Program:

Boxing Music (2006) - Todd Tarantino (b. 1974)
La Solitude du coureur de fond (2000) - Franck Bedrossian (b. 1971)
whatWALL? (2003) - Ken Ueno (b. 1970)
Corail (2000) - Edmund Campion (b. 1957)
BREAK (2008) - Aaron Einbond (b. 1978)

COMPOSER BIOS/Program Notes:

Franck Bedrossian After studying writing, orchestration and analysis at the CNR in Paris, Bedrossian studied composition with Gérard Grisey and Allain Gaussin and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris. In 2002/03, he studied composition and computer music at IRCAM. His works have been performed in France and abroad by ensembles such as Route, 2e2m, Ictus, Short Circuit, Cairn, the Ensemble Modern, Alternance, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Danel quartet, the Diotima quartet, and as part of festivals such as Agora, Résonances, Manca, RTÉ Living Music Festival, l’Itinéraire de nuit, Ars Musica, Nuova Consonanza, Le Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo,le Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence, Fabbrica Europa, and Wien Modern. He is currently Associate Professor of Music Composition at the University of California at Berkeley in the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).

Todd Tarantino is a New York City based composer. His music tends to be characterized by an intricate surface that combines multiple tempi, complex harmonic systems, and freedom within closely controlled parameters with a respect for lyricism and narrative. He travels extensively and much of his recent music draws on his experiences in the developing world, seeking, through the creative process of translation, to present in his own language a version of these experiences.

His music has been performed throughout America as well as in Europe, Asia and Africa by musicians such as Ensemble Moderne Akademie, Manhattan Sinfonietta under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky, Second Instrumental Unit, saxophonist Eliot Gattegno, pianists Barbara Lieurance and Kathleen Tagg, and the OCNM Ensemble under the direction of Zsolt Nagy. His music has been played at venues as varied as the ISCM World Music Days, the Ostrava Days New Music Festival in the Czech Republic, the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, the Aspen Music Festival in America, the Arab Perspectives Festival in Egypt as well as throughout New York City. Tarantino holds a doctorate in composition from Columbia University. His principal composition teachers include John Luther Adams, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen Siegel, Tobias PIcker and Jonathan Kramer.

This version of Boxing Music, for soprano saxophone, was written at the instigation of Eliot Gattegno, who convinced Todd through words and his performance of its suitability for that instrument.

Winner of the 2006-2007 Rome Prize and the 2010-2011 Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer and vocalist whose wide range of innovative works have been thrilling audiences around the world. The dramatic discourse of his music is based on the juxtaposition of extremes: visceral energy versus contemplative repose, hyperactivity versus stillness. He engages with multiple modes of music making: as a composer of acoustic works, as an electronic musician, and as an improviser specializing in extended vocal techniques.

Edmund Campion Connections between music and the natural world are major themes in Edmund Campion's work, which includes such compositions as Outside Music for ensemble with synthesizer (2005) (commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players), and Corail (Coral) for saxophone and live electronics (2001-present) (commissioned by IRCAM). In two of his scores, l'Autre (commissioned by Radio France and performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in 2003) and ME (commissioned by the CIRM in Nice, France and recently performed by Thomas Buckner at the Eighth San Francisco Electronic Music Festival), Campion explores close collaboration with poet John Campion in an exploration of art born of ecological concerns. A native of Dallas, Texas, Edmund Campion (b. 1957) did his doctoral work in composition at Columbia University and attended the Paris Conservatory where he worked with composer Gérard Grisey. In 1993 he was selected to work at IRCAM where he composed Losing Touch for vibraphone and tape, and was subsequently commissioned to write a large-scale piece for interactive electronics and MIDI grand piano as well as the full-length music theater work Playback. Campion joined the composition faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, where he is also Co-Director at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)

Aaron Einbond is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in music composition at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 at The University of California, Berkeley where his teachers include Edmund Campion, David Wessel, Cindy Cox, and Andrew Imbrie. He was born in New York in 1978 and has studied with John Corigliano, at Harvard with Mario Davidovsky, at the University of Cambridge with Robin Holloway, at the Royal College of Music, London with Julian Anderson as a British Marshall Scholar, and in Paris with Philippe Leroux as a Fulbright Scholar. He was selected for two years of the Cursus in Music Composition and Technologies at IRCAM in Paris where he studied with Yan Maresz through Berkeley's Georges Ladd Prix de Paris. He has received performances and commissions from Ensemble L'Instant Donné, Ensemble L'Itinéraire, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble Cairn, Antonio Politano, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Festival MANCA, and IRCAM's Festival Agora. Awards for his compositions include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two BMI awards, two ASCAP awards, and fellowships and scholarships from the Wellesley Composers Conference, Aspen Music Festival, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Voix Nouvelles, Domaine Forget, and the French American Cultural Exchange.

David Wegehaupt is an American saxophonist passionate about the promotion and development of contemporary music. As a soloist and chamber musician, David has been active in commissioning and performing new music for saxophone. His world and regional premiere performances include pieces by Aaron Einbond, Gael Tissot, Mikel Kuehn, Thierry Alla, Ivan Fedele, Claudio Gabriele, Vincent Bouchot and Timothy Stulman. He has played recitals as a soloist and a chamber musician around the United States, in Belgium, Greece, Germany, France, Canada, and Thailand. He has been invited to perform at festivals worldwide, including Synthermeia Music Festival in Thessoloniki, Greece, MANCA New Music Festival in Nice, France, and Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften in Berlin, Germany. In April 2010, David will be performing the North American premiere of Bruno Mantovani’s concerto Troisième Round with the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble.

In May 2007 David graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in Music Performance and a minor in recording technology. While there, he studied with Dr. John Sampen. He was a Fulbright grant recipient in 2007-2008 during which he studied at Conservatoire National de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt with Jean-Michel Goury. In May 2010 he will complete a MM in Music Performance at Arizona State University where he studies with Tim McAllister. David was the only American to reach the semi-final round of the 4th International Adolphe Sax Competition in Dinant, Belgium in November 2006.

David is a member of the Anubis Quartet, a new generation modular saxophone ensemble committed to the creation, progression and performance of new art music. Musicians of Anubis Quartet regularly perform on all members of the saxophone family, resulting in engaging and varied performances which exponentially increase the possibilities of expression through sound. In addition to a Chicago debut performance at Nichols Concert Hall of the Music Institute of Chicago, engagements during the previous concert season included the presentation of new works in Bangkok, Thailand at the World Saxophone Congress, and a performance at the NASA Region IX conference in Edmonton, Alberta. Currently, Anubis Quartet is the collaborating ensemble for Random Access Music, an NYC-based composers collective, and will present a concert of seven world premieres in New York, May 2010. In 2010-2011, Anubis looks forward to participating in the city of Chihuahua, Mexico’s New Music Festival, performing in the Mid-American Center for Contermporary Music’s concert series “Music at the Forefront,” and the premiere performance of RYOT Project, a collaboration between composers and performers in an attempt to investigate boundaries between improvised and composed music.