Concierto: Dana Jessen / Paula Matthusen [USA]

During the course of the residency, Dana Jessen and I will be developing a new work for bassoon and live-electronics, entitled of an implacable subtraction. The title draws its name from Julio Cortázar’s landmark work Hopscotch, in which multiple, navigable paths are made suggested and made possible, disrupting the linearity of the narrative. Working with Dana Jessen’s wide range of extended techniques for the bassoon, I will explore the range of spectra the instrument can create (through multiphonics and singing) as well as their levels of stability and predictability. The spectra produced by the bassoon at different points will be analyzed in real time, and influence not only the actual live-processing of the sound, but also the potential paths the piece can follow. of an implacable substraction is part of a commissioning project made possible by the New Music Bassoon Commissioning Fund, which include new works by Sam Pluta, Tristan Perich, and Peter V. Swendsen.


DANA JESSEN

Praised for her diverse talents, bassoonist Dana Jessen is in high demand as a soloist, chamber musician, improviser and new music specialist. Dana is the founder of Splinter, a San Francisco-based reed quintet, and has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble Dal Niente, Calefax Quintet, Rushes Ensemble, Pamela Z, Lucky Dragons, Amsterdam Contemporary Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort and Harvard Group for New Music, among others. Her strong ambitions to explore free jazz and creative improvisation have led to performances throughout Europe and the United States with Han Bennink, Frank Gratkowski, Joe Morris, Taylor Ho Bynum, Michael Moore, Ab Baars, Anne La Berge, Wilbert de Joode, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Mike Reed and many others.

In 2009, Dana created the New Music Bassoon Fund, an ongoing consortium commissioning podium dedicated to large scale works for bassoon. Through this ground-breaking organization, Dana invited 30 bassoonists to participate in the project’s first commission, an hour-long composition titled, Rushes, for seven bassoons by composer and Bang on a Can co-founder, Michael Gordon. Dana premiered Rushes in Fall 2012 with a hand picked ensemble of the most innovative bassoonists in the U.S. and continues to tour it around the world. Hailed as ""fascinating...Gordon's simple transformations achieve, in all their simplicity, a great expressiveness"" (NRC-Dutch National Newspaper), Rushes has been described as an evening length tour-de-force.

Recent concert highlights include performances at the Ravinia Music Festival in Highland Park, Belgium’s Concertgebouw Brugge, Berlin's Universität der Künste, San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, November Music in the Netherlands, Brooklyn’s Roulette, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Amsterdam's World Minimal Music Festival at the Muziekgebouw aan' t IJ. She has been artist in residence at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Amsterdam's STEIM, De Lindenberg Productiehuis, and the Omi International Arts Center. Her recordings as a bassoonist and improviser can be heard on RIOJA, Evil Rabbit and the New World record labels along with a forthcoming 2014 release on Bang on a Can's Cantaloupe Music. Dana has also been heard on radio programs including NPR's All Things Considered, Chicago Public Radio’s Relevant Tones and the BBC Radio's Hear and Now.

Dana is currently a Lecturer at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has presented masterclasses and workshops on topics surrounding contemporary music and improvisation for students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and University of California at Berkeley among others. She holds a M.M. in Bassoon Performance with academic honors from the New England Conservatory of Music and a M.M. in Improvisation from the Artez Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in the Netherlands. She lived in Amsterdam for three years as the recipient of a2009-2011 HSP Huygens Fellowship and 2008-2009 J. William Fulbright Fellowship where she researched contemporary and improvised music.


PAULA MATTHUSEN

Paula Matthusen 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.
Paula Matthusen

Her music has been performed by Dither, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, Ballett Frankfurt, The Glass Farm Ensemble, James Moore, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Other Minds Festival, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, International Computer Music Conference and Dither's Invisible Dog Extravaganza. She performs frequently with Object Collection, and through the theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts.

Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Awards, First Prize in the Young Composers' Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship and recently the ""New Genre Prize"" from the IAWM Search for New Music. Matthusen has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Matthusen completed her Ph.D. at New York University - GSAS. She was Director of Music Technology at Florida International University for four years, where she founded the FLEA Laptop Ensemble. Matthusen is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology.

Programa
- Improvisation - Dana Jessen + Paula Matthusen
- this person would be an animal - Dana Jessen
- eden's arch of promise bending - Paula Matthusen
- Of an implacable subtraction (work in progress) - Dana Jessen + Paula Matthusen
- Dorian Reeds :: - By Terry Riley, performed by Dana Jessen + Paula Matthusen