Daedalus String Quartet Plays Columbia Composers

This concert is free and open to the public.

PROGRAM

MIKA PELO                    Up, Down, Charm, Strange

ASHLEY NAIL                 String Quartet

Intermission

SAM PLUTA                    Lyra

JOSHUA CODY               Wind


About the Program

    Swedish composer Mika Pelo writes music for soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras, with or without electronics. He received his DMA in composition from Columbia in 2008. He is assistant professor of Composition at UC Davis, California, and is also co-directing the new music group Empyrean Ensemble. Mika's music is published by Edition Peters, Germany.
    About Up, Down, Charm, Strange (2007), he writes:
    In quantum physics, up, down, charm and strange are four of the six flavors that a quark can possess. I majored in science in high school, obliging my father's wishes that I get a " proper" education before getting into music, but I was a very mediocre student. Lately I have returned to science, and now when nobody forces me to read it, I of course enjoy it much more. String theory is incredibly fascinating, and incredibly complex, and I have big problems comprehending it. Nevertheless, the language used to describe the theory inspires me.
    I believe that this poetic language of the writers who are trying to explain these theories had a big impact on the writing of this music. It has nothing to do with the technical aspect of the piece, however; there are no formulas or systems taken from science that I have worked with. It merely provides a backdrop and feeling of the music for me personally, perhaps in a very subversive way for the listener too, and not the least it gives me the title, which I often have trouble with otherwise.

Ashley Nail, a graduate student in music composition at Columbia, previously studied composition at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Minnesota.  Her works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Zeitgeist, and the JACK Quartet. She writes:
    The four functions of consciousness correspond to the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience.  Sensation (i.e., sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going.

Sam Pluta is a New York City-based composer and improviser working in the fields of acoustic and electronic music in the graduate program in composition at Columbia.  He is technical director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a New York City based group dedicated to the performance of new music by young composers.  As a founding member of the improvising quintet Glissando Bin Laden, he has focused in recent years on fusing the worlds of acoustic and electronic sounds through improvisation.  In 2009 he won the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer's Award for his work Switches. He writes:
    Lyra is an exploration of frozen microtonal timbres that are at once stationary and at the same time constantly moving.  It is a perfectly clear star-filled sky reflecting upon a motionless lake.

Joshua Cody was born in Milwaukee and studied composition at Northwestern, IRCAM, and Columbia, where he will soon complete the DMA.  He recently conducted his latest orchestral work Black Fire in New York's Central Park; French artist Pierre Huyghe's film of the performance was seen by thousands at the Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and the Tate Modern. He writes:
    Wind was written in 2004 for the Arditti Quartet in honor of the ninety-fifth birthday of Elliott Carter.  First performed by the Arditti Quartet on January 30, 2004, in New York, at the Orensanz Center, in honor of Mr. Carter’s ninety-fifth.  The sinuous lines that largely make up this piece approach, reach, and overtake a quote from Mr. Carter’s song cycle Tempo e Tempi.

About the Artists
The Daedalus String Quartet
Min-Young Kim, violin
Kyu-Young Kim, violin
Jessica Thompson, viola
Raman Ramakrishnan, cello

The Daedalus Quartet was founded in the summer of 2000, and one year later captured the Grand Prize of the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition, quickly establishing itself as among America’s outstanding string quartets. The Quartet was appointed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as the Chamber Music Society Two quartet for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons. The ensemble has served as Columbia University’s Quartet-in-Residence during 2005-2009. The Daedalus Quartet has won wide acclaim for their performances of contemporary music, including works by Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág, and György Ligeti.

This concert is supported by the Music Performance Program and the Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music at Columbia University.