PEOPLE

dutch uk network


DUTCH CONNECTION:

Expo 58 /58 Project (compositions):
- Kees Tazelaar - Composer - Institute of Sonology, The Hague
- Marij van Gorkom – Bass Clarinet - SONIC SPACES, The Hague
- Marianne Dekker - Visual Artist , The Hague

Sines&Squares 2016:
- Rob Hordijk - Instruments Maker. Hordijk Synthesizers, The Hague

Part of Walter Carrol Series:
- Ebonit Saxophone Quartet - Amsterdam
(Simone Müller – Soprano-Sax// Dineke Nauta – Alto-S// Johannes Pfeuffer – Tenor-S// Paulina Kulesza – Bariton-Sax)


UK CONNECTION (The University of Manchester )

COMPOSITION STAFF
- David Berezan , Ricardo Climent, Phillip Grange, Kevin Malone, Camden Reeves, Richard Whalley

PhD Composers involved

- Rosalía Soria, Julian Ávila, Falk Morawitz, Mario Duarte, Richard Scott

Network Administrator

Semester One 2015-16: Ricardo Climent - ricardo.climent[AT]manchester.ac.uk
Semester TWO 2015-16: Julian Ávila - julian.avilasausor[AT]postgrad.manchester.ac.uk


BIOGRAPHIES

Kees Tazelaar - Institute of Sonology, The Hague.
Kees Tazelaar (July 27, 1962) was taught at the Institute of Sonology from 1981 to 1983 (Utrecht) and from 1987 to 1989 (The Hague). He subsequently studied composition with Jan Boerman at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, graduating in 1993. Since then Tazelaar has been teaching at the Institute of Sonology. He is head of Sonology since June 2006. In addition to his own autonomous works, he has contributed to music theatre projects by Dick Raaijmakers (Die glückliche Hand geöffnet, Scheuer im Haag) and Theatergroep Hollandia (Perzen, Varkensstal). In recent years he has also been occupied intensively in the restoration and reconstruction of major electronic works from the past. In his specially equipped studio new versions have been made of compositions by Gottfried Michael Koenig (Klangfiguren II, Essay, Terminus), Jan Boerman (Kompositie 1972, Ruïne), Edgard Varèse (Poème Électronique), Iannis Xenakis (Concret P-H), György Ligeti (Pièce Électronique no.3, Artikulation), Luctor Ponse (Concerto voor Piano en Band). Since June 2005, Tazelaar is a visiting research fellow of the University of Bath, UK, and as such participated in the VEP (Virtual Electronic Poem) project. During the winter semester of 2005-2006, Kees Tazelaar filled the Edgard Varèse Guest Professorship at the Technical University of Berlin.

Marij van Gorkom – Bass Clarinet - SON1C SPAC3S, The Hague.
Marij Van Gorkom studied with Dutch bass clarinet soloists Harry Sparnaay and Henri Bok. In a process of continuous reflection and reinvention, she intends to not only continue and expand on the pioneering work of her teachers, but also to search for new directions and sonic possibilities. Sonic Spaces is underlined by a research trajectory supervised by Simon Emmerson at De Montfort University, Leicester. Before this she studied clarinet with Eli Eban at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where the technical foundations of her playing were developed. Other influential teachers are Jan Jansen, James Campbell, and José Luis Estellés. In 2010 she graduated cum laude in chemistry at Leiden University.

Marianne Dekker – Visual Artist, The Hague.
Marianne Dekker (*1953) studied painting and graphic arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Her work consists of drawings and paintings (small to medium sized) and short digital animations based on stills and videos. After her studies she used strong colours and figurative images. Then came a period of drawing more sober coloured geometrical lines, characters and signs, after which her work became completely abstract. In her current work, colours are more exuberant again. In 2004 she started photographing in her studio. She takes pictures and makes films of (details of) her own drawings and of small daily life objects. She uses these pictures as material for making animation movies. The electronic music for these animations is made by composer Kees Tazelaar. Videowork has been presented at Metropoliskino in Hamburg, Tesla Galerie in Berlin, the 2009 Shanghai Electroacoustic Music Week, the Contemporary Museum of the National University in Mexico City (MUAC), the Institute for Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Bath, Fylkingen in Stockholm and the MANTIS Festival, Manchester UK


David Berezan - The University of Manchester, UK
After completing a BA in History (1988) at the University of Calgary, a Diploma in Composition (1996) at Grant MacEwan College (Edmonton) and a MMus in Composition (2000) at the University of Calgary, David Berezan moved to the UK and completed a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition (2003) at the University of Birmingham (UK). In 2012 he was appointed Professor in Electroacoustic Music Composition at The University of Manchester (UK), where he has acted, since 2003, as Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios and MANTIS (Manchester Theatre in Sound). Since 2000 he has primarily composed acousmatic music, though he has also composed and performed solo and ensemble live-electronics works. He is a practitioner and proponent of sound diffusion performance and the interpretation of fixed-media work. David Berezan has been awarded in the Music Viva (Portugal, 2012), Bourges (France, 2002), Luigi Russolo (Italy, 2002), Radio Magyar (Hungary, 2001), São Paulo (Brazil, 2003, ’05), L’espace du son (Belgium, 2002) and JTTP (Canada, 2000) competitions. In addition to frequent concert performances of his work, his music has been broadcasted on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as well as the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). He has worked in residence in the studios of the University of Calgary (Canada, 2011), Université de Montréal (Québec, 2011), CMMAS (Mexico, 2011), EMS (Sweden, 2011, ’12), VICC (Sweden, 2011, ’12), The Banff Centre of the Arts (Canada, 2000, ’07), ZKM’s Institut für Musik und Akustik (Germany, 2007), Ina-GRM (France, 2007), IMEB (France, 2007), ESB (Switzerland, 2005), and Tamagawa University (Japan, 2007).

Ricardo Climent - The University of Manchester, UK
His research focuses on the articulation of structure in interactive game-audio and music composition. The architecture of his works often employs mosaic-size sonic materials, which are exposed across a wide range of outcomes and media tools. For the last six years he has concentrated on the use of audio-graphic-physics in game engines and the use of metadata retrieval. This culminated with the creation of new works driven and inspired by SonicPathfinding techniques and the great potential of these technologies beyond strict gaming. Ricardo created 3D game-audio interactive environments using the Navigation System through Sound, such as "Hồ- a sonic expedition to Vietnam"(2009-10); "[5]" - Valencia 1939, including geo-locative data (2013), and "Putney" (2014) mapping the London Underground with original sounds from a 1969 VCS3 synthesizer. His recent research strongly connects with hos works employing dynamic scores for acoustic instruments and live electronic media in prior works such as 'Xi', 'Russian Disco' or 'Drosophila'. Ricardo has been involved in the creation of a number of collaborative projects, such as: LocativeAudio(.org) using GPS audioguides, in partnership with NoTours, escoitar and Institutions in UK and abroad; the S.LOW Projekt, a large scale cross-disciplinary project in Berlin; The Timbila(.org) project started by Miquel Bernat, The Tornado-Project (a cross-atlantic commissions for flute, clarinet and computer for American wind virtuosi Esther Lamneck (clarinet) and Elizabeth McNutt (flute); the Drosophila Tour, a dance-theatre work with KLEM and Idoia Zabaleta; The Microbial Ensemble, a sound installation performing microbes, with Dr Quan Gan; The Carxofa Electric Band, a children's project with vegetables and Electronics with Dr Iain McCurdy, Sines & Squares Festival with Sam Weaver and Richard Scott, Putney with Alena Mesarosova, Manuel Ferrer and Mark Pilkington and in 2015 started dutch-uk.network.

Phillip Grange - The University of Manchester, UK
Philip Grange (born 17 November 1956) is an English composer. Grange was born in London. He attended Peter Maxwell Davies’s classes at Dartington, and then took further, private, lessons with Davies while at The University of York, where he also studied composition with David Blake. He has held the posts of Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge (1985–7), and of Northern Arts Fellow in Composition at Durham University (1988–9) before joining the music department at Exeter University as lecturer (1989), reader (1995) and professor (1999) in composition.[1] In 2000 he moved to the University of Manchester, where he is Professor of Music. Philip Grange's first published pieces date from the late 1970s and include Cimmerian Nocturne (1979), which was commissioned by The Fires of London and included a performance under director Peter Maxwell Davies at the 1983 Proms as well as numerous national and international performances. Other early works include The Kingdom of Bones for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra, (1983), Variations (1988) and Concerto for Orchestra: Labyrinthine Images (1988)[2] During the early 1990s Grange completed two BBC commissions, Focus and Fade for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who gave the premiere at the Royal Festival Hall in 1992 conducted by Andrew Davies, and Lowry Dreamscape, which was premiered at the 1993 BBC Festival of Brass by the Sun Life Brass Band conducted by Roy Newsome. Other works from this period include Piano Polyptich (premiered by Stephen Pruslin at the 1993 Aldeburgh Festival) and Bacchus Bagatelles for wind quintet. More recently, Grange has written works for Ensemble Gemini and Psappha, as well as other high profile international ensembles such as the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain3. In July 2009, the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain gave the world premiere of Cloud Atlas, Grange's most recent large-scale work, based on the 2004 Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel by David Mitchell, at the 2009 Cheltenham Music Festival, conductor by Philip Scott. Grange's music is published by Maecenas and Edition Peters.

Kevin Malone - The University of Manchester, UK
The work of Kevin Malone spans genres and media beyond any conventional labelling. He is equally at home with electronics, multimedia and harpsichords to choirs and orchestras, embracing a postmodernist and poststylist approach across his work over the past decade. Performances and broadcasts in Europe, North America and Australia have attracted enthusiastic -- and sometimes bewildered -- comments from the press. Over the last 12 years, his compositions have focused on global events and issues with a particular awareness of the roles of performers and the audience in public arenas, the sound of the spoken voice and its use in broadcast media, interdisciplinary work including film soundtracks and installations, and comedic timing. He has composed the music for two feature films -- To Kill a Killer and Lockout and created the music and sound design for The Assembly, a half-hour film commissioned by the 2007 Manchester International Festival. His most recent orchestra works have focused on the events of 9/11: the two concertos Vox humana, vox populi (bassoon, tenor saxophone or cello solo with medium orchestra) and Eighteen Minutes (two double bass soloists with string orchestra); and the two tone-poems E pluribus unum (cello solo with medium orchestra) and Angels and Fireflies (flute or recorder solo with string orchestra). Two further works based on the events of 11 Sept 2001 include the choral song Gently Tread composed for the fifth anniversary ceremony at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, and Requiem77 for tenor saxophone or cello with air traffic controllers recordings. Preferring to communicate to audiences with both familiar and unusual sounds, Malone's postmodern style is readily heard in the extensive 52-minute string quartet Opus opera commissioned by Arts Council England which presents the full dramatic territory of an opera through four string players. Equally eclectic works include Count Me In for piano and tape (artists' selection in the British Contemporary Piano Competition 2006), Buffalo for wind band, American Terpsichore for piano quartet which wickedly melds popular dance styles with academic musicianship training, and A Clockwork Operetta, a commission which sets discarded pop lyrics from Burgess' screenplay of A Clockwork Orange. Many of these works have been presented in major events such as "Eagles, Angels and Fireflies: A Transatlantic Commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11" webcast between the Imperial War Museum North (UK) and Wake Forest University (USA) on 11 Sept 2011, and "40 Minute Warning" which marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 through a multimedia performance at a British nuclear bunker site.

Camden Reeves - The University of Manchester, UK
Camden Reeves was born in Oxford, England in 1974. Inspired by his grandfather, a Jazz musician, he began learning the piano at an early age whereupon he began composing almost immediately. Reeves read music at the University of Exeter, studying composition with Philip Grange (now a colleague at the University of Manchester), and at the age of just 22 was appointed Composer Fellow with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester (a fruitful two-year collaboration that resulted in a number of striking orchestral scores). Further composition studies ensued with David Blake and Roger Marsh at the University of York and with Paavo Heininen on a CIMO Fellowship at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Reeves’ music has been performed throughout the world by a range of artists and ensembles, including the Basle Soloists, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Richard Casey, Psappha, the Celtica Duo, Gemini Ensemble, the Hallé Orchestra, the Lawson Trio, Loré Lixenberg, Okeanos, Psappha, Dominic Saunders, Alison Wells and Clive Williamson. Between 2004 and 2007, Reeves collaborated extensively with pianist Richard Casey on the three-year AHRC project ‘Confronting the Contemporary Piano’, resulting in a number of new works for solo piano (all of which are now published by Peters Edition), piano within chamber contexts and culminating in the Piano Concerto (2009). The piano trio Starlight Squid is available on Borderlands, Campion Cameo 2053 (Chagall Trio, 2005). A CD of the complete piano works performed by Richard Casey was released on the same label in 2007 (Cameo 2070), and the song cycle Night Descending, for mezzo-soprano and ensemble was released on Cadenza (CACD 0807) by Alison Wells and Gemini in August 2007. Reeves is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Manchester, where he has taught since 2002.

Richard Whalley - The University of Manchester, UK
An addiction to playing the piano and a compulsion to comprehend how music works (an impossible task) are the driving forces behind the music of Richard Whalley. Informed as much by a relationship with the music of the past (particularly that of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert) as with the music of more recent composers (Ligeti, Nancarrow, Nono, Birtwistle…) his work continually applies new or unexpected approaches to familiar musical concepts. For example Interlocking Melodies, composed for the Quatuor Danel in 2007, engages with the concepts of melody and the whole-tone scale by exploiting relationships between complementary whole-tone melodies a quarter-tone apart. Navigating a pathway between seemingly contradictory qualities of intimacy (where every nuance counts) and of playfulness or quirkiness, recent compositions have drawn on diverse sources of inspiration, driven by a preoccupation with the sensuous and/or physical impact of music. For example Intoxicating Orchids (2006), composed for the New Professionals was inspired by the scent of orchids. Circling (2006), composed for Psappha, took its starting point from the elegance and contrapuntal complexities of steam engines in Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. Perhaps most eclectic of all, his solo cello sonata Tachophobia (2008) is a response to Tarantino’s film Deathproof (2007) and Bach. On a more technical level Whalley’s music engages with processes of variation and disruption, chromatic inflections of stacked chords, and contrapuntal relationships between sharply differentiated material.

Rosalia Soria (PhD Student at NOVARS)
PhD Focus: State Models (Physical models) in composition. Rosalia Soria Luz is a Mexican composer, bass player, and electronics engineer. She studied composition at the “Conservatorio de las Rosas” in Morelia Michoacán, with Eduardo Solís, Javier Álvarez and Juan Sebastián Lach. She also completed a masters in Electrical Engineering at the UMSNH in Morelia, focusing in Automatic Control Systems and linear systems modelling. She worked as a Lecturer at the Electrical Engineering Faculty of the UMSNH from 2008 to 2012. In 2012 she was awarded with the prestigious President Doctoral School awards from the University of Manchester to study her PhD in composition at the NOVARS Research Centre. Her research is focused on the use of state-space mathematical models for sound synthesis and electroacoustic composition. Her works include multichannel fixed media pieces, mixed media and instrumental works.

Julián Ávila (PhD Student at NOVARS)
Currently researching his PhD at NOVARS Research Centre, University of Manchester, UK in Spectral Diffusion and Spectral Energy in Electroacoustic Composition: Sculpting Space in Time informed by applications in Biophysics. Focuses on the area of electroacoustic composition based on space and multidisciplinary projects, specializing at IRCAM in Paris, University of Alcala de Henares in Madrid, and CDMC (Centre for the Diffusion of Contemporary Music in Madrid). Degree in Composition and Saxophone at RCSMM (Madrid Royal Conservatory). A Master’s Degree in Performing Arts at URJC (King Juan Carlos University). Advanced contemporary composition course at CSMA. Sound technician course at the Centre of Technology for the Performing Arts of INAEM (Ministry of Culture, Spain). ‘Francisco Guerrero Marín’ 2013 award of Fundación SGAE-CNDM. Composer's Marathon V – 2013 (Vienna). National first prize in the competition INJUVE Creation 2012. First prize in Vacances Percutantes 2011 (Bordeaux, France). Second prize in the competition INJUVE Creation 2011. First prize in Hui, hui música 2007. Nowadays he works as a GTA at NOVAS at the University of Manchester. He has taught Music Technology at COSCYL (Castile and León Conservatory). www.julianavila.com

Falk Morawitz (PhD Student at NOVARS)
PhD Focus: Molecular Sonification, Music from Molecules. His areas of interest include acousmatic music, interactive sound art and electronic dance music. In a compositional context I am interested in sound design and the abstraction and electronic processing of audio symbols (sounds that symbolise certain ideas or have certain culturally-dependent associations) and their usage in musical contexts. Bio: 2008 – 2012 studied at University of St Andrews, graduated with distinction / Master of Chemistry 2012 – 2013 Research Fellow at KFnSc, Organic Solar Cell Research Centre Seoul, South Korea 2013 – 2014 Music and Science teacher, German School Changchun, China Alumni of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)

Mario Duarte (PhD Student at NOVARS)
PhD Focus: Evolutionary Biological forms in composition. Born in Mexico City, he studied guitar, musicology and composition at Musical Studies and Research Centre (CIEM) and Hispanic Literature at Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM). After completing his musical training he worked as a composer, scriptwriter, producer and announcer for Opus 94.5FM. In 2010 he founded with the support of the University, the program Comunidades Sonoras - Sound Communities, a social music project that works with urban marginalized and social excluded people in Mexico City. He has received several honours and grants, 4th place at Janácek – Revueltas 2008 First International Composition Competition. Prague, Czech Republic. First place Wind Quintet Composition Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts CMMAS. Morelia, Michoacán, México. Founding in order to complete a Master Degree by CONACYT (The Mexican National Council for Science and Technology)- INBA (The National Institute of Fine Arts) and The University of Manchester. In 2013 he started a PhD in Electroacoustic Music Composition at the NOVARS Research Centre under the supervision of Prof. Ricardo Climent. Research interest Biological Approaches to Musical Composition, Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, Mixed Media Music, Live Electronics.

Richard Scott (PhD Student at NOVARS)
PhD Focus: Hybrid Strategies for Electroacoustic Music Composition and Improvisation. Richard Scott (psi, Basic Electricity, Novars) is an electroacoustic composer and free improvising musician working with analogue modular synthesizers and alternative controllers such as his own self-designed WiGi infra red controller developed at STEIM, the Buchla Thunder and Buchla Lightning. He has been composing and performing improvised music for over 25 years, recently performing with artists such as Evan Parker, Jon Rose, Richard Barrett, Thomas Lehn, Twinkle3, Axel Dörner, Michael Vorfeld, Helmut Lemke, Ute Wasserman, David Birchall and Grutronic. http://richard-scott.net/


Dutch Connection 2016

Rob Hordijk - Hordijk Synthesizer Systems - The Hague, The Netherlands One of the most most creative designers in modular synthesis today, Rob specializes in hand-build analog electronic instruments including his Hordijk modular system and standalone boxes somewhere between musical instruments and objets d’art. An example of an instrument designed by Rob is the Blippoo Box, an audio sound generator that operates according to the principles of chaos theory. Rob has been teaching, lecturing and conducting workshops since 1983 at a number of institutes in The Netherlands, and occasionally in other places on this planet"

Ebonit Saxophone Quartet - Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A thrilling young quartet from Amsterdam performs new works by the University’s Kevin Malone (Revolution) and Richard Whalley (Iapetus Suture, based on an ancient geological cross-section between England and Scotland), alongside recent music by Dutch composers.
Simone Müller – Soprano-Saxophone Dineke Nauta – Alto-Saxophone Johannes Pfeuffer – Tenor-Saxophone Paulina Kulesza – Bariton-Saxophone