Composers from Landscape Music, an international composers’ collective, and musicians from Citywater, Sacramento’s premier new music ensemble, present their work in a free online event with the Visions of Film and Arts Wild Festival on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 5:00pm PDT. Register for this free event at visionsofthewild.org.
São Miguel Island, the Azores. Photo by Guillermo Varela. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
The audience will hear the World Premiere performances of two brand new works for flute and cello, commissioned by Landscape Music exclusively for Visions of the Wild. Composed by Juhi Bansal and Daniel Morel, these pieces will celebrate diverse locales from the biosphere reserves of the Azores to the apple orchards of Missouri. The premieres will be recorded and presented by Cathie Apple, flute, and Timothy Stanley, cello, of Citywater.
Additionally, composers Nell Shaw Cohen, Derek Keller, and Ryan Suleiman will introduce excerpts from works that take inspiration from places in and around the Bay Area. They’ll discuss their musical responses to Andy Goldsworthy’s land art in the Presidio of San Francisco (Cohen’s Transforming Forest); the beauty, complexity, and fragility of the Sacramento watershed (Keller’s NorCal Water Music); and the devastation of the 2017 Sonoma wildfires (Suleiman’s Burning).
The presentation will conclude with a live audience Q&A.
“Spire” by Andy Goldsworthy. Photo: Nell Shaw Cohen.
The Visions of the Wild Festival, a partnership of the U.S. Forest Service and Vallejo Community Arts Foundation, presents this event as part of their series 38°N. Monthly 38°N programs highlight connections between nature, culture and community through the work of artists, scientists and adventurers responding to locales at 38°N of the equator: the same latitude as Vallejo and Benicia.
Accordingly, all works featured on this program have their geographical impetus near 38°N of the equator. The audience will be invited to take an imaginative journey through these works spanning chamber music, orchestral music, and interactive multimedia performance.
This event is also a part of Landscape Music’s Earth Year, which includes activities taking place during the year 2020 through Earth Day 2021. This initiative is a catalyst for new works, performances, music videos, and community events showcasing new music that reflects environmental themes at the forefront of our global consciousness.
Register for this free event at visionsofthewild.org.
Participants
Landscape Music is an international collective of composers and composer-performers. Their mission is to deepen public appreciation of the natural world by providing a platform for contemporary composers whose music engages with landscape, nature, and place. LandscapeMusic.org
Flute instructor at Sacramento State’s School of Music, Dr. Cathie Apple is one of the founders of Citywater new music ensemble. An avid supporter of new music, Cathie has commissioned and/or premiered many works for flute and various chamber ensembles, has collaborated with composers such as Clare Shore, Nicholas Deyoe, Garrett Shatzer, Brent Chancellor, Stephen Blumberg, and Sunny Knable, and regularly performs on the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento. cathieapple.com
“Radiant and transcendent,” the music of Juhi Bansal weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, and strong female role models. Her music draws upon elements as disparate as progressive metal, Hindustani music, spectralism, musical theatre and choral traditions to create deeply expressive, evocative sound-worlds. She is a staunch proponent of bringing new audiences into contemporary music and of helping musicians of all ages take ownership of music creation. juhibansal.com
Nell Shaw Cohen, Director of Landscape Music, evokes landscapes, visual art, and the lives of mavericks in her lyrical works for the stage, concert hall, and digital media. Commissions include Houston Grand Opera, Skylark Vocal Ensemble, The Brass Project, and Montage Music Society. Her operas have had workshops with Fort Worth Opera, American Opera Projects, New Dramatists, New York University, and University of New Mexico. Raised in San Francisco, she lives in Brooklyn, NY. nellshawcohen.com
Born from uncommon versatility as a composer/performer, Derek Keller‘s music explores hybridity between classical music, jazz and rock. Working in multimedia, his Modular Music Project combines live performance, formal modularity, and mobile devices to create experiences along the deterministic–improvisational–aleatoric continuum that address socio-political challenges of our time. Keller has received commissions from Loadbang, SACRA/PROFANA, Citywater, Empyrean Ensemble, Fondation Royaumont, Redfish-BlueFish, NOISE, among others. Keller is an Assistant Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University. derekkeller.com
Daniel Morel is a composer, producer, and educator based in Kansas City. Garnering commissions and performances across the United States, his works are permeated with the Western sensibilities of his Colorado upbringing. Daniel composes orchestral, wind ensemble, vocal, and chamber music. He is currently an instructor at Avila University. danmorel.com
Cellist Timothy Stanley is a performing artist and teacher living in the Sacramento area. Timothy currently teaches privately in Sacramento and Davis. He is a senior teacher with the Sacramento State String Project, a not-for-profit which provides low cost music instruction to Sacramento elementary school children. As a performer, Timothy plays with numerous local symphonies and orchestras as well as area baroque ensembles and the new music ensemble, Citywater. citywatermusic.com
The music of Ryan Suleiman engages with daydreams and the natural world – in particular, the simultaneity of sublime beauty and dread of living in our times. His work has been performed throughout the United States at such festivals as SICPP (New England Conservatory), June in Buffalo (NY), and NANOworks Opera Workshop (Atlanta). Dr. Suleiman has worked with numerous ensembles, including West Edge Opera, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Daedalus Quartet, and Symphony d’Oro. ryansuleiman.com.