New York, NY, 2/8/2007 – The Columbia Sinfonietta continues its goal of bringing new, stimulating, and cutting-edge works for ensemble and electronics to New York audiences. Featuring some of the most talented instrumentalists on the contemporary music scene and conducted by new music expert Jeffrey Milarsky, the Sinfonietta is pleased to present the New York premieres of three works written in the last two decades by American composers Roger Reynolds and Noel Zahler, and Canadian-American Ronald Bruce Smith. The centerpiece of the concert will be Roger Reynolds’ The Angel of Death, a startling “concerto” for piano soloist with ensemble and electronics. Perhaps the most extensive work ever conceived that bridges the disciplines of composition and psychology/psychoacoustics, The Angel of Death addresses issues of the composer’s invention with musical materials and how an audience receives, processes, and perceives those same materials. Reynolds originally teamed up with cognitive psychologists Stephen McAdams and Emmanuel Bigand, as well Frédéric Voisin at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, where Reynolds had a series of residencies. The team also expanded to include engineers and musicologists. Much of the pre-composition work involved exposing different groups of listeners –thematic materials that Reynolds had written, first for piano solo and then re-arranged for the ensemble. Then, in performance/experiments done at IRCAM and the University of California at San Diego, where Reynolds teaches, audiences provided real-time responses to the work in its final form. Psychologists then used the data to compare and contrast discrepancies between Reynolds’ original concept of form and his audiences’ reactions. The Sinfonietta’s performance will feature Stephen Gosling as the soloist.

The concert also includes two shorter works for ensemble and electronics. Boston-based Ronald Bruce Smith considers the use of electronics in enhancing acoustic instruments ideal for his interest in “timbral variety” and “openness to new sound sources.” Flux is a meditation on the word, which refers to two contrasting harmonic systems and their interplay, as well as personal emotional flux and the idea of a larger, continuous global flux. Tone color is explored via the “imaginative manipulation of harmonic spectra from the overtone series.” Noel Zahler, Director of the University of Minnesota School of Music, is a composer whose interests include artificial intelligence and music, score-following software, and real-time electronics. Zahler’s Concerto for Clarinet, Chamber Orchestra and Interactive Computer is a kind of trialogue in which its clarinet protagonist (Michael Norsworthy as soloist) engages in a conversation with the listener, the ensemble, and its spatialized self. Every note in the clarinet part is read by the computer, which then spatializes and processes the material in real-time.

All three works require a live performance setting so that they may be appreciated as their composers intended them to be heard. A special state-of-the-art sound system will be set up in Miller Theatre for the rehearsals and concert, at which all three composers will be present. Don’t miss this special opportunity. Individual tickets are $15 ($10 for students and seniors). They are available, in advance or on the day of the concert, from the Miller Theatre Box Office [Broadway at 116th Street, New York, NY 10027 – Tel. (212) 854-7799].