October 21, 2002

'Music in Motion' theme for
2002 Contemporary Music Festival at ISU

CMF guest ensemble, eighth blackbird

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The Indiana State University music department's 36th Contemporary Music Festival will be Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. The theme for this year's festival is "Music in Motion."

Todd Sullivan, music department chairman, says of this year's theme, "We began the idea of a CMF theme with last year's festival and we have attempted to build much of this year's festival programming to incorporate the idea of motion. Music can embrace and inspire motion of all varieties, of which dance is one. Innovative rhythmic structures are inherent to both music and dance, but the term 'motion in music' is much broader and can extend into an instrumentalist's performance as well.

For example, one piece in this year's festival incorporated the performer simply moving about the stage at different points in the music."

This year's principal guest composer will be Chen Yi, from the Conservatory of the University of Missouri -- Kansas City. Other guests include The Louisville Orchestra, with conductor Uriel Segal; the 2002 composition competition winner, Mike McFerron, from Lewis University in the Chicago area; and eighth blackbird. 

Concerts by the various performers are scheduled in the afternoons and evenings of the festival. The festival begins with an opening concert 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, entitled "Music in Motion Showcase," featuring ISU student ensembles. 

The 2002 guest ensemble, eighth blackbird, will give a concert at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 31 in the recital hall. Hailed as ambassadors of new music, eighth blackbird has a growing reputation for its astounding musical versatility as well as for its dedication to the works of today's composers. The sextet, currently ensemble-in-residence at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, is active in teaching young artists about contemporary music and has taught master classes and conducted outreach activities in the art of contemporary performance and interpretation. Each member of eighth blackbird holds a bachelor's degree in music performance from the Oberlin Conservatory and artist diplomas in chamber music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory. eighth blackbird derives its name from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

The award-winning Louisville Orchestra, returning for the 16th year as orchestra-in-residence, will perform Chen's "Momentu," McFerron's "Perspectives" and works by other contemporary composers. The Orchestra's concert will conclude the festival at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, in Tilson Auditorium.

The orchestra has received several ASCAP awards and has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, among other venues. Segal, the music director of the Louisville Orchestra, is also music director of the Chautauqua Festival and Conductor Laureate of the Century Orchestra in Osaka, Japan. He guest conducts frequently around the world.

Chen, a Chinese-born American, is a composer of orchestral, chamber, choral and piano works. She is also an ethnomusicologist and a skilled violinist specializing in the music of the late 20th Century. She began violin and piano studies at the age of three, only to have them interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. She spent two years in a labor camp before eventually being released and becoming composer and concertmaster with the Beijing Opera Troupe. She later graduated from the Central Conservatory in Beijing.

She came to the United States in 1986 and received her doctor of musical arts with distinction in 1993 from Columbia University. She then served as composer-in-residence for the Women's Philharmonic, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer and the Aptos Creative Arts Program in San Francisco until 1996. From 1996-1998, she taught at the Peabody Conservatory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. and is currently on leave from a distinguished professor of music composition position at the Conservatory in the University of Missouri at Kansas City until 2004 to pursue more musical composition with the help of the Charles Ives Living Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She has won many major awards, including First Prize from the China National Composition Competition, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lili Boulanger Award from the Women's Philharmonic and the NEA Composer Fellowship, among others.

McFerron is currently an assistant professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University in the Chicago area. He received a doctor of musical arts in composition from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2000. He has been on the faculty of UMKC and the Kansas City Kansas Community College and has served as resident composer at the Chamber Music Conference of the East Composer's Forum in Bennington, Vt. He is the founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest and hosted the 2000 Kansas City Festival of Electronic Music. McFerron has had his work performed in many venues around the country.

Other festival activities include a recital by ISU student composers/performers on Thursday, Oct. 31, and sessions with the different festival guests. A Midwest Composers' Forum concert will be given at 3 p.m., Nov. 1, in which the Terre Haute Academy of Dance, under the direction of Patti Plascak Willey, will have seven Terre Haute North and South Vigo High School student dancers performing on stage and in the aisles of the recital hall to help accentuate this year's theme of "Music in Motion."

For more information, contact the department of music at (812) 237-2771.

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Contact:
Todd Sullivan, Dept. of Music
(812) 237-2771 or misulliv@isugw.indstate.edu

Writer:
Curt Koehler, Public Affairs
(812) 237-3791, devkoehl@isugw.indstate.edu

ISU Public Affairs:
(812) 237-3773 or http://isunews.indstate.edu