Contemporary Music Residency: Graduate Colloquium

Topic: “De-centring the Agenda: New Music in a Post-New Music Era”

Join us for a Graduate Colloquium with Jerry Pergolesi and Evan Ziporyn. This event is part of an exciting 3-day contemporary music residency at the Don Wright Faculty of Music with conductor/composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn and ContaQt.

This event is part of a three-day residency (October 8-10) including masterclasses, talks and a performance with Contemporary Music Studio and is supported with funding by the Music Undergraduate GiftFund and the Moscovich Fund for Innovation in Music, established with a visionary gift from Jim and Barbara Moscovich. 

Location: Room TC101, Talbot College, Western University

Bios for Evan Ziporyn and Jerry Pergolesi:

Composer/conductor/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn's music has taken him from Balinese temples to concert halls around the world.

He has composed for and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Ethel, Anna Sofie Von Otter, the American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Iva Bittova, Terry Riley, Don Byron, Wu Man, and Bang on a Can. In 2017, his arrangements were featured on Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, and on Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home.

Most recently, his orchestral reimagining of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, was recently released on Islandia Music, featuring Ziporyn conducting his own Ambient Orchestra with Maya Beiser, cello soloist. Since its 2017 premiere, Ziporyn has conducted the work in Boston, Barcelona, New York Central Park Summerstage, Australia's Adelaide Fringe Festival, Strathmore Hall, and numerous other national and international venues. 2019 also saw the world premieres of two new works, the drum concerto Impulse Control for the Bowling Green New Music Festival, and the gamelan/string hybrid Air=Water for Philadelphia's Network for New Music. Other recent works include the collaborative immersive installation Arachnodrone/Spider's Canvas with Christine Southworth, which premiered at Paris' Palais de Tokyo in 2018, and The Demon in the Diagram with visual artist Matthew Ritchie and choreographer Hope Mohr.

Ziporyn studied at Eastman School of Music, Yale, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He received a Fulbright in 1987, founded Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and composed a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan and western instruments, as well as evening-length works such as 2001's ShadowBang, 2004's Oedipus Rex (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’s A House in Bali, which was featured at BAM Next Wave in October 2010. He released two albums of his orchestral works with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, featuring tabla master Sandeep Das as soloist.

From 1992-2012 he served as music director, producer, and composer/arranger for the Bang on a Can Allstars, winning Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year award in 2005. He has also recorded and toured with Paul Simon (You're the One) and the Steve Reich Ensemble, sharing in the latter's 1998 Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance. In 2012 he formed the Eviyan Trio with Iva Bittova and Gyan Riley, with whom he recorded two albums. He has also released numerous albums on Cantaloupe Music, New World, CRI, Airplane Ears, and other labels. Other honors include a USA Artist Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Prize from the American Academy, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and commissions from Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program, and Meet the Composer. As a conductor recent appearances include LA Opera (Keeril Makan’s Persona), Hamburg Elbsphilharmonie (Julia Wolfe/Bill Morrison’s Fuel), the Barcelona Symphony, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. At MIT he is Distinguished Professor of Music, Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology, and currently Guest Director of the MIT Symphony Orchestra.

Jerry Pergolesi is the founding member and percussionist for ContaQt and produced each of ContaQt’s critically acclaimed commercial recordings, including his arrangement of Brian Eno’s experimental/ambient classic Discreet Music. He is also a founding member of the Queer Percussion Research Group. His latest project, LMNL, is an open collaboration that currently pairs him as a multi-instrumentalist in an experimental electroacoustic/ambient duo with clarinetist Louise Campbell.

Jerry’s artistic practice and research consider queer, feminist, and postmodern theories as they relate to the politics of aesthetics and genre in 20th and 21st Century music, and music education. His research works to un-silence marginalized and under-represented voices in music and explores the intersection of queer and new music scenes, popular and art music scenes, shared engagement, creative arts education, and cooperative music creation processes specifically with non-musicians. To that end, Jerry created the Intersection Music & Arts Festival, an annual, multi-genre, barrier-free, accessible festival of experimental music, and Music From Scratch, a music creation workshop open to everyone.

Jerry has presented his research at the American Musicological Society Annual Conference; the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies’ Sex Salon at the University of Toronto; LGBTQ Studies & Music Education QMUE I, III and IV: Establishing Identity; the International Conference on Minimalist Music; the University of Ottawa and the University of Pittsburgh; and recently contributed a chapter entitled “Anarchy and the subversive potential of silence in the music of John Cage” to the publication Music and Spirituality Series: Vol. 6. Queering freedom: Music, identity, and spirituality edited by Karin Hendricks & June Boyce-Tillman. 

-----

Presented by Graduate Studies in Music, the Don Wright Faculty of Music Graduate Colloquium series includes lectures by distinguished guests, Western faculty members, and senior graduate students on all fields of research and creative activity in music.

• All are welcome. No tickets or RSVP required. Simply attend and enjoy!
• End times are approximate. 
• If this event has a program, it will be on the Concert Programs page up to one week ahead to print at home or save to your phone. Reading programs (on silenced devices please!) during events is perfectly fine.
• Changes happen. Please revisit this page on the day of the event for potential updates.
• For tips on transit, parking, guest expectations, accessibility and more please visit our Audience Information page. 

Want more music? Sign up for the Don Wright Faculty of Music's monthly email to be notified of planned events and major changes.