20240202_FNM Chamber Concert IIa

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents the

21st Biennial Festival of New Music Chamber Concert (IIa) featuring works by

Evan O’Dell Leah Reid Meadow Bridgham Aaron Spotts

Friday, February 2, 2024 10:10 a.m. | Opperman Music Hall

PROGRAM Perseverate (2023)

Jonah Zimmerman and Matt Hightower, euphonium Mike Anderson and Chris Bloom, tuba

Reverie (2019-2020)

Evan O’Dell

Leah Reid

Seventeen Years (2021)

Minyoung Rho, piano

City Electric (2018) I. Busy Intersection, Signals Dark II. Light Drowns the Night Sky III. Flicker and Surge

Meadow Bridgham

Aaron Spotts

Connor Croasmun and Jariel Isaac Santiago-Ruperto, clarinet Brad Pilcher, bass clarinet

To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All… Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.

Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.

Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Evan O’Dell: Perseverate The word “perseverate” describes the fixation upon repetition of a thought or action past the initial stimulus that caused it. This behavior is quite common in individuals with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The piece Perseverate represents this concept musically utilizing post-serial techniques to follow the same gesture as it takes a variety of shapes and positions. As the piece progresses the idea grows in both intensity and instability until it can no longer support itself, at which point it fades into nothingness. While the piece isn’t inspired by any specific occurrence, it is deeply personal in its message pertaining to the struggles around mental health both within ourselves and those we love.

Evan O’Dell is a contemporary composer from Atlanta, Georgia. His musical style can be best described as eclectic, synthesizing elements of 20th and 21st century western contemporary compositions with jazz, contemporary hip hop, and video game scores.

Above all else, O’Dell believes in the possibility for contemporary music to be made accessible to a mainstream audience. When looking for inspiration, his favorite artists include George Crumb, Natasha Barrett, Kendrick Lamar, and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Throughout his career O’Dell has had the opportunity to work with several premiere contemporary ensembles such as the JACK Quartet and the wind trio Bantam Winds who premiered O’Dell’s work An Abandoned Mall last October. Additionally, O’Dell was selected as one of the featured composers at the 2023 Penn State New Music Festival. Upon Graduating with a bachelor’s degree in music composition from Columbus State University, he plans to pursue a master’s in composition in Europe.

Leah Reid: Reverie Reverie is an acousmatic composition that leads the listener through an immersive fantasy centered around deconstructed music boxes. The work comprises 8 sections that alternate between explorations of the music boxes’ gears and chimes. In the work, the music boxes’ sounds are pulled apart, exaggerated, expanded, and combined with other sounds whose timbres and textures are reminiscent of the original. As the piece unfolds, the timbres increase in spectral and textural density, and the associations become more and more fantastical. Gears are transformed into zippers, coins, chainsaws, motorcycles, and fireworks, and the chimes morph into rainstorms, all sizes of bells, pianos, and more.

Reverie won 1st prizes in the KLANG! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition and Musicworks’ Electronic Music Competition, Sound of the Year’s Composed with Sound Award, and 2nd Prizes in the Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition and the International Destellos Competition.

Leah Reid is a composer, sound artist, researcher, and educator, whose works range from opera, chamber, and vocal music, to acousmatic, electroacoustic works, and interactive sound installations. Her primary research interests involve the perception, modeling, and compositional applications of timbre.

Winner of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, Reid has also won the American Prize in Composition, first prize in the KLANG! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition, first prize in Musicworks’ Electronic Music Competition, Sound of the Year’s Composed with Sound Award, the International Alliance for Women in Music’s Pauline Oliveros Award, and second prizes in the Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition and the International Destellos Competition.

Reid received the D.M.A. and M.A. in music composition from Stanford University and the B.Mus from McGill University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia. www.leahreid.com

Meadow Bridgham: Seventeen Years Seventeen Years started as an idea for a piano concerto based on the lifecycle of a cicada. The earliest sketches were inspired by Copland’s Piano Fantasy, a work I have long admired for its ingenuity in form and harmony, and Adès’s first piano concerto, In Seven Days, which radically changed how I conceptualized my compositions. I had intended to perform the concerto as part of the annual new music orchestra concert at the University of Michigan, where I earned my master’s. This did not work out, unfortunately. Years later, I was commissioned by my college professor Richard Ratliff to write him a fantasy, and it just so happened that the seventeen-year cicada brood X was due for a reappearance.

Meadow Bridgham writes acoustic concert music that imbues traditional form and harmony with contemporary techniques, often employing pop-inspired, improvisational, and noise-based characteristics. They have worked with important composers such as William Bolcom, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larsen, Bright Sheng, and Joan Tower. Their music has been performed as part of the American Music Festival, the New York Festival of Song, the Westben Composer-Performer Residency, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, among others. Meadow recently earned their Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music.

Aaron Spotts: City Electric City Electric drew much of its inspiration from two sources. First, at the outset of writing the piece, I spent a good portion of time experimenting with clarinet gestures in my mind. My favorite ideas formed what was essentially a “bucket list” of material that would be included in the piece. These ideas became the seeds for the main material of the composition. The second influence came from advice my composition teacher once gave me: that I not rely so heavily on my typical, prefabricated formal structures, but be more free and dynamic with the overall shaping of my music.

Aaron Spotts (b. 1980) is a composer and educator living in Tallahassee, Florida, creating contemporary classical, electroacoustic, improvisatory, film, and popular music. He holds the doctorate in music composition from Florida State University (FSU), having studied with Ladislav Kubik, Clifton Callender and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Recent highlights include: His orchestral work, Sketch Book, being chosen as a finalist for both the Tampa Bay Symphony’s 3rd Annual Call for Scores Competition and the Chelsea Symphony’s Composition Competition; Inter-being selected for the Chicago Ensemble’s “Discover America IX” competition; Life for Life receiving honorable mention in the 2019-2020 American Prize orchestra division; a commission from The Ambassador Trio being premiered in Vancouver, B.C.; and the performance of his electro-acoustic string quartet, The Light Through the Trees, in Washington, DC. For more info, please visit www.aaronspottsmusic.com.