Distributed October 16, 2000
For Immediate Release
News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



World premières to be featured

Brown Festival of Contemporary Music debuts Oct. 26-28

Original musical works by students, alumni, faculty and professional composers will be premièred during the first Brown Festival of Contemporary Music Thursday, Oct. 26, through Sat., Oct. 28, 2000. Composers Julian Wachner and Thomas Goss will also conduct master classes.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Music lovers will have a unique opportunity to hear world première performances of some exciting new works by students, faculty, alumni and professional composers when the first Brown Festival of Contemporary Music makes its debut next week.

Between Oct. 26 and 28, the festival – the first ever organized and run solely by students – will offer four public concerts, as well as master classes with professional composers Julian Wachner and Thomas Goss. According to student composer Joshua Saulle ’01, the festival is “the culmination of three years of increasing new music activity on campus.” That activity began in 1997 with the creation of the Original Music Group, an organization designed to give student composers a forum for interaction, critique and performance.

The three-day festival is being jointly sponsored by the Original Music Group and Brown New Music, as well as the Music Department and the Sara and Robert A. Reichley Concert Fund.

“This is quite an event, one that I think is quite unique for a school like Brown, which is not a music school or conservatory,” said Saulle. “The students here have worked diligently, and by our work and our banding together and working with the department, we have revitalized an aspect of Brown’s cultural life.”

The festival will open Thursday, Oct. 26 with an 8 p.m. concert in Grant Recital Hall, 1 Young Orchard Ave., by the Bowed Piano Ensemble, an innovative group founded and directed by Stephen Scott ’69. The ensemble, which plays directly on the strings of a grand piano, will present a one-hour program of Scott’s original works, including Vikings of the Sunrise, Entrada and Rainbows, Part One.

On Friday at 8 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green, Brown New Music will present its concert, Scraping Skies, featuring world premières commissioned from several professional composers, including internationally recognized composer Julian Wachner, Brown medical professor Elaine Bearer, Thomas Goss and Sarah Michael. The ensemble will perform Wachner’s Soliloquies and Transformations, Bearer’s Oppenheimer Project, Goss’s Broken Glass and Michael’s Ursuline Avenue. The program will also include Trudeau is Dead, a new work by the ensemble’s artistic director, Nathan Stumpff ’02.

Concert-goers will have two opportunities to hear original student compositions on Saturday, Oct. 28. At 2 p.m. the Original Music Group will present an eclectic program of various styles of non-Classical music ranging from jazz and alternative rock to bluegrass and traditional Irish banjo. At 8 p.m. the Original Music Group will première works by nearly a dozen student composers in its fall concert; both events will be held in Grant Recital Hall.

Participating student composers are Matthew Dalton, Daniel Edinberg, James Egelhofer, Raymond Fiore, Daniel Fiori, Benjamin Keyes, Drew Maletz, Jennifer Mitnick, Sloane Moore, Long Nguyen, Joshua Saulle, Neal Shah, Aaron Sokoloff, Nathan Stumpff and Matthew Weber.

In addition to the concerts, master classes on composition will be offered by Wachner and Goss on Friday, Oct. 27, at 4:30 p.m. in room 112 of the Orwig Music Building, 1 Young Orchard Ave. During these sessions, several advanced student composers will have an opportunity to present their work to the professionals for critique.

All of the festival’s events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.brown.edu/Students/Brown_New_Music/festival.htm or call (401) 863-3234.

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