Performance Event || NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists – June 26, 2011

source: nyfa.org

On Sunday, June 26th – 9pm, the NYFA will host a performance as part of their 2011 Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists. The event will take place at Galapagos Art Space – Brooklyn, NY and will feature compositions by Neil Rolnick and the Iktus Percussion Quartet, with original work by Vivian Fung, Inhyun Kim and Masataka Odaka. This occasion will be free and open to the public.

About the Compositions

- As featured on the NYFA website

Neil Rolnick, 2011 Mentor and NYFA Fellow in Music Composition

MONO is a series of twelve musical meditations on the fragility of perception and our ability to adjust to changes in our perceptual abilities. On March 31, 2008, Neil Rolnick lost all hearing in his left ear. With only one ear, he now hears the world monophonically. To find out if his loss of perception is unique, he asked friends and colleagues if they experienced similar changes to their perceptions of the world through their five senses. What he found was a flood of people who identify one of their five senses as impaired. Rolnick compiled some of these stories into the music and media performance, MONO. The MONO Prelude, a foretaste of the larger work, describes his experience in the initial few weeks after discovering and adjusting to the change in his hearing. Unlike the larger piece, which involves instruments, singers and various media, MONO Prelude is a performance solely by Rolnick which involves talking to the audience and controlling a laptop that modulates his voice. For more on Rolnick’s work and his bio, please visit his website here.

Vivian Fung, 2011 Mentor and NYFA Fellow in Music Composition

Chanted Rituals is a musical composition of three movements played without pause. The essence of this piece relates to the act of chanting, whether in a dance, a prayer or a chase. The trumpet in this work is the central instrument to deliver each chant, and the percussion provides rhythmic and melodic support for it. The first movement, Dance, is inspired by jazz and rock. The second movement, Prayer, uses flugelhorn as the basis for stating the melody and is inspired by chants heard in Buddhist temples. Chase, the last movement, drives the work to a fast and energetic close through use of constant repeated notes and changing meters. For more on Vivian Fung’s work and her bio, please visit http://www.vivianfung.net/.

For full event details, further composition information and participant bios, please visit:

New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).