The University of New Mexico

NEWS RELEASE

 


John Donald Robb Symposium 2006

FEATURED COMPOSERS AND ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Roger Reynolds was educated in music and science at the University of Michigan . His compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video and real-time computer spatialization, in a signature multidimensionality of engagement. The central thread woven through Reynolds' uniquely varied career entwines language with the spatial aspects of music. This center first emerged in his notorious music-theater work, The Emperor of Ice Cream (1961-62; 8 singers, 3 instrumentalists; text: Wallace Stevens), and is carried forward in the VOICESPACE series (quadraphonic tape compositions on texts by Coleridge, Beckett, Borges and others), Odyssey (an unstaged opera for 2 singers, 2 recitants, large ensemble, multi-channel computer sound; bilingual text: Beckett), and JUSTICE (1999; soprano, actress, percussionist, computer sound and real-time spatialization, with staging; text: Aeschylus). In addition to his composing, Reynolds' writing, lecturing, organization of musical events and teaching have prompted numerous residencies at international festivals. He was a co-director of the New York Philharmonic's Horizons '84, has been a frequent participant in the Warsaw Autumn festivals, and was commissioned by Toru Takemitsu to create a program for the Suntory Hall International Series. Reynolds' regular masterclass activity in American universities also extends outward: to the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki , Ircam in Paris , the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing , to Latin America and Asia, to Thessaloniki . His extensive orchestral catalog includes commissions from the Philadelphia , Los Angeles and BBC Orchestras. In 1988, perplexed by a John Ashbery poem, Reynolds responded with Whispers Out of Time , a string orchestra work which earned him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Critic Kyle Gann has noted that he was the first experimentalist to be so honored since Charles Ives. Reynolds' writing -- beginning with the influential book, MIND MODELS (1975), and continuing, most recently, with FORM AND METHOD: Composing Music (2002) -- has also appeared widely in Asian, American and European journals. Reynolds' music, recorded on Auvidis/Montaigne, Lovely, New World, Pogus, and Neuma, among others, is published exclusively by C.F. Peters Corporation, New York . In 1998, Mode Records released WATERSHED, the first DVD in Dolby Digital 5.1 to feature music composed expressly for a multi-channel medium. "As in all art making, there is a kind of 'alchemy' going on [producing] a richly nuanced and authentic result," wrote Richard Zvonar in Surround Professional. In the same year, The Library of Congress established the Roger Reynolds Special Collection. Writing in The New Yorker, Andrew Porter called him "at once an explorer and a visionary composer, whose works can lead listeners to follow him into new regions of emotion and meaning."
 
Steven Schick
has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher for the past 30 years.  He studied at the University of Iowa and received the Soloists Diploma from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg , Germany . He has commissioned and premiered more than one hundred new works for percussion and has performed these pieces in major concert series such as Lincoln Center's Great Performers and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella concerts, as well as in international festivals including Warsaw Autumn, the BBC Proms, the Jerusalem Festival, the Holland Festival, the Stockholm International Percussion Event and the Budapest Spring Festival, among many others. He has recorded many of those works for SONY Classical, Wergo, Point, CRI, Neuma and Cantaloupe Records and has been regular guest lecturer at the Rotterdam Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music in London . Schick is Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and Lecturer in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. He was the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002 and from 2000-2004, he served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève in Geneva , Switzerland . Schick is the founder and Artistic Director of the percussion group, "red fish blue fish."

red fish blue fish (Steven Schick, Artistic Director)
is the resident ensemble of percussionists of the University of California , San Diego . The group serves as a laboratory for the exploration of new work for percussion and tours this work regularly. Red Fish Blue Fish has played in New York at Lincoln Center and the Henry Street Settlement as part of the Bang on a Can Festival, in Paris at the Agora Festival, at Mexico City's Centro de Bellas Artes, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and as a regularly featured ensemble on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella series. In the 2004/2005 season, they presented a concert at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Nashville . The members of the ensemble are: Gustavo Aguilar, Greg Stuart, Don Nichols, Robert Esler.

Glenn Hackbarth
is currently on the faculty at Arizona State University where he is the director of both the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and the Electronic Music Research Studios. The recipient of grants and awards for musical composition from  ASCAP, the Arizona Arts Commission and the  National  Endowment for the Arts, he has composed for a large  variety of instrumental combinations in both the acoustical and electronic mediums.  His music is available on the Crystal , Access and Orion labels.

John Donald Robb (1892-1989)
led a rich and varied life as an attorney, composer, arts administrator, and ethno-musicologist. He composed an impressive body of work including symphonies, concertos for viola and piano, sonatas, chamber and other instrumental music, choral works, songs and arrangements of folk songs, two operas, including Little Jo , a musical comedy, Joy Comes to Deadhorse , and more than sixty-five electronic works.  Robb's orchestral works have been played by many major orchestras in the U.S. and abroad and under noted conductors, such as Hans Lange, Maurice Abravenel, Leonard Slatkin, Gilberto Orellana, and Yoshimi Takeda, among others. During his two decades as an international lawyer in New York, Robb studied with leading composers Horatio Parker, Darius Milhaud, Roy Harris, Paul Hindemith and Nadia Boulanger and in 1941, at the age of 49, left his law career to become head of the music department at the University of New Mexico and served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts from 1942-57. During his tenure at UNM, Robb's fascination with Hispanic Folk Music led to his collection of over 3,000 field recordings of traditional songs and dances from the American Southwest, South America and Nepal which formed the nucleus of the John Donald Robb Archive of Southwestern Music at the University of New Mexico. He wrote two books on the subject, including, Hispanic Folk Songs of New Mexico (1954) and his authoritative book, Hispanic Folk Music of New Mexico and the Southwest: A Self Portrait of the People (1980). 

The John D. Robb Musical Trust
was established at UNM in 1989 by John D. and Harriet Robb. The mission of the Trust, in collaboration with UNM, is to support the music and musical legacy of John Donald Robb, to further his inspiring commitment to education and to advance the understanding of music of the Southwest. Since 1989, the Trust has supported the editing of many of Robb's compositions; performances of his and other composers work at the UNM Composers' Symposiums and other national and regional venues; a scholarship for the study and performance of Robb's piano work; several CD recordings, including those with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra; a comprehensive exhibit celebrating the life and work of Robb at Zimmerman Library; and many other projects. The Trust established the John D. Robb Graduate Music Assistantship at UNM in 2000 and initiated the John D. Robb New Mexico Composers' Competition in 2003. Most recently, the Trust presented John D. Robb's folk opera, Little Jo , at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in October 2005 under the direction of conductor, Guillermo Figueroa.

 


The University of New Mexico is the state's largest university, serving more than 32,000 students. UNM is home to the state's only schools of law, medicine, pharmacy and architecture and operates New Mexico's only academic health center. UNM is noted for comprehensive undergraduate programs and research that benefits the state and the nation.

www.unm.edu