“Uncanny Valley” + New Piece for Solo Piano Commissioned from John Gibson!

Solo pianist Oni Buchanan and poet Jon Woodward have just announced a new piece for piano and electronics from American electroacoustic composer John Gibson.

The piece will serve as accompaniment and counterpart to a live reading by Woodward of his mind-bending new poem “Uncanny Valley.”  The full program is now in the works and is set for performances beginning in September 2012.

“Uncanny Valley” is a long serial poem in 16 sections, meant to be read out loud, with numerous optional repeats throughout the text. These repetitions act as accumulations of sound, maddening as well as hypnotic. Gibson’s piece provides a sonic environment in which the text floats freely, with its pacing determined by the two performers. Digital samples triggered by both performers mirror and enmesh the piano and spoken text.

Jon Woodward’s Uncanny Valley manuscript  recently won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s 2011 Open Competition and will soon be published by the school.  He  has two other volumes of poetry published: Rain (Wave Books, 2006) and Mister Goodbye Easter Island (Alice James Books, 2003).

John Gibson’s works have been performed across the world by groups like London Sinfonietta, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Seattle Symphony, the Music Today Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, and Ekko!  He writes sound processing and synthesis software, and has taught composition and computer music at the University of Virginia, Duke University, and the University of Louisville. He is now Assistant Professor of Composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Duo Orfeo In the Studio This Week!

Guitarists Duo Orfeo head into the studio today to begin a marathon 3 or 4 days of recording with producer/engineer Peter Blanchette.  At the finish line?  Their upcoming full-length release, “I sing the body electric,” a title inspired by Walt Whitman.  The Duo is capturing performances of some music we’ve heard in concert (such as Arvo Part’s “Spiegel im Spiegel”) and much that no one’s heard before.  The album will consist entirely of the group’s own arrangements for electric guitar of many compositions that have never been performed on guitars at all.  Says the group: “Almost all of this music is quiet, contemplative, and relaxing, yet (we think) very powerful and deeply moving.”  The album is scheduled for a November release.

Track list:

Arvo Part -  Fratres
Eric Satie – Three Gnossiennes
Federico Mompou – Musica Callada, book one I-III
John Cage – In a Landscape
Valentin Silvestrov – Quiet Music
Eric Satie – Three Gnossiennes
Arvo Part – Spiegel im Spiegel

Four Quartets: Variations

“Four Quartets: Variations,” revolving around T. S. Eliot’s inimitable sequence Four Quartets, is a theatrical, musical and poetic tour de force.  Moored by the performances of four vocalizing actors and four poets interacting with excerpted and remixed text of Eliot’s Four Quartets, the project also features byways into performance sets by the Bryant Park Quartet (string quartet) and The Guidonian Hand (trombone quartet), as well as guest artists Iktus Percussion Quartet, which expand the musical reaches and correspondences of the poem.  Emphasizing the profundity and structural revelations of Eliot’s book-length text, the actors and musicians surround the poets’ recitations with extended techniques of all varieties, from improbable instrumental sounds to extremes of vocal and improvisatory production, letting the text re-echo in time past, time present, and time future.  Fare forward, voyagers.

The quartet of actors are Marya Lowry, Phil Timberlake, Corianna Moffatt, and Nate Speare, while participating poets include Thalia Field, R. Dwayne Betts, Cathy Park Hong, Katie Ford, Major Jackson, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Jon Woodward, and Oni Buchanan.

Grateful thanks to the following individuals for their support in producing this project:
Sponsors: Colleen Hovey and Chris Bator, Sirkku Kontinnen and Harri Kytömaa
Contributors: Robin Welte and Art Murray, Paula and Jack Barthel, David and Joella Hricik, Tom and Debbie Bross, Greta and Bob Ingraham, Jan Pechenik, Jaqueth Hutchinson

New Music Announced from Eve Beglarian for the Guidonian Hand!

We’re more than thrilled to announce that one of our favorite composers, Eve Beglarian, has just been commissioned by the Tribeca New Music Festival for a brand new 15-minute work entitled Pump Music. The piece will be composed for trombone quartet, violin, and “electronically transformed recordings of hand pumps that she has collected in campgrounds while traveling down the Mississippi River in 2009.” We’re particularly excited because the music will feature our own trombone quartet (who better?), the Guidonian Hand.

Eve Beglarian has been composing and publishing incredible music since the ‘90s and since then she’s seen her work performed and recorded by groups like the Bang On a Can All-Stars, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and many more. Her 2009 kayak trip down the Mississippi River made headlines when she began it, including an in-depth feature in the New York Times.  This summer, her music was performed at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary American Music.

For more info on the current commission, visit the Meet the Composer site.

Stay tuned for more news as this season gets ready to kick off next week, beginning with a Stephen Drury residency at the University of Idaho!

One Last Look at Summer 2011

It’s hard to believe it, but the layer-worthy temperatures outside don’t lie: summer is finally coming to an end.  While we’re eagerly looking forward to a jam-packed fall of events for ourselves, it’s worth another look back at a few more of our artists’ exploits in these recent months.

Guidonian Hand trombonist Sebastian Vera recently returned from a trip to Haiti to lend his talents to the wonderful Jean Baptiste Dessaix Music School (“Ecole de Musique Dessaix-Baptiste”).  It’s a year-round program backed by international supporters that includes a big summer camp element with teachers and volunteers from all over North America teaching students aged 6 to 25.  The program took a hit with the earthquake in 2010, but is bouncing back in incredible ways!

Meanwhile, the Bryant Park Quartet just finished running a week-long summer chamber music camp at Stony Brook University.  The BPQ has helped spearhead the Stony Brook University Community Music Program as its first ever Ensemble-In-Residence, and the summer camp is a major element of the program’s initiative to work with young musicians at Stony Brook and in nearby public schools. They’ll be headed back for a concert at the end of the month (September 25)!

Meanwhile, Stephen Drury spent the summer with two big projects in Boston — the first being Boston University’s Spectral music workshop with composer Joshua Fineberg (Spectral Summer), which included a world premiere of Fineberg’s “Counterfactual.” Second was of course Drury and his Callithumpian Consort’s annual Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), which this year featured composer-in-residence Tristan Murail and a world premiere of John Luther Adams‘s “4000 Holes.”

Outside of a handful of New England performances, Duo Orfeo have been busy preparing material for an electric guitars album, which they’ve just announced they’ll be recording this fall. They promise pieces by Arvo Part, John Cage, Erik Satie and Valentin Silvestrov, and those in attendance at this spring’s “Machines” concerts have already had a taste of some of these sounds.  Needless to say, we can’t wait to hear this record.

And of course, don’t forget the bevy of new talent that joined our ranks this summer: the West Shore Piano Trio, Rhonda Sider Edgington, and janus trio!

May you have a great weekend and check back often for updates as this extremely exciting concert season gets underway…

Announcing the West Shore Piano Trio!

We’re proud to announce another brand new addition to our stellar roster of artists – the West Shore Piano Trio! The group caught our eye this past year performing a dizzying variety of repertoire with a keen programming eye toward countless layers of inspiration in every piece they’ve chosen. They’ve recently put on incredible performances of Foote, Schoenfield, Dvořák, Beethoven and more (you’ll find ample evidence of this at their artist page).

The interaction that Jay DeWire (piano), Heather Haughn (violin), and Diana Flesner (cello) have established with audiences across the East Coast has proven to be one-of-a-kind, and their upcoming programming includes masterworks from Schumann, Shostakovich, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Chopin and more. We’re more than proud here at Ariel Artists to be representing them in future concert seasons and can’t wait to bring them to your community!

Rhonda Sider Edgington’s Further Adventures in Germany

Summer is winding down, but before we start gushing about our incredible season on the way, we thought we’d share a wrap-up of what’s been an amazing summer of performances for one of our newest artists, organist Rhonda Sider Edgington.  In recent weeks, she’s performed three concerts on different incredibly historic organs throughout Germany.

She traveled to the village of Neuenfelde, outside of Hamburg, on July 7, to perform on the Arp Schnitger organ from 1688 in St. Pancratius Church. St. Pancratius Church is the church where Schnitger is buried, so it’s kind of a Mecca for fans of this very famous organ builder.  On July 31st, she performed in the village of Niederndodeleben, outside of Magdeburg, on a lovely organ in the St. Peter and Paul Church.  Parts of it date back to Heinrich Compenius from 1611, which means this gets to mark its 400th anniversary! Other parts of the organ are from 1750 by Johann Georg Hartmann.

Finally, Edgington performed on August 14th in the tiny, isolated village of Basedow in the region called “Mecklenburg’s Switzerland.” This performance included work  on Basedow’s Herbst/Gercke organ from 1683 in an amazing church where the oldest section dates back to 1247.

We’re looking forward to presenting more performances by Edgington and sharing her unique artistry with audiences here in the very near future!

janus trio Awarded Chamber Music America Grant!

Chamber Music America delivered the great news that they’ve chosen janus trio as one of a very select few recipients of its 2011 grants for commission!  The trio joins an elite class of ensembles this year and will be putting the grant toward new work from the incredible, pioneering composer Paul Lansky in creating a new trio piece.  We’re extremely excited by this honor and can’t wait to hear where Lansky and the group take us in the near future.

Visit Chamber Music America’s website for more info.

Ariel Artists Welcomes the janus trio to the Roster

We’re overjoyed to announce the addition of the newest ensemble in our roster, the incredible janus trio: Amanda Baker (flute), Beth Meyers (viola), and Nuiko Wadden (harp).  Based in Brooklyn, the janus trio has quickly built a great reputation for amazing interpretations of traditional and brand new repertoire, from Ravel and Debussy to Toru Takemitsu, Arvo Pärt and David Lang.  We’re thrilled to have on board a group so active in exploring these works as well as seeking out new work from incredible young composers and the composition departments of Princeton, Colgate, NYU, Columbia and Cornell Universities.  The group has performed these works with pioneering spirit in all kinds of venues, from the Kennedy Center to Joe’s Pub and Le Poisson Rouge.  Our minds are already buzzing with the possibilities in store for this unbelievable group next season!

Ariel Artists Welcomes Rhonda Sider Edgington

It’s our great pleasure to introduce the newest member of the Ariel Artists roster – organist Rhonda Sider Edgington!  An incredible performer of everything from Baroque masterpieces to French literature of the 19th Century to modern music of the 20th Century, Rhonda is just now returning to the United States after years studying in Germany on some of the greatest organs ever built.  In her first season with us, she’ll be offering a stellar mix of work by Bach, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Messiaen, Sanders, Alain and many more.  We couldn’t be more excited to have the honor of connecting her with audiences far and wide in the near future!