Kirstin Franko

World Premiere Compositions to Debut this Weekend

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 05 May 2021 15:23:44 +0000

World Premiere Compositions to Debut this Weekend Pam Muirheid Wed, 05/05/2021 - 11:23

In This Story

Renowned composer Evelyn Simpson-Curenton and Mason’s own Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Green Machine Ensembles Michael W. Nickens (Doc Nix).

The Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music presents A Song of Freedom: Featuring World Premieres by Evelyn Simpson-Curenton and Michael W. Nickens, Saturday, May 8 at 8:00 p.m. as part of Mason Arts at Home. The concert celebrates unity and resilience in the face of division and uncertainty and showcases works by Black composers as well as selections inspired by the African-American experience.

The program’s world premieres are commissions by the Dewberry School of Music from renowned composer Evelyn Simpson-Curenton and Mason’s own Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Green Machine Ensembles Michael W. Nickens (Doc Nix).

“This magnificent concert is a true collaboration across our Dewberry School of Music students, staff, and faculty and is a celebratory finale to an unparalleled year. We heard clearly from our students that ‘representation matters,’ and our music faculty resolved to commission and highlight works by gifted Black composers for our May concert,” shared Dewberry School of Music Director Linda A. Monson. “Together we are using our gifts as artists to demonstrate the power of working together. I am so proud of the performances by our students and honored for the opportunity for the Dewberry School of Music to commission two remarkable compositions.”

Simpson-Curenton’s world premiere of Passages will feature current students from across the University Choirs, a guest solo appearance by School of Music alumna and Metropolitan Opera artist Aundi Marie Moore, as well as solos by current students Rosie Wright, Case Hope, and Eliyahu Young. Under the direction of the Director of Choral Studies, Stanley Engebretson, Passages uses phrases from the Bible and other sources and lifts up the ideals of justice and of loving the common good. Lyrics such as “sing now a song of freedom where all are inherently free” and “let justice roll down as water with righteousness, like an ever-flowing stream” guide the beautiful imagery within the music.

Reflecting on the piece, Engebretson shared, “Teaching and rehearsing this premiere by one of Washington’s most famous composers has been a great honor and privilege. It was a great delight to introduce her to Mason’s singers via Zoom so they could experience her amazing talents for themselves. Her brilliant piece captures the majesty of freedom with the call for us to ‘come together as one’ in a most empathic way.”

Nickens’s original work, titled The Orator, The Abolitionist, The Man: Frederick Douglass is based on the 1893 biography written by his great-great grandfather James Monroe Gregory, a contemporary of Douglass. His piece features the Mason Wind Symphony, members of the Green Machine, and spoken word derived directly from the biography and Douglass’ speeches, delivered as narration by Nickens himself.

Nickens’s piece is inspired by composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein as well as 90s hip hop artists including Wu-Tang Clan, who all unapologetically brought the local culture to the sound of the time. The piece’s musical style ebbs between orchestral, go-go, and hip hop layered with spirituals and Protestant hymns.

Nickens shared, “As a work very much in progress (the second movement of a larger composition I am creating), I am grateful to our students collaborating with me to bring this nine-month project to life. I hope all who experience it hear the narration both as an artifact of our American history and as an opportunity to connect with the enduring issues that are being addressed today.”

This pre-recorded digital concert features more than 100 students performing as part of the momentous event, including additional works ranging from works by distinguished Black composers such as William Grant Still and George Walker, to Antonin Dvorák, and U2’s “MLK.” The performance highlights students from the Mason Symphony Orchestra, University Choirs, Wind Symphony and Green Machine, Trombone Choir, Percussion Ensemble, and Tuba/Euphonium Ensemble.

Topics

Dewberry School of Music

College of Visual and Performing Arts

Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music

School of Music

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) School of Music

diversity equity and inclusion DEI

School of Art’s Arcadia Installation Cultivates Green Consciousness

Pam Muirheid — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:50:13 +0000

School of Art’s Arcadia Installation Cultivates Green Consciousness Pam Muirheid Thu, 01/14/2021 - 13:50

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

In This Story

Donald Russell

Yassmin Salem, Coordinator of Murals at Mason, within the Arcadia installation
Photo by Evan Cantwell/Mason Creative Services

Arcadia, created by artist Sam Nester and offered in partnership with the School of Art’s Murals at Mason and Mason Exhibitions initiatives. The groundbreaking exhibit, which features plants as musical composers and visual performers, opened in November 2020 and will be accessible through December 2021 via its dedicated Twitch livestream at twitch.tv/masonarcadia, as well as in person from outside the Presidents Park Hydroponic Greenhouse on Mason’s Fairfax campus.

Arcadia uses modified biodata-sonification sensors to convert the natural, real-time biorhythms of Virginia native plants into Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data. Data collected from the plants is sent to a computer that processes it with Ableton and Max MSP and then outputs real-time sound through a variety of MIDI instruments. Plant signals controlling the MIDI instruments also control an LED light display corresponding to the pitches of the MIDI instruments. The audiovisual experience creates a synesthetic art exhibition where the activation of one sense triggers other senses, evoking a state of wonder.

“Arcadia represents an inspiring fusion of worlds—the natural and the digital, the visual and the musical. This kind of boundary blurring speaks directly to a vision of a better future, and we are thrilled to share it with the Mason community,” stated Rick Davis, Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Arcadia makes sustainability a topic of inspiration and reflection for a wider audience. Environmental consciousness is a shared value at Mason and public art is a great tool for casual viewers to reflect on their relationship with nature. This exhibition will catalyze wonder through a variety of programs that use intersectional social justice as a frame to explore sustainability, environmental justice, healing, and consciousness.”

Arcadia applies contemporary artistic practice to engage cross-disciplinary research and inquiry. Over the course of the year, the exhibit will have a number of collaborators and research partners who will utilize the data, monitor the plants’ health, and manipulate the MIDI stream for a variety of activities and events. Two of these partners are the Center for Well Being and Counseling and Psychological Services, who are currently featuring Arcadia as an integral part of the “Mindful Mason Moments” guided meditation series. Similarly, Doni Nolan, the Greenhouse and Gardens Program Manager and current Biosciences PhD student, is making use of the exhibit to conduct research on the propagation of American ginseng (wild ginseng is a threatened plant in Virginia) and soil microbiome health—both of which support her ongoing research about root rot in hydroponics and her development of an organic integrated pest management (IPM) program that adds beneficial microbes to prevent and treat root rot.

Arcadia’s integration of researching, saying “I would like to see contemporary artists collaborating in all types of research, not only by influencing the research process, but by creating an accessible and communicable result: a work of art—especially studies of the environment, social justice, health, technology, psychology, history, community development, and political science, to name a few.”

Arcadia exhibition, all of the native Virginia plants will be relocated to various sites on Mason’s Fairfax campus. The medicinal plants will be transplanted to the Green Studio, in collaboration with Associate Professor Mark Cooley, and the edible plants will be moved to the Innovation Food Forest under the care of Greenhouse and Gardens Program Manager, Doni Nolan.

Arcadia invites us to wonder how we use technology to have an authentic relationship with the natural phenomena that surround us at all times. I urge all of us to consider how we can re-center ourselves at this crucial moment in our shared history.”

Arcadia are available on the official Mason Exhibitions page, including an introductory video. Additionally, the recording of a live Mason Arts at Home performance—featuring Sam Nester, members of the Brass Project Ensemble, and fellow experimental musicians—can be viewed here.

Arcadia is made possible with generous funding from Mason’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact; Institute for a Sustainable Earth; Institute for Digital InnovAtion; the Office of Sustainability’s Patriot Green Fund; the Center for Well-Being; Counseling and Psychological Services; and Provisions Research Center for Art & Social Change. Collaborators include Amanda Jarvis, MIX Maker Manager, Mason Innovation Exchange; Doni Nolan, Program Manager of the Greenhouse & Gardens Program; Mark Cooley, Director of the Green Studio; Dr. Andrea Weeks, Director of the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium; and Paige Seber, a New York City-based Lighting Designer, who helped Nester with initial lighting concepts.

Young Alumni Commissioning Project recognizes three alumni artists

Pam Muirheid — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 19:56:57 +0000

Young Alumni Commissioning Project recognizes three alumni artists Pam Muirheid Mon, 12/14/2020 - 14:56

��AV’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) announced the second round of Young Alumni Commissioning Project award recipients this week. The three alumni were chosen based on the artistic excellence, career impact and feasibility of their proposals and will receive financial, marketing and production support to have their projects presented by the college at a Mason venue during the 2020-21 season.

Leila Mire

Leila Mire, BFA Dance Performance ’18, has received the award and $5,000 in commissioning support for “Scheherazade Retold,” an evening-length dance piece that explores the nuanced history of appropriation in the ballet world and beyond. The work draws on Arab and Western devices to comment on various renditions of “1001 Arabian Nights.”

Mire is a Lebanese American performer, choreographer, educator and writer. She has performed for ClancyWorks, Silk Road Dance Company, in freelance work and as a solo artist. Her work has been commissioned for the National Cathedral’s 1 Journey Festival and performed at venues all over the country.

Watch Dance, Politics, and Gender: An Exploration of New Work with Leila Mire.

Kevin Elam, BM Jazz Studies ’14, and Donovan Jones, BA Film and Video Studies ’18, were awarded Young Alumni Creative Development Awards and will each receive $2,500 in commissioning support.

Kevin Elam

Elam, the 2019 All-Ireland Champion in Men’s Singing, will be using the award to record a full-length album of Irish traditional music called “Roots and Beginnings.” Elam has performed at the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress, as well as at the Virginia Scottish Games, Acadia Trad Festival, Appaloosa Festival, and many other folk music festivals in the D.C. area.

Donovan Jones

Jones will be directing and producing “Do Better,” a music video for up-and-coming DMV recording artist Hakeem. Since graduating from Mason, Jones has worked on several major film and television productions, such as “Wonder Woman 1984” (2020), “Harriet” (2019) and Showtime’s “The Good Lord Bird” (2020). He is currently working on the upcoming Apple TV series “Swagger.”

“Round Two of our commissioning program is now out in the world doing its good work,” said Rick Davis, dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “I am excited by what these young artists in dance, music and film have proposed to create—each project shows insight, expertise and a deep sense of humanity—and I can't wait to see what they bring back from their explorations.”

Applicants for the award were required to be a graduate of the College of Visual and Performing Arts from the class of 2009 and after, and proposals could be for an original new work in any art form, suitable for performance, exhibition or screening in a Mason venue during the 2020-21 season.

The Young Alumni Commissioning Project is made possible by a generous bequest from the estate of Linda E. Gramlich for the support of young artists, and by donors to Mason’s Giving Day, including Shugoll Research.

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

CVPA Alumni