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Princeton Sound Kitchen presents Composing for Improvisers Concert
Presented by Princeton Sound Kitchen
date & time
Tue, Feb 6, 2024
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
ticketing
Free, unticketed
- This event has passed.
Princeton University students in the MUS 541 Seminar ‘Composing for Improvisers,’ together with course instructor and faculty member Dmitri Tymoczko, present new works for an improvising ensemble that features some of New York City’s finest improvisers: Wendy Eisenberg, guitar and voice, Russell Greenberg, percussion and voice, yuniya edi kwon, violin and voice, Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone, Lester St. Louis, cello and voice, and Nate Wooley, trumpet. New works by Dai Wei, Francisco del Pino, Travis Laplante, Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh, Isaac Santos, Dmitri Tymoczko and Max Vinetz.
Program
Max Vinetz interwoven interstices
Francisco del Pino Mantra
Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh Full Moon Child
Dai Wei Parnassius
Travis Laplante 3-1-0
Isaac Santos counterculture
Dmitri Tymoczko Glimmer
About PSK
A lab for Princeton University composers to collaborate with today’s finest performers and ensembles, Princeton Sound Kitchen is a vital forum for the creation of new music. Serving the graduate student and faculty composers of the renowned composition program at the Department of Music at Princeton University, PSK presents a wide variety of concerts and events throughout the year.
Program Notes
Dai Wei
Parnassius
Dai Wei, voice
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Each Parnassius (Snow Apollo butterfly), in the form of larva or pupa, has survived sub-zero temperatures among the mountains at thousands of meters above sea level, going from one mountain to another. Despite the extreme climatic conditions that the Parnassius needs to endure in order to grow, its tiny body dances to its heart’s content on the tops of snow- covered mountains with a pair of large, powerful wings
We must have experienced the winter of life to varying degrees. I have spent a few years battling illness and now aspire to regain my normal singing abilities. As I write these words, I am actively combating the anesthesia’s side effects from surgery. It is my hope that this work, like the warmth that Parnassius exudes in the bitter cold, will bring us hope, shelter and courage. Travis, Nate, edi, Lester, Wendy, and Russell, I am deeply grateful to each one of you and to the opportunity that brought us together to create this work. Heartfelt thanks to Dmitri and Travis for making this happen.
Francisco del Pino
Mantra
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, voice and electric guitar
Francisco del Pino, electric guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
We’ll gather together around a bygone tune, and build a moment for us to share inner memories, and join in a spirit of ceremony and remembrance.
Travis Laplante
3-1-0
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
The title 3-1-0 is short for “three (the many) becoming one (unity) becoming zero (non- being).” This process of transformation is the inspiration for the composition.
The piece begins with the ensemble divided into three duets (Edi/Lester, Nate/Travis, Wendy/Russell) representing “3.” Eventually the duets cross-pollinate, transforming the inner relationships of the ensemble. The dissolution of pre-existing individuality is pushed further when the entire ensemble is called to arrive at a unison “D.” This leg of the musical journey represents “3” becoming “1,” a process of unification that brings the ensemble together as a single instrument.
The unity of the ensemble brings forth a period of passionate harmony. However, this period cannot be sustained after a more destructive and dense musical force takes over. The ensemble falls apart, but does not revert to a place of separateness. Instead, silence emerges and sound itself becomes less and less relevant. The players’ roles shift from sound makers to preparers of silence. This represents “1” becoming “0,” a process of the ensemble emptying itself of sound to experience a collective silence.
A heart-felt thank you to edi, Lester, Nate, Wendy, and Russell for being so generous in bringing this music to life.
Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh
Full Moon Child
Music by Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh Text by Soom
Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum
Soom, gayageum
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin and voice
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Weaving threads of Soom’s personal journey, this musical collaboration transcends her personal space. We—Soo Yeon, edi, Soom, and the ensemble—sonically paint her escape from the social and cultural constraints, symbolized through the concept of the full moon. According to this symbolism, a baby born on the day of the full moon is traditionally expected to be a boy, analogous to the moon with its full energy, which we use to portray her breaking free and embracing a freer true self. This isn’t just her story; it’s our collective dance beyond binaries—man vs. woman, masculine vs. feminine, good or bad, etc.—defying rigid narratives with improvised whispers and shared musical breaths. Join us as we celebrate being “humans.”
Isaac Santos
counterculture
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin and voice
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Isaac Santos, piano
Russell Greenberg, percussion
In meeting and getting to know the performers involved in this program, I realized that each of them have adopted unique techniques and practices on their instruments; often in direct opposition to tradition, while still embracing said tradition in unconventional ways. Hence the title, counterculture.
I wanted to capture each of their individual personalities and playing styles, in addition to blurring the lines between the familiar and uncanny.
I am deeply grateful for Travis Laplante, Dmitri Tymoczko, and all the performers involved for being so kind and gracious during our collaboration. I have learned a great deal from being able to work with them.
Dmitri Tymoczko
Glimmer
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Dmitri Tymoczko, keyboard
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Glimmer is the latest installment of an ongoing project in spontaneously coordinated improvisation. Typically, I play on a keyboard which transmits musical notation to performers iPads in real time, allowing for music that is both spontaneous and coordinated. Performers can also send cues to one another by touching buttons on their iPads. Sometimes we have projected the iPad display on screens so that the audience can follow along; tonight, however, we will have live video by Liam Elliot.
Max Vinetz
interwoven interstices
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
At its core, interwoven interstices is a study of the instrumental technique of “decoupling.” For an instrument, decoupling involves separating roles that are traditionally used in conjunction with one another. For instance, a cello traditionally produces sound by bowing a string with the right hand and fingering a pitch with the left hand. A saxophone traditionally produces sound with a combination of air production / embouchure and fingering keys on the instrument. Decoupling, as a process, treats these parameters independently, individually. An example would include a cello playing a fast repetitive figure, and changing the right hand technique independent of the left hand technique. While the left hand continues to finger pitches quickly, the right hand may explore a variety of bow positions and bow pressures, exploring methods of sound production that are independent of the left hand’s activity. The right hand could even lift the bow altogether, leaving behind a quiet, delicate fluttering texture in which the cellist’s left hand is the sole sound-producing force.
Utilizing decoupling as both an instrumental technique and a musical process, interwoven interstices generates its material by exploring decoupling techniques from the saxophone and asks the rest of the ensemble to translate its techniques into their own manner of playing. Sometimes, this asking is quite literal. Other times, I have provided notation in which I have reimagined the saxophone’s decoupling in terms of another instrument’s playing.
On the subject of composing for improvisers, I often take issue with composers claiming complete authorship over the sound that virtuoso improvising performers have spent decades cultivating. It is my belief that despite the instructions that we composers provide (through text, notation, graphics, etc), it is ultimately the performers who give the piece everything. Their performance is not a representation of the score: it is the piece. With this in mind, I would like to thank Travis, Nate, Wendy, Russell, edi, and Lester for bringing their creative energy to this work and giving it a heartbeat that simply couldn’t exist on the page alone.
About
Dai Wei is a composer and vocalist whose musical journey navigates in the spaces between east and west, classical and pop, electronic and acoustic, innovation and tradition. She often draws from eastern philosophy and aesthetics to create works with contemporary resonance, and reflects an introspection on how these multidimensional conflicts and tension can create and inhabit worlds of their own. Being an experimental vocalist, she performs herself as a Khoomei throat singer in her recent compositions, through which are filtered by different experiences and backgrounds as a calling that transcends genres, races, and labels. She was featured in The Washington Post’s “22 for 22’: Composers and Performers to Watch this year.” Described as “impassioned” by The New York Times, “with a striking humanity” by The Washington Post, and “incredibly creative and dynamic” by the Utah Symphony Orchestra, her music has received commissions and performances by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, and Aizuri String Quartet. Recent projects include new works for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra West Coast Tour, and Carnegie Hall Link Up program.
Francisco del Pino is a Buenos Aires-born composer and guitarist with an affinity for music that is meticulous, expressive, and patient. Drawing influence from both classical and vernacular traditions, his work revolves around process and pattern and is usually characterized by an extensive use of counterpoint. Francisco’s debut album Decir, a song cycle on texts by Argentinian poet Victoria Cóccaro, was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2021. His music has been described as of “sheer beauty” (Bandcamp Daily), “lucid, entrancing” (I CARE IF YOU LISTEN), and “ethereal, yet heavy, distinguished, yet humble—and always beautiful” (Classical Post). Francisco is a PhD candidate in the Music Department and a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities.
Over the last five years or so Wendy Eisenberg has been keeping listeners guessing. Nominally an improvising guitarist, they don’t recognize any musical limitations, perpetually finding ways to apply a deeply exploratory practice to a wide variety of contexts. Eisenberg plays solo guitar as well as banjo in both acoustic and electric settings, warped post-punk songs in the trio Editrix, delicately dangerous guitar music in the critically acclaimed Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, febrile post-Prime Time free jazz in Strictly Missionary, and punk-prog in a trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith. As Eisenberg told fellow guitarist Nick Millevoi in an interview for Premier Guitar in 2021, “I need to be in a punk band at the same time as I need to be playing free improv at the same time as I need to be playing songs. All at the same time—otherwise none of the practices will work for me.” Their musical range isn’t a glib manifestation of eclecticism, but a genuine artistic essence. Eisenberg has collaborated with a disparate array of musicians from all points along the creative music spectrum, including Bill Orcutt, Allison Miller, Shane Parish, Francisco Mela, Carla Kihlstedt, John Zorn, and Caroline Davis. They have released music on Tzadik, VDSQ, Ba Da Bing! Records, Garden Portal, Feeding Tube, Out of Your Head, and Dear Life Records, and performed everywhere from intimate basements to international festivals including Moers, Le Guess Who? and Big Ears.
New York-based percussionist Russell Greenberg enjoys exploring creative and unclassifiable music that lives between styles and works to share his love for musical experiences with audiences worldwide. As a founding member of the piano and percussion quartet, Yarn/Wire, Russell has collaborated with many leading composers including Annea Lockwood, Øyvind Torvund, and Tyshawn Sorey to craft a body of new, wide-reaching and varied music. He has also been an active collaborator with a number of artists and ensembles including Nate Wooley, Either/OR, Wet Ink Large Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and others. In addition to his work with leading contemporary music ensembles, Russell enjoys touring and recording with bands such as Seaven Teares, Kayo Dot, and Hi Red Center. Russell received degrees in music from the University of California at Berkeley and Stony Brook University and is currently head of percussion studies at SUNY Purchase College.
yuniya edi kwon (also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space and lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres and inflections, textures and movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, Holland Andrews, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music / Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow.
Travis Laplante is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist. Laplante leads the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance, as well as Subtle Degrees, his duo with drummer Gerald Cleaver. Recently, Laplante has composed long-form works for new music ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and the ~Nois Saxophone Quartet. Laplante is also known for his raw solo saxophone concerts and being a member of the avant-garde quartet Little Women. He has performed and / or recorded with Tyshawn Sorey, Caroline Shaw, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, Sō Percussion, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, International Contemporary Ensemble, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Darius Jones, Mat Maneri, Julia Bullock, and Matt Mitchell, among others. Laplante has released 12 critically acclaimed albums as a leader or co-leader on New Amsterdam Records, Aum Fidelity, Skirl, Tripticks Tapes, Out of Your Head Records, and NNA Tapes. Laplante has toured his music extensively and has appeared at many major international festivals such as The Moers Festival (Germany), Jazz Jantar (Poland), Saalfelden (Austria), Jazz em Agosto (Portugal), Earshot (Seattle), Hopscotch (North Carolina), and the NYC Winter JazzFest. As a composer, Laplante has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), the JACK Quartet, Roulette Intermedium, Yarn/Wire, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the MATA festival, and The Jerome Foundation.
Soo Yeon Lyuh is a composer, improviser, and master of the haegeum, a two-stringed Korean bowed instrument. Hailing from Daegu, South Korea by way of Princeton, New Jersey, Lyuh draws inspiration from traditional Korean music to perform a meld of improvisatory and experimental sounds. She is currently pursuing her second PhD in composition at Princeton University, after receiving the first doctorate in Korean music at Seoul National University. As a performer, Lyuh possesses flawless technique and a full command of the haegeum’s traditional repertoire. For twelve years, she was a member of South Korea’s National Gugak Center, which traces its roots to the 7th Century Shilla Dynasty and is Korea’s foremost institution for the preservation of traditional music. To weave authentic styles into new musical domains, Lyuh relocated in 2015 to the San Francisco Bay Area and drew inspiration from its dynamic improvised music scene. In 2017, she was invited to collaborate in a series of concerts with the Kronos Quartet, and this work set her on the path of becoming a composer. As a composer, Lyuh asks classically trained performers to think outside the box, drawing out fresh sounds that, once understood, sound organic. Although these sounds are uneasy to visualize with notation, Lyuh can communicate a lot of them and often demonstrates the parts by joining and performing with the ensemble. Ultimately, Lyuh is all about making a bridge between cultures across borders, and breaking down any walls.
Lester St. Louis is a New York-born and -based composer, improviser, cellist, sound designer, and curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research, and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially; ecstatic sound worlds, flow and interaction. He has performed internationally throughout the United States, the European Union, Canada, China, and South America.He collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams (under the moniker HxH), Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Pheroan Aklaff, Superblue, ICE, Speaker Music, Terence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as JACK Quartet, RAGE Thormbones, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble, among others.
Isaac Santos is a composer of contemporary concert music based in New Jersey and originally from Broward County, Florida. Much of Isaac’s current output is inspired by visual art, nature, and everyday life. Through his compositions, he aspires to create deeply affective music that engages introspectively with some of our most deep and poignant emotions.
Soom is an experimental musician, composer, visual artist, and writer who prompts audiences to ponder existence within the essence of daily life. She draws her inspiration from philosophy, psychology, science, storytelling with a deep-rooted belief in the transformative healing power of the arts. She has written works influenced by Korean folk traditions, Indian ragas, and contemporary classical music. Soom crafts an experience that explores realms beyond the confines of our individual selves. Her works include Synchronicity, premiered by Bergamot Quart, and Voice Within, her piece for voice, haegeum, and piano premiered by Soo Yeon Lyuh, Elliot Cole, Noah Magnus, and Soom. She performed Become Insect andGraphic Score ALN-CMI 2023 with fellow Arts, Letters, and Numbers resident artists, and she has created theater music for theater group Ghost Tickle on a site-specific performance piece called This is Supposed to be Serious. Her book Cross-Cultural, Cross-Institutional Collaborative Art Project has been commercially published and distributed worldwide since 2008. She studied art history and music at Indiana University Bloomington and received a Masters degree in Public Art Studies from University of Southern California. Soom was selected as a 2023 – 2024 Fellow in bespoken, a mentorship program for women and non- binary artists. She was an artist-in-residence at Arts, Letters, and Numbers in 2022 – 2023. She is excited to join the UCROSS residency in spring 2024.
Dmitri Tymoczko is a composer and music theorist who has taught at Princeton since 2002.
Max Vinetz’s music draws inspiration from various intersections between improvisatory, popular, and traditional forms and aesthetics. His work centers the perception of rhythmic and timbral events and is concerned with the relationships between narrative, musical objects, and sonic artifacts as they relate to music and other forms of media. Max is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (2018, 2020), the Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize, and the Gardner Prize from the American Viola Society. He has received additional recognition and awards from Voices of Ascension, the Doug Davis Composition and Performance Endowment, Musiqa, Copland House, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival. As a Yale undergraduate, Max won the Beekman Cannon Friends Prize, awarded for a “musical composition exhibiting unusual originality and promise,” the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize awarded to the “most promising and gifted composer” in the junior class, and was also awarded the Lewis P. Curtis Fellowship, the Tristan Perlroth Prize, and the R.J.R. Cohen Fellowship for Musical Performance (2017, 2018). Upcoming projects include an evening length staged electroacoustic song cycle for panSonus, titled The New Manilla Envelope and an EP written in collaboration with Anson Jones. A graduate of both Yale and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Max is currently pursuing his PhD in Composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Doctoral Fellow.
Nate Wooley was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of thirteen. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. He was the founder and editor of Sound American Publications, a journal dedicated to featuring the ideas and work of musicians in their own words. He is the recipient of the FCA Grants to Artists Award, the Spencer Glendon Award for Ethics in the Arts, a 2022 NYFA Fellow in the Arts, and the 2024 composer-in-residence at Mills College.
About PSK
A lab for Princeton University composers to collaborate with today’s finest performers and ensembles, Princeton Sound Kitchen is a vital forum for the creation of new music. Serving the graduate student and faculty composers of the renowned composition program at the Department of Music at Princeton University, PSK presents a wide variety of concerts and events throughout the year.
Program Notes
Dai Wei
Parnassius
Dai Wei, voice
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Each Parnassius (Snow Apollo butterfly), in the form of larva or pupa, has survived sub-zero temperatures among the mountains at thousands of meters above sea level, going from one mountain to another. Despite the extreme climatic conditions that the Parnassius needs to endure in order to grow, its tiny body dances to its heart’s content on the tops of snow- covered mountains with a pair of large, powerful wings
We must have experienced the winter of life to varying degrees. I have spent a few years battling illness and now aspire to regain my normal singing abilities. As I write these words, I am actively combating the anesthesia’s side effects from surgery. It is my hope that this work, like the warmth that Parnassius exudes in the bitter cold, will bring us hope, shelter and courage. Travis, Nate, edi, Lester, Wendy, and Russell, I am deeply grateful to each one of you and to the opportunity that brought us together to create this work. Heartfelt thanks to Dmitri and Travis for making this happen.
Francisco del Pino
Mantra
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, voice and electric guitar
Francisco del Pino, electric guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
We’ll gather together around a bygone tune, and build a moment for us to share inner memories, and join in a spirit of ceremony and remembrance.
Travis Laplante
3-1-0
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
The title 3-1-0 is short for “three (the many) becoming one (unity) becoming zero (non- being).” This process of transformation is the inspiration for the composition.
The piece begins with the ensemble divided into three duets (Edi/Lester, Nate/Travis, Wendy/Russell) representing “3.” Eventually the duets cross-pollinate, transforming the inner relationships of the ensemble. The dissolution of pre-existing individuality is pushed further when the entire ensemble is called to arrive at a unison “D.” This leg of the musical journey represents “3” becoming “1,” a process of unification that brings the ensemble together as a single instrument.
The unity of the ensemble brings forth a period of passionate harmony. However, this period cannot be sustained after a more destructive and dense musical force takes over. The ensemble falls apart, but does not revert to a place of separateness. Instead, silence emerges and sound itself becomes less and less relevant. The players’ roles shift from sound makers to preparers of silence. This represents “1” becoming “0,” a process of the ensemble emptying itself of sound to experience a collective silence.
A heart-felt thank you to edi, Lester, Nate, Wendy, and Russell for being so generous in bringing this music to life.
Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh
Full Moon Child
Music by Soom and Soo Yeon Lyuh Text by Soom
Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum
Soom, gayageum
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin and voice
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Weaving threads of Soom’s personal journey, this musical collaboration transcends her personal space. We—Soo Yeon, edi, Soom, and the ensemble—sonically paint her escape from the social and cultural constraints, symbolized through the concept of the full moon. According to this symbolism, a baby born on the day of the full moon is traditionally expected to be a boy, analogous to the moon with its full energy, which we use to portray her breaking free and embracing a freer true self. This isn’t just her story; it’s our collective dance beyond binaries—man vs. woman, masculine vs. feminine, good or bad, etc.—defying rigid narratives with improvised whispers and shared musical breaths. Join us as we celebrate being “humans.”
Isaac Santos
counterculture
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin and voice
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Isaac Santos, piano
Russell Greenberg, percussion
In meeting and getting to know the performers involved in this program, I realized that each of them have adopted unique techniques and practices on their instruments; often in direct opposition to tradition, while still embracing said tradition in unconventional ways. Hence the title, counterculture.
I wanted to capture each of their individual personalities and playing styles, in addition to blurring the lines between the familiar and uncanny.
I am deeply grateful for Travis Laplante, Dmitri Tymoczko, and all the performers involved for being so kind and gracious during our collaboration. I have learned a great deal from being able to work with them.
Dmitri Tymoczko
Glimmer
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Dmitri Tymoczko, keyboard
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Glimmer is the latest installment of an ongoing project in spontaneously coordinated improvisation. Typically, I play on a keyboard which transmits musical notation to performers iPads in real time, allowing for music that is both spontaneous and coordinated. Performers can also send cues to one another by touching buttons on their iPads. Sometimes we have projected the iPad display on screens so that the audience can follow along; tonight, however, we will have live video by Liam Elliot.
Max Vinetz
interwoven interstices
Travis Laplante, tenor saxophone
Nate Wooley, trumpet
yuniya edi kwon, violin
Lester St. Louis, cello
Wendy Eisenberg, guitar
Russell Greenberg, percussion
At its core, interwoven interstices is a study of the instrumental technique of “decoupling.” For an instrument, decoupling involves separating roles that are traditionally used in conjunction with one another. For instance, a cello traditionally produces sound by bowing a string with the right hand and fingering a pitch with the left hand. A saxophone traditionally produces sound with a combination of air production / embouchure and fingering keys on the instrument. Decoupling, as a process, treats these parameters independently, individually. An example would include a cello playing a fast repetitive figure, and changing the right hand technique independent of the left hand technique. While the left hand continues to finger pitches quickly, the right hand may explore a variety of bow positions and bow pressures, exploring methods of sound production that are independent of the left hand’s activity. The right hand could even lift the bow altogether, leaving behind a quiet, delicate fluttering texture in which the cellist’s left hand is the sole sound-producing force.
Utilizing decoupling as both an instrumental technique and a musical process, interwoven interstices generates its material by exploring decoupling techniques from the saxophone and asks the rest of the ensemble to translate its techniques into their own manner of playing. Sometimes, this asking is quite literal. Other times, I have provided notation in which I have reimagined the saxophone’s decoupling in terms of another instrument’s playing.
On the subject of composing for improvisers, I often take issue with composers claiming complete authorship over the sound that virtuoso improvising performers have spent decades cultivating. It is my belief that despite the instructions that we composers provide (through text, notation, graphics, etc), it is ultimately the performers who give the piece everything. Their performance is not a representation of the score: it is the piece. With this in mind, I would like to thank Travis, Nate, Wendy, Russell, edi, and Lester for bringing their creative energy to this work and giving it a heartbeat that simply couldn’t exist on the page alone.
About
Dai Wei is a composer and vocalist whose musical journey navigates in the spaces between east and west, classical and pop, electronic and acoustic, innovation and tradition. She often draws from eastern philosophy and aesthetics to create works with contemporary resonance, and reflects an introspection on how these multidimensional conflicts and tension can create and inhabit worlds of their own. Being an experimental vocalist, she performs herself as a Khoomei throat singer in her recent compositions, through which are filtered by different experiences and backgrounds as a calling that transcends genres, races, and labels. She was featured in The Washington Post’s “22 for 22’: Composers and Performers to Watch this year.” Described as “impassioned” by The New York Times, “with a striking humanity” by The Washington Post, and “incredibly creative and dynamic” by the Utah Symphony Orchestra, her music has received commissions and performances by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, and Aizuri String Quartet. Recent projects include new works for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra West Coast Tour, and Carnegie Hall Link Up program.
Francisco del Pino is a Buenos Aires-born composer and guitarist with an affinity for music that is meticulous, expressive, and patient. Drawing influence from both classical and vernacular traditions, his work revolves around process and pattern and is usually characterized by an extensive use of counterpoint. Francisco’s debut album Decir, a song cycle on texts by Argentinian poet Victoria Cóccaro, was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2021. His music has been described as of “sheer beauty” (Bandcamp Daily), “lucid, entrancing” (I CARE IF YOU LISTEN), and “ethereal, yet heavy, distinguished, yet humble—and always beautiful” (Classical Post). Francisco is a PhD candidate in the Music Department and a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities.
Over the last five years or so Wendy Eisenberg has been keeping listeners guessing. Nominally an improvising guitarist, they don’t recognize any musical limitations, perpetually finding ways to apply a deeply exploratory practice to a wide variety of contexts. Eisenberg plays solo guitar as well as banjo in both acoustic and electric settings, warped post-punk songs in the trio Editrix, delicately dangerous guitar music in the critically acclaimed Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, febrile post-Prime Time free jazz in Strictly Missionary, and punk-prog in a trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith. As Eisenberg told fellow guitarist Nick Millevoi in an interview for Premier Guitar in 2021, “I need to be in a punk band at the same time as I need to be playing free improv at the same time as I need to be playing songs. All at the same time—otherwise none of the practices will work for me.” Their musical range isn’t a glib manifestation of eclecticism, but a genuine artistic essence. Eisenberg has collaborated with a disparate array of musicians from all points along the creative music spectrum, including Bill Orcutt, Allison Miller, Shane Parish, Francisco Mela, Carla Kihlstedt, John Zorn, and Caroline Davis. They have released music on Tzadik, VDSQ, Ba Da Bing! Records, Garden Portal, Feeding Tube, Out of Your Head, and Dear Life Records, and performed everywhere from intimate basements to international festivals including Moers, Le Guess Who? and Big Ears.
New York-based percussionist Russell Greenberg enjoys exploring creative and unclassifiable music that lives between styles and works to share his love for musical experiences with audiences worldwide. As a founding member of the piano and percussion quartet, Yarn/Wire, Russell has collaborated with many leading composers including Annea Lockwood, Øyvind Torvund, and Tyshawn Sorey to craft a body of new, wide-reaching and varied music. He has also been an active collaborator with a number of artists and ensembles including Nate Wooley, Either/OR, Wet Ink Large Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and others. In addition to his work with leading contemporary music ensembles, Russell enjoys touring and recording with bands such as Seaven Teares, Kayo Dot, and Hi Red Center. Russell received degrees in music from the University of California at Berkeley and Stony Brook University and is currently head of percussion studies at SUNY Purchase College.
yuniya edi kwon (also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space and lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres and inflections, textures and movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, Holland Andrews, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music / Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow.
Travis Laplante is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist. Laplante leads the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance, as well as Subtle Degrees, his duo with drummer Gerald Cleaver. Recently, Laplante has composed long-form works for new music ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and the ~Nois Saxophone Quartet. Laplante is also known for his raw solo saxophone concerts and being a member of the avant-garde quartet Little Women. He has performed and / or recorded with Tyshawn Sorey, Caroline Shaw, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, Sō Percussion, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, International Contemporary Ensemble, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Darius Jones, Mat Maneri, Julia Bullock, and Matt Mitchell, among others. Laplante has released 12 critically acclaimed albums as a leader or co-leader on New Amsterdam Records, Aum Fidelity, Skirl, Tripticks Tapes, Out of Your Head Records, and NNA Tapes. Laplante has toured his music extensively and has appeared at many major international festivals such as The Moers Festival (Germany), Jazz Jantar (Poland), Saalfelden (Austria), Jazz em Agosto (Portugal), Earshot (Seattle), Hopscotch (North Carolina), and the NYC Winter JazzFest. As a composer, Laplante has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), the JACK Quartet, Roulette Intermedium, Yarn/Wire, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the MATA festival, and The Jerome Foundation.
Soo Yeon Lyuh is a composer, improviser, and master of the haegeum, a two-stringed Korean bowed instrument. Hailing from Daegu, South Korea by way of Princeton, New Jersey, Lyuh draws inspiration from traditional Korean music to perform a meld of improvisatory and experimental sounds. She is currently pursuing her second PhD in composition at Princeton University, after receiving the first doctorate in Korean music at Seoul National University. As a performer, Lyuh possesses flawless technique and a full command of the haegeum’s traditional repertoire. For twelve years, she was a member of South Korea’s National Gugak Center, which traces its roots to the 7th Century Shilla Dynasty and is Korea’s foremost institution for the preservation of traditional music. To weave authentic styles into new musical domains, Lyuh relocated in 2015 to the San Francisco Bay Area and drew inspiration from its dynamic improvised music scene. In 2017, she was invited to collaborate in a series of concerts with the Kronos Quartet, and this work set her on the path of becoming a composer. As a composer, Lyuh asks classically trained performers to think outside the box, drawing out fresh sounds that, once understood, sound organic. Although these sounds are uneasy to visualize with notation, Lyuh can communicate a lot of them and often demonstrates the parts by joining and performing with the ensemble. Ultimately, Lyuh is all about making a bridge between cultures across borders, and breaking down any walls.
Lester St. Louis is a New York-born and -based composer, improviser, cellist, sound designer, and curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research, and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially; ecstatic sound worlds, flow and interaction. He has performed internationally throughout the United States, the European Union, Canada, China, and South America.He collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams (under the moniker HxH), Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Pheroan Aklaff, Superblue, ICE, Speaker Music, Terence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as JACK Quartet, RAGE Thormbones, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble, among others.
Isaac Santos is a composer of contemporary concert music based in New Jersey and originally from Broward County, Florida. Much of Isaac’s current output is inspired by visual art, nature, and everyday life. Through his compositions, he aspires to create deeply affective music that engages introspectively with some of our most deep and poignant emotions.
Soom is an experimental musician, composer, visual artist, and writer who prompts audiences to ponder existence within the essence of daily life. She draws her inspiration from philosophy, psychology, science, storytelling with a deep-rooted belief in the transformative healing power of the arts. She has written works influenced by Korean folk traditions, Indian ragas, and contemporary classical music. Soom crafts an experience that explores realms beyond the confines of our individual selves. Her works include Synchronicity, premiered by Bergamot Quart, and Voice Within, her piece for voice, haegeum, and piano premiered by Soo Yeon Lyuh, Elliot Cole, Noah Magnus, and Soom. She performed Become Insect andGraphic Score ALN-CMI 2023 with fellow Arts, Letters, and Numbers resident artists, and she has created theater music for theater group Ghost Tickle on a site-specific performance piece called This is Supposed to be Serious. Her book Cross-Cultural, Cross-Institutional Collaborative Art Project has been commercially published and distributed worldwide since 2008. She studied art history and music at Indiana University Bloomington and received a Masters degree in Public Art Studies from University of Southern California. Soom was selected as a 2023 – 2024 Fellow in bespoken, a mentorship program for women and non- binary artists. She was an artist-in-residence at Arts, Letters, and Numbers in 2022 – 2023. She is excited to join the UCROSS residency in spring 2024.
Dmitri Tymoczko is a composer and music theorist who has taught at Princeton since 2002.
Max Vinetz’s music draws inspiration from various intersections between improvisatory, popular, and traditional forms and aesthetics. His work centers the perception of rhythmic and timbral events and is concerned with the relationships between narrative, musical objects, and sonic artifacts as they relate to music and other forms of media. Max is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (2018, 2020), the Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize, and the Gardner Prize from the American Viola Society. He has received additional recognition and awards from Voices of Ascension, the Doug Davis Composition and Performance Endowment, Musiqa, Copland House, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival. As a Yale undergraduate, Max won the Beekman Cannon Friends Prize, awarded for a “musical composition exhibiting unusual originality and promise,” the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize awarded to the “most promising and gifted composer” in the junior class, and was also awarded the Lewis P. Curtis Fellowship, the Tristan Perlroth Prize, and the R.J.R. Cohen Fellowship for Musical Performance (2017, 2018). Upcoming projects include an evening length staged electroacoustic song cycle for panSonus, titled The New Manilla Envelope and an EP written in collaboration with Anson Jones. A graduate of both Yale and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Max is currently pursuing his PhD in Composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Doctoral Fellow.
Nate Wooley was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of thirteen. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. He was the founder and editor of Sound American Publications, a journal dedicated to featuring the ideas and work of musicians in their own words. He is the recipient of the FCA Grants to Artists Award, the Spencer Glendon Award for Ethics in the Arts, a 2022 NYFA Fellow in the Arts, and the 2024 composer-in-residence at Mills College.