2015
February 2015
3 SoSCC sponsors a performance of Timber composed by Michael Gordon, and presented by NOVA chamber music series and percussionists of the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City, Utah. Timber is a meditation on sound and rhythm, bringing the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. In a unique intermission “Percussion Discussion”, SoSCC founder Glenn Prestwich interviews percussionists Keith Carrick and Eric Hopkins in order to better understand the connections between the chemistry and biology of wood and the techniques that percussionists use produce a varied palette of sounds.
12 SoSCC attends the musical premiere of Libby Larsen’s work for string quartet as performed by the Fry Street Quartet with Professor Robert (Rob) Davies, at the Caine Performance Hall in Logan, Utah. SoSCC will help co-sponsor the expansion of this next generation of the Crossroads Project, known as Emergence, which will comprise art, music, and the spoken word to highlight personal involvement with global sustainability.
September 2015
22 SoSCC is sponsoring the creation of the video component of Crossroads/Emergence, the next chapter of the Crossroads Project, premiering in its full context with music, script, and imagery at the Caine Performance Hall in Logan, Utah. Libby Larsen’s work for string quartet will be performed by the Fry Street Quartet with script by Rob Davies, performed by actor Robert Scott Smith, and featuring video projections by Conor Provenzano. Crossroads: Emergence joins Crossroads: Rising Tide as the second chapter in a growing collection of performances bringing the power of performance art to bear on the social science of human systems and global sustainability. See blog for news and photographs.
November 2015
6-7 SoSCC is a contributing co-commissioner to a new percussion concerto, Switch, composed by Andrew Norman and premiered by percussion soloist Colin Currie and the Utah Symphony in its Masterworks series. SoSCC founder Glenn Prestwich will interview Andrew in a pre-concert lecture, moderated by the symphony’s VP for artistic planning Toby Tolokan, in order to help the audience understand the composer’s concept for the piece (Switch is a “game of control”). We’ll explore scientific analogies and metaphors related to this game of control, and we’ll discuss and play excerpts from the score to provide the audience with milestones and a roadmap to navigate their experience of listening and observing the first performance of a new work. Please see the blog for news and photographs.
December 2015
4-5 SoSCC is a contributing co-commissioner for Control: Five Landscapes for Orchestra, an orchestral work by Nico Muhly, with videography by Josh Higgason. Inspired by the beauty of southern Utah’s iconic landscapes experienced by Nico during the Utah Symphony’s Mighty Five Tour in Summer 2015, Control will be premiered by the Utah Symphony in its fall Masterworks series. SoSCC founder Glenn Prestwich will interview Nico and Josh in a pre-concert lecture, with the goal of providing the audience with a sonic roadmap as well as a framework to understand the geology, meteorology, chemistry, and biology that created the remarkable structures, shapes, and colors of these landscapes. For more information, please listen to the live interviews on KSL5 with Nico Muhly, Josh Higgason, Thierry Fischer, and Glenn Prestwich.
2016
April 2016
29 Andrew Norman’s Switch, co-commissioned by SoSCC, had its New York City premiere by the Utah Symphony performing at Carnegie Hall.
October 2016
8 SoSCC has commissioned Reaction Yield, an innovative work about synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry to be composed and performed by Third Coast Percussion in association with the exciting Ear Taxi New Music Festival in Chicago from October 5-10, 2016. Reaction Yield draws the analogy between the creation of a new composition of music from motif building blocks of tones, aural colors, rhythms, dynamics, and tempi with the process of creating a new composition of matter using a chemical catalog of molecules and a synthetic strategy. Please check out the workshopping video in June 2016 with Glenn preparing videos and stills of TCP composers David Skidmore, Rob Dillon, Sean Connors, and Peter Martin hard at work (and play!). More information is available in the News section, with photographs, video, and audio files. Meanwhile, you can enjoy a live performance of Reaction Yield by clicking the link.
You can now read and see more about this premiere, which took place on Saturday evening, October 8, 2016 in the Harris Theatre in Chicago. The performance of Reaction Yield by Third Coast Percussion was acclaimed as a highlight of the Ear Taxi New Music Festival ! Check out the great articles about the premiere from the Chicago Tribune review and the Chicago Classical Music Review! More information will soon be posted in the blog section, with photographs, video, and audio files.
2017
April 2017
30 SoSCC commissioned a work titled Negative Expanse by UC Berkeley composer Jon Kulpa and performed by the Friction Quartet.Themed on the dramatic orbiting and “descent” into a black hole, then collapse to a quantum singularity, this piece was been created for installation/performance in science venues, planetariums and other suitable spaces. Negative Expanse was premiered by the Friction Quartet in combination with an electronically interactive sound system in UC Berkeley’s Hearst Memorial Mining Building as part of an astronomically-themed program entitled Spaced Out. The live performance was recorded and can be seen and heard here.
2019
February 2019
1 SoSCC co-commissioned Scar Tissue by Vancouver, BC-based composer Jeffery Ryan, with librettist and Giller-prize winning novelist and poet Michael Redhill. The premiere of Scar Tissue, in Ottawa, ON, Canada at the Ottawa Chamber Fest Concert Series was performed by the iconic Canadian piano trio, the Gryphon Trio, in collaboration with the world-reknowned vocal ensemble Nordic Voices. Themed on the concept of disturbance, recovery, and the role of relict structures in the recovery process, this piece captures in 9 movements how systems recover from devastating events and the establishment of a new normal. In human wound healing, in refugee crises, in weather disasters, in financial crashes, in rainforest deforestation, in accidents changing traffic flow, and in family transitions of death or divorce, the cycle of recovery is slow and never quite gets back to the original starting place.
2020
October 2020
25 SoSCC co-sponsored the October 25, 2020 NOVA premiere of the film version of Crossroads Rising Tide, composed by Laura Kaminsky and performed by the Fry Street Quartet and narrated by physicist Rob Davies. Energizing communities to live a more sustainable lifestyle is the cornerstone for maintaining a heathy biosphere that sustains us all.
2021
August 2021
8 SoSCC provided support for the BBC Proms 2021 commission to Augusta Read Thomas for her new work entitled “Dance Foldings (for orchestra).” The world premiere by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the Royal Albert Hall, London, UK, captures the process of protein synthesis (primary structure) and protein folding (secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure). Importantly to this timeframe, Dance Foldings takes inspiration from the biological ‘ballet’ of proteins that a vaccine activates within the human body. More information, including program notes, creative mapping, and the scientific underpinnings, can be found in the News section.