2 Fenruary 2012
Sound Icon wil perform Haas' IN VAIN tomorrow!: Feb 3rd, 7:30pm at the ICA
30 January 2012
Sound Icon's upcoming performance of IN VAIN is selected as a Boston Globe "Critic's Pick"! Read the article HERE .
Also, Please check out the full-length article on Sound Icon and IN VAIN in Friday's Boston Globe.!
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27 January 2012
Sound Icon is awarded a 2012 Seimens Foundation Grant-in-Aid!
28 December 2011
Sound Icon launches it's new website!
Sound Icon is a sinfonietta ensemble dedicated to presenting the most important works and composers of the past few decades.
LEARN MORE
George Friedrich Haas: IN VAIN
Sound Icon will perform Haas' hour-long masterwork In Vain at one of Boston's modern architectural marvels, the Institute of Contemporary Art.
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Sound Icon presents the US premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's hour-long Concerto Séraphin for 16 players. Salvatore Sciarrino's Introduzione all'Oscuro and the winner of the Sound Icon/Boston University composition competition round out the program.
SALVATORE SCIARRINO
Introducione All'Oscuro
RAFAEL AMARAL
Pherrik ic
WOLFGANG RIHM
Concerto Séraphin (US premiere)
NOVEMBER 15, 2011
BOSTON UNIVERSITY's CFA CONCERT HALL
855 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215
8pm / free
Georg Friedrich Haas' In Vain is presented by Sound Icon for the first time in Boston. Haas' marriage of a visceral, mind-bending soundscape with a visual environment that includes extended periods of complete darkness offers an unparalleled, immersive experience. The Institute of Contemporary Art is one of Boston's architectural marvels, and provides a perfect setting for Haas' masterwork.
GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS
In Vain
FEBRUARY 3, 2012
INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
100 Morthern Ave, Boston, MA 02210
7:30pm
Sound Icon performs monumental pieces by Austro-German masters Helmut Lachenmann and Beat Furrer. Furrer's Narcissus-Fragment and Lachenmann's "...Zwei Gefühle...", musik mit Leonardo - both for two speakers and ensemble - join Furrer's visceral, ecstatic Nuun for two pianos and ensemble.
BEAT FURRER
Narcissus-Fragment
Nuun
HELUMT LACHENMANN
"...Zwei Gefühle...", musik mit Leonardo
Paavali Jumpannen, Yoko Hagino PIANO
Brian Church, Douglas Williams SPEAKER
FEBRUARY 25, 2012
855 Commonwealth Ave, Bosron, MA 02215
Sound Icon is a Boston-based, sinfonietta-sized ensemble committed to performing fundamental new music repertoire from the past few decades. Our mission is to perform works that have redefined our understanding of music.
Well-known ensembles abroad, such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble InterContemporain, the London Sinfonietta and others have been trailblazers for this instrumental grouping, which offers the colors of a full orchestra together with the precision and flexibility of a chamber ensemble. Sound Icon will bring this sound, so integral to many contemporary masterworks, to audiences in Boston and elsewhere through concerts and academic residencies, which will allow us to work with student composers interested in the sinfonietta genre.
A key facet of Sound Icon's identity is our commitment to this groundbreaking repertoire that requires the color and precision of a sinfonietta-sized ensemble. Each Sound Icon concert will feature one landmark work that is not often heard live in the United States. With thoughtful programming around each such work, Sound Icon attempts to engage audiences in a dialogue about what progressive music really is - music that redefines rules, experiences and boundaries.
These groundbreaking works, though well-respected in the musical community, are often not performed in the United States. Sound Icon intends to bring this repertoire and a sinfonietta-sized ensemble to Boston, a vibrant cultural capital. We aim to encourage composers, performers and audiences alike to continue this progressive journey, through innovative programming and exciting musical events.
Watch our Kickstarter video for our first concert of the 2011/12 season. Directors Victoria Cheah and Jeffrey Means discuss their vision for the ensemble.
One of a younger generation of conductors dedicated to new and recent repertoire, Jeffrey Means has emerged as a prominent figure in contemporary music.
Based in Boston, Means leads many of the city's new music ensembles, including the Firebird Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Xanthos Ensemble, and the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble. Means is also the conductor and artistic director of Sound Icon, a sinfonietta ensemble dedicated to the most important works and composers of the past few decades. Currently in it's second season, Sound Icon's recent performance of Gerard Grisey's Les espaces acoustiques: Prolgoue, Periodes, Partiels for the first time in Boston was described as a stimulating tightrope walk, balanced between musical detail and corporeal flair by the Boston Globe.
In 2010, Means led the opening concert of Boston's Celebrating Boulez festival; the program included Boulez's seminal Le marteau sans maitre, along with his Improvisations sur Mallarme I and II and Jean Barraque's rarely-heard Sequence. Other recent highlights include one of the first US performances of Hans Abrahamsen's one-hour masterwork Schnee, and performances of Elliott Carter's A Mirror on Which to Dwell in conjunction with a celebration of Elizabeth Bishop's centennial. In 2011, Means served as conductor of the Etchings Festival of Contemporary Music in Auvillar, France.
In 2008, Means led the opening concert of the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music, a three-day event featuring Boston's finest new music ensembles. He also regularly conducts at New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice; at this festival he's led the music of Salvatore Sciarrino, Kaija Saariaho, Chaya Chernowin and many others. In 2009, Means was one of two conductors selected to study with Pierre Boulez in Lucerne, Switzerland. In 2011, he was invited back to study with Boulez again. This season, Means will lead US premieres of major works by Wolfgang Rihm, Tristan Murail, and Beat Furrer.
Jeffrey remains an active percussionist. He has performed with many of Boston's ensembles, including the Boston Philharmonic, Atlantic Symphony, Back Bay Chorale, Harvard Group for New Music, Emmanuel Music, Gardner Chamber Orchestra, and many others. Also an active chamber musician, Means recently performed with the Worcester Chamber Music Society, and has performed numerous times on New England Conservatory's First Monday chamber music series. Other recent, notable performances include collaborating with pianist Stephen Drury on Stockhausen's epic work Kontakte, and serving as ensemble director for Steve Reich's Drumming during Boston's Reich Festival with the composer in attendance. In 2005, Means was a percussion fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center.
Means holds a BM in percussion and a MM in conducting from New England Conservatory. At NEC, he received the John Cage Award, the Tourjee Alumni Award, and was given the Gunther Schuller Medal at his graduation. He has recordings available on Albany, Mode, New World, Navona, and Naxos records.
Victoria Cheah (b. 1988, New York, NY) is a composer. Her music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Cairn, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Hunter College Opera Studio, Hunter College Symphony and others. She has participated in festivals such as the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, SICPP, the International Composition Workshop at the Conservatoire de Blanc-Mesnil, European American Musical Alliance, and The Walden School. Past teachers include Eric Chasalow and Shafer Mahoney as well as Norma Newton (voice) and Geoffrey Burleson (piano).
Cheah is the Executive Director of Sound Icon, a Boston-based, sinfonietta-sized ensemble committed to performing fundamental new music repertoire from the past few decades. She has also worked with other leading new music ensembles and presenters including the Manhattan Sinfonietta, the Argento Chamber Ensemble and the BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon.
Cheah has been the recipient of a Macaulay Honors College scholarship as well as the department prize in music at Hunter College, from which she holds a B.A. with concentrations in composition, piano and literature. She is currently a doctoral candidate in composition at Brandeis University, studying with David Rakowski.
---- Please check back for complete biographical information. ----
Jessi Rosinski FLUTE
Ashley Addingotn FLUTE
Elizabeth England OBOE
Rane Moore CLARINET
Alexis Lanz CLARINET
Alexis Lanz, clarinetist, is an active performer in Bostons musical landscape. He performs regularly with Discovery Ensemble, the Callithumpian Consort and Xanthos Ensemble. Previously, he has appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was awarded the Gino B. Cioffi Memorial Prize, at the National Orchestral Institute, as principal clarinetist of the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and as a soloist with the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Other recent performances include appearances with A Far Cry, Ludovico Ensemble, the New World Symphony, and the Juventas New Music Ensemble and lOrchestra Sinfonica dell'Europa Unita. While at the New England Conservatory, Alexis was awarded the John Cage Award for Excellence in Contemporary Music Performance. He has performed under the batons of Stefan Asbury, Andrew Davis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Bernard Haitink and James Levine.
Alexis completed his studies at the New England Conservatory, where he received Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees. He has studied with National Symphony clarinetist Edward Cabarga, and Thomas Martin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Amy Advocat BASS CLARINET
Hailed as "dazzling" by the Boston Globe, Amy Advocat, clarinetist, is an avid performer of new music having performed with the Firebird Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, The New Fromm Players at Tanglewood, Sound Icon, Callithumpian Consort, Boston Microtonal Society's NotaRiotous, Brandeis New Music, Juventas and the Second Instrumental Unit. She has also performed with the Boston Pops, Opera Boston, Boston Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Advocat was twice a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and has participated at the New York String Orchestra Seminar, Spoleto USA Festival, Virginia Arts Festival, June in Buffalo and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
Ms. Advocat was named the first recipient of the Boston Woodwind Society's Harold Wright Award and is a Hadar Foundation Scholar. She received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music Degrees from the New England Conservatory, where she was a recipient of the Tourjée award; a scholarship awarded to one outstanding NEC graduate who returns for a second degree. Her principal teachers include Simon Aldrich, Thomas Martin, David Weber, William Wrzesien and Craig Nordstrom. She has been recorded on Mode, Navona and New World Records.
Chris Watford BASSOON
Jason Huffman TRUMPET
Chris Moore TROMBONE
McMillan Gaither TROMBONE
Yoko Hagino PIANO
Hagino navigated the score with bravura confidence and energy. Her tone was bright, edgy...... The Boston Globe
Yoko Hagino was born and raised in Japan, where she began her piano studies at the age of four. As a child, she performed her own compositions, which took her to Europe and the U.S., including performances as a concert soloist with the Czech Symphony, University of Southern California Symphony, Kyoto City Symphony, and Ensemble Orchestra Kanazawa Ms. Hagino has been papered as soloist with Osaka Century Orchestra, U-Mass Boston Chamber Orchestra, Key West Symphony Orchestra, White Rabbit Symphonietta, and performed various of Piano Concerts from Bach to Contemporary. Ms. Hagino won the second prize in the Steinway Society Piano Competition, second prize in the First International Chamber Music Competition, second prize of the All-Japan Selective Competition of the International Mozart Competition and also won a prize in the Ninth Chamber Music Competition of Japan in 1999.
She received her Bachelor's and her Master's degrees with honors from Tokyo National University, where she won its concerto competition. She earned an Artist Diploma from the Longy School of Music, where she studied with Victor Rosenbaum and also won the schools concerto competition. Ms. Hagino completed a Performance Diploma at Boston Conservatory, where she was a student of Michael Lewin and also received the Churchill Scholarship. She has been invited to play at the Royal Academy Recital Series at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Bösendorfer Piano Recital Series in Tokyo, Japan, Webster Concerto Series in Hanover, NH, Harvard Musical Association, Boston Steiner Hall, Kilington Music Festival.Boston Conservatory New Music festival, William Kapell Music Festival, and at Steinway and Sons in Kamen, Germany. She also appeared live on Suisse Romande Radio in Switzerland. As a devoted chamber musician, she is the CoDirector of Die Musiker Witz, has given many concerts in various places in Japan. She has performed with contemporary ensembles, such as White Rabbit, while being Ensemble in Residency at Harvard University, Area III, and Ludovico ensemble. She has been a staff pianist at the Boston Conservatory, faculty at The Key West Young Artist Program, Morgan State University Summer Opera Workshop in Baltimore.
Franziska Huhn HARP
Harpist Franziska Huhn has given numerous solo recitals throughout the United States in Illinois, Indiana, Rhode Island and Texas, as well as international recitals in Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Syria, Pakistan and Germany, including several performances for the German President (Johannes Rau and Horst Koehler). She also was featured in a recital on WGBH in "Live from Studio 1." Ms. Huhn has participated in the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra (1994), the Pacific Music Festival in Japan (2001, 2002) and the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox Massachusetts (1999,2000). She later returned to Tanglewood to perform contemporary music as a Fromm player (2003). Ms. Huhn is also active in and around the Boston area performing as a substitute harpist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and playing regularly with the Walden Chamber Players and Mistral Chamber Players.
Ms. Huhn studied on full scholarship with Lucile Lawrence at Boston University and then continued with Ann Hobson Pilot at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she completed a Masters Degree and Graduate Diploma, in addition to becoming the first ever harpist to be awarded the Artist's Diploma by the Conservatory in 2005. In 2007, her album Harp Solo was released, followed by Bejeweled (flute and harp) in 2009. Since 2003, Ms. Huhn has been the Assistant Director of the Harp Seminar at Boston University's Tanglewood Institute, herself being an multiple alumn of the Harp seminar. Ms Huhn serves as harp faculty at the New England Conservatory and Longy School of Music.
Mike Williams PERCUSSION
Nicholas Tolle PERCUSSION
Nicholas Tolle , percussion/cimbalom, has been described by the New York Times as "virtuosic" and by the Albany Times-Union as "amazingly skilled." In 2012 he will appear with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and Portugals Remix Ensemble. In 2009 he performed the solo cimbalom part in Pierre Boulez Repons in Lucerne, Switzerland with the composer conducting. He has also performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Nederlands Radio Kamer Philharmonie, the Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, Collage New Music, and many other groups around New England. He attended the Boston, Amsterdam, and New England Conservatories, and is the founder and artistic director of the Ludovico Ensemble.
Gabby Diaz VIOLIN
Shaw Pong Liu VIOLIN
Ethan Wood VIOLA
Mark Berger VIOLA
Nicole Cariglia CELLO
Randy Zigler BASS
Sound Icon's upcoming performance of GF Haas' In Vain is referneced in the Boston Globe's article entitled Galleries and the Art of Music: " Serious contemporary music still puts in appearences: In February, local group Sound Icon will perform with the Boston premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas' stunning In Vain..."
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
Sound Icon's Inagural concert in March, 2011, featuring Gerard Grisey's Les Espaces acoustiques , received overwhelmingly positive reviews:
Boston Globe: "The ensemble made a heady slash, their repertoire in line with their invitation: listen up."
READ THE FULL REVIEW
Boston Musical Intelligencer: "...an impeccabble account of what also seemed to be a formidably difficult score, a viewpoint noisly shared by the audience."
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Announcing the 2011/2012 Season:
Rihm, Lachenmann, Furrer and Haas
Sound Icon is proud to announce its first full season featuring masterworks by German
and Austrian composers Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann, Beat Furrer and Georg
Friedrich Haas. Following the success of Sound Icons inaugural concert, which featured
the first half of Gérard Griseys Les Espaces Acoustiques, the 2011-2012 season
continues to advance Sound Icons mission to perform groundbreaking, influential works
of contemporary music that are not often heard live in the United States.
Wolfgang Rihm and Helmut Lachenmann represent the two sides of an old debate in
art - the conceptual, rational Apollonian and the intuitive Dionysian conceptions of
artistic approach and object. Rihm's work is a compelling example of energetic, intuitiondriven
music that functions as a force of nature. Lachenmann, known for pushing the
boundaries of extended performing techniques, has been extremely influential in
contemporary music with his theory of "musique concrete instrumentale," in which an
instrumental sound not only matters because of its inherent sonic qualities but more
importantly because of the concrete context from which the sound arises - the energy
needed to produce the sound, the materials, the resistance encountered in making it.
Lachenmanns music balances these sonic concern with a clearly audible structuralist
rigor he draws from Webern and Nono.
Austrian composer Beat Furrer is known for his striking, highly textured music, which
balances the highly conceptual and combinatorial influences of Lachenmann's work with
the palpable sensorial and performative drive present in the music of Rihm. Georg
Friedrich Haas' highly dramatic works have become very influential in recent years as
his music merges the sounds of French spectralism with the aesthetic excess of Rihm
and the conceptual rigor of Lachenmann, all contributing to Haas' own distinct
exploration of theatricality.
Our November 5, 2011 concert features the US premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Concerto
Séraphin, a visceral, vibrant hour-long work. Salvatore Sciarrino: Introduzione all
Oscuro balances out the Rihms exuberant energy with his miniaturist focus on the
finest details of sound and instrumental gesture. Our February 25, 2012 concert will
feature Beat Furrer's Nuun and Narcissus Fragments, and Helmut Lachenmann's
'...zwei Gefühle...', Musik mit Leonardo. The juxtaposition of Furrer's Narcissus
Fragments, Lachenmann's '...zwei Gefühle...' (both for speaker and ensemble) and
Furrer's Nuun (for two pianos and ensemble), sparks a valuable dialogue between
soloist/ensemble, text/context and content/concept. Both concerts will take place at
Boston University, where Sound Icon will also hold workshops, readings and open
rehearsals for Boston University student composers.
Sound Icon will also present Georg Friedrich Haas' groundbreaking work of music
theater In Vain at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston on February 3, 2012. In Vain
is an evening length work for large ensemble and light, where passages are heard in full
darkness and bright flashes of light serve as palpable events. In Vain is a true dramatic
experience that takes advantage of the physical power of sound, light and environment
to give an unparalleled experience.
In this first full season, Sound Icon hopes to give Boston audiences a look into some of
the most striking composers and works coming out of Germany and Austria over the last
30 years.
For more information, please contact:
Victoria Cheah
Executive Director, Sound Icon
vcheah_brandeis.edu
917.674.6667
Jeffrey Means, artistic director
jeff_c_means_yahoo.com
Victoria Cheah, executive director
