PROGRAM: LINKED VERSE

Saturday, December 7, 2013 / 7:30 pm / Bing Concert Hall Sunday, December 8, 2013 / 2:30 pm / Bing Concert Hall

ARTISTS OpenEndedGroup Marc Downie Shelley Eshkar Paul Kaiser Ko Ishikawa, shō Maya Beiser, cello Fernando López-Lezcano and Nick Malgieri, sound Scott Kepley, lighting Beth Morrison, producer

PROGRAM Linked Verse (World premiere) An intermedia composition by Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and OpenEndedGroup

Linked Verse is coproduced with the Stanford Department of Music and was commissioned by Stanford Live in collaboration with the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York; the Creative Media Centre, City University of Hong Kong; and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Additional support has been LINKED VERSE provided by the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), the Stanford Arts Institute, and the Center for East Asian Studies.

PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please be considerate of others and turn off all phones, pagers, and watch alarms, and unwrap all lozenges prior to the performance. Photography and recording of any kind are not permitted. Thank you.

28 Stanford Live Magazine November/December 2013 ARTISTS’ STATEMENT The music of Linked Verse also In Linked Verse we find our unexpected arises from an unexpected pairing way through scenes, motifs, and of instruments—the s h o¯ , an ancient structures of Japan and the West. mouth organ customarily part of There’s a distinct sense of difference and the gagaku court orchestra, and the otherness but also of utter familiarity, cello, that most versatile of western of the old but also the new, of time stringed instruments. This makes for suspended but also flying past. a stark sense of difference, for the s h o¯ ’s musical idiom is like nothing in Linked Verse gets both its name and its the West. Its slow sounds shift color visual structure from the ancient Japanese subtly with the modulated breath of the poetic practice of renga, an apt form in musician—it’s worth remembering that many ways, not the least being that it in gagaku music the unit of measure Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an intensely collaborative practice— is breath not the metronome, and it just as our tight interweaving of music prizes the timbral over the harmonic. venues. He has received numerous awards and image for this work has been. at, among others, the UNESCO Film sur And yet the sho¯ is unusual in being able l’Art Festival in Paris in 1992, Video Art In renga, two or more poets take turns to sustain up to six notes, which can Festival in Locarno in 1992 and 1993, in adding interlocking links in a long bring it closer to the western emphasis Manifestation Internationale Vidéo et Art chain of unexpected associations that on harmony. For its part, the cello’s Éléctronique in Montréal in 1993, and will constitute the poem. The first poet exceptional range allows the cellist to International Festival of New Cinema and starts with three lines, to which the next reach up and join the high notes of the New Media in Montréal in 2000. poet adds two more to form a single sho¯ . Of course the cellist’s fingering self-contained stanza. However, those, and bowing can also yield exceptional Kapuscinski’s primary interest is the two added lines are now repeated to timbral variation at all ranges, creation and performance of works in start the next stanza, completed with matching the sho¯ ō’s subtlety of color. which musical instruments are used to three lines contributed by the next poet, control multimedia content. He was again forming a self-contained stanza And so this pairing of instruments first trained as a classical pianist and that, crucially, makes a completely can make for unexpected similarity in composer at the Chopin Academy of different kind of sense. And so the addition to stark difference, allowing Music in Warsaw and expanded into process continues, guided by rules us to move as freely through musical multimedia at a residency at the Banff and constraints (of season, of person, worlds as we do through visual Centre for the Arts in Canada (1988) and of theme) until the final duration ones—or rather to move through the during doctoral studies at the University of 36 or 100 stanzas is reached. audiovisual web of the work, where of California, San Diego (1992–1997). we lose ourselves as we find the way. The sequences of Linked Verse are built Kapuscinski is actively involved in up out of an invented visual renga that —Shelley Eshkar, Marc Downie, intermedia education. As of 2008 he is follows a similar AB-BC-CD pattern. Paul Kaiser, and Jaroslaw Kapuscinski Assistant Professor of Composition and Drawing on 3D captures we made in director of the Intermedia Performance Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan and in their Lab at Stanford University. He has rough American counterparts, New Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, taught at McGill University in Montreal, York City and the Bay Area, we link composer the Royal Academy of Arts and Music our shots together by such simple visual Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an intermedia in The Hague, the Art Conservatory properties as size, color, and texture composer and pianist whose work and Music Academy in Odense, but also by point of view, direction, has been presented at New York’s and the Conservatory of Music at movement, and connotation. Since renga MOMA, the Zentrum für Kunst und University of the Pacific and has lectured works to block all extended continuity, Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, the internationally. He has published, you never know where the next shot Museum of Modern Art Palais de among others, the article “Composing will lead, and you don’t know where Tokyo in Paris, the National Reina Sofia with Sounds and Images,” outlining his you’ll end up until you get there. Museum in Madrid, and many other intermedia theory.

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Road (2012); the shorter installations After Ghostcatching (with Bill T. Jones, 2010), Stairwell (with Wayne McGregor, 2010), and plant (2011); the interactive installations Into the Forest (2011), Drawn Together (2012), and Becoming (2013); and the chamber opera Twice through the Heart (with Mark-Anthony Turnage and Wayne McGregor, 2011). Its first collaboration with Jaroslaw Kapuscinski came earlier this year at OpenEndedGroup, projections the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Maya Beiser, cello OpenEndedGroup comprises three with the short 3D-film Knight’s Rest. Maya Beiser has captivated audiences digital artists—Marc Downie, Shelley worldwide with her virtuosity, eclectic Eshkar, and Paul Kaiser—whose Among the prizes the artists have repertoire, and relentless quest to pioneering approach to digital art won individually or collectively are redefine her instrument’s boundaries. frequently combines three signature a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John The Boston Globe declares, “With elements: nonphotorealistic 3D Cage Award from the Foundation virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and rendering, the incorporation for Contemporary Arts, a Media an appetite for pushing her instrument to of body movement by motion Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, capture and other means, and the Foundation, and a Bessie Award for Maya Beiser is the postmodern diva of autonomy of artworks directed or the BIPED decor. the cello.” AllMusic.com reports, “Maya assisted by artificial intelligence. Beiser has etched a bold career path that They have presented their work at marries classical to rock, starched collars Their artworks span a wide range of Lincoln Center, the New York Film to casual dress, and tradition to forms and disciplines, including dance, Festival, the Barbican Centre, the unorthodoxy.” music, installation, film, and public art. Hayward Gallery, ICA Boston, Sadler’s In the field of dance, they have worked Wells, the Festival d’Automne, the Over the past decade, Beiser has most closely with Merce Cunningham Sundance Film Festival, the Detroit created new repertoire for the cello, (Hand-Drawn Spaces, 1998, BIPED, Institute of Art, the Rome Film commissioning and performing many 1999, and Loops, 2001–2008) but Festival, the Museum of the Moving works written for her by today’s leading also have worked with Bill T. Jones Image, SITE Santa Fe, EMPAC, MASS composers. She has collaborated with (Ghostcatching, 1999, and 22, 2005), MoCA, the MIT Media Lab, ICA composers , , Philip Trisha Brown (how long..., 2005), London, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Glass, , , and Wayne McGregor (Stairwell, the Centre for Contemporary Art , , and 2010). Their public artworks include (Glasgow), the Kiasma Museum, and Mark O’Connor, among many others. Pedestrian (multiple sites, 2002), other venues. A featured performer on the world’s Enlightenment and Breath (Lincoln most prestigious stages, Beiser appeared Center, 2006 and 2007), Recovered OpenEndedGroup has been resident as soloist at the Sydney Opera House, Light (York Minster, 2007), Crossings artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s (Nuit Blanche/Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Michigan, Barbican, and the World Expo in Museum, 2010), and All Day EMPAC, Le Fresnoy, Georgia Tech, Nagoya, Japan, and was a featured (Barclays Center, 2013). the Exploratorium, Arizona State speaker and performer at the 2011 TED University, Harvard University, conference. Her TED Talk has since In recent years, OpenEndedGroup Columbia University, the MIT Media garnered over half a million views online. has created new approaches to 3D Lab, the Brooklyn Academy of Music/ projection, which has resulted in Bell Labs, UC Irvine, ZKM, and the Beiser has conceived, performed, works of digital cinema such as City University of Hong Kong. and produced her critically acclaimed Upending (2010) and All Sides of the multimedia concerts, including

30 Stanford Live Magazine November/December 2013 You’ve made World to Come, which premiered Collaborating with renowned film your house as part of the inaugural season of composer , she Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall; Almost is the featured soloist on soundtracks Human, a collaboration with visual for M. Night Shyamalan’s The a home. artist Shirin Neshat; and Provenance, Happening, ’s The which premiered at Carnegie Hall Great Debaters, Edward Zwick’s Blood in 2008 and forms the basis of her Diamond, and Rupert Sanders’s Snow latest recording. Her sold-out concerts White and the Huntsman. Raised on a at Carnegie Hall have been chosen kibbutz in Israel by her French mother by the New York Times critics as and Argentinean father, Maya Beiser among the “Best of the Year.” is a graduate of . Her major teachers were Aldo Parisot, Uzi Highlights of Beiser’s recent U.S. tours Weizel, Alexander Schneider, and Isaac include performances at the Kennedy Stern. Beiser was the founding cellist Center in Washington, D.C., Royce of the new-music ensemble Bang on Hall in Los Angeles, the Kimmel a Can All-Stars. mayabeiser.com Center in Philadelphia, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center in Davis, the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the So who says you Celebrity Series in Boston, and the International Festival of Arts and have to leave it just Ideas in New Haven. Other recent performances include major venues because you’ve and festivals in Barcelona, Paris, gotten older? Tokyo, Shanghai, and Athens. She has appeared with many of the world’s Avenidas Village top orchestras performing new works for the cello, including the St. can help you stay in Paul Chamber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Ko Ishikawa, shō the home you love. Sydney Symphony, China Philharmonic, Ko Ishikawa is a professional sho¯ and many others. Beiser’s latest (Japanese bamboo mouth organ) player recording, Provenance, has been a and is a member of the gagaku ensemble top-selling classical and world music Reigakusha. He was born in Tokyo CD since its release in 2010. Her in 1963 and studied s h o¯ and gagaku For more information performance of Steve Reich’s Cello music with masters Mayumi Miyata, or to schedule a Counterpoint, a piece written for her, Hideaki Bunno, and Sukeyasu Shiba. private consultation, is featured on the Nonesuch Records He became a member of the Reigakusha call us today at album You Are, which was chosen in 1987 and has made numerous by the New York Times as one of the appearances with the ensemble and (650) 289-5405 or visit top albums of the year. She is also as a soloist in Europe, performing in avenidasvillage.org the soloist on the Sony Classical CD major festivals. His performances of release of Tan Dun’s Water Passion both traditional and new music for s h o¯ and has performed his Academy have been highly regarded in Vienna, Award-winning score Crouching Tiger London, Paris, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Concerto with orchestras around and Berlin. Ko Ishikawa has worked frequently with Otomo Yoshihide in the globe. She has released four solo AV 100812 tree 1_3v.pdf CDs on eOne Music (formerly Koch the group Cathode, and he played Records), including Oblivion, Kinship, and recorded with Gene Coleman in Your life, your way, in your home World to Come, and Almost Human. Japan in 2001, 2002, and 2003.

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