Wanted to mention an upcoming event in Austin I think is worth making an effort to attend.

Audio Inversions will be playing at the Austin Museum of Art on April 2nd. I have no idea what sort of sound to expect beyond knowing they will be playing a selection of songs from contemporary composers on classical instruments.

AMERICAN ORIGINALS PROGRAM:

Proverbs of a Cathedral Builder by James D. Norman
for brass quintet

Spirit Realms (Three Meditations) by Dan Welcher
for flute and percussion

Cineshape 1 by Amy Williams
for flute and percussion

Violin Concerto by Lou Harrison
for violin and five percussion
featuring Stephanie Teply, violin

It sounds like it will be an interesting program!

Additionally, for your $10 entrance fee ($7 for students), you will get a chance to see the art exhibits which are normally closed to visitors on Mondays. The exhibits currently showing are America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, an overview of their public art works and some in-museum installations, and The Paper Sculpture Show, which is hard to describe, but it involves paper, so you know I’m interested. You can read the promotional information about them at the AMOA site, if you are interested in learning more.

If you don’t have anything to do on Monday night, think about stopping by. It’s cheaper than dinner out, and it’s probably much better for you too! Lin and I will be there for the concert and then wandering around the exhibits afterward, so if you find yourself at the AMOA that night, tap me on the shoulder and say hello. I promise, I don’t bite … hard.

Behind the cut is information about the composers who wrote the pieces which will be performed by Audio Inversions. Sounds very eclectic. Read over it and see if it isn’t something you too might enjoy. I know my curiosity is piqued.

WHO: Audio Inversions
WHAT: American Originals: Unheard, Uncommon, & Unbelievable
WHERE: Austin Museum of Art-Downtown, 823 Congress Avenue at 9th Street
WHEN: Monday, April 2 at 8 pm
TICKETS: $10 general public, $7 students available at the door

Parking for this event will be available on the street (meters stop
at 5:30) and at a garage at 9th and Brazos.

COMPOSER BIOS:

JAMES D. NORMAN
Composer James D. Norman’s (b. 1980) music, which includes orchestral
and chamber music, music for winds and percussion, as well as a
chamber opera and music for film, has been performed throughout the
United States. Currently a Lecturer in Music at Texas A&M University,
and the Composer-in-Residence with Austin-based new music concert
series, Audio Inversions, Mr. Norman has received numerous awards and
accreditations citing his achievements in music composition and
academia. In 2004, Norman participated at the Cabrillo Festival of
Contemporary Music as part of the composer / conducting seminar, and
saw the premiere of a new orchestral work, Regatta. He is winner of
both the University of Southern California and University of Texas
Symphony Orchestra Composition Competitions, a Fellow at the Atlantic
Center for the Arts, and winner of a BMI Student Composer Award in 2003.

A native of Salem, Oregon, Mr. Norman received his Bachelors of Music
degree in composition in 2002 from the University of Southern
California Thornton School of Music, where he studied with Donald
Crockett, Frank Ticheli and Stephen Hartke. Mr. Norman is currently
working on a DMA degree in composition at The University of Texas at
Austin, where he also recieved his MM degree, and has worked
extensively in composition with prominent American composers, Kevin
Puts, Dan Welcher, and Russell Pinkston. Mr. Norman currently resides
in Austin, Texas.

DAN WELCHER
Dan Welcher first trained as a pianist and bassoonist, earning
degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of
Music. He joined the Louisville Orchestra as its Principal Bassoonist
in 1972, and remained there until 1978, concurrently teaching
composition and theory at the University of Louisville. He joined the
Artist Faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 1976,
teaching bassoon and composition, and remained there for fourteen
years. He accepted a
position on the faculty at the University of Texas in 1978, creating
the New Music Ensemble there and serving as Assistant Conductor of
the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1990. It was in Texas that
his career as a conductor began to flourish, and he has led the
premieres of more than 120 new works since 1980. He now holds the Lee
Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the School of
Music at UT/Austin, teaching Composition and serving as Director of
the New Music Ensemble.

Dan Welcher has won numerous awards and prizes from institutions such
as the Guggenheim Foundation (a Fellowship in 1997), National
Endowment for the Arts, The Reader?s Digest/Lila Wallace Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Bellagio
Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Ligurian Study Center in Bogliasco,
Italy, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. His orchestral music has
been performed by more than fifty orchestras, including the Chicago
Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony. He lives
in Bastrop, Texas, and travels widely to conduct and to teach.

AMY WILLIAMS
Amy Williams has appeared as a pianist and composer at renowned
contemporary music venues in the United States and Europe, including
the Logos Foundation and Ars Musica (Belgium), Musikhöst Festival
(Denmark), Gaudeamus Musik Week (Netherlands), Tanglewood Festival,
Subtropics Festival (Miami), North American New Music Festival
(Buffalo), Sound Field (Chicago), LA County Museum, Mondavi Center
(Davis) and Dresden New Music Days (Germany). Her compositions have
been performed by
leading contemporary music soloists and ensembles, including the
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Empyrean Ensemble, International
Contemporary Ensemble, CUBE, California E.A.R. Unit, North/South
Consonance, Monarch Brass, Ensemble Aleph, Due East, Bent Frequency,
Maverick Ensemble, Duo Diorama, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Amy
Dissanayake, soprano Martha Herr, bassist Robert Black, and a recent
piano concerto for Ursula Oppens and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra.

As a pianist, Ms. Williams has recorded for MODE and HAT-ART Records.
She has received awards from ASCAP, the Thayer Award for the Arts,
the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the 2002 Wayne Peterson
Prize in Music Composition. She has had residencies at the Akademie
Schloss Solitude (Germany) and Bellagio Center (Italy). She holds a
Ph.D. in
composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where
she also received a Master’s degree in piano performance. Her
principal teachers were composers David Felder, Charles Wuorinen and
Nils Vigeland and pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Alan Feinberg. Before
her current position as Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory at
the University of Pittsburgh, she taught at Northwestern University
and Bennington College.

LOU HARRISON
Lou Harrison was for fifty years in the vanguard of American
composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that
transcends cultural boundries, Harrison’s highly acclaimed work
juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every
corner of the world. Born in Portland, Oregon, on May 14, 1917, Lou
Harrison grew up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area.
There he was influenced by Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chants and the
music of California’s Spanish and Mexican cultures. Harrison also
developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music through early
recordings. As a young man, Lou Harrison worked as a dancer and a
dance accompanist. His early compostions included a large body of
percussion music, combining Western, Asian, African and Latin
American rhythmic influences with homemake ‘junk’ instruments. During
this period, Harrison worked closely with John Cage and began studies
in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg.

A move to New York in the mid-forties brought Lou Harrison to the
Herald Tribune as music critic. Here Harrison helped to bring wider
attention to the work of Charles Ives, and is considered largely
responsible for Ives’ receiving the Pulitzer Prize. The young
composer and critic also embarked on a study of early European music
during this period. In the late forties, Harrison taught at the
legendary Black Mountain College. By the early fifties, he moved back
to California, where he has lived ever since. Residence on the West
Coast has intensified Harrison’s involvement in a synthesis of
musical cultures bordering on the Pacific, reflected in such works as
“Pacifica Rondo” and “Lo Koro Sutro” for chorus and gamelan. He has
over the decades maintained an interest in dance, theater and the
craft of instrument building and is an accomplished puppeteer who has
written musical pieces for puppet theater. Lou Harrison has travelled
extensively, adding to the global resonance his artistry, performing
and studying with the musical masters of varied cultures, and
presenting his work to enthusiastic audiences everywhere.

A little more info in this more recent post.