Hello All,

I have been spending a great deal of time lo these last days dealing with the launch of the new semester at the College. During this time, I have also been thinking about my latest performance(s) and completed the recording and editing of the new CD.

On January 23rd, we (Wolf’s Gang, me plus Alexandra Honigsberg and Jed Distler) had our debut performing Mozart’s lovely Kegelstatt Trio for clarinet, viola, and piano. The performance went beautifully, but it did inspire some deep thinking. Alexandra afterwards made a comment about how this was good for me because playing Mozart is not (or maybe ‘no longer’ is better) part of my world. She was right, of course, but it did really get me thinking about both the idea of performance specialization and of streamlining one’s performing (and maybe even composing) life as one matures.

There are some amazing Mozart players in the world. They specialize. This is what they do. Mozart is hard…real hard…there needs to be a certain sparkle, a perfect beauty in the clarity of the performance that takes years, decades, to begin to master. The great Mozart players have that…I don’t. It’s not my world. I’m OK with that. I can play Mozart valiantly with flawless technique and sweetness of sound, but I don’t–can’t–match the clarity brought out by a specialist in Mozart’s music. I’ve heard some amazing musicians play Mozart–some of the best players in the world–who played beautifully but didn’t have the ‘Mozart sparkle’ I’m mentioning.

Alexandra was right, this was good for me–good for us, methinks. It was fun and we got a great response from the audience, but did we ‘play Mozart’? Methinks no…a man like me who cut his teeth on Babbitt and Stockhausen is not going to be a ‘Mozart guy.’ But…I learn every time I do play it, and even though I’ll never be a Mozart specialist, I’m glad for the experience of it.

One has to do what one does. Younger artists who are still searching can dabble. Once one is established, you’ve got to chose your battles knowingly.’Who you are?’ and ‘what you do?’ need to be in the forefront of one’s professional artistic decisions.

Know thyself….

Which brings me to recording my new CD. I am delighted to say that the editing was completed this past Friday, which means that the CD is ready to go–well, ready to presented to labels, I should say.

My music is not like Mozart’s. Even though I use classical forms, my works have a great deal ‘indeterminacy’ about it, brought about by performer/conductor choices and/or through improvisation. Successful performances of much of my music have to be technically fiery and improvisationally inspired. Tall order. Works like …no longer to his father…which I recorded are practically impossible to play perfectly live due to the technical and creative demands on the performer (not to mention endurance…the piece can go 30 minutes…) and the acoustical properties of the saxophone. This, needless to say, created a conundrum in the studio: do I ‘make it perfect’ for the CD, even though perfect is not reality, and actually a lot of the interest in the piece comes from inconsistencies occurring and how the performer decides (or not) to develop them.

I decided to keep the inconsistencies because the track(s) would have been altered significantly had I made them perfect; the phrasing and raw power of the original performance would’ve been lost. I do admit to ‘ironing out’ one or two things, but even then only a couple of glaring micro-moments that I couldn’t live with. In an age of digitized perfection, my performance is raw emotionally, maybe flawed, but honest and powerful–I prefer it, it’s real, and I like it.

And maybe the Platonic Ideal in this case is in its impact, not in its perfection.

And speaking of raw, I uploaded a youtube video of another of the pieces on the new album, Soho Sophisticate. This is from my performance on December 4, 2011 at Cornelia Street Cafe.

Thank you all again for your continued support.

Until soon,

Demetrius

Dear All,

Writing to share with you the information for two upcoming January shows.

On Monday, January 23rd, I will be joined by my great friends and colleagues Alexandra Honigsberg and Jed Distler for our debut performance as ‘Wolf’s Gang’ for the ‘Classical at the Cornelia’ series at the Cornelia Street Cafe. The program will feature Mozart’s ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio for clarinet, viola, and piano, Jed performing Alvin Currans’ For Cornelius (1982) for solo piano, and Jed and I engaging in a rather randy version of the 2nd movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. We’ll also freely improvise at the end.

Here’s a little history about the ‘Kegelstatt’ (thanks to Alexandra)

Written for his friends, the Jacquin family, for their intimate house concerts in Vienna (with Mozart on viola), this piece is the first of its kind scored for these instruments, breaks many standard musical conventions of tempi and forms (including a 7-part, multi-rondo finale with piano intermezzi), and helped raise the clarinet, a new instrument, to prominence. Its instrumentation is often swapped around to suit the musicians available on a particular occasion, as Mozart did, but this is the original. It is said to be all about delicacy, dialogue, and intimacy (“Kegelstatt,” “Skittle Alley,” added by others after the fact due to improbable tales of Mozart’s gaming during its composition).”

The performance will be held at the Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC, January 23rd at 8:30 PM.

This’ll be fun

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Boston-based guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan will once again perform my composition A Child Sings At Thanksgiving as part of his New Lullaby Project. I am delighted that Aaron is getting such great mileage out of this piece, and I hope it continues to bring him joy and success. The concert will also feature works by Boyadjian, Takemitsu, Fletcher, and a Boston Premiere of Upward (2011) by John McDonald.

The performance will be held at the Church of the Advent Library, Boston, January 27th at 8PM.

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If you’re in the area(s), please consider stopping by one, or both, of these performances.

Thank you again for your continued support.

Demetrius

Hello All,

As many–if not all–of you know, my 43rd birthday was on January 14…an interesting age. You know, I remember vividly an interview with Paul McCartney in 1985. He had just released Give My Regards To Broadstreet, and was musing about his age, which was 43..almost as a ‘when did *this* happen’ vibe to it. I don’t know if I have this vibe about me–I am, however, hopeful that my career has more of an upward trajectory from this point on than McCartney’s has…

Regardless, this past week has been…eventful…so I want to share it with you.

The main thing I was to accomplish this January was to begin my new CD, with the first recording session being January 12…well, due to unforeseen circumstances, the content of that recording session had to be changed last-minute, like the night before (everything was booked…). Because of this, the entire CD concept had to change–I ended up recording pieces that I wasn’t planning on, so the content will be very different–and many of the pieces that I planned on recording this spring will no longer be on it because they no longer fit with what I had to record Thursday…

…make sense?

On top of that, now, instead of having to spread the recording out over the spring, I will have everything done in the studio by this coming Friday, January 20! The logistics of the ‘new’ project now make this possible. Many of this is due to the flexibility of the wonderful pianists (and great friends!) Elaine Kwon and Jed Distler for helping save this project last moment. So what will be on it, you ask…? Well, I’m not going to say just yet (don’t want to jinx this…again!), but I will say that I am now looking for a new title for the CD…maybe I’ll hold a competition or something…maybe…

Well, onto all of the other crazy good news this week:

Firstly, I got word from the Rome-based ensemble Piccola Academia degli Specchi that they will perform my composition for chamber ensemble Love Letters in the Ether (for flute, soprano saxophone, violin, cello, and piano 4-hands), which was written for them in 2010. This is great news; from what I have heard from the ensemble and other sources, it is very difficult to get funding in Italy to perform non-Italian composers, so we are all delighted! The concert will be held April 4th in Rome, and my great friend Bill Susman will also be represented on the concert!

Secondly, I was contacted by Parma Recordings. Parma is the record company that took over Capstone Records, the company with whom I released my first two CDs. We have been in discussion about re-releasing these two CDs, and I just received word that the first, When Wind Comes To Sparse Bamboo, will be released this March, both for purchase and also into the catalog of the Naxos Online Music Library. I’m delighted, needless to say.

And thirdly, I was put in contact towards the end of last week with Woomyung Choe, the Music Director of the Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey. He is commissioning me to compose a new concerto for saxophone and full symphony orchestra for their 2012-13 season opener in September…yes, you heard right, for SEPTEMBER…he said that he wants a big piece that can be as long as 25 minutes…I guess I won’t be doing much else this summer, will I…? Not only am I writing it, I’m also the soloist. This is great for so many reasons, probably the main one being that I have been wanting for years to write a big piece for saxophone and orchestra that I could play, but like any major work, why write it if you’ve got no where yet to do it? My teacher Chinary Ung told me this. Hundreds of symphonies and operas are sitting gathering dust on composer’s shelves…well, I am honored and delighted to finally have an opportunity–at 43–to compose a large orchestral work that will actually get played.

So…that was *my* week…never boring…let’s see what this week brings with the final two recording sessions for the CD.

Of course, I still have to finish composing Roots Music for the Beijing Irish Modern Music Festival in March, but as I always say: “one major crisis at a time…”

Until soon,

Demetrius

Happy New Year to All!

As many of you have probably noticed by now, I am in the midst of updating my website. I needed to make the browsing experience here more user friendly and sleek (read: get rid of all of the excess clutter on my pages…). I will most certainly announce when everything is in place and fully operational…to be honest, I mainly need time to figure it all out, myself…

Well, you already heard the big news on my last posting. I have been appointed to the Fulbright Specialist Roster in the field of American Studies, Music. This week, I have started the process of creating projects and deciding where to go. I have many invitations from countries that I have already visited, but I also want to focus some on places that I haven’t been where my presence and teaching would have the most impact. I hope to have my first project underway shortly, and am aiming to travel and be in-residence (wherever that may be…sorry, no hints yet…don’t want to jinx anything…) by either fall 2012 or spring 2013.

…OK, one hint…the top of my list is a place where I absolutely love the cuisine…somehow, food always comes back into the picture, doesn’t it…?

Since this is January, I am off from teaching for the bulk of the month. During this time, I will be focusing on some large-scale projects that I want to share with you:

I have finally decided to take the plunge and record my next CD. This one–my 4th–will include my chamber music compositions (classical) written for/with clarinet: solos, duos, and trios. This will be the first CD containing only my written (through-composed) music, so it is an exciting (and daunting) endeavor. My first, When Wind Comes To Sparse Bamboo, included my favorite solo music (from across the centuries) to play on saxophone. My second, From a Far-off World, featured music by friends (for saxophone and bass clarinet), as well as my first compositions on a commercial recording. The third, Sfumato, my duo recording (for flutes and voice) with vocalist Galina Parfenova contained exclusively improvisations, although I did compose and realize electronic ‘backdrops’ for the improvisations.

[Note: one of the updated features to my new website will be the ability to purchase all of my CDs here...still figuring this one out...hopefully soon...]

The new CD, titled Autumn Yearning, will have a different vibe since although I am playing on every track, the CD is about my compositions and not my solo playing. This is the exciting part, and this is also why that even though I could’ve easily done a CD with all of my solo/electro-acoustic saxophone, clarinet, and flute compositions, I wanted to focus mostly on chamber music where I am part of the texture and not necessarily the main attraction, although the parts I wrote for myself are never ‘subdued’ by any means…plus, after my first 2 CDs being solo/electro-acoustic projects, it was high time for a change. Also, the one instrument which strangely I haven’t recorded on under my own name on is clarinet (and piccolo, but I don’t count that…); this is funny since in the classical world, for all intent and purpose, I am a clarinetist…funny…

So then, this month, I will record my song cycle Moonlight of Lost Dreams (text by Jacquelyn Familant) with Ms. Familant, soprano and Elaine Kwon, piano with yours truly on clarinet; my Gymnopaedia for clarinet and piano (again with Ms. Kwon); and my Three Graces for Clarinet Solo.

During this same time, I am preparing for a concert on January 23rd at Cornelia Street Cafe where I–along with violist Alexandra Honigsberg and pianist Jed Distler–will be playing the Mozart “Kagelstatt” Trio for clarinet, viola, and piano…we’re calling ourselves ‘Wolf’s Gang’…get it…WOLFGANG Amadeus Mozart…Jed came up with this one…brilliant

Wolf’s Gang is also the same crew who is premiering and recording the title track to the new CD, Autumn Yearning. We’ll record it sometime around the premiere on February 18th at Flushing Town Hall.

And speaking of premieres, I must also finish composing Roots Music within the next couple of weeks so as to send to my colleague Benoit Granier and the TIMI Modern Music Ensemble for its premiere at the Beijing Irish Modern Music Festival in March in China. As I’m sure you recall, I was commissioned by Dr. Granier and the festival to compose a large scale work that combines western classical instruments with traditional Chinese and Irish instruments and a jazz saxophone (me). My Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis Composer Residency this fall was to research the traditional music of these cultures and to organize and create this piece. Well, as you all know, I was successful in finishing the groundwork for the composition and am now writing it all down and preparing the score for performance. This’ll be fun!

And, well, if that weren’t enough, I was also given the task over this winter break to create a two-year undergraduate composer’s workshop for Five Towns College, where I teach composition and performance. This will redefine the entire composition program, and they are giving me full reign to organize it however I wish…scary…of course, I pushed for this, so this is what I get…but I’m delighted that it’s being implemented.

And if I get bored, there are plenty of residency and grant applications due this month…will be sending out a few of those, as well…

So, here is my January…I’ll keep you all updated as the month proceeds.

Until soon,

Demetrius

All things must pass…

Here I sit, writing the final blog of my Flushing Town Hall composer residency, looking out the window of the ‘jail cell’ (the room which was actually a jail cell, now the green room of the performance hall) looking out the window over hustling and bustling Flushing with its Chinese restaurants and Korean markets. I can’t barely believe that this three month period has passed…tempus fugit…

It has been a wonderful experience. Director Ellen Kodadek and the rest of the Flushing Town Hall staff have been kind and gracious with their space and time. The composition residency, sponsored by Exploring the Metropolis in collaboration with Con Edison, is a fantastic program which I can’t praise enough.

And I even have lots to show for my time beyond an enhanced palate for Chinese cuisine…

The smallest of my three composition projects was Soho Sophisticate for solo saxophone, which was premiered on November 20th as part of a collaborative concert between me, Benoit Granier, and Paul Miller/DJ Spooky in Soho. This work will get a second showing on my December 4th concert at the Cornelia Street Cafe.

While it started out as a transcription and a side project for my residency concert in Februrary, Autumn Yearning has become a major piece in its own right, potentially dwarfing even Roots Music in length, clocking in at a whopping 14 minutes! This work, for clarinet, viola, and piano, is positioned to be the title track of my next CD which I hope to release by (wait for it…) autumn (of course) of 2012. Explorations and negotiations are being made into labels and distribution, and I plan to have this piece recorded soon after its February 18 premiere. More on this later…

The main focus of my residency was the research and creation of Roots Music, the work which will be premiered as part of the Beijing Irish Modern Music Festival in March, 2012. I spent much of time meeting with traditional musicians and researching everything from the traditional music of China and Ireland to individual instruments, including spending much time mastering the Chinese dizi flute. My goal was not to complete the composition, but to have all of the preliminary work finished to begin the composing process during the winter break from my college teaching. This I have accomplished to the fullest extent my choosing all of my source material for the work, and also by mapping out the entire structure of the piece (which I completed today!).

Since the piece is about the primordial musical connection that flows between all cultures, I have taken traditional/popular music from Ireland, China, and the US as source material for the piece. I can’t give away too much about the process or structure or final product, but I can give you these three videos that may get your musical taste buds a-salivating…

How’s that for starters?

Now, the work begins on constructing the piece for it to be sent off to China for early January.

The honor of the Flushing Town hall residency gave me the time, the space, and the opportunity to research and create all of this music. I am truly indebted to Con Edison and Exploring the Metropolis and can only hope that this wonderful program thrives to support other composers for years to come.

Until soon,

Demetrius

ps–I never did encounter any of the supposed ghosts that haunt Flushing Town Hall, and especially this jail cell in which I’m working in now…well, maybe as I pack up for the day I’ll get lucky…

Serial Underground
“the subversive nightclub series” (Time Out NY)

Sunday, December 4 6:00 pm (doors open at 5:45)
Jed Distler, host
@ The Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia Street bet. (6th and 7th Ave.), NYC (map)

Dear Friends,

Please join me on December 4th, 2011 for “Double Trouble”, presented by Serial Underground, hosted by Jed Distler and Composers Collaborative, inc.

This concert will pair me with the wonderful violinist/composer ANA Milosavljevic who will perform a set of solos and improvisations.

I will be joined in my portion of the concert by the always brilliant Jed Distler on piano for the premieres of my compositions Giuffre Sketches and The Love We Made, as well as performances of some of my other works.

Here are the program notes to Giuffre Sketches:

Giuffre Sketches is dedicated to the memory of my teacher, jazz musician and composer Jimmy Giuffre, who passed in 2008. It uses motives and phrases from some of Jimmy’s lesser-known compositions as source material for both the written and improvisational elements. The work also uses two well-known pieces that are interwoven to create a structural element: the folk song The Train and the River, and Jimmy Van Heusen’s Darn That Dream. Both of these pieces have special meanings for me, most especially the Van Heusen, which was the basis for one of my first conceptual epiphanies while I was working with Jimmy.

The Love We Made was one of the works that I composed during my residency at ARTErra in Portugal this past summer. It is a jazz ballad, influenced by Wayne Shorter, Weather Report, and even the band Styx.

I am delighted to be a resident artist at Serial Underground for the 3rd season, and even more delighted to announce that I have been appointed curator of the 2012-13 season. There will be more on this later when the time is right.

I hope you can join us on the 4th of December!

Thank you again for your support!

Sincerely,

Demetrius

Rounded third, gunning for home…

[Non-U.S. readers: this is a baseball reference...it basically means that almost done with my endeavors...one of these days, I may very well reference the 'Infield Fly Rule'...be wary]

The last couple of weeks at my residency have been focused on preparing for upcoming concerts as much as writing and editing my music. The last endeavor to prepare for was today’s concert with Benoit Granier and Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) in which we combined traditional Chinese music, experimental improvisation, and new technology. I also premiered my new work for solo saxophone, entitled Soho Sophisticate, which I wrote during my residency. It was a successful afternoon, so I am pleased with the results.

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I’ll tell you, though: one of the great perks of being in residence at Flushing Town Hall has been the vibrant visual and performing arts presentations that they give year-round. I was very lucky to be given a ticket for the NEA Jazz Masters concert on Friday night in which I got to see a number of great musicians whom I had never actually seen live. This concert featured saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Frank Wess, and pianist Barry Harris. These mainstays of the jazz firmament really presented an amazing concert. It’s funny: when I listen to ‘classic’ jazz–basically that style of the 1950′s which has been put onto a pedestal and unfortunately over-copied in recent decades in every college in the US–I have the same reaction as to when I’m listening to other ‘period’ music, like Baroque. It is wonderful in all of these instances to hear great masters of that given music play, which this concert was. I mean, heck, these guys *created* that style, so they have every right to play it to their heart’s desire. And they kept it *fresh*, which is dramatically important, especially when playing tried and true standards by Armstrong and Ellington. I was especially impressed with Frank Wess’ playing, which I really didn’t know as well as Heath’s. The almost 90 year-old Wess, was helped to the stage and to be seated, but he played some really great jazz solos on tenor sax and flute. I can only hope that I’m still doing it all that well by that age…

It does, however, give me ideas about going full-throttle with a ‘classic’ jazz quartet project (tenor sax, piano, bass, drums), but doing only my music. As you recall, I wrote a number of tunes/charts for that combination while at ARTErra in Portugal this summer…still deciding exactly what to do with them and where to go with them…most of them (as I now look at the music a few months after writing it all) could be expanded into more of a ‘progressive’ style that I am known for–if you remember from my summer blogs, these pieces were rather ‘fusionesque.’  A lot of my more ‘classical’ works can–with a wee bit of tweaking–easily be rewritten into having more of a progressive jazz vibe…food for thought…

…speaking of food for thought, I am going to miss lunch in Flushing over the weekends…may have to escape there at least one day a week for my Chinese food fix…

The next residency blog will be my last for this project, since this is my last week there. It may happen next week, or I may wait until I organize my final report to Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis and post that…we’ll see how inspired I am

Until soon,

Demetrius

October to December…the busiest time of probably my life. Between teaching, performances (and their preparation), composition deadlines, redoing my website, writing various applications, and keeping up with general publicity it’s been quite a couple of months…thus continues my residency work, which in many ways has been a Godsend in keeping me above water. Mainly, it’s been great for writing and practicing, but I have at times used the space and solitude for my other more mundane work.

[Note: I promised never to use the time for college-related work, regardless of how far behind I am...and I haven't]

Just to catch you all up, we had the Best Buddies Carnegie Hall show on Thursday where I was soloist, premiered my composition for solo saxophone Around Monk-night (which I wrote immediately before the residency began), and had the debut of William Susman OCTET. We played a great, full audience and raised much money for the charity. Now, begins the preparation for the next series of concerts…

Next up on the block is my collaboration with Benoit Granier, Ding Xue’er, and Paul Miller at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art on November 20th. Here is the information on the project. It will be on this concert/presentation where I will premiere my new work Soho Sophisticate, which I wrote a couple of weeks ago here at the residency. Maybe I’ll play it while I’m live processed through laptop/smartphone…we’ll see how I feel at the time. Could be a trip.

This week here, I started preparing the music for my annual solo concert as a resident artist of the Serial Underground new music series, created by the Composers Collaborative, inc. at the Cornelia Street Cafe on December 4th. I’ll be playing all of my own music, including the premieres of The Love We Made and Giuffre Sketches. Giuffre Sketches will be the main work, three times the length of anything else on the program. The piece was scheduled for premiere on last year’s show, but had to be postponed due to a colleague’s illness. It’s a big piece, and I play multiple instruments on it: clarinet, tenor sax, and baritone sax. I’ll go into more detail about the piece and its significance on a later post (when I promote that concert) but the piece is a dedication to my late teacher Jimmy Giuffre and those three instruments are the ones he played the most. The tenor sax and clarinet are what I tend to play the most now, too, but this season its just been soprano and alto saxophones (save for some tenor and flute stuff early on), so my main horns have been on the back burner, but easily recoverable; considering that the winter will be heavily clarinet, this is a good thing. The baritone sax–which is the horn I played almost exclusively in my 20s–and I have had a rough relationship in recent years. It doesn’t take too long to come back, like an old friend, but it doesn’t feel as automatic as it once did, plus it’s really heavy for me now, so it’s awkward to play. Practicing it today was nice, but it did hurt some. The wonderful and talented Jed Distler and I will be rehearsing the two pieces (mentioned above) tomorrow, so we’ll see how it all goes. I do have to drag the arsenal of equipment all the way to the West Village for rehearsal, but that”s alright. The piece needed to be for these instruments.

One of the main projects I have had to accomplish this fall is the redesign of my website. This is also in the final stages, but has taken much work and time. Thankfully, I’ve smartened up enough to hire a web designer to facilitate the changes, but still…I spent a good deal of time this weekend working on mp3s, gallery photos, and design lay-out. Like the practicing and the re-acquaintance with the baritone sax, it had to be done…I’m glad I had the space–and the quiet solitude–to do it.

I will say, however that the China project(s) are going full steam, and that many other facets of this will be coming into fruition in the next couple of weeks, including potential meetings with more traditional instrumentalists…so stay tuned…

Until soon,

Demetrius

Please visit the original website posting here:

http://biz.ifeng.com/v/special/lephone/

News and information
Concert + demonstration
@ Soho Gallery for Digtal Art
November 20th from 2-4 pm
Address: 138 Sullivan St., New York, NY 10012

This event is part of a world wide traveling project of “China doer, Action at Once-Fun to be a doer” sponsored by Lenovo Lephone S2 , we invited musicians from different areas to work together to realize a new experimental concert at Soho Gallery for Digital Art at 2 pm. , 20th, Nov. in New York City.
During that time you will experience a new feeling of music produced by both real instruments and phone application instruments.
You will see how you can phone-remix music and become a DJ.
Without any effort you can realize the dream to connect with established composers and play music with them, jamming on your own phone, how cool is that!
There will be interactive games on stage, meetings with established composers, players, DJs and researchers from New York and Beijing.
Free and open to the public.

People:

Paul D. Miller aka DJ SPOOKY is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and The Wire amongst other publications. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work New York Is Now has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science came out on MIT Press 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media was recently released by MIT Press. Miller’s deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of t he legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records.

Ding Xueer is born in the Quancheng Jinan. she started to study gushing at the age of 5 at the Mr./Mrs. Shi Congyu Jinan Vanguard Song-and- dance troupe Yan Wei. At 9 years old Ding Xueer obtain her first title: the Jinan “the healthy, studious, and helpful student” award. In 2000 Ding Xueer went on study with the renown gushing professor Professor Li Meng to study. In 2001she entered the Middle school attached to the Central Conservatory of Music. during that time of her studies, She continuously obtains “the specialized outstanding scholarship. In 2007 Ding Xueer was accepted at the the Central Conservatory of Music.

Benoit Granier is a French Composer living in Beijing (China), he studied composition with Arturo Gervasony, Guy Rebel, Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle as well as Fergus Johnston at Trinity College Dublin where he completed a PhD degree in Computer Music and Composition in 2007.
When moving down to Beijing, He founded the Timi Modern Music ensemble, Beijing renown amplified new music Band, in 2008. Among the pieces premiered by the Timi were work by emerging composers such as Tony Deritis, John Mallia, Gerry Chenoweth as well as Benoit Granier. The work that the composer did with the performers open new possibilities in music and introduce himself to the notion of music and culture…

Award winning composer and performer Demetrius Spaneas travels the world as a musical ambassador, connecting classical, jazz, and traditional music throughout the US, Eastern Europe, and Asia to create international dialogue through artistic collaboration. He has worked with such diverse artists as John Cage, Ray Charles, and Kyrgyz traditional musicians, and has been featured soloist and composer at major concert venues and international festivals in the three continents.
He currently has two solo recordings on Capstone Records, When Wind Comes to Sparse Bamboo (2003) and From a Far-off World (2006), both of which will be rereleased by the Naxos Online Library. In 2010 he released Sfumato, a collection of improvisations with vocalist Galina Parfenova under his own label, DSM.

THE SOHO GALLERY FOR DIGITAL ART is the “heartchild” of John Ordover, son of the late lawyer Jerry Ordover, a leading figure in the Modern Art community. His father’s clients over the years included artists such as Roy L ichtenstein, Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Nam Jun Paik and preeminent gallery owner Leo Castelli. “Growing up around the brilliant, spontaneous and off-beat crowd my father introduced me to,” Ordover said, “that creative energy drove my work as a writer and editor; opening a gallery is simply coming full circle.”

Mr. Ordover is also open to the idea of installations created specifically for the gallery and to other creative uses of the space. “We don’t accept any limitations, ” Mr. Ordover said. “Beyond our primary function as a gallery, we intend to use our facilities as a screening room for short films, a stage for experimental theater and other such cultural events — we want to make ourselves into a suppor tive center for the entire SoHo cultural community.”

Links

Dj Spooky:
http://www.djspooky.com/
Demetrius Spaneas;
http://www.dspaneas.com/
Benoit Granier
http://www.granierb.net/
Ding Xue’er
http://www.granierb.net/timi/dingxueer.html/
Soho Gallery
http://sohodigart.com/

Well, here I am; rounding third on my residency, heading for home…I may just slide in under the tag, too…

I finished Autumn Yearning…completely…editing done. It was very good to leave it for a couple of weeks. There were a few measures of music that really weren’t doing it for me, some that I wrote 2 months ago…a little bit of distance really does makes a grand difference.

Editing is always the hard part. The music writing, albeit tumultuous at times, is the enjoyable and creative part. The editing is, well, editing…adding phrase markings and articulations and dynamics…basically making the music practical for performance.

But…when editing, you can actually rethink quite a bit. case in point, if I weren’t editing after the fact of composing, I may not have come up with the ways to fix the measures I didn’t like. So again, distance combined with precision has merits.

However, unfortunately, I am only able to come here one day this week–today–due to other professional obligations. Tomorrow, I am playing with the Broadway/”Glee” star Idina Menzel at the Tilles Performing Arts Center. This will be an afternoon/evening affair where we rehearse in the afternoon (our only one, of course) and perform that evening. Sunday, we have the first real rehearsal with OCTET for our Carnegie Hall debut on Thursday, which is the same concert that I will be a soloist on and premiering my Around Monk-night.

It’ll be a fun week!

But that’s not the end of my residency project work for the week…no sir…it just won’t be happening at the residency. I have finally connected with Paul Harrigan, the gentleman from Dublin who will be the Irish pipes soloist for our concert in Beijing in March where we will premiere my Roots Music with the TIMI ensemble. I will also be meeting with folks from the New York State Council on the Arts who are connecting me with other Chinese musicians based in NYC (more on this next time). Now comes the time where I start taking the various elements that I have been exploring and will begin to construct Roots Music.

Now the fun begins…rounding third…that outfielder has got a good arm, but I think I can beat him

Until soon,

Demetrius