Winner of Eklekto Geneva Call for Scores

The laureates of the Call for Projects 2017 are:

David Bird (US)
Jamie Hamilton (UK)
Luc Döbereiner (DE)
Léo Collin (CH/FR)

The Jury was composed by Daniel Zea (composer, co-artistic director of Ensemble Vortex), Brian Archinal (percussionist, Ensemble Nikel, HKB Bern) and Anne Gillot (Musician and journalist for Radio, RTS, Ensemble Babel, Ensemble Vortex). 

The presentation of the winning projects will take place on November 4th, 2017 at l’Abri in Geneva.

Multiplicities - for Multi-Tracked Bass Flute (2016)

Multiplicities is an ongoing commission and collaboration with MIT's Architecture Journal "Thresholds", and flautist Laura Cocks. It was designed with an attempt to understand and aestheticize the complexities and variations inherent in the performer/score relationship.

Amidst the transmission of a musical idea, between the composer, score, performer, and audience, there is invariably a rich capacity for interpretation, contingency, and variability. It is often in these inconsistencies that a work finds its depth, as variable interpretations inevitably cast new light on a musical subject, imbuing it with a variety of perspectives, energies, and characterizations.

This work, ”Multiplicities”, is scored for indefinitely multi-tracked (pre-recorded/live-looped and layered) bass flute, in it, I aim to objectify the variabilities that occur from one performance to the next. I attempted to develop a notation that is, in one sense, quite specific in its prescriptive instructions, yet in another, highly receptive in its harnessing and objectifying of the nuances and variabilities that happen from one performance to the next. When the instruments become layered, these variabilities infuse the work with a variegated color, allowing what is essentially one part, to sound like a swarm or a mass of individual lines. The challenge was how to develop material in a range of variability, and to allow this range to dilate and contract as I saw fit, but not let these variabilities run out of control and obstruct my ability to articulate cohesive structural and formal shapes.

Sound, Space, Simulation - Portrait Concert / Design Exhibition

On May 26th and 28th, Qubit New Music will present "Sound, Space, Simulation", a two-day event highlighting complex relationships between architecture and music. These events will feature music by David Bird, Carolyn Chen, and Alec Hall, performed by renowned soloists, Laura Cocks, Weston Olencki, Meaghan Burke, and the violin and viola duo andPlay. These events will also feature visual exhibitions and installations from the Boston-Based design firm WOJR, and respected architecture journal MIT Thresholds. Both of these events will occur at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, and will feature a selection of craft beer from Lagunitas Brewery, who have generously offered to sponsor the event.

"Myth" is the first of two events curated by Qubit New Music that highlight the intricate relationships between architecture and music. This event will explore the role of Myth and the Mythic in contemporary music, architecture, and design and will feature a visual exhibition from MIT's architecture journal Thresholds, sculptures from the Boston-Based design firm WOJR, and music by David Bird performed by Laura Cocks, Meaghan Burke, and andPlay. The event will feature craft beer from Lagunitas Brewery, who have generously offered to sponsor the event.

• 5 - 7pm - Visual Exhibition from Thresholds Journal

• 8pm - Music for instruments and spatialized electronics
(Music by David Bird performed by Laura Cocks, Meaghan Burke, and andPlay)

apocrypha
(for violin, viola, and 8 channel electronics)
spatia
(for solo cello and spatialized field recordings)
atolls
(for solo piccolo and 29 spatialized piccolos) 

http://qubitmusic.com/2016-17-SEASON/SOUND-SPACE-SIMULATION
https://www.facebook.com/events/1888084044801378/

"Dialogue" - Album Release

Dialogue consists of five new works for solo cello, written in collaboration with Helen by composers David Bird, Adam Hirsch, Kurt Isaacson, Haley Shaw, and Danny Clay. Newby's approach to the instrument imagines a cello liberated from its body and open to a world humming with new sonic possibilities. The works written for this collection explore the textured relationships between a cello and its imagined potential, between a performer and a hazily defined "other": an empty courtyard, a resonating piano, a disembodied voice, a subharmonic sine wave, a self-oscillating snare drum. Recorded live on 2-inch analog tape and stretching out across a patient time frame, Newby's hi-fi solo debut is by turns shimmering and dizzying, wondering out loud about how to hear things differently. 

https://ephemeralstream.bandcamp.com/album/dialogue-2

Works Performed at 2016 Gaudeamus Festival

Thank you again to the wonderful players of Oerknal and Quatuor Bozzini for their amazing work during the 2016 Gaudeamus Festival. Three of my works were performed, along with a bunch of other great tunes. It was an amazing experience and I thank everyone involved in the festival!

Winner of 2016 BMI Student Composer Award

The BMI Foundation (BMIF), in collaboration with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), has announced nine young composers, ages 15 to 27, as the winners of the 64th annual BMI Student Composer Awards. The winning compositions include works for orchestra and wind ensemble as well as solo and chamber works plus pieces involving electronics. Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who serves as the permanent Chair of the Student Composer Awards, Mike O’Neill, BMI President and CEO and BMIF Honorary Chair, and Deirdre Chadwick, BMI’s Executive Director of Classical and the President of BMIF, announced the decisions of the jury and presented the awards at a private ceremony held on May 16, 2016, at the J. W. Marriott Essex House Hotel in New York City.

The 2016 award recipients and their award-winning compositions are:

• David Bird (b. 1990): Drop for string octet, strobe lights, electronic sounds

• Jack Hughes (b. 1992): Ripple for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

• Tonia Ko (b. 1988): Games of Belief for piano

• Tristan Xavier Köster (b. 1993): The Empty City Stratagem for male traditional Chinese folk singer (or tenor) and large orchestra

• Ryan Lindveit (b.1994): Spinning Yarns for wind ensemble

• Daniel James Miller (b. 1989):Contrails for flute and responsive electroacoustic environment

• Paul Mortilla (b. 1995):
  STUPOR for trumpet, bass clarinet, double bass, piano, and drumset

• Phil Taylor (b. 1989): Sparks for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

• Justin Zeitlinger (b. 2000): Miniatures for two violins

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/64th-annual-bmi-student-composer-award-winners-announced/