Commissions 2018-19
This season, Tigue premieres three new works by composers Lea Bertucci, Paula Matthusen and Elori Kramer — each working at the cross-section of music and technology; each through a different lens. These commissioned works will explore the sculptural and mechanical nature of percussive objects, as well as the effects of emerging technology on our understanding of the natural world, the individual and perception.
lea bertucci
is an American composer and performer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. In addition to her instrumental practice, (alto saxophone and bass clarinet), her work often incorporates multi-channel speaker arrays, electroacoustic feedback, extended instrumental technique and tape collage. Deeply experimental, her work is unafraid to subvert musical expectation.
Her discography includes a number of solo and collaborative releases on independent labels, including I Dischi Del Barone, Obsolete Units, Telegraph Harp, Clandestine Compositions and NNA Tapes.
She has performed extensively across the US and Europe at venues such as The Kitchen, PS1 MoMA, The Drawing Center, Anthology Film Archives, Abrons Arts, The Walker Museum, Madison Square Park, The Reniassance Society, Chicago, ISSUE Project Room, Pioneer Works, The Queens Museum, Roulette, Artists’ Space, Caramoor, The High Zero Festival, and Experimental Intermedia, among many others. She is a 2016 MacDowell Fellow in composition and a 2015 ISSUE Project Room Artist-in-Residence.
the music
The composition will be a 30-40 minute rather muscular piece that functions as a meditation on the nature of militarized sound, and is in some ways a fantasy of the breakdown of the great American war machine. I am using bits from drum corps style military marching music within the context of sustained and dynamic rolls on snare drum as the basis for this music. Extended technique including electoacoustic preparations and incorporating unconventional percussive objects will be crucial to the timbral and structural nature of the work.
paula matthusen
is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.
Her music has been performed by Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the Estonian National Ballet, James Moore, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Other Minds, the MATA Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, and the International Computer Music Conference. She performs frequently with Object Collection, and through the theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts.
the music
scored for three percussionists with retractable ladders, cassette players and percussion instruments, the work investigates the natural distortion of gravity using instruction based physicality as an obstacle for simple musical tasks.
elori kramer
Elori Saxl Kramer is a musician, composer, and filmmaker.
She makes films with SWIMMERS and music with Alpenglow.
She's directed films for the New Yorker and Slate.
She's composed music for Patagonia, Google, Poler, Dove, the New Yorker, This American Life, Public Radio International, Gimlet, MOMA, and more.
Her work has been featured by the New Yorker, Vimeo Staff Picks, Paste, Consequence of Sound, Flood Magazine, Impose, Bullet Media, Exclaim, VPR, Seven Days, and shown at festivals around the world.
Most recently, she premiered The Blue of Distance.
Originally from Minneapolis, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she can generally be found falling at a skatepark.
the music
A new piece exploring the effects of emerging technology on our understanding of the natural world, the individual, and perception.
These projects made possible by the Jerome Foundation, and New Music USA.