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Contact: Tamar Fortgang
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Morton Subotnick and Tony Martin Debut

Musical Explorations Series at REDCAT

November 19
7:30 pm and 9:30 pm
Tickets: $24 general admission

Los Angeles, October 28 - Electronic and computer music pioneer Morton Subotnick is joined by painter and visual performer Tony Martin to inaugurate the Musical Explorations series at CalArts' REDCAT performance space and gallery. General admission tickets are $24 and can be purchased at the REDCAT box office located on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles, by phone at 213-237-2800 or via www.redcat.org.

Performances are based on four compositions by Subotnick that span over thirty years of his career, Sidewinder (1970, rev. 2003), Until Spring (1976, rev. 2003), The Wind (from the Gestures series, 2003) and Whisper (from the Gestures series, 2003). Sidewinder and Until Spring were released in the year of their completion on Columbia Masterworks as stereo recordings. This presentation is a re-working of the two works, performed on two laptop computers by Subotnick. A live visual score by Tony Martin will accompany Sidewinder. The Wind is a new work that is based on a poem ("The Wind") by Melody Sumner Carnahan. A recording of Joan La Barbara reading the 24 phrases of the poem is the source material from which the score was created. Subotnick will use two software applications on his laptops: Isadora created by Mark Coniglio and a custom application created to his specifications by Hunter Ochs.

The performance is presented in surround-sound and will fully employ the unique spatial properties of REDCAT's advanced sound systems.

Visual artist Martin will incorporate a variety of techniques while interacting in real time with Subotnick's music. Liquids, dry ingredients, handmade and photographic slides and film collages will be projected throughout the theater space. Visual sequences are built from the development of mark making, erasure, accumulation and dispersal of light in changing spaces.

One of the founders of CalArts School of Music, where he currently holds the Mel Powell Chair in Composition, Morton Subotnick has been a true innovator in working with interactive computer music systems. He is one of the acknowledged pioneers in the field of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. He was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for the phonograph medium, Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967). This now classic work and The Wild Bull (also an electronic commission for Nonesuch, 1968) have been choreographed by leading dance companies throughout the world and remain in permanent repertory.

In addition to composing numerous works in the electronic medium, Subotnick has written eight works for orchestra (including a Bicentennial commission played by the six major U.S. orchestras), chamber and ensemble works (including The Fluttering of Wings premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet) and music for the theatre and multi-media events. The Double Life of Amphibians was a collaboration between director Lee Breuer, visual artist Irving Petlin and composer Subotnick utilizing live interaction between singers, instrumentalists and computer in a staged tone poem, premiered at the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival. A chamber version of that piece was premiered in Santa Fe, N.M. Jacob's Room is a monodrama composed for the Kronos Quartet and Joan La Barbara, which received its premiere in San Francisco. A Key To Songs (based on Max Ernst's surrealistic novel in collage titled Une Semaine de Bonte) for chamber orchestra and synthesizer was premiered at the Aspen Music Festival. Hungers, for Joan La Barbara, computers, video, instrumental ensemble and dancer, was completed in collaboration with video artist Ed Emshwiller and commissioned by and premiered at the Los Angeles Festival.

Subotnick's interest in inspiring children to learn music led him to develop several CD-ROMs and a web site (www.creatingmusic.com). Subotnick tours extensively as a lecturer and composer/performer, and is published by Theodore Presser, Universal Editions and Editions Jobert. Tony Martin's "paintings in time" are legendary. His visual compositions were performed and exhibited in the 1960s and '70s across the country, often seen in collaboration with the new music composers working at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. He created the light system for the Experiments In Art & Technology Pavilion at Expo '70, Osaka, Japan. The shows of viewer participational sculptures and installations such as The Well; You, Me, We and Game Room at the Howard Wise Gallery were groundbreaking in their incorporation of the psychology and aesthetics of the viewer as a direct and necessary part of the art "object." He was awarded an NEA grant to develop the Vector Image Wall, a constantly evolving electronically produced drawing made of spatial and moving lines of light which was shown at PS 1, NYC. A Web-based work Galaxy, commissioned by Electronic Arts Intermix, is presented at www.eai.org. A visual poem in a digital video projection format, Over Under Across, was recently exhibited at Eyebeam, NYC; and Sideshow Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His works have been shown at SFMOA, LACMA, Whitney Museum of Art, and Chicago ICA, and many universities and galleries. A comprehensive overview of Martin's work and career as painter and new media artist can be seen at www.tonymartin.us.

The Musical Explorations Series at REDCAT is an expanded, yearlong version of the annual festival presented by CalArts' School of Music. Offering a rich variety of creative performances, the series features interactive computer-based music and electronica, contemporary and traditional chamber music, improvisation, jazz, world music and, in particular, unique and surprising intercultural collaborations. Funded by Robert B. Egelston and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation