DXARTS Concert

An evening of new music with electronics and video by Joshua Parmenter, Don Craig, Stelios Manousakis and Stephanie Pan.

Date and time: Monday, April 27th at 8pm

Location: Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center

Address: 4649 Sunnyside Ave. Seattle, WA

Tickets: $5 - $15 sliding scale donation at the door.

Program:

“Theta (IV-Ritardando)” for viola and real-time electronics by Joshua Parmenter*

Melia Watras - viola

“Symphony of Visual Music” for computer realized sound and visuals by Donald Craig*

Improvisation-based compositions by Stelios Manousakis, performed by Stephanie Pan and Stelios Manousakis.

Program Notes & Biographies:

“Theta (IV-Ritardando)” for viola and real-time electronics:

Theta for viola and live electronics is the fourth and final piece in a series of pieces exploring musical changes: crescendo, decrescendo, accelerando and ritardando. In Theta, the violist is required to constantly slow down their tempo for almost the entire piece. This subtle and constant changing of pulse moves the piece through its five sections that grow in length as the piece moves towards its final tempo of a quarter note beating at 60, where the sixteenth note's rhythm (4 Hz, the Theta rhythm) is the same as our brain's rhythm as we reach sleep. All material in the computer part comes from the live performance of the viola. Since no two consecutive notes are really the same exact duration and are constantly slowing down, the rhythmic relationship with the past and present becomes quite complex. Sounds from the past slowly become more and more distant, and the spectral quality of the viola slowly disappears into whispers as the piece drifts to its end.

Theta was composed for violists Melia Watras and Garth Knox, who have both contributed greatly to the composition of the viola part.

Joshua Parmenter bio:

Joshua Parmenter is currently a Research Artist in Computer Music and Composition at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed his D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Washington in 2005, where he studied with Prof. Richard Karpen. He received his Master of Music in Composition in 2002 from the University of Washington. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Edwin Dugger and Jorge Liderman. He is currently a Research Artist at the University of Washington at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media.

Parmenter's music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe. He specializes in both acoustic and electro-acoustic music, especially music that combines performers with real-time electronics. An important part of his research has been in the development of real-time synthesis software as part of the SuperCollider open source project. He also uses the CSound and Common Music synthesis programs. Currently, his research is focused on extending the real-time analysis and performance tools in the SuperCollider programming language, as well as a suite of Ambisonic Unit Generators for sound spatialization.

Parmenter's piece Organon Sostenuto for flute, bassoon, cello, double bass and live electronics was awarded the prize for outstanding composition from the Americas at ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2008, he completed his "Musical Changes", a set of four pieces that explore crescendo, decrescendo, accelerando and ritardando The first piece "Cadence (III. Decrescendo) received its premiere in November 2005, and Concerto for Bass and Computer-realized Sound (II. Accelerando) was commissioned and performed in March, 2006 by bassist Kristjan Sigurleifsson.

Described as “staggeringly virtuosic” by The Strad, violist Melia Watras has been hailed by audiences and critics alike for her electrifying and vibrant performances. She has long been at the forefront of the American new music scene, both as a soloist and co-founder of the award winning Corigliano Quartet (www.coriglianoquartet.com). Throughout her career Watras has championed the works of living composers. In the last ten years she has had 8 solo viola pieces written for her and has co-commissioned 10 new works for the Corigliano Quartet. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed 30 world premieres while making a dozen world premiere recordings.

Melia Watras bio:

Watras has performed in many of the nation’s leading venues including Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center. A versatile performer, Watras made her dance debut at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York City, where she played viola and danced in the premiere of Kathryn Sullivan's At Home.

Watras’s debut solo CD, Viola Solo, was released by Fleur de Son (www.fleurdeson.com) and earned high praise from the media. Strings remarked, “Watras is a young player in possession of stunning virtuosic talent and deserving of the growing acclaim.” The Strad called her “excellent” and “authoritative,” while the American Record Guide proclaimed, "Watras is a terrific violist." For the CD, Watras adapted John Corigliano’s Fancy on a Bach Air for viola. Her edition of this work is published by G. Schirmer, Inc. Watras’s second solo CD, Prestidigitation, is set to release in October 2008 and features world premiere recordings of five works written especially for her.

“Symphony of Visual Music” by Donald Craig

Notes:

"Symphony of Visual Music" is a work of intermedia, or visual music. It uses abstract animation combined with computer music to create an art that is neither music nor visual art alone but alloy of both, where neither can be considered to be accompaniment to the other. The intention is to create a work that fails if it cannot be both seen and heard. The compositional technique owes much to compositional practices of music: rhythm, motivic development, counterpoint, cadential resolution, dissonance, consonance, hocketing, and isorhythm. It is in a number of movements that are fairly independent and distinct but contribute to the integrity of the whole, much like a symphony. Each movement has its own visual and sonic material with the occasional reference to other movements. This work is the dissertation for my Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Donald Craig Bio:

Donald Craig is a graduate student in Music Composition at the University of Washington. He earned his double degree in Music and Arts from the University of Washington in June, 2000. He was awarded his Master of Music in 2003. He has studied with Joel Durand, Kenneth Benshoof and Richard Karpen. He is presently studying with Juan Pampin. He also plays guitar and has studied with Steven Novacek.

Works by Stelios Manousakis and Stephanie Pan

Stelios and Stephanie have been performing as a voice and live electronics duo for three years; they have also collaborated on a variety of projects involving multiple media. Together with organist Kirstin Gramlich they founded the improvisation trio Computer Aided Breathing, which released its debut album Fukuoka Method in 2007. In this concert they will perform three pieces by Stelios, developed collaboratively through workshop sessions. These are open compositions portraying three different strategies for exploring the continuum between composition and improvisation. They are conceived as compositions as well as live-sets, merging approaches and vocabularies from the worlds of concert music and 'underground' performance.

Bios:

Stephanie Pan is a singer and performance artist currently based in The Hague, the Netherlands. She performs in experimental music, new music, experimental theater, and early music, specializing in extended vocal techniques and live improvisation. At the root of her work is the notion of pure communication; finding a form of contact with the audience which is stripped of social expectations and distractions, that speaks beyond the conventional and social limitations and constructs of language.

As a soloist she has performed in the US and in Europe, premiering works by composers including John Thow, Martijn Padding, Trevor Weston, Barbara Ellison and Jasna Velickovic. In theater, she performs with groups such as de Veenfabriek and the Belarus Free Theatre. She is one-third of Computer Aided Breathing, a trio for voice, organ and live electronics devoted to live improvisation, which she co-founded in 2006. The group released its first CD, Fukuoka Method, in 2007 on SevenInchRecordings. As a Medievalist, she has recorded with Sequentia, and is a founding member of Scivias Chor and Ars Choralis Coeln.

Ms. Pan holds a BA from UC Berkeley in Music and Applied Mathematics, and a First Phase Diploma, with distinction, in Classical Singing from The Royal Conservatory, The Hague, where she studied with Lenie van den Heuvel, Jill Feldman, and Barbara Pearson. She is currently a participant in the post-graduate experimental theater program DasArts.

Stelios Manousakis is a composer, performer, sound designer and researcher. In these capacities he strives to develop a new musical language merging algorithmic finesse with the expressivity of improvisation, that can unify the process of art creation from the most abstract to the most practical level in ways that are meaningful, both as a process and as a result. He has developed and implemented in software an evolutionary generative model, which he uses for composing music from the lowest, atomic/cellular level of sound synthesis to the highest level of macro-forms. Stelios composes mostly electronic, electroacoustic and electro-instrumental music. Besides his solo work, he is co-founder of the ensembles Computer Aided Breathing, SelectInput and Breakcore Tapdance Collective and collaborates frequently with the multimedia noise group Feedback Society and soprano Stephanie Pan.

Stelios grew up in Chania, Crete, where he studied accordion, piano and music theory; he later moved to Athens to study at the National University of Athens. After receiving a BA in Linguistics and graduating with honors from the conservatory in Advanced Music Theory as a student of Giorgos Fitsioris, he moved to the Netherlands, joining the Institute of Sonology at The Royal Conservatory, The Hague. There he studied with Paul Berg, Konrad Boehmer, Joel Ryan and Kees Tazelaar, among others, graduating with a Master's Degree in Sonology. He is currently a graduate student at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) in the University of Washington.