This New Forest is an evening-length performance inspired by ecological speculations fusing nature and machine; translating authentic and imagined biological systems into a musical world that is rhythmic, immediate and physical. The evening combines two NYC premieres of works by Paula Matthusen and Elori Kramer with Tigue’s original music. Matthusen and Kramers explore the sculptural and mechanical nature of percussive objects as well as the effects of emerging technology on our understanding of the natural world, the individual, and perception. Original music by Tigue resumes in their unique musical language described as “simultaneously lighthearted and cerebral, casual and austere.” (Thrdcoast)
Performers:
Matt Evans: percussion
Amy Garapic: percussion
Carson Moody: percussion
Paula Matthusen: composer
Elori Kramer: composer
Tigue is a group of three percussionists with a fluid musical identity. Praised for their energetic and focused performances, the Ohio-born Brooklyn-based members (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic and Carson Moody) have continuously made their own blend of instrumental minimalism while simultaneously collaborating with and commissioning experimental work by contemporary composers.
Elori Saxl Kramer makes music and film. She’s directed films for the New Yorker and Slate. She’s composed music for new music ensembles, Patagonia, Google, Poler, Dove, the New Yorker, This American Life, Public Radio International, Gimlet, MOMA, and more. Her work has been featured by the New Yorker, Vimeo Staff Picks, Paste, Consequence of Sound, Flood Magazine, Impose, Bullet Media, Exclaim, VPR, Seven Days, and shown at festivals around the world. She is in Alpenglow. Most recently, she premiered her chamber music composition The Blue of Distance. Originally from Minneapolis, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she can generally be found falling at a skatepark.
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, and the 2014 – 2015 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen is currently Associate Professor of Music at Wesleyan University and Chair of the Music Department.
This performance is supported by a New Music USA Project Grant the New Music USA Impact Fund.
