World Piece: Opera No Opera - AH! - Monday 21st July

Thursday 31 July 2008

Opera No Opera - AH! - Monday 21st July

Ten o'clock Monday 21st July 2008 - all ten composers are ready and the experiment begins!

We've found our workspace again from seeing it for the first time last night.

This is where we're going to be spending most of our time working together. I'm taking lots of photos - but I noticed today I haven't brought the correct lead with me to connect my camera to the MacBooks we'll be getting...silly me! Consequently, I've already started taking many photos of us working together and the places where we're doing that - but can't upload them just yet - but I will, then you'll have a much better picture of what the whole project is about!

David has explained to us what the piece is going to be about...and it's an opera...that's not an opera, but it is an opera because it's an opera, but it's not an opera...get it...?!! And it's called AH!

Here are some extracts from the prospectus notes about AH! which David Rosenboom (soundswordsounds) and Martine Bellen (wordsoundswords) had written to 'sell' the project to investors and people who're interested in it:

"AH! is such an opera that is not an opera and is called an opera for our time. AH! is an offering for the betterment of humanity on Earth today. AH! is an environment for discovering. AH! is an immersive opportunity for illumination, a flight simulator for psychonauts, AH! is an opera."1

It continues:

"Composer/performer, David Rosenboom, and poet/writer, Martine Bellen, developed an interactive, creative process that integrates sound and word composition in a new way, such that music and libretto are not separate, are not different, and one that works from the origins of both music and language, illuminating their power to both differenciate and to join human beings."2

The whole idea is a brilliant one...I have to carry on working now on the opera-no-opera...! But wait 'til next time for more about the master plan!

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1. Bellen, M., & Rosenboom, D., 'Excerpts from Opera Prospectus' 2008

2. Ibid.

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Taster Sessions

Fancy listening to some of what we've been doing?
Well, click on the bits you want to listen to below!

Live Guitar Session 1

Live Guitar Session 2

Live Guitar Session 3

Live Group Session 1

Live Group Session 2

Live Group Session 3

11 Person Laptop Band

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So what's this all about then eh?!

Hello there and welcome to my blog!

The deal:

10 young composers (including little ol' me in the UK!) have been brought together from across the entire world to California to work as a team writing a collaborative piece of music in a project called 'A Counterpoint of Tolerance'. Call it a world/modern music version of 'Feed the World' if you will!

This blog is a rather amusing record of our project and me embarking on the creation and completion of my 20 minute radio documentary for my MA in Broadcast Jounrnalism.

Can we do it? Can I do it? What's going to happen? I don't know so...

Read on for the highs, the lows, the jokes, the sarcasm and general hillarity of a (now) slightly maddening post-grad student so far!

Martine's Biography

Martine Bellen is the author of six collections of poetry including THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER (Copper Canyon Press); FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE MONKEY GOD (Spuyten Duyvil); TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS (Sun & Moon Press), which won the National Poetry Series Award; and PLACES PEOPLE DARE NOT ENTER (Potes & Poets Press).

A bilingual collection of her poetry has been published in Germany by Verlag im Waldgut (translator, Hans Jürgen Balmes). She has written the libretto for OVIDIANA, an opera based on Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES (composer, Matthew Greenbaum) that has been performed in New York City and Philadelphia and is presently collaborating with the composer David Rosenboom on an opera based on the DIAMOND SUTRA entitled AH!

Ms. Bellen’s poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, including SAINTS OF HYSTERIA: A HALF CENTURY OF COLLABORATIVE POETRY (Soft Skull Press), IN OUR OWN WORDS: A GENERATION DEFINING ITSELF (MWE), THE CONVERGENCE OF BIRDS: WRITING INSPIRED BY JOSEPH CORNELL (DAP) and THIS ART (Copper Canyon Press).

She has been a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, and the American Academy of Poets Award. Bellen is a contributing editor of the literary journal CONJUNCTIONS.

Ivan's Biography

Iván Caramés Bohigas was born in 1979 in Valladolid, Spain. He lived in Madrid for all his life were he follow all his general school an his musical education until he move to Gijón (Asturias, Spain) at the edge of 21 to go on with his cello studies with a member of the Moscow Virtuose. Three years after entered in the "Utrecht conservatorium" in the Nederlands were he nowadays studie composition under the leading of Jeroen D´hoe and Carolin Ansink. With an endless and eclectic curiosity he goes on exploring differet fields such as philosophy, tai-chi and several dances.

Michael's Biography

Michael-Thomas Foumai (Born 1987, Honolulu, HI)

Michael-Thomas Foumai began studying music at the age of 12, and he taught himself the basics of composition and orchestration by studying scores and recording of classical composers.

Entering the local youth symphony, Michael studied violin with Craig Young and composition with Peter Askim. In 2004, his first symphonic work, The Bicycle Ride, received honorable mention from the Morton Gould ASCAP Young Composer’s Competition and was later premiered in 2005 by the Hawaii Youth Symphony.

Since then, the Royal Hawaiian Band, Honolulu Stake Orchestra, Ebb and Flow Ensemble, Hawaii Youth Symphony, University of Hawaii Symphony and the Honolulu Symphony have performed Foumai’s works.

An avid supporter and performer of contemporary music, Foumai is a member of ASCAP and currently concertmaster of the University of Hawaii Symphony. He studies composition with Byron Yasui, Jon Magnussen, Donald Womack, Takeo Kudo, Thomas Osborne and violin with Iggy Jang.

Alex's Biography

Alex Kotch (b. 1983) is an American composer of instrumental, electroacoustic, and electronic music—ranging from chamber works to remixes—and an active performer on clarinets, saxophones, laptop, and djembe.

He has received fellowships from the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Duke University, scholarships from The Walden School and the European American Musical Alliance, and honors from ASCAP.

Having received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music from Brown University (2006), he’s currently working towards a Ph.D. in composition at Duke University in North Carolina, where he performs in the New Music Ensemble and the Djembe Ensemble and is teaching assistant for a course on Hip-Hop.

Upcoming concerts include electroacoustic sets in North Carolina and Rhode Island and chamber music performances in New York City by the Lost Dog Ensemble. Current commissions include a work for 100 saxophonists for Saxophones en Fete in Paris and a work for cello (Silvia Lenzi), dancer, and cd.

Claudio's Biography

Claudio Maldonado is a composer, guitar concertist, arranger, software developer, conductor, researcher, author and cultural maker.

He has played concerts for guitar and new technologies, given readings and courses at venues, fine halls, festivals and others spaces from international scene, being distingished by recognised institutions and organisations.

His insterest and music is focused on real time performances using evolving technologies. He had developed real time procesing software, instrumental mixed works and cultural projects related to the development of the new music.

Vedran's Biography

Vedran Mehinovic was born in 1981 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He began learning the piano at the age of eight, quickly developing into somewhat of a prodigy. Together with his family, all musicians, he helped maintain the artistic life of the city during the Bosnian war.

After escaping to the United States, his focus gradually shifted from performing to composing. Mr. Mehinovic has received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory, and is currently pursuing his doctorate
at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 2006, he was one of the winners of the Ziggurat Ensemble Competition, aimed at creating more new music for a unique mix of Eastern and Western instruments. The premiere of
his work took place at the new Bimhuis, in Amsterdam, during the International Gaudeamus Music Week.

Last year, his piece RA was selected as one of the just three orchestral works to be performed during the Gaudeamus festival, and has won an Honorable Mention at the week’s end.

An enthusiast of diverse ethnic arts, Mr. Mehinovic has organized concerts of Korean, Hindustani, Uyghur, and Chinese musics in Boston. His works have been performed in Bosnia, Croatia, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands,
and the United States.

David's Biography

David Rosenboom is a composer, performer, conductor, interdisciplinary artist, author and educator, known as a pioneer in American experimental music. He has explored ideas in his work about the spontaneous evolution of musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art, computer music systems, interactive multi-media, compositional algorithms and extended musical interface with the human nervous system since the 1960's.

Rosenboom holds the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music in the School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts where he has been Dean of the School of Music and Conductor of the New Century Players since 1990 and was Co-Director of the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology from 1990 to 1998. He taught at Mills College from 1979 to 1990, was Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department and Director of the Center for Contemporary Music and held the Darius Milhaud Chair from 1987 to 1990.

He studied at the University of Illinois, where he was later awarded the prestigious George A. Miller Professorship and has held positions in the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York in Buffalo, York University in Toronto, where he was Professor of Music and Interdisciplinary Studies, Bard College, Simon Fraser University, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale, and Ionian University in Greece.

His work has been presented in many venues around the world, widely published, and recorded on a variety of labels.

Syrse's Biography

My name is Diana Syrse and I'm from the biggest city of the world, Mexico D.F. My father is a guitar player and a music teacher, my brother and my sister are musicians too, so since I was little I was surrounded by music of all styles, from Claude Debussy to The Beatles.

I began my formal studies when I was 8 and at 11 I wrote my first composition. My sister and I used to sing together and since I was little I always wanted to be a singer. So that was the beginning of my musical life, which actually has become my life.

Since I studied composition I have been very interested in contemporary music and I enjoy searching for new sounds, for me ugly sounds don´t exist. I like traditional opera too and enjoy very much of world music. Also I like multidisciplinary things.

For me being on a stage is like a ride on a rollercoaster, where I can forget everything else that happens in my life and I can focus in just one thing…music…it is like an ephemeral dream in which I’m immensely happy. Such wonderful feeling also floods my heart every time I have the chance to hear my music performed by some one else.

I like people to experiment sensations and see colors as I do when I’m hearing music in my head and I appreciate to know that people sometimes have being moved by a phrase of my voice. To create, to improvise and to play are my strongest passions and to be better each day is what I work for.

Counterpoint of Tolerance has brought to me lots of opportunities and the privilege to meet very fine artists that like me are trying to express themselves, each one in a very personal way and trying to contribute some of his art to the world.

Working for society, for, liberty, peace, justice, tolerance, comprehension and music itself and to make people feel is one of my principal goals.

Xiaoliang's Biography

I began to learn playing piano when I was four. When I was eleven, I began to learn composition and piano. In 2000, I enter the Music School Attached to The Shanghai Conservatory of Music, major in composition. During my studying in the school, I got the half scholarship every semester, and in 2002, I got the honer prise of the composition compitition, called "HUANG SU" composition compitition.

In 2007, I graduated from this school, and then entered the Shanghai Conservatory of Music after a examination. At same time, I entered the Hochschule für Musik Saar, Germany, too.
I chose to go to Germany to continue studying composition, and up to now.

In 2008, I went to Darmstadt to take part in the akademi, and became a mamber of A Counterpoint of Tolerance. My mostly compositions:"RE XUE---for cello solo", "Larkish Strings---for Stringquatet" "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd---ensemble for 1 soprano, 1 alco and 4 instruments", "Stringquartet 1" , "Illumination---- für Violino und Klavier", "Sprindes Gelb---für Live-electronik und Horn",