The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

cover: Andy Warhol, Gardner Cowles, 1977, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink

on canvas, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

© 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /

Artists Rights Society (ars), New York

The Seventieth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,854th Concert

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

Steve Antosca, artistic director, composer

Lisa Celia, flutist • Bill Kalinkos, clarinetist

Ross Karre, videographer • Jaime Oliver, computer musician

With guest musicians

Gina Biver, guitarist • William Brent, computer musician, pianist

Presented in honor of Warhol: Headlines

November 9, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Larry Austin (b. 1930)

Threnos (2001-2002)

Steve Antosca (b. 1955)

for two (1982)

Jaime Oliver (b. 1979)

Screen Test (2011)

Antosca/William Brent (b. 1977)/Ross Karre (b. 1983)

Plastic Fantastic Transforms (2011)

Benjamin Broening (b. 1967)

Trembling Air (2009)

Lou Reed/Velvet Underground

Venus in Furs (1966)

Arranged by the National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble (2011)

This concert is made possible in part by supportfrom the Randy Hostetler

Living Room Music Fund

The Musicians

STEVE ANTOSCA

Steve Antosca’s music integrates instruments with computers for real-time

processing, prerecorded audio processing, and spatialization. Through

the realization ofscores that juxtapose elements of nondeterminacy with

traditional notation, he crafts a sonically rich performance environment.

Formerly the artistic director and composer-member of verge Ensemble,

he is currently the artistic director ofthe National Gallery ofArt New Music

Ensemble and codirector ofthe John Cage Centennial Festival Washington,

dc, 2012. Commissioned for new works by the American Composers Forum,

the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, the Bourges International

Competitions, the Fromm Fund at Harvard University, the Johansen International Competition, the Kennedy Center, Meet the Composer, and the

McKim Foundation at the Library ofCongress, he produces new music for 

almost every public performance in which he is involved.

In March 2011 Antosca presented a concert in the National Gallery’s

West Building Rotunda in celebration ofthe Gallery’s seventieth anniversary,

premiering a pair ofworks titled echo:: memory. The event was described by

the Washington Post as “a spectacular, wonderfully provocative” concert, with

the Rotunda ofthe Gallery transformed into “an immense temple ofsound,

presenting a program oftheatrical new works that married humans with

computers, and ancient myths with contemporary aesthetics.”

Antosca has lectured on music and music technology trends at universities and cultural institutions throughout the United States and in Mexico as

part of crossmgPoint, his series of collaborative projects. Recipient of a master’s

degree in computer music composition from the Peabody Conservatory of

Johns Hopkins University, he maintains a website at www.steveantosca.com.

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LISA CELLA

Acknowledged by her peers as a champion of contemporary music, flutist 

Lisa Celia is artistic director of San Diego New Music, a founding member

ofits resident ensemble noise, and codirector ofsoundoN: A Festival of

Modern Music. She also founded the flute duo inHale and C2, a flute and

cello duo. A faculty member ofthe Soundscape Festival ofContemporary

Music in Maccagno, Italy, Celia is associate professor ofmusic at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a founding member ofits faculty

contemporary music ensemble, Ruckus.

BILL KALINKOS

Clarinetist Bill Kalinkos enjoys a varied freelance career as a member of

Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Signal, Deviant Septet, and the National

Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble. He has also played with Anti-Social

Music, the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble de Sade, Ensemble

Pamplemousse, Metropolis Ensemble, and Toby Twining Music. Recognized

by the Washington Post as a “notable contemporary music specialist,” Kalinkos

has premiered pieces by John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich,

Roger Reynolds, Wolfgang Rihm, and John Zorn, among other composers. 

His appearances as clarinet soloist include Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto

with the Columbia Civic Orchestra and John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons with 

Alarm Will Sound in Amsterdam and California. Currently coprincipal 

clarinetist ofthe New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra and a member

of iris Orchestra, Kalinkos teaches at the University ofCalifornia at Santa

Cruz and Berkeley and was recently appointed principal clarinetist ofthe

Oakland East Bay Symphony.

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ROSS KARRE

Percussionist and temporal artist Ross Karre works with a variety ofmedia

and practices ranging from contemporary classical music to experimental

multimedia performance incorporating video, sound, lighting, and theater.

A graduate ofthe Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the University

ofCalifornia at San Diego, he has worked extensively with Steven Schick

and redfish bluefish. He cofounded the percussion group Ensemblexn in 

Lucerne, Switzerland, under the direction of Pierre Boulez. Recent projects

include collaborations with James Dillon, eighth blackbird, the National

Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble, Roger Reynolds, Speak Percussion, and

Third Coast Percussion. Karre recently joined the International Contemporary

Ensemble (ice) as a full time member and looks forward to a season with that

ensemble that includes performances and premieres ofworks by George

Aperghis, John Cage, James Dillon, David Lang, George Lewis, Pauline 

Oliveros, and Yannis Xenakis.

JAIME OLIVER

A former student of composer and computer music pioneer Miller Puckette,

Jaime Oliver obtained a PhD in computer music from the University of

California, San Diego, and is currently a Mellon post-doctoral fellow at

Columbia University. Oliver designs electronic instruments that listen, understand, remember, and respond. His open source Silent Drum and mano

controllers use computer vision techniques to track and classify hand gestures.

His work has been supported by scholarships and grants from the Fulbright 

Commission, Meet the Composer, the Ministry of Culture of Spain, and the 

University ofCalifornia. He received first prizes in the 2010 File Prix Lux

Competition and the 2009 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at

the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, as well as a Giga-Hertz-Preis 

from the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany.

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GINA BIVER

Guitarist Gina Biver composes music for chamber ensemble, choir, multimedia, dance, and film. Upon completing her undergraduate music degree

at Berklee College of Music in Boston, she performed for several years as a

lead guitarist and songwriter in New York, Boston, and other east coast cities.

She has recorded her music at Electric Lady Studios and was the subject of

articles in Kerrang!, Guitar World, and Guitarfor the Practicing Musician. Her

music for television and film has won Cine Golden Eagle, Tele, and International Television and Video (itva) Awards. Biver studied composition with

Steve Antosca and Garrison Hull, completing her master ofmusic degree at

George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She has been awarded composer grants from the American Composers Forum and the American

Music Center and a 2010 Strauss Fellowship grant from the Arts Council

of Fairfax County. A fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts 

(vcca), Gina Biver is currently the director-composer of Fuse Ensemble, a

new music/new media ensemble based in Washington, DC. In addition to 

iTunes, her music is available at www.ginabivcr.com and www.fusc-enscmble.com.

WILLIAM BRENT

Computer musician and pianist William Brent’s creative work includes

experimental music performance, sound art, and sound design. Controlled

by software written in the SuperCollider and Pure Data (Pd) programming

environments, his projects involve various combinations ofsounds produced by human players, robots, and computers. In addition to live concerts,

Brent is also active in the areas ofremote network music performance and

interactive sound installation. An assistant professor of audio technology

at American University in Washington, DC, and the author of open source

libraries for real-time timbre analysis and design of digital musical instruments, he maintains a website at www.williambrent.com.

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Program Notes

Andy Warhol is among the foremost artists ofthe twentieth century. His

visual vocabulary has become a part ofthe vernacular from which it originally derived. The exhibition Warhol: Headlines brings together works that

the artist based largely on headlines from the tabloid news. Warhol had a lifelong obsession with the sensational side of contemporary news media, and

examples ofhis source materials for the works of art are presented for comparison, revealing Warhol’s role as both editor and author. Because his art

traversed high, low, and popular culture and could be experienced in the

gallery, museum or concert setting, Warhol continues to be relevant and

inspire presentations in new contexts. In addition to this concert, musical

celebrations of Warhol: Headlines at the Gallery include a cine-concert on

November 12 at 4:00 pm in the East Building Auditorium, a concert by the

Verdehr Trio on November 23 at 12:10 pm in the West Building Lecture Hall, 

and special music presented in the exhibition space on December 10 at 3:30 pm.

The exhibition remains on view until January 2, 2012.

A lament composed in memory ofthe victims ofthe terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, Larry Austin’s Threnos is a single-movement work that

unfolds in three continuous sections, heard between two bass clarinet

groupings—one live and one virtual. The bass clarinet player’s live sounds

are amplified, processed, and diffused in the listening space. The virtual

ensemble is unseen, but its sounds are heard in a three-dimensional,

octophonic soundscape that surrounds and combines with the live sounds.

Threnos was commissioned in August 2001 by bass clarinetist Michael

Lowenstem, who also recorded materials for its computerized virtual

octophonic component. Living and working in Brooklyn, New York, Lowenstern exchanged emotional e-mails on September 11, 2001, with Larry Austin,

who was working on his commission. Austin writes: “After that, the conception ofmy piece for Michael became inextricably an expression ofmourning

for the victims ofthat infamous tragedy. And the model and inspiration for

my lament was Dido’s lamento aria for Aeneas from Henry Purcell’s opera

Dido and Aeneas.... One doesn’t literally hear the Purcell lament [in Threnos];

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instead, one hears a quiet, eerie, timbral montage drifting in and out ofthe

sounding texture ofbass clarinet lines and sounds.”

A graduate ofthe University of North Texas, Mills College, and the

University ofCalifornia-Berkeley, Larry Austin studied composition with

Violet Archer, Darius Milhaud, and Andrew Imbrie. During his residency in

California in the 1960s, he enjoyed extended associations with composers

John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and David Tudor. Noted for his work in

traditional as well as experimental genres, Austin’s music has been performed

and recorded by the Boston Symphony, National Symphony and New York

Philharmonic orchestras, as well as by other major ensembles in North

America and Europe. A recipient ofnumerous commissions, grants, and

awards, he has composed more than eighty works incorporating electroacoustic and computer music media; combinations oftape, instruments,

voices, and orchestra; live-electronics and real-time computer processing;

and solo audio and video components. Austin resides with his wife Edna at 

their home in Denton, Texas, and maintains a studio, gaLarry, out ofwhich he

generates commissions, tours, performances, articles, recordings, and lectures.

Composed in 1982 for any two performers, Steve Antosca’sfor two

emphasizes aleatoric (chance) techniques and the use ofmusical gestures.

The performers supply the appropriate clefs for their instruments and may

use several clefs during the performance ofthe piece. In many instances,

actual pitches are not supplied—they are only suggested by arrows up and

down and by the shape ofthe line ofsuccessive arrows, aided by the use of

accidentals. Each performance offor two is unique in the timbres ofthe pair

ofinstruments, the actual pitches, and the counterpoint between the instruments, but the shape ofthe melodic line and the musical gestures remain

the same. Since 1999 for two has been performed with an improvisation

section, prompted by the composer’s desire to add to the spontaneity and

aleatoric nature ofthe composition, already suggested by the indeterminate

clefs and non-specific pitches and rhythms. Near the end ofthe work, both

players improvise on themes presented up to that point, after which they

improvise on the theme that opens the concluding section.

To add to the ever-evolving nature offor two, a 2005 performance

included audio processing ofthe instruments as well as interactive brain

8

wave-controlled animation, created by Paras Kaul using eeg and biofeedback. Using the ibva Brain Wave Interface developed by Masahiro Kahata, 

Kaul’s brainwaves controlled the animation of a lotus flower. The current

version incorporates immersion processing, an experimental technique

where extreme amounts oflayered processing are applied in real time.

Jaime Oliver’s Screen Test borrows its title from Andy Warhol’s 1960s

experimental portrait films. Screen tests are ways ofseeing how the images of

the real world look through the transformations of cameras and lenses, as a

film director plans for eventual full production. Warhol’s films probe their subjects as the camera is manipulated, but they are themselves the finished work.

The composer is concerned with seeing how images “sound” through the

transformations of cameras, lenses, and computers. Through technological

mediation, the images ofgestures are transduced into the sounds ofgestures.

In Plastic Fantastic Transforms, composers Steve Antosca, William Brent,

and Ross Karre take as their starting point Andy Warhol’s transformations of

traditional images, stretching reality into a color-saturated environment. Working in both audio and visual domains, Plastic Fantastic Transforms creates composite layers out ofsonic and visual elements presented in their raw form. A

limited and specific set ofmaterials is stretched across a substantial amount

oftime and over numerous transformational dimensions. The entirely electronic musical score is a series ofmalleable events that form a continuous

thread ofprocessed transformations, each adding to the previous one to 

construct an environment ofsaturated and spatialized audio. The video 

transformations involve shooting silk screens with a camera macro lens,

capturing the textures of paper and ink as well as the vibrancy ofthe colors.

The resulting video files are triggered at specific points in the music and

temporally transformed.

Hailed by the New Haven Register as “a major talent,” Benjamin Broening

couples his interest in the expressive power ofsound with a sense ofline

derived from his background as a singer. Active as a composer of acoustic

and electroacoustic music, he has written pieces for many leading contemporary ensembles, including the Arts Now Series at North Carolina State 

University, the Band and Orchestral Division ofYamaha Corporation of

America, the Charlotte (North Carolina) Symphony Orchestra, the Choral

9
Arts Society of Philadelphia, the Connecticut Choral Society, Duo Runedako,

eighth blackbird, Ensemble U (Estonia), and Zeitgeist. A recipient of a

Fulbright fellowship, Broening has also received recognition and awards

from the American Composers Forum, Andrew Mellon Foundation, Jerome

Composers Commissioning Program, Presser Music Foundation, and Virginia 

Commission for the Arts.

About Trembling Air, Broening writes: “Without meaning to, I seem to 

have stumbled into composing a series of pieces about being in Estonia. I

spent six months there in 2007 and have been back four or five times since

[then] for anywhere from a week to a month. Every time I go, I am struck by

the light, by the feeling ofthe air, and the natural world—the sea, the forest,

the farmland. My recent pieces imperfectly reflect those experiences: Dark

Wood for cello evokes the feeling ofbeing the Estonian forests, Changing Light

for sextet is a response to my experience ofthe magical quality ofthe light in

Estonia, and Trembling Air evokes the quality of energy ofthe air there, filled 

as it is with the sound ofbirds, trees, and water.”

Based on the novella by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

(1836-1895), Venus in Furs concerns a man who dreams ofspeaking to Venus 

about love while she wears furs. The narrator tells his dreams to a friend,

Severin, who tells him how to rid himselfofhis fascination with cruel women.

In 1967 the debut album ofThe Velvet Underground & Nico, produced by

Andy Warhol, included the song Venus in Furs, written by front man Lou Reed

with vocals by the German singer Nico. It became one ofthe group’s most

famous recordings. Among the first rock songs to deal explicitly with the

subject and imagery ofsado-masochism, it refers indirectly to the novella 

through the repeated refrain “Severin, Severin.” In 2003 Rolling Stone named

the recording the “13th greatest album of all time” and the “most prophetic rock 

album ever made.” During its time with Andy Warhol, the band became part

ofhis multimedia road show, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, for which it provided

the music. The National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble’s treatment of

Venus in Furs uses current technology and techniques for sonic transformation to take a new look at a now forty-four-year-old classic.

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Next week at the National Gallery ofArt

Dean and Britta

Indie rock cine-concert

Presented in honor of

Warhol: Headlines

Warhol: Headlines, currently on view on the Mezzanine ofthe East Building,

is organized by the National Gallery ofArt, Washington, in association with the

Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; the Galleria nazionale d’arte modema, Rome;

and the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.

The international tour ofthe exhibition is sponsored by

The Terra Foundation for American Art.

The exhibition in Washington is made possible by

The Exhibition Circle ofthe National Gallery ofArt.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from 

the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

November 12, 2011

Saturday, 4:00 pm

East Building Auditorium

Alexander Markov, violinist

Music by Bach, Gershwin, Paganini,

and other composers

November 13, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court