Holidays for the Future
7-10pm Sunday, April 29th, at 16 Beaver Street (between Broad and Broadway)
4th Floor, New York, NY 10004
Holidays For the Future is a music series in Manhattan that features composers and improvisers who are dedicated to exploring and experimenting with musical styles and forms. The series occurs on one Sunday of every month and is curated by Edward Schneider. http://holidaysforthefuture.wordpress.com/
Performances are free to the public and complimentary drinks will be provided. Special thanks go to Thomas Hallaran and IB5K, who generously facilitate our series' use of the 16 Beaver Space.
The April performances in this series will explore how instrumentation and ensemble size shape musical discourse in contemporary improvisation.
The first group of improvisers, Nathan Bontrager, Tina Chancey, Sarah Cunningham, and John Mark Rozendaal, will be performing as a gamba consort. The origins of these instruments (a group of bowed string instruments) date back to the renaissance and baroque periods; however, they will be played in an innovative and contemporary manner. The second group will combine the saxophonist Edward Schneider and pianist Constance Cooper with Jeff Lependorf playing shakuhachi. Jeff’s instrument is a Japanese end-blown wooden flute that is associated with the blowing meditation of Zen Buddhist monks. Lastly, Nathan Bontrager will lead a group of improvisers in an experiment that draws from various practices of conduction a la COBRA, Language Music, etc. Improvisers who wish to perform in this large ensemble should email Edward Schneider by April 25th. Then information will be emailed to participants with basic signals and parameters that will be used during the performance
Featuring Five Performances:
Act 1: gamba consort: Nathan Bontrager, Tina Chancey, Sarah Cunningham, John Mark Rozendaal
Act 2: pianist Constance Cooper, saxophonist Edward Schneider, shakuhachi player Jeffrey Lependorf
Act 3: composer/improviser Nathan Bontrager conducting a group of improvisers
(If you wish to participate in this set, please email Edward Schneider by April 25, [email protected] Then information will be sent to you with basic signals and parameters that will be used during the performance)
Cellist Nathan Bontrager (New Haven) performs improvised music ranging from the avant-garde to world folk styles. While earning his M.M. at the University of Maryland, Bontrager began to focus more heavily on contemporary works and frequently played with local new music ensembles such as Mobtown Modern and the Great Noise Ensemble. In addition, he co-founded The Experimental Music Performance Organization (T.E.M.P.O.), an ensemble committed to premiering new works. Bontrager has been increasingly active in the experimental music scene in New Haven (Firehouse 12, the Uncertainty Music Series), New York (the Stone, Evolving Voice Series), and throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. In addition to Broadcloth, he can be found performing with the folk group Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, the American Baroque Orchestra, and the New Haven Improvisers Collective.http://www.broadclothtrio.com/
TINA CHANCEY directs HESPERUS, the world-traveled early/traditional music ensemble dedicated to bringing the past alive through collaborations between early music and film, theater, dance and world music. While she plays medieval fiddles, violas da gamba and renaissance violin, her particular specialty is the five-stringed pardessus de viole; she received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to present debut concerts at Carnegie Recital Hall and the Kennedy Center, and has recorded on that instrument for Dorian and Golden Apple. For the past decade, Dr. Chancey has focused her performance, research and teaching energies on improvisation. Her silent film scores for Robin Hood, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Golem, the General and the Mark of Zorro blend early music and improvisation, as do her performances with storyteller Jon Spelman. She writes on improv and playing by ear for Early Music America magazine and The American Recorder, and directs SoundCatcher workshops teaching musicians both skills. The Versatile Viol is her 3-CD series featuring the viol in Scots-Irish music, French baroque music, and American traditional music. Dr. Chancey has been given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Early Music America. For more information, please visit www.tinachancey.net
Pianist and composer Constance Cooper (New York) received first prize in the 2002 Gustav Mahler Competition (Austria). Her reflections about string instruments led to her invention of new hand-positions and notation for "Coming From Us," commissioned by the American Composers Forum (Cadence Recordings). Her Divertimento for String Quartet is available on the Princeton CD label. "Amoroso" for orchestra was recorded by Harold Farberman in 2001. Her improvisatory pieces for organ, synthesizer, and bass "Repaying Sin-Driven Senators by Not Thinking About Them" were completed during a residency at ArtOMI. She has appeared as composer, pianist, and singer at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and with the Princeton University Composers Ensemble, Continuum, and the American Microtonal Festival. Her improvisation trio Chemical Composition will soon be heard accompanying the choreography of Linda Diamond and in the feature film Eli and Lulu, written and directed by Yana Bille. She received her PhD in composition from Princeton in 2003. http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/constance-cooper/id36603071 and http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=94415 (for Chemical Composition)
Sarah Cunningham is recognized as one of the foremost viola da gambists worldwide. She was co-founder, with Monica Huggett, of Trio Sonnerie, with whom she recorded most of the important chamber music for violin and viol, much of it for the first time, and toured on four continents between 1982 and 1997. She was invited by Sir James Galway to collaborate on his CDs of Bach's flute music, and toured with him in Europe and the USA. Her solo CDs were released on ASV and EMI/Virgin Classics, and she has appeared as recitalist from Helsinki to Vancouver. As concerto soloist she recorded works by Telemann with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Monica Huggett. She has toured and recorded with John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Simon Rattle, Trevor Pinnock, Ton Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, Roger Norrington; with viol consorts Les Filles de Sainte Colombe, Fretwork, Phantasm, Hesperion XX, Parthenia, and the Carthage Consort; and medieval ensembles Sequentia and Virelai. She founded and directed the East Cork Early Music Festival, recognised as “Ireland's premier early music festival”, from 2003-2009. She teaches in the recently established Historical Performance Department at the Juilliard School, was professor of viola da gamba in Bremen, Germany from 1990-2000, and has taught at numerous summer academies and master classes worldwide. The 2010-2011 season sees appearances with Tempesta di Mare and Piffaro in Philadelphia; at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC; at the Aston Magna and Amherst Early Music Festivals in New England; and teaching engagements for the Viola da Gamba Society of America chapters in Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Greater New York, as well as the International Baroque Institute at Longy, Cambridge, MA. In recent years, alongside her passion for teaching, she is indulging her passion for learning, pursuing interests in improvisation and composition, movement, and visual art, with studies with Meredith Monk, Suprapto Suryadarma, and Val Rossman; and in Process Work with Arnold Mindell.
Jeffrey Lependorf’s music fuses unabashed lyricism with deep literary and historic exploration and a pervasive wit. A composer of operas and chamber music, he is also a certified master of the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute, and has helped create a new repertoire of music for this ancient instrument. His music has been performed around the globe—literally, in fact: a recording of his Night Pond for solo shakuhachi was launched into space when the shuttle Atlantis took off on May 15, 1997 and remained for a year aboard the Russian space station Mir. Born in 1962 in Philadelphia, Jeffrey Lependorf received a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from Oberlin Conservatory. He also received the venerable honorific name “Koku” (“empty nothingness”) from Kinko shakuhachi master Yoshinobu Taniguchi. His “Masterpieces of Western Music” audio-course is available through Barnes & Noble’s “Portable Professor” series as well as for download through Audible.com. He currently serves as Director of the Music Omi International Music Residency Program in upstate New York, and also serves as the shared Executive Director of two beloved literary organizations: Small Press Distribution and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.
John Mark Rozendaal specializes in teaching and performing stringed instrument music from the Baroque and Renaissance eras. As founding Artistic Director of Chicago Baroque Ensemble, JMR performed and led seven seasons of subscription concerts, educational programs, radio broadcasts, and recordings for the Cedille and Centaur labels. Rozendaal served as principal 'cellist of The City Musick, and Basically Bach, and has performed both solo and continuo roles with many period instrument ensembles, including the Newberry Consort, Orpheus Band, and the King's Noyse. Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Catacoustic Consort, The Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and Soli Deo Gloria's Chicago Bach Project. JMR performs as a member of Trio Settecento with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and harpsichordist David Schrader; as a member of Repaast Baroque Ensmeble; and as a member of the viol consort Sonnambula. Rozendaal's viola da gamba playing has been praised as "splendid" (Chicago Tribune), and "breathtaking" (Sun-Times). Recordings are available on the Cedille and Centaur labels. A dedicated teacher, Rozendaal is in demand as a workshop teacher and often joins the faculties of the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, Viols West’s annual workshop, Amherst Early Music, Madison Early Music Festival, and the Music Institute of Chicago’s annual Baroque Festival. As Artist-in-Residence at The Harvey School, a coeducational college preparatory school locatied in Katonah, New York, Rozendaal led the Harvey Early Music Ensemble's tours to England in 2006 and to Italy in 2007. JMR teaches private lessons and viola da gamba Dojo classes at his studio in Manhattan.
Saxophonist Edward Schneider (Brooklyn) is an improviser, composer, and educator currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Before his recent move to New York, Schneider lived in Minneapolis where he co-founded the quintet Process is the Goal and was founding member of the Minneapolis Free Music Society. Prior to this Schneider studied composition at the University of Illinois under the renowned experimental composer Herbert Brun. During this time the Kronos Quartet selected his composition for sight-reading. After earning a Masters in Ethnomusicology from Washington University, Schneider received a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum to produce the compact disc (Again) Against/Because. . . In 2009 his new electronic composition, the tree that was a bird, was performed as part of the Conny Purtill performance at the Blinky Palermo puppet theater at the Pompidou in Paris. Recently, Schneider was the subject of a documentary by the filmmaker Mark Nye. http://soundcloud.com/edward-schneider
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