Violin Viola & Video Virtuosity

These four very different videos, each made in collaboration with the composer and intended for live concert performance, contain certain broad themes that tie them together. In my non-collaborative video work, I explore half-seen imagery that disappears just before you might affix a firm meaning. A shadowy beam of light creates an illusion of life, conjuring visions of physicality and evoking strong emotions. But you can pass your hand through it. Cinema is at once a presence and an absence – an idea I also found myself exploring in each of these pieces, over a period of seven years.

I experience Preston Stahly’s Sapphire very much as a journey and explored that idea in the video. I imagine the composer’s inspiration for the music, (a night on the water), super-imposed with the vision of the listener, in her own space and time.

Jan Jirásek’s Dilemma is one of the first compositions I was interested in working with to create a live video performance, and is the most personal. It’s a highly emotional piece that flickers between vulnerability and anger. The imagery is entirely abstract, as the work takes place in an internal place, within the individual.

In comparison Ofer Ben-Amots two compositions are more centered on relationships between individuals: a dance and a letter. This relationship allows me to explore compositions that work with all the tension and intimacy of a couple – both within the frame of the projection, between the projection and Ms. Bentley Pollick, and with multiple screens.

In Metaman Charles Norman Mason and I explored the individual’s blurring relationship to the environment – specifically the digital environment. The video is projected onto Ms. Bentley Pollick, who becomes the screen for the imagery. I meld the soloist into a visual and aural landscape: as both the source and site of the imagery.

Sheri Wills is an artist whose work is based in film, video performance & installation. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the London Film Festival, the Director’s Lounge in Berlin, the San Francisco Cinematheque and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. Her work is featured in the Rizzoli book Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound, by Matt Woolman. She holds an MFA in filmmaking & an MA in art history, theory & criticism, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her collaborations include video projects with music composed by Bright Sheng, Jan Jirásek, Charles Norman Mason, and Ofer Ben-Amots and video performances with music ensembles, including the Providence String Quartet and Luna Nova New Music Ensemble. Sheri Wills is a professor of art and the director of the film/media program at the University of Rhode Island. She lives in New York City. Sheri’s video artistry is featured in the October/November 2012 issue of Art Voices Magazine:

Sapphire for violin and electronics (2010) Preston Stahly

Sapphire for violin and electronics: A few years ago I was sailing with friends from Block Island to Huntington, Long Island in mid October. My trick at the helm was from 4 AM to 8 AM. Even in rough seas, time slows down and the senses sharpen, taking in all kinds of detail that may otherwise go unnoticed. On this morning the sky went from pitch black with a million stars occasionally blocked by ominous passing clouds, to a beautiful predawn sapphire. The unfolding light and journey of that morning was the inspiration for this piece.

Preston Stahly grew up in Indiana and started studying piano at age seven. By the time he was a teen, he was performing and arranging music in soul, R&B, and rock bands on the midwest college circuit, in the Chicago/Milwaukee area, and as a studio musician at Chess Records. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from the University of Michigan. His principal teachers include William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Ross Lee Finney, Eugene Kurtz, Barton McLean, and George B. Wilson. His concert music uses acoustic and electro-acoustic techniques with a wide variety of instrumentation ranging from solo and chamber music to his Chimera, a three-part work for orchestra that received the Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His music has been recorded on the Fleur De Son Classics, Musical Heritage, and TNM labels. In addition to chamber, vocal, and symphonic works, he has also written music for film (Robert Altman’s Secret Honor) and television (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Children’s Television Workshop). He currently serves as Artistic and Executive Director of Tribeca New Music, Inc. in New York City.

Baroque Fantasy for violin (1974) Stuart Diamond

In 1973 a former teacher suggested I contact Max Pollikoff. I telephoned knowing little whom I was calling. Max, as it turned out, was the founder of Music in Our Time, the landmark modern music series performing primarily at the 92^nd Street Y from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. He was also one of the leading contemporary music violinists. Max, ever good-natured and welcoming to young composers, agreed to meet and asked me to write a new piece: “Why not do something like the solo violin works of Bach?” I went to work, delving into the music of Bach, Ysaÿe and others. I created a composition that hearkens back to the music of those composers’ eras, yet through the refraction of a modern prism. Max premiered Baroque Fantasy in 1974 and it immediately became one of his favorites, a signature piece that he played repeatedly for years. Max became an important mentor and friend introducing me to colleagues and premiering other works on his series. Karen Bentley Pollick ’s performance at our Electric Diamond concert at The Walker Stage in Manhattan in June 2012 was the first performance since Max’s last recital. For today’s performance I created a multimedia component that mirrors the music, using visual elements as if they were structured musical motifs.

Stuart Diamond is a composer, writer, videographer, director, and producer who has created original musical, multimedia and literary works for a range of venues and medium, including the concert stage, theater, opera, dance, television, film and print.

His music has been recognized by numerous organizations, including The Criterion Foundation that supported him for six years, for the sole purpose of writing, creating and performing contemporary classical and electronic music, recognizing the unique aspects of his work that simultaneously explored the frontiers of new music and technology while creating an art that remained meaningful and relevant to the general concert audience.

Writing for The New York Times, Peter Davies wrote: “Stuart Diamond is a refreshingly original composer in that he subscribes to no fashionable school and apparently writes according to his own fancy. Variety said, “A wonderful trip into the asteroids… a fully symphonic piece of intense dignity and feeling.” A review in The Christian Science Monitor described his art as “Imaginative, visual, linear music – the music Tolkien might have written if he had used a piano instead of a pen”. James Roos, lead music critic of The Miami Herald, wrote, “Turning rock and roll into chamber music may be about as elusive a trick as the alchemists’ dream of turning lead into gold, but Stuart Diamond, at least to my ears has done it… ahead of his time.”

Mr. Diamond is also the founder of ELECTRIC DIAMOND, one of the longest-lived electro-acoustic music performance groups still going strong for over 30 years. Joining forces in the 1980’s with the eclectic keyboard innovator Don Slepian and later with Karen Bentley Pollick, ELECTRIC DIAMOND presents programs that integrate classical music – from Bach to Mussorgsky – with free-flowing improvisations and modern soundscapes. They have performed throughout America and Asia and in New York City at Carnegie Hall, Macy’s 4th of July Celebration, and have been featured on National Public Radio.

Heat Whispers for violin & video (2012) Nat Evans Video by Erin Elyse Burns World Premiere

Private ritual, identity, observation and the everyday juxtaposed within the extreme are motifs that run through Nat Evans’ and Erin Elyse Burns’ work. Their new collaboration is a further exploration of these ideas. Filmed within both harsh and dramatic desert landscapes, Heat Whispers is a meditation on the physicality of pace and the experience of place. The score for Heat Whispers is comprised of sound for the violin paired with hand bells and electronic manipulations. At points the electronic and violin sounds combine to create a counterpoint to the ambient sounds captured within the video. These added layers aim to draw the viewer into the landscape being traversed.

Seattle Composer Nat Evans writes concert music for various mixed chamber ensembles, distinctive electro-acoustic music, and site-specific music events that fuse nature, community and subjectivity of experience. His music is regularly performed across the United States and has also been performed in Europe, South America, Australia and China. Evans has received numerous commissions including the Seattle Percussion Collective, the Harrison Center for the Arts, ODEONQUARTET, Seattle Pacific University Men’s Choir and Percussion Ensemble, Beta Test Ensemble, The Northwest School Chamber Orchestra, among others. His music has been featured on a number of radio stations in the United States, as well as BBC3, and in the 2011 Music Issue of The Believer. He studied music at Butler University with Michael Schelle and Frank Felice.

Evans has created installations at the Harrison Center for the Arts, and helped organize (and performed in) the Sonic Waves Experimental Music Festival in Melbourne, Australia. His music has also been featured in the Long Beach SoundWalk sound art festival, Brooklyn’s Nuit Blanche event Bring To Light, as well as the Make Music Winter festival as part of Tom Peyton’s Bell by Bell event. A frequent collaborator, Evans has worked with fashion designers in Berlin, artists, filmmakers, and composers and musicians such as Ross Simonini. He and Simonini have written scores for film as well as modern dance, including choreographer Catherine Cabeen.

In September 2010 a new site-specific electro-acoustic work that combines nature, community and music – Sunrise, September 18th, 2010– was presented in Seattle as well as in Louisville. Participants downloaded the score to a portable listening device, then joined groups in their respective geographic locales to observe sunrise together as they listened to the music. This was the first in a series of site and time specific works presented in this manner. In 2011 Evans presented his Sunset + Music tour across the United States using the same method as sunrise event, with this one taking place at Sunset. The events were covered extensively in the press, and Evans was invited to give lectures on the topic, as well as present it at New York’s Bring To Light Festival. Currently he is working on the third in this series entitled Blue Hour as a commission for the Private Works series at The Hartt School.

Erin Elyse Burns was raised in Reno, Nevada. She earned her BFA from the University of Nevada in 2004. In 2006, Burns was a United States Artists Fellowship Nominee. She has lived and worked in Basel, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany and has exhibited her work widely. She completed her MFA at the University of Washington in 2009 and currently resides in Seattle where she is adjunct photography faculty at the University of Washington and North Seattle Community College. In Sept. 2012 her artwork was be part of an interactive performance entitled “Hungry Ghosts” at the 100 Acres Sculpture Park, Indianapolis Museum of Art. This was a site specific music and art collaboration with Seattle composer Nat Evans. In addition to her own art making practice, Burns also creates curatorial projects, the first of which, Of Light and Land, was a small group video screening at the Tashiro Kaplan Artists Lofts in Seattle WA, in June 2012. Her second curatorial project, a small group exhibition entitled, Trespass, will open at the Sierra Arts Foundation in Reno, NV in January 2013. Burns has an upcoming solo exhibition schedule at Seattle’s A Project Space in March 2013 and will have work in 4Culture’s e4c electronic storefront gallery debuted at the same time.

Burns’ work occupies territory between image, performance and artifact. She constructs experiences that embrace struggle and the potential for failure, yet simultaneously evoke a sense of the picturesque, the humorous, the vulnerable and the absurd. Concepts of private ritual, identity, physicality and fascinations with the process of learning persist within her work. She utilizes both still and video cameras to transform expectations of authenticity, document and reality.

Grand Tango for violin (2011) Jeffrey Harrington World Premiere

When I moved to Avignon, France in 2010 I had already begun a series of tangos and I had no idea I was moving into the heart of the French tango territory itself, Nimes, which is 25 miles away. Needless to say, we’re surrounded by tango music and many of our local friends are tango dancers themselves.

My music has always sought to exploit under-explored melodic and rhythmic territories from around the world without openly quoting or utilizing pastiche. Grand Tango for Solo Violin is written in the tradition of the concert tango and was inspired not only by the popular traditional music but also by the virtuoso solo violin music of Bach.The video for Grand Tango for Solo Violin was created by computer processing public domain tango video footage frame by frame and then editing it to loosely match a recording Karen had provided me. I used a combination of effects, including creating different types of chaotic dispersion fields around each image that produces a halo of curves and waves that I then colored in various ways. At various moments of the video I used mirroring effects, which give each image a mandala-esque appearance. The end result is a video creating a continuous stream of various forms of abstraction for each the dancer’s movements. Original source material of the video shot by Jeff Mission, Travis Vautour, and Leonid Andreev at the Redtail Collective, Boston, MA. Lighting by Travis Vautour. Editing and post-production by Jeff Mission. Dancers: Eve and Keki.

Jeffrey Harrington was born and raised in the Deep South, spending most of his formative high school years in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he became personally familiar with many great blues artists with his work at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. While he has studied with many famous composers at Juilliard and Tulane, including Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, he attributes his musical education to self-study.

Jeffrey Harrington’s music is characterized by New Orleans-influenced rhythms, and intense counterpoint and climaxes. A noted microtonalist and electronic experimentalist, he was also one of the first musicians to adopt the Internet for music distribution and promoting, starting in 1987 with RelayNet emails and BBS downloading. He is likely the first composer to utilize the Internet to further his career, and probably invented the free music distribution model. By employing pre-web computer systems he distributed his music (both scores and all recordings) to musicians and listeners around the world free of charge garnering worldwide performances and attention. Harrington moved to Avignon, France in 2010 after his home on Sanibel Island was threatened by the oil spill. In November 2011, Harrington had 4 world premieres across the globe in 20 days, two in Germany by Duo Ahlert und Schwab and The Twiolins, one in London, by Camilla Hoitenga, and one in Southern California by The Hutchins Consort.

Dilemma for viola (1987) Jan Jirásek

The title of the piece describes its content. Four basic musical ideas representing four basic emotions are confronted in order to express the feeling of a dilemma. Dilemma was originally composed for solo cello and recorded on the BMG/Ariola “Jan Jirásek: Bread and Circuses“ CD.

Born during January in Rychnov nad Kneznou, Czech Republic, Jan Jirásek graduated from the Janácek Academy of Musical Art in Brno (JAMU), where he studied composition with Prof. Zdenek Zouhar as well as electro-acoustic, computer and electronic music and music theory.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jirásek’s music was widely performed at the following festivals: “Synthese 90” Festival in Bourges; “Elektronmusik Festival” Stockholm; “ler Colloque International des jeunes Compositeurs de Musique Electro-accoustique 1991,” UNESCO in Paris; Prague Spring Festival; Schleswig – Holstein Festival; “Czechoslovak Night” Munich 1990; twice at Munich Biennale; Plymouth Music Series in Minneapolis and Summer Music Symposium Colorado Springs.

Jan Jirásek has composed for numerous renowned institutions and performers: Kulturkreis Gasteig e.V. commissioned “Bread and Circuses” for six percussionists for the Munich Biennale 1992; Kulturkreis Gasteig e.V. commissioned the reconstruction Carl Orff’s “St. Luke Passion” according to the manuscript of J.S.Bach, which was destroyed during World War II; Duo Quattro Mani commissioned a piece for 2 pianos; Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra commissioned a piece for chamber orchestra, Festival “Voor de Vind” commissioned a piece “Viribus unitis” (for organ and tuba).

Jan Jirásek is a frequent guest on international radio and television discussions and interviews: Hessen Radio, Bavarian Radio, Czech Radio Prague, Radio Free Europe, Czech Television Prague, Spanish Television Madrid, Ars Electronica Linz, UNESCO Paris, and Minnesota Public Radio. Mr. Jirásek’s music is recorded on BMG Classics (the CD “Renaissance of Humanity” with music by Jan Jirásek, Arvo Pärt and Hildegard von Bingen), and BMG-Ariola (the CD “Bread and Circuses”). Jan Jirásek received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent the academic year 1996-97 as a visiting Professor of Composition in the USA at the Hartt School of Music and University of Colorado at Boulder. Mr. Jirásek writes prolifically for films. He was awarded with the prestigious film music prize “The Czech Lion” for movie “An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World” (dir. Juraj Jakubisko) and for movie “Kytice” (Wild Flowers), directed by F.A.Brabec.

The Red Curtain Dance for viola (2003) Ofer Ben-Amots

The Red Curtain Dance is an excerpt from my chamber opera The Dybbuk. The solo composition is written in a free ballad form, telling the story of two young individuals: Leah, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and Hannan, a poor Yeshiva student. The two love each other secretly, but due to their different social status they cannot fulfill their desire to each other and unite in marriage. The composition depicts a scene in which Leah and Hannan cross paths in the synagogue and greet each other gently and silently. Understanding that he will never be able to realize his great love to Leah, Hannan starts dancing in a dream-like manner. The dance starts as a mixture of piety, melancholy and eroticism, but increasingly becomes more intense, obsessive and frenzied. At the end, Hannan is exhausted — he loses his desire to live without his beloved.

Letter to Avigdor for violin (1990, rev. 1999) Ofer Ben-Amots

Letter to Avigdor is a personal letter written in notes instead of words. Avigdor Zamir (1928-1996) was a great musician who had an immense influence on my musical upbringing as a child in Israel. Avigdor was not only a violinist, conductor, dedicated teacher and great storyteller, but also a brave warrior during Israel’s 1948 Independence War who later became an avid and active peacemaker.

Born in Haifa, in 1955, Israel, Ofer Ben-Amots gave his first piano concert at age nine and at age sixteen was awarded first prize in the Chet Piano Competition. Later, following composition studies with Joseph Dorfman at Tel Aviv University, he was invited to study at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. There he studied with Pierre Wismer and privately with Alberto Ginastera. Ben- Amots is an alumnus of the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold, Germany, where he studied with Martin C. Redel and Dietrich Manicke and graduated with degrees in composition, music theory , and piano. Upon his arrival in the United States in 1987, Ben-Amots studied with George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his Ph.D. in music composition. Currently on the faculty of Colorado College, Dr. Ben-Amots is a Professor of music composition and theory.

Ofer Ben-Amots’ compositions are performed regularly in concert halls and festivals Worldwide. His music has been performed by such orchestras as the Munich Philharmonic, ÖRF – Austrian Radio Orchestra, Bruckner Orchestra, Zürich Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Moscow Camerata, Heidelberg, Erfurt, Brandenburg, the Filarmonici di Sicili, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Milano Chamber Orchestra, Portland Chamber Orchestra, and the Colorado Springs Symphony among others. His compositions have been professionally recorded by the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Barcelona Symphony, the BBC Singers, and the renowned Czech choir Permonik. Ben-Amots has received commissions and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Maurice Amado Foundation, Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival, Fuji International Music Festival in Japan, Delta Ensemble from Amsterdam, Assisi Musiche Festival, and many others.

Ofer Ben-Amots is the winner of the 1994 Vienna International Competition for Composers. His chamber opera, Fool’s P aradise, was premiered in Vienna during the 1994 festival Wien modern and has become subsequently part of the 1994/95 season of Opernhaus Zürich. He is recipient of the 1988 Kavannagh Prize for his composition Fanfare for Orchestra and the Gold Award at South Africa’s 1993 Roodepoort International Competition for Choral Composition. His Avis Urbanus for amplified flute was awarded First Prize at the 1991 Kobe International Competition for Flute Composition in Japan, and a required composition at the 1993 Kobe Flute Performance Competition. In 1999, Ben-Amots was awarded the Aaron Copland Award and the Music Composition Artist Fellowship by the Colorado Council on the Arts. In 2004 he won the Festiladino, an international contest for Judeo- Spanish songs, a part of the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. Dr. Ben-Amots is a member of the Advisory Board and the Editorial Board of the Milken Foundation American-Jewish Music Archive. In addition, he is a Jerusalem Fellow of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity and its Artistic Director for North America since 1997.

Ofer Ben-Amots’ works have been repeatedly recognized for their emotional and highly personal expression. The interweaving of folk elements with contemporary textures, along with his unique imaginative orchestration, creates the haunting dynamic tension that permeates and defines Mr. Ben- Amots’ musical language. His music has been published by Baerenreiter, Kallisti Music Press, Muramatsu Inc., Dorn, and Tara Publications. It can be heard on Naxos, Vantage, Plæne, Stylton, and Music Sources recording labels.

Metaman for violin with digital sound &video (2009) Charles Norman Mason

Composer Charles Norman Mason and NYC artist Sheri Wills continue their collaborative work with a piece created specifically for Karen Bentley Pollick. It blurs the digital with the human by turning the soloist into a visual and aural landscape: as both the source and site of the imagery and as both the source of real and imagined sound sources. The video is projected onto the soloist, who becomes the screen for the imagery – imagery that shifts as the violinist moves within the frame. The audio is a combination of live acoustic and digital audio that includes samples of recorded performances of Ms. Pollick. The title for the piece comes from Gregory Stock’s book Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. The music for Metaman was completed during a residency sponsored by the Escape to Create Institute of Seaside, Florida.

Charles Norman Mason has been recognized repeatedly for his originality and attention to color. Peter Burwasser of Fanfare writes that Mason’s music speaks in a “boldly, original voice”. High Performance Review states that the music is “full of invention… funky and colorful… consistently ingenious.” Katherine Porlington writes in Upstate Music (NY) “…Mason’s Senderos Que se Bifurcan… is, without doubt, one of the finest new clarinet chamber works of the past twenty years.” Nancy Raabe writes in The Birmingham News “Mason’s brilliant “From Shook Foil” occupies a class of its own… it is charged with creativity.

Mason has received many awards for his compositions including the American Composers Orchestra “Playing it Unsafe” prize, the 2005 Rome Prize, the Premi Internacional de Composició Musical Ciutat de Tarragona Orchestra Music prize, and a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Award. His music has been performed throughout the world. Recent performances include the FORO INTERNACIONAL DE MUSICA NUEVA in Mexico City, the Quirinale in Rome, the Aspen Summer Music Festival, Nuova Musica Consonante in Romania, and the Spoleto Festival (SC), Twice recently his music was broadcast on “Performance Today” on NPR. His music is available on ten different compact disc recordings. His music is published by Living Artist Publishing. Dr. Mason is associate professor of composition the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and director of the Electronic Music studio. He is also executive director of Living Music Foundation, Inc.

Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as violinist with Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999 and performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian hardangerfele. A native of Palo Alto, California, she studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky at Indiana University where she received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance. She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her own record label Ariel Ventures she has produced Dancing Suite to Suite, <amberwood>, and Homage to Fiddlers and Bebop for Beagles. She filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano in Shoal Creek, Alabama, in June 2009.

Pollick was concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984 and has participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences. She has appeared as soloist with Redwood Symphony in the world premiere of Swedish composer Ole Saxe’s Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony, and orchestras in Panama, Russia, Alaska, New York and California. She has performed in recital with Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome, Seattle, New York City and Colorado, throughout the Czech Republic with cellist Dennis Parker at the American Spring Festival, and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, Pollick received a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists. Pollick received a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for her March 2010 Solo Violin and Alternating Currents concerts in Birmingham, Seattle and at Music Olomouc 2011. With Australian pianist Lisa Moore, Pollick formed the duo Prophet Birds in spring 2009 and the Double Duo with Paul Dresher and Joel Davel. Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee. She currently resides in Evergreen, Colorado.