Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents
American Modern Ensemble
Performing New Works by:
Viet Cuong
Cenk Ergün
Wally Gunn
Noah Kaplan
Juri Seo
Performed by:
American Modern Ensemble
Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Start time: 8:00 pm
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PSK presents American Modern Ensemble with guests performing new works by Princeton composers Viet Cuong, Cenk Ergün, Wally Gunn, Noah Kaplan and Juri Seo at Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall on Tuesday, February 10, 2015, at 8:00pm.
Dan Trueman, Director
Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor
PROGRAM
WALLY GUNN AND SCOTT BRENNAN
Long Distance
CENK ERGÜN
Something, Something Else, Something
JURI SEO
#three
NOAH KAPLAN
Penetralium
VIET CUONG
Nothing If Not
WALLY GUNN AND SCOTT BRENNAN
Long Distance
Not Long Now
Counting
Mimicking Proximity
Four Cities
Absence Is A Well
Wally Gunn, tenor
Spencer Evans, actor
Laura Sheedy, actor
Terrence Hunt, filmmaker
Performance devised by Nothing To See Here
In 2008, I moved from Melbourne, Australia, to New York, USA, leaving family, friends, a lover. While the excitement of being in a wild, new city prevailed most of the time, homesickness was ever-present, a low hum in the background. Naturally, I noticed others who felt the same way. Expat friends from all over the globe described to me the same curious feelings of elation tempered with sadness that marked the experience of living so far away from home.
Back in Australia, Scott Brennan, a comedian, actor, and writer, was himself experiencing the same trials induced by long distance relationships. I asked him to collaborate on a musical project about the topic by writing some poetry which I could use as the text for a song cycle. His first poems—beautifully spare and yet still heartbreaking—began to trickle into my email inbox over the next few months, and I wrote some drafts. Since then, I have worked on the piece in fits and starts; needling Scott for another poem here, tinkering with some music there... And now at last there is something to show: five songs stitched together into some kind of narrative. For this performance, I have roped in more talented friends—my Nothing To See Here actor colleagues Laura Sheedy and Spencer Evans, and filmmaker Terrence Hunt—to add action and vision to bring life to the story. Long Distance is part pop record, part song cycle, part music video, part theater show. We hope you enjoy it.
Special thanks to Scott Brennan, Spencer Evans, Terrence Hunt, and Laura Sheedy for their inventiveness, resourcefulness and generosity throughout the making of this project.
CENK ERGÜN
Something, Something Else, Something
Bass flute, bass clarinet, piano…all of these instruments on stage amaze me. I just wanted create a piece that focuses on their sounds in isolated contexts. The winds are a group. Piano, bass, and percussion are special visitors. Something happens, then something else happens, then the first something happens again.
JURI SEO
#three
Despite my meager experience with jazz, I have always been drawn to its spontaneous beauty and easygoing virtuosity. #three is the fourth piece I composed in jazz style. I started with a couple of small musical materials I stumbled upon on my piano and lived with them for several months. They took some surprising turns: from espressivo to scherzo, from romantic piano flourishes to clamorous rock beats. The collage-like progressions probably resulted from my struggle to compose piano licks while my husband Mark was banging away rock grooves in the basement (which I found terribly distracting). Somehow, everything worked out in this music. I love such moments when conflicts dissolve in one giant stockpot of musical structure!
NOAH KAPLAN
Penetralium
The most salient feature of Penetralium is a dichotomy between quarter-tone chromaticism and very tonal 12-tone equal-tempered music. The quarter tones have a corrupting effect on the purity of the familiar intervals, and for me, the driving element of the piece is this contrast between dark and light, dirty and clean. As the piece grew, I became more and more interested specifically in the juxtaposition of quarter-tone harmonies with 12-tone equal-tempered melodic material, which could be easily doubled by various winds or winds and bass. The “main theme” is almost always stated with 12-ET, but the context surrounding it continually shifts, changing the expressive potential of this simple motive: alternately lyrical, comic, dark, sad, or disfigured. The form is basically a long, slow crescendo to something more expressive, varied, inward, and pure, the Penetralium.
VIET CUONG
Nothing If Not
Nothing If Not embellishes monophonic lines by stacking and staggering the many colors of the ensemble, including a vast array of overblown flute harmonics. Heartfelt thanks to the American Modern Ensemble.
MEET THE PERFORMERS
American Modern Ensemble is marking its 10th anniversary in 2014-2015 which spotlights American music via lively thematic programming, performing the widest possible repertoire, particularly by living composers. Founded in New York City in 2005 by Robert Paterson and Victoria Paterson, AME is a dynamic, creative force in the modern music scene. With a world-class ensemble made up of NYC’s finest, AME is “simply first-rate” (The New York Times). AME has performed over 150 living composers in venues ranging from Lincoln Center to The Roulette, and has "consistently demonstrated a flair for inventive programming" (Steve Smith, Time Out New York). AME programs both cutting edge and traditional works, presenting unique, engaging events that encourage dialogue between artists and audiences. Sold out crowds at Merkin Hall, Dimenna Center, the Rubin Museum, SubCulture and many other venues are a winning testament to AME's tremendous fan base and ever expanding popularity. AME has and continues to perform educational and outreach concerts and residencies at universities such as the CUNY Graduate Center, Princeton, Yale, Adelphi, James Madison, Lafayette, and many more. Recent collaborations include the Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, Prototype Opera Festival, American Opera Projects, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and the Talujon percussion ensemble.
MEET THE COMPOSERS
Viet Cuong’s (b. 1990) works have been performed internationally in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, International Double Reed Society Conference, Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, Midwest Clinic, GAMMA-UT Conference, and several CBDNA conferences. He is a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Award, Walter Beeler Memorial Prize from Ithaca College, Boston Guitarfest Composition Competition, Dolce Suono Ensemble Competition, Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association Grant, Peabody Alumni Award, Gustav Klemm Award, Prix d'Été Competition, and National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project. Viet has held artist residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was a scholarship student at the Copland House’s CULTIVATE Emerging Composers Institute and the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals. He is currently a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Doctoral Fellow at Princeton, and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Peabody Conservatory. Please visit www.vietcuongmusic.com to learn more.
Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists including Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Laboratorium, and Joan Jeanrenaud. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, Grey McMurray, and Jeff Snyder.
Wally Gunn is a composer living and working in New York who writes rock music, concert music, and music for theater, film, and visual art. Growing up in a rural town in Australia’s southeast, Wally first began making music in his early teens, writing on a Casiotone for his electronic dance band, which never played a gig. After high school, he moved to Melbourne to join rock bands, and spent several years writing songs and gigging around the country, then enrolled in the Victorian College of the Arts composition program. After graduating with honors, Wally worked with friends and fellow composers Kate Neal and Biddy Connor in Dead Horse Productions to stage concerts of their own and other composers’ new music in warehouses, underground parking lots, cinemas, and other unusual spaces. He also composed original music for several Melbourne theatre companies. Wally moved to New York in 2008 to begin a master’s degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Julia Wolfe. Since relocating, Wally has composed original music for Manhattan-based The Actors Company Theatre and has become a company member of Brooklyn-based theater Nothing To See Here, under the artistic direction of Laura Sheedy. Wally's concert music has been performed in Australia by The Dead Horse Ensemble, Three Shades Black, Speak Percussion, Atticus String Quartet and Silo String Quartet, and in the US by Riley Lee, Mobius Percussion, Sō Percussion, Dither Guitar Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, futureCities, and Red Shift. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University.
Noah Kaplan is a second-year composer at Princeton.
Juri Seo is a composer & pianist based in New Jersey. She loves to write music that is full of energy, often incorporating contrasts, deceptions, humor and lyricism imbued with contemporary quirkiness and experimental spirit. Juri has received a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship from the University of Illinois, and Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She holds a D.M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has also studied at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome) and Yonsei University (Seoul). She joined the composition faculty at Princeton University in 2014.