20240203_FNM Electroacoustic Concert

THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents the

21st Biennial Festival of New Music Electroacoustic Concert (V) featuring works by

Clifton Callender • Sofia Matus Cancino Riley Ferretti • Melika Fitzhugh • Pierce Gradone Eren Gümrükçüoğlu • Wenbin Lyu • Du Yun

Saturday, February 3, 2024 1:00 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall

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 2working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.

PROGRAM Dinosaur Scar (1999)

Geoff Deibel, saxophone

Meditations on a Warming Planet (2023) I. Parched Earth II. Atmospheric River III. Habitat IV. In Memoriam

Du Yun

Clifton Callender

Heidi Louise Williams, piano

Keep the Balance on the Back Curve (2018)

Pierce Gradone

Jared Cummings, alto saxophone In an Artist’s Studio (2022)

Marcía Porter, soprano

Lattice Scattering (2018)

Riley Ferretti

Eren Gümrükçüoğlu Rachael Lawson, flute Oliver Schoonover, piano Keith Roberson, animations

Winter of Recrudescence (2020)

Concordia (2023)

If the Ocean Had Wings… (2022)

Celso Cano, guitar

Celso Cano, guitar

Quin Nardone, piano

Melika Fitzhugh

Sofia Matus Cancino

Wenbin Lyu

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Du Yun: Dinosaur Scar The dinosaurs were so physically large that it would take time for the rest of their nervous systems to figure it out if they’d received a killing blow. To me, that’s a beautiful idea — that sometimes you do things without knowing that you’re doing them and what impact it will have later.

I wrote it in my sophomore year of college. It still rings true.

Du Yun, born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theatre, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts, and noise. Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world.

Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone (libretto by Royce Vavrek), won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Classical Composition category for her work Air Glow. Her collaborative opera, Sweet Land with Raven Chacon (for opera company The Industry), was the 2021 Best New Opera by the North America Critics Association. Four of her feature studio albums were named The New Yorker’s Notable Recordings of the Year, in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, respectively. Her latest monodrama opera In Our Daughter’s Eyes was a notable performance of the year in 2022 by The New Yorker.

A community champion, Du Yun was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble; served as the Artistic Director of MATA Festival (2014-2018); conceived the Pan Asia Sounding Festival (National Sawdust); and founded FutureTradition, a global initiative that illuminates the provenance lineages of folk art and uses these structures to build crossregional collaborations from the ground up. Du Yun was named one of 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Foundation (2018), “Artist of the Year” by the Beijing Music Festival (2019). In 2022, she was granted a Creative Capital Award for an AR intergenerational Kun-opera project. Asia Society Hong Kong has honored her for her continued contribution in the performing arts field. Other notable awards include Guggenheim, American Academy Berlin Prize, Fromm Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The Carnegie Foundation and the Vilcek Prize in Music have honored her as an immigrant who have made lasting contributions to the American society. In 2023 Harvard University honored her as centennial medalist, the highest recognition for its alumni.

As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by the New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”

Du Yun is Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her concert music is published worldwide by G. Schirmer.

Clifton Callender: Meditations on a Warming Planet Meditations on a Warming Planet began as a part of Ann Duhamel’s “Prayers for a Feverish Planet” project, which features a collection of works for solo piano that respond in some manner to climate change. Inspired by the ambitiousness of the project and Ann’s moving performances, I decided to add three more movements to form the current set of four, each focusing on a different aspect of the crisis.

“Parched Earth” depicts the process of desertification, where fertile regions are gradually replaced by arid, unfertile areas. While the process can be natural, the spread of arid regions is increasingly caused (and exacerbated) by human activities.

“Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics” (noaa.gov). While these are naturally occuring phenomena, their size

and the resulting release of moisture as precipitation and potential for flooding are increasing due to climate change.

“Habitat” depicts the progressive loss of species and wildlife, again exacerbated by climate change, in a rather direct manner with a gradual reduction of musical activity leading to a single, isolated, and extremely thin note.

Over the decade beginning in 2012 over 1,700 environmental activists and land defenders have been murdered doing their work. “In Memoriam” is dedicated to the memory of these courageous individuals, focusing on their beautiful, impactful, and inspiring lives.

Clifton Callender is Professor of Composition at Florida State University, teaching composition, music theory, and music programming and computation, and has studied at the University of Chicago, Peabody Conservatory, Tulane University, and King’s College, London. His works, which often draw on mathematics, are recorded on the Capstone, New Ariel, and Navona labels. Recent commissions include Chain Reactions, for the 75th commemoration of Chicago Pile 1 (the first nuclear reactor), Canonic Offerings and Hungarian Jazz, for the Bridges Conference on the Arts and Mathematics, gegenschein, for Piotr Szewczyk’s Violin Futura project, and Reasons to Learne to Sing, for the 50th Anniversary of the College Music Society. A recent composer in residence at Copland House, his music has been recognized by and performed at Third Practice, the Spark Festival, the American Composers Orchestra, SEAMUS, Forecast Music, Composers Inc., Studio 300, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Festival of Electroacoustic Music “Primavera en La Habana,” NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the Northern Arizona University Centennial Composition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conferences, the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen and the ppIANISSIMO festival in Bulgaria. Recent works include a focus on the climate crisis, including a setting of Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s poem for the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit, Dear Matafele Peinam, and a new work for solo piano and electronics, Meditations on a Warming Planet. Also active in music theory, Callender has published in Science, Perspectives of New Music, Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Online, and Intégral and serves on the editorial boards of Perspectives of New Music and the Journal of Mathematics and Music, for which he served as Co-Editor-in-Chief.

Pierce Gradone: Keep the Balance on the Back Curve Keep the Balance on the Back Curve is an homage to the golden (or perhaps neon) age of saxophone solos in popular music: the late 70s and early 80s. The specific inspiration for this piece, though, is an undeservedly obscure track from the Walker Brothers’ 1978 album Nite Flights.

The title is is a lyrical fragment from the song Fat Mama Kick, which features an absolutely wild saxophone solo

by Alan Skidmore in which he seems to disregard the meter, harmony, and tempo of the song to create a wailing, impassioned scream. I wanted to capture this unbridled and precarious energy by employing Coltranesque sheets of sound with a constantly shifting sense of tempo and dynamic, asking the saxophonist to keep her balance, so to speak, amidst a musical high-wire act of microtones, percussive sounds, and lightning-fast arpeggios. Keep the Balance on the Back Curve was commissioned and premiered by Katherine Weintraub.

Pierce Gradone’s music echoes the strange brew of musical cultures that made up his childhood, from playing bluegrass in the hills of Appalachia, to sprinting the marathon of blinding-fast pentecostal shout music. Described as “gorgeous, expansive” (I Care If You Listen) and “engaging” (Chicago Tribune), his works explore the notion of music as an embodied art, emphasizing the somatic aesthetic experience by engaging with performative agency and virtuosity. His music been performed by Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, Imani Winds, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, Pacifica Quartet, Quince Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, and Switch Ensemble, among others. He has received commissions and awards from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, American Modern Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Luna Nova, Line Upon Line Percussion, Ursa Ensemble, and others. Based in Chicago, Pierce is a faculty member in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University.

Riley Ferretti: In an Artist’s Studio Christina Rossetti’s poem “In an Artist’s Studio” delves into the ideas of the objectification of women in art. This relationship of the woman’s manipulated image through the artist’s lens gave an interesting opportunity to explore how to attempt to replicate these ideas of manipulation in the voice. The voice can give much information to the listener. From the timbre to the diction to the range, we can determine many preconceived notions about someone’s background. The same idea can apply to the appearance of someone, and when this appearance is manipulated in favor of someone’s ideals, will we notice it? In this piece, it is apparent that we notice it, just like how we notice it in Rossetti’s poem.

Riley Ferretti is a Japanese-American composer and vocalist whose music explores the idea of human connection through choral, instrumental, and electronic music. Her inspiration spans numerous sources, from poetry to nature to personal experiences. She recently graduated from the University of Louisville with a B.M. in Music Composition, where she won the 2021-2022 KMEA Collegiate Composition Competition for her choral piece, The Oak, and received the Sixty-Second Annual Alumni Award. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Music Composition at the University of Florida, where she is concentrating on the connection between the voice and live electronics as well as the creation of unique textures in instrumental and vocal music.

Eren Gümrükçüoğlu: Lattice Scattering Atoms, or smaller particles, are naturally lined up in a crystal formation (lattice). Light waves are sent towards this lattice to find out how the light bounces off and scatters. By analyzing the patterns and shapes this scattering creates, one can learn about the geometry of the lattice, and thereby the structure of the matter in question. This is a procedure which is frequently done when engineers want to test a new material for an industrial design. If the wavelength of the light is larger than the space between the lattice points, there will be no interaction and the light wave will just pass through (silence). However, if the wavelength is just right, there will be reactionary oscillations, which will create “phonon scattering” (sound).

Eren Gümrükçüoğlu is a composer and improviser of acoustic/electroacoustic music and a music technologist. His research explores the dynamics of interaction between electronics and live instruments, generative systems, the utilization of non-western elements in concert music, jazz improvisation, and genre divisions with an emphasis on listening practices. He has collaborated with leading ensembles and performers including the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Semiosis Quartet, Conrad Tao, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Quince Ensemble, Deviant Septet, yMusic Ensemble, New York Polyphony, Quince Ensemble, Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, and Metropole Orkest among others. His music has been performed around the globe and featured in national and international conferences and festivals such as June in Buffalo, SICPP, ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, Taproot New Music, ROCC Conference, and SCI. In addition to his academic work, he composed, arranged, performed, and recorded music for film and TV in Hollywood and in Turkey. His studies and years of professional experience in the global music industry span film scoring, jazz composition and improvisation, live performance/touring, audio engineering, and all aspects of music production.

Gümrükçüoğlu writes music that dwells at the intersection of diverse musical styles as a consequence of his wide-ranging experiences in contemporary classical, jazz, and Turkish folk music—bringing together listening practices of disparate genres and cultures. Electronics and improvisation are integral to his compositional process both in terms of generating ideas and exploring live performance possibilities. He refrains from creating a crass amalgam of genres but rather incorporates the idiosyncrasies, contours, shapes, rhythms and pacings of different styles into his music. His compositions evoke the sense of spontaneity and elasticity that are central to musical development in jazz, while at the same time maintaining a rigorous approach to managing musical form and texture that is typical of much contemporary concert music.

His scores are published by Babel Scores, Paris.

Melika M. Fitzhugh: Winter of Recrudescence The piece, whose title is a nod to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, was written during the beginning of the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the winter of 2020/21. Most of 2020 was spent... existing. Staying home, seeing the same walls day in, day out. Somewhat, in the summer and early fall, one could step outside, perhaps have socially distanced picnics and whatnot; but then: winter arrived with a flurry of snow.

Infections and deaths resurged. A new strain made landfall. So: back to those same walls, those same activities, days pass but have lost meaning. Again.

The same story, retold, again and again.

A native of Stafford, Virginia, Melika M. Fitzhugh (A.B. Harvard-Radcliffe, M.M. Longy School of Music of Bard College) studied conducting and composition with Thomas G. Everett, Beverly Taylor, James Yannatos, Roger Marsh, Jeff Stadelman, and, most recently, John Howell Morrison. Mel’s compositions have been performed internationally by the PHACE Ensemble, Quarteto Larianna, the Brouwer Trio, Sarah Jeffery, Radcliffe Choral Society, Berit Strong, John Tyson, Miyuki Tsurutani, and Aldo Abreu. The artist, also a film and stage composer, is currently a member of world/early music ensembles Urban Myth, Balkan Fields, and the Quilisma Consort.

Sofía Matus Cancino: Concordia Concordia is a visual music piece for live performance focused on the interpolation of audiovisual textures.

Based on macrophotography of Arizona’s local foliage, the visual dimension uses machine learning tools to vary the original images and interpolate between them, while the aural portion processes the guitar’s timbre live, leading the narrative through the performer’s gestures, organically unifying the nature of both elements.

Sofía Matus Cancino is a composer and digital artist whose main interest is the research and production of visual music. Matus studied piano at the Conservatory of Music of the State of Mexico (2007-12). She graduated with honors from both the B.A. in Digital Art (UAEMEX, 2012-17) and the M.A. in Music Technology (UNAM, 2020-22). Her work has been presented in festivals and conferences such as SEAMUS, Visiones Sonoras, PRISMS Contemporary Music Festival, Music by Women Festival, NodoCCS, Sound:Frame, among others.

Sofía has received the Mykytyn Distinguished Composition Award (ASU-2022) the ‘PEJ’ 2020 (MX) and the ‘Creatividad Emergente’ Award from the Ministry of Culture of the State of Mexico. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate and a Teaching Assistant in the Music Theory and Composition Department at Arizona State University, where she holds a Presidential Graduate Scholarship.

Wenbin Lyu: If the Ocean had Wings...

If the Ocean had Wings... was written in June of 2022. The idea for this piece was inspired by a video game I recently played, “It Takes Two.” I was amazed by the game’s imaginative scenes, especially “Beneath the Ice”, which inspired me to write this piece. If the Ocean had Wings... takes the listener on a celestial, nonstop journey that combines the piano and electronics. The music explores the timbre of the piano’s different registers and many fast-paced textures that highlight the pianist’s virtuosity. If the Ocean had Wings... was written for the SPLICE Festival and virtuoso pianist Vicki Ray.

7

Wenbin Lyu is a Chinese composer and guitarist based in the United States, whose compositions blend contemporary Western techniques with ancient oriental culture. His work draws inspiration from nature, science, and video games.

Lyu has received fellowships from prestigious institutions and festivals such as the Tanglewood Music Center, Cabrillo Festival Composers Workshop, Blackbird Creative Lab, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. His works have been featured at numerous events, including the SCI, RED NOTE, TUTTI, Alba, Cabrillo, NMG, Tanglewood, ICMC, NYCEMF, EMM, IRCAM, SEAMUS, and SPLICE, and have been performed by acclaimed ensembles including the Beijing Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Tianjin Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Fifth House Ensemble, Del Sol Quartet, Icarus Quartet, Society for New Music, Capitol Quartet, Transient Canvas, and Hypercube.

8