, at 7pm at the Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., NYC). The performance and discussion is free with pay-what-you-wish Museum admission, and no tickets or reservations are required.

According to Kultur Steiermark, “Erin Gee’s music defies a simple description. Often, an impression of ephemeral, fragile poetry is formed from the gossamer-quality of the work, which continually aspires to plumb the possibilities of the human voice.” At the Whitney Museum, Ms. Gee will perform several of her works for solo voice, which employ unusual techniques using two microphones and live computer processing. The performance and discussion will also include an excerpt from Dakota, an evening-length film mixed with live performances by both Ms. Gee and Colin Gee, and a preview of the siblings’ work in progress – Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, for electronically processed voice, actor, and orchestra, with film by Mr. Gee. Mouthpiece XIII will be premiered by ACO’s Orchestra Underground at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on November 30 at 7:30pm.

ACO’s annual Composers OutFront! series puts composers on the stage, bringing audiences closer to the creative process and making connections between composers’ roots as performers and their music for the concert hall. The series presents composers who will have major works performed by ACO during the concert season. In keeping with ACO’s eclectic musical programming, featured composers come from diverse backgrounds in jazz and improvised music, rock and pop, classical, and world music. Composers OutFront! events take place throughout the city in unusual spaces including community centers, museums and galleries, libraries, and other non-traditional venues for classical music.

Fun, bold, and unpredictable, the Whitney Live performance series showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge artists. Performances represent new trends, reinterpret American traditions, and resonate with the Whitney’s exhibitions and permanent collection.

Erin Gee, composer-performer

Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIII: Mathilde of Loci, Part 1, which will premiere at ACO’s season opening concert on November 30 in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, is based on a fictionalized account of the life of Matteo Ricci, proponent of the Memory Palace or the Method of Loci, a mnemonic technique. Ms. Gee (voice) and her brother (actor) will be performing with the orchestra. The work was made possible through a new partnership between ACO and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.

Ms. Gee received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano and composition, respectively, from the University of Iowa, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. In Austria and Germany, she studied composition with Beat Furrer, Mathias Spahlinger, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett, and Steve Takasugi. She completed her Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz in 2007. Ms. Gee’s awards for composition include the Teatro Minimo first round prize from the Zürich Opera House, the International Rostrum of Composers Award, the Samuel Barber Rome Prize, the Impuls award, a CAP award from the American Music Center, the Look & Listen Festival Prize, the Judith Lang Zaimont Prize, and she was featured composer at the 4020 festival in Linz, Austria in 2008. She has worked with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Vokalensemble Zürich, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Klangforum Wien, and others..

Her opera, SLEEP, with libretto by Colin Gee, was premiered by the Zürich Opera House in January 2009. In November, the Zurich Tage für Neue Musik will present Repertorio Zero in a performance of Mouthiece XII. Gee is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Montalvo Arts Center. In 2010, she will be in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. She is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

Colin Gee, writer, director & actor

Trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell Arte School of Physical Theater, Colin Gee is currently the founding artist-in-residence in an 18-month Whitney Live residency program, and a visiting artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Prior to his residency, he was commissioned by the Whitney Museum in 2008 to create and perform Objective Suspense in the exhibition “Alexander Calder: the Paris Years.” His film Dakota (2006), with live solo performance and music by Erin Gee, was presented at P.S. 122, Diskurs’04 Giesen, Wexford Arts Center, 4020 Festival, and received the Best Male Performer award at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival.

Mr. Gee was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 in the touring production, Dralion, and appeared in the company’s television program Solstrom (2003). Recent works include Portrait and Landscape (2002 – current), an ongoing series of video portraits first shown at Dance Theater Workshop, Cathedral Project (2009), a series of 12 short films, and The Chestnut (2009), with Limerick Youth Theatre in Limerick, Ireland. Also in 2009, his essay Firespots, was published in the Austrian art journal kursiv. A second film/performance project, Across The Road (2009) premiered at The Chocolate Factory. Screenplays for Lady Heard Voices (2007) and Across The Road (2007) were selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and other film projects include the shorts Lady Heard Voices (2004), featuring Irene Hultman, and Stardust (2007). Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company from 2000 to 2001, and was co-artistic director of The Flying Machine Theater Company from 1998 to 2001, with works including Petrushka (2000) at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, Utopians (1998), The Escapist (1999), and Archipelago (2000).

About ACO

American Composers Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, New Music Readings, and commissions, ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser-known, and increases regional, national, and international awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. More information about ACO is available online at www.americancomposers.org.

About the Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art is the leading advocate of 20th- and 21st-century American art. Founded in 1930, the Museum is regarded as the preeminent collection of American art and includes major works and materials from the estate of Edward Hopper, the largest public collection of works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras, as well as significant works by Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Kiki Smith, and Andy Warhol, among other artists. With its history of exhibiting the most promising and influential American artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney’s signature show, the Biennial, has become the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in America today. The Whitney is currently moving ahead with plans to build a second facility, designed by Renzo Piano, located in downtown New York at the entrance to the High Line in the Meatpacking District.

Composers OutFront! is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Whitney Live is made possible by the Whitney Live Producers.

Major support of American Composers Orchestra is provided by The Achelis Foundation, Amphion Foundation, Arlington Associates, ASCAP, ASCAP Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, BMI, BMI Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Fromm Music Foundation, GAP Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, John and Evelyn Kossak Foundation, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc, Meet The Composer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Paul Underwood Charitable Trust, The Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation and The Helen F. Whitaker Fund.

ACO programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by New York City Council Member Gale A. Brewer.

American Composers Orchestra
Robert Beaser, Artistic Director
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor Laureate
Steven Sloane, Principal Guest Conductor
Derek Bermel, Creative Advisor