This event has been postponed due to weather. Please check back soon for the rescheduled date.

the [Switch~ Ensemble]:

Laura Cocks: flutes
Madison Greenstone: clarinets
Lauren Cauley: violin
T.J. Borden: cello
Megan Arns: percussion
Jason Thorpe Buchanan: artistic director & electronics/sound
Chris Chandler: electronics/sound

PROGRAM:

Resonant Mechanisms: Upstate Experimentalism
Sarah Hennies, Everything Else (2016)
Victoria Cheah, Hard columns you within (2022) - world premiere
Julius Eastman, Buddha (1984)
Jen Kutler, Chatter Marks (2022) - world premiere

ENSEMBLE BIO:

A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, the [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation of new works for chamber ensemble: we bring bold new acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia projects to life. At the core of each performance is our commitment to the total integration of technology and live musicians. We strive for compelling artistry achieved through the seamless creation, production, and execution of new music, and believe that working directly with composers—in a medium where the score is a point of departure rather than a finish line—allows for new and thrilling musical possibilities.

[Switch~] contributes to the future of the genre by strongly advocating for and commissioning the music of a new generation of emerging young composers. Recent engagements include performances and residencies at Cornell, Bard College, the University of Chicago, Ithaca College, Buffalo State University, UC Berkeley, the University of Missouri, the University at Buffalo, the VIPA Festival (Spain), Eastman School of Music, Colby College, and Avaloch Farms Music Institute, as well as concerts at the Image/Sound Festival, San Francisco Center for New Music, MATA Interval Series, NYCEMF, Vanguard New Music Series at Kent State University, the Queens New Music Festival, the CD release of Christopher Chandler's Smoke and Mirrors on the SEAMUS label, CD releases with composers Juraj Kojs, Stephen Yip, Dorothy Hindman, Heather Stebbins, and more.

Based in New York City and founded in 2012 at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, the [Switch~ Ensemble] looks toward the future of contemporary music. Dedicated to performing high-level chamber music integrated with cutting-edge technology and supporting emerging and early career composers, we are passionate about helping to build a diverse canon of 21st century works that leaves space for all voices—especially those that have historically been excluded from our field. Upcoming engagements include performances at PS21, Hallwalls, the University at Buffalo, as well as a world premiere at the Clemente in New York City by Sam Pluta, commissioned by Chamber Music America.

This concert is presented with support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Amphion Foundation.

more info at: https://www.switchensemble.com

Megan Arns is a percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and educator with a diverse set of skills and a driven passion for her craft. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO where she has served as Director of Percussion Studies since 2014. Recent past faculty positions include Mansfield University in Pennsylvania and the National Music Conservatory in Amman, Jordan where she was also the Principal Timpanist of the Amman Symphony Orchestra. Active as a contemporary chamber percussionist, Megan's recent highlights include collaborative performances in Spain, France, India, Jordan, Costa Rica, Ghana, and the United States at venues such as the Kennedy Center, Millennium Park, Smithsonian Institution, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Megan regularly performs with the [Switch~ Ensemble], Clocks in Motion, and DRAX. Megan received her D.M.A. in Percussion Performance & Literature and M.A. in Ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music. She was also awarded performance degrees from Florida State University (M.M.) and Truman State University (B.M.), where she was recognized as a Presser Scholar. Megan endorses Vic Firth Sticks & Mallets, Pearl/Adams Musical Instruments, Black Swamp Percussion, Remo Drumheads, and Zildjian Cymbals. www.meganarns.com

Tyler J. Borden is a cellist working with, in, and around the constraints of the cello. Formerly from Western NY, he is now based in Brooklyn NY, where he spends much of his time finding ways to exploit the strengths and failures of himself and his instrument. "T.J. Borden is a multifaceted sound shaper, noise maker, collaborator and community organizer. As an interpreter, he brings his technical brilliance to his cello playing by working closely with composers in solo works and in group formations like the [Switch~ Ensemble] and the Mivos Quartet. As an improviser, he can be found piling into a shitty car with his bandmates and touring across the country to play in broom closet sized venues and sleeping on strangers' floors. As an organizer, he can be seen putting together shows for experimental artists, most notably co-founding High Desert Soundings, a multi-day festival located in the desert of Southern California's Wonder Valley." – Michelle Lou www.tylerjborden.com

Violinist and improviser Lauren Cauley has quickly risen in New York's avant-garde as an artist known for genre-breaking performances that expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument. Now a "mainstay of the local new-music scene" (New York Times), she's built a reputation as an interpreter of "fierce precision" and "excellence uncompromised" (Cleveland Classical). Lauren maintains an international career with performances as a soloist, and with Metropolis Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, and the [Switch~ Ensemble]. Lauren received her BM and MM from the Eastman School of Music, where she served as Teaching Assistant to Charles Castleman. While at Eastman, Lauren was awarded a DAAD grant to study at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, Germany, later attending the International Ensemble Modern Academy, Klangspuren Schwaz. As a sought-after collaborator and recording artist, Lauren's playing has been broadcast on WNYC, ORF Radio Wien, WDR Köln, Radio SRF 2 Kultur, and NBC's Saturday Night Live. Lauren can be heard on Albany Records, Atlantic Records, ATMA Classique, Blue Note, Chandos Records, New Focus Recordings, Physical Editions, and RVNG Intl. As a composer, Lauren has premiered her own work for violin and electronics at the Guggenheim Museum and been commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble. www.laurencauley.com

Laura Cocks is a flutist with "febrile instrumental prowess" (The New York Times), who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music and "creates intricate, spellbinding works that have a visceral physicality to them" (Foxy Digitalis). Laura is the executive director and flutist of TAK Ensemble "one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music" (I Care If You Listen) with whom Laura makes musics "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex." (WIRE Magazine). Laura performs regularly as a soloist, an improvisor, and with ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in NYC and abroad. Their recent solo album, field anatomies, was released on Carrier Records in 2022, and praised for its "superhuman physicality" and "disciplined patience" (Bandcamp Daily's Best Contemporary and Experimental Releases). Laura holds a doctorate from The Graduate Center and continues their writing and research in corporeal analyses of art and musical praxis. They studied with Michel Debost, Kate Hill, William Bennett, Kathleen Chastain, and Tara Helen O'Connor at Oberlin Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and The Graduate Center. Laura uses they/she pronouns. www.lauracocks.biz

Christopher Chandler is a composer, sound artist, and a co-founder of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. He serves as Assistant Professor of Music at Union College in Schenectady, NY where he teaches courses in music theory, composition, and technology. His acoustic and electroacoustic work draws on field recordings, found sound objects, and custom generative software. His music has been performed across the United States, Canada, and France by leading ensembles including Eighth Blackbird, the American Wild Ensemble, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. His music has received recognition and awards for his music including a BMI Student Composer Award, an ASCAP/SEAMUS Commission, two first prizes from the Austin Peay State University Young Composer's Award, winner of the American Modern Ensemble's Annual Composition Competition, and the Nadia Boulanger Composition Prize from the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. Christopher received a Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music, an M.M. in composition from Bowling Green State University, and a B.A. in composition and theory from the University of Richmond. www.christopherchandlermusic.com

Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist based in New York City. They have performed as a featured artist of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Notable performances have been as a soloist presented by ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Night of 100 Solos in Los Angeles, in recital at the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo) and at the Fondation Abbaye Royaumont. Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble], and has performed as a guest with Alarm Will Sound, Either/Or, and Argento New Music Project. They can be heard on Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, TAK Editions, Unknown Tapes, eë editions (AT), Impakt Collective (DE), and upcoming on Relative Pitch Records. Madison is a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where they learn greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis. They hold a Bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music where they studied with Kenneth Grant and Jon Manasse. Since 2012 they have pursued periodic studies with Ernesto Molinari within the framework of different festivals and masterclasses. www.madison-greenstone.com

Jason Thorpe Buchanan is a tri-continentally active American composer, conductor, Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble], and Artistic Associate/Lecturer in Digital Media and New Technologies for Music at the Hochschule für Musik Dresden's Hybrid Music Lab. Formerly Department Chair of Composition, Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at Mahidol University, Managing Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative (U Missouri), and Director of the UT Austin Electronic Music Studios. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, and has been commissioned and sought internationally by Alarm Will Sound, Talea, Nikel, Interface, Eklekto, Slagwerk Den Haag, Royaumont, EXAUDI, the HKNME, Eastman Musica Nova, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, YST Conservatory (Singapore), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst, and others. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at Darmstadt, The Industry's FIRST TAKE, and MATA. Honors include a Fulbright Fellowship (Hamburg), nomination for the Gaudeamus Prize, an American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant, and Artist-in-Residence at the Embassy of Foreign Artists (Switzerland). www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com

PROGRAM NOTES:

Everything Else (2016) asks musicians to choose an object/method for performing a repetitive sound-making action that is "non-musical" (i.e. do not use something commonly known as a musical instrument) for the duration of the piece. Performers should agree on a total duration before and/or during rehearsals. Performers may define some criteria for choosing a duration during the rehearsal process (or not). Preference is given (but not limited to) sounds that change over time, are difficult to repeat precisely, or are otherwise not prone to exact repetition. In addition to this, each player should also have a small, high-pitched instrument with a limited range. – Sarah Hennies

"As the years have passed, Hennies' work has increasingly focused on the remarkable harmonic and rhythmic possibility found Everything Else immediately dropped me into a world of joy, humor, and severity…it is an effort of raw materiality, but here, in the spirit of Fluxus and Dada, she reminds us to find beauty and emotion beyond encounters where we expect them, and that compositional structure is not always what we think." – Bradford Bailey

Instabilities at the forefront of attention beome features - who is to say what is intentional, when looking at something that is inherently unstable? The romance of instability lies in the search for affirmation. Is this what I thought this was, or could be, and how may I earn you? Hard columns you within (2022) attempts a meditation on the undertow towards stability in identity and meaning, through intense amplification and the residue of resonance. Commissioned by and dedicated to the [Switch~ Ensemble], and written with the utmost gratitude and friendship. – Victoria Cheah

Buddha (1984) is a late period open instrumentation and open duration work, a single-page, hand drawn score of a resonating oval encompassing 20 staves of non-durational pitches, without performance instructions. Unlike many of Eastman's other works, no audio recording of the piece from his lifetime exists. The original score consists of a single page on which notes are notated in an oval on twenty systems one above the other (eleven in treble clef, nine in bass clef). On the paper, the staves vary greatly in length due to the oval that delimits them; on the shortest ones, there is only one note each. Almost always, the last notehead of each line is connected by a horizontal line to the right edge of the oval, suggesting a long holding of the note in question. The conventional arrangement of the staves from top to bottom (or high to low or all G clefs at the top and all F clefs at the bottom) as well as the range of tones that get deeper and deeper from top to bottom suggest the simultaneity of the musical proceedings—and not just a playing of the individual lines one after the other. The coordination of the simultaneous sounding, however, is not organized by any numbers, bar lines, auxiliary lines, or recognizable superimposed notation. – Program note by Philip Bartels

Chatter Marks (2022) is an investigation into the relationship between the breakdown of the individual and the crumbling social, political and economic foundations of the United States in present day. Looking to composers from the Fluxus movement for inspiration, the score asks the performers personal questions around their upbringings and personal lives. I incorporated my sewing machines turned monophonic mechanical synthesizers which follow the pitch of one performer at a time which are meant to attempt to mimic the musicians' emotive playing and fall short. The musicians attempt to hide, change or break the sewing machines in any way they can like prey trying to evade a predator. In the last section of the piece, I created and built a custom electro-magnetic vibraphone exciter with hand made bars in which the default is for all notes to ring out unless they are held down. In this section, there is not enough and the performers must steal from each other until there is nothing left. – Jen Kutler

COMPOSER BIOS:

Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She presents her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist with notable performances at MoMA PS1 (NYC), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Festival Cable (Nantes), send + receive (Winnipeg), O' Art Space (Milan), Cafe Oto (London), ALICE (Copenhagen), and the Edition Festival (Stockholm). As a composer, she has worked with a wide array of performers and ensembles including Bearthoven, Bent Duo, Claire Chase, ensemble 0, Judith Hamann, R. Andrew Lee, Talea Ensemble, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Two-Way Street, Nate Wooley, and Yarn/Wire.

She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from New Music USA, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County. Sarah is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College. https://www.sarah-hennies.com/

Victoria Cheah (b. 1988, New York, NY) is a multi-disciplinary composer interested in boundaries, sustained energy, and social-performance rituals. Her work has been commissioned and/or featured by ensembles and presenters including Non-Event, [Switch~ Ensemble], Line Upon Line, Han Chen, andPlay, Yarn/Wire, Wavefield Ensemble, MATA Festival, Guerilla Opera, Ensemble Dal Niente, Vertixe Sonora, Marilyn Nonken, PRISM Quartet, and performed by others. Recordings of their music can be found on Dinzu Artefacts, New Focus Recordings, and XAS Records. Cheah currently serves as Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, as well as Director of Operations of Talea Ensemble.

From 2011-2015, Cheah served as the founding executive director of Boston new music sinfonietta Sound Icon. She has worked with ensembles and festivals including Composers Conference, Manhattan Sinfonietta, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Composit Festival, and Cantata Profana towards the realization of contemporary music events in New York, Boston (USA) and Rieti (IT). Previously, Cheah has taught music, research, and writing related courses as an instructor at Longy School of Music, Brandeis University, and as a teaching fellow at Harvard University. As a composer, she has attended academies including Sommerakademie Schloss Solitude, Darmstadt, Fontainebleau, VIPA, SICPP, The Walden School, and others. Cheah holds a B.A. in music from City University of New York Hunter College & Macaulay Honors College and a Ph.D. in music composition & theory at Brandeis University. https://victoriacheah.com

Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was an artist who, as a gay, black man, aspired to live those roles to the fullest. He was not only a prominent member of New York's downtown scene as a composer, conductor, singer, pianist, and choreographer, but also performed at Lincoln Center with Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, and recorded experimental disco with producer Arthur Russell. 'Eastman is something of a cult figure among composers and singers', reads a 1980 press release. Despite his prominence in the artistic and musical community in New York, Eastman died homeless and alone in a Buffalo, NY hospital, his death unreported until eight months later, in a Village Voice obituary by Kyle Gann. He left behind few scores and recordings, and his music lay dormant for decades until a three-CD set of his compositions was issued in 2005 by New World Records. In the years since, there has been a steady increase in attention paid to his music and life, punctuated by newly found recordings and manuscripts, the publication of Gay Guerrilla, a comprehensive volume of biographical essays and analysis, worldwide performances and new arrangements of his surviving works, and newfound interest from choreographers, scholars, educators, and journalists. 'The brazen and brilliant music of Julius Eastman…commands attention: wild, grand, delirious, demonic, an uncontainable personality surging into sound', writes Alex Ross for The New Yorker.

Jen Kutler is a multidisciplinary artist and performer. She modifies found objects that are cultural signifiers of power, gender, queerness and intimacy to create atypical instruments and sculptures. Her performances feature many of her instruments incorporated with immersive field recordings to explore common and discrepant experiences of familiar social tones in immersive sound and media environments. https://www.jenkutler.com/