10to the 2011 Look & Listen Festival, our landmark 10th anniversary season and our second time in the wonderful setting of the Chelsea Art Museum. In honor of the occasion we have increased our number of concerts from three to four and share these added ways to celebrate this milestone:

• Commemorative visual art and music essays from Laurie Fendrich, Peter Plagens, and Bruce Hodges

• Special video tribute from So Percussion

• Silent Auction

• Champagne & Chocolate post-concert reception on Saturday evening

• 10th anniversary tee shirts

We are also honored that the entire run of four concerts in this special season will be recorded for broadcast on WQXR’s Q2, New York’s home for new music! www.wqxr.org/q2

Thank you for joining us!

welcome

TopPanel Discussion with

William Wegman, Carla Khilstedt, and

Lisa Bielawa, hosted by John Schaefer at the Robert Miller Gallery

in 2006

MiddleNancy Davidson, Steve

Riech, and Fred Sherry on a 2006 panel discussion

at Robert Miller Gallery

BottomSo Percussion and

Percussion Discussion team up at the

2006 Festival at Robert Miller Gallery

Top David Del Tredici and Marc Peloquin perform at Gary Snyder Project Space at the 2009 Festival.

Middle eighth blackbird warms up before a 2005 concert at Robert Miller Gallery

BottomSteve Mackey and Fred Sherry at the 2003 Festi-val at Art In General

&10 Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens are painters who are married and live and work in New York. Plagens, whose book on Bruce Nauman is forthcoming from Phaidon in 2012, was the former art critic for News-week Magazine. He writes frequently for Art in America and other publications. His most recent exhibition, in January 2011, was at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York. Fendrich is a professor of fine arts at Hofstra University. Her twenty-year retrospective of paintings and drawings opened this past fall at the Williamson Art Gallery at Scripps College, in Claremont, California. She is represented by Gary Snyder Project Space in NY.

A Decade of Delight by Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens

A retrospective glance over the decade of the Look & Listen Festival reveals an astonishing depth and breadth of offerings in contemporary music at a variety of art venues, as well as a variety of lively symposia made up of artists, art critics, composers, and musicians. Each spring, for the past decade, the Festival welcomed performances by such composers and performers as Steve Reich, John Corigliano, Meredith Monk, eighth blackbird, So Percussion, and Ethel. Audiences have listened to brilliant contemporary music while pondering the art of artists ranging from Tim Hawkinson to Beatrice Mandleman, in such galleries as Ace, Robert Miller, Betty Cunningham, and the Gary Snyder Project Space.

So, it would be tempting to mark the tenth anniversary simply by synopsizing all that has happened and offering deserved kudos to everyone who has made Look & Listen a reality. Yet this occasion should also prompt us to return to the original (in both senses of that word) premise of the festival—founding director David Gordon’s idea that serious new music (which is to say, new serious music), presented in a setting of contemporary art, offers people the chance to experience contemporary art and music in way that merges sights and sounds into evenings of double delights.

Those drawn to contemporary art, and those drawn to contemporary music, are not neces-sarily the same audience. Yet they have much in common. Both share a longing for art that reflects contemporary experiences. Both are alert to the unexpected and surprising in art, and are hungry for the thrill that comes from new art.

Sixty years ago, the idea that new music and new art were natural partners hardly needed iterating. In the 1950s, avant-garde artists regularly hosted music events in their studios, and that haunting music you hear behind the images of Jackson Pollock in the short documen-tary, Pollock Painting, is Morton Feldman’s. Those responsive to art and music belonged to a single, small, tight-knit, avant-garde art community. In Lower Manhattan, for example, mem-bers of the art community found it perfectly natural to move from an opening for an abstract expressionist painter at the Tanager Gallery on Tenth Street to a John Cage performance at Carnegie Hall.

During the 1960s, new art forms other than painting and sculpture rose up—including, es-pecially, performance-art pieces, such as the famous Robert-Rauschenberg/Billy-Kluver-led Experimements in Art and Technology collaboration, Nine Evenings in 1966, and video instal-lation art pieces. During the subsequent decades, art and artists made their ways increasingly out of isolated and private studios into the real world and onto, as it were, the street. But rather paradoxically, audiences for contemporary art and music drifted apart. The “pluralism” that took hold in the visual arts (i.e., everything from photorealist painting to earthworks in the desert could make equal claims to being avant-garde) did not lead as much as one might think to visual artists developing much interest in the explorations going on in contemporary music. Nor did the new developments in music translate into musicians and composers de-veloping any particular openness to contemporary art.

The Look & Listen Festival reestablishes that connection, and provides a context in which contemporary composers, musicians and artists, and their audiences, can delight in one another’s endeavors. More profoundly, Look & Listen extends a greater tradition, transcend-ing the modern and contemporary, and reaching back to the Renaissance, where music and art were seen as sister arts. Art and music audiences in New York are fortunate to have the Festival among us. With enthusiasm, support, and perhaps a little bit of luck, Look & Listen will be with us for at least another decade to come.

A Decade of Listening, Looking, and That Ampersand by Bruce Hodges

In 2002, the Look & Listen Festival broke new ground with contemporary music concerts in some of New York’s most prestigious art galleries, and actively encouraged audience mem-bers to combine their listening with the eclectic offerings on the walls. But in an unofficial nod to John Cage (perhaps), neither the concerts nor the art were planned with the other in mind. Cage’s famously disjunctive approach to the aural and visual often meant that one never quite knew what to expect, either in the brain’s process of assimilation, or in the way that it as-sembled the results. But as it turned out, more often than not, exhilaration was in store.

Midway through Look & Listen’s ten years, I still recall the 2006 concert with So Percussion hammering out David Lang’s the so-called laws of nature—the final section played on flower pots and crockery—while gazing at The Pace Gallery’s portraits by Alex Katz. Somehow Lang’s timbral fireworks gave Katz’s sophisticated habitués more three-dimensional person-alities, as if they were additional—if mute—members of the live audience. Conversely, Katz’s rows of deadpan onlookers made Lang’s percussive chorus shriek even louder. That same year at Robert Miller Gallery, the dark, David Lynch-esque environments of Australian photog-rapher Bill Henson gave a more sinister cast to Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, performed by the Biava and Daedalus String Quartets. But if one chose to focus more on the art, Golijov’s explosiveness lent Henson’s mysterious landscapes an undercurrent of anxiety, even violence.

Do we need to look at something while listening? Frankly, I hope for most people, the answer is a resounding “no.” Today’s culture continually demands that both senses be engaged si-multaneously, reflecting the grip of film and television, as well as an insistence on multitasking (even when ill-advised). But the fact is: we’re always visually evaluating, even if no formal art is on display. Even a pristine audiophile laboratory like Carnegie Hall—where music still holds court over optical stimuli—nevertheless has creamy walls, scarlet upholstery and gilt trim, which inevitably affect impressions of what is heard. Serendipitous confluences of what we hear and what we see can mesh—or clash—with intriguing results. In the past decade, Look & Listen has zeroed in on that sometimes harmonious, sometimes gently chaotic relationship. How valuable a conjunction can be: that tiny ampersand – a locus of meaning – might be the most important part of the Festival’s name.

Bruce Hodges is North American Editor for MusicWeb International, based in London, and writes a monthly column on recordings for The Juilliard Journal. His blog, Monotonous Forest, focuses on music and art, and he has also written for Lincoln Center, Playbill, artcritical.com and others.

Festival founder David Gordon and composer Suzanne Farrin at the 2003

Festival at Art in General.

So Percussion 10th Anniversary Video Tribute

JASON TREUTING Life is good when you are at a Look & Listen concert

We are happy to celebrate Look and Listen’s 10th Birthday with all of you tonight! In one form or another, we’ve been involved since the beginning and it has been amazing to see the festival grow. We’ve played loud things and soft things and huge percussion set-ups crammed into galleries and sparse set-ups spread out around the galleries. This year, we are honored to be involved via video since we couldn’t make it in person. We hope this short piece serves as a good way to kick off the party. It is called life is (blank), but tonight we will call it Life is good when you are at a Look & Listen concert.

Jason Treuting

Composer/performer/improviser Jason Treuting enjoys making pieces that trans-lates numbers and letters into patterns of sound. He has made music with and for So Percussion, QQQ, Alligator Eats Fish, Matmos, Kneebody, Steve Mackey, Big Farm, and many other experimental artists. He has been called “genre-busting” by The New York Times and his music has been called “rich and engrossing” by Time Out New York. His first CD with So Percussion, Amid the Noise, was chosen as a top ten album of the year by All About Jazz. His music is recorded on Cantaloupe Music and New Amsterdam Records.

So PercussionEric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting

Since 1999, So Percussion has been creating music that explores all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility. Called an “experimental powerhouse” by the Village Voice, “astonishing and entrancing” by Billboard Magazine, and “brilliant” by The New York Times, the Brooklyn based quartet’s innovative work with today’s most exciting composers and their own original music has helped them forge a unique and diverse career. The members of So Percussion are co-directors of a new percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. They are also co-directors of the So Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University. So would like to thank Pearl/Adams Instruments, Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth Drumsticks, Remo Drumheads, Black Swamp Accessories, and Estey Organs for their sponsorship.

Silent Auction

To commemorate the 10th Annual Look & Listen Festival, renowned musician and frequent festival guest Mark Stewart has created an original instrument, the Microsonophone. Esteemed photographer Ron Gordon has produced a limited edition photo retrospective of the ten Festivals. Both works of art will be on display throughout the Festival. This is your chance to support the Festival and take home a piece of Look & Listen history!

THE MICROSONOPHONE

Mark Stewart wrote: I like to say that there are two kinds of music: Public and private. A Microsonophone is for private music making. There are many “small” sounds that, with the aid of a stethoscope, are quite beautiful and big when

listened to thusly. Microsonophones (a family of instruments) allow the player the luxury of privacy (even in a crowded room), with the commensurate benefits–you can play whatever you’d like without suffering the judgement of others. Have at it! It’s sonic fingerpainting. The word “musician” is too often used discourage people from participating in their birthright as soundmakers. Be a soundmaker with a Microsonophone.

Recognized as a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and instrument designer, Mark Stewart has been heard around the world performing old and new music. Since 1998 he has recorded, toured and been Musical Director with Paul Simon. A founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Mark is also a member of Steve Reich and Musicians and the manic duo Polygraph Lounge. He has worked with Anthony Braxton, Bob Dylan, Cecil Taylor, Meredith Monk, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Phillip Glass, and Marc Ribot, among others. Mr. Stewart is on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music.

THE PHOTO RETROSPECTIVE

Ron Gordon wrote: When David first asked me to document the new Look & Listen Festival that he was planning in New York, I didn’t even have a camera with me. At the time, I was mainly photographing architecture and historic preservation and working with large format equipment. Not knowing what I was getting into or how successful the Festival would become, I said, “Sure, no problem.” Ten years and thousands of images later, this is what I have learned:

I have learned a lot about New Music. I had no idea what it was or who was involved. The quality and innovation of the composers, the performers, and the production con-tinues to impress me. From the early days when we all worked together to put up and take down 100 chairs each night and move them to another venue, the Festival evolved into a very sophisticated and well-oiled production with many dedicated volunteers.

I learned that it is not easy to produce music in a location that is conducive to the viewing of art. Of course the lighting in these galleries is set up to enhance the art on the walls, but I hadn’t realized how little light fell on the performers. The walls are washed in beautiful light, but the performers are hidden in deep shadow.

Getting a picture when all the musicians have the best expressions on their faces was one of my biggest challenges. With a building, all you have to do is wait for the best light to fall on it. With musicians you have to anticipate the perfect moment. Oh, and you can’t make any noise.

The photographs that you see on the walls at this tenth anniversary concert are small symbols of the enormous accomplishment of the Look & Listen Festival.

Ron Gordon’s photographs are in numerous permanent collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Focus Infinity Fund, Chicago Historical Society, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Illinois State Museum, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Paris Art Center, and many private collections. He has an extensive history of exhibitions, publications and photographic contributions in films such as The River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford, and The Music Box, directed by Costa-Garvas, and he recently appeared on ABC news in a feature on his pro bono work with learning disabled children.

Left Mark Stewart

Right Ron Gordon

Opposite page:Jason Treuting

The Chelsea Art Museum serves as home to the Miotte Foundation, which is dedicated to conserving the work of Jean Miotte, continuing research and bringing the work of Informel to American audiences.

Jean Miotte, (b. 1926) came of artistic age in the decade after World War II when non-figurative gestural abstraction was emerging on both sides of the Atlantic as the contemporary artistic language. The term L’Art Informel was coined by the French critic, Michel Tapié, to connote “without form”. The negation of traditional form, a radical break from established notions of order and composition, was par-ticularly suited to a cultural environment born out of the circumstances of postwar Europe where abuse of morals and fascist ideology had led to such horror and destruction.

While Informel is often regarded as the European equivalent of Abstract Expres-sionism, it is distinguished from its American counterpart by a loss of faith in prog-ress and the collective possibilities of an avant garde. Rather, the artists who came to be grouped as Informel – Jean Miotte, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Emil Schumacher, and Kazuo Shiraga, among others – claimed an individual freedom embodied in the spontaneity of the gestural, abstract language to create a bridge between cultures, to break beyond national barriers of geography or expression to form a truly international language.

The power and transcultural appeal of this painting was soon seen in its interna-tional reception. Miotte was invited to exhibit throughout Europe, America, and the Near and Far East long before the concept of globalization was current in artistic terms. But whereas globalization tends toward cultural uniformity, Miotte’s work fostered individual dialogue within each culture.

While Miotte’s work remains committed to the Utopian aspects of gestural abstraction, he has continued to grow, fighting the repetition of a signature style, constantly pushing the boundaries and possibilities of the line, the gesture and the liquidity of paint.

The Chelsea Art Museum & Visual Artist Jean Miotte The 10th Anniversary Look & Listen Festival At-A-Glance ALL CONCERTS AT THE CHELSEA ART MUSEUM

Thursday, May 19 at 8 pm HOST WQXR/Q2’S NADIA SIROTA

JACK Quartet performs Julia Wolfe’s Dig Deep and Philip Glass’ 5th String Quartet, Tanya Bannister performs Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne and Jan Radzynski’s Mazurka, No. 2, and Doug Perkins presents Michael Gordon’s XY.

Friday, May 20 at 8 pm HOST WNYC’S JOHN SCHAefeR

Brooklyn Rider performs John Cage’s In a Landscape (arranged by Justin Messina) and Colin Jacobsen’s Achille’s Heel, harpist Bridget Kibbey presents excerpts from Murray Schaffer’s Crown of Ariadne and Elliott Carter’s Bariolage, and Split Second performs Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez’s Machinary and the world premiere of the two-piano arrangement of John Musto’s Passacalgia.

Saturday, May 21 at 8 pm HOST WQXR’S TeRRANCe MCKNIgHT

Toy pianist Phyllis Chen performs the world premiere of The Little Thing by Angélica Negrón, David Lang’s Miracle Ear, and her own works, Colure and Double Helix, John Hollenbeck and the Claudia Quintet play works written by Mr. Hollenbeck for the Festival, and the Driving Force Trio (Jonathan Greenberg, Guy Klucevsek, and Eiot Gattegno) performs Zibuokie Martinaityte’s Driving Force. Ms. Martinaityte is the winner of the Look & Listen 2011 Festival Composers Competition.

Saturday evening’s concert is followed by Look & Listen’s 10th Anniversary Champagne & Chocolate Reception.

Sunday, May 22 at 3 pm HOST NPR CONTRIbuTOR LARA PeLLegRINeLLI

Missy Mazzoli’s captivating quintet Victoire presents her own Cathedral City, The Driver, India City, and A Song for Mick Kelly, percussionist David Cossin of Bang On a Can plays the world premiere of a new work he has written for the Festival, and the Brasil Guitar Duo performs Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Fandango en Rondeau, Golli-wogg’s Cakewalk by Claude Debussy, and Sete Aneis by Egberto Gismonti.

eighth blackbird performing Table Music at 2006 Festival

Jean Miotte, Le débat, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 76” x 204”

CONCERT 1

Thursday, May 19 at the Chelsea Art Museum

AMBIENT MUSIcJason Treuting

HOSTNadia Sirota

PROGRAM

Michael Gordon XYDoug Perkins

interviewMichael Gordon

Jan Radzynski Mazurka, No. 2Tanya Bannister

Philip Glass 5th String QuartetJAcK Quartet

INTERMISSION

Jason Treuting Life is good when you are at aLook & Listen concert So Percussion

Sofia Gubaidulina Chaconne Tanya Bannister

interviewJulia Wolfe

Julia Wolfe Dig DeepJAcK Quartet

Composers

Jason Treuting Ambient Music

Composer/performer/improviser Jason Treuting enjoys making pieces that translate numbers and letters into patterns of sound. He has made music with and for So Percussion, QQQ, Alligator Eats Fish, Matmos, Kneebody, Steve Mackey, Big Farm, among others. He has been called “genre-busting” by The New York Times and his music “rich and engrossing” by Time Out New York. His first CD with So Percussion, Amid the Noise, was chosen as a top 10 album of the year by All About Jazz. His music is recorded on Cantaloupe Music and New Amsterdam Records.

Philip Glass 5th String Quartet

Philip Glass (b. 1937) has had an extraordinary impact upon the musical and intel-lectual life of our times. After studies at The Juilliard School, he moved to Europe where he studied with Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with Ravi Shankar. He returned to NY in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.”

The expansive 5th String Quartet (1991) is an epic journey full of dramatic contrasts and all of the composer’s trademark stylistic devices: self-propelling rhythms, elemental harmonic progressions, and restless arpeggiated figures. Reflecting on his approach to the composition of the 5th String Quartet, Glass commented: “I was thinking that I had really gone beyond the need to write a serious string quartet and that I could write a quartet that is about musicality, which in a certain way is the most serious subject.”

Michael Gordon XY

Michel Gordon (b. 1956) is co-founder and co-artistic director of the renowned Bang on a Can Festival. His music is an outgrowth of his experience with under-ground rock bands in New York and his formal training in composition at Yale with Martin Bresnick. Tuneful, rhythmic and raw, Gordon has embraced elements of dis-sonance, minimalism, modality, and popular culture in what has been considered by some people as a bold and direct sound. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from New York University and a Masters of Music from the Yale School of Music.

FROM THE cOMPOSER XY is a percussion solo for five tuned drums. In XY, the right and left hand of the performer get louder and softer in reverse symmetry. That is, while the right hand gets louder and louder, the left hand, which was loud, gets softer and softer, and so on. Eventually, each hand moves at different speeds. As the drumming of the right hand fades away, the drumming of the left hand emerges at a faster rate. Also, the length of time that the hands take to emerge and fade contracts and expands. I am speaking of the hands of the performer as if they were independent beings, and indeed they practically are. When I was imagining the music of XY, I thought of the double helix of DNA, which wraps around itself and spirals upwards.

JasonTREUTING

PhilipGLASS

SophiaGUBAIDULINA

MichaelGORDON

JanRADZYNSKI

JuliaWOLFE

Chelsea Art Museum in 2010

Performers

Tanya Bannister

Lauded by The Washington Post for playing “…with intelligence, poetry and proportion,” pia-nist Tanya Bannister’s debut recording, late piano sonatas of Muzio Clementi, was released in 2006 on the Naxos label. BBC Music Magazine declared: “Barenboim’s EMI Beethoven sonata cycle is readily brought to mind. Yet although she pos-sesses enviable articulate and accurate fingers, she is also sensitive to the music’s many lyrical asides.” This is the story she began, a CD of solo piano music of living American composers (David Del Tredici, Christopher Theofanidis, Suzanne Farrin, and Sheila Silver), was released on Albany Records in February 2009. She is a winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition.

JACK QuartetChristopher Otto & Ari Streisfeld, violins; John Pickford Richards, viola; Kevin Mcfarland, cello

The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with “explosive virtuosity” (Bos-ton Globe) and “viscerally exciting performances” (The New York Times). NPR listed their performance as one of “The Best New York Alt-Classical Concerts Of 2010.” JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Mat-thias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, James Dillon, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Elliott Sharp, Beat Furrer, Caleb Burhans, and Aaron Cassidy. The Quartet also offers fresh interpretations of early music, including works by Don Carlo Gesu-aldo, Guillaume de Machaut, and Josquin des Prez.

Doug Perkins

Percussionist Doug Perkins has been described as “terrific, wide-awake and strik-ingly entertaining” by the Boston Globe and “brilliant” by The New York Times. He performs as a member of the Meehan/Perkins Duo, was a founder of So Percus-sion and collaborates with ICE, Signal, eighth blackbird, and composers David Lang, Paul Lansky, John Luther Adams, Nathan Davis, and Larry Polansky. Perkins has been directing large-scale percussion concerts. His event Persephassa in Central Park Lake was one of NYCs Top Classical Events in Time Out New York and New York Magazine. He is on the faculty at Dartmouth College and directs the Chosen Vale International Percussion Seminar. He performs with Vic Firth, Pearl /Adams, and Black Swamp instruments.

Nadia Sirota host

Hailed by The New York Times as “the violist of choice among downtown en-sembles these days,” violist Nadia Sirota has been praised for her “command and eloquence,” in the Boston Globe. She is best known for her unique interpretations of new scores and for commissioning and premiering works by Marcos Balter, Caleb Burhans, Judd Greenstein, and Nico Muhly. Her recent debut album, First Things First (New Amsterdam Records), was declared “a collection of vital, imagi-native recent scores” by The New York Times and named a Times 2009 Record of the Year. Ms. Sirota also hosts “Nadia Sirota on Q2,” a weekday show devoted to contemporary music on WQXR’s new internet radio stream Q2.

Sofia Gubaidulina Chaconne

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) lived in Moscow until 1992. Since then, she has made her primary residence in Germany. Her compositional interests have been stimu-lated by: the tactile exploration and improvisation with rare Russian, Caucasian, and Asian folk and ritual instruments collected by the Astreia ensemble, of which she was a co-founder; the rapid absorption and personalization of contemporary Western musical techniques (a characteristic, too, of other Soviet composers of the post-Stalin generation including Denisov and Schnittke); a deep-rooted belief in the mystical properties of music.

The strong point of the Chaconne resides above all in the pleasing stylistic alter-nation presented by each of the contrasting variations on the Chaconne, whose deliberately rough and charicaturial theme comes from the 17th century dance. The comic theme of the Chaconne, as in tradition, appears in the finale and closes with a perturbing theme of a fast march, drowned out by a final sustained chord. -gILbeRTO DALMONTe (TRANSLATION BY KEVIN O’NEILL)

Jan Radzynski Mazurka, No. 2

Polish composer Jan Radzynski studied composition with Krzysztof Penderecki and Jacob Druckman at Yale University. He taught at Yale before joining Ohio State in 1994. His works have been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Cracow Phil-harmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, West German Radio Orchestra, Mexico National Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Recent com-missions are from the Haifa Symphony, the Concertante Chamber Players, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra.

FROM THE cOMPOSER Mazurka, No. 2, Lento ma non troppo, composed in 2008 as companion piece to Mazurka, No. 1, further explores the possibilities inherent in an encounter of two different musical cultures where Polish folk elements, like an open fifth ostinato drone, are laced with augmented seconds, octatonic scales, and high chromaticism of the Jewish Ashkenazi and Sephardic melismatic style.

Julia Wolfe Dig Deep

Drawing inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, Wolfe’s music is distin-guished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Steel Hammer, written for the Bang On A Can All-Stars and Trio Mediaeval. In the words of the Wall Street Journal, Wolfe has “long inhabited a terrain of [her] own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock.” Wolfe has been commis-sioned by the Lark, Ethel, Kronos, and Cassatt Quartets.

FROM THE cOMPOSER Dig Deep is the third of my string quartets. It is incessant and crazy driven. The music wrestles with itself - the bows dig deep into the strings for a thick reedy sound. Dense chords are cut up with frenzied tunes that sing at hyper speed. The quartet is united and fractured - unified in odd metered attacks in an off beat pulse, interrupted by frenetic counterpoint - everyone playing together and not together. The tunes interrupt and lengthen. While there is a clear tie to blues riffs, by the end the harmony becomes almost Brahmsian in always leading somewhere but never landing. Dig Deep was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet with gener-ous support from Nora Norden.

SIROTAPERKINSBANNISTER JACK Quartet

STePHeN POff

CONCERT 2

Friday, May 20 at the Chelsea Art Museum

AMBIENT MUSIcSean carson

HOSTJohn Schaefer

PROGRAM

Murray Schafer Crown of AriadneBridget Kibbey

interviewcarlos Sanchez Gutierrez

Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez Machinary for piano duoNEW YORK PREMIERE OF I, II, III and V; WORLD PREMIERE of IVVIDEO BY ARTHUR GANSON

Split Second

John Cage In a LandscapeBrooklyn Rider

INTERMISSION

Jason Treuting Life is good when you are at a Look & Listen concert So Percussion

Elliott Carter Bariolage Bridget Kibbey

interviewJohn Musto & colin Jacobsen

John Musto PassacagliaWORLD PREMIERE OF THE ARRANGEMENT FOR TWO PIANOS BY THE COMPOSER

Split Second

Colin Jacobsen Achille’s HeelBrooklyn Rider

CARSON

SCHAFER

SANCHEZ GUTIERREZ

CAGE

TREUTING

CARTER

MUSTO

JACOBSEN

Composers

Sean Carson Ambient Music

Sean Carson helped found the Look and Listen Festival with David Gordon and received his PhD in music theory and composition from NYU in 2003. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and runs a performance series at the Berkeley Art Museum.

John Cage In A Landscape

20th century conceptual artist John Cage (1912-1992) famously “composed” the piano piece entitled 4’33” (1952), which called for the pianist to sit at a piano and not play for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The son of an inventor, Cage spent time in Europe as a young man, absorbing culture and studying with composer Arnold Schoenberg. He returned to the United States in the 1930s as a composer with an avant-garde approach, composing pieces for percussion groups and for what was called “prepared piano”–a piano with various objects inserted between the strings for percussive effects. Some consider Cage little more than a charlatan, but his idea that “everything we do is music” has undoubtedly influenced modern composers.

Nicholas Cords wrote: In A Landscape, a beautifully meditative and gently melis-matic work, suggests a much wider world than it would seem from a cursory glance at the score. Writing about the String Quartet in Four Parts from 1949, Cage expresses a sentiment which could easily apply to In A Landscape: “This piece is like the opening of another door; the possibilities implied are unlimited.” Originally for solo piano or harp, Justin Messina arranged In a Landscape for string quartet in 2009. Reflecting on his treatment of this work, Justin writes: “When I play In A Landscape at the piano, the thing that strikes me most is how different it is from other piano music. Cage specifies that the pedal is to remain depressed through-out, resulting in a rich, almost atmospheric quality. The ensuing musical language is one where the focus shifts away from the notes and phrases and centers on the resonance that emerges beneath them. In this arrangement I endeavored to accen-tuate and animate that resonance.”

Eclipse Quartet at Robert Miller Gallery in 2007

Elliott Carter Bariolage

Born in 1908 in New York City, Elliott Carter began to be seriously interested in music in high school and was encouraged at that time by Charles Ives. He at-tended Harvard University where he studied with Walter Piston and later went to Paris where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. Carter has been the recipient of the highest honors a composer can receive: the Gold Medal for Music awarded by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Medal of Arts, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hailed by Aaron Copland as “one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field,” Carter has received two Pulitzer Prizes and commissions from many prestigious organizations.

Bridget Kibbey wrote: Having just celebrated his 100th birthday, Elliott Carter is regarded as one of the most innovative, prolific composers of our time. With both men living in NYC, Carter became a friend and admirer of the harpist Carlos Salzedo. Fascinated by the sounds Salzedo was producing on the harp, Carter makes a point to add special effects for the instrument in his works for harp. In fact, Carter’s compositions for the harp challenge the player to new heights of technique and expression on the instrument. Bariolage is one such display of color and sound, and is the middle movement of Trilogy, a three-movement work for harp which Carter wrote for Heinz and Ursula Holliger.

Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez Machinary

Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York Tundra, where he teaches at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey, and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princ-eton, and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many of the standard awards in the field (e.g. Barlow, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters). Mr. Gutierrez co-directs the Eastman BroadBand En-semble. He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee’s Notebooks every day, hasn’t grown much since he reached adulthood at age 14, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.

FROM THE cOMPOSER These pieces, five out of a growing collection of miniatures written for piano-duo, are part-homage, part-commentary on the awesome ma-chines built by the American artist Arthur Ganson, a self-described cross between a mechanical engineer and a choreographer. Ganson’s machines are simple and profound, quiet and eloquent, high-tech and low-tech, finite and eternal.

Colin Jacobsen Achille’s Heel

Colin Jacobsen’s work as a composer grows naturally from his involvement with the Silk Road Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider and The Knights. Recently chosen by NPR listeners as one of the top 100 composers under 40, his compositions include Brooklesca, an homage to his hometown of Brooklyn, Beloved, do not let me be discouraged… written for Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider’s recording for Harmonia Mundi’s World Village label, and Achille’s Heel, heard tonight and on Brooklyn Rider’s CD Dominant Curve. He has written music for dance and theater as well, including Compagnia de’ Colombari’s production of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.

FROM THE cOMPOSER For years, I found it difficult to imagine the act of “compos-ing.” With the weight of the entire classical music canon looming large, I couldn’t see myself coming up with anything new worth anything to anybody. Largely through my work within the Silk Road Ensemble, the patient support of my friends in Brooklyn Rider, and the example of composers like Claude-Achille Debussy, I realized that it was possible to put notes together as a child plays: with seri-ous intent, joy when something works, and with the idea, as Debussy put it, that “pleasure is the law.” So Achille’s Heel (4 mvts: Lydia’s Reflection, Second Bounce, Loveland, Shur Landing) is above all a celebration of Play; childlike and un-inhibit-ed, yet filled with rules and boundaries. This was well exhibited in the interplay of gods and mortals in ancient Greek mythology and, as William Shakespeare put it, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women mere players.”

John Musto Passacaglia

Now known as one of our busiest opera composers, John Musto’s reputation as a master of the concert song has long been secure, both as composer and as a performer at the piano. His highly refined playing is featured in song recitals (often with the soprano Amy Burton), chamber music, concertos, and solo works. Last season, Mr. Musto embarked on a recording project with conductor Glen Cortese and the Greeley Philharmonic to perform and record both his piano concerti for Bridge records. He also served as composer-in-residence at the Mannes College The New School for Music. Since 2004, he has seen the production of three new operas, with a fourth, The Inspector, to premiere at the Wolf Trap Opera company in April 2011, and at Boston Lyric Opera in 2012. Wolf Trap’s recording of his first opera, Volpone, was nominated for a 2010 Grammy.

So Percussion at Pace/Wildenstein in 2006

Painting ay Joseph La Piana at the 2008 Festival at Robert Miller Gallery

Performers

Bridget Kibbey

Harpist Bridget Kibbey captivates audiences with masterpieces and new works that stretch the boundaries of her instrument. She has premiered works by Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Au-gusta Read-Thomas, and Kaija Saariaho, and she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kimmel Center, and the Tanglewood, Spoleto, and Lucerne Fes-tivals. Ms. Kibbey can be heard on the Deutsche Grammaphon label with soprano Dawn Upshaw in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre and Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs. Her CD of 20th century repertoire, Love is Come Again, was proclaimed “a strong contender for this year’s most distinguished debut CD” by Time Out New York. Ms Kibbey is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, and the Astral Artistic Services Auditions.

Brooklyn RiderJohnny gandelsman & Colin Jacobsen, violins; Nicholas Cords, viola; eric Jacobsen, cello

The adventurous, genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider combines a wildly eclectic repertoire with a gripping performance style. NPR credits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” The musicians play in concert halls and clubs, in venues as varied as Joe’s Pub in NYC, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Todai-ji Temple in Japan, the Library of Congress, and the South By Southwest Festival. Through creative programming and global collaborations, Brooklyn Rider illuminates music for its audiences in ways that are “stunningly imaginative” (Lucid Culture).

Split SecondRoberto Hidalgo & Marc Peloquin

Split Second explores a wide range of the piano ensemble repertoire: from Mo-zart to Stravinsky, from Argentinean tango to George Crumb, as well as important scores by Adams, Rzewski, Bolcom, and Errollyn Wallen, among many others. A Split Second performance in Mexico City was cited in Reforma as “one of the best chamber music events of the year.” Recent engagements include performances at Bennington College, Tenri Cultural Institute, Bargemusic, the Bellas Artes and Anfiteatro Simón Bolívar in Mexico City, and the Cultural Center at Roubaix, France. This concert is the ensemble’s third appearance at Look & Listen.

John Schaefer host

John Schaefer is the host of WNYC’s innovative music/talk show “Soundcheck”, which features live performances and interviews with a variety of guests. Schaefer has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series “New Sounds” since 1982, called “The #1 radio show for the Global Village” (Billboard), and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986. Schaefer has written extensively about music, including: the book New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music (Harper & Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); The Cambridge Companion to Singing: World Music (Cambridge University Press, U.K., 2000); and the TV program Bravo Profile: Bobby McFerrin (Bravo Television, 2003).

SCHAEFERSPLIT SECONDKIBBEY BROOKLYN RIDER

Murray Schafer Crown of Ariadne

R. Murray Schafer (b. 1933) is a composer, educator, environmentalist, scholar, and visual artist. Schafer’s involvement in music education led to his booklets, The Composer in the Classroom, Ear Cleaning, The New Soundscape, When Words Sing, and Rhinoceros in the Classroom. These illustrate his experiences with students and are among the first introductions to John Cage’s concepts of cre-ative hearing and sensory awareness into the Canadian classroom. As the ‘father of acoustic ecology’, Schafer has been concerned about the damaging effects of noise on people, especially dwellers of the ‘sonic sewers’ of the city. His booklets The Book of Noise and The Voices of Tyranny are pleas for anti-noise legislation and urban soundscape improvements.

Crowne of Ariadne depicts the myths of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur. The harpist represents Ariadne, and uses a wide range of percussion instruments to do so, most notably ankle bells. In the myth, Ariadne and other maidens were cho-sen to be sacrificed to the Minotaur and are thrown into a complex maze with the Minotaur waiting on the other end. Ariadne and Theseus (with whom she is in love), lead the group out of the maze by unfolding thread and slaying the Minotaur. This whimsical work was written for Judy Loman in 1979.

Robert Miller Gallery in 2005

Ethel and So Percussion team up at the

2007 Festival at Betty

Cuningham Gallery

CONCERT 3

Saturday, May 21 at the Chelsea Art Museum

AMBIENT MUSIcDavid Gordon

HOSTTerrance McKnight

PROGRAM

Colure & Double HelixPhyllis chen

interviewPhyllis chen & John Hollenbeck

John Hollenbeck Untitled WORLD PREMIERE

claudia Quintet

interviewZibuokle Martinaityte

Zibuokle Martinaityte Driving Force FOR TROMBONE, SAX, ACCORDION2011 L&L COMPETITION WINNER

Driving Force Trio

INTERMISSION

Jason Treuting Life is good when you are at a Look & Listen concert So Percussion

David Lang Miracle Ear Phyllis chen

interviewAngélica Negrón

Angélica Negrón The Little Thing WORLD PREMIERE

Phyllis chen

John Hollenbeck Untitled WORLD PREMIERE

claudia Quintet & Theo Bleckmann

Post-concert Champagne & Chocolate Reception

GORDON

CHEN

HOLLENBECK

LANG

MARTINAITYTE

NEGRÓN

Composers

David Gordon Tribeca

David Gordon is the founder and director of the Look & Listen Festival and president of the League of Composers/ISCM. He also founded and is president of Pinnacle Prep, a test prep company with over 35 employees that provides tutoring in students’ homes throughout the tri-state area. Mr. Gordon taught on the faculty of NYU and Hofstra University. His music has been performed by WSCMS, NY Virtuoso Singers, the League/ISCM, Talujon, and others, and he composed the music for, filmed, and edited Mitia, a documentary on the life of Matthew Ditlove, a French WWII veteran. Mitia was selected for archive by the Spertis Museum in Chicago to be used for educational purposes and as a presentation to Holocaust survivor groups.

In 1980, the composer moved to Tribeca, an emerging neighborhood with spacious, raw lofts, ideal for artists leaving the rapidly changing SoHo. Over the next 20 years, Tribeca changed, becoming barely recognizable to those who were familiar with it. Tribeca harkens to the fading charm of the old familiar territory.

Phyllis Chen Colure & Double Helix

FROM THE cOMPOSER After hunting down composers to write for the toy piano, I realized that there were a lot of pieces that I wanted to write for myself. My com-positions use unconventional instruments and sound-making devices that become integral to the visual and aural components of the work. In the last couple of years, I have composed several miniature works using toy pianos, music boxes and bowls. Only in retrospect have I discovered that many of them have been inspired by a circular gesture that has often been said to characterize my piano playing. Colure & Double Helix were composed using mixing bowls performed with my left hand. I found several of the bowls while I was living in Indiana and completed my percussion set at a housewares store in Tokyo. Both works appear on my mini-disc Mesmers. Time Out Chicago captured my compositional voice describing it as “a quirky music world that simultaneously haunts and inspires.”

John Hollenbeck Untitled

Genre-crossing composer/percussionist John Hollenbeck has gained widespread recognition as the driving force behind the unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world music, and contemporary composition. His Large Ensemble’s albums, A Blessing (Omnitone) and eternal interlude (Sunnyside Records), both received Grammy nominations, and in 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Hollenbeck is known for his collaboration with Meredith Monk, and commissions from Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gotham Wind Symphony, Ethos Percussion Group, and the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Tonight’s pieces are fresh off the press, so there are no notes.

David Lang at Pace/Wildenstein Gallery in 2007

Phyllis Chen in 2010 at Gary Snyder Project Space

Dave Lang Miracle Ear

Passionate, prolific, and complicated, composer David Lang embodies the restless spirit of invention. Lang is at the same time deeply versed in the classical tradition and committed to music that resists categorization, constantly creating new forms. In the words of The New Yorker, “With his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for the Little Match Girl Passion, Lang, once a postminimalist enfant terrible, has solidified his standing as an American master.” Many of Lang’s pieces resemble each other only in the fierce intelligence and clarity of vision that inform their structures. His cata-logue is extensive, and his opera, orchestra, chamber and solo works are by turns ominous, ethereal, urgent, hypnotic, unsettling and very emotionally direct.

FROM THE cOMPOSER Miracle Ear was written for Margaret Leng Tan and is dedicat-ed to my father Daniel Lang, in honor of his 70th birthday. Miracle Ear is the name of a brand of hearing aid that advertises on late-night TV. I wanted to create a piece that was an appropriate gift for my father - something about the passage of time but not too morbid. My father now wears hearing aids in both ears and apparently they can create as many listening problems as they solve. In particular, hearing aids may not make listening to music any easier because they tend to boost the back-ground noises and sounds associated with making music-breathing, attack, room noise, etc-more than the music itself. Through the hearing aid, notes that were too soft to hear unaided become drowned out by all the other louder noises. In Miracle Ear, gentle and subtle rhythms in the toy piano are accompanied by the sharp attacks of metal pipes. This makes the music very difficult to hear.

Zibuokle Martinaityte Driving Force

VivaVoce Magazine declared of the composer: “Virtuosity and a convincingly alluring rhetoric in her music are synthesized with intuitivism and existential pathos. Like an illusionist, the composer crafts an inner space filled with high tension controlled by her alone. Then one becomes the prisoner of the author, sometimes forced to float in that inner space between reality and transcendental states.” Ms. Martinaityte favors unconventional blends of timbres and intense utilization of extreme instru-mental registers, which often stretch the boundaries and technical capabilities of the performers. She gives exceptional roles to oft-underused instruments such as tuba, trombone, accordion, or bassoon. In 2008, Ms. Martinaityte was commissioned by the MATA Festival, where The Knights Chamber Orchestra premiered her Polarities.

FROM THE cOMPOSER Upon receiving a commission to write Driving Force for this rather peculiar combination of instruments, I was perplexed by how to approach it and especially how to utilize the accordion. My memory was cluttered by so many clichés of conventional usage of accordion, ranging from various folk traditions and French chansons to Piazzolla’s tangos that some of them unconsciously sneaked into the piece. Thanks to the wonderful accordion player Raimondas Sviackevicius (Lithuania), I was introduced to a whole new vocabulary of extended techniques, which became a part of the sound palette of the work. What is the engine of the music? What is the driving force of music? Is it rhythm, melos, harmony, polyphony, timbre or an inner impulse? In the process of writing Driving Force, I was consciously trying to grasp where the driving force of this work emanates from. Unexpectedly, I was inspired by the harmony of Baroque cadences as well as Baroque melismas, which are easily detectable in the composition.

Performers

Phyllis Chen

Describing Phyllis Chen, The Oregonian declared: “…her captivating performance was animated by un-bridled inventiveness, the kind of joyous creativity that playing with toys is meant to inspire.” A CAG New Music/New Places fellow, Ms. Chen’s artistic pursuits take her in numerous directions as a pianist, toy pianist, composer and performance artist. She is studying for her doctorate at Indiana University with André Watts.

Driving Force Trioeliot gattegno, saxophone; Jonathan greenberg, bass trombone; guy Klucevsek, accordion

eliot gattegno is the only saxophonist to win the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis, widely considered the most prestigious prize for the interpretation of new music. He has worked with James Levine, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Kurt Masur at festivals such as Marlboro, Tanglewood, Shanghai, Prague, and Spoleto. He is currently a Fellow at Harvard University and resides in NYC.

Jonathan greenberg, a native of Brooklyn, is a founding member of the St. Luke’s Trombone Quartet, bass trombonist with Absolute Ensemble and Mike Longo’s New York Jazz Orchestra, and he is a frequent performer with Manhattan Brass. Other collaborations include performing and recording with the Manhattan Jazz Or-chestra, with Keely Smith, Frank Sinatra, Jr., and Toshiko Akiyoshi, among others.

guy Klucevsek is a composer/accordionist who has performed and/or recorded with Laurie Anderson, Brave Combo, Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, and John Zorn. He has premiered over 50 solo accordion pieces, released 20+ recordings as soloist/leader, and can be heard on John Williams film scores.

Claudia QuintetDrew gress, bass; Matt Moran, vibraphone; Ted Reichman, accordion; Chris Speed, clarinet & tenor saxophone; special guest Matt Mitchell, piano

The Claudia Quintet’s music demonstrates that “innovative jazz does not have to be harsh, angry, loud, shrill or grating; it can be delicate, witty, ethereal and radiantly lyric, as the Claudia Quintet pointed out…” [Chicago Tribune]. Formed by John Hollenbeck in 1997, the ensemble’s unique sound has inspired dancing hippie girls at a New Mexico noise festival, the avant-garde cognoscenti in the concert halls of Vienna and Sao Paolo, and a generation of young musicians worldwide.

Terrance McKnight host

At WQXR, Terrance McKnight is host on weekday evenings and for the Saturday evening program, “All Ears with Terrance McKnight”, which was honored with an ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award in December 2010. McKnight’s musi-cal experiences – from glee club soloist and accomplished pianist, to professor at Morehouse College, and finally as producer/radio host – have consistently champi-oned the juxtaposition of the European Classical tradition alongside the American ‘Classical’ tradition – jazz, gospel, African American spirituals and other musical genres. McKnight was first heard in New York in 2008 when he joined the staff of WNYC and moved to WQXR in 2009.

McKNIGHTCLAUDIA QUINTETCHEN

CONCERT 4

Sunday, May 22 at the Chelsea Art Museum

AMBIENT MUSIcMilton Babbitt

HOSTLara Pellegrinelli

PROGRAM

Missy Mazzoli Cathedral City & The DriverVictoire

Jason Treuting Life is good when you are at a Look & Listen concert So Percussion

interviewDavid cossin

David Cossin Untitled WORLD PREMIERE

David cossin

INTERMISSION

interviewJean Miotte

Castelnuovo-Tedesco Fandango en RondeauDebussy Golliwogg’s Cakewalk (ARRANGED BY JOÃO LUIZ)

Gismonti Sete AneisBrasil Guitar Duo

interviewMissy Mazzoli

Missy Mazzoli India WhiskeyA Song for Mick KellyVictoire

CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO

Composers

Milton Babbitt Occasional Variations

The compositional and intellectual wisdom of Milton Babbitt (1916 – 2011) influ-enced a wide range of contemporary musicians. Babbitt was also renowned for his great talent, instinct for jazz, and his astonishing command of American popular music. Babbitt studied composition privately with Roger Sessions. The recipient of numerous honors, commissions, and awards, including a MacArthur Fellow-ship and a Pulitzer Prize Citation for his “life’s work as a distinguished and seminal American composer,” Babbitt was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Babbitt composed this piece on the legendary RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Co-lumbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio between 1968 and 1971. With this piece, one of a handful of all-electronic works he created at the studio during the sixties and early seventies, Babbitt put into music his research on the limits of musical and conceptual perception. Occasional Variations is divided into three parallel sections that re-visit the traditional idea of musical variation in a uniquely electronic manner.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Fandango en Rondeau FROM SONATINA CANONICA, OP. 196

The composer met Andres Segovia in 1932. Though he was a pianist by training, this initial interaction led Castelnuovo-Tedesco to write over 100 works for guitar, making him a central figure of 20th century guitar. Though Sonatina Cononica, written in 1961, may by its title suggest a genre that pays tribute to past styles, it is actually a thoroughly contemporary work, lyrical and sometimes humorous in na-ture, with three contrasting movements. The last movement of this work, Fandango en Rondeau, ritmico e deciso (rhythmical and decisive), is an energetic dance yet with some moments of introspection, including a brief melody indicated as ‘expressive and a little passionate’ before the main theme returns with its vivacity and excitement. - gRAHAM WADe

David Cossin Untitled

David Cossin was born and raised in Queens, New York, and studied classical percus-sion at the Manhattan School of Music. His interest in classical percussion, drum set, non-western hand drumming, composition, and improvisation has led to performances across a broad spectrum of musical styles. Cossin has written for many performers and groups including The Shanghai National Dance Company, Talujon Percussion Quartet, Michael Lipsey, Doudou Huang, Tom Kolor, and the C3 percussion Group. Since 1999, his sonic installations have been presented in New York, Italy and Germa-ny. He wrote, performed and recorded music for the documentary film Vertical Traveler and was invited to be artist in residence at the Loop Gallery in Italy.

Claude Debussy Golliwogg’s Cakewalk FROM CHILDREN’S CORNER (ARR. BY JOÃO LUIZ)

Children’s Corner is a set of six pieces published in 1908 and written by Debussy for his daughter Emma-Claude, known in the family as Chou-Chou and born in 1905. She was to outlive her father by barely a year. The English titles of the pieces are a reflection of Debussy’s anglophilia, echoed also in his habit of taking strong tea for breakfast and in a liking for whisky, and evidence of the influence on Chou-Chou of her English governess, Miss Gibbs.

JasonBABBITT

SophiaDEBUSSY

MichaelCOSSIN

JanGISMONTI

JuliaMAZZOLI

Patricia Spencer at ACE Gallery in 2002

Performers

Victoire

Missy Mazzoli, composer/piano; Olivia De Prato, violin; eileen Mack, clarinet; Lorna Krier, keyboards; eleonore Oppenheim, double bass

Victoire was recently dubbed “an all-star, all-female quintet” by Time Out New York, and was described by Pitchfork as “so good... a pleasingly accessible entrée into the world of pseudo-classical music.” Victoire performs Mazzoli’s distinct blend of dreamy post rock, quirky minimalism and rich romanticism. Since forming in 2008 they have shared the stage with Tortoise, Twi the Humble Feather, Redhooker and many others, performing at many top venues including New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Galapagos, Roulette, The Stone and the Whitney Museum, Chicago’s Mil-lennium Park, and the Bang on a Can Marathon. In spring of 2009 they became the first classical group to be featured on “eMusic.com Selects”.

David Cossin

David has worked across a broad spectrum of musical and artistic forms to incorporate new media with percussion. He has recorded and performed with composers and ensembles including the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich and Musicians, Philip Glass, Yo-Yo Ma, Meredith Monk, Tan Dun, Cecil Taylor, Talujon Percussion Quartet, and the trio, Real Quiet. Numerous theater projects include collaborations with Blue Man Group, Mabou Mines, and director Peter Sellars. Da-vid was featured as the percussion soloist in Tan Dun’s Grammy and Oscar winning score to Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Most recently, he joined Sting for his world tour, Symphonicities.

Brasil Guitar DuoDouglas Lora & João Luiz

Winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Brasil Guitar Duo is equally at home on a Classical or World Music series. Its innovative programs feature a seamless blend of traditional and Brazilian works. The Daytona-Beach News Journal exclaimed: “...there are two new kids on the classical guitar block –they’re from Brazil, and they’re armed and ready with the music of São Paulo’s streets.”

Lara Pellegrinelli host

Dr. Lara Pellegrinelli is an arts journalist and scholar. She received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Harvard University in 2005, focusing on jazz studies. Ms. Pellegrinelli currently teaches at Princeton University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Village Voice, and Time Out New York. She contributes arts and culture pieces on a wide variety of topics to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Her long list of interview subjects includes Edward James Almos, Jo Boobs, Asha Bhosle, Wafaa Bilal, Vince Clarke, Eileen Fulton, James Galway, Ed Koch, Wynton Marsalis, Sara McLachlan, Meredith Monk, Michael Musto, Bobbie Lee Nelson, Anita O’Day, Penny Palfrey, Angie Pontani, and Jacques Pepin.

PELLEGRINELLIBRASIL GUITAR DUOVICTOIRE COSSIN

The well known Golliwogg’s Cakewalk is a light-hearted version of a dance that had been popularized in the music-halls of the 1890s. Children’s Corner was first performed in Paris at the Cercle Musical by the American pianist Harold Bauer. The Suite was later orchestrated by Andre Caplet.

Egberto Gismonti Sete Aneis (SEVEN RINGS)

Gismonti (b. 1947) began his formal music studies on the piano in Brazil. He studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and composer Jean Barraqué, a disciple of Schoenberg and Webern. He was attracted by Ravel’s ideas of orchestration and chord voicings, as well as by choro. To play this music Gismonti made the transi-tion from piano to guitar, listening to musicians as wide-ranging as Django Rein-hardt and Jimi Hendrix. For him, Hendrix’s achievements were proof that “popular” and “serious” idioms need not remain opposite poles.

Sete Aneis is a modern choro, heard in a transcription by João Luiz, and the light, delicate texture perfectly complements its lively, joyful melody.

Missy Mazzoli The Diver, Cathedral City, India Whiskey, A Song for Mick Kelly

Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” by The New York Times. 2011 includes the premiere of a new orchestral work for the Orchestra of the League of Composers at Miller Theatre and a new solo work for violinist Jennifer Koh, com-missioned by the LA Philharmonic. From 2007-2010 Ms. Mazzoli was executive director of the MATA Festival. Victoire’s debut album Cathedral City, was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2010 and was named one of the year’s best classi-cal albums by The New York Times, Time Out New York, NPR and the New Yorker.

FROM THE cOMPOSER The Diver began life as a section of my chamber opera-in-progress, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt. In this instrumental version a repetitive line, played by the keyboards, becomes consumed in a flood of strings and looped electronics.

Cathedral City, the title track from our 2010 album, includes vocal samples from soprano Mellissa Hughes, as well as hundreds of other sampled power tools, hedge clippers, washing machines and skipping CDs. The text was inspired by an account from the neurologist Oliver Sacks, in which he describes a man who, at age fifty, learns to see after having been blind since birth.

India Whiskey features the amazing Eleonore Oppenheim playing an improvised double bass solo. This work also includes samples from The Conet Project, a compilation of recordings from number stations, short wave radio transmissions of mysterious origin that usually consist of a woman repeating a series of seemingly random numbers. While it is now generally agreed that these transmissions are codes for spies, it doesn’t make them any less creepy.

A Song for Mick Kelly was inspired by a character in Carson McCullers’ novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Mick Kelly is a young girl living in 1930’s Georgia. She wants desperately to be a composer, but must content herself with making a violin out of a cigar box and to wander around the neighborhood listening to Beethoven symphonies through her neighbors’ windows. In this work I imagined the kind of music she would make if given a chance to compose. This piece includes text by Farnoosh Fathi, sung from Mick’s point of view.

ABOUT LOOK & LISTEN

Mission

The Look & Listen Festival is an annual event dedicated to presenting new music in art galleries. Both artists and audiences enjoy performances by musicians of the highest caliber, who present concerts in New York City’s most prestigious art galleries. We are excited to continue to promote and encourage the appreciation of contemporary visual art and concert music.

Look & Listen Festival

By presenting contemporary classical music in art galleries, the Look & Listen Festival provides a visual context for music and an aural context for visual art, thereby en-hancing the appreciation of both. Concerts feature a range of 20th and 21st century classical music by established composers alongside newer works by younger, emerg-ing composers performed by the finest new music specialists. The Festival is also dedicated to promoting contemporary visual artists and the galleries that feature them.

Look & Listen has recently enjoyed enthusiastic attention from the press: NY1 featured the Festival in its Your Weekend Starts Now segment as a “great thing to do;” in its preview of the week’s cultural “happenings,” The New York Times said, “Both eyes and ears are catered to at the annual Look & Listen Festival;” and Steve Smith described the Festival in his review (part of a two-page color spread!) as a “lively annual event;” WQXR’s Q2, called the Festival “one of New York’s best new music events;” The New Yorker highlighted the Festival in its Goings On About Town, saying it “stimulates the eyes as well as the ears;” Time Out New York declared, “This eagerly anticipated celebration of new music, words, and visual art returns for three nights of genre-mashing exploration;” and WNYC featured excerpts of the Festival on New Sounds.

Composer Interviews

Integral to the Festival are interviews with composers, performers, and visual artists. Special guest hosts conduct the interviews, which explore the creative process from the varied perspectives of the different fields.

Ambient Music

Pre-concert presentations of ‘ambient compositions’ are a specialty of the Festival. These pre-taped works are often written by emerging composers and premiered in the gallery prior to each evening’s full-length concert and at intermission. Audience members are free to listen, have conversations, or stroll around the gallery taking in the visual art during this time, while being enveloped in ambient music.

Commissioning & Premiering

Through commissioning and premiering, Look & Listen strives to spark new works by dynamic and compelling composers. In 2010, Look & Listen commissioned its first new work, a piece by Dr. Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez for the prominent sextet eighth blackbird, who premiered the work at the Festival. Dr. Sanchez Gutierrez won the prestigious Fromm commission to help fund the new piece. This year’s Festival boasts numerous premieres, and future commissions and premieres are in the works!

Look & Listen Festival Prize

The Look & Listen Festival Prize, an annual competition, offers composers the op-portunity to win a New York City premiere at the Festival as well as a cash award. Each year, one piece is selected by a jury comprised of members of the Look & Listen Composers Collective. The competition is open internationally to emerging composers working in a variety of mediums. Look & Listen Festival Prize winners have been:

2003 Mei-Fang Lin Interaction2004 Peter Gilbert Ricochet2005 Panayiotis Kokoras Paranormal2006 Erin Gee Yama Mouthpieces2007 Izzi Ramkissoon Sub-ter-ain Frequencies2008 Nathan Davis Keybyar Untai2009 Paul Leary I Have a Past Life Memory from the War that Blew the Fifth

Planet into the Asteroid Belt2010 Dan Visconti Love Bleeds Radiant2011 Zibuokle Martinaityte Driving Force

History

In 2001, while enjoying one of Joan Tower’s Second Helpings concerts at the DIA Center, David Gordon was struck by the intimacy between audience and per-formers as well as the effect of extended viewing of the visual art. Interested in providing audiences with more concerts in such settings, he approached fellow NYU composer and Ph.D. student Sean Carson with the idea. Sean immediately committed to the project, and together, they and third original board member Sarah Snider contacted all the performers, composers, and galleries they knew, hop-ing to put on a Festival in 2003. Everything fell into place when Ace Gallery owner Douglas Christmas told David, “If you guys are supporting new music, I’m willing to support new music.” Fortunately, everyone, from graduate students to professors to performers to friends and family, loved the concept and volunteered ideas and time, making a Festival in the spring of 2002, a year earlier than planned, a reality.

Daedalus at the Robert Miller Gallery

Held in TriBeCa’s Ace Gallery, the 2002 Look & Listen Festival paired contempo-rary music with Tim Hawkinson’s indescribably unique installation, Überorgan. The 2003 Festival moved to Art In General and featured appearances by composer George Crumb, sculptor Donald Lipski, and cellist Fred Sherry. In 2004, Robert Miller Gallery hosted Look & Listen for what would be the first of five consecu-tive years, and amidst the large-scale, contemplative photographs of Bill Henson, prominent composers Martin Bresnick, John Corigliano, Steve Reich, and Joan Tower joined the renowned painter Philip Pearlstein in panel discussions. Meredith Monk, original Kronos member Joan Jeanrenaud, eighth blackbird, So Percussion, and others performed in front of works by the Canadian surrealist painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis and the famed Wil-liam Wegman joined panel discussions hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer.

The 2006 Festival featured a different gallery each night: Robert Miller Gallery, Betty Cuningham Gallery, and Pace/Wildenstein. The variegated surroundings en-hanced a star-studded lineup that included headliners eighth blackbird, So Percus-sion, and Ethel. Lively panels hosted by John Schaefer and Bruce Hodges featured Keynote speakers David Lang and Suzanne Bocanegra, photographer Bill Henson, and painter Judy Glantzman. Look & Listen 2007 took place amidst the provoca-tive paintings by Michael Kalmbach at the Robert Miller Gallery and in front of Abby Leigh’s playful paintings at the Betty Cuningham Gallery. Another wide array of performers included ICE, John Zorn’s Sappho Ensemble, Ethel, and So Percus-sion. Mr. Zorn’s work was written specifically for and premiered at the Festival. In 2008, the Festival returned to Robert Miller Gallery with the striking paintings of Joseph La Piana and OK Harris with the fascinating sculptures of Marilynn Gelf-man. Festival hosts John Schaefer, Sara Fishko, and Molly Sheridan interviewed Mario Davidovsky, Mark Stewart, and others. Mr. Stewart delighted audiences with his invented instruments and endless creativity; Ethel and Electric Kompany’s joined forces with Mr. Stewart for the Festival Finale – a rendition of Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, arranged by Mr. Stewart; So Percussion and Zeena Parkins teamed up to perform a Jason Treuting piece from his recent CD; and the exciting 2 Foot Yard energized the Festival audience. The 2009 Festival was hosted by OK Harris, where contemplative paintings of Mark Aronson and life-size, totemic sculptures of Robert Rohm provided the backdrop, and Gary Snyder/Project Space, where Leon Berkowitz’ paintings illuminated the space. Performer headliners included Bang on a Can, the League/ISCM, So Percussion, David Del Tredici, Marc Pelouquin, Todd Reynolds, and Split Second.

Chelsea Art Museum and Gary Snyder/Project Space hosted the 2010 Festival, where Jean Miotte’s and Beatrice Mandelman’s colorful paintings enlivened the respective spaces. WNYC’s John Schaefer, WQXR’s Terrance McKnight, and NPR contributor Lara Pellegrinelli hosted the concerts, renowned composers John Cori-gliano, Missy Mazzoli, and Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez were on hand to speak about their works – Mr. Sanchez Gutierrez’ happened to be L&L’s first commission, and virtuosic performers So Percussion, eighth blackbird, JACK Quartet, Phyllis Chen, and Face the Music played before standing-room only crowds each night.

Boards & Staff

Founder, PresidentDavid Gordon

Advisory BoardMartin Bresnick, George Crumb, Mario Davidovsky, Laurie Fendrich, Ron Gordon, Doug Hilson, Aaron J. Kernis, Paul Lansky, Donald Lipski, Steven Mackey, Meredith Monk, Philip Pearlstein, Peter Plagens, John Schaefer, Fred Sherry, Mark Stewart, Joan Tower

Board of DirectorsSean Carson, Amanda Cooper (Treasurer), Suzanne Farrin, Amy Frawley (Chair),David Gordon (President), Kristin Hevner, Laurel Marx, Danny Mefford, Sebastian Zubieta, (Vice President)

ConsultantsAmanda Alic (web), Robert Edelman (visual art), Jennifer Keiser Gordon (strategic planning and legal), Bruce Hodges (musical), Ron Gordon (photography), Bill Seig-mund (Q2 recording and sound), Jason Treuting (musical)

AdministrationStephanie Coleman (Director), Cleek Schrey

Look & Listen Festival Composers CollectiveSean Carson, Suzanne Farrin, David Gordon, Sebastian Zubieta –Composers of Ambient Music

facing pageMeridionalis conducted by

Sebastian Zubieta in 2010 at Gary Snyder/Project Space

Special Thanks

Enough cannot be said of the cooperation and support of 2011 Look & Listen Festival host chelsea Art Museum. Melissa Netecke, Ivan Gaete, and Cheryl Chan were tremendously helpful during the many months of planning. Thank you so much!

Thank you to John & Naomi of The Chocolate Room and Heather of Long’s Wines & Liquors, who donated fine chocolates and bubbly for the Champagne & Chocolate Reception. What a wonderfully generous gesture!

Thank you to Yamaha Artists Services, New York, for the sponsorship of a piano and to the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York for its sponsorship of Split Second.

Thank you to Bill Siegmund of Digital Island Studios, NYC for excelent sound engineering.

Thank you to Laurel Marx Design and Town Crier Printing.

CONTRIBUTORSLook & Listen is a non-profit organization and is made possible with generous financial support from public and private foundations and individuals. We greatly appreciate every contribution and thank all of our supporters deeply.

FOUNDATIONSAaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Amphion Foun-dation, BMI Foundation, Cary New Music Performance Fund, Eastman’s Hanson Institute for American Music, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Jewish Communal Fund, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Shana Alexander Charitable Foundation

PUBLIC SUPPORTThis program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts

CORPORATE SUPPORTPinnacle Prep

BENEFACTORAugusta Gross & Leslie Samuels

PATRONSDoug & Danielle Hilson, Joanne Witty & Eugene Keilin

DONORSAmy & Mark Frawley, Suzanne Farrin & Sebastian Zubieta

FRIENDSLaurie Fendrich & Peter Plagens, Martin Bresnick, Matthea Marquart, Nancy & Kenneth Falchuk, Jean-David Beyer, Ilene & Lester Bliwise, Louis Karchin, Herb Deutsch, Doris S. Lewis, Marjorie Saltzberg, Katherine A. Lemire, Carol D. Browne, Jo Hammerman & Donald Coleman, Judith Raphael & Tony Phillips, Mr. & Mrs. Sanford M. Sorkin, Felice Mendell & Marc Cooper, Christopher Tordini, Gina Genova, Richard & Ellen Farren, Amanda L. Cooper

Donations received after April 1, 2011 will be acknowledged in the 2012 program.

Yamaha Piano provided courtesy of Yamaha Artist Services, NY. Additional support for Split Second provided by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. P

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