“This program is supported in part by Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency – the National Endowment for the Arts.”
Five by Three
astrid hubbard flynn
I originally wrote Five by Three for saxophonist Ivan Cunningham in late 2020 and early 2021. It is heavily influenced by the compositions of Anna Webber and Eric Wubbels, which often add and subtract material from insistently repeated off-kilter rhythmic fragments, and by Roscoe Mitchell's style of saxophone playing, often replete with wide leaps and piercing articulations like car horns or alarms. The title, “Five by Three,” refers to the piece's structure – most of its pitch content is generated by three different transpositions of a five-note set.
Nothing Motorised
Treya Nash
Nothing Motorised is named after a joke that my mother once made about me and my sister not being able to drive a car. The piece in itself turns the instruments into one vehicle, exploiting and blending their different resonances. The material that the piece develops is sparse but leads to many different timbral combinations and incidental rhythms through beating. The pace of the piece is slow and exploratory, like a bicycle or carriage ride. Perhaps there are a few moments where the carriage rocks or the bicycle speeds down a hill, but generally the journey is slow, more for enjoyment than destination. Whatever mental or physical vehicle the listener decided to travel in, it is definitely nothing motorised.
Repetition Fable
Marguerite Brown
Repetition Fable explores economy of material within a repeating prime number (surface) beat structure. The structure expands over the course of the piece, while simultaneously accumulating manipulations, which may be perceived as a fictitious narrative. I worked closely with clarinetist Grace Talaski to unearth the minimal number of gestures used in Repetition Fable. Once the gestures had revealed themselves, we collaborated on excavating manipulations. Once the manipulations had revealed themselves, I transferred the sounds into notation.
REEL
Kyle Rivera
REEL is structurally based upon the process of film editing and time as a linear phenomenon. In film editing, raw footage and scenes are selected, combined, and arranged into a particular coherent sequence. Editing establishes a sense of action, story progression, and continuity that are not necessarily chronological. However, a movie is always consumed and perceived in linear real time. This concept is woven into the five scenes of REEL. There is no predetermined order for the scenes. Instead, they are presented in an order that is determined by the final editor - the performer. By removing a definitive order between scenes, the flow of time between scenes is also removed. As a result, time transforms from a series of sequential events into an experience of a simultaneous one.
Furthermore, REEL explores the parallel to human persona and identity. Similar to the film editing process, individuals reveal elements of their lives and personalities to others in a sequence that is determined by the nature of the particular relationship. As a result, everyone consciously and subconsciously sustains multiple slightly different personas in varying circumstances. Each persona is equally valid and real. The music of REEL uses a fixed set of motivic ideas and pitch classes. In each scene, the musical elements take on a new persona and identity. These identities unfold and progress in a manner uniquely determined by the setting of each scene. In doing so, they create multiple unique personas that are in essence different sides of one individual character. Although each persona is presented individually, they all exist simultaneously within a single person reflecting the experience of simultaneous time.
Vitrales
Pablo Rubino Lindner
One of the main ideas of Vitrales is about forming sound images and processes in which each member of the ensemble operates similarly to a tiny piece of glass inside a big a stained glass, that is, being a small, sometimes apparently meaningless part in itself, but absolutely necessary to the emergence of the whole picture. Some of these “pictures” are moving images, that are transformed or that travel inside the ensemble associated with a particular spatial behavior. This sort of device implies an almost constant succession of different reliefs that occur among the members of the ensemble. Because of this, a great degree of precision and amalgamation in all areas of playing (rhythm, dynamics, intonation, articulation, etc.) is required to render those fragile sound images visible.
Music of What Happens
Tim Feeney
“Tell us that,” said Fionn turning to Oisi’n, “The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge,” cried his merry son. “A good sound,” said Fionn. “And you, Oscar,” he asked, “what is to your mind the finest of music?”
“The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield,” cried the stout lad. “It is a good sound,” said Fionn. And the other champions told their delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a moved one.
“They are good sounds all,” said Fionn. “Tell us, chief,” one ventured, “what you think?” “The music of what happens,” said great Fionn, “that is the finest music in the world.” Tales of the Boyhood of Fionn, Irish traditional.
For a few years now, when on the road I’ve kept a journal that I fill with short ideas for pieces. Occasionally they come together as complete, crystal-clear entities that I only have to hand to a neighbor in order to hear and see miracles; more often they are fragmented, disjointed, or maddeningly unfinished, hinting at small possibilities for making sounds, for layering them in dialogue with one another, or gesturing towards a vague poetry suggestive but incomplete.
Music of what happens became a folio of these text pieces, and is an attempt to connect the agency so important to our improvising ethic to our memories and to older musics, collaging abstract sounds with fragments of folk music including some sean nós songs of western Ireland. It allows for an explicitly nostalgic source to be renewed and repatterned, in a way that feels viscerally important at a time when nostalgia seems to be a hiding place from an otherwise increasingly fragmented and fearful present.
Meet the Composers
astrid hubbard flynn
astrid hubbard flynn (b. 1999, they/them) is an autistic, nonbinary, white settler descended from Irish ancestors, living on Dakota land in so-called Saint Paul, Minnesota. They make music using flute, voice, electronics, staff notation, text, graphics, and improvisation. Throughout their work and life, astrid is interested in healing, facilitating collaborations, and inventing alternative worlds. In 2022, astrid received a B.A. in Music from Brown University, where they studied composition with Wang Lu, Kristina Warren, Shawn Jaeger and Eric Nathan. Outside Brown, they have also studied with Libby Larsen, Abbie Betinis and Edie Hill. As a music educator, astrid has designed and facilitated discussion sections on popular music, and co-organized concerts of student music at Brown. Their work has been performed by Zeitgeist, YarnWire and the Kukuruz Quartet, and presented by IntCE's Ensemble Evolution, Fresh Squeezed Opera, zFestival, the Source Song Festival, and the Atlantic Music Festival.
Treya Nash
Treya Nash is a composer and creative coder based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is currently completing her PhD at Louisiana State University with Mara Gibson, Jesse Allison, and Steven David Beck. She has previously studied with Paul Koonce, Mark Engebretson, and Alejandro Rutty. She previously worked as Program Director for Charlotte New Music. She currently teaches courses in composition and coding. Treya’s work has been performed by ensembles such as Hypercube, Homegrown New Music Ensemble, Quarteto L’Arriana, Camerata Temporalis, PHACE, and more. Her work has been performed internationally, in the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Brazil, and Argentina. Treya’s areas of focus include chamber music, interactive web-based music, and electronic opera.
Marguerite Brown
Marguerite Brown (b.1990) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who explores new mediums, forms, and performance practices with an emphasis on unorthodox approaches to tuning and temperament. In her compositions, algorithms often provide a framework for indeterminate parameters to unfold, where performer control and composer control play an equal role in realizing the vision.
Marguerite received first place in the 6th International Microtonal Guitar Competition (composition category) with her piece Solo (Daisy) which she performed on a guitar refretted in an original 11-limit just intonation tuning system. Her other work for refretted guitars was recently published in the microtonal journal Edition Zalzal, as well as presented at the 2021 21st Century Guitar Conference and the 2021 Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival. Marguerite was also recently awarded the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Prize for her string quartet in just intonation titled chroai: tetrachords which was performed in New York City by Mivos Quartet in November 2022.
Marguerite was awarded a Darmasiswa Scholarship from 2013 – 2014 to study Central Javanese gamelan at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Surakarta. She has been a member of multiple gamelan ensembles since 2011, playing traditional and contemporary music. She is currently working on a new composition for gamelan instruments commissioned by Gamelan Pacifica for a recording titled WITHIN to be released in 2023.
Marguerite holds a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts (2013), a MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2019), and is currently a PhD student in music composition at the University of California, San Diego.
Kyle Rivera
The music of American composer Kyle Rivera (b. 1996) is dynamic, intriguing, and energetic. Through the use of bold gestures and nuanced effect, he creates musical narratives that are vibrant and compelling. Kyle often draws upon his Caribbean heritage and the diverse cultural environment he grew up to craft the soundscapes of his music. He continually seeks out a wide variety of sonorities in order to explore and convey the human experience.
Kyle is a Connecticut-based composer currently studying at the Yale School of Music towards a Masters in Music Composition. He earned a BM in Music Composition and Viola Performance from the University of Houston with a Minor in Kinesiology. His principal teachers for composition were Katie Balch, Dr. Rob Smith, and David Ludwig. He has also studied composition with Jimmy Lopez, Reiko Fueting, Martin Bresnick, Pierre Jalbert, Christopher Theofanidis, Stephen Hartke, and Don Crockett. Kyle has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival where he received the Druckman Prize. He also attended the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival, Fresh Inc Music Festival, and the Atlantic Music Festival.
As a composer, his music has been performed across the United States and internationally in Russia, the UK, and Thailand. Past collaborations include the Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Musiqa Houston, AURA Contemporary Ensemble, KINETIC Ensemble, Houston Grand Opera Co., Fifth House Ensemble, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Opus Illuminate, 10th Wave Chamber Music Collective, the Chelsea Music Festival, and Bent Frequency. Future projects collaborations with the Albany Symphony, Yale Percussion Group, and a commission from the Aspen Music Festival.
Pablo Rubino Lindner
Pablo Rubino Lindner studied Composition at La Plata National University, where Mariano Etkin was his main teacher. He is a professional violinist, currently Chief of Second Violins of the Argentinean Theater Permanent Orchestra. He graduated from the Music Conservatory of Bahía Blanca as a Violin Technician.
His music has been played by some of the most renowned performers of today, like, among others, Quatuor Diotima, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Saint Petersburg Conservatory Orchestra, Quartetto Maurice, Quartetto Indaco, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, Ben Roild-Ward, Lucas Ounissi, Alina Traine.
He won the prestigious Toru Takemitsu Composition Award (1st prize – 2019), the Juan Carlos Paz Composition Prize, got to the finals in the Bruno Maderna Composition Competition, and received honorable mentions in many competitions, like the First National Composition Competition for Orchestra, the SecondIse-Shima International Composition Competition, the Musique sans frontiers Composition Competition and others.
He is the violinist and producer of the Ensamble NEO, an ensemble advocated to the contemporary repertoire with a focus on the production of Argentinean and Latin American composers. He has been selected to participate in many festivals, being the most recent ones: Altanticx Composition Course (Buenos Aires-New York), Barcelona Modern International Composition Course (online due to COVID-19), VII St. Petersburg International New Music Festival (online due to COVID-19), Ticino Musica Festival, 4th International Young Composers Academy (Lugano, Switzerland), IMPULS Academy (Graz, Austria).
He is currently Assistant Professor of Contemporary Repertoire at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the National University of La Plata, and he teaches orchestral repertoire in the Argentinean Theater Orchestra Academy.
He has received scholarships from Mozarteum Argentino (Mosoteguy scolarship), Innopraktika and Russian Seasons School, Fundación Williams, reMusik.org and the Ticino Muscia Academy. Since 2019 his music is published by Babel Scores.
Tim Feeney
Tim Feeney performs, composes, and improvises sounds and images in and for forests and waterfronts, investigating unstable sound and duration. He appears in bookstores and basements with Sarah Hennies and Greg Stuart as the trio Meridian; in galleries and libraries with Vic Rawlings and Annie Lewandowski; in living rooms and warehouses with Clay Chaplin and Davy Sumner; in tunnels and train stops with Cody Putman and Cassia Streb as the trio Tasting Menu; in colleges and museums with Andrew Raffo Dewar, Holland Hopson, and Jane Cassidy; on recordings for Intakt, Black Truffle, Rhizome.s, Caduc, Full Spectrum, Sedimental, and Marginal Frequency; and in the occasional festival or concert hall with Anthony Braxton and Ingrid Laubrock.
He is a faculty member in percussion, improvisation, composition, and experimental sound practices at the California Institute of the Arts.
Founded in 2003, Atlanta-based Bent Frequency brings the avant-garde to life through adventurous and socially conscious programming, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and community engagement. One of BF’s primary goals is championing the work of historically underrepresented composers - music by women, composers of color, and LGBTQIA+. Hailed as “one of the brightest new music ensembles on the scene today” by Gramophone magazine, BF engages an eclectic mix of the most adventurous and impassioned players.
BF has partnered with internationally acclaimed ensembles, dance groups, and visual artists in creating unique productions ranging from traditional concerts to fully staged operatic works, to concerts on the ATL streetcar, to a band of 111 bicycle-mounted, community performers. BF’s programming, educational outreach, and community events aim to be inclusive of the diverse and dynamic communities they are a part of.
BF is ensemble in residence at Georgia State University and run by Co-Artistic Directors Jan Berry Baker and Stuart Gerber.
Credits:
Created with images by Andrey_A - "Wave band abstract background surface" • Sergey Kohl - "A fragment of the engine" • sapol - "Minimal geometric white light background abstract design. vector EPS10." • NeoLeo - "3d render, abstract white geometric background, minimal flat lay, twisted deck of square blank cards with rounded corners" • george - "Video Editing" • Stillfx - "Blue glass textured background" • Ezume Images - "Neon Soundwave Notes"