Matt Malsky --To Have Done With ---- Roger Lebow, cello. 19th Annual Ussachevsky Festival

At its essence, To Have Done With is theatrical, a malleable character facing adversity. At the beginning, the cellist represents a self--assured, articulate, and resolute voice that is (musically) stable. Over the course of this piece, this solitary, live performer must navigate through a dense, often chaotic swirling soundscape composed of diverse audio fragments: Artaud screaming and banging in the stairway of his apartment flat; random spoken phrases from Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, the sounds of reel--to--reel tape recorders and other machines, individual musical instrument notes, breaking glass, an Edith Piaf torch song, and several hundred other bits of found audio. Gradually, the cello becomes more tentative, and plays less thematically coherent music. The external world, portrayed by the computer, consists of some pre-determined sounds, and some that are only activated in response to the loudness of the cello. In the final section, "La Vie En Rose," the cellist regains his/her composure, though transfigured by experience. --Matt Malsky

Matthew Malsky's compositional style is characterized by its rhythmic vitality, dramatically crafted gestures, melodic angularity, and irony. His music has been described as economical and elegant in both its technical and intellectual rigor, and in the way cutting-edge electronics are fully integrated with live performance. Malsky's compositions speak with intensity, seriousness and an underlying inquisitiveness about the boundaries between a complex world and a searching interior voice.
His compositions have been performed and acclaimed internationally, most recently at the Ultima Festival in Oslo, Norway, the Bytes of Art Festival @ Ylem in San Francisco, the En red 0-2000 Festival in Barcelona, the iChamber performing series at Arizona State University, national Society for Electro Acoustic Music-US conferences, the Australasian Computer Music Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, the International Computer Music Festival in Kobe, Japan, and the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival. His virtuosic compositions for acoustic instruments with live computer processing have attracted the interest of outstanding soloists including John Bruce Yeh (Chicago Symphony), Esther Lamneck (NYU), Frank Cox (c-squared), and Patti Monson (Sequitur). His second string quartet, Lacan, was premiered by the Penderecki String Quartet in the winter of 2007.
Matt Malsky is an Associate Director of Publications with the Electronic Music Foundation.


Cellist Roger Lebow has taught at Pomona College since 1993. A familiar figure in the Los Angeles musical landscape, you'll hear him as soloist, chamber player and in the LA Opera pit. He is also an ardent player, on baroque cello and viola da gamba, of early music. Lebow is also on the faculty of Chapman University. Formerly at Occidental College, he has also been on the guest faculty of CalArts, UC Irvine, and UC Bjoerling. He has recorded on the Delos, New World, Water Lily Acoustics, Spectral Harmonies and Albany labels. He received his Bachelor of Arts from U.C. Santa Cruz and his Master of Music from the University of Southern California.


19th Annual
Ussachevsky Memorial Festival

Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911--1990), Pomona '35, was a pioneer in the field of electronic music and co-founder of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Among his early compositions was his Jubilee Cantata (1937), performed by the Pomona college choir and orchestra to celebrate the college's 50th anniversary. In 1988, he was commissioned to write another piece in commemoration of Pomona's 100th anniversary. He left a bequest to the college to support activities in the field of electronic music. This annual series of concerts and some of the equipment used tonight are made possible by this gift.

This 19th Annual Festival's music depends in varying ways on technology to expand the tonal capabilities of familiar musical instruments, to make new sounds that could not be made any other way, or to coordinate rhythmic strands in ways that would be difficult otherwise. The performer's role in many of these pieces differs from what is found in a typical classical concert. Despite generally precise notation, performers must react to electronic responses that might vary with each performance. In several pieces, all of the electronic sounds heard derive directly from the live players' performance.

Video by Barry Werger-Gottesman

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Malsky
• To
• Have
• Done
• With