6 composer-performers, 6 different styles;
an evening of arty music by the bastard children of Webern and Kandinsky.

Balance (Aubrey Byerly) is a piece for any quartet. The four performers each play from the graphic score. The score presents an image composed of seven superimposed script figures resulting in a complex calligraphic design. Each performer individually creates a strategy for realizing all, or a portion of, the score, keeping in mind that the end goal is a collective performance, where individuals will need to coordinate their own musical ideas with a developing ensemble perspective, trying not to compromise original individual intent.

As an undergraduate at the University of California in San Diego, Aubrey Byerly (b. 1984) studied music composition under Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Chaya Czernowin, Chinary Ung, and Phillipe Manoury. After graduating, she moved to Buffalo in 2006 to pursue a combined MA/Phd in Music Composition at the University of Buffalo. Byerly's works have been premiered by internationally acclaimed performers such as The Barton Workshop, Geoffrey Gartner, and Red Fish Blue Fish.

by chance (Jenece Gerber) Three meaningless meditations for flute, singing bowls, and voice---in nonsense English, Turkish, and tongues. Music and text by Jenece Gerber; with Sabatino Scirri, flute and Jenece Gerber, singing bowls and voice.

Jenece Gerber is interested in exploring how sound can convey meaning, suggest multiple meanings, and destroy meaning. She has written for traditional ensembles and very non-traditional ensembles. She has has studied Balinese gamelan in Indonesia and opera in universities. In August her string quartet "judge a moth by the beauty of its candle" will be premiered as part of the "Summer in Sombor" composition program in Serbia. In October of this year her choral work "je me delace" will be premiered by the New York Virtuoso Singers in New York City. In addition to studying for the Ph.D in composition with Jeff Stadelman at the University at Buffalo, Jenece is a master's degree candidate in vocal performance at the University of Akron, currently studying voice with Tony Arnold at UB. Most recently she has performed with the Open Music Ensemble and Babel.

Dan Shim Ga (Robert Phillips) How often does one hear the tone of a voice betraying what the voice is saying? A simple, "Hello, how are you?" is frequently answered with a "fine" that is too lingering, too exasperated- the speaker is in fact not fine. Perhaps this is the tension between language and sound- a tension that is ripe for exploitation in music. "Dan Shim Ga," an experimental miniature by composer Robert Phillips, extracts music from this expressive power living between text and tone, and hunts for the kernel of meaning that so often hides between semantics, voice, and the physical production of sound itself. (A graph of these relationships has been provided by the composer to guide us in our search for this kernel, and to generate excitement for the upcoming Infringement Festival concert.)

Cast Out Aside (Tom Stoll) is an electronic piece created as a response to the wasteful nature of our society—and, more specifically, participation in society by myself as an individual. Within the piece, a spoken text acts as a meditation as I explore possession, loss, memory, and waste. Sounds of man-made materials invade the aural experience as the listener experiences their inevitable tendency towards accumulation and decay. -TS

Tom Stoll is a graduate student composer making electronic and acoustic music. He teaches the undergraduate electronic music techniques classes at UB. His latest works besides "Cast Out Aside" are a collection of pieces for solo cello and solo bass, with interactive electronics.

Rhythmic Harmonies (Sam Tymorek) is a live performance using a laptop computer that generates music according to a predetermined algorithm. The resultant music is an interaction between the live performer (myself) and predetermined processes.

Sam Tymorek has been a Buffalo resident for two years while working on an MA in composition at the University at Buffalo. He has composed music for concert, dance and video using both acoustic instruments and electronics. Sam will be moving to Boston immediately after this concert.

Electric Currents II (Sundar Subramanian) is an arrangement for electric guitar of Shawn Bell's Currents II, originally scored for classical guitar. It is a unique piece based on an energetic repetitive rhythm that is subtly varied. At the same time, the piece features memorable and complex melodic and harmonic qualities. Sundar has added some live signal processing to bring out various characters in the piece.

Solipsism (Ten Bars) (Sundar Subramanian) is a composition for electric guitar with a drone. (A sruti-box, sometimes used in Indian classical music, will be used.) Ten different bars of music, which leave much room for interpretation, are provided. The performer has some freedom concerning how to order these bars.

Sundar Subramanian, 28, is a Canadian composer completing coursework for the PhD in music composition at SUNY Buffalo. He completed his undergraduate studies at Carleton University in Ottawa and his MA in composition at York University in Toronto.

Some publications related to this event:
July and August, 2007 - 2007