The Department of Music is thrilled to welcome the Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet as artists in residence at UMBC on November 20th-21st. The residency will include concerts, masterclasses, and a lecture for the UMBC Community. The quartet will coach members of the orchestra and wind ensemble, and present a lecture/demonstration, in Spanish, on the evolution of tango music and its connection to Argentine identity. On Saturday, November 20th, the quartet performs a concert of original and classic tango selections, followed by an introductory Argentine Tango dance class presented by master tango dancers and teachers Aja Fenn and Masha Abapolnikova. The culmination of the residency will be a concert presented by the UMBC Symphony Orchestra with the Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet as featured soloist, performing works by Astor Piazzolla and Pedro Giraudo juxtaposed with Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera’s “Estancia Dances” and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.
The Latin GRAMMY Award winning Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet represents the evolution of tango, from its roots in the traditional Orquesta típica, to tango nuevo as epitomized by Astor Piazzolla, and now to a contemporary sound that respects the past and looks to the future. Pedro Giraudo, who has become an active cultural ambassador of this beautiful and passionate music of his native Argentina, brings something new and exciting to the form while retaining all the lushness and beauty of tango. In 2018 Giraudo’s album ‘Vigor Tanguero’ won a Latin GRAMMY award for ‘Best Tango Album’.
The other members of the quartet are three of the most prominent musicians in the tango world: Nick Danielson (violin) is Assistant Concertmaster of the NYC Ballet Orchestra and enjoys a distinguished career in both the classical and tango worlds; Rodolfo Zanetti (bandoneón) is recognized as one of the most distinguished solo bandoneonists in the United States, performing at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center; Ahmed Alom (piano) has been considered a prodigy since the age of 14, winning numerous international prizes in piano competitions, and now living in New York, where he continues to garner acclaim.
Renowned tango dancers Aja Fenn and Masha Abapolnikova of Fábrica Tango present a socially distanced Argentine Tango Dance Workshop. Masha and Aja have been serving the Washington metropolitan area and the global tango community as teachers, performers and event organizers for conjointly 20 years. They have run popular milongas, brought high quality instructors to town, worked with musicians, built a non-profit, trained new teachers, appeared in documentaries and theater productions, and taught hundreds of people how to dance tango! Their student base spans the full spectrum from beginner to teachers-in-training. During their time in the non-profit sector they served populations such as veterans, seniors, kids and the LGBTQ+ community. Masha and Aja met in 2010. Their combined vision, skills and creativity have been explosive ever since.
The UMBC Symphony Orchestra performs orchestral literature from the 18th to the 21st centuries including both standard repertoire and contemporary works, from a broad range of musical styles. Membership is open to all UMBC students, faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the local community by audition, with preference given to qualified UMBC students. The UMBC Symphony Orchestra performs under the direction of Dr. Nell Flanders
This residency is made possible by the support of the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), the Department of Dance at UMBC, Dresher Center for the Humanities, Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication, and the Latinx and Hispanic Faculty Association.
The Department of Music is pleased to present its eleventh Livewire Festival, an exploration of today’s music featuring faculty artists as well as leading guest composers and performers.
After a year of isolation, we celebrate our return to togetherness with REWIRED, an exploration of the unique power of music as an art of physical and material presence. Over an intensive three days, October 21-23, we present renowned contemporary ensembles Yarn/Wire and Cantata Profana, host eminent guest composers Robert Morris and Victoria Cheah, and present outstanding faculty and student musicians in a series of concerts.
Thursday evening, faculty ensemble RUCKUS opens the festival with a program called PRESENCE, with music by Robert Morris, Jo Kondo, Robert Carl, Amy Williams, Olly Wilson, and Viet Cuong. Ranging from solo voice with electronics to sextet, the works on this program explore the real-time dialogue central to chamber music: from the intertwined lines of Morris’s Traces and Carl’s Waterlight to the delicate timbral interplay of Kondo’s Aquarelle to the tenor voice in dialogue with itself in Wilson’s Sometimes.
Early on Friday afternoon, UMBC music students curate a program of contemporary music.
Opening later on Friday afternoon and continuing on Saturday, UMBC music faculty Linda Dusman and Alan Wonneberger join with Information Systems faculty Foad Hamidi and Keith R. Porter Imaging Facility director Tagide deCarvalho toshare their new work Raaz. According to the artists, “Raaz, which means secret in Farsi, is a multimedia bioart installation that centers on the concept of poetry-infused transgenic wine created using genetically modified yeast. The text, a canonical Sufi poem by the 14th century Persian poet Hafiz, is a meditation on timelessness through transformative love.”
On Friday evening, Cantata Profana will present an avant-garde, multimedia salon show that will gradually deconstruct a small instrumental chamber ensemble back into its fundamental theatrical and material components. Along the way, Cantata Profana's core performers will be joined by UMBC faculty Airi Yoshioka and Lisa Cella. The program features work by Claude Vivier, Victoria Cheah, Gleb Kanasevich, and Steven Kazuo Takasugi.
On Saturday afternoon, RUCKUS is joined by additional faculty and student performers to present a special performance of Robert Morris’s Arboretum. This event is presented in partnership with the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture and the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park. Arboretum is a concert-lengthed work that is designed as an immersive experience. Performers move around the Sculpture Park as they play, and audience members are encouraged to move as well, changing their perspective on the work over its duration. The composer describes this work as “a slowing unfolding … the experience of this music is like watching sunsets, clouds passing, or sea changes.” The event also marks the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership and will include remarks on the Partnership's history and presence at UMBC and in Baltimore. A limited number of grass beach mats and hot cider will be provided, or bring your own blanket, lawn chairs, and picnic to sit on the lawn.
The festival concludes on Saturday night with a performance by the dynamic piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire in a mind-bending program of works by Klaus Lang and Misato Mochizuki. In Lang’s gorgeous work, time seems to stand still; while in Mochizuki’s explosive work, the theatricality of chamber music once more bursts to the fore.
Livewire is produced by the Department of Music with support from CIRCA, the CAHSS Office of the Dean, and the Provost’s Office.
Event Details
Corona Bagatelles comprises a musical cryptogram of 1273 amino acids, which chained together create the spike protein of the COVID-19 virus. This protein enables the virus to bind to human cells and replicate itself, creating havoc in the human body. Each of the 5 movements is based on a subset of the entire amino acid chain, and its sounding motives suggested various characters or moments in the composer's experience of the COVID quarantine (including an odd sequence where it quoted the opening notes of the Dies Irae, the mass for the dead).
The final act of the coronavirus involves binding to our cells before it replicates itself. Humanity binding to one another in shared purpose perhaps constitutes our only way to survive. An expression of this contradiction closes the set of bagatelles.
Dr. Phyllis Robinson (UMBC Biology Dept) and Peter Bailer ('21 BA in Music Composition, BS in Biochemistry) assisted with the translation from biology into music.