Etude XII "Imitations-Dialogues"

Like Debussy, Ohana composed two books of Etudes for piano, the last both beeing for piano and percussion.

The roots of this lively Etude gladly draws from the Afro-Cuban rhythms, Negro-spiritualist melodic figures or the improvised breaks of the American jazz music. As the plural of the title indicates (Imitations-Dialogues) the instrumental connivance is many-sided: from the sometimes freely accompanied monologue tone absolute dialogue for the deaf by using the interchangeable instruments.

"Ohana takes advantage of the effect of mimetism and acoustic deceit caused by the approximate nature of the aural memory, so as to make us forget at times that the piano is an instrument with tempared pitch, whereas at least some of the skinned percussions are not." wrote the musicolog Harry Halbreich.

Music For Joan

This short piece was written in 1988 to honour my friend, the great painter Joan Mitchell, on the occasion of a national retrospenctive of her work, which started in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1988.

Born in Paris in 1926, Betsy Jolas is the daughter of translator Maria Jolas and poet and journalist Eug�ne Jolas, founder of the well known literary magazine "transition", in which the "Finnegans Wake" of James Joyce was published under the heading "work in progress". She came to the U.S. in 1940, completed her general schooling, then started studying composition with Paul Boepple, piano with Helen Schnabel and organ with Carl Weinrich.

After graduating from Bennington College, Betsy Jolas returned to Paris in 1946 to continue her studies with Darius Milhaud, Simone Pl�-Caussade and Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire National Sup�rieur de Musique of Paris.

Prize winner of the International Conducting Competition of Besan�on (1953), she has since won many awards, including Copley Foundation of Chicago (1954), ORTF (1961), American Academy of Arts (1973), Koussevitsky Fondation (1974), Grand Prix National de la Musique (1974), Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1981), Grand Prix de la SACEM (1982). Betsy Jolas became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983.

In 1985 she was promoted to Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1992 she received the Maurice Ravel Prix International and was named "Personality of the Year" for France. In 1994 she was awarded the Prix SACEM for the best premi�re performance of the year for her work "Frauenleben". She was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and made Chevalier de la L�gion d'Honneur in 1997.From 1971 to 1974 Betsy Jolas replaced Olivier Messiaen at his course at the Conservatoire National Sup�rieur de Musique of Paris and was appointed to the faculty in 1975.

She has also taught at Tanglewood, Yale, Harvard, Mills College (Darius Milhaud chair), Berkeley, USC and San Diego University, to name a few.Her works, written for a great variety of combinations, have been Widely performed throughout the world by first class artists such as Elisabeth Chojnacka, Kent Nagano, William Christie, Claude Helffer, Kim Kashkashian... and by leading groups : The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the) Concord Quartet, the Domaine Musical, the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Philharmonia, etc. Twelve of her works have been recorded for EMI, Ad�s, CRI, Erato, Barclay, several of which have been the recipients of grand prize gramophone awards.

Al Furioso

Piano, and Percussion, an exciting Pair! Suppleness, dynamic possibilities, Virtuosity, sound colors richness, soft or percussive, all is present there. One Eldorado for one Composer !

Dialog Imaginär

Professor Georg Katzer, born in 1935 in Habelschwerdt, Silesia, studied composing under the instruction of Rudolf Wagner-Regeny and Ruth Zechlin. In addtition to that he studied the piano in Berlin (East) and at the academy of musical arts in Prague. After that he was a student in a master class of Hanns Eisler at the academy of arts of the GDR, a member of which he was elected in 1978. In connection with a master class he was appointed professor of composing.

In 1982 he founded the studio of electro-acoustic music. Since 1963 Georg Katzer has lived as a freelance composer in and around Berlin. He is a member of the academy of arts of Berlin-Brandenburg, the Freie Akademie Leipzig and the academy of electro-acoustic music in Bourges / France. In spring 1990 he was elected President of the Musical Council of the GDR. Since Germany's re-unification he has been a member of the committee of the German Mucical Council. In 1992 he was a guest of honour in Villa Massimo in Rome. In addition to his work as a composer (chamber music, orchestral works, solo concerts, three operas, two ballets, puppet shows) Georg Katzer is also engaged in computer music, multimedia-projects and improvisation. On tours across Europe he played - among others - together with Johannes Bauer, Wolfgang Fuchs, Paul Lytten, Radu Malfatti, Phil Minton, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowski and Phil Wachsman. He was awarded several prizes for composing and other honours in the GDR, Switzerland, France, in the USA and repeatedly in the Federal Republic of Germany. Apart from music his main interests are art, literature and languages.

Soundstates

SoundStates explores the 3 states of matter (gas, liquid and solid) and their transformations into one another. This flowing from one sound state to the other forms the basis of the structure of the piece, to reflect a similar process in the spontaneous changes in nature. The piece begins with solid, block-like sounds which gradually disintegrate; it ends with a succession of rising, more atmospheric sounds, with a return to elements of the original material. The source sounds were mostly drawn from the marimba and were digitally processed in the CLM (Common Lisp Music) environment.

Ching-Wen Chao is currently appointed Assistant Professor in the Music Department of the National Taiwan Normal University. She lectured at Stanford University in 2002-03. She received her DMA in composition at Stanford University, where she studied with Jonathan Harvey, Brian Ferneyhough and Chris Chafe. She was also committed to her research and composition of electronic music at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Recent awards include the First Prize of the Young Composers Competition of the Asian Composers League, and the First Prize of the Music Taipei Composition Competition, 2005 Arts Award in Taiwan, the First Prize of the 2003 Fanfare Composition Competition held by the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, and the fellowship recipient of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Founation Fellowship in Humanities. Her works have been premiered in various music festivals such as the 60th Congress of the Institut fuer Neue Musik und Musikerziehung in Darmstadt, Dresdner Tage Fuer Zeitgenoessische Musik, Festival des 38�me Rugissants, Festival of the GMEM, Colon Electronico Festival, 2004 Contemporary Clarinet Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, International Computer Music Conference(ICMC), Music99 Festival and Courses, etc. In recent years she has collaborated with world-renowned new-music ensembles such as the Arditti String Quartet, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble On_line Vienna, California EAR Unit, St. Lawrence String Quartet, VOXNOVA, EARPLAY, Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan Wind Ensemble, as well as performers as Pi-Hsien Chen, members of the Eighth Blackbird, of the CALARTS ensemble and of Ju Percussion Ensemble. Her works have been performed in various music festivals and electronic music centers in major cities of Canada, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and US.

Phonic Streams

commissioned by the French Government.

Streams of sound for our ears in the main idea of this work. Continuous streams, diverging, meeting, finding accidents that slow or speed up the flow.

Fluidity and flexibility is the second idea; for instruments that produce the sounds - drops of sound - they must be molded together to create a mass and allow them to develop. Recorded sounds - the magnetic tape of yesteryears- this is the bed of streams, the convector that orients the evolution and places the traps and turning points.

Fluid and flexible streams the way they are done by Ancuza Aprodu and Thierry Miroglio who take the journey through this work by exploring all its recesses.

Daniel Teruggi studied composition and piano in Argentina. In 1977 he came to France and studied at the Paris Conservatory in the Department of Electroacoustic Composition and Musical Research. In1981, he is became member of the Ina-GRM ( Groupe de Recherches Musicales ) where he was in charge of the pedagogy of digital systems for composers, and then became Artistic Director of the Group.

Director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales since 1997, he is actually Research Director in the INA.

His particular field of interest is the relation between composers, with their concerns regarding creation, and the research and development of new tools that will integrate new demands and enlarge the domain of conceps applied to electro-acoustic composition.

Teruggi composes music for fixed media (tape), small instrumental groups and tape, or real-time processing of instruments. His music has been recorded on European and American labels and he has written several articles on acousmatic music and on sound projection. In 1998 he obtained a PhD in Art and Technology at the Paris VIII University. He teaches Sound and Visual Arts at the Paris I Sorbonne University and directs a seminar on new technology at the Paris IV University.