Miller Theatre Presents A Composer Portrait Of ØYVIND TORVUND, March 2

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its 2022-23 Composer Portraits series with Øyvind Torvund.

Featuring an all-star cast of musicians, including JACK Quartet and Yarn/Wire, premiere two new works by the genre-blending Norwegian composer and an onstage discussion with Øyvind Torvund and Melissa Smey, Thursday, March 2, 8PM at Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets starting at $20; Students with valid ID starting at $10

Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund relies on his classical compositional training as much as his background as a guitarist in rock and improvising groups in his work. His music is simultaneously quirky, serious, frenetic, and shimmering, and reveals an expansive sonic language, incredible orchestration, and the juxtaposition of the expected and unexpected. An all-star cast of new music artists join together to perform a program of recent works including two premieres.

Program:
new work (2023) world premiere
for Yarn/Wire and JACK Quartet
Plans for Future Ensemble Pieces (2020, rev. 2023) world premiere
version for flute, clarinet, electric guitar, 2 keyboards, 2 percussion, and string quartet
Untitled School/Mud Jam/Campfire Tunes (2014)
for piano/percussion quartet, projected images, and electronic sound

Artists:
Laura Cocks, flute
Rane Moore, clarinet
Giacomo Baldelli, guitar
JACK Quartet
Yarn/Wire

Born in Porsgrunn and currently living outside Bergen, Norway, Øyvind Torvund studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo from 1998 to 2002 and at the Berlin University of Arts in 2002. Torvund has been working as a freelance composer since 2002 and has collaborated closely with soloists and chamber groups, including the ensemble asamisimasa, percussionist Håkon Stene, the Oslo Sinfonietta, and the BIT 20 Ensemble. He has also written pieces for Klangforum Wien, the Black Page Orchestra, Ensemble Zwischentöne, Ensemble Plus Minus, Tøyen Fil og Klafferi, Yarn/Wire, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the SWR Orchestra. Torvund's pieces have been performed at the Donaueschinger Festival, Eclat, MaerzMusik, Ultraschall, Ultima, the Transit Festival, SPOR festival, KLANG - Copenhagen Avantgarde Music Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Cairo Contemporary Music days, Kwadrofonik Festival, Angelica Festival, Music Biennale Zagreb, Monday Evening Concerts, Only Connect, Huddersfield, Borealis, Kontraklang, Other Minds Festival, and at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.

Torvund has been the recipient of the Arne Nordheim's Composer Prize (2012), the Edvard prize (2017), and the Berlin Art Prize (2022), and was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2014, 2016, and 2022. He has had residencies at the Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy and at the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg, and was a fellow at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2013.

The two releases of Torvund's music won a Norwegian Spellemann award for Best Contemporary Music: Neon Forest Space, performed by ensemble asamisimasa (Aurora, 2015) and The Exotica Album, performed by the BIT 20 Ensemble, with Jørgen Træen and Kjetil Møster (Hubro, 2019). This spring the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Olari Elts are recording an album of his orchestral works, to be released later this year.

Flutist Laura Cocks works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music. She is the executive director and flutist of the TAK ensemble in addition to performing regularly as a soloist, an improviser, and with ensembles including the Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in New York City and abroad. Their recent solo album field anatomies (Carrier Records) was noted as one of Stereogum's top-ten experimental releases of the year.

Highlights for the 2022-23 season include the world premiere of a new work by Jessie Cox in collaboration with the Sun Ra Arkestra; solo performances as part of the Peabody Conservatory's George Lewis Festival; the premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey presented by the New York Philharmonic's Nightcap series; the TAK ensemble tenth anniversary festival; and recordings out on Dinzu Artefacts (TAK ensemble), Catalytic Sound (with Chris Corsano, Luke Stewart, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Timothy Angulo), and Infrequent Seams (with Weston Olencki).

Cocks is in residence at the University of Pennsylvania for the 2022-23 academic year as part of TAK's position as Long-term Visiting Ensemble in Residence, in addition to teaching privately at The New School. They hold a doctorate from the Graduate Center at CUNY and continues their writing and research in corporeal analyses of art and musical praxis.

Rane Moore is a founding member of the New York-based Talea Ensemble. She recently joined the award-winning wind quintet, The City of Tomorrow, and is also a member of Boston's Callithumpian Consort, Sound Icon, and Improbable Beasts. Moore is also the principal clarinetist for the Boston Philharmonic and Boston Landmarks Orchestra.

Moore collaborates frequently with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, New York New Music Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, Emmanuel Music, A Far Cry, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. Her latest festival and series performances include the Tanglewood Music Festival, Lincoln Center Festival, Wien Modern, Warsaw in Autumn, ECLAT in Stuttgart, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Resonant Bodies Festival in New York, Festival Musica Strasbourg, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Monadnock Music, Rockport Music, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, Town Hall Concerts in Seattle and Trinity Wall Street in New York, among many others. She has recordings on over a dozen labels including Tzadik, Pi, Wergo, Kairos, and ECM records.

Moore is on the faculty at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England Conservatory. She is the co-artistic director of Winsor Music, a chamber music series and musical outreach organization in the Boston area.

New York City-based guitarist Giacomo Baldelli focuses on exploring works of the 20th century while also developing a new 21st-century repertoire for guitar. Most recently, he has been interested in expanding the contemporary repertoire for electric guitar.

Baldelli has performed numerous solo recitals at festivals and venues including the Aperto Festival in Reggio Emilia, the Bellagio Festival, and the "Cinque Giornate" Contemporary Music Festival in Milan (Italy); the University of Leeds International Concert Series (U.K.); and in the U.S., BUCNM Concert Series in Boston, Alia Musica Festival in Pittsburgh, Compositum Musicae Novae in Miami, Versipel New Music in New Orleans, and National Sawdust and Spectrum in New York. His project NIDRA, co-produced with the video artists OOOPStudio, won the call for new projects at the Queens New Music Festival 2015 and premiered at the Secret Theatre in New York City that year and presented at the Biennale Musica 2018 in Venice.

Baldelli's debut CD Chitarra Italiana del XXI°Secolo (Bottega Discantica, 2010) includes the first Italian recording of Fausto Romitelli's masterpiece for electric guitar "Trash TV Trance." His most recent album is Electric Creatures (2018).

Hailed by The New York Times as "our leading new-music foursome," the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to their mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. The quartet was selected as Musical America's 2018 "Ensemble of the Year," nominated for Grammy Awards for recordings in 2018 and 2022, named to WQXR's "19 for 19 Artists to Watch," and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Through intimate relationships with today's most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has worked with artists such as Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, Helmut Lachenmann, Caroline Shaw, and Simon Steen-Andersen. JACK's all-access initiative, JACK Studio, commissions a selection of artists each year, who will receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new work to be performed and recorded by the quartet.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music.

Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. The ensemble is admired globally for the energy and care it brings to performances of today's most adventurous music, and the New York Classical Review states that "Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today." Founded in 2005, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and their creative potential.

Yarn/Wire has performed internationally at festivals including the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International, Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Ultima (Norway), Festival 20/21 (Belgium), Contemplus (Prague), and Wien Modern (Austria) festivals, in addition to Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York's Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood, Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Catherine Lamb, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.

Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival, plus other educational residencies and outreach programs, the quartet works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music.

Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Kairos, New Amsterdam, Northern Spy, Shelter Press, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint.