Holidays for the Future: A music series dedicated to freeform chamber punk

@ The Home Of

8pm on Saturday, October 1, 2011

The concert is free and will have complimentary drinks

Featuring Four Acts:

(click play button to hear or right click file link and select “save as” to download)

Act 1: Broadcloth: Anne Rhodes (voice), Nathan Bontrager (cello), Adam Matlock (accordian/recorder)

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Broad_cloth

Act 2: Constance Cooper (voice piano)

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Connie

Act 3: Edward Schneider (saxophone) + Brian Baumbusch (electronics/keyboard)

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Brian_and_edward

Act 4: Nathan Bontrager (cello)

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CELLO_SOLO

BIOS:

Brian Baumbusch began his formal musical training on the classical guitar at the Interlochen Arts Academy at age 15, where he studied flamenco guitar. During his studies, he traveled to Spain to study with a flamenco guitar teacher in Cadiz. Then he moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where he formed the Opal Quartet, now a leading quartet there. In 2006 he entered Bard College, where he performed in the Gamelan group and studied with the renowned microtonal music scholar Kyle Gann. His recent recording with the Opal Quartet of an arrangement of a Gamelan piece has attracted the attention of Kronos’s violinist, David Harrington; they are discussing the possibility of future arrangements. While at Bard, Brian was awarded an independent study grant to spend a semester in Argentina researching Argentinean folk music. His field recordings and video footage have been produced as a pilot documentary.

Cellist Nathan Bontrager performs improvised music ranging from the avant-garde to world folk styles.  While earning his M.M. at the University of Maryland, Bontrager began to focus more heavily on contemporary works and frequently played with local new music ensembles such as Mobtown Modern and the Great Noise Ensemble.  In addition, he co-founded The Experimental Music Performance Organization (T.E.M.P.O.), an ensemble committed to premiering new works which remains active.  Upon moving to Connecticut, Bontrager became increasingly active in the experimental music scene in New Haven (Firehouse 12, the Uncertainty Music Series), New York (the Stone, Evolving Voice Series), and throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.  In addition to Broadcloth, he can be found performing with the folk group Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, the American Baroque Orchestra, and the New Haven Improvisers Collective.

Constance Cooper received first prize in the 2002 Gustav Mahler Competition (Austria). Her reflections about string instruments led to her invention of new hand-positions and notation for Coming From Us, commissioned by the American Composers Forum (Cadence Recordings). Her Divertimento for String Quartet is available on the Princeton CD label. Amoroso for orchestra was recorded by Harold Farberman in 2001. Her improvisatory pieces for organ, synthesizer, and bass Repaying Sin-Driven Senators by Not Thinking About Them were completed during a residency at ArtOMI. She has appeared as composer, pianist, and singer at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and with the Princeton University Composers Ensemble, Continuum, and the American Microtonal Festival, and produced her own contemporary vocal recital series for 7 years. She received her PhD in composition from Princeton in 2003.

Accordionist Adam Matlock followed a path from a ground work of classical piano pedagogy and the African-American Spiritual tradition toward a wider range of folk, jazz and new music. After abandoning study of the piano in favor of playing keyboards in rock bands, Matlock formally returned to music while working on a B.A. at Hampshire College, which combined the study of music composition and fiction writing, teaching himself the accordion for the sake of performing Klezmer with the Valley Kapelye under the direction of Adrianne Greenbaum. Matlock composes electronic music under the moniker G. Zarapanecko, and neo-cabaret songs under the name An Historic, and approaches collective folk deconstruction and film scoring with Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps. He also performs with the Elm City Guitar Quartet +3, the Erasmus Quintet, and other groupings of the New Haven Improvisers Collective, and continues to devour most new types of music set in front of him, most recently as the accordionist for the Yale Tango Orchestra and Yale Klezmer Band.

Anne Rhodes holds a B.M. in Voice Performance from Boston University’s School for the arts and an M.A. in Music Performance from Wesleyan University, where she focused on experimental music, improvisation and collaborating with composers. She has performed withConnecticut Opera, Yale Opera, Portland Opera Repertory Theatre, the FLUX Quartet, New Haven Improvisers Collective, and the hip-hop duo Mirror Boiyz, and has premiered works by composers including Anthony Braxton, Neil Leonard, Taylor Ho Bynum, Mikael Karlsson, and Alvin Lucier. She is a principle singer in the Trillium Project, an opera company lead by and dedicated to performing the works of Anthony Braxton. Anne currently studies voice with Elizabeth Saunders. As a day job, she serves as Research Archivist for Yale University’s Oral History of American Music.

Edward Schneider is an improviser, composer, and educator currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Before his recent move to New York, Schneider lived in Minneapolis. During this time he co-founded the quintet Process is the Goal and was an active member of the Minneapolis Free Music Society. In 2009 Schneider received a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum to produce the compact disc (Again) Against/Because. . . That same year his new electronic composition, the tree that was a bird, was performed as part of the Conny Purtill performance at the Blinky Palermo puppet theater at the Pompidou in Paris. Recently, Schneider was the subject of a new documentary by the filmmaker Mark Nye.