Loadbang

New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a 'formidable new-music force' by TimeOutNY. Creating 'a sonic world unlike any other' (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA and the Look and Listen Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China) and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China). loadbang has premiered more than 400 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today's leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellows Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, and Alex Mincek. They are an ensemble-in-residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival, and through a partnership with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, they are on the performance faculty of Divergent Studio, a contemporary music festival for young performers and composers held each summer.

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Program

How to breathe underwater - Chris Cerrone

Doabín - Angélica Negrón

Island of the Sirens - Eve Beglarian

At the center of a wound still fresh - Lisa Atkinson

Old fires catch old buildings - Paula Matthusen

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Angélica Negrón (1981) - Dóabin (2016)

dóabin is a piece inspired by the peculiar story of Poto and Cabengo (Grace and Virginia Kennedy), the San Diego identical twins born in the 70's who invented their own language to communicate with each other. These girls grew up in a bubble of isolation experiencing only minimal contact with the outside world and were mostly raised by their grandmother, who spoke only German and who did not interact much with them. The girls soon developed their own communication and secret language, which combined fragments of English and German with some neologisms. dóabin explores childhood imagination and genius through a lens of mystery and certain wonder. Through vocal play, nonsense syllables and lighthearted yet enigmatic instrumental textures, the piece seeks to delve into the idiosyncrasies of the construction of meaning and the perception of speech sounds as well as in the bizarre world of these two girls. (notes by Angélica Negrón)

 

Eve Beglarian (1958) - Island of the Sirens (2011)

Eve Beglarian's The Island of the Sirens combines the mythically alluring song of the sirens with the sound of a flood warning siren she heard on her journey down the Mississippi River. It sets a poem by Rilke which describes the impossibility of relating a journey to those who were not on it. The instrumental parts are deeply linked to this idea of relating information, being composed as audio tracks which the instrumentalists must try to imitate in real time, to convey what they are hearing. (notes by Jeffrey Gavett)

 

Chris Cerrone (1984) - How to Breathe Underwater (2011)

How to Breathe Underwater is a portrait of depression. In the same way that composers of the 19th century wrote miniatures based on the figures of the Commedia Dell’arte, How to Breathe Underwater was inspired by a character in the Jonathan Franzen novel, Freedom. While reading the novel, I was struck by the character named Connie Monaghan. The author described her as having “no notion of wholeness—[she] was all depth and no breadth. When she was coloring, she got lost in saturating one or two areas with a felt-tip pen.” This kind of singular obsession—the sense of being overwhelmed, and eventually drowned, inspired me to compose this piece. In fact, I initially called the piece “All Depth and No Breadth.” However, I decided that How to Breathe Underwater was a more appropriate title. In the end, I wanted to suggest optimism, not fatalism. (notes by Chris Cerrone)

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Lisa Atkinson (b.1992) - At the center of a wound still fresh

is a Chicago-based composer whose work endeavors to explore interiority through the tactile, visceral nature of live-performance and the emotional context of gesture while examining issues of fragility, memory, timbre, time, and perception.

 

Paula Matthusen - Old fires catch old buildings

is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.

 

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