Past Events

Saturday, December 15, 2012	CAM (Contemporary Art Museum) 3750 Washington Blvd St. Louis, MO 63108
George Lewis (Laptop) Marina Rosenfeld (Turntable)

Sour Mash was composed by George Lewis and Marina Rosenfeld as a recording collaboration for multiple playback recombinations. Their fruitful partnership produced vinyl records intended to be further manipulated in their “Sour Mash” live sets, and also as creative material to be further used by other musicians and DJs.

A member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), George Lewis’s work as composer, improvisor, and performer explores electronic music, multimedia installations, and text-sound works. His awards include the MacArthur Fellowship, and he has published and recorded prolifically. Lewis is currently the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University.

Turntablist and multi-media artist, Marina Rosenfeld, creates large-scale performance works and installations. Her work has been commissioned by the Whitney Biennial, Tate Modern, The Kitchen, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and her music presented at festivals such as Mutek, Donaueschingen, and Ars Electronica.

Wadada Leo Smith and The Golden Quartet

Saturday, November 13, 2010, 7:30 pm

• Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet, flugelhorn
• Vijay Iyer, piano
• Pheeroan akLaff, drums
• John Lindberg, bass

560 Trinity Building at Washington University

Golden Quartet is an ensemble of master composers / performers, whose experimental practice utilizes the quartet form, which is the purest foundation of musical expression in jazz / creative music and western music culture. As multi-instrumentalists they are concerned with a practice and research that involves an array of complex systemic forms, where the musical languages of compositional / improvisational / ankhrasmation are merged seamlessly in their interactive development in the quartet and are manifested in the performance dimension as a single music language. Golden Quartet’s music is fiery, explosive, and surges with a positive improvised energy force that’s constructed with polycentric melodic / sonic / rhythm units. The ensemble’s textural and structural materials reveal a musical terrain that is creatively rich and architecturally clear in form.
Check out a video of Wadada and the Golden Quartet:

Chamber Project St. Louis

Saturday, October 16, 2010, 7:30 pm
Christ Church Cathedral, 1210 Locust St.

• Adrianne Honnold, saxophone
• Jennifer Gartley, flute
• Dana Hotle, clarinet
• Laura Reycraft, viola
• Amanda Kirkpatrick, piano
• Valentina Takova, cello

Chamber Project St. Louis celebrates the success of contemporary American female composers by presenting an exhilarating program featuring works by Pulitzer Prize Winner Jennifer Higdon and Grammy Award Winner Libby Larsen. Firmly committed to working with living composers and performing contemporary music, CPSTL introduces audiences to the freshest sounds of this millennium. In the 2009-2010 season, CPSTL gave the world premiere of Modern, Movie, Pop by Stephen Prina at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, commissioned and premiered Aaron Johnson’s Flash at the North American Saxophone Alliance’s Biennial Conference, and presented an entire program of new works by the New Tertian Composers Collective.

CAMA Event
Saturday, May 8, 2010 – 7:30 pm
Kranzberg Arts Center
501 N. Grand

Separate Checks is a new work by composer/performer Tom Hamilton that combines electronic sound with acoustic performers. Hamilton continues the direction started in his CAMA event last season by directing a stream of improvising musicians to create a confluence of changing sonic ideas and moods in the midst of his sonic environment.

Percussionist/electronic musician Rich O’Donnell and reed player Dave Stone will join Hamilton in the spontaneous creation of Separate Checks. The group will also incorporate musical elements supplied by bassist Zimbabwe Nkenya.

Hamilton’s work with electronic music originated in the late-60s era of analog synthesis. He often explores the interaction of many simultaneous layers of activity, prompting the use of “present-time listening” on the part of both performer and listener. Hamilton was a 2005 Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, has worked on more than 60 recordings, including 12 CDs of his own music, and is a longtime member of composer Robert Ashley’s touring opera ensemble.

More information and music samples.

CAMA Event!
Saturday, April 3, 2010 – 7:30 pm
Kranzberg Arts Center
501 N. Grand

Cellist Craig Hultgren is an activist for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avantgarde.

Possessing a broad range of instrumental techniques from traditional to radical, he has had over 100 new works written for him. He currently plays in the Alabama Symphony, has served as principal cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Panamá, and teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and Birmingham-Southern College, where he directs the BSC New Music Ensemble.

Along with poet Anna Lum, Dr. Mabuse (synthesizer and cello), and Rich O’Donnell on KYMA electronics, Hultgren will present a program that blurs the conclusions, beginnings and differences of music and poetry.

In Stains, an evocative set of solo cello pieces with strong narratives will be sampled and extended to run seamlessly, overlapping poems and stories. The works will include acoustic, electronic, and video pieces for solo cello played by Hultgren, as well as a variety of narrative pieces. The audience will contribute a collective “exquisite corpse” that will be created in the first part of the performance and performed at the end of the concert.