Weird Premieres

The first half of 2014 is proving to be particularly ripe with several "out of the ordinary" premieres. It started with plans, preparations, and all the necessary fixin's for a concert in February that was the premiere of the 2 flutes, 4 marimbas, 2 glockenspiels, and narrator version of Debussy's Bilitis, as well as Dexter Morrill's Fantasy for piccolo and percussion ensemble. The Iowa State University Percussion Ensemble was all poised to perform with the fabulous flutists, Scott Metlicka and Sonja Giles and then school was actually canceled! In a place where life doesn't skip a beat for 12 inches, even 16 inches of snow, we for real had a blizzard that closed school and canceled that concert. With schedules wedged together throughout the spring no future date could be set to make that concert happen, however some little bits of ideas have been forming to program the Debussy at the first Heartland Marimba Festival & Workshop this summer at ISU with 2 vibraphones, 4 marimbas, 2 glockenspiels, and narrator. In advance of the careless blizzard, Scott and I did get to premiere my composition Morning of Life for flute and marimba at other concerts in Iowa.

March and April are the "money" months, so to speak. On a 4,000 mile (that's 6,500+ kilometers) trip to Minot, ND and Edmonton and Regina, Canada I performed (so not actually a premiere) Neil Thornock's Illumination for solo chimes. Neil is the composer that has written me a carillon and percussion ensemble piece and a dulcimer solo. Some may not be surprised that he had composed a chime solo some years back, but I was extremely excited to be able to program a chime solo! I have just remembered that I neglected to mention Bjorn Berkhout's solo dulcimer work Torque that I premiered in January at ISU, which I also performed three times on the Canada tour. This "Great Tour of the Upper Prairie-lands" came about because of a fortunate rekindling of a friendship on Facebook. Angela Schroeder and I were at Northwestern University doing our Master's degrees together back in 2003 and she invited me to perform the Canadian premiere of Andrew Ardizzoia's Glass House Concerto for percussion soloist and wind ensemble with her ensemble at the University of Alberta-Edmonton.

Next up is the premiere of Steven Simpson's Images of Africa for dulcimer and six percussionists with the University of Iowa Percussion Ensemble, Daniel Moore, director. The very next day is the premiere of Igor Iachimciuc's Rustic Sketches for Marimba and Contrabass Ensemble with the Chicago Bass Ensemble (Jacque Harper, director) and Leslie B. Dunner conducting. Both of these compositions I hope to perform many more times, and the process with the composers, directors, and ensembles has been added to the top of the list of great collaborations!

So far we have just covered January through March. April will bring the premieres of solo marimba works by Igor Iachimciuc and Neil Thornock. Respectively, Through flowers (Iachimciuc) and Fanfares and Quantasy (Thornock) will be premiered at the Wyoming Day of Percussion at Casper College and the University of Utah.

Taking some time to write this timeline of events puts many things in perspective. These projects and collaborations are something to be forever cherished and considered in the class of living dreams. The fortune contained in these experiences is too great to funnel into words, but I hope that many artists will be inspired to tackle the lot of their creative fancies and bring together more unheard-of collaborations.

A big thank you to Bjorn Berkhout, Scott Metlicka, Sonja, Giles, Neil Thornock, Angela Schroeder, Andrew Ardizzoia, Dexter Morrill, Jacque Harper, Chicago Bass Ensemble, Leslie B. Dunner, Daniel Moore, the University of Iowa Percussion Ensemble, Steven Simpson, and Igor Iachimciuc!

Westward bound. Thoughts about pertinent things. New Horizons (Projects).

I was going to start this post differently, but then I had a hankering for some pizza (travel food) and had an experience I wanted to share. I have stopped in Ogallala, NE (somewhere way out 80) on my way west to San Diego and found a Valentino's Pizza for dinner. Normally this kind of joint would not be on my short list for places to have dinner but I am in the middle of NE and I wanted pizza. I walked into the Take Out door and voila I was in the kitchen! I mean, there was a "half-door" between me and the dishwashing station, but I didn't notice it at first, just saw piles of dirty dishes and sweaty workers. "Hi, I would like some pizza to go." "Oh, ok, here's a box and just come through here to the buffet." The dining room had the appropriate dim lighting and putrid stench, and people intently tasting every pizza. So, for $11+ I got my 6 small slices, and then said, "Oh, I guess I should have gotten the buffet for $10 then...?" She said, "Yep."

I'm west bound for the eventual destination of San Diego. Today I stopped in Ogallala, NE and tomorrow I will visit Arches National Park and stay in Moab, UT. Finally reaching Cedar City, UT to visit percussionist Lynn Vartan. Lynn and I are getting started on our new Solstice repertoire for our first Chicago season in December. For a couple days we will dig into new duo percussion music that will be performed at Links Hall in Chicago and then in LA in April 2014. Lynn and I believe that as a duo we have what every musician searches for in a collaborating chamber setting, the complete connection. We played together on a few concerts in Iowa last February, you can read about that tour in my last blog post, and we were hooked! It was kismet immediately. If you are a chamber musician and have performed with many other musicians you know what I mean. It is not everyday that a musician can find these collaborators and Lynn and I both have worked with several collaborators.

Many, many of the artists we have both collaborated with have been cherished and worthwhile experiences, and we will likely collaborate with them again, we love collaborating and projects! But when you find that certain artist that "clicks" in many ways other than just their playing, it's rare. Being in a new chamber group also requires commitment to booking, promotion, advertising, commissioning, funding, scheduling, etc. And most of the time those are the areas that one person ends up doing all themselves and most of the time that is a recipe for the groups eventual disbandment.

From Cedar City I will travel to San Diego to see my boyfriend, Korey, and play timpani in the orchestra for his opera summer program, Opera Neo; and see my percussion friend, Cory; my sister, Sarah will also visit; and I will likely meet with some other composers and artists during the month long stay.

Coming up in September is a chance to hear my newest composition for percussion duo, Maneuveresque. Written for Matthew Andreini and Gabor Palotas for their Iowa/Hungary Percussion Project. They commissioned 6 composers; 3 Iowan and 3 Hungarian, to write new duos. They premiered the duos in Hungary (dates and places on my website) in June and July with success and on September 4 they will perform their program at Iowa State University! This project is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit in the percussion world and I was super happy to be asked to write a new piece for it. They have raised money through crowd-funding, as well as from concert fees. And after just meeting with Matt coming off of his 2 month stint in Hungary he said the reaction to the music was extremely pleasing and the most remarkable thing was that the 6 pieces have 6 distinct, individual characters. Keep and eye out for recordings and published scores.

In later September I will be performing 2 concerts, one at ISU and another at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The ISU concert will feature some music on cimbalom with Boro Martinec and Mei-Hsuan Huang, violin and piano colleagues respectively at ISU. Also, I will premiere a new marimba work by Jeffrey Holmes, Nereus Sonata. Likely one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, marimba solos I've seen. It's a jam packed solo of cascading figures, active, big and wide harmonies, and my favorite part, a slithering and off-kilter but sexy fugue. If all goes as planned (with practicing in the sunny town of San Diego) I will also meet with the composer while in CA, as he lives in LA. The ISU concert on September 18 will be live webcast so you can see the world premiere live in real-time here: http://www.music.iastate.edu/feeds/recital/.

Back on the road! Ogallala, NE

A Partial Summation of Spring 2013...

Below you will find a very partial summation of some of the new professional experiences and exquisite collaborations I had during the Winter/Spring semester of 2013. This time of this year was amazingly productive, now that I can take a step back and reflect, with finishing a 200-page dissertation and graduating with a DM from Northwestern University and accomplishing what you will read below!

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February, 2013

Matthew Coley visited the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA last February for a week long residency to perform Andrew Ardizzoia's "Glass House Concerto" with the wind ensemble conducted by Gerard Morris. Andrew and Matthew began collaborating on GHC in 2010, and did a partial premiere with Iowa State University's Wind Ensemble, Michael Golemo, conductor in April of 2012. The full premiere of four movements with two solo stone xylophone interludes, almost totally 40 minutes of music, was done with the UPS Wind Ensemble, and can be watched on YouTube by searching the title and composer or soloist. While in Tacoma Matthew and Andrew also held a variety of master classes and lectures. Matthew gave a master class to percussion students and Andrew worked with conducting and composition students. Together they gave lectures in the business school on collaboration and music business.

The concerto came about by several coincidental forces in the collaboration. The first being, Matthew heard Andrew's orchestral piece, "*Some Assembly Required", premiered by the ISU Symphony in 2010 and had been working on a glass project, "CLEARLY", with Co'Motion Dance Theatre at the time as well. Through other concerti, commissioning projects, and collaborations, Matthew had assembled a large collection of consorts of odd percussion instruments; i.e. glass gongs, temple blocks and woodblocks, glass and stone xylophone, and tuned bottles, and had in mind a concerto featuring these collections of instruments. Soon after Matthew approached Andrew about the concerto, Andrew happened to visit the Philip Johnson "Glass House" in New Canaan, CT, which exhibits stark juxtapositions of glass, metal, wood, and stone all over the property. Thus the concerto was born, and the soloist performs on only glass, metal, wood, and stone instruments inside a cage. Future performances and a recording are in the works.

Upon returning from Tacoma Matthew jumped into collaborations with percussionist and duo partner, Lynn Vartan. Lynn visited Iowa State University to perform with the percussion ensemble and teach a master class. Lynn, Matthew, and the ISU Percussion Ensemble performed a joint concert at ISU in late February. Lynn and Matthew's duo, Solstice, then went on tour and performed concerts and master classes at the University of Northern Iowa (Randy Hogancamp and Matt Andreini, hosts) and the University of Iowa (Dan Moore, host). Solstice will be performing in Chicago and LA during their 2013-2014 season.

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April 2013

On April 5 and 6, Matthew Coley hosted the 2013 Iowa Day of Percussion at Iowa State University! The event brought in guest artists from Texas, California, North Dakota, and Arizona, as well as students and other professional percussionists from all over Iowa, and was sponsored by the Iowa Arts Council, ISU, and the Percussive Arts Society.

The Crossing 32nd Street ensemble performed a concert with students, Matthew, and guest artist Cory Hills on April 5.

April 6 kicked off with FUNdamental clinics by snare drummer Brian Nozny, who had also taught a master class at ISU on April 4, and timpanist Jacob Theiben.

During the morning sessions of April 6 Marshalltown High School Percussion Ensemble received a two-hour clinic with Iowa Percussion Group artists Matt Andreini, Dan Krumm, and Stan Dahl. The High School and Collegiate Competitions were held, and Ames High School student Grant Simmons and ISU student Ryan Pearson won!

Crossing 32nd Street held a master class on their repertoire including a demo of Steve Reich's "Drumming" with ISU students, Matthew, and Cory Hills.

Guest Artist Jamal Mohamed held a master class on hand drums and world music in the afternoon with a preview of the evening concert to come.

The afternoon and evening of April 6 was a tour de force of performances. The Recital Hall at ISU had music performed constantly for about 7.5 hours!

Organist Lynda Hakken began the afternoon with a concert featuring the Iowa Percussion Group on Lou Harrison's Concerto for Organ and Percussion Orchestra.

Following that the Iowa Percussion Group rehearsed Gary Ziek's "Concerto for Solo Percussion and Percussion Ensemble" with the Collegiate Competition Winner, Ryan Pearson.

The Collegiate Percussion Ensemble Showcase Concert then took place with performances by: University of Northern Iowa, Central College, Iowa State University, Davenport North High School, and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The evening concert was an awesome array of performances by guest artists, including Jamal Mohamed, Cory Hills, Iowa Percussion Group, and Crossing 32nd Street, as well as competitions winners and other students.

Pictured below is Jamal Mohamed with Matthew, John Kizilarmut, Mike Giles, Stan Dahl, Cory Hills, and Brian Nozny (photo by Robin Doty). The evening concluded with a FULL performance of Steve Reich's "Drumming"!

Arthur Lipner visited ISU for a week at the end of April and performed with the Jazz Bands,
Percussion Ensemble, and Jazz Combos. He also taught private lessons and a master class with ISU percussionists and presented his documentary Talking Sticks to the music school. 

The Percussion Ensemble performed his composition "Mallet Fantasia", a concerto for vibraphone and marimba soloist with percussion ensemble and choir. The Ames Children's Choir, Gene LeVasseur, director, were also guest performers on April 24.

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Super-duper Independent Artist Feature 2

Composer, Steven Ricks
CD: Mild Violence

I'm excited to write the second installment of the "Super-duper Independent Artist" feature I recently added to my monthly e-letters. In August 2012 I would like to present composer, Steven Ricks. If you read the first feature of this kind you may notice that I featured the composer, Neil Thornock, from Brigham Young University, and Steven Ricks also happens to be from BYU.

I met Steve on a trip for which I was performing some of Neil's music. Steve actually conducted the performance of Steve Mackey's "Micro-Concerto" I did with the BYU New Music Ensemble. He is an excellent guy, enthusiastic through and through about new projects, a modern composer with a unique and resonating voice, and a mover and shaker. His latest CD is Mild Violence; a mixture of contemporary chamber and solo pieces with electronics. After releasing my second album, "Souvenirs", with an alternation of solo tracks and chamber tracks, I am tending to be drawn to CD's that cover vast territories and varieties of repertoire, especially in contemporary music, and Steve's does just that.

I was drawn mainly to the title track, "Mild Violence", a Pierrot quintet plus percussion piece, that starts in a curious way much akin to tinkering with the percussion set-up, and then goes on to evoke fascinating punches of composers, Lee Hyla and Steve Mackey, but only to be smashed out by none other than Steven Ricks. The title refers to the clinical label for videogames alerting about "cartoonish malice", but also the piece can tend to delve more into the realistic malice of humanity.

As most things seem to fall, in a serendipitous way, once I had settled on a topic for my dissertation; "Pierrot Plus Percussion; A Trend Shaping Contemporary Chamber Music, Composition, and Percussion Repertoire", all roads led back to Steve and Mild Violence. And another coincidence being that he conducted my last performance of Mackey's "Micro-Concerto" in October 2011, which is also a Pierrot plus percussion piece.

"American Dreamscape" is the third track for alto saxophone, piano, percussion, contrabass, and electronics, and opens suggesting "uncontrolled kinetic motion--a runaway train, or perhaps a runaway tape reel, spinning faster and faster until it melts onto the tape head." A cosmic exploration of texture at times, and the chaos of a city club strip at others. Track 5, "Beyond the Zero" for solo violin and electronics got my blood boiling the most...in a good way. A very suggestive piece for real violence in war and the world, the interaction between the acoustic and electronic players creates a wonderfully crafted spectral malaise.

I highly recommend checking out this disc for new music connoisseurs, percussionists, and everyone interested in the path of contemporary music.

Visit Steve's awesome webpage here!

Percussion Contributions of Marcin Błażewicz

I feel that many aspects of my career have been charmed. One being the numerous composers I get to collaborate and interact with. I met Marcin Błażewicz in Stuttgart, Germany as I was going onstage to perform his "Concerto Rustico" for the final round of the Stuttgart World Marimba Competition. He was very appreciative of the performance I gave and we began a cherished friendship. I stayed in touch with him through that year and then brought him to Chicago to see me do the US (Chicago) premiere of the same concerto and then record it for my first solo album "Circularity". The next stone in our path together was the duo he composed for me and Ronni Kot Wenzell to premiere on tour in Denmark, Sweden, and later the Midwest. I then saw him again in 2011 in Aalborg, Denmark for the premiere of "Piece for Two Marimbas". I have also recorded his marimba solo, "Sonata for Marimba" on my second album. Nonetheless, it has been a top-rated friendship between two creative people.

As Marcin is very well-known in Poland for his accomplishments as a composer, I feel that that renown does not carry beyond to other parts of the world as it should. I hope that this post will help percussionists worldwide become aware of exquisite contributions Marcin has made to the breadth of quality music we have available. Most of the pieces listed can be found at Edition Svitzer (www.editionsvitzer.com) or Schott Music.

Compositions for percussion:
Arista, Death Omen; for solo percussion and live electronic (1988)
AS; for harp, solo percussion and live electronic (1992)
Kundalini; for 6 percussions and live electronic (1997)
Sahay Manush; for 2 percussions (2005)

Sonata for Marimba (2009)

Second Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra (2005)

Concerto Rustico for marimba and string orchestra (2007)

Piece for Two Marimbas (2011)

And of course Marcin has composer an amazing amount of music for other instruments. The last 5 pieces on the list above can be found on recordings by myself, Mark Ford, or Marta Klimisara.

Marcin Błażewicz – a composer and teacher, born in 1953 in Warsaw. He  started his music education at the age of thirteen. His first compositions come into being then.In between 1974 and 1975, he studied philosophy. In 1982, he graduated with honors from the composition class under Professor Marian Borkowski at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music, in Warsaw (currently the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). In 1983, he published a proclamation of  his critical attitude to the cultural policy of the Polish authorities and artists’ associations. The composes voices his critical attitude even currently, stating that the system transformation has not altered anything for Polish musicians. Since that time his compositions have been performed more frequently abroad than in Poland. In 1985, he participated in the Iannis Xenakis composition courses and in 1987 being an SACEM grant holder – in the Oliver Messiaen courses.In between 1983 and 1987, Marcin Błażewicz was the artistic director of the independent International Forum of  New Music, which was created by him and a handful of his friends. Since 1985 he has been employed at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music, in Warsaw, where he has had composition and instrumentation classes since 2004.

Super-duper Independent Artist

While doing several miles of traveling this summer I was contemplating the self-promotion that I do online and wondering what more could make it all seem more useful. I came up with the idea, or the expansion of ideas already in place, to specifically feature/help promote other independent artists and collaborators through my email newsletter. I mean, after all, helping each other should be a part of what we artists are about. It ultimately makes our lives better with an abundance of opportunities always there for the taking, or participating.

So, here it is, the first entry of the "Super-duper Independent Artist" Feature.

Neil Thornock's CD, "No Stopping, Standing, or Parking" is the first one I have chosen. Neil gave me his CD in October of 2011 when I was at Brigham Young University collaborating with him and performing his music. I actually drove that trip from Iowa to Utah...yes, 1200 miles! So I popped the disc in the player as I left Utah, and BAM!, it was awesome! I listened to it twice through on the drive back.

After having the idea to add this bit to my newsletters I immediately knew which disc I wanted to start with, so I popped it back in the player recently driving from La Crosse, WI to Chicago and enjoyed it even more than I did the first 2 times 6 months earlier.

It is a saxophone CD. Yes, I have gone bonkers for saxophone. I have always liked the sound of a good saxophone quartet, but Neil has taken it further with saxophone and harpsichord, saxophone and processed carillon, and other great chamber combinations. My favorite track would have to be Traptalk, for saxophone and harpsichord.

One thing you should know about Neil is that he has written me a percussion ensemble and carillon piece and a hammer dulcimer solo. I was originally turned on to him through his carillon solo piece. So, in short, this composer is a cool kat, and will attempt anything with great success!

We are working on recording a CD of his percussion works, to be released...in the future.

Check Neil and his music out at www.neilthornock.net.

What is the right dissertation topic? Dance, Dulcimer, Percussion, Theory?

As I stare down at the deadline for finishing my Doctor of Music degree and ponder endlessly on what I should hunker down and do my dissertation on, I realize maybe it is a good time for a blog post.

There are so many collaboration topics and projects I should be posting about in this blog, but I just haven't made the time to do so. So I thought, why not take some time and put down all the ideas I have for a dissertation topic and maybe this will help facilitate the thinking process...?

Topics in chronological order:

1. A Comprehensive Study of the Dance and Music Collaboration "Genre" Postdating Cage and Cunnigham. As you may be saying to yourself, and as my committee said to me about this one; this could be a whole book. Appropriately, I have abandoned this one for now, and hope to get back to it later in life and write that book.

Following in the steps of Carolyn Brown's, "Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham", and works by other authors, I feel there is a need for a user's manual to collaborating between dance and music. John Cage and Merce Cunnigham set a solid genre in motion with their long relationship, and since then there has been an explosion of new works created branching off from this path. A book that interviews collaborators, compiles lists of pieces and artists, defines some common approaches to collaborating, and provides an overall guide to possible ways to begin a collaboration could be very valuable.

2. Research into the trends of contemporary hammer dulcimer repertoire.

This topic is not developed enough in my own mind yet, and as I see it right now, most of the trend is currently coming from me. So I don't think there is enough to run with here...yet.

3. The contributions of composer, Marcin Blazewicz, to contemporary percussion repertoire. Here, I would have analyzed two works by Marcin; "Concerto Rustico for marimba and string orchestra" and "Piece for Two Marimbas", to show the breadth of his contribution to percussion. He is largely unknown in the US, but famous in Poland, and his voice for percussion writing will likely live on for a long time. I would also interview him for this paper, as we are in contact from time to time.

4. This topic idea was similar to # 3, but using the Danish composer, Andy Pape. Andy's output for percussion has been more focused on battery percussion pieces. I would include an in-depth analysis of a couple of his percussion works and attempt to show why his compositional voice resonates so well with percussion instruments.

And finally # 5.

This topic is becoming the most developed in my brain and will likely be where I settle.

A Survey and Analysis of the Use of Hammer Dulcimer in Contemporary Chamber Music. This dissertation will serve to examine and analyze the use of hammer dulcimer in contemporary chamber music from 1978-2006. I have chosen four pieces that utilize a variety of instrumentation with hammer dulcimer, one for each decade starting in 1978. Technical concerns, such as tuning and demands on the performer will be addressed, as well as the role of the instrument in each piece. Other works will be used to hopefully show a change or shift in the importance placed on the hammer dulcimer as an integral role in the texture. Theoretical analysis will be provided for the four pieces, and other repertoire will be presented to support trends on the use of hammer dulcimer.


Signing off to begin writing the outline.