Miller Theatre Presents Outdoor Premiere Of INUKSUIT Today

MILLER THEATRE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
announces the New York City open-air premiere of John Luther Adams' Inuksuit

Performance of large-scale percussion work in Morningside Park, featuring 99 musicians from across North America, will be a highlight of Make Music New York for 2011

Tuesday, June 21, 5:00PM
FREE - No tickets required

From Miller Theatre Director Melissa Smey:
"For Miller Theatre, this performance is an incredible opportunity to forge meaningful and lasting connections:
with great performing artists from near and far; with this beautiful park located right in our backyard; with audiences from our neighborhood and beyond. This is a piece that I know will speak to all who hear it."

Tuesday, June 21, 5:00PM

John Luther Adams' Inuksuit (2009)
A work for "nine to ninety-nine percussionists," intended to be played outdoors, Inuksuit is designed to heighten our awareness of the sights and sounds that surround us every day and to energize our experience of our own environment. Written for an incredible array of instruments-conch shells, airhorns, sirens, gongs, maracas, drums, cymbals, and glockenspiels-the piece was premiered in the forests of Banff, Canada and has been performed a handful of times in the United States. This concert will mark the first outdoor performance of the work in New York, and the first rendition of the piece in a densely populated urban setting.

Presented on the summer solstice as part of the citywide festival Make Music New York, this free performance will offer an opportunity for all New Yorkers to experience this moving and important work-which generated such acclaim and enthusiasm in its recent New York premiere-set amidst the beautiful, dramatic terrain of Morningside Park.

Led by percussionist Douglas Perkins, Miller's performance of Inuksuit will combine the talents of professional percussion ensembles such as So Percussion and Percussion Group Cincinnati alongside students from throughout North America, including conservatories and university music departments in New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Florida, and Montreal.

The performance is co-sponsored by Columbia University in the City of New York and the Friends of Morningside Park.

ARTISTS: Douglas Perkins, music director
So Percussion
Percussion Group Cincinnati
The Proper Glue Duo
Mantra Percussion

Students from:
Baylor University
The Boston Conservatory
Brooklyn College of Music
Dartmouth Contemporary Music Lab
Eastman School of Music
Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble
The Hartt School at University of Hartford
The Juilliard School
McGill Percussion Ensemble; Aiyun Huang, director
New York University
Queens College Aaron Copland School of Music
So Percussion Summer Institute
Stony Brook University
Texas A & M University - Corpus Christi
University of Central Florida; Thad Anderson, director of percussion
University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music
Yale University

BIOS: Village Voice critic Kyle Gann describes John Luther Adams's (http://www.johnlutheradams.com/) music as "beautiful, shimmering, vast, luminous, ecstatic." Originally from New Jersey, Adams has been living and composing in Alaska for more than 30 years. His most celebrated pieces, including The Place Where We Go To Listen, a site-specific work installed currently at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, reflect the natural world in constantly evolving, rolling tonal changes. Adams has been composer in residence with musical organizations including the Anchorage Symphony, the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and the Fairbanks Symphony, and he's taught at the University of Alaska, Bennington College, and the Oberlin Conservatory. He is the author of Winter Music: Composing in the North and The Place Where We Go To Listen. His music has been performed by Bang on a Can, the California E.A.R. Unit, and Percussion Group Cincinnati, among others. His works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, eighth blackbird, and American Composer's Orchestra.

Doug Perkins (http://www.dougperkins.com/) specializes in new works for percussion as a chamber musician and soloist. This has taken him throughout North America and Europe including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, the Spoleto USA Festival, and the World Expo in Lisbon, Portugal. He was a founding member of So Percussion and is presently at work with the Meehan/Perkins Duo. He works regularly with such composers as David Lang, Steve Reich, Paul Lansky, John Luther Adams, Nathan Davis, John Zorn, and Evan Ziporyn. He also performs regularly with groups such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Camerata Pacifica, Collage New Music, Max Roach's M' Boom, and the electronica duo Matmos. Doug currently teaches percussion at Dartmouth College and is the Director of the Contemporary Music Lab, the Annual Festival of New Music and the concert series The Way to Go Out. Doug received degrees from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (BM), Yale University (MM/ AD), and Stony Brook University (DMA) with additional Doctoral studies at the Eastman School of Music where he earned a Performers Certificate. His principal teachers were Jack DiIanni, Jim Culley, and Robert Van Sice.

So Percussion (http://sopercussion.com/) began performing while its members were students at the Yale School of Music. A blind call to David Lang, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of New York's Bang on a Can Festival, yielded their first big commissioned piece, the so-called laws of nature. In the following years, they worked with composers such as Paul Lansky, Dan Trueman, Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Fred Frith, and many others. In 2010, So presented the U.S. premiere of Reich's new Mallet Quartet. So's third album, Amid the Noise, heralded a new direction: original music, written by member Jason Treuting. Recent projects include the site-specific Music For Trains in Southern Vermont and Imaginary City, a sonic meditation on urban soundscapes commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy Of Music's 2009 Next Wave Festival. Starting in the fall of 2011, its members will be Co-Directors of a new percussion department at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. So Percussion has performed all over the United States, with concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, The Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Stanford Lively Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many others. In addition, recent tours to Russia, Australia, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Ukraine have brought them international acclaim. They won 2nd prize overall and the Concerto Prize at the 2005 Luxembourg International Percussion Quartet Competition.

Percussion Group Cincinnati (http://www.pgcinfo.com/PGC.html) was founded in 1979 and consists of members Allen Otte, James Culley, and Russell Burge, all of whom are faculty members and ensemble-in-residence at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. Appearances in their national and international touring schedule have included the major cities, festivals, concert halls and schools of America, Europe and Asia. In addition to community concerts, workshops, and masterclasses, the Group regularly appears as concerto soloists with symphony orchestras, and has presented their program "Music From Scratch" to hundreds of thousands of children across North America. The Group has developed special relationships with John Cage, John Luther Adams, Qu Xiao-Song, Russell Peck, and with Larry Austin. Recent performances include the Shanghai International Spring Music Festival, a tour of Japan, and the premiere of a new concerto in Singapore with the Singapore Chinese Instrument Orchestra. The group's work appears on various CDs, including their own ars moderno label; their recording of John Luther Adams' evening-length "Strange and Sacred Noise" was released in surround-sound by Mode this year.

To post a comment, you must register and login.