Reviewing

New AIR Festival

Mari Kimura, Alec Hall, David Bird

STRING NOISE (PK Harris, Conrad Harris), Kristen Norderval

Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, in collaboration with Violinist/Composer Mari Kimura, present the inaugural event of a new concert series entitled the “New AIR Festival”. The event features outstanding artists from the music and technology residencies at Harvestworks in New York City.

The two-day festival will take place on Friday and Saturday, September 14 and 15, 2018 at 8PM at the Tenri Cultural Institute.  Facebook event

Two Day Festival Ticket $30

Location: Tenri Cultural Institute,
43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011

Friday, Sept. 14, The New AIR Festival will feature two composers from the dynamic contemporary performer/composer collective “Qubit”  – Alec Hall and David Bird . Qubit is a collective of composers and sound artists who curate and produce events that feature innovative applications of technology in music. They will share the evening with Mari Kimura, who is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. She will perform a recent commission by composer Michael Harrison, and one of her own compositions using her prototype motion sensor system MUGIC.

Tickets: $20 / $15 students/seniors

David Bird
Mari Kimura

Saturday, Sept. 15, The New AIR Festival will feature a new composition by composer Michael Byron performed by the phenomenal string duo, STRING NOISE (PK Harris, Conrad Harris). The evening will also feature pianist/composer Kristen Norderval who combines her operatic lineage with electronic experimentation, placing a special emphasis on small-scale opera, cross- disciplinary work, and compositions utilizing interactive technology.

Tickets: $20 / $15 students/seniors

Kristin Norderval
String Noise

The New AIR Festival is made possible by the support from:

ICIT (Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology Program at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine) http://music.arts.uci.edu/icit/

Harvestworks Media Arts Center with funds from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, mediaThe foundation and Music USA’s NYC New Music Impact Fund made possible by the Scherman
Foundation’s Katharine S and Axel G Rosin Fund . http://www.harvestworks.org/

Kimari, LLC.

Alec Hall

Alec Hall is a composer and violinist living in New York City. His
music attempts to re-imagine the possibilities of acoustic materials in the
post-Avant-Garde musical landscape. Using forms of sonic representation to address
urgent non-musical debates, his work is as aesthetically polycentric as it is
politically engaged. His compositions have had been performed by such groups as
Ensemble SurPlus, Proton, Intercontemporain, the Orchestre Philharmonique de
Radio-France, the JACK Quartet, ICE, Talea, Either/OR, Wet Ink, Continuum,
Pamplemousse, Ekmeles, Continuum, and soloists Séverine Ballon, Stephane Ginsburgh,
and David Broome. Alec is the co-founder of Qubit and currently serves as its
co-artistic director. He holds a DMA from Columbia University, an MA from UC San
Diego, and is a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellow.

David Bird

David Bird is a composer and multi-media artist based in New York City.
His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and mixed media
environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the
individual. His work has been performed internationally, at venues and festivals
such as the MATA festival in New York City; the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht,
Netherlands; the Wien Modern Festival in Vienna, Austria; the SPOR festival in
Aarhus, Denmark; the IRCAM Manifeste Festival in Paris, France; the Festival Mixtur
in Barcelona, Spain. He has composed and collaborated with groups like the Ensemble
Intercontemporain, the Jack Quartet, the Bozzini Quartet, Yarn/Wire, the Talea
Ensemble, Mantra Percussion, the Mivos Quartet, the Austrian Ensemble for
Contemporary Music (OENM), AUDITIVVOKAL Dresden, Ensemble Proton Bern, Loadbang, the
TAK Ensemble, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, and the Nouveaux Classical Project. He is a
founding member of the New York-based chamber ensemble TAK, and an artistic-director
with Qubit New Music, a non-profit group that curates and produces experimental
music events in New York City.

Michael Byron

Michael Byron (born September 7, 1953 is an American composer and
editor of contemporary music anthologies. In 1971, he met, and began studying with
James Tenney, at the newly built California Institute of the Arts. At around the
same time, he was introduced to Harold Budd, and Richard Teitelbaum (two lifelong
musical friends), and soon thereafter Lou Harrison, Dane Rudhyar, and Robert Ashley.
During the halcyon days of the early 1970s, his music—its compositional
trajectory—was one of extreme reductionism. In 1973, he moved from Los Angeles to
Toronto to study with Richard Teitelbaum at York University. For reasons unrelated
to the geographical change, the allure of reductive music passed as quickly as it
had come. In the winter of 1973-1974, he began composing Starfields, for piano four
hands. Starfields was his first work using an ergodic form, and stochastic processes
adhering to the principle of multiplicity. Byron also began the publishing
experiment, Pieces, a series of anthologies devoted to the increased dissemination
and visibility of radical directions in music. He later served on the Board of
Directors of the Aesthetic Research Center of Canada, where he edited The Journal of
Experimental Aesthetics. In 1975, along with visual artist Jackie Humbert, composer
David Rosenboom, and filmmaker George Manupelli he co-founded the multidisciplinary
performance-art group, Maple Sugar. Finally, in the winter of 1976-1977, with the
encouragement of composer Lou Harrison, he moved permanently to New York City.
There, he composed prolifically, but also worked on the periphery of the art
rock/punk/noise works with Rhys Chatham and others, in lower Manhattan’s club scene.
In 1979, he was hired by the DIA Art Foundation to work as assistant to La Monte
Young. Over the last four decades, working independently, Byron has created a
rigorous body of work marked by extreme polyrhythmic complexity, and intricate
contrapuntal textures that have become a hallmark of his style. This music is
exclusively virtuosic. His music has been recorded on New World Records, Cold Blue
Music, Meridian Records, Poon Village Records, Neutral Records, Tellus, Koch
Records, and Bandcamp. His scores are published, and distributed by Frog Peak Music.