I/O New Music

I/O Ensemble
Repeat

Steven Dennis Bodner and Matthew Gold, directors

There are now NO TICKETS REQUIRED for this concert. General admission. Doors open at 7:30pm.

Thomas Bergeron, trumpet; Steven Bodner, saxophones and conductor, Stephanie Busby, bassoon; Matthew Gold, percussion; David Kechley, double bass; Chaz Lee ’11, synthesizer; Nat Parke, cello; Jonathan Salter ’02, clarinet; Doris Stevenson, piano

The Williams College Department of Music opens the 2010-2011 concert season with a performance by department faculty members of the I/O Music Ensemble on Friday, Sept. 10, at 8 p.m. in the ’62 Center CenterStage. This free event is open to the public.

Directed by Steven Dennis Bodner and Matthew Gold, the ensemble presents pieces by faculty members David Kechley and Ileana Perez-Velazquez as well as David Lang, Alex Mincek, and Rebecca Saunders with musicians Thomas Bergeron, trumpet; Steven Bodner, saxophones and conductor, Stephanie Busby, bassoon; Matthew Gold, percussion; David Kechley, double bass; Chaz Lee ’11, synthesizer; Nat Parke, cello; Jonathan Salter ’02, clarinet; and Doris Stevenson, piano.

I/O Ensemble, the house band for THE BOX, kicks off the new season with Repeat, a program featuring recent works by Williams faculty composers David Kechley and Ileana Perez Velazquez, and cutting-edge new music by David Lang, Alex Mincek, and Rebecca Saunders. I/O continues its exploration of the world of contemporary music, from Williamstown to its farthest fringes, with a program of new sounds and mangled grooves for small ensembles.

David Kechley’s Design and Construction and Ileana Perez Valázquez’s Light Echoes are both major new works being given their second performance on this program. Design and Construction, a series of “trialogues” for trumpet, saxophone, and percussion is a virtuosic and rhythmically supercharged work that explores an expanded timbral palette for saxophone and trumpet, and employs a drum set made from wooden planks, circular saw blades, wine bottles, and other found and altered objects. Light Echoes takes its inspiration from an astronomical event that took place approximately 20,000 light years from earth involving light from a stellar explosion echoing off dust surrounding the star V838 Monocerotis. Perez Velázquez has created a poetic interpretation of this event, reflected both in the structure of her work and the instrumental color and pitch.

Novel sounds and unusual timbres are at the forefront in British born and Berlin based composer Rebecca Saunders’s Into the Blue, which delves into the strange and surprising sound world beneath the surface of its instrumental palette. Alex Mincek describes the arrested grooves of his Nucleus, for saxophone and drum set as a Blade Runner–esque dystopian soundscape. This work explores the idea of difference through repetition, and seeks to achieve a schizophrenic clattering of the jaws. Repetition is also at play in the asymmetrical grooves of David Lang’s dance/drop, an arrangement of the two instrumental movements of his larger work, Are You Experienced? The commands in its title, dance and drop, are taken from instructions given to the listener by the narrator in the larger work. This performance features a new version arranged for the instruments of I/O Ensemble, now including cello as well as percussion, synthesizer, baritone saxophone, and piano.

THE BOX series was conceived in 2007 by Williams composers David Kechley and Ileana Perez Velázquez to present the music of living composers in a setting more intimate and a performance space more flexible than a traditional concert hall. Performers include visiting artists and groups as well as I/O New Music, THE BOX house band.