Ensemble Ipse, Culture Lab LIC, and the Tiffany Mills Company present:

New Music for Seven Violas and Dance - Featuring Choreography and Movement by the Tiffany Mills Company

Sunday June 5th, 2022, 7pm

Culture Lab LIC - 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City

Ensemble Ipse, the Tiffany Mills Company, and Culture Lab LIC are thrilled to present this unique event, featuring new commissions by Eden Lonsdale and Santa Bušs, selected through our call for proposals.

PROGRAM:

• Eden Lonsdale – “Shedding” - IPSE COMMISSION and WORLD PREMIERE

• Santa Bušs - "In qual parte del ciel..." - IPSE COMMISSION and WORLD PREMIERE

• Joseph Di Ponio - "Slowly Filling Space" - WORLD PREMIERE

• Tony Prabowo - "Doa Persembunyian - A Prayer for Refuge" for choir, arr. Griffin, *

• Stephanie Griffin - “Poem from Exile” *

Ensemble Ipse & Guest Artists:

Stephanie Griffin, Michael Davis, William Hakim, Caroline Johnston, Jeremy Kienbaum, Beth Meyers, Chieh-Fan Yiu, violas

Guest Conductor: Carl Bettendorf

*Choreography: Tiffany Mills with creative contributions from the Company

Dancers: Alex Biegelson, Tiffany Mills, Jordan Morely, Nik Owens, Emily Pope

Ensemble Ipse is a 501(c)(3) contemporary music ensemble dedicated to showcasing the wide variety of practices in the current new music scene. The ensemble presents concerts of recent music that transcends aesthetic categorization and strives to create a forum for composers and sound artists on the edges of the mainstream of contemporary music. With this in mind, Ensemble Ipse is committed to performing and commissioning the music of emerging composers, as well as composers who have been traditionally under-represented in the larger new music community, including women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+.

Since forming in 2016, Ipse has premiered 41 works, 13 of them commissions, held numerous calls for scores for emerging composers, received support from the New York State Council on the Arts, New Music USA, the Queens Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, NET/TEN, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, and released an album on New World Records in May, 2019.

ABOUT THE TIFFANY MILLS COMPANY:

Tiffany Mills and the NYC-based Tiffany Mills Company has created over 20 works performed with a “fearless sense of freedom and exhilaration” (Washington Post). The company was formed in 1995 and incorporated as a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization in 2000. Mills’ process of creation is collaborative, ensemble-based, and multidisciplinary. She collaborates to blur lines between mediums and to discover layered methods of constructing dances (drawn from partnering, improvisation, and somatic modalities).

When meaning emerges from form, Mills takes command of the work, directing the dancers and the precise shape, emotion and character of the choreography. The work often focuses on the vulnerability of being human through investigating themes of communication, connection, relationship, exposure, breakdown, and transformation. Mills celebrates differences amongst the performers. She challenges the audience to be in an active role — to participate, experience, absorb and respond.

ABOUT EDEN LONSDALE:

Eden Lonsdale is a composer from Berlin (DE). He has studied composition to postgraduate level at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) with Malcolm Singer, Cassandra Miller and Julian Anderson and at the Kunstuniversität Graz with Klaus Lang. He has also studied Just Intonation at the UdK Berlin with Marc Sabat.

Eden’s music focuses mainly on exploring the inter-connectedness of harmony and timbre. Often using very limited materials, his dense and immersive sound-worlds attempt to draw the ear into the smallest details and hope to inspire the listener’s self-guided exploration into the music’s manifold layers. For Eden composition is not a discipline of self-expression but rather a way of creating new spaces in which the multi-dimensional aspects of sound and time can be experienced freely.

He has written concert music for and with soloists such as Satoko Inoue and Heather Roche as well as ensembles including EXAUDI, Apartment House, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Orkest de Ereprijs, IPSE, Orchester im Treppenhaus and ICTUS. Upcoming projects include pieces with Roadrunner Trio, Barcelona Modern Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Recent pieces have been performed at EstOvest Festival, Blurred Edges Festival and the London Culture Mile.

Eden is also a founding member of ‘Red Panel’, a new music ensemble operating in London and Berlin.

ABOUT SANTA BUŠS:

SANTA BUŠS is Latvian composer especially interested in detailed pre-compositional process andpeculiarly in working with extra-musical ideas (found in other disciplines of art, physiology, history,mythology, nature, architecture, medicine, sports, philosophy, etc.). Although her main focus and alsoform of expression has been linked with instrumental music, lately she has discovered a deep interest invoice and its possibilities, as well as is very keen to expand her approach towards sound and compositionexploring different forms of collaboration. This includes also exploring territories between conventionaland unconventional notation and performance techniques, as well as experimenting between theboundaries of music, theatre and opera, and focusing on the physical manipulation of instruments andthe presence of musicians as a source of drama.

Santa Bušs has written for various set-ups, including wide range of chamber music, small scale stagepieces, orchestral scores, sound installations, works for choir and electronics... Her works has beenperformed throughout Europe, in Americas, Asia and Australia, including Austria (Wien Modern,Festival Zeitkl nge), Belgium (Transit Festival, ISCM World Music Days 2012), Canada (Heliconian Hall,Toronto; 21C Music Festival, Toronto), Cuba, Denmark, Estonia (Baltic Music Days / Estonian MusicDays), France, Georgia, Germany (including Gewandhaus Leipzig and festivals DonaueschingerMusiktage 2007 - The Next Generation, Usedomer Musikfestval 2010), Hong Kong (ISCM-Musicarama2015), Iceland, Italy (Villa Massimo), Latvia (including Arēna Festival, Latvia’s New Music Days, RigaFestival, White Night, etc.), Lithuania, Luxembourg (Th  tres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Rainy Days2018), Norway (Grieghallen), Sweden (Kalvfestivalen), Switzerland (including Portrait Concert inWinterthur), Slovenia (Festival Slowind 2010, etc.), South Korea (44th Pan Music Festival, ACCPerforming Arts Festivals 'Symphony for Asia'), Spain (Mixtur Festival 2013), Turkey (Bilkent ConcertHall), the UK (including Britten Studio at Aldeburgh Music and Cockpit Theatre) and the USA (includingopening concert of the IAWM Congress 2011 in Flagstaff, Arizona; IAWM Annual concert in New York,113 Collective Concert Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota, etc.).

Her music has been performed by numerous renowned artists, including  rhus Sinfonietta (Denmark),BIT20 Ensemble (Norway) and conductors Christian Karlsen and Trond Madsen, Convergence NewMusic Ensemble (Georgia / Armenia) and cond. Thomas Herzog, Divertimento Ensemble (Italy),Ensemble Aleph (France), Altera Veritas (Latvia), Ensemble Aris (South Korea), EnsembleSpectrum(Slovakia) and cond. Matej Sloboda, der/gelbe/klang (Germany) and cond. Armando Merino, UnitedInstruments of Lucilin (Luxembourg), Ensemble Kochi (Japan) and cond. Isao Matsushita, Ensemblemise-en (New York) and cond. David Bloom, Ensemble Multilat rale (France) and cond. L o Warynski,Ensemble for New Music Tallinn (Estonia), Ensemble N  (Spain), Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain(France) and cond. Daniel Kawka, Ensemble Suono Giallo (Italy), Ensemble TaG (Switzerland), HongKong New Music Ensemble (Hong Kong) and cond. Sharon Choa, IEMA (Germany) and cond. ClemensHeil, Leipziger Bl serquintett (Germany), Norrbotten NEO (Sweden), Platypus Ensemble (Austria),Quintus Anima (Latvia) and cond. Ainārs Rubiķis, Slowind (Slovenia), SNIM (Austria), Trio Art-i-Shock(Latvia), mandolinist Avi Avital and singers Carla Huhtanen, Fiona Kimm, Lori Lixenberg, pianistsDzintra Erliha, Ian Pace, Iveta Cālīte, clarnetists Victor de la Rosa and Fie Schouten, violinist MagdalēnaGeka, wind quintet Carion (Denmark), Sinfonietta Rīga (Latvia) and cond. Normunds Šnē, OrchestraRīga (Latvia), Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and cond. Zsolt Nagy and Andris Poga a.o. She hasongoig collaboration with writer and director Fxxx Bxxxxx.

Santa has studied piano and organ at Cēsis College of Music, and both composition and musicology at theLatvian Academy of Music (under Arturs Maskats and Rolands Kronlaks, master's degree in 2009) andHamburg University of Music and Theatre (under Manfred Stahnke). She has supplemented her studieswith 30+ mastercourses with renowned composers, as well as been part of the Jerwood Opera WritingProgramme (2014-15, UK), New Music Incubator (2015-16, Croatia/Belgium), Composers LAB Heritage& Modernity (2016, Egypt), ENOA/Helsinki Festival's Music Theatre Creation Lab (2016, Finland),Women Opera Makers Workshop supervised by Katie Mitchell (2016-17, organized by Festival d'Aix,France), Th  tres de la Ville de Luxembourg's TalentLAB#18 (2018), and the Central and EasternEuropean Countries Composers Field Trip in China (2018).Santa Bušs has been head of ISCM Latvian section (2013-17).

ABOUT TONY PRABOWO:

The music of Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo has captivated audiences in his own country and on the international scene.

Born in Malang, Indonesia in 1956, he studied music under the guidance of the widely acclaimed composer Slamet Abdul Syukur, and was soon recognized as one of his nation's foremost composers for his numerous collaborations with renowned choreographers, visual artists, poets, theater directors and film-makers.

His music has also been featured at prestigious international festivals in Indonesia, including Art Summit 1998 and the Sacred Rhythm Millennial Percussion Festival in Bali. In addition to his work with Western-style ensembles, he also creates unique contemporary compositions with traditional Indonesian musicians. His longest-standing collaboration of this kind is with the New Jakarta Ensemble, which he founded in 1996. This group has performed in Indonesia, England and the United States and recently released their first CD, Commonality, on Siam Records.

ABOUT STEPHANIE GRIFFIN:

Stephanie Griffin is an innovative composer and violist with an eclectic musical vision. Born in Canada and based in New York City, her musical adventures have taken her to Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Mexico and Mongolia. Stephanie founded the Momenta Quartet in 2004, is a member of the Argento Chamber Ensemble and Continuum, and serves as principal violist of the Princeton Symphony, viola faculty at Hunter College, and Executive Director of Associated Chamber Music Players. She has received composition fellowships and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Instituto Sacatar (Brazil) and the New York State Council on the Arts. As an improviser, she was the 2021 Alumnus in Residence at Music Omi and performs with numerous avant-jazz bands. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Samuel Rhodes and has recorded for Tzadik, Innova, Naxos, Aeon, New World and Albany records.

ABOUT JOSEPH DI PONIO:

Joseph Di Ponio has been built a reputation as a composer of musicthat is rich in sonic color and imagery. Drawing on contemporary ideasabout the distinction of time and temporality, his work plays on theissues of space and time as experienced by the listener.

Active in both the acoustic and electronic worlds, Di Ponio has receivedcommissions from Yarn/Wire, TimeTable Percussion, Iktus Percussion,the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, and the violinist Jubal Fulks. Hiswork has been featured on the North River Music Festival (NYC) andpresented at venues such as the Kaufman Center (NYC), the JuilliardSchool, Alice Tully Hall, and several new music festivals at institutionalvenues. His work has received awards from ASCAP, New YorkPerforming Arts Spaces, and New Music USA. He has been a composerin residence for the Accidental Music Festival, Green MountainChamber Music Festival, and was a recipient of a ConEd Composer’sResidency through Exploring the Metropolis.

Joseph received hi Ph.D. in music composition and theory from SUNYStony Brook where his primary teachers were Sheila Silver, DariaSemegen, and Daniel Weymouth.

ABOUT CULTURE LAB LIC:

“Culture Lab LIC is a 501(c)(3) formed to bring accessible highquality art of all genres to our community, and to support local artistsby providing rehearsal, performance, exhibition space, as well as arobust residency program. Culture Lab LIC is dedicated to upholding,equity, diversity and inclusion across all our platforms.

Operating out of a 12,000 square foot art center, Culture Lab LIChosts two fine art galleries, a 90 seat theatre, classroom space, andan 18,000 square foot outdoor venue, made possible by thegenerous donation of space from Plaxall Inc.

Culture LabLIC is honored to host more artsand culturalprogramming than any other organization in New York City. CultureLab LICis more than a venue, it is the heart of Long Island City.Learn more at www.culturelablic.org.”