Studio Z Blog Archive

Pat O'Keefe's New Music Harvest Concert Preview

9/25/2013

The first concert of Zeitgeist's season is happening this weekend at Studio Z, and I'm especially excited about these concerts because we will be performing a piece that I've wanted to bring to the Twin Cities for a very long time:Apprehensions for clarinet, voice, and piano by Shulamit Ran, based on a poem Sylvia Plath. I had the great fortune to work with Shulamit some years ago, and at her composer talk she played a recording of this piece. It blew me away instantly, and I've been wanting to perform it ever since. It is a brilliant work, full of drama and intensity. Joining me on the piece are two fabulous guests: pianist Solange Guillaume and soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, who are both doing an amazing job with the score. This is a performance not to be missed!

Shulamit's piece will be beautifully balanced by Nattsanger, also for soprano, clarinet, and piano by Minnesota's own Abbie Betinis. This is a gorgeous setting of some wonderfully rich and mysterious poems about night time and darkness by Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen.

Rounding out the program will be two exciting pieces for the percussive side of our group: Echoes Fantasy by Iowa composer Christopher Hopkins, and Music for Cajon and Electronics by computer wizard Cort Lippe.

The performances are this Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, Sept. 26-28 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 on Thursday and Friday, and $20 on Saturday for a special donors event, including a pre-concert talk by local poet John Minceszki.

It is an exciting and eclectic program that we are eager to bring to the public. I hope you can join us!

--Pat O'Keefe

Zeitgeist: New Music Harvest
Sept. 26-28, 7:30 p.m.
Studio Z: 275 E. Fourth Street, Suite 200, St. Paul

Introducing Julie Sweet, piano

9/22/2013

Zeitgeist is pleased to welcome pianist Julie Sweet to the stage with them this season, starting with the New Music Harvestconcerts next weekend. Julie will be stepping in for the 2013-14 season as Shannon Wettstein takes a leave of absence. Here's an interview with Julie so you can get to know her and say hello at the next Zeitgeist concert!

Tell us about your musical background before joining Zeitgeist.

I started with piano lessons at age 7 (I remember watching my dad, in total awe, playing the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis), participated in competitions, played for a female group called Hot Potatoes and church services. During my academic years and years after, I participated in a variety of musical projects, including solo and duo-piano recitals (presenting works by composers such as Debussy, Prokofiev, Barber, Ravel, Schönberg, Poulenc, Ewazen, and Jeffrey Brooks), tons of theater productions and vocal/instrumental recitals. After I moved to Minneapolis I slowly but surely connected with musicians to form a New Music ensemble; I'm currently keyboard specialist and coordinator of Skeleton Crew.

What interests you about new music? How did you become drawn to it?

My passion for new music transpired when I first heard Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 at the age of 13 on the radio (meanwhile my oldest sister was blasting Guns ‘n’ Roses in her bedroom). During my teens to early 20s, I surrounded myself with sounds of independent film scores, albums by Sonic Youth, Portishead, Crass, Bauhaus, Butthole Surfers, Miles Davis (especially Bitches Brew), Poster Children, many local bands of Mankato, MN and so much more. Then I curiously purchased a book called Avant-Garde since 1945. The book contained descriptions of the evolution of music since the mid-40s. I could not help myself but investigate further. My interest was rapidly evolving, so I took on a contemporary music course for a couple semesters. It was the state of my mind, being open and listening to what was really going on that drew me in. Texture, tone color, dynamics, rhythm, communication between instruments/voices, exploitation of noise, piano having no boundaries. The icing of the cake was meeting Minneapolis composer/mentor Jeffrey Brooks at a master class. we had a knack for connecting musically, and my artistic sense exploded learning about Bang on a Can, the Yale scene, and conceptual art. It was then I fully understood my role as a musician and composer.

What has it been like working with Zeitgeist so far?

Working with Zeitgeist has been an enriching experience! I am so grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with them. I really dig their dedication and enthusiasm and not to mention, the music. It’s equivalent to shoving fresh cut spinach down your throat... so nutritional. Always excited for the next rehearsal!

What do you think are going to be the highlights of this season?

Buckle up! The entire season will be a joyride for all involved, including the room next to Studio Z. Not to mention, come 2014, we will be presenting works by eminent composer, George Crumb.

Julie Sweet received her bachelor and master's degrees in Piano Performance at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Toy Wilson Blethen Fine Arts Award and Stein Music Scholarship. In addition, Julie studied composition and developed close ties with guest artist/composer Jeffrey Brooks from Minneapolis. Since 1998, she has been an educating enthusiast. Julie's versatility and insatiable passion allows students to take on pieces from any musical genre, bringing a sense of adventure and enjoyment to all their lessons.

Aside from teaching, she performs frequently as a new music soloist and chamber artist in the Twin Cities. Currently, Julie is coordinator and keyboard specialist for mixed chamber ensemble Skeleton Crew and recently joined forces with widely acclaimed new music ensemble Zeitgeist for their 2013-14 season. She continues to charm vocal and instrumental studios with her accompanying skills at various institutes. Julie also has composed numerous solo and small ensemble works for instruments such as toy piano, CP80 electro-acoustic grand piano, synthesizer, amplified cello/double bass and electric guitar.

Christopher Hopkins on "Echoes Fantasy"

9/16/2013

Composer Christopher Hopkins shares the inspiration behind his piece “Echoes Fantasy” for two pianos and two vibraphones. Zeitgeist will perform this work in their New Music Harvest concerts Sept. 26-28 alongside music by Shulamit Ran, Cort Lippe, and Abbie Betinis.

Echoes Fantasy is one of several recent compositions in which I integrate ideas from historical and modern musical forms. In these compositions I look to the deeper motivations and overarching poetic gestures found in historical forms, then reveal these in a composition that has modern formal and stylistic characteristics. The dialectic of the historical and modern identities are a matter of background, there is no use of quotation or style imitation. The aim is to create a synthetic whole.

In Echoes Fantasy I work with the genre of the solo fantasia as developed from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. In particular, I am inspired by pieces in a quasi-improvisational style, that revel in extroversions of elaboration, and that purposefully remain elusive in their generative logic. I transform this solo genre into a work for an ensemble, four keyboards of similar timbres, selected for their ability to blend and thereby to create the affect of a single complex instrument. I resist the creation of a true polyphonic texture, which would shift the historical model away from the solo to the ensemble fantasia, a type associated more with ingenious tactics of composed melodic imitation than with spontaneous improvisation. Still, while I use no true polyphonic forms, there are allusions to multiple voices through the use of overlapping echoic variations of motives, this more a matter of drama than of structure.

While a historical fantasia provides an overarching idea of form and style of gesture, modern metrical, rhythmic, and pitch-timbral forms provide the elemental level. Symmetries of prime numbers organize both the tempo and the metric structure. Rhythmic divisions and offsets are fluid and set against beats that shift in time value. The tonality is complex, with whole sonorities as focal points, these sonorities often being themselves so complex as to provide timbral rather than harmonic values. These elemental forms I consider not only to be well suited to the fantasia form but actually to give an element of fantasia to many modern compositions not so deliberately identified. In creating Echoes Fantasy I first adopted the idea of fantasia from historical models, but later found that the genre was already an integral aspect of my more modern musical experience.

-Christopher Hopkins

Christopher Hopkins is an American composer working in both experimental and traditional forms, with special interests respectively in electroacoustic music and dialectics of historical and contemporary forms. He is on the faculties of Music and Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State University, where in addition to creative work in music composition he conducts research coordinating sound synthesis with 3-D haptic virtual reality.

Zeitgeist: New Music Harvest
Sept. 26-28, 7:30 p.m.
Studio Z: 275 E. Fourth Street, Suite 200, St. Paul

STUDIO Z Blog
A PROJECT OF ZEITGEIST NEW MUSIC

Pat O'Keefe's New Music Harvest Concert Preview

Introducing Julie Sweet, piano

Christopher Hopkins on "Echoes Fantasy"

Studio Z Blog

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STUDIO Z BlogA PROJECT OF ZEITGEIST NEW MUSIC

Pat O'Keefe's New Music Harvest Concert Preview

Introducing Julie Sweet, piano

Christopher Hopkins on "Echoes Fantasy"

Studio Z Blog

Categories

Archives

STUDIO Z Blog
A PROJECT OF ZEITGEIST NEW MUSIC