Luciano Chessa / Ctrl-Z / DunkelpeK
Ben Tinker's monthly music series presents:
Luciano Chessa is among the most interesting and inventive minds currently working in the Bay Area. Active as a composer, performer, conductor and musicologist, Chessa’s work draws heavy influence from experimentation, blending unorthodox ideas with classical form. Imaginative in its embrace of the avant-garde, Chessa’s music quickly reveals the promise of the timbral and conceptual possibilities afforded by his innovative approach. Chessa’s music has featured prominently on programs across Europe, Australia and the United States. Recent premieres include Come un’infanzia, for guitar and string quartet (2011) premiered by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and A Heavenly Act (2011), an opera on libretto by Gertrude Stein commissioned by SFMOMA to compliment Virgil Thompson’s 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts. The work premiered on August 19, 2011, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, in a staged production by the Ensemble Parallèle, conducted by Nicole Paiement and featuring video by Kalup Linzy. Luciano Chessa attended the Conservatory of Bologna where he earned a DMA in piano and an MA in music composition. Arriving in California in 1998 Chessa continued his studies in musicology at the University of California, Davis where he earned his Ph.D. in 2004. He has lectured at St. John’s College of Oxford, UK, Columbia University, Harvard University, Sydney’s and Melbourne’s Conservatories and Universities, the Conservatory of Music in Bologna, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and EMPAC in the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He currently serves on the composition faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. sfcm.edu/faculty/luciano-chessa
Ctrl-Z is a group dedicated to the performance of composed music for live electronics. Founded by Ryan Page, Daniel Steffey, and Nick Wang in 2015, the group often finds itself in collaboration with other musicians, who perform on both electronic and acoustic instruments, to realize these works. Using an array of modular synthesizers, computers, homemade circuitry, test equipment, and other machinery, they have commissioned new works for the medium, as well as realized classic pieces, or adapted open ended instrumentation scores to fit their means of performance. Music in their repertoire includes works by John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Ryan Ross Smith, Alvin Lucier, and those in the group, among others. They are always accepting new pieces submitted by living composers, as well as realizing more classic works by pioneers of the genre. youtube.com/watch?v=GIs1KTwF4cA
DunkelpeK is
Nava Dunkelman (percussion) and
Jakob Pek (guitar, miscellany, piano). This Bay Area based duo offers listeners a visceral, syncretic experience of sound and silence. Playing an avant-garde world improvisation that is inspired and informed by many musics, DunkelpeK's sound interweaves and explores countless dimensions of vibration, giving being to a sonic reality unlike any other. dunkelpek.bandcamp.com
More info: facebook.com/events/1813976535587841
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Fred Frith and Nava Dunkelman