With Renée Levine Packer, Joan La Barbara, and Jan Williams

Moderated by Steven Swartz

9:45 am Registration

10:00–10:35 am Presentation: Renée Levine Packer

10:45 am–12:15 pm Panel: Renée Levine Packer, Joan La Barbara, and Jan Williams, Moderated by Steven Swartz

12:30–1:30 pm Buffet luncheon

the philadelphia music project and bowerbird present

The Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB) transformed a sleepy, postindustrial city into a hotbed of the avant-garde, “bigger and hipper than anything ever held in New York or Paris” (Life magazine, 1965), and represents an important, under-recognized chapter in the history of American music.

Based on a plan by composer Lukas Foss, the Rockefeller Foundation provided annual fellowships for young composers and virtuoso instrumentalists to live in Buffalo for up to two years at a time, creating a cadre of like-minded musicians who spent their time studying, creating, and performing complex and often controversial new work. From this experiment emerged a legendary group of composers and musicians—George Crumb, Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Maryanne Amacher, Frederic Rzewski, David Tudor, Julius Eastman, and many more.

In 1972, Morton Feldman joined the faculty of SUNYAB and remained there until his death in 1987. During this period, Feldman assured his legacy as a master teacher and was also able to focus intently on composing. In this environment of exploration and openness, he composed his most singular and arguably most important works, including many of those featured in Bowerbird’s AMERICAN SUBLIME festival, supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Music Project.

PRESENTATION Renée Levine Packer, the Center’s administrative and managing director from 1965–1978 and author of This Life of Sounds, will present a slide lecture on the Center, complete with rare photos and historic recordings, including the first recording of Terry Riley’s In C.

PANEL Renée Levine Packer will be joined by percussionist-composer Jan Williams, who served in various roles, including director, conductor, and artistic director, of the Center, and composer-vocalist Joan La Barbara, a frequent performer with the Creative Associates and on the Evenings for New Music. Steven Swartz will moderate.

ABOUT AMERICAN SUBLIME AMERICAN SUBLIME is the first major festival in Philadelphia devoted to the music of Morton Feldman (1926–87), Saturday, June 4 – Sunday, June 12, 2011. The festival includes seven concerts at venues throughout the city, with performances by some of the leading Feldman interpreters of our time. AMERICAN SUBLIME focuses on music from the last years of Feldman’s life, all of it performed for the first time in Philadelphia. The centerpiece is an extremely rare performance of his monumental six-hour String Quartet No. 2, which concludes the festival at the Philadelphia Cathedral on June 12.

friday, june 10, 2011 Caplan Hall, Terra BuildingUniversity of the Arts211 S. Broad Street, 17th floorPhiladelphia, PA 19107

registration deadline: friday, june 3, 2011To register, please call PMP at 267.350.4960, or email Elizabeth Sayre at esayre@pcah.usRegistration is required. This event is offered free of charge.

book lecture and panel discussion:

Making It New—America’s Avant-Garde Utopia: Evenings for New Music, Buffalo, 1964 – 1980

PANELISTS

Renée Levine Packer was administrator with Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp, and co-director with Jan Williams and Morton Feldman, of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo, and a director of the Contemporary Music Festival at the California Institute of the Arts. She has been director of the Inter-Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts, the producer of Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s multimedia opera The Cave, and a dean at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her book This Life of Sounds: Evenings For New Music in Buffalo was published in summer 2010 by Oxford University Press. Levine Packer holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

Joan La Barbara is a composer, performer, and sound artist who creates sound-scores for film, video, and dance. Her multi-layered textural compositions have appeared at international festivals including Brisbane Biennial, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Warsaw Autumn, Frankfurt Feste, Metamusik-Berlin, Olympics Arts and Lincoln Center. Her awards include the 2008 American Music Center Letter of Distinction for her significant contributions to American Contemporary Music, the Guggenheim Fellowship, a DAAD-Berlin Artist-in-Residency, seven NEA grants, and numerous commissions for concert, theatre and radio, including Saint Louis Symphony, Meet The Composer, Live Music for Dance, WDR-Cologne, RIAS, VPRO, and Radio Bremen. Recordings of her work include: “ShamanSong” (New World), “Sound Paintings,” “Voice is the Original Instrument” (Lovely Music), plus numerous other composers. “73 Poems” appeared in the Whitney Museum’s “American Century Part II: SoundWorks.” “Messa di Voce,” an award-winning interactive media performance work, premiered at Ars Electronica-Linz. Her voice with electronics score for “Children’s Television Workshop/Sesame Street” has broadcast worldwide since 1977. She has premiered landmark works composed for her unique voice by Robert Ashley, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, and Morton Subotnick. La Barbara is composing a new opera exploring the interior dialogue and sounds within the mind.

Jan Williams, percussion soloist and conductor, has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. He has recorded for Columbia, Vox/Turnabout, Desto, Lovely Music, Spectrum, Wergo, DGG, Orion, Hat-Art, OO, New World, Deep Listening, EMF Media, and Mode Records. Composers who have written works especially for him include Lukas Foss, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Joel Chadabe, Morton Feldman, Orlando Garcia, Gustavo Matamoros, Luis de Pablo, Frederic Rzewski, Nils Vigeland, and Iannis Xenakis. With Yvar Mikhashoff, he was Co-Artistic Director of the North American New Music Festival from 1983–1993. He is Professor Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo. Morton Feldman’s compositions “Why Patterns?”, “Crippled Symmetry,” and “For Philip Guston” were written for the Feldman Soloists: Jan Williams, Nils Vigeland, and Eberhard Blum. This group performed the premieres of these works and presented Feldman’s music widely in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

Moderator: Steven Swartz studied music and philosophy at Swarthmore College and earned a Ph.D. in composition from University at Buffalo under principal teacher Morton Feldman. In lieu of pursuing an academic position, he moved to New York City, embarking on a career that would eventually span journalism, radio, the recording industry, and music publishing. His writing on music has appeared in The New York Times (Arts & Leisure), Tempo, Perspectives of New Music, and other publications. From 1990 to 2006 he served as Publicity Manager for Boosey & Hawkes. In 2007 Steven founded Dotdotdotmusic, providing PR, writing, and consulting services to the new music field, specializing in artists whose music transcends styles and genres. His clients include Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Meet The Composer, cellist Maya Beiser, PRISM Quartet, New Amsterdam records, MATA Festival, and others. He is a co-founder of Make Music New York, the city’s largest annual one-day music festival. Steven has also enjoyed a parallel career as a recording artist, singing and playing ukulele in the “avant-folk” combos Songs from a Random House and Bedroom Community.