Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of OSCAR BETTISON, 2/20 1/23/20, 10(45 AM

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACTS January 22, 2020 Aleba Gartner, 212/206-1450 Tickets & Information: 212/854-7799 [email protected] millertheatre.com Lauren Bailey Cognetti, 212/854-1633 [email protected]

"Miller’s utterly indispensable Composer Portraits series reaches its 20th season this year, two decades in which these concerts have made or cemented the reputations of dozens of composers.“ — The New York Times

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts

continues its 20th season of Composer Portraits with OSCAR BETTISON

featuring Courtney Orlando, violin Alarm Will Sound Alan Pierson, conductor

Thursday, February 20, 2020, 8:00 P.M. Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street)

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Tickets: starting at $20; Students with valid ID: starting at $7

Photo by Kyle Dorosz for Miller Theatre.

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From Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey: "Oscar Bettison has been on my Composer Portrait wish list for years, and his music has an inherent theatricality and boldness that lends itself perfectly to the always fearless and boundary-pushing Alarm Will Sound. The musical textures and sonic landscape on this Portrait are incredibly immersive and will leave the audience feeling invigorated. I’m thrilled to welcome AWS back to the Miller stage and share these two brilliant works by Bettison with audiences.”

Composer Portraits Thursday, February 20, 2020, 8:00 P.M. Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street)

Oscar Bettison (b. 1975)

LISTEN

With an affinity for inventing instruments from found material and for reimagining the roles of existing instruments, Oscar Bettison’s music explores the boundaries of pitch and noise, classical and rock, convention and invention. His work has been described as possessing “an unconventional lyricism and a menacing beauty” (WNYC). Two chamber concertos comprise this Portrait, which features the exciting return of Alarm Will Sound to the Miller stage.

PROGRAM: Pale Icons of Night (2018) New York premiere Livre des Sauvages (2012)

ARTISTS: Courtney Orlando, violin Alarm Will Sound Alan Pierson, conductor

Praise for Bettison's Livre des Sauvages:

“Mr. Bettison’s three-movement Livre des Sauvages had a consciously madcap air reminiscent of ’s Chamber Symphony. . .The work was willfully wild in its asymmetric repetitions—and at times seemed to delight in the possibility of becoming obnoxious—but was also hard not to love for its headbanging inventiveness.” — The New York Times

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“Bettison’s work was an outrageously zany opus that fused the sounds of previous modernists into his own voice. And a unique voice it is: think Carl Stalling meets Edgar Varese meets John Zorn, while bouncing off a caffeine high. Starting with a thumping rhythm that came crashing out of the gate, Livre des Sauvages pulsated with an irrepressible energy and vitality, as well as brilliant craftsmanship.” — Bachtrack

Read a Q&A with Melissa Smey and Lara Pellegrinelli: "What You Should Know About Oscar Bettison’s Composer Portrait"

Composer Portraits at 20

With this new season, Miller Theatre proudly celebrates the 20th season of its influential Composer Portraits series, called "indispensable" earlier this year by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. For twenty years, Miller Theatre’s flagship series has fostered the creation of new work, served as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known, and created a community of adventurous listeners.

The final Portrait of the season

DAI FUJIKURA: Champions of Fujikura's music, ICE performs a high-octane program, including a world premiere Miller commission (3/5)

Oscar Bettison oscarbettison.com

Oscar Bettison’s music lives, thrillingly, on a razor’s edge between unpredictability and a groove wrought of full-bodied play. Born on the U.K.’s Channel Islands to Spanish and British parents, Bettison began composing at an early age, fascinated by the interplay between the “weird, hazy, tenuous aural image" in his imagination and the wild effort to wrestle it onto the page. His earliest music training began as a violinist at the Purcell School, the oldest specialist music school in the U.K. From mornings spent singing Hungarian folk songs to afternoons studying sixteenth-century counterpoint, Bettison was

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gathering the means of forming a new language comprising countless cross-pollinating strands.

Soon the rebelliousness of his teenage years took hold, and the routine of violin practice was replaced with the visceral pleasure of rock ’n’ roll percussion, the demands of competition with the liberating study of iconoclast composers, from George Crumb and to György Ligeti and Igor Stravinsky. His early compositional voice blossomed, culminating in his winning the first BBC Young Composer of the Year award in 1993 at age 18.

Though he would continue his studies in the U.K. at London’s Royal College of Music, it was his move to Amsterdam to study at The Hague with and Martijn Padding that was a decisive turning point. It was there that he developed a philosophy of music-making that characterizes his music to this day: to embrace creative discomfort, to shun pre-planning, and crash through challenges with fantastic, imaginative twists. As Bettison has said: “It's not that refinement is a bad thing. But there are times when it can get in the way."

In 2005–2007, after his move to the U.S. to finish his Ph.D. at Princeton University, Bettison would compose a breakthrough work, the evening-length O Death which grafts popular musical styles, including blues, onto the requiem structure. Based on a folksong of the same name, the towering piece asked the Dutch sextet Ensemble Klang to add to its standard instrumentation with a banjo, harmonica, recorder, Jew's harp, melodica, plus flower pots and wrenches.

Bettison continued challenging boundaries with adventurous works that attracted attention from press and audiences, such as B&E (with aggravated assault) and Livre des Sauvages for large ensemble, and was recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. To this day, Bettison is breaking free from his own molds—he is composing more for orchestras, with the recent world premiere of Remaking a Forest for Oregon Symphony (2019) and Pale Icons of Night—his first violin concerto—for Courtney Orlando and Alarm Will Sound in 2018, as well as Lights in Ashes (an orchestral reimagination of a movement from O Death) premiered by the New World Symphony in 2017.

He currently lives in New Jersey and is chair of the Composition department of John Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute, where he teaches composition and instills in his students the fearless, resourceful spirit to build upon the techniques of the past, or to forge new ones entirely.

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Courtney Orlando, violin alarmwillsound.com/members/courtney-orlando

Heralded by The New York Times as a violinist of “tireless energy and bright tone,” Courtney Orlando specializes in the performance of contemporary and crossover music. She is a founding member of the acclaimed new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, which has premiered works by and collaborated with some of the foremost composers of our time, including John Adams, Steve Reich, , Michael Gordon, and . Performances with Alarm Will Sound include those at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Festival, Holland Festival (Amsterdam), among others, and a tour of Moscow and St. Petersburg. She is also a founding member of the Deviant Septet, and the League of Unsound Sound (LotUS), and a member of Ensemble Signal.

Orlando earned a B.M. in violin from Temple University, an M.A. in theory pedagogy and a Ph.D. in violin from the Eastman School of Music, where she later taught. Currently, she serves on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins Institute.

Alarm Will Sound alarmwillsound.com

“One of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” (The New York Times), Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music. “Stylistically omnivorous and physically versatile” (The Log Journal), their repertoire comes from around the world and ranges from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music. The group includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work.

Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival. Held annually at the University of Missouri in Columbia, the festival features eight world premieres by early-career composers. In 2013-14, Alarm Will Sound served as artists-in- residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Alarm Will Sound can be heard on thirteen recordings, including its most recent, The Hunger, and the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s . Acoustica, their genre-bending, critically acclaimed album, features live-performance arrangements of

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music by electronica guru .

Alan Pierson, conductor alanpierson.com

Artistic director and conductor of Alarm Will Sound, Alan Pierson has been praised as "a dynamic conductor and musical visionary" by The New York Times and "one of the most exciting figures in new music today" by Fanfare. He is also Principal Conductor of the -based Crash Ensemble and co-director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble. Pierson has been a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Eastman School of Music and, formerly, was the artistic director and conductor of the .

Pierson has been a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, L.A. Opera, London Sinfonietta, Steve Reich Ensemble, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, New World Symphony, and Silkroad, among other ensembles. He regularly collaborates with major composers and performers, including Yo-Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Donnacha Dennehy, La Monte Young, and Iarla Ó Lionáird, and choreographers Mark Morris, John Heginbotham, Akram Khan, and Elliot Feld.

Pierson received bachelor degrees in physics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in conducting from the Eastman School of Music.

Miller Theatre millertheatre.com

Miller Theatre at Columbia University is the leading presenter of new music in and one of the most vital forces nationwide for innovative programming. In partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, Miller is dedicated to producing and presenting unique events, with a focus on contemporary and early music, jazz, opera, and multimedia performances. Founded in 1988, Miller Theatre has helped launch the careers of myriad composers and ensembles over the years, serving as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known in the United States. A four- time recipient of the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous https://mailchi.mp/alebaco/miller-theatre-presents-oscar-bettison-portrait?e=076444d635 Page 7 of 9 Miller Theatre presents a Composer Portrait of OSCAR BETTISON, 2/20 1/23/20, 10(45 AM

Programming, Miller Theatre continues to meet the high expectations set forth by its founders—to present innovative programs, support the development of new work, and connect creative artists with adventurous audiences.

Miller Theatre 's 2019-20 Season is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Columbia University’s Miller Theatre is located north of the Main Campus Gate at 116th St. & Broadway on the ground floor of Dodge Hall.

Directions and information are available online at millertheatre.com or via the Miller Theatre Box Office at 212.854.7799.

For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews, please contact Aleba & Co. at 212/206-1450 or [email protected].

For photos, please contact Lauren Bailey Cognetti, 212/854-1633; [email protected].

Copyright © 2020 Aleba & Co., All rights reserved.

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