MATA Interval 2.4
Play! Music for Toys
Curated by Angelica Negrón
Featuring performances by ensemble TRANSIT, Judy Dunaway, Jenny Walshe, and special guest Margaret Leng Tan
Works by Angélica Negrón, Judy Dunaway, Tristan Perich, Daniel Wohl, Nathan Davis and John Kennedy
MATA Interval 2.4 PLAY! - Composers
Nathan Davis (NYC) makes music as a composer and percussionist. He has received commissions from the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Meehan/Perkins Duo, Ethos Percussion Group, the Jerome Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, and received awards from ASCAP, Meet the Composer, the Look and Listen Festival, and the ISCM. Several of his electroacoustic percussion pieces are available on a solo cd, Memory Spaces, and his acoustic music is published by Frog Peak. As a percussionist, he tours extensively in the cello/percussion duo Odd Appetite and is a member of ICE. He has recorded for Tzadik, New Albion, Bridge, and Cold Blue records. More info is at www.nathandavis.com.
For the past fifteen years Judy Dunaway has been primarily known for her numerous works for latex balloons as sound producers. Her works for balloons include sound installations, multimedia works, improvisational performances, and avant-garde musical compositions. She has presented these works throughout North America and Europe at many important venues, festivals, museums and galleries including the Alternative Museum (NYC), Bang on a Can Festival (NYC), Everson Art Museum (Syracuse), Frau Musica Nova (Germany), the Guelph Jazz Festival (Canada), Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors (NYC), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), Podewil (Berlin), Galerie Rachel Haferkamp (Koeln), the Roy and Edna Disney Center (Los Angeles), Seltsame Musik Festival (Austria), the SoHo Arts Festival (NYC), STEIM (Netherlands), Diapason Gallery (NYC) and ZKM (Germany). Her discography includes CDs on the CRI (Composers Recordings Inc.) and Innova labels.
Eclectic Australian-American musician Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specializing in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all his own that is “sincere” (neural.it), “playful” (igloo magazine), “colourful and refreshingly unpretentious” (Paris Transatlantic). Griswold performs as a soloist, in Clocked Out Duo (with percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson), and collaborates with musicians from diverse backgrounds as well as visual artists, and writers.
Composer and conductor John Kennedy is Artistic Associate of Spoleto Festival USA, where he plans and leads many of the festival’s music programs, and is the Artistic Director of Santa Fe New Music. He has composed numerous works for traditional and experimental ensembles, and has been commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and Sarasota Opera among others. He has guest conducted with many organizations including the Lincoln Center Festival, New York City Ballet, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Kennedy also founded the ensemble Essential Music, which was active in New York from 1987. He has been on the board of the American Music Center since 2000 and served as President from 2002-2005.
Angélica Negrón (b. 1981, Puerto Rico) received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied composition under the guidance of composer Alfonso Fuentes. She was the winner of the scholarship that the Amaury Veray Foundation gives to an outstanding student in the music composition department of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico as well as the Phantomvox Scholarship (2004) and the Roberto I. Ferdman Award (2006). Her music has been performed by the NYU Percussion Ensemble, Astoria Symphony Orchestra, Lumina String Quartet, NYU Symphony Orchestra and the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and she has written music for documentaries, films, theater and modern dance. She also holds a bachelor’s in audiovisual communications from the University of Puerto Rico, and is a founding member of the Puerto Rican electro-acoustic pop outfit Balún where she sings and plays the accordion, violin and keyboard. With her solo project, Arturo en el Barco, she concentrates on working with lo-fi ambient compositions and has released albums on Observatory (Austria) and Carte Postale Records (Belgium).
In 2008, as a recipient of the Lindsay and Brian Shea Fellowship, she participated in the European-American Musical Alliance (EAMA) Summer Music Program at L’Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris where she studied with Dr. Robert Beaser, chair of the Composition department of The Juilliard School, and guest composer Sofia Gubaidulina. Her recent work for toy piano and electronics “Columpio” won second prize on the UnCaged Toy Piano Competition and she is currently a curatorial associate for MATA Interval Series. She recently completed her master’s degree in music composition at New York University where she studied with Portuguese guitarist and composer Pedro Da Silva and film composer Ira Newborn. Angélica is currently part of the Teaching Artists Collaborative from The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and a member of ASCAP, the International Alliance for Women in Music and New York Women Composers.
In all of his creative activities, Tristan Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. The Village Voice, BOMB Magazine, BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News, Cool Hunting and Spin Magazine covered the release, which has also been featured on television. Surface Magazine called the boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.”
Perich’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund), counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues including the Whitney Museum, P.S.1 and Mass MoCA. His recent activities include electroacoustic pieces for 1-Bit Music with instrumental accompaniment. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
Paris born Daniel Wohl (1980) is a composer of electronic and acoustic music based in Brooklyn. His music is played by ensembles and performers such as the American Symphony Orchestra, The Calder Quartet, the Da Capo Chamber Players, TRANSIT, the Nucleus Ensemble, California E.A.R Unit, St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the University of Michigan Philharmonic, and performers such as Tara Helen O’Connor and Vicky Ray. Awards, commissions and grants have come from ASCAP, Carlsbad Music Festival, New York Youth Symphony First Music, Society for New Music, the Definiens Project C3 competition, Meet the Composer, and the Brooklyn Arts Council for his work with TRANSIT, an ensemble he co founded.
Most recently, he was a featured composer in both Da Capo’s Sonic Youth at Symphony Space concert, and St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble 2nd Helpings series at the Chelsea Art Museum and DIA, Beacon. In 2008 he was awarded an ASCAP Morton Gould prize for his orchestra piece Helium, an ASCAP Plus award, and a New York Youth Symphony commission, which will be premiered at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in 2009. He is also the winner of the 2009 Carlsbad Music Festival / Calder quartet commission.
Daniel completed his Master’s Degree at the University of Michigan School of Music, studying with Bright Sheng and William Bolcom, and Bard College with Joan Tower. He has also studied with Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute. Daniel teaches composition at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.