Fall 2019 – Spring 2020 Visiting Artists

Spring 2020

Michael Francis Duch

Michael Francis Duch (1978) was born and raised in Trondheim, Norway, and plays the double bass. He is currently Deputy Head of Department at Department of Music at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology - NTNU, and a former member of the The Young Academy of Norway.Duch completed his project “Free Improvisation – Method and Genre” as research-fellow at the University of Trondheim (NTNU) late October 2010, where he has been doing research on Free Improvisation and the use of Improvisation in Experimental Music. He has been involved in about 70 recordings released in various formats, and has played solo-concerts various places in Norway and Sweden, and also Reykjavik, Athens, Madrid, Vienna, Glasgow, Huddersfield and London.

Event Details

Jenny Olivia Johnson

Jenny Olivia Johnson (b. 1978 in Santa Monica, CA) is a composer, sound artist, and music scholar, as well as an Associate Professor of Music at Wellesley College. Her compositions and artwork range from electroacoustic chamber songs and contemplative solo works to short amplified operas and interactive sound sculptures with lighting. Jenny’s most recent project is the immersive installation DIVE (LUCY’S LAST DANCE), currently on view at the Davis Museum from February-June 2020. The installation is based on Jenny’s forthcoming headphones-opera “The After Time,” which explores the erotics of grieving.

Event Details

Maayan Tsadka

Maayan Tsadka is a composer, sound artist, improviser, sound explorer and teacher. At the root of all his works is an attempt to grasp some understanding about the nature of sound, its behavior, acoustic ways of organization, and its environmental and social roles. He is interested in uncovering and amplifying layers and musical patterns—hidden, inherent structures— which occur acoustically, as well as in an exploration of the ways in which the sonic phenomena meets the physiology of the ear and the psychology of listening. Often, his work incorporates a dimension of imaginary and speculative sonic worlds, on the line between crypto-zoology, crypto-botany and futuristic folklore. 

Event Details

Weston Olencki

Lecture/Talk with colloquium on approaches to performance and presentation of works via Zoom. Email Matt Barbier for Zoom link if interested in joining mbarbier@calarts.edu

Weston Olencki is a South Carolina-born, Brooklyn-based musician working at the intersections of improvisation, contemporary composition & extended instrumental performance, new media technologies, and noise-based practices. 

 

Event Details

Gloria Yehilevsky

International percussionist Gloria Yehilevsky presents an immersive practice with improvisation, composition, and education. Her work is rooted in the philosophy that music is communication. She was selected as an artist for the World Percussion Group in 2017, received the highest awarded prize in the Italy PAS International Vibraphone competition, won the PAS/Armand Zildjian Percussion Scholarship, and is a Musical Merit Foundation protégé. Her accolades include recording for NAXOS, airing on BBC Radio 3, performing in the International Symposium at PGVIM in Bangkok, performing at PASIC and earning the Fred Sanford Award with Santa Clara Vanguard.
Gloria endorses Black Swamp Percussion.

Event Details

Julia Holter

Julia Holter is a composer, performer, and recording artist based in Los Angeles. Her interest in sonic mysteries has led her to record in various settings--in her home, outside with a field recorder, and in recording studios—as well as to perform live, often with a focus on the voice and the space between language and babble. Holter’s music is multi-layered and texturally rich. She has amassed a body of work that explores melody within free song structures, atmosphere, and the impulses of the voice. She has released five studio albums: Aviary (2018), Have You In My Wilderness (2015), Loud City Song (2013), Ekstasis (2012), and Tragedy (2011). Holter has performed her music at venues and festivals throughout the world with an ensemble of creative musicians. She has written music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other ensembles, as well as scores for the films “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (2020) and “Bleed for This” (2016) and the TV show “Pure” (2019).

Event Details

Jacob Wick

You’ll be listening to some of Jacob’s solo work, specifically from the record feel, released in 2019 on Thin Wrist. Then talk about the idea that structured feel, which is the process queer sound -> queer time -> queer space. 

Jacob Wick is an improviser, writer, and artist. His work is dedicated to and informed by queer feelings and queer politics. As an improviser and trumpet player, he has performed in a variety of contexts, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kennedy Center, and the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). He has performed with Matana Roberts, Andrea Neumann, Gerald Cleaver, Katherine Young, Judith Hamann, Toshimaru Nakamura, and others.

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Fall 2019 Visiting Artists

Women in Jazz Panel

A versatile vocalist, Alina Roitstein is known for her “beautiful voice and equally beautiful presence” (El Nuevo Herald). Her career spanning chamber music and contemporary works, opera and art song, jazz and Latin music, and choral music has taken her to venues all over the world. She is also a singer and composer for River Song Quintet, a chamber jazz ensemble and the Trevor Anderies Quintet, an ensemble led by drummer/composer Trevor Anderies, exploring the lines between composition and improvisation, jazz, folk, and West African music.

(Lauren) Elizabeth Baba is a violinist, violist, composer, and improviser living in Los Angeles, California, performing a wide variety of music from original improvisatory music to jazz, classical, folk, avent-guarde, chamber, pop, and experimental styles. Baba is the composer and director of theBABAorchestra, a 17-piece big band performing her original instrumental compositions. She has composed for several short films and co-composed for several movies including BARBIE Mariposa and the Fairy Princess, Waking, and Artificial Sweetner. Baba studied jazz violin/viola and composition at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California where she received her BFA in Jazz Performance. 

Nedra Wheeler is a bassist, composer and bandleader that has been performing in Southern California and touring Internationally for more than 25 years. She is one of the recipients of the 2006 Jazz Legend of Los Angeles Awards from the Dunbar Economic Development Corporation and the City of Los Angeles. Nedra earned her Master of Fine Arts from CalArts and is a performer and teacher with the Jazz Mentorship Program at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs-Watts Towers Arts Center & Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center.


Location
School of MusicWorkshops