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ArtPower Presents World Premiere by Roger Reynolds
2015–16 Season Opening Concert Featuring Violinist Irvine Arditti
La Jolla, C.A.—ArtPower at University of California, San Diego’s 2015–16 season opens with the world premiere of Shifting/Drifting for solo violin and real time computer processing by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and UC San Diego professor Roger Reynolds. Featuring acclaimed English violinist Irvine Arditti, founder of the celebrated Arditti Quartet, with computer musician Paul Hembree, the performance takes place at the Department of Music’s Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater on Friday, September 25, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 and can be ordered online at boxoffice.ucsd.edu or by calling the box office at 858.534.TIXS (8497).
Inspired by Reynolds’ 30-year friendship with Arditti, Shifting/Drifting is a duet that captures the metaphorical journey from the violinist to the computer-musician. The “two ways of moving—also of being—that seem to me inherent in the way my friend Irvine plays his violin. At times, a sudden and decisive shift from one position to another is called for, at others, a gradual and subtle repositioning of the hand (or an attitude) is more appropriate: ‘shifting’ or ‘drifting.’ The new work is a response to him and to his instrument,” explains Reynolds. Additional program information can be found at artpower.ucsd.edu.
About Roger Reynolds
Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer–winning American composer, is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds and those newly enabled by technology. His work responds to text of poetic and mythological origins. His reputation includes a “wizardry in sending music flying through space: whether vocal, instrumental, or computerized.” His leadership within the UCSD Department of Music helped establish it as an international leader in composition and computer music. Reynolds won the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1989, with the string orchestra work, Whispers Out of Time. In 2009, he was appointed university professor, the only artist ever so honored by the University of California. His work has been featured at festivals including Warsaw Autumn, the Proms and Edinburgh Festivals (UK), the Suntory International Series and Music Today (Tokyo), and the Helsinki and Venice Biennales, and the New York Philharmonic’s “Horizons ’84.” In 1998, the Library of Congress established a Special Collection of his work, and it is also included in the Paul Sacher Collection, Basel. Reynolds’s compositions are published exclusively by the C.F. Peters Corporation, and several dozen CDs and DVDs of his work have been commercially released. His work embodies an American artistic idealism reflecting the influence of Varèse and Cage, and it has also been compared with that of Boulez and Scelsi. He lives with his partner of 50 years, Karen, in Del Mar, California, overlooking the Pacific.
About Irvine Arditti
Irvine Arditti studied at the Royal Academy of Music where the Arditti Quartet was formed in 1974. Both in the quartet and as soloist, he has performed throughout the world in most of the leading concert halls and festivals promoting the most challenging new music and has given world premieres of hundreds of works. Arditti’s name is synonymous with the highest level of quality and dedication in the performance of new music. The list of composers he has worked with is a who’s who of 20th and 21st century music, and there are also hundreds of younger composers whose work he has performed. More than 200 CD releases both with the quartet and as soloist document Arditti’s achievement. As leader of the quartet, he accepted, in 1999, the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. This prize for “lifetime achievement” in music began in 1974 and is normally given only to individuals. The Arditti quartet is the only ensemble ever to receive it. The complete archive of both the Arditti quartet and Irvine Arditti are housed in the Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.
About ArtPower
ArtPower at UC San Diego builds creative experiences in music, dance, film, exhibition, and food for our collective pleasure and inspiration. We engage diverse audiences through vibrant, challenging, multi-disciplinary performances by emerging and renowned international artists. Through extensive partnerships, ArtPower provides exciting opportunities for research, participation, and creation of new work, igniting powerful dialogue between artists, students, scholars, and the community.
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