NEC Composers' Series: Mallia, Miljkovic, Mantilla, Moe, & Xiao

John Mallia | Dodo (2009)

Program note and Bios

Dodo (2009) was written at the kind request of Julia Werntz for the occasion of the Boston Microtonal Society’s 20th anniversary. The piece was composed for cellist David Russell, who has performed the piece several times.
        During a visit to New York City’s Museum of Natural History, while my, then 6-year-old son, William, was spending time looking at the expertly stuffed tigers, the skeleton of a dodo bird that happened to be housed in the same large glass case caught my attention. I was reminded of the sad story of the extinct bird, and decided to treat it as the subject of a musical composition. The microtonal melodic lines used in the piece are characterized, alternately, by slow micro-descents and striving, angular lines that tend toward ascent but fail to reach a clear goal. The electronic component includes sounds coaxed from a rare, and injured, vintage Buchla synthesizer. I am grateful to my friend, and favorite cellist, David Russell, for his many engaging performances of this piece.                                                
– John Mallia

John Mallia lives and works in the Boston area and is a member of the Composition Faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music where he also directs the Electronic Music Studio. Additionally, he is a member of the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, as part of their low-residency M.F.A. program in Composition. His compositional process is informed by spatial constructs and concepts, and a fascination with presence, ritual, and the thresholds standing between states of existence or awareness.
       His music and multimedia work has been performed and installed throughout the U.S. and internationally by organizations such as Musicacoustica (Beijing, China), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), ConArte MediaMix (Mexico), L.A. Freewaves (CA), ZeroOne New Media festival (CA), Gaudeamus (The Netherlands), International Computer Music Association, SEAMUS, Hua xia Ensemble (Lincoln Center), Zeppelin Festival of Sound Art (Barcelona, Spain), Festival Synthèse (Bourges, France), Interensemble’s Computer Arts Festival (Padova, Italy), Yo-Yo Ma (Barbican Centre, London), and Medi@terra`s Travelling  Mikromuseum (Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia). 
        He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) at the University of North Texas (2004-5) and was composer-in-residence at the Institut de Musique Electroacoustique (Bourges, France; 1993, 2002).   https://soundcloud.com/jmallia

Hailed as “superb”, “incisive” and “sonorous and panoramic” (Boston Globe), David Russell maintains a vigorous schedule both as soloist and as collaborator in the U.S. and Europe. He was appointed to the teaching faculty of Wellesley College in 2005 and currently serves as Lecturer and Director of Chamber Music. He has served as Principal Cello of the orchestras of Odyssey Opera and Opera Boston since 2010 and performs regularly with many ensembles based in New England such as Cantata Singers and Ensemble, the Worcester Chamber Music Society, and Emmanuel Music. A strong advocate of new music, Russell has performed and recorded with contemporary ensembles such as Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Firebird Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Music on the Edge, Dinosaur Annex, Collage, the Fromm Players at Harvard, and entelechron. Recent projects include recordings of cello concertos by Chen Yi and Lukas Foss, recordings of solo and chamber works by Lee Hyla, Eric Moe, Tamar Diesendruck, Donald Crockett, Andrew Rindfleisch and Roger Zahab as well as premieres of music by David Lang, Barbara White, Marti Epstein, Daron Hagen, José-Luis Hurtado, Robert Carl, Gilda Lyons, and Jorge Martin. Russell has also recently premiered works for cello and orchestra by Laurie San Martin and Samuel Nichols, as well as works for solo cello by Tamar Diesendruck, Andrew Rindfleisch, and John Mallia. Russell has recorded for the Tzaddik, Albany, BMOPSound, CRI, Centaur and New World Records labels.

Katarina Miljkovic | Waltz for Nada (2006-2022)

Program note

My friend and a close collaborator, pianist Nada Kolundzija, asked me to compose a piece for her concert dedicated to piano waltz in the 21st century. After long consideration, I decided to write a short piece based on typical waltz patterns and the process of their deconstruction. I chose two minor triads for the harmonic material and metric grouping of three units, each subdivided into three parts. As a result, the piece revolves around groups of 3, 9, 27, and 54 pulses, beats, or measures. During the development, the deviations caused by insertion of grouping into two, four, five, and seven metric units create an impression of speeding up and slowing down the swirling movement of a waltz. Temporal deviations are coupled with the sliding transformation of the two triads, each independently moving through pitch space.
       While initially written for piano solo, the current version of the Waltz for Nada includes electronic processing of piano sound, breaking it into hundreds of fragments, each slightly different. This new layer reflects on the numerous waltzes from the past.                                                                                   
– Katarina Miljkovic

Katarina Miljkovic investigates the interaction between science, music, and nature, through collaborative musical performance. This interest led her to the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot’s essay, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”, and self-similar complex structures resulting in the cycle, Forest, “…a dreamy piece, along the lines of Feldman or Brown…entirely captivating” (Signal to Noise).  In collaboration with Wolfram Research, Miljkovic has been working on the sound mapping of the elementary rules from Stephen Wolfram’s New Kind of Science. She presented her exploration in this new field at Brown University, NKS conferences in 2004, Waltham, MA, Wolfram Technology Conference 2005, Champaign, Illinois, NKS 2006, Washington, D.C., NKS 2007, University of Vermont, 2011, The Musical and Scientific Legacies of Iannis Xenakis, 2006, Toronto, International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, MCM 2007, and ECMST ~ MASA 2010, Berlin, EUROMicroFest 2017, Improtech Paris - Philly 2017, Boston Cyberarts festivals, Cambridge Science festivals, and Boston First Night. Her generative music has been described as “a refined, hypnotic dream” (Danas) “a work of musical and visual slow-motion with only a few delicately elaborated musical metaphors” (Radio Belgrade). 
        At NEC’s Commencement in 2004, Katarina Miljkovic received the Louis and Adrienne Krasner Teaching Excellence Award. She has taught at NEC since 1996.
http://www.katarina-miljkovic.net/

Lautaro Mantilla | Por la Ventana / Out the Window (2022)

Program note and bios

Window:

1: an opening especially in the wall of a building for admission of light and air that is usually closed by casements or sashes containing transparent material (such as glass) and capable of being opened and shut
2: a range of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum to which a planet's atmosphere is transparent
3: an interval of time during which certain conditions or an opportunity exists

Out the window: 
out of existence, use, or consideration

Por la Ventana is a piece included in a larger body of work entitled Memoria/Olvido  where there are a series of soundscapes based on studies about the relationship between time, space, light, and perspective with memory. Por la Ventana presents the concept of memory as a window and throughout its three movements, it exposes three different angles, or perspectives, over the same story othe past.
– Lautaro Mantilla

Lautaro Mantilla is a guitarist, composer, and improviser from Bogota, Colombia. He graduated from New England Conservatory receiving a Doctorate in Composition / Contemporary Improvisation.
        Based in Boston, Mantilla is an active musician from the NY and Boston music scenes as well as a faculty member of the Contemporary Improvisation department at NEC, where he co-produces the departmental concerts, teaches Ensembles and Studio Lessons, in addition to serving as Chair of Contemporary Improvisation Preparatory School and Continuing Education.
https://soundcloud.com/lautaro-mantilla

Andy Fordyce is a drummer and music educator living in Lowell, MA. Andy currently teaches courses in music theory and applied drum set at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His studies in Contemporary Improvisation are a primary influence on both his teaching and playing. Recent performances include collaborations with indie pop artist Photocomfort, blues musician John Shirley, and an improvisational trio with fellow NEC alumni Dave Cordes and Lautaro Mantilla.

Eric Moe | Deep Ecology (2020)

Concert Premiere

Program note and bio

Deep Ecology was written for cellist David Russell and was composed in Montana in 2020. The composition takes its title from the environmental philosophy that affirms the dependence of humans on all life forms: other organisms are worth preserving regardless of their utility as resources. In this view, there is no Humanity//Nature split. In my composition, despite the presence of a human performer wielding a cello (an instrument primarily made of once-living materials), the musical fabric is suffused with periodic sounds made by other creatures (e.g. insects, birds, frogs) and human-made instruments that imitate such sounds. The result is a sonic landscape fashioned from sound-objects of often ambiguous origin; the cello begins as a foregrounded figure in the landscape, but eventually recedes into the background. Ominous shearing sounds – evoking Atropos, the Fate who cuts the thread of life – suggest that our time as a species to figure things out is limited.
– Eric Moe

Eric Moe, composer of what the New York Times has called “music of winning exuberance,” has received numerous grants and awards for his work, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship; multiple commissions from both the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations; the Barlow Endowment, Meet-the-Composer USA, and New Music USA; fellowships from the Composer's Conference and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and residencies at MacDowell, Montalvo Arts Center, Yaddo, Bellagio, Camargo, VCCA, UCross, Aaron Copland House, Ragdale, Hambidge, Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Avaloch Farms, and the American Dance Festival, among others.
        Tri-Stan, his one-woman opera on a text by David Foster Wallace, was hailed by the New York Times as “a tour de force” that “subversively inscribes classical music into pop culture.” A recording is available from Koch International Classics. One review of his latest CD, Uncanny Affable Machines (New Focus Recordings), finishes up with “Killer stuff that feels like thinking man’s music”. Strange Exclaiming Music (Naxos) was described in Fanfare as “wonderfully inventive, often joyful, occasionally melancholy, highly rhythmic, frequently irreverent, absolutely eclectic, and always high-octane music.” Kick & Ride (bmop/sound) was a WQXR album of the week: “...it’s completely easy to succumb to the beats and rhythms that come out of Moe’s fantastical imaginarium, a headspace that ties together the free-flowing atonality of Alban Berg with the guttural rumblings of Samuel Barber’s Medea, adding in a healthy dose of superhuman strength.” Other portrait CDs include  Meanwhile Back At The Ranch (New World Records), Of Color Braided All Desire, Kicking and Screaming, Up & At ‘Em, Siren Songs (Albany Records), and On the Tip of My Tongue (Centaur).
        As a pianist, Moe has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, Albany, New World, and Innova labels in the music of John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, Jay Reise, Ezra Sims, David Keberle, Felix Draeseke, and many others in addition to his own. His solo recording, The Waltz Project Revisited - New Waltzes for Piano, a CD of waltzes for piano by two generations of American composers, was released in 2004 on Albany. Gramophone magazine said of the CD, “Moe’s command of the varied styles is nothing short of remarkable.” He founded and currently co-directs Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge new music concert series. Moe studied at Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley and is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh.  https://www.ericmoe.net/

See the program note for Dodo for the David Russell's biography.

Kitty Xiao | Two Works of Introspection 2020)

heart tide
limits

Program note and bio

Two Works of Introspection (2021) was composed for guitarist Brian Dooley. 

– heart tide is a visceral exploration of intensities in timbre, density and space. The electric guitar and electronics often crossfade between one another, creating an illusion of where one might and the other may begin. The depth, effect and trans-formation of sound is central to the performance.
– limits is a work of slow overlapping change and undulation. Micro deviation of pitch and timbre flows between the electronics and electric guitar. Delicate attention should be given to the delineation of vibrato and feedback forms.               
– Kitty Xiao

Kitty Xiao is an Australian composer, electronic musician, and pianist. Central to her aesthetic is a search for unity in contemporary culture, human psyche, art and machine. Her music moves between the world of concert music to performing as an electronic artist of experimental noise and techno. Her music involves electro-acoustic and acoustic compositions, and live modular sets which explore the relationship between sound, physical embodiment, the space it occupies, its tactility, and intensity. Her music is represented by the Australian Music Centre, and she is the recipient of the 2021 DenisDiderot [ A-i-R ] Grant, 2020 Belle S. Gitelman Award, 2019 Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize and,is an Alfred Kitchin scholar. Selected performances and commissions include: Ensemble Modern (GER), Darmstädter Ferienkurse(GER), Château d’Orquevaux (FR), Sarasota Orchestra (US), Switch~ Ensemble (US), OSSIA New Music(US), line upon line percussion (US), Transient Canvas (US), Panoramic Voices (US), Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra (US), Odds and Ends (US), Frequency Shift (US), Modular World(US), Colorado Synth Society (US), Slow Rise Music (CAN), Modulate TV (UK), Australian National Academy of Music (AU), Arts Centre Melbourne (AU).
        Kitty holds a Master of Music degree (Composition) from the Eastman School of Music, a Master of Music degree (Performance) from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, a master’s degree of Teaching and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Melbourne.
http://www.kittyxiaomusic.com/