Today’s track premiere features Unheard-of//Ensemble performing Erin Rogers‘ Family Picnic 2008 from their forthcoming self-released debut album Unheard-of//Dialogues.
Unheard-of//Dialogues features six commissioned works by Erin Rogers, Christopher Stark, Nathan Hudson, Reiko Füting, Nickitas Demos, and Michael Lanci in addition to the world premiere recording of Tonia Ko‘s Hum Phenomenon.
Here’s what Erin had to say about her work, Family Picnic 2008:
“Unbanking” is a marketing term created for ads and other creative materials to convince customers that a bank does not identify with typical and frustrating banking processes. In Family Picnic 2008, a third-party unbanker-bot injects itself into the world of the performers, permeating the musical texture of the work, interacting with the players, and engaging in typical and frustrating marketing practices. Family Picnic 2008 is inspired by the generosity of large banks.
Unheard-of//Dialogues is out January 19, 2019, but you can pre-order the album here.
About Erin Rogers
Based in New York City, Erin Rogers is a Canadian-American composer, saxophonist, and performance artist dedicated to new and experimental music. Named a “rising star” (Broadway World), her music has been described as “whimsical, theatrical” (Brooklyn Vegan), “a wild ride” (An Earful), and “so complex, it’s primitive.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Her works have been presented at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Roulette, The Knockdown Center, MATA Festival,Ecstatic Festival, Prototype Festival, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, wasteLAnd, and internationally, at the Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), Resonanzraum (Hamburg), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid); NyMusikk Bergen (Norway), Edmonton Fringe Festival (Canada), Splendor (Amsterdam), and the World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland.
Her work crosses genres from theatre-to-installation-to-silence, through collaborations with Orange Theatre, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Harvestworks, Decoder, and Music for Contemplation. Her music has been featured on the French Quarter Festival (New Orleans), Continuum Music Festival (Memphis), Nief-Norf Summer Festival (Knoxville), Edmonton Fringe Festival (Canada), Charlotte New Music Festival, SPLICE Festival (Kalamazoo), Bowling Green New Music Festival, Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva Manuel Enriquez (Mexico City) and the mise-en Festival (NYC). She has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, Copland House, and wild Up, and is co-artistic director of the experimental performance ensembles: thingNY, New Thread Saxophone Quartet, Hypercube, and Popebama.
About Unheard-of//Ensemble
Ford Fourqurean (clarinet), Matheus Souza (violin), So Sugiyama (cello), and Daniel Anastasio (piano) form the core of Unheard-of//Ensemble, a contemporary chamber ensemble dedicated to the development and performance of new music by living composers. Unheard-of’s 2018-2019 season features the release of Unheard-of//Dialogues, examining the modern voice of Messiaen quartet instrumentation, with works written for Unheard-of by Reiko Füting, Erin Rogers, Michael Lanci, Nathan Hudson, Nickitas Demos, and Christopher Stark, as well as Hum Phenomenon by Tonia Ko. They present their second Midwest tour with performances at Short North Stage, Columbus, OH, with the premiere of Uneasy by Ken Thomson supported by the Johnstone Fund for New Music. Other 2019 season highlights include their second workshop with the Manhattan School of Music composition studio and second tour of the southeast visiting Georgia State University, Columbus State University, Chattanooga State Community College, and more.
Past seasons featured over 40 premieres as well as teaching and performing at universities and venues across the United States, including workshops with the Manhattan School of Music Composition Studio and University of Texas- Arlington, a guest residency at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and performances at the Art Institute of Chicago, PianoForte (Chicago), New York Electroacoustic Music Festival at National Sawdust, the Applause New Music Concert Series (Texas), the University of Louisville, Columbus State University, University of Alabama- Birmingham, and others, as well as radio features on 89.3 Montreal, 90.1 WUSB, and Clarinet Corner.