19 May 2019
DNK Days in collaboration with Splendor presents:
Reinier van Houdt and DNK Ensemble
play works by Jordan Dykstra and Michael Pisaro
Jordan Dykstra - The Arrow Of Time
(for piano, siren, and electronics) (wp)
Michael Pisaro - Fields Have Ears (2)
(for piano and electro-acoustic ensemble)
Reinier van Houdt - piano
DNK Ensemble
Seamus Cater - quiet noise
Koen Nutters - sine tones
Martijn Tellinga - sine tones
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec - quiet noise
Sunday 19 may 2019, 16:00
at Splendor (Grote Zaal)
Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116
1011 LX Amsterdam - NL
www.splendoramsterdam.com
Description:
Young American composer Jordan Dykstra is coming to the Netherlands to work with pianist extraordinaire Reinier van Houdt on a new piece for piano, siren and electronics. DNK DAYS in collaboration with Splendor presents the World Premiere of this piece plus an extra-long version of Michael Pisaro’s masterpiece for piano, sine tones and analogue noises: Fields Have Ears(2) played by Reinier, who has extensively worked with Pisaro on several classic releases of his piano music, and the DNK ensemble.
This commission and performance was supported by a generous grant from the Netherland-America Foundation (NAF).
Bios
Jordan Dykstra (b. Sioux City, Iowa, USA, 1985) is a composer, arranger, violist, and improviser. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific conceptual, avant-garde, environmental, and graphic languages. Jordan received his undergraduate degree from CalArts where he studied with Michael Pisaro, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Ulrich Krieger, and Eyvind Kang. For his masters degree from Wesleyan University, Jordan focused on the connection between astronomy and composition, studying with Alvin Lucier, Alex Waterman, and Neely Bruce. Four years ago Jordan founded Editions Verde, a small-run publishing label for musical art objects, and in 2018 released A Known Unknown — a text and guided improv hybrid score for piano, percussion, and electronics. Recently, Mr. Dykstra has found a voice in film music and, amongst other projects, was a featured composer on Hail Satan?, a documentary film which premiered at the 2019 Sundance FIlm Festival in Park City, Utah.
Reinier van houdt started working with tape recorders, radios, objects, and various string instruments at a young age. He studied piano at the Liszt Akademie in Budapest and The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He developed a fascination for matters that escape notation: sound, timing, space, physicality, memory, noise, environment - points beyond composition, interpretation and improvisation.
He has built himself an unusual repertoire that consistently resulted from personal quests; from collaborations with composers & musicians, from research in archives, from the composing and staging of music-performances or from unorthodox studies of classical music.
Aside from his own music he premiered music by Robert Ashley, Alvin Curran, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Francisco López, Charlemagne Palestine, Yannis Kyriakides, Maria de Alvear, Jerry Hunt, Michael Pisaro, Walter Marchetti. He has also worked with John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Luc Ferrari, Peter Ablinger and Christian Marclay. Reinier van Houdt plays in Current 93, recently releasing an album with contributions by Nick Cave, John Zorn and Antony Hegarty. He is also one of the moving forces behind the experimental music collective MAZE.
He performed in such diverse venues as The Roulette & the Issue Project Room in New York, San Ildefonso Mexico City, Café Oto & Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, DOM in Moscow, Setagaya Gallery Tokyo, Paradiso Amsterdam, Apollohuis Eindhoven, the New Library in Alexandria Egypt, REDCAT & the Wulf in Los Angeles, Mills College Oakland, Non Event Boston, Kuryokhin Center in St Petersburg, Trafo Budapest, Nuits Nomadiques in Paris, Brut in Wien, HAU and Volksbühne in Berlin, Empty Gallery Hong Kong, Tramway Glasgow and Klangraum Düsseldorf. Appearances in festivals CTM Berlin, Meltdown London, Angelica Bologna, Holland Festival, Warsaw Autumn, Incubate Tilburg, UNSOUND Poland, Primavera Barcelona, November Music Den Bosch, and many others.
Michael Pisaro was born in Buffalo in 1961.
He is a composer and guitarist, a member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble and founder and director of the Experimental Music Workshop, Calarts.
His work is frequently performed in the U.S. and in Europe, in music festivals and in many smaller venues.
It has been selected twice by the ISCM jury for performance at World Music Days festivals (Copenhagen,1996; Manchester, 1998) and has also been part of festivals in Hong Kong (ICMC, 1998), Vienna (Wien Modern,1997), Aspen (1991), London (Cutting Edge, 2007), Glasgow (INSTAL 2009), Huddersfield (2009), Chicago (New Music Chicago, 1990, 1991) and elsewhere.
He has had extended composer residencies in Germany (Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Dortmund University), Switzerland (Forumclaque/Baden), Israel (Miskenot Sha'ananmim), Greece (EarTalk) and in the U.S. (Birch Creek Music Festival, Wisconsin).
Concert length portraits of his music have been given in Munich, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Vienna, Merano (Italy), Brussels, New York, Curitiba (Brazil), Amsterdam, London, Tokyo, Austin, Berlin, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Zürich, Cologne, Aarau (Switzerland), and elsewhere.
He is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2005 and 2006 Grant Recipient.
Most of his music of the last several years is published by Edition Wandelweiser (Germany).
Several CDs of his work have been released by such labels as Edition Wandelweiser Records, Compost and Height, confront, Another Timbre, Cathnor, Nine Winds and others, including most recently "transparent city, volumes 1–4", "an unrhymed chord”, "hearing metal 1”, "A Wave and Waves” and "harmony series (11–16)".
His translation of poetry by Oswald Egger ("Room of Rumor") was published in 2004 by Green Integer. He is Co-Chair of Music Composition at the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles.
He has performed many of his own works and those of close associates Antoine Beuger, Kunsu Shim, Jürg Frey and Manfred Werder, and works from the experimental tradition, especially John Cage, Christian Wolff, James Tenney and George Brecht.
DNK Ensemble
The DNK-ensemble is an ever changing flexible group of multi disciplinary performers brought together by DNK-Amsterdam, changing according to the requirements of specific projects. DNK-ensemble has worked with Reinier van Houdt, James Beckett, Riley Harmon, Morten J. Olsen, Jeff Carey, Bea McMahon, Sara Campos.
DNK-ensemble's working method is based on a collaborative composition process where different performative, musical, textual and visual material is thrown into a melting pot made up of mutable timeframes and spatial and aural dynamics. By arranging in time and space, equating sound, object and action and letting go of the singular compositional ego, the material can be influenced by the collaboration with new logics being discovered in the dynamic of the pack.
Besides producing original work, the DNK-ensemble aims to re-install revolutionary but somewhat forgotten sound art and performance works that have shifted perception of performance and music as such. Past performances of the DNK-ensemble include works by Cornelius Cardew, Anthony McCall, Dick Raaijmakers, Antoine Beuger and David Tudor.