mass deception. Next Atlantis, by composer Sebastian. Currier and video artist Pawel Wojtasik, addresses the interaction
ORCHESTRA UNDERGROUND: A-V
Welcome to Orchestra Underground: A-V, an exploration of some of the wonderful possibilities found when video artists join the orchestra. This album contains three collaborative works by as many composers and videographers. Each is an integrated whole—the impact of the audio-visual experience being much more than the sum of its parts. As unified as the works are individually, the collection is stunning in the range of themes, sounds and aesthetics they offer. Each of the three pieces was premiered by American Composers Orchestra as part of Orchestra Underground. This concert series, founded in 1994, seeks to re-invent and re-imagine the orchestra with unusual instruments, eclectic influences, new technologies, important new compositional voices and the kind of interdisciplinary collaborations seen and heard in this A-V album. The works here are just a sample of the many new video/ orchestra pairings born of Orchestra Underground in its first decade—and are released here to celebrate this milestone. The first-time collaboration of composer Margaret Brouwer and video artist Kasumi resulted in Breakdown, a sample-based hybrid opera in one act. Through this mash-up of thousands of public domain film snippets, the artists explore issues of power, corruption and public mass deception. Next Atlantis, by composer Sebastian Currier and video artist Pawel Wojtasik, addresses the interaction between human culture and nature. It includes stunningly beautiful images of the watery world of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou, and water sounds woven into the musical fabric of the orchestra. The result is poignant: for New Orleans, water is both
the life-blood of the city and, as we have seen, its potential destroyer. Composer Michael Gandolfi and video artist Ean White created As Above, a diptych made up of two sections juxtaposing the natural world with our urban surroundings, through sound and image: Touch, features natural images and a musical structure based on fractal processes, and Electric explores urban imagery and incorporates rock harmonies, blues lines and Caribbean-inflected rhythms. Finally, it is worth noting that none of these works is a forced marriage. The composers and video artists sought each other out, finding in each other something that extends and complements their own work. In so doing, they have created exciting new possibilities for the experience of orchestra music. We are delighted to share the results with you. More information about American Composers Orchestra can be found at www.americancomposers.org.
BREAKDOWN Margaret Brouwer, composer Kasumi, video The goal in the creation of this hybrid opera was to write music and video/ sound simultaneously, allowing each to inspire and propel the other. From the very first moment, the music and the video are completely interrelated. Most of the musical motives were created by imitating a rhythm or a group of intervals existing in the speeches or sounds on the screen. Many are exact replications. Spoken phrases were chosen that are not only emphatic but also have vibrant rhythms and definitely pitched intervals. For instance, in the sentence, “The machines give you the power to control the universe,” the speaker’s voice rises steadily in pitch, and the rhythm of his speech is definite and emphatic. The first time this musical motive appears, it begins in the brass, and, as the pitch rises and the intensity of the speaker increases, the entire orchestra joins in. This motive is used in different ways throughout the opera. Other phrases that are literally copied and then used as musical motivic material are “that’s extra fine,” “perpetual profit,” “breakdown,” a short phrase from an operatic-type singer, and the rhythm of a repeated laugh. In Scene 3 the forward motion slows down and a dreamlike sequence begins. Near the end of this scene, the speech of the person who says the line, “There are some things we do just because we believe in them,” has been slowed down considerably. The phrase has been set to a melody that follows the pitch shape of the voice and is timed to the rhythm of the speaker. In the style of a Gesamptkunstwerk, sometimes the musical motives appear or are elaborated upon even when the particular character or idea is not on the screen, deepening
Margaret Brouwer Credit: Christian Steiner
the drama or showing a hidden message. History could be rewritten as an account of significant gestures, both physical and aural. The essence of evil can be embedded in a salute, the energies of freedom rallied by a defiant word. Thumbs up or down, heads lowered or eyes upraised— are all central to our perception of certain crucial realities.
BREAKDOWN is an attempt at using these brief, fragmentary gestures to weave a larger tapestry, both narrative and musical. The cultural and historical context of the clips is set off against its purely formal qualities: the movement of a hand, a color, a shadow, a percussive sound. These opposing qualities are continually in play with each other, creating a tension that is central to the work. As much as it could be said that BREAKDOWN is a narrative construction using found footage, it is equally true to say
that it is the clips themselves, in their musical tone, their symbolic meaning, and their latent transgressive energy that drives BREAKDOWN.
1996 to 2008. In addition to Naxos, other recordings of Brouwer’s music can be found on the New World, CRI, Crystal, Centaur, and Opus One labels.
Margaret Brouwer’s music has earned singular praise for its lyricism, musical imagery, and emotional power. Recent premieres and commissions have included Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony; Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers, a Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award and premiered by the Cleveland Women’s Symphony; her first children’s symphonic drama, Daniel and Snakeman, premiered by CityMusic Cleveland; Rhapsody for Orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony; and BREAKDOWN, a collaborative work by Brouwer and video/sound artist Kasumi, commissioned and premiered by American Composers Orchestra. Brouwer has received numerous awards and fellowships including an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship. In January 2006, Naxos released a CD of her orchestral music called Aurolucent Circles featuring Evelyn Glennie, solo percussionist and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz conducting.
A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, Kasumi is internationally celebrated as a leading innovator of a new art form synthesizing film, sound, animation and video. American art critic Douglas Max Utter says of Kasumi’s work that it “sews contemporary sound and sight-bytes like jewels to the pleated and gathered fabric of high baroque structure.” Kasumi has won global acclaim for her experimental films and video art in venues worldwide: from Lincoln Center with The New York Philharmonic to collaborations with Grandmaster Flash and DJ Spooky. She performed and exhibited work at Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart and at the Chroma Festival de Arte Audiovisual in Guadalajara,
Many of the country’s most distinguished ensembles in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Cleveland regularly program her works. In New York Brouwer’s music has been programmed by the Chamber Music Society, American Composers Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and by the Cassatt and Cavani String Quartets. Her works have also been played by the Seattle, Dallas, Detroit, and Columbus Symphonies, among others. She served as head of the composition department and holder of the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music from
Kasumi
Mexico, and her work, BREAKDOWN, the 2010 Vimeo Remix Award winner, premiered at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra. She was commissioned to create a new work for the Cleveland Museum of Art that premiered July 2011, was awarded an EMPAC Dance Movies Commission 2009- 2010 by The Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts and created an original film for performance with The Cleveland Orchestra. A 2011 Creative Workforce Fellowship recipient, Kasumi executive-produced acclaimed filmmaker Kitao Sakurai’s AARDVARK, which won the Special Mention Award for Best First Feature at the 2010 Locarno Film Festival. As a musician, Kasumi has twice been soloist at Carnegie Hall and has recorded four LP albums; in Japan, her soundtrack performance for OGINSAMA, starring Toshiro Mifune, was nominated for a Japanese Academy Award. She is the published author of two books and dozens of journalism articles and is an artist whose painting and print work is in collections in the USA and Japan.
Next Atlantis Sebastian Currier, composer Pawel Wojtasik, video The initial impetus for Next Atlantis came from a commission by the Ying Quartet. As part of the commission, they stipulated that the work should relate to a geographic location in the United States. I didn’t think of land, but of water. Because water is of such significance, because the city has such character and individuality, and because it is also so threatened and vulnerable, I thought immediately of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou which flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Next Atlantis is not about the ravages of Hurricane Katrina per se, but about the more far-
Next Atlantis reaching interaction between human culture and the natural world. Another motivation was purely sonic: I’ve always loved the sound of water and have had in mind for some time to write a piece that weaved water sounds into a musical fabric. And here the sound of water is especially poignant, because for New Orleans water is both the lifeblood of the city and its potential destroyer. Aside from the destructive force of hurricanes and large storms, a stretch of land in the bayou the size of Manhattan is lost to the encroaching sea every year. This is the result of natural processes, man-made changes in the waterways in and around the city, and global climate change. In the process of composing this work, I discussed the project with video artist Pawel Wojtasik and asked him if he would be interested in making a video to accompany my score. He agreed and, hence, there are two versions, one purely musical, with string quartet and pre-recorded samples; and the other, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, with string orchestra, video, and four-channel sound.
The overall character of Next Atlantis is one of sustained quietude, peacefulness, and serenity, but with a sense of emptiness and loss not far off. It is an elegy for a future that must not happen: New Orleans has been submerged under water. Sounds of water, both above and below the surface, pervade the piece. The water is an idealized water, often electronically sculpted into melodies and chords. The string ensemble maintains a dialogue with these liquid sounds. The instruments imitate the sounds of water, and the water itself takes on vestiges of the players’ harmonies. Intertwined with these sounds is the faint, ghostly echo of fragments from “Bourbon Street Parade,” here subdued into quiet disembodied strains that rise to the surface like bubbles from a sunken shipwreck. In the video images of water, of the city, of ruin, of the extraordinary beauty of the surrounding wetlands, and of affected residents wash up on the screen. It is a new Atlantis, not of the mythic past, but one of the too possible future.
—Sebastian Currier Sebastian Currier is the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. His chamber music was
His Microsymph, a large-scale symphony that has been squeezed into only ten minutes, was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and premiered at Carnegie Hall. It has also been performed by such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Eos Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra, and has been recorded by the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra with Hugh Wolff, conductor.
Sebastian Currier Credit: Jeffrey Herman
presented by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2007 and 2008, including 3 world premieres. In December 2009 he returned to Berlin again for the premiere of his harp concerto Traces, which was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and performed by harpist MariePierre Langlamet under the baton of Donald Runnicles. Traces received its US premiere in July 2010 at the Grand Tetons Music Festival, again conducted by Maestro Runnicles. His music has been enthusiastically embraced by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom he wrote Aftersong, which she performed extensively in the US and Europe, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Barbican in London, and the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg. His violin concerto, Time Machines, dedicated to Ms. Mutter, was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in June 2011.
He has also written works that involve electronic media and video. Nightmaze, a multimedia piece based on a text of Thomas Bolt in which the protagonist dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway, where strange road signs loom up only to disappear into the night, has been performed by Network for New Music and the Mosaic Ensemble. Recordings include his Next Atlantis with the Ying Quartet on Naxos, and “On the Verge” from Music from Copland House, featuring his Grawemeyer Award-winning Static, and other chamber works. His “Quartetset/Quiet Time” album, recorded by the Cassatt Quartet, says Anne Midgette for The New York Times, “…distances the present from the past, causing the listener to think about music itself.” He has received many prestigious awards including the Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. He received a DMA from the Juilliard School; and from 1999-2007 he taught at Columbia University.
Paweł Wojtasik is a filmmaker and video artist born in Łód, Poland and currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. Wojtasik lived in Tunisia before immigrating to the U.S in 1972. He received an MFA from Yale University in 1996. From 1998 until 2000 Wojtasik was a resident at Dai Bosatsu Zendo Buddhist monastery in the Catskill mountains of New York State. Wojtasik’s internationally recognized films and video installations are poetic reflections on our environment and culture. The New York Times calls Wojtasik “immensely talented.” Referring to his video Dark Sun Squeeze (2003) Holland Cotter of The Times said: “Pawel Wojtasik delivers the final word on the absolute value of news, money, politics and just about everything else.” Wojtasik’s work The Aquarium (2006) deals with the destruction of the oceans; while his 360° panoramic video installation Below Sea Level (2009) concerns itself with the plight of New Orleans. Next Atlantis, a collaboration with composer Sebastian
Pawel Wojtasik
Currier, also on the theme of New Orleans, had its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on January 29th 2010. Also in 2010 Wojtasik had a solo exhibition at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, NY, featuring a five screen video installation “At the Still Point,” with footage shot in India and with the soundscape by Stephen Vitielllo. The Village Voice, naming it “best in show” commented: “this five-channel project cycles through a series of startling images, shot in Wojtasik’s long, mesmerizing takes.” Wojtasik’s Pigs was included in the 2010 New York Film Festival, and at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. The film had its Asian premiere at the 2011 Hong Kong International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prize in the short film category. Pawel Wojtasik was a featured artist of the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar at Colgate University. He is a recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts individual artist grant for 2007 and 2010. In 2011 Wojtasik was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to make a feature-length film on the theme of labor in India. Most recently Wojtasik has been named a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Video/Film. His work is represented by Video Data Bank.
our work to best serve the overall joining of music with video. I was immediately impressed by the fundamentally ‘natural’ qualities of Ean’s first video and the overall ‘urban’ flavors of his second video, which dictated the quality of music that I wrote for each. The musical structure for Touch (my subtitle for the music that joins with the first video) incorporates fractal processes in which a simple shape, the first three degrees of a major (or minor) scale, is expressed in increasingly complex temporal relationships. Following a brief transition, the second movement, Electric, unfolds as a series of passages comprised of several vernacular languages (rock harmonic-progressions, blues lines and phrasing, and Caribbean inflected rhythms) superimposed upon a grid that remains from Touch, which evokes a surreal and unusual landscape that I felt matched the tenor of the video sequence. Although the surface of this movement is in stark contrast to the first, there is a common rhythmical structure of six pulses against five, or six
followed by five, that is consistently expressed across both movements and serves to connect rhythmical elements in each video that I felt were similarly present. Ean White’s preference is for the video to be mixed realtime during performance. I share in his preference as it enables the video to participate as an active performer, allowing the musical ensemble to be free from the constraints of a ‘fixed-video’ element. Michael Gandolfi’s earliest musical involvement was in rock and jazz improvisation beginning at age eight as a self-taught guitarist. As his improvisational skills developed he became increasingly interested in music composition and began formal study in his early teens. He received the B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music, as well as fellowships for study at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, the Composers Conference, and the Tanglewood Music Center.
As Above Michael Gandolfi, composer Ean White, video As Above is a music and video collaboration commissioned by and dedicated to the Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Foundation for Collage New Music. In 2004 I viewed a spectacular video by Ean White composed of sights and sounds from ‘The Big Dig’ that was screened at Harvard University. Soon afterwards I approached Ean about entering into a collaborative venture and he immediately presented me with raw footage for each of the videos in a newly conceived diptych. I responded with musical sketches and our collaboration was quickly underway. Our method was quite interactive, as we each modified
As Above
Conservatory of Music and the Tanglewood Music Center. He was a visiting lecturer on music at Harvard University in 2002, and held a similar position there from 19961999. He is listed in the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ean White is a multimedia artist working primarily with large-scale sound installations and real-time video performance. Recently, he has been creating new pieces for the centennial of the “Bread and Roses” strike.
Michael Gandolfi
The video for As Above is designed for live performance only. Instead of being a fixed video track to which the conductor must march in lockstep, it is to be produced in real time as part of the ensemble. The sound of specific instruments also control some aspects of the video performance. A small projection surface, no more than two meters in height, is placed on stage directly behind the musicians to reinforce the live, musical nature of the performance and to minimize any notion of the video being some kind of omniscient spectacle.
Mr. Gandolfi is the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His music has been performed by many leading ensembles including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Mr. Gandolfi’s music has been recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, CRI, Innova and Klavier labels, and USMB Recordings. He is a faculty member of the New England
THE ARTISTS AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA American Composers Orchestra (ACO), founded in 1977, is the only orchestra in the world dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. ACO makes the creation of new opportunities for American composers and new American orchestral music its central purpose. ACO identifies today’s brightest emerging composers, champions prominent established composers as well as those lesser known, and increases awareness of the infinite variety of American orchestral music, reflecting geographic, stylistic, and temporal diversity. ACO also serves as an incubator of ideas, research, and talent and as a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras, and advocates for American composers and their music. ACO has performed music by nearly 600 American composers, including 200 world premieres and commissioned works. ACO maintains an unparalleled range of activities, including an annual concert series at Carnegie Hall, commissions, recordings, broadcasts and streaming, educational programs, new music reading sessions, composer residencies and fellowships, as well as special projects designed to advance the field. More information is available at americancomposers.org.
GEORGE MANAHAN, CONDUCTOR In his fourth season as Music Director of the American Composers Orchestra, the wide-ranging and versatile George Manahan has had an esteemed career embracing everything from opera to the concert stage, the traditional to the contemporary. In addition to his work with ACO this season, Manahan continues his commitment to working with young musicians as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Manhattan School of Music as well as guest conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Ean White
music of our time has enriched and enabled Concert Music both at home and abroad.” His Carnegie Hall performance of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra was hailed by audiences and critics alike. The New York Times reported, “the fervent and sensitive performance that Mr. Manahan presided over made the best case for this opera that I have encountered.” George Manahan’s wide-ranging recording activities include the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s Tehillim for ECM; recordings of Edward Thomas’s Desire Under the Elms, which was nominated for a Grammy; Joe Jackson’s Will Power; and Tobias Picker’s Emmeline. As music director of the Richmond Symphony (VA) for twelve years, he was honored four times by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) for his commitment to 20th century music.
ANNE MANSON, CONDUCTOR
George Manahan Manahan was Music Director at New York City Opera for fourteen seasons. There he helped envision the organization’s groundbreaking VOX program, a series of workshops and readings that have provided unique opportunities for numerous composers to hear their new concepts realized, and introduced audiences to exciting new compositional voices. In addition to established composers such as Mark Adamo, David Del Tredici, Lewis Spratlan, Robert X. Rodriguez, Lou Harrison, Bernard Rands, and Richard Danielpour, through VOX Manahan has introduced works by composers on the rise including Adam Silverman, Elodie Lauten, Mason Bates, and David T. Little. In May 2011 Manahan was honored by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) for his “career-long advocacy for American composers and the
Anne Manson is recognized throughout the world for her conducting achievements. She was the first woman to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, where she led the Vienna Philharmonic and a cast that included Samuel Ramey and Philip Langridge in a production of Boris Godunov which met with great critical acclaim. Ms. Manson is one of only three women to have been appointed Music Director of a leading American symphony orchestra, having served as Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony from 1999 to 2003. She launched her career in 1988 as Music Director of the London-based Mecklenburgh Opera, where over a span of eight years she programmed operas ranging from Mozart to 20th-century rarities, while commissioning world premieres from a host of contemporary composers. Anne Manson is distinguished by her dynamic podium presence, stylistic versatility, and ability to draw audiences into the inner world of the composer. A reputation for excellence in the central German repertory, combined with a passionate advocacy of music of the present, has led to invitations leading orchestras
worldwide. Ms. Manson’s opera repertoire ranges from the 17th to the 21st century.
BRADLEY LUBMAN, CONDUCTOR Brad Lubman, conductor/composer, is founding coArtistic Director and Music Director of Ensemble Signal, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most vital groups of its kind.”. Since his conducting debut in 1984, he has gained widespread recognition for his versatility, commanding technique, and insightful interpretations. His guest conducting engagements include major orchestras such as the DSO Berlin, Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie, WDR Symphony Cologne, Cracow Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Orchestra (Bayerischen Rundfunks), Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Deutschland Radio Philharmonie, American Composers Orchestra, and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, performing repertoire ranging from classical to contemporary orchestral works. He has worked with some of the most important ensembles for contemporary music, including London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, musikFabrik, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, and Steve Reich and Musicians. He has recorded for Albany, BMG/RCA, Bridge, Cantaloupe, CRI, Kairos, Koch, Mode, New World, Nonesuch, Orange Mountain, and Tzadik. Lubman’s own compositions have been performed in the USA and Europe and can be heard on his CD, insomniac, on Tzadik. Lubman is Associate Professor of Conducting and Ensembles at the Eastman School of Music since 1997, where he directs the Musica Nova ensemble, and is on the faculty of the Bang-on-a-Can Summer Institute. He is represented by Karsten Witt Musik Management.
Orchestra Underground: A-V American Composers Orchestra 244 West 54th Street, Suite 805 NYC, NY 10019 www.americancomposers.org
[email protected] 212.977.8495
1 BREAKDOWN Margaret Brouwer / Kasumi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18:42 George Manahan, conductor
2 Next Atlantis Sebastian Currier / Pawel Wojtasik . . . . . . . . . . . . 18:35 Anne Manson, conductor
3 As Above Michael Gandolfi / Ean White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9:34 Bradley Lubman, conductor
Cover Image: BREAKDOWN, Bouwer/Kasumi ACO’s recording initiative is made possible with the support of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Margaret Brouwer and Sebastian Currier commissioned and premiered by American Composers Orchestra with the support of the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.
Brouwer recorded live on February 20, 2009. Currier recorded live on January 30, 2010. Gandolfi recorded live on October 15, 2006. All pieces recorded at Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philidelphia, PA. Copyright © 2013
