BAM Presents DJ Spooky's Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica During 2009 Next Wave Festival

Based around field recordings made in Antarctica by DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid/Paul D. Miller exploring the acoustic qualities of ice, Terra Nova transforms the artist's first person encounter with the continent's harsh, dynamic landscape into a large scale multimedia performance work that employs video projections, sampling, and a scored symphony performed live by members of the acclaimed New York and Chicago-based International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

In 2008, inspired in part by a 1949 work by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, also titled
Sinfonia Antarctica, multi-hyphenate Miller-DJ, writer, visual artist, and composer-set out with the
help of a portable studio to do with technology what Vaughan Williams could only achieve through
musical metaphor: create a sonic portrait of a vast territory. Today, such a portrait inevitably invokes environmental concerns, and one of Terra Nova's artistic aims is to give voIce To a landscape undergoing irrevocable change, allowing audiences to experience the climate crisis with
unprecedented intimacy.

An art installation inspired by the artist's Antarctica journey-North/South-opened at New York's
Robert Miller Gallery in January 2009. Miller has previously appeared at BAM in several mainstage
collaborations, including choreographer Ralph Lemon's Geography (1997 Next Wave Festival),
contemporary music ensemble Bang on a Can's Lost Objects (2004 Next Wave Festival), and
choreographer Bill T. Jones' 20th Anniversary (2004 Spring Season). Terra Nova: Sinfonia

Antarctica marks Miller's first Next Wave Festival commission.

About the Artists
Paul D. Miller is a conceptual artist, writer, and musician working in New York. His written work has
appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, and Artforum, among many other publications. Miller's first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in 2004, and Sound Unbound, a collection of writing about sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition edited by Miller (featuring essays by everyone from Brian Eno to Saul Williams), was released by MIT Press in 2008.

Miller's work has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the 1997 Whitney Biennial; the 2000 Venice Biennial for Architecture; the 2007 Venice Biennial of Art (Africa Pavilion); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and many other museums and galleries. Solo shows include Path Is Prologue (Paula Cooper Gallery) and North/South (Robert Miller Gallery). He is the co-publisher of the magazine A Gathering of Tribes-a periodical dedicated to new writings from a multicultural context-and was the first editor-at-large of the cutting edge digital media magazine, Artbyte: The Magazine of Digital Culture.

But Miller is perhaps best known under the moniker of his constructed persona: DJ Spooky That
Subliminal Kid. As DJ Spooky he's worked with artists as diverse as Kool Keith, Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth, and Yoko Ono, among countless others. He also composed and recorded the music score for the film Slam (1998 Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival), and presented the multimedia work DJ Spooky's Rebirth of A Nation, which played at over 50 venues around the world and is currently out on DVD. The latest DJ Spooky CD, The Secret Song, has been hailed as "a welcome return to recording by one of its most mercurially intelligent musicmakers" (All Music Guide). Other recordings include the landmark compilation release In Fine Style, DJ Spooky Presents 50,0000 Volts of Trojan Records!!!, Drums of Death, Optometry, Dubtometry, and Riddim Clash, among others.

More information can be found at www.djspooky.com.

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble
comprised of 30 dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Founded in 2001, ICE has rapidly established itself as one of the leading new-music
ensembles of its generation, winning first prize in the 2005 Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards,
and performing over 50 concerts a year in the US and abroad. Recent engagements include
performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center, the Bang on a Can Marathon at the
World Financial Center, and performances at international festivals in Europe, Asia, and Latin
America, among many others. The ensemble released its first critically acclaimed CD on the Naxos
label in 2007, and has recently released a new album on the New York-based indie label New Focus
Recordings featuring works by Davidovsky, Linberg, Saariaho, Du Yun, and Fujikura.
In addition to ICE's performances at major venues throughout the world, the ensemble has selfproduced eight contemporary music festivals in venues as wide-ranging as nightclubs, galleries, and warehouses, many of which are free and open to the public. An interest in multimedia productions has led to collaborations with Ridge Theater, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, director Luca Vegetti on the U.S. Premiere of Xenakis' opera Oresteia, and with director Lydia Steier on the co-production of a touring version of Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King. As a recipient of a MAP Fund award this season, ICE will commission the Brooklyn-based songwriter Corey Dargel for an evening length art/pop song cycle tailor-made for the ensemble, to be premiered at Performance Space 122 in May 2009. A champion of music by emerging composers, ICE has given over 400 world premieres to date. In 2004, ICE launched the 21st Century Young Composers Project, a worldwide call-for-entries by composers under the age of 35, which has culminated in the world premieres of works by young composers in 27 different countries. ICE members performing in Terra Nova are: Kivie Cahn-Lipman (cello), Erik Carlson (violin), Jen Curtis (violin), and Jacob Greenberg (piano). 

Bob McGrath is co-founder and Artistic Director of Ridge Theater. He has directed theater and opera at venues including the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Lincoln Center, The American Repertory Theater, Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, Vineyard Theater, and St. Ann's Warehouse. He has collaborated with composers and writers including John Adams, Gavin Bryars, Ben Katchor, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Mark Mulcahy, Susan Sontag, Mac Wellman, and Julia Wolfe. Teaching engagements include Virginia Tech (current), Sarah Lawrence College and New York University (NYU). McGrath is the recipient of three OBIE awards.

For ticket and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.