Events for Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Music of Cage and Harrison

Event Time

4:00 pm

A special festival finale featuring Javanese gamelan.

Click names for performer biographies.

Performers

• Gamelan Pacifica
• Originally formed in 1980, Gamelan Pacifica was among the innovators in developing the resources to create and perform gamelan music in the United States. Gamelan Pacifica has performed extensively in the Pacific Northwest as well as in Canada and other parts of the United States. It is an active and adventurous ensemble, with a reputation for creating diverse productions merging traditional and contemporary musical forms with dance, theater, puppetry, and visual media. Visiting artists have included some of the most notable artists of Indonesia. Gamelan Pacifica has been invited as guest performer at the Smithsonian Institute’s Festival of Indonesia, New Music Across America Festival, Vancouver New Music Society, On the Boards, Walker Art Center, Performing Arts Chicago, and many others. Gamelan Pacifica has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Arts International. Gamelan Pacifica is currently supported in part by sustaining funds from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4Culture. Gamelan Pacifica, a professional ensemble-in-residence at Cornish College of the Arts, is directed by Professor Jarrad Powell.
• Cynthia Dillard
• Cynthia Dillard is a songwriter and performing artist living in Seattle. She writes music for the Golden Tree Story, and has recently enjoyed collaborating with local musicians Gwen Bayly and Kiera Clarke, as well as Charlottesville painter Courtney Grant.
• Michelle Doiron
• Michelle Doiron has been studying and performing Central Javanese gamelan since 1995. In 1998 she graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a BM (emphasis in piano performance) and has been teaching private piano lessons since that time. She is also adjunct faculty member at Seattle Pacific University where she teaches the Gamelan Ensemble class.
• Stephen Fandrich
• Stephen Fandrich, pianist, composer, improvisor, vocalist, teacher, and overtone-singer graduated from Cornish College of the Arts in 2000. He founded the Seattle Harmonic Voices, an active overtone-choir performing in the Seattle area since 1999.
• Ted Gill
• Ted Gill studied voice and piano in his formative years and sang with miscellaneous choral groups. In 1989 he heard his first live gamelan and was totally captivated by the instrument. He has performed with Gamelan Pacifica for the last seven years.
• Evan Gilman
• Evan Gilman is a native Seattleite who has performed with various groups in Seattle and Indonesia. Under the tutelage of I Wayan Sinti, he helped build a new type of Balinese gamelan called Siwa Nada, which now resides at the University of Washington. While living in Bali for a year and studying various types of Balinese gamelan, he also worked to further his photographic and solo guitar compositions.
• Booth Haley
• Booth Haley first got a taste of gamelan at Wesleyan University and was inspired, chiefly by the smiling serenity of Professor Sumarsam, to go to Java for a year as a Darmasiswa scholarship student. There he learned that gamelan gets more and more complex the more one learns about it and that, while the Javanese smile is easy, true serenity is also not easy to master.
• Jessika Kenney
• Jessika Kenney, is a vocalist and composer living on Vashon Island. She performs with Gamelan Pacifica and with the Hossein Omoumi Ensemble, and teaches voice at Cornish College of the Arts. Her work demonstrates a love both for the depth of traditional sources and for experimental methods, and has brought her to many places including Indonesia, Iceland, and Italy. Kenney has studied with many great singers including Jay Clayton at Cornish (1994–1997) and Nyi Supadmi of Central Java (1998–2000). Since 2004, she has immersed herself in the art of Classical Persian music with Ostad Hossein Omoumi. In 2007, Kenney completed her degree at Cornish, while studying Persian vocal music and theory (avaz and radif) and developing her compositions for gamelan.
  
  Kenney has performed works by composers as varied as Tadao Sawai, John Cage, Hans Eisler, Lou Harrison, Michael Maier, Eyvind Kang, Sutrisno Hartono, Eve Beglarian, Morteza Khan Neydavoud, Raz Mesinai, and Jarrad Powell. Her recording credits include Aestuarium (2006) and Athlantis (2007) with Eyvind Kang, the vocal music of Jarrad Powell in The Stonehouse Songs (2007), and Voices of Spring (Ava-ye Bahar) (2008) with Hossein Omoumi.
• Deena Manis
• Deena Manis began playing with Gamelan Pacifica in 2002, weaving her strengths as a visual and performance artist with her percussive and vocal roots and deep love of music. Striking the meditative tones of the Javanese gamelan has become a passion and intentional practice, one imbued with expression and a humbleness to open to a greater tonality of spirit and tradition.
• Peter Joon Park
• Peter Joon Park is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. His main areas of interest include Korean traditional music, the Korean diaspora, and Asian-American identities. He has performed gamelan music for several years and was the director of the gamelan ensemble at Pacific Lutheran University in 2004–2005.
• Stephen Parris
• Stephen Parris is a composer/performer from the Seattle area. He currently performs with Gamelan Pacifica and various ensembles originating from the Monktail Creative Music Concern.
• Jesse Snyder
• Jesse Snyder began studying Javanese gamelan music in 1988 as a music major at Wesleyan University, where he also studied Carnatic and Hindustani vocal music. Jesse first traveled to Solo, in Central Java, in 1997; he returned in 1999 for a yearlong Dharmasiswa scholarship to study gamelan music. During that year he had the privilege to study with many of the leading exponents of the Solonese tradition, including both faculty from Sekolah Tinggih Seni Indonesia (Indonesian College of the Arts) and freelance musicians.
• Gamelan Pacifica Chorus
• Graham Banfield, Trevor Eichhorn, William Falconer, Sean Glenn, Roger Nelson, William Ransom, Barry Snyder, Ben Sobel, Peter Stevens
• Jarrad Powell, director
• Jarrad Powell, Artistic Director, is a composer, performer, teacher, and Drums Along the Pacific festival curator,. His compositions have been performed and broadcast internationally and include pieces for voice, gamelan, and various Western and non-Western instruments; electroacoustic music; and music for theater, dance, and experimental film. His work also includes numerous cross-cultural collaborations, particularly with Indonesian artists, including the innovative theater pieces Visible Religion and Kali. He is Music Director and composer for Scott/Powell Performance, a contemporary dance company formed in 1994 with noted choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott. Their most recent piece, Geography, was a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project. Recent projects also include music for three innovative short films of Robert Campbell, Tilt, Eidolon and Delta of C16H22O4. Powell’s work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Performing Arts Chicago, On the Boards, Music in Motion, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents, and the National Performance Network. He has received grants and awards from the NEA, Arts International, Rockefeller Foundation, Paul Allen Family Foundation, 4Culture/King County, The Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs/Seattle, Artist Trust Foundation, and Creative Capital Foundation. His most recent recordings, Natural Selection and Stonehouse Songs, are available from Present Sounds Recordings. He is currently Professor in the Music Department at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
• Adrienne Varner, piano
• Adrienne Varner, piano, lives in Seattle and is a devoted performer of contemporary and experimental solo and chamber works. Highlights of the past year included a solo recital of music by Lou Harrison, John Cage, Jarrad Powell, and Toru Takemitsu; performances of chamber music by Frank Oteri and improvised music by Seattle composer Gust Burns; and recordings of solo and chamber music by both Jarrad Powell and Eyvind Kang. Varner also studies and performs Javanese gamelan music as a member of Gamelan Pacifica, with whom she gave the Northwest premiere of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan in February 2008. Her love for Indonesian music led her to study gamelan in Java during the summer of 2006. A 2007 graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Varner studied piano with Dr. Peter Mack and Oksana Ezhokina and holds a bachelor of music in piano performance.
• Paris Hurley, violin
• Paris Hurley, violin, has been performing with a multitude of orchestras, chamber ensembles, and bands for the last twenty years. Her wide variety of experience extends from her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of fifteen to her mastery of new music and love of experimentation, making her one of the most sought-after violinists of the Pacific Northwest. While finishing her degree at Cornish College of the Arts, Hurley became a core member of the hyperexperimental performance group Degenerate Art Ensemble, creating multimedia works that ranged from explosive rock club sets to large-scale dance/theater productions, notably performing at The Moore Theatre, the REDCAT in L.A., and throughout Germany.
  
  Hurley has written, recorded, and performed with an array of local groups including Circus Contraption, Seattle Pianist Collective, Implied Violence, Reptet, The Dead Science, Aqueduct, Parenthetical Girls, The Bike Bin Project, Figeater, Led to Sea, Ribbons, The Water Tower Project, Trespassers William, Johanna Kunin, and Eric Miller. This year, she looks forward to two European tours and a record release with Balkan rock legends Kultur Shock, followed by the premiere of her first evening-length multimedia work, Bridging Wounds.
• John Duykers, tenor
• John Duykers, tenor, made his professional operatic debut with Seattle Opera in 1966. Since then he has appeared with many of the leading opera companies of the world including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Netherlands Opera, the Grand Theatre of Geneva, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Frankfurt Opera, Opera de Marseille, Canadian Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Opera, San Diego Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
  
  He is well known for his performances of contemporary music, having sung in 96 contemporary operas including 61 world premieres. Among these, in 1987 he created the role of Mao Tse Tung in John Adams’ Nixon in China, premiered with Houston Grand Opera, and has performed it throughout the world. Nixon in China won an Emmy for the PBS “Great Performances” telecast, and a Grammy for the Nonesuch recording.
  
  Philip Glass has written three roles for Duykers, including The Visitor (In the Penal Colony) and the Older Galileo in Galileo Galilei (by Philip Glass and Mary Zimmerman) at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and on the Next Wave Series at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Duykers recently performed The Narrator in the premiere of Lou Harrison’s Young Caesar with the Ensemble Paralelle at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
  
  Independently produced new works include The Tyrant by Paul Dresher and Jim Lewis, with the Seattle Chamber Players, the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, and Cleveland Opera, and Mordake, a new solo work written for Duykers by Erling Wold, which premiered in 2008 at the San Francisco International Arts Festival.
  
  Recordings include Chairman Mao in John Adams’ Nixon in China, Callin’ Home Coyote by Janice Giteck, Perilous Chapel and Rapunzel by Lou Harrison, and several works by Paul Dresher.