IMPROVISED MUSIC WILL BE FEATURED DURING A NOVEMBER 11 CONCERT AT BARD COLLEGE Performers include Richard Teitelbaum and Carlos Zingaro, and Toshimaru Nakamura and Sean G. Meehan

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON-On Monday, November 11, there will be a concert featuring improvised electronic music at Bard College. Open to the public without charge, the program will begin at 8:00 p.m. in Bard Hall.

The first half of the program is presented by the Creative Music Alliance at Bard, and features performances by Sean G. Meehan on snare drum and Toshimaru Nakamura on a no-input mixing board.

The second half of the program is presented by The Bard Center, Integrated Arts, and the Music Program at Bard, and will feature Bard professor Richard Teitelbaum on synthesizer and Carlos Zingaro on violin and electronics.

For further information, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425.

About the artists:
Richard Teitelbaum is a pioneer in electronic and computer music acknowledged for innovations in interactive computer systems and his ability to humanize the synthesizer. A founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran, of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome in 1966, Teitelbaum has composed in a variety of genres, including works for the Japanese shakuhachi master Katsuya Yokoyama and pianists Aki Takahashi and Ursula Oppens. He has written a choral piece for 20 Japanese Buddhist monks, and collaborated on multimedia works with Nam June Paik, Joan Jonas, and others. His most recent recording, Blends, includes two works written for Yokoyama, with Teitelbaum performing on electronics; other recordings include Golem: An Interactive Opera; Live at Merkin Hall: Duets with Anthony Braxton; Concerto Grosso; Rune Some By You; and Cyberband. Teitelbaum's compositions have been performed in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lisbon, London, Paris, Tokyo, and, in the United States, in Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere. In 2002, Teitelbaum was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Arts Electronica from Austrian Radio and Television; commissions from the Venice Biennale, German Radio, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet the Composer /NEA Commissioning Program, and Rockefeller Foundation; and two Fulbright research grants to Italy and Japan.

Carlos Zingaro, a regular musical collaborator with Teitelbaum, was born in Lisbon, Portugal. He was the founder, in 1967, of Plexus, the only Portuguese group to have developed a new musical approach based on contemporary music, improvisation, and rock. Since 1975, Zingaro has performed with a variety of musicians, including Barre Phillips, Derek Bailey, Jon Rose, Kent Carter, Ned Rothenberg, Evan Parker, and Paul Lovens. He has performed at some of the most important new music and improvising festivals in Europe, Asia, and America. In 1979 Zingaro was awarded a Fulbright Grant and invited to the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, to participate in meetings, classes, and performances with such composers as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Leo Smith, Tom Cora, and Richard Teitelbaum. He has produced several film scores and worked extensively with dancers and dance companies, including Gulbenkian Dance Company, the Opéra de Genève Dance Company, Michala Marcus, Aparte, and Olga Roriz.

Sean Meehan creates ways to acoustically sustain tones from the snare drum, most noted as a marching instrument. From low-end rumbles to piercing sheets of sound, using simple implements like dowels and forks, Meehan provides beds of sound, drones, and melodies. His interest in improvisation and collaboration has taken him around the world, where he has performed solo and with other artists, ranging from traditional instrumentalists to avant-garde flower arrangers. His recordings include a CD of solo drum pieces and a trio recorded in Japan, with Mamoru Fujieda playing computer and Michihiro Sato playing shamisen. His duet CD with Sachiko M was released November 1. In a recent issue of Wire magazine Byron Coley says, "Meehan is one of the best, though least documented percussionists around
. . . a king of small gestures and smears."

Toshimaru Nakamura is a prominent member of the burgeoning onkyo movement in Japan. Onkyo, a Japanese word meaning "reverberation of sound," places more emphasis on sound texture than on musical structure, distilling elements of techno, noise, and electronic music into a unique hybrid. Nakamura plays the no-input mixing board, connecting the input of the board to the output, then manipulating the resultant feedback. "It is an instrument that conceptually makes no sound but is given voice through misuse," he says. He has several solo recordings and performs often in duet with Sachiko M. His most recent CD is a duet with AMM's Keith Rowe that has received critical acclaim. Nakamura has been a guest at most European and Japanese contemporary music festivals.

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(10.21.02)

This event was last updated on 10-25-2002

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