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

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,832nd Concert

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

“In Celebration: Sounding Space”

Presented in Honor ofthe Seventieth Anniversary

ofthe National Gallery ofArt

March 16 and 17, 2011

Wednesday and Thursday, 12:10 pm

West Building Rotunda

Admissionfree
Program

“In Celebration: Sounding Space”

Steve Antosca (b. 1955)

echoic landscape* (2010-2011)

echoes

sound garden 

atmospherics

Judith Shatin (b. 1949)

Penelope’s Song** (2007)

Hosech al P’ney HaTehom (Darkness Upon the Face ofthe Deep)** (1991)

Antosca

in every way I remember you* (2010-2011)

Footfalls echo in the memory (tenor saxophone)

Down the passage which we did not take

Toward the door we never opened....

My words echo... in your mind.... (baritone saxophone)

Other echoes inhabit the garden, (alto saxophone)

Shall we follow?

Through the vibrant air.... (soprano saxophone)

Shatin

Sic transit* (2011)

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

Living Room Music Fund.

Selected audio equipment provided by vark Audio ofCabin John, Maryland.

Rehearsal spacefor this concert provided by the University ofCalifornia

Washington Center.

*World Premiere Performance 

’"Washington Premiere Performance

The Composers

STEVE ANTOSCA

The music ofAmerican composer Steve Antosca integrates instruments

with computers for real-time processing, prerecorded audio processing, and

spatialization. He has received a Fromm commission from Harvard University, a McKim commission from the Library ofCongress, commissions from

the American Composers Forum, and support from Meet the Composer, the 

National Endowment for the Arts, and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund. In 2009 his composition One Becomes Two for violin and

computer was a selected winner in the “Electroacoustic Music with Instruments” category ofthe Thirty-sixth Bourges International Competitions. A

graphic page from the score was published in Notations 21. He has received

numerous grants for teaching technology, including awards from the United

States Department of Education.

In his series of concerts and lectures titled “crossmgPOiNT,” Antosca has 

collaborated with American University, the Library ofCongress, the Peabody

Institute, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of California Washington Center, and the University of Maryland. Antosca has a master’s degree

in computer music composition from the Peabody Conservatory ofJohns

Hopkins University. Currently the artistic director of verge ensemble and the 

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble, Antosca lives and teaches in

the Washington, DC, area and maintains a website at www.steveantosca.com.

JUDITH SHATIN

Composer, sound artist, community arts partner, and educator Judith Shatin 

is dedicated to timbral exploration and invention as well as collaboration

with musicians, artists, and communities. Her music reflects her fascination with literature, visual arts, the sounding world, the social meaning of

the arts, and new media. She has received commissions from the Barlow

and Fromm foundations, the McKim Fund ofthe Library ofCongress, the

Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program, and ensembles such

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as Ash Lawn Opera; Da Capo Chamber Players; the Illinois, National, and

Richmond Symphony orchestras; the Peninsula Women’s Chorus; and the

Virginia Glee Club. Shatin has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Meet the Composer. Twice a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, she has

held residencies at La Cite des Arts in France and Mishlcan HaAmanim in

Israel, as well as at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative

Arts, and Yaddo in the United States.

Long an advocate for her fellow composers, she has served on the

board of directors ofthe American Composers Alliance and on the advisory 

board ofthe International Alliance for Women in Music. In demand as a

master teacher, Shatin has served as bmi Composer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, and as senior composer at the Wellesley Composers Forum.

She is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of

Virginia, where she founded the Virginia Center for Computer Music. She 

is featured in Women ofInfluence in Contemporary Music, Nine American

Composers, recently published by Scarecrow Press. More information is

available at www.judithshatin.com.

The Musicians

The National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble was formed in 2010 and

gave its inaugural concert in the East Building Atrium last March, in a concert

titled changes: seasons. In celebration ofthe seventieth anniversary ofthe

Gallery, the ensemble brings a dramatic concert to the West Building Rotunda,

creating an acoustical experience ofits architectural space.

Members ofthe National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble performing

in this concert are Steve Antosca, artistic director, computer musician; saxophonist Noah Getz; percussionist Ross Karre; computer musician Judith

Shatin; Buchla Lightning wand specialist Forrest Tobey; and members of

Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, installers ofthe percussion robots.

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NOAH GETZ

Based in Washington, dc, jazz and classical saxophonist Noah Getz has

performed at major venues throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Phillips Collection, the Music Center at 

Strathmore, and the National Gallery ofArt. Getz received a first-round

Grammy nomination for his contribution with the New Hudson Saxophone

Quartet to America’s Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, vol. v, and was a

finalist in the Haverhill International Soloist Competition in the United

Kingdom. In 2007 Albany Records released his album Crosscurrents, which

explores the intersection ofjazz and contemporary classical music. Getz is

the saxophone musician-in-residence at American University.

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.

He received a bachelor ofmusic degree from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in 2005 and a doctor ofmusical arts degree from the University of California at San Diego (ucsd) in 2009. He has worked extensively

with Steven Schick and red fish blue fish, performing with that ensemble at 

the National Gallery in November 2007. In March 2010, he was the percussionist for the first performance by the National Gallery ofArt New Music

Ensemble. With the renowned conductor and composer Pierre Boulez,

Karre cofounded the percussion group Ensemble xn in Lucerne, Switzerland. Recent projects include collaborations with composers James Dillon 

and Roger Reynolds as well as the ensembles eighth blackbird, International

Contemporary Ensemble, Speak Percussion, and Third Coast Percussion. In

addition to his work as a freelance musician and artist, Karre continues his

studies in the visual arts at ucsd.

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FORREST TOBEY

An associate professor ofmusic at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana,

Forrest Tobey serves as the college’s orchestra conductor and teaches courses

in composition and music technology. He has been a Buchla Lightning wand 

performer since the instrument first saw the light of day in the early 1990s.

Known for his innovations in this field—using the gestural language of

conducting for the interactive control of computer-generated sound—he 

celebrates on this occasion a return to Washington, DC, where he performed

regularly before moving to Indiana.

EXPRESSIVE MACHINES MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (emmi) was founded in 2007 by

Scott Barton, Steven Kemper, and Troy Rogers, who are graduate students in

composition and computer technologies in the Mclntire department ofmusic 

at the University ofVirginia. Their instruments and compositions have been 

featured at Art Basel Miami, BradFest, the first Robotics Regional Competition, the Guthman New Musical Instrument Competition, the International 

Computer Music Conference, the Livewire Festival, the New Interfaces for

Musical Expression Conference, and the Pixilerations Festival. The video

ofone ofthe ensemble’s recent creations, “Drum Circle,” will be released on

the upcoming EcoSono DVD, Agents against agency. More information about

emmi is available at www.expressivemachines.org.

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Program Notes

“In Celebration: Sounding Space” is a concert designed by composers Steve

Antosca and Judith Shatin in honor ofthe National Gallery ofArt’s seventieth

anniversary, with special attention to the crowning architectural feature ofthe 

West Building, the Rotunda. Both composers have contributed works that use

contemporary technologies to reinforce and extend the boundaries oftraditional instruments. Computer software and audio have been designed specifically for these compositions and the rich acoustic environment ofthe Rotunda.

For the works being premiered at these concerts, composition, performance, 

software, and hardware combine to present an integrated flow ofsound.

To achieve these effects and create a sonically robust environment,

a multi-channel audio system distributes sound to speakers strategically

placed throughout the performance space and in the balcony ofthe Rotunda.

This strategy expands and extends the sound imagery ofthe instruments

and electronic audio, using both controlled, predetermined placement

and non-determinate spatialization, while interacting with the unique

acoustic features ofthe architectural space. Listeners are encouraged to

move around the Rotunda during the performance to hear and observe from

different perspectives.

The two works by Steve Antosca, echoic landscape and in every way I

remember you, were composed and designed for the Rotunda space, with

its resonant qualities in mind. The two-piece set is titled echo::memory,

drawing on the complex nature ofsound reverberation in the space and the

composer’s personal recollections of many hours spent in the Gallery. The

works are related, as materials from one piece are freely interchanged with

materials from the other. The echo::MEMORY compositions play with the 

concept of echoic memory, the auditory phenomenon in which there is a

briefmental echo that continues to sound after an auditory stimulus has

been heard. In the vast reverberant landscape ofthe Rotunda, rich and 

complex harmonic and non-harmonic frequencies accumulate at points 

ofsilence in the music, combining to form new auditory moments, then

quickly fade.

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Composed for Buchla Lightning wands and percussion, echoic landscape

emphasizes the use ofthe real-time gestural control ofthe wands to activate

and manipulate sounds in space, expressively moving sound in three dimensions. The wands allow control ofsound by human gestures, directly mapping

sounds and causing them to move up and down, toward the listener and away,

and in a spiral direction. Performance parallels between the Buchla Lightning

wand performer and the percussionist are found in the gestural motions of

both players, observed as they extract sound from real and virtual instruments.

The scrapes, sweeps, and mallet licks ofthe percussionist can be imitated

by the wands, but the analogous gestures can be mapped to any sound, and

control the distribution ofthat sound in the space. Like all acoustic instruments, percussion instruments are limited in their ability to project sound

by the design ofthe performance space, whereas the Buchla Lightning wand

can control the distribution ofits sound throughout the space.

Poetic and ambiguous, in every way I remember you consists offour

tableaux, the titles ofwhich are text excerpts from Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot,

the first ofthe author’s Four Quartets. The composition suggests the observation of an individual, realized through a performer, and viewed and heard

from varying perspectives.

The perspectives the composer has in mind are “the person you are

remembering, the one you envision”—a close-up, personal, immediate and

intimate representation; and “someone you are looking upon”—an external

view from some distance away. These perspectives are created through the use

of a choir ofsaxophones, played by a single performer, electronic sounds, and

movement ofthe performer and the sounds through the Rotunda. During the

performance, the saxophonist migrates through stations in the Rotunda while

pin-point placement ofsound changes the relationships and shifts the focus 

ofthe viewer/ listener’s attention. The electronic sounds are a reflection and

extension ofthe instrumental part, imaged through real-time computer audio

processing ofthe live performance, and prerecorded, processed audio. The

latter material, taken from saxophone and percussion samples previously 

recorded in the Rotunda, is used to extend the saxophone’s capabilities. At

some moments, the solo texture ofthe sax is enhanced by the extremely

reverberant nature ofthe Rotunda, while at other moments, the raw power

ofthe instrument combines with the electronics to saturate the performance

space with an intense aural texture.

Like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Ulysses and The Odyssey ofHomer

Engravedfrom the Compositions ofJohn Flaxman by James Parker and James 

Neagle in the National Gallery’s permanent collection, Judith Shatin’s

Penelope’s Song was inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey. The epic tells ofthe

travails ofOdysseus (Ulysses), who was away from home for twenty years due

to the Trojan War and a vendetta on the part ofthe sea-god Poseidon. In her

husband’s absence, Penelope, Queen ofIthaca, was the object ofmany greedy 

and arrogant suitors who tried to woo her in order to become king. To stave

offunwanted attention, she devised the excuse that she would take no suitor

until she finished weaving a shroud for her husband’s father, Laertes. Since

she unraveled at night what she had woven by day, she made no progress

on the shroud, giving her more time to await Ulysses’ return. Shatin’s music

reflects the story from Penelope’s point ofview. The composer created the

electronic sounds from intricate processing, a “reweaving” ofrecordings she

had made of a weaver at her wooden looms. The original version of Penelope’s

Song, scored for amplified viola and electronics, was premiered by Laura

Wilcox at the Portuguese Musica Viva Festival. The version for soprano

saxophone and electronics, heard in today’s concert, was commissioned

and recorded by Susan Fancher on the Innova label.

Inspired by the Biblical story of creation, Hosech Al P’ney HaTehom

(Darkness upon the Face ofthe Deep) represents a world being born— 

out ofthe subterranean darkness, sonic lightning; out of chaos, life. It is

also a new world ofsound being born—not the music oftraditional instruments or representations ofthem, but music constructed from the fundamental building blocks ofsound. Here, music becomes architecture. Music 

also becomes unfamiliar—timbres shiver and break apart, zoom, coalesce, 

become animate. Boundaries disappear, space seems elastic. This piece does

not use any “real-world” sounds. Rather, it uses computer-generated sound

to lure the listener into a new musical realm. In the first ofthe work’s three

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sections, the sounds ofthe void reach up to become pitch. In the second,

sonic lightning sets off a wild storm, with volcanic action spawning the

animate. In the third, the primordial quality ofthe first is recaptured,

though there are remnants ofthe second. Hosech Al P’ney HaTehom was 

composed at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music 

and Acoustics, where Judith Shatin was a visiting composer in 1990. For

the composer, this music calls to mind a woodcut from the National Gallery’s permanent collection, The Creation by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Composed especially for this concert, Sic transit is scored for percussionist

and six percussion robots (bots), which are computer-controlled mechanical

arms. The percussionist and the bots play various combinations ofwood,

metal, and skin instruments, simultaneously linking and separating their

voices. The piece traces the passing oftime, through which everything moves, 

rising and falling, compressing, expanding, beginning, ending. Some events 

can be anticipated; others are surprises. The performer utilizes his intimations

ofthe future and recollections ofthe past, and responds as his emotional and

behavioral repertoires allow. As the music unfolds, there are times when the

percussionist is completely aware ofwhat the bots will do and enters into a

conversation with them, and there are other times when he can only respond

to what happens in the moment, drawing on a repertoire ofpossible moves as

he comments, dances, and duels with the bots. There are also times when he

sticks to his path, regardless ofwhat happens around him. All passes.

The composer extends her thanks to Steve Kemper and Peter Traub for

their help in developing the Max patch that enabled the creation ofthe bots’

music. The instruments were developed by composers Scott Barton, Steve

Kemper, and Troy Rogers.

Program notes by Steve Antosca and Judith Shatin

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Next week at the National Gallery ofArt

Francois Chaplin

Music by Chopin, Debussy, and Faure

Presented in honor of Gauguin: Maker ofMyth

March 20, 2011

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Tanya Anisimova, cellist

Lydia Frumkin, pianist

Music by Anisimova and Schubert

Presented in honor ofWomen’s History Month

March 23, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium