Opus Zero Band

Steven Dennis Bodner, director
Opus Zero Band
Steven Dennis Bodner, conductor
Virginia Warnken, vocalist
Scott Smedinghoff ’09, pianist

October 1, 8:00 p.m.
Mass MoCA Club B-10

Cycles: 3 films with live music

Program:

Transit (2002/2009) – American premiere
music and film by Michel van der Aa

Katrina Ballads (2007/2010) (selections)
music by Ted Hearne
films by Bill Morrison – New England premiere

M is for Man, Music, Mozart (1991)
music by Louis Andriessen
films by Peter Greenaway

Cycles explores the idea of human life at three different moments: birth/creation, old age, and death/destruction.

M is for Man, Music, Mozart was parts of a series of music/video collaborations commissioned by BBC for the Mozart bicentennial in 1991. In this provocatively tongue-in-cheek film, Greenaway sets in motion a process that must lead to the “inevitable creation” of Mozart: first the gods create Man, then they teach man to Move, then they create Music to which to move, and then they create Mozart (to create the music to which man may move!). Written for the Orkest de Volharding (an ensemble of flute, 3 saxophones, horn, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, piano, and bass) and the jazz singer Astrid Seriese, Louis Andriessen’s post-minimalist, pop-tinged score–described by the Wall Street Journal as “riveting”–combines the playfulness of Mozart with the austerity of Stravinsky and the drive of Reich. The Opus Zero Band is excited to be joined by vocalist Virginia Warnken of Roomful of Teeth.

Transit is one of the latest works by the remarkable young composer and film maker Michel van der Aa. Synthesizing elements of several previous works (the piano + electronics piece Just Before and the film Passages), Transit tells the story of an old man, trapped in his own house, who is fighting against a loneliness verging on insanity. The solo pianist interacts with not only the video but also the engaging electronics, creating a moving work of total theater. This evening’s performance — the American premiere — will be given by Williams alum Scott Smedinghoff ’09.

Finally, selections from Ted Hearne’s stunning and Gaudeamus Prize-winning Katrina Ballads provide a scathing examination of the destruction of the Hurricane Katrina and the government’s woefully inadequate response which led to even greater devastation. With new films by Bill Morrison (which incorporate historical footage), Hearne’s song-cycle consists of texts drawn entirely from news reports, mostly from the week of the storm. As Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times, “What [Hearne] was after was not a documentary about Katrina as the people of New Orleans experienced it, but rather an inflected, interpreted record of how the rest of the country watched it unfold — that is, as the news media presented it, complete with resoundingly famous sound bites.” Like American music and New Orleans itself, Katrina Ballads is an omnivorous and multi-stylistic work, at once both ironic and dramatic, driving and reflective.

Formed in 2006 on the Williams College campus and directed by Steven Bodner, the Opus Zero Band —the highly-flexible, chamber-ensemble extension of the Williams Symphonic Winds—has quickly made a name for itself as one of the most cutting-edge new music ensembles in New England. The ensemble is committed to presenting innovative and provocative performances featuring the most significant music written today, regardless of instrumentation. In 2008, the Opus Zero Band presented the second complete performance (and collegiate premiere) of Louis Andriessen’s masterpiece De Materie, a performance described by Andriessen as “amazingly good” and by critic Barton McLean as “heroic” and “astounding.”
Other recent highlights include collaborating with composer Steven Bryant on the creation of Ecstatic Variations (2009); presenting the American premiers of Klas Torsentsson’s Self-portrait with percussion, Michel van der Aa’s Preposition Trilogy, and Kyle Gann’s Sunken City; collaborating with Williams student composers and choreographers on the show “Overexposed,” which featured a semi-staged performance of Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat; and performing throughout Argentina in January 2009. The Opus Zero Band has also collaborated three times with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, creating an evening-length, electro-acoustic, multi-media performance (“Passages”) in the galleries this past winter, as well as presenting the premieres of feedforward (2007) by choreographer David Neumann and composer Eve Beglarian and also Philip Miller’s opera Hottentot Venus (2009).
Along with the Symphonic Winds, the Opus Zero Band has commissioned and/or premiered a number of works by composers such as Lukas Foss, Judd Greenstein, David Kechley, Michael Torke, Jay Wadley, and Michael Weinstein. This past March, Opus Zero Band performed at the College Band Directors National Association Eastern Division conference at West Chester University, presenting a provocative program of music by Judd Greenstein, David Kechley, David Lang, and featuring Louis Andriessen’s De Staat

Steven Dennis Bodner is an Artist-in-Residence at Williams College where, since 2000, he is director of the Opus Zero Band and Symphonic Winds, co-director of I/O New Music, and teaches classical saxophone and courses in music fundamentals and aural skills acquisition. He has degrees in philosophy and saxophone performance from Miami (OH) University, and a M.M. in conducting from New England Conservatory in 1999; he is presently a candidate for his Ph.D. in Music Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In demand as a guest conductor and clinician, Steven has guest-conducted ensembles in Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, New York, Maine, and Virginia. He has commissioned and premiered works both for wind ensemble and for saxophone, and his interpretations have received praise from numerous musicians, including most recently pianist Sarah Cahill, critic Barton McLean, and composers Louis Andriessen, Michel van der Aa, Eve Beglarian, Steven Bryant, Brian Coughlin, Nancy Galbraith, Kyle Gann, Michael Gordon, Karel Husa, Stratis Minakakis, and Roberto Sierra. As a saxophonist, Steven has recently performed with the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, Williams Chamber Players, the Manchester Music Festival, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and the microtonal ensemble NotaRiotous.