VERGE ensemble hails from Washington, DC where it is the new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art,specializing in the interaction between acoustic instruments and technology. Highlight of the program will feature such a pure force - a piece based on a Pablo Neruda poem by composer Steve Antosca. Special guests include acclaimed author Nick Antosca and cellist Collin Oldham, premiering his electronic instrument inventions, the Cellomobo and Radio Tape Knife.
Steve Antosca, composer and computer
Lina Bahn, violin
Jenny Lin, piano
Collin Oldham, composer and cellomobo
Nick Antosca, reader
Steve Antosca is the Artistic Director and composer member of VERGE ensemble, new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The ensemble has recently been described as putting “modern classical music in front of the public with more dedication and skill than any other group in Washington.” In 2007, Mr. Antosca was awarded a McKim commission from the Library of Congress and a Fromm commission from Harvard. As Artistic Director of VERGE, he was awarded an NEA grant to present a festival of new music in Washington. His work One becomes Two, premièred by violinist Lina Bahn at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC in March 2007, was described by the Washington Post as “the afternoon’s most exciting composition.” One becomes Two received its European première in Paris at the Festival de musique Américaine in May 2007.
Lina Bahn is a violinist in the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, which served as lecturers at Indiana University and has had residencies at the Juilliard School and Dickinson College. Their travels have brought them to festivals and performances around the world, and throughout the United States, in venues including: The Library of Congress, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Recital Hall, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, and Lincoln Center’s “Great Performance Series”. As a soloist, Ms. Bahn has appeared with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfonica de la Serena (Chile), and the Malaysian National Symphony Orchestra. She has performed recitals, concerts and in festivals such as the Costa Rican International Chamber Festival, the Sierra Summer Festival, the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the Garth Newel Music Series, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende. Ms. Bahn holds a Doctoral degree from Indiana University, a Masters degree from University of Michigan, and she completed her undergraduate studies under Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School.
Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, Chopin Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, with orchestras such as Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI and SWR German Radio Orchestra. She records for Koch International Classics, Hänssler Classic, BIS Records and is the subject of the documentary, “Zahara”, by Elemental Films Spain. She is a member of the Verge Ensemble and resides in New York City. www.jennylin.net
Collin Oldham began exploring electronic music in 2005, at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA,) moving his studio to the klangquadrat in Berlin in 2006. He studied cello at Northwestern University, University of Louisville (where he was a Louisville Orchestra Fellow), Moscow Conservatory, and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Ron Leonard. He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington Opera. With violinist Lina Bahn, he founded the Mount Pleasant Chamber Music Players, which was awarded an NEA grant. He first performed with the Verge Ensemble in 2003. The cellomobo is a computer music instrument that attempts to model the behavior of a bowed string. It gives haptic feedback to the bow at audio rate to simulate the stick-slip action of a bowed string. This feedback stream finds it way back into the audio stream, creating a unique hybrid of digital and analog synthesis.
Nick Antosca’s stories and essays have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Nerve, The New York Sun, Identity Theory, The New York Tyrant, The Antietam Review, Hustler, Opium, elimae, and others. His first novel, Fires, was published in 2007 by Impetus Press, and his second, Midnight Picnic, will be published in fall 2008.
Daisy Press: Morton Feldman’s Three Voices
w/ Video by Zach Layton
A specialist in the field of contemporary music, Daisy Press, soprano, is performing for the second time in her career Morton Feldman’s Three Voices this evening. The studio recording of Ms. Press’ version of this piece will soon be released. Most recently, she performed George Crumb’s Unto the Hills with So Percussion at Miller Theater. She has also performed Steve Reich’s Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians with So Percussion at the same venue. Additional credits include being the featured soloist for the New York premiere of Phillipe Leroux’s Voi(rex) at Miller Theater alongside IRCAM; Apparition by George Crumb at the Bang on a Can Marathon, where Daisy Press has appeared with the VOX vocal ensemble. She is currently on faculty at Manhattan School of Music, where she received her Masters degree. She also holds academic degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and Oxford University, and she has studied voice in the studios of Trish McCaffrey and Hilda Harris, and North Indian ragas with Michael Harrison.
Ms. Press was for two years singer-in-residence; Attila-Joszef Fragments by Kurtag at Symphony Space; and excerpts, with the composer in attendance, for Elliot Carter’s Of Challenge and of Love. She has also appeared in Ireland with the Argento Ensemble in Earl Kim’s Exercises en Route and was hailed for her “calm naturalness” by The New York Times for her performance of early and late Webern song cycles. Having been raised on a rock and roll tour (literally under the stage), she has recently been seen performing at Irving Plaza with the preeminent Neil Diamond cover band, Super Diamond.
daisypress.net