JLA's Strange and Sacred Noise in Lexington, KY

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 23:15:17 -0500

Deep in the middle of winter, after spending holiday time with family and friends, Andy will be teaming up with good friends to offer an evening-length performance of John Luther Adams’ epic Strange and Sacred Noise. The piece, scored for percussion quartet, will be available for the university and community of Lexington, complete with a pre-concert lecture. More details will be posted as they become available, but please make plans to come out and support this incredible piece!

Solo Appearance at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, IL

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:00:00 -0500

Andy has been invited to present his masterclass “Percussion Throwdown!: Challenging Your Percussion Section to Use Their Finest Ingredients” at the 64th Annual Midwest Clinic in Chicago, IL. Please stay posted for more information!

Percussive Arts Society International Convention 2010

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:00:00 -0500

Andy and the nief-norf project have been accepted to perform Christopher Adler’s new percussion quintet “Pines Long Slept in Sunshine” as a part of the Focus Day events at PASIC 2010. nief-norf will appear with its core members Kerry O’Brien, Erin Walker, and Eric Willie along with Alex Harmon, who participated in the work’s premiere in 2009.

The theme for the 2010 Focus Day is the “Ecology of Percussion” and the day will be hosted by Morris Palter. Adler comments on the related issues in his program notes for the work:

“This piece is not about the imitation of the sounds of the natural world, but about the capacity of mathematically-inspired constructions to evoke the complexity and richness of forms in the natural world. The piece begins with an almost didactic demonstration of this principle, as the random excitations of wind chimes are played simultaneously with a gentle peal of gongs rigorously derived from the polyphonic application of the cyclic decomposition of a single permutation to multiple musical parameters.

Everything in this piece is either generated by, or subjected to transformation by, one of a family of permutations of the two-octave (24-note) scale. Complex structures emerge as the result of the interference of multiple simultaneous applications of this action of generation or transformation. In the latter half of the piece, large-scale structures are derived from the logarithmic spiral (underlying the geometry of the conch shell and pine cone, for example) and the Fibonacci series.”

To learn more about Christopher Adler’s music, visit his website at www.christopheradler.com

Intermedia Festival @ IUPUI

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:00:00 -0400

Primed to be one of the best weekend’s of the year, Andy will be heading to Indianapolis with some of his closest friends to perform some incredible music at the Intermedia Festival. Hosted by Scott Deal and the Donald Tavel Arts and Technology Research Center, performances will be occurring throughout the weekend by artists such as Pamela Z, R. Luke DuBois, and Matthew Burtner among others. Andy will specifically be performing:

Red Arc/Blue Veil by John Luther Adams
Friday @ 8:30 PM

This Window Makes Me Feel... by John Supko
Performed by Nothing in Common
Saturday @ 11:00 AM

Straitjacket by Mark Applebaum
Performed by the nief-norf project
AB, Kerry O’Brien, Erin Walker, Bill Sallak, and Mike Truesdell
Saturday @ 4:30 PM

On top of all the great music it will be great to reconnect with everyone who is attending and performing. If you are in the midwestern region, please consider coming to the festival in Indianapolis, IN.

US premiere of JLA’s Inuksuit

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 01:00:00 -0400

Andy has been invited to Furman University in Greenville, SC to take-part in a campus-wide celebration of scholarly activity entitled “Furman Engaged!,” where he will cooperate with the Furman Percussion Ensemble on the United States premiere of John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit.. The work, scored for 9 to 99 percussionists, was premiered at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada which Bliss participated in during the summer of 2009.

John Luther Adams, said to be “one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century” by Alex Ross of The New Yorker, resides outside Fairbanks, Alaska and has been creating a massive collection of works that draws its inspiration from the natural world that surrounds him. Adams writes, “Inuksuit is inspired by the stone sentinels constructed over centuries by the Inuit in the windswept expanses of the Arctic. The word ‘Inuksuit’ translates literally ‘to act in the capacity of the human’...it is a concert-length work for percussion in which the performers are widely dispersed and move throughout a large, open area. The listeners, too, may move around freely and discover their own individual listening points. This work is intended to expand our awareness of the never-ending music of the world in which we live, transforming seemingly empty space into a more fully experienced place.”

The United States premiere performance will take place at Furman University on April 16th where Bliss will be collaborating with both Luther Adams, as well as renowned solo percussionist Steven Schick. The performance will be preceded by a special pre-concert discussion with the composer, followed by the outdoor performance on the university’s campus. The summer premiere at the Banff Centre was covered by The New Yorker and a video portrait of the project, can be viewed at <www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/09/video-john-luther-adams-inuksuit.html> and the recent mention in the New Yorker can be viewed here.

For more information about the performance in Greenville, please see the link below!

Inuksuit at Furman University

Nothing in Common @ UT Martin

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:00:36 -0400

Andy and Mabel will be giving a concert as the Nothing in Common duo at the University of Tennessee at Martin. The concert will be held in the University Center’s Watkins Auditorium and will be on March 28th at 3 PM in the afternoon. The concert will also feature UTM Faculty members Amy Simmons (clarinet) and Julie Hill (percussion), and Ken Douglas. The program will include:

Megaphone by Nathan Michel
Credo in Us by John Cage
This Window Makes Me Feel... by John Supko
and more...

Please stop in and bring your friends out to see Nothing in Common while they are on the road.

Solo Performance in Martin, TN

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:00:51 -0500

Andy will be performing a solo faculty recital at the University of Tennessee at Martin on Sunday Feb. 21st. The spring semester has a lot of exciting events planned, so this performance should be a great way to contribute to things in the Humanities Auditorium with works by Xenakis, Lang, Gann, and others. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please see UTM’s Percussion Department page. Hope to see you there!