Wednesday, April 8th, The Anagram Ensemble presents a program of original works and collaborations with composers Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and Viola Yip. This program highlights the diverse abilities of all five participants, who all contribute to this concert as both composers and performers. Bassist and composer James Ilgenfritz has directed The Anagram Ensemble for more than 15 years. This trio formation features cellist Meaghan Burke and violist Stephanie Griffin, and has previously performed music by Petr Kotik, Alvin Singleton, and M Lamar. This is also the group’s first presentation of their own compositions as a trio.
Anagram joins Hunter Hunt-Hendrix in a presentation of Apparition of the Eternal Church, his interpretation of Olivier Messiaen’s organ piece of the same name, scored for electric guitar, electronics, and strings; Apparition is a modular part of Hunt-Hendrix’s ongoing multimodal opera cycle The OIOION Cycle.
Viola Yip's performance uses her electro-mechanical instrument Bulbble, with processed sounds as well as lights and shadows, forming an audio-visual musical interplay. Yip also presents Three Strings Trio (2020). In this piece each member of The Anagram Ensemble plays a monochord, which Yip processes electronically, developing an environment that allows each string player to play acoustically individually and yet inter-relating each other through the vibrations of audio feedback.
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is a composer, musician, artist, and philosopher who seeks to tie these practices into a synthetic unity. They are known for their transcendental black metal band Liturgy, praised by The New York Times and Pitchfork for its ecstatic energy and fusion of black metal with classical minimalism, among other styles. Hunt-Hendrix composed and directed the video opera Origin of the Alimonies, which was screened with a live score at National Sawdust in Brooklyn in 2018. In November 2019, a live-action version of the opera debuted at REDCAT in Los Angeles, along with a solo art exhibition at Libertine Gallery consisting of prophetic diagrams related to the opera. The same month Liturgy also released and toured H.A.Q.Q., the band’s fourth studio album, which is tied to an ongoing philosophical Youtube lecture series.
A Native of Hong Kong, Viola Yip is a New York-based experimental composer, performer, sound artist, and instrument builder. Her recent interest falls on creating performances based on an intermedial conception of music as well as creating sound pieces that are created through playing around unconventional relationships of objects. Viola's instruments and performances have been presented in major music festivals and concert series in New York, Missouri, Chicago, San Diego, Boston, Bowling Green (Ohio), Pittsburgh, Ithaca, Saratoga Springs, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Dublin, Belfast, Manchester, Huddersfield, Madeira, Ghent, Amsterdam, The Hague, Brussels, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Darmstadt.
Composer and bassist James Ilgenfritz is recognized in The New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and his “invaluable contributions to New York’s new-music community.” James has performed around the US, Europe, and in Asia with his bands Hypercolor and MiND GAMeS. In 2019 he released You Scream A Rapid Language – an album of recent chamber music, which was noted in The Wire for its "glint of mischief" and ability to "foreground the performative and gestural elements of music making." This album of chamber works follows his previous two solo contrabass albums Origami Cosmos (2017) and Compositions (Braxton) 2011 – which featured music by Annie Gosfield, Miya Masaoka, Elliott Sharp, JG Thirlwell, and Anthony Braxton. James presented his music in residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone in 2015 and 2018, and in 2011 he was Artist In Residence at ISSUE Project Room. He holds degrees from University of Michigan and University of California San Diego. James began New York’s first Suzuki Bass program at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in 2011, and continued there until 2019, when he left to pursue a PhD in music composition at University of California Irvine. James splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and Orange County, California.
Hailed as “outstanding,” with a “street-smart, feline voice” (New York Times), Meaghan Burke is a cellist, vocalist, and composer working in the space between contemporary music, improvised music, and songwriting. She is a founding member of contemporary feminist string quartet The Rhythm Method, avant-grunge band Forever House, and Viennese songwriter collective Loose Lips Sink Ships. Meaghan recently released her second album of compositions, "Creature Comforts," as well as Forever House's debut "Eaves" and Loose Lips Sink Ships' self-titled debut.
Stephanie Griffin is an innovative composer and violist with an eclectic musical vision. Born in Canada and based in New York City, her musical adventures have taken her to Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Mexico and Mongolia. Stephanie founded the Momenta Quartet in 2004; and is a member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble and Continuum; principal violist of the Princeton Symphony; and viola faculty at Brooklyn College. She was a 2019 Composition Fellow at the Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and has received prestigious composition fellowships from the Jerome Foundation (2017) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2016), and was a 2014 fellow at Music Omi. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Samuel Rhodes, and has recorded for Tzadik, Innova, Naxos, Aeon, New World and Albany records.