ONE-TWO-THREE-Concerts
Concert #12
NICOLE
KLAGSBRUN GALLERY
526 West 26th Street
(10th & 11th Avenues)
New York City
Sunday, April 7, 2002 at 4:30 PM
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MELLITS
CONSORT
Marc Mellits
keyboard
Cristina Buciu
violin
Dominic Frasca
electric
guitar
Elizabeth Simkin
cello
Danny Tunick
marimba
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Program:
01. The Misspent Youth of Soup
02. Broken Glass
03. Elegy for Simeon
04. Jellyfish
05. Lefty's Elegy
06. Machine
IV
07. Srecan Rodjendan, Marija!
08. Troica
09. Dreadlocked
10. Machine III
11. Machine V
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Born in the United States, in Baltimore, Maryland, Marc Mellits (composer/keyboard) has studied at the Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, Cornell University, and Tanglewood. His teachers have included Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, Dominic Frasca, Bernard Rands, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Roberto Sierra, and Steven Stucky. Mellits' music has been widely performed throughout the United States & Canada, as well as Europe. Mellits' music is visceral, often making a deep connection with the audience: "This was music as sensual as it was intelligent; I saw audience members swaying, nodding, making little motions with their hands." (New York Press).
His recent commissions include pieces for internationally acclaimed artists such as the Kronos String Quartet, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Sergio and Odair Assad, and Eliot Fisk, as well as the Albany Symphony's Dog's Of Desire, the Orchestra Dancing In Your Head, Dominic Frasca, American Baroque, Lelabo (Paris), Manhattan New Music Project, New Millennium Ensemble, and the Meridian Arts Ensemble. He is also a founding member of the acclaimed Common Sense Composer's Collective, which seeks new and alternative ways of collaborating with performance ensembles. Mellits is also the artistic director of his own unique ensemble, the MELLITS CONSORT. On CD, Mellits' music can be found on CRI/Emergency Music and Koch. Marc Mellits lives in New York City.
Cristina Buciu (violin) is a native of Bucharest, Romania and comes from a family of well-known musicians. Her teachers include Sherban Lupu, Peter Zakofsky, and the Muir String Quartet. Ms. Buciu is an alumnus of the Academy of Music in Bucharest, the University of Illinois and Boston University. She has concertized extensively with several orchestras and performed solo and chamber music recitals in the U.S. and Europe.
Cristina Buciu has been featured on National Radio-Television of Romania, Yugoslavia, the Voice of America, as well as other American radio stations. She has been invited to several summer festivals, including the Gubbio Festival, the Mittenwald, Novi Sad, and Lanciano Festivals, as well as the Tanglewood Music Festival where she worked with the Julliard String Quartet, Leon Fleisher, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, and Andre Previn.
Cristina enjoys torturing her students, her stand partner in the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, her husband (Marc Mellits), and playing with Shlomo the cat."
Dominic
Frasca (electric guitar)
began playing electric guitar at the age of 13. By the age of 17 he began studying
classical guitar. Between the years 1986-1993 he attended and was thrown out of
some of the finest academic institutions in the United States including Univ.
of Akron, Univ. of Arizona and Yale Univ.
During this time he studied
guitar with Steve Aron, Tom Patterson and Philip Rosheger and composition with
Daniel Asia, Jack Vees, Anthony Davis & Marc Mellits. Over the years, Frasca
has become known for his unorthodox and original guitar technique as well as his
technically and musically demanding transcriptions of minimalist works by Philip
Glass, Steve Reich and Anthony Davis.
It is in his original composition
where Frasca's exploitation of the guitar is most apparent. His concept of the
instrument as a complex percussion source, having endless possibilities, prompted
G.F.A. Soundboard Magazine to write, "A guitarist of original and rare
genius, Frasca's compositional style exhibits a seamless integration of multi-colored
percussive technique and metric modulation within traditional guitar vocabulary."
Not limiting himself to the restrictions of the conventional classical guitar,
Frasca plays on multiple string guitars, which he designed, that employ both steel
and nylon string with the use of amplification. Often times these guitars will
be designed and built to play just one piece.
Recently Dominic has come
full circle and began playing electric guitar again most notably on the premiere
recording of the Steve Reich piece Electric Guitar Phase (which Frasca arranged)
for Nonesuch Records. Equally as concerned with the visual aspects of performance
as with the audible, Frasca's concerts often contain multi-media works, which
employ the use of such things as video, power tools, erotic dancers and even lawn
care equipment. The Oberlin Press wrote of one performance "a guitar was
destroyed by means of a wood chipper while a sucession of horrifying graphic images
were flashed on TV screens ... his performance amounted to an assault on the audience
... Frasca should not be invited back."
All of which goes with
Frasca's philosophy: "You can excite an audience, you can anger an audience,
you can even scare an audience, but just don't bore an audience."
Elizabeth Simkin
(cello) Faculty, Ithaca College School of Music & Bowdoin Summer Music
Festival; principal cellist, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. Founding member of the
Taliesin Trio, the Ariadne String Quartet, and Cornell University's new music
group, Ensemble X. She has been guest artist with the Lydian String Quartet and
at summer chamber music festivals including Chautauqua, Tanglewood, Bloomington
Early Music, Roycroft, Skaneateles, Spoleto, Garth Newel and June in Buffalo.
As a 1996 Artistic Ambassador, she represented cultural life in the U.S. with
a recital tour that included concerts in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Krakow, Tallin,
Bucharest, Sofia, Skopje and other cities in Eastern Europe. Ms. Simkin has recently
developed a program for chamber music study, Music with a Central European Accent,
in collaboration with the Janaceck Academy of Music, Masaryk University.
Danny Tunick (marimba)
is "confused, and likes to stay indoors."
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sTRANGE qUOTE:
"Thy
voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes,
and when I looked upon
thee I heard a sTRANGEmUSIC."
Oscar
Wilde
Salome
1893/1894
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Our
deepest thanks to: Nicole Klagsbrun, Valerie Flpvna, Ian Mitchell, Scott Zarnes,
James Goettel & everyone at Serious Music.
Happy Birthdays to:
Marija Ilic and Lilly the Wonder Dog