ICIT 15th Anniversary Concert

FRIDAY MARCH 8th, 2024 | 8PM | Winifred Smith Hall 

Organized by Christopher Dobrian & Presented by ICIT
William David Fastnow, technical director
Alex Golden, Associate Production Manager

Program

Song on Strings and Knots by Fabricio Cavero

Point-Line-Circle is the first “episode” of my series “Poem-Rites”. However, for this opportunity, it will be performed with Quipus (a pre-Columbian notation system with colored strings and knots). The main intention of the Poem-Rite series is to integrate diverse musical technologies, including notation systems, which expands the role of my composing with the experience of making my own instruments of clay, and my own notational tools, in this case, Quipus, which allow me to develop a unique way to notate and perform my composition. The Quipus invites us to be aware of the tactility, since I adopt it as a tool to suggest “texture” and “color” while performing. It also allows me to elaborate on my fascination with pre-Columbian artifacts that challenge the established history that says that my ancestors were “savages” without a writing system. I do not seek to satisfy scientific or historical propositions, but to approach the poetics and symbolisms of strings and knots, as what they simply are, strings and knots, which I connect with my poem “Point-Line-Circle”. This performance has a pre-established structure with improvisational segments for the voice and musical technologies (aerophones made of clay, electroacoustic viola, computer, speakers) and video projector. This performance portrays principles of Andean storytelling in which music is not an isolated expression from other arts, but a wholesome experience in that englobes singing, poetry, dance and costume. I would like to present this performance as Poem-Rite 4: “Song on Strings and Knots”.

FAE12xFERMENTED by Corey Fogel

FAE12xFERMENTED pairs events, rhythms, and frequencies produced by a piano, with events, rhythms, and frequencies produced by a percussionist, with the assistance of computer software. The computer software encodes the improvisational decisions of the performer using a condition of direct proportion in the synchronization of piano:drum material, which is that, exclusively, the frequency of a percussive event determines not only the frequency of a piano event, but also the rhythmic accuracy, timing, duration, phrase length, and density of the event produced in response.

This Unbending Creature by Hesam Abedini

This piece is composed based on a Persian poem by Fereydoon Moshiri (1926-2000). 

I am troubled
With humanity’s dire end …now more than ever.
So troubled …that I shudder with the thought

Not able to see, or to read, or to think
This unbending creature
Alas…

Cry, and he will not learn or notice
Scream and he will remain deaf

He cannot see
That to this growing mass of people
And the bloody strife they are entangled in
Will soon be added the fear of starvation

He cannot see
That if you give the earth blood in the place of water
It will never grow wheat for you

Translated to English by Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz

Small flux five by Kevin Zhang

Small flux five is a semi-improvisatory composition combining a solo instrument (in tonight’s version, clarinet) with live sample triggering.

Time is the Hero by Danny Sanchez

Two records come to mind. Dave Brubeck’s 1959 album “Time Out” and Hiromi Uehara’s 2007 album “Time Control.” I’ve always found uncommon time signatures fascinating and beautiful. Exploring ways to compose for piano and electronic beats using odd meters is especially rewarding when different subdivisions are featured. This composition “Time is the Hero” is a practice in shifting meters and perhaps a nod to that legacy.

Also, this title is a part of a larger quote I’ve always enjoyed: “Time is in fact the hero of the plot…given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait; time itself performs the miracles.” It was written by Nobel Laureate and evolutionary biologist George Wald in reference to the origin of life (also the title of his 1954 article). I found this quote inspiring, providing me with reassurance to find comfort in the passage of time, to dream of wonders and possibilities, and of course, hope.

After ICIT by Adib Ghobani

“Content Advisory: This performance may contain explicit language and may not be suitable for individuals under the age of 18.” After ICIT is a parody focusing on the issues of post-PhD life.

Temporal Dissonance Suite, II. HPEM & III. Tokyo Ghouls (2021) by Shih-Wei Wu

Shih-wei Wu (taiko, shakuhachi, vocal), Bella Pepke (cello), Danny Sanchez (piano), Spencer Pepke (drums)

Temporal Dissonance was composed in 2021 as a personal reflection on the psychological effect of quarantine during the global pandemic of 2020. I was especially fascinated by how my own sense of passage of time has fluctuated as a result of health scare, stress and lack of social contacts.

Play on Words by Lisa Yoshida

Lisa Yoshida (violin), Daniel Richardson (alto sax), Fabricio Cavero (electronics), Alyssa Wixson (piano), Danny Sanchez (piano), Oliver George-Brown (electronics), William Fastenow (electronics), Hesam Abedini (tombak), Kevin Zhang (clarinet), Shih-Wei Wu (shinobue)

Play on Words is for open instrumentation, and uses a rather bland text (here, a monthly email from UCI Campus Billing reminding students their fees are due) to create a simple score that the performers dynamically reinterpret. When singular words are recited repetitively it starts to lose its meaning, and at some point merely becomes a sound. Play on Words encourages the performers to interact with this phenomenon, or “semantic satiation” as coined by Leon Jakobovits James in 1962, to explore the countless ways a word can be recontextualized and performed as speech through their instruments.

Composer Bios

Fabricio Cavero

Fabricio synthesizes composition, performance, investigation and pedagogy in his musicianship. His music education has passed through diverse stages as student and teacher in Cusco, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Texas. He earned a bachelor in viola performance (TCU, 2012) and a master´s in music theory and composition (SMU, 2015). In 2020 he attended the master’s program at UNTREF in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he was a teaching assistant and member of the Orquesta de Instrumentos Autóctonos y Nuevas Tecnologías. Here, he learned to replicate Pre-Columbian aerophones made of clay. Fabricio orbits between popular music (Andean Folklore, Rock, Cumbia) and academic music (Orchestral, Chamber, Vocal, and Computer Music), which are inspired by his commitment with his Andean Traditions, especially with the Pilgrimage to “El Señor de Coyllority”. Currently he attends the Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology Ph. D. program at the University of California Irvine.

Corey Fogel

Corey Fogel (b 1977) is a composer, drummer, and artist based in Los Angeles. Fogel works across genres and mediums to explore many facets of improvisation. He approaches sounds, textiles, collaborators, gestures, and objects as viable materials for spontaneous, strategized, time-based experimental performance, often incorporating sculpture, video, various musictraditions, theatricality, and ritual.

Fogel’s works have been presented at Machine Project, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources, Los Angeles; Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles; The Wulf, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca, REDCAT; Los Angeles; and New Music for Strings Festival: Reykjavik. Corey was awarded The California Community Foundation 2014 Fellowship in Visual Arts.

Fogel also performs and composes in many rock, jazz, noise, folk, and chamber music capacities. Recent collaborations include: Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, Phil Minton, Patty Waters, Abigail Levine, Simone Forti, Judith Berkson, Raven Chacon, Yoshi Wada, Michael Winter, Robert Blatt, Maya Dunietz, John Butcher, John Russell, Todd Barton, Misha Marks, Brian Allen, Alexander Bruck, Patrick Shiroishi, Haley Fohr, Liz Glynn, Chris Speed, Mark Dresser, Kathleen Kim, Ezra Buchla, Tony Malaby, Devin Hoff, John Dieterich, Carlin Wing, Sam Mickens.

Hesam Abedini

Hesam Abedini is an Iranian-American performer, composer, improviser, educator, producer, and filmmaker residing in Sacramento, California. His work crosses the boundaries between idioms as wide as Western contemporary music, classical Persian music, free improvisation, and computer music. He is the founding member of the Sibarg, an intercultural creative music ensemble that combines traditional Persian music and Jazz. Hesam’s music have been performed by various musicians and ensembles such as, the JACK Quartet, Atlas Ensemble, Del Sol Quartet, Loadbang, Miolina, Eclipse Quartet, NMCE, Amalgama Ensemble, and Mark Dresser’s Bass Ensemble.

Hesam studied classical Persian music under the supervision of Dr. Hossein Omoumi, and directed the NEA and Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute-sponsored Documentary film “From Isfahan to Irvine”, which has been screened and archived in the Library of Congress. Hesam is a graduate of the Tehran Music Conservatory and holds his B.A. in Music Composition with honors from the University of California, San Diego. He completed his PhD in ICIT at the University of California, Irvine as a Roshan and Provost PhD Fellow under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Dobrian. Currently, he is teaching music theory and composition at Butte College.

Kevin Zhang

Kevin Zhang’s work as a composer and experimental musician encompasses instrumental, vocal, electronic, and electro-acoustic concert music, along with field recordings, sound walks, site-specific installations, and interdisciplinary projects involving film, theater, and dance. He currently teaches music composition and theory at California State University, San Bernardino.

Danny Sanchez

Danny Andress Sanchez (b 1987) is a musician who has studied musical landscapes from jazz to electronica and has enjoyed composing and performing in the gray areas. He comes from a family of pianists and has roots in the bicultural borderlands of West Texas. He has operated in Southern California as the leader of many creative ensembles and built a reputation as a music director, artist consultant, and educator. Relativity Media contracted him to develop their early music production program, followed by years working with the Beat Lab Academy in Eagle Rock, where he was piano faculty, artist coach, and electronic music instructor. Currently he works as the director of the Los Angeles Academy for Artists and Music Production in Santa Monica, under the guidance of Grammy Award winning producer duo Stargate.

Adib Ghobani

Adib Ghorbani is an Iranian pianist, composer, filmmaker, and actor based in the United States. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in classical piano performance and a Master’s in music composition, Adib leaves his country, Iran, for the United States to pursue his studies as a Ph.D. student in the ICIT program (Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology) at UC Irvine. Adib’s Ph.D. project was called ‘Silent Music,’ an integration of live music, theater, film, and motion sensors. In addition to his endeavors on silence and interdisciplinary performances, his works span a wide variety of other forms, such as songwriting and sound design. Adib’s songs played a crucial role as anthems during the Women Life Freedom Revolution in Iran, chanted by countless Iranian protesters worldwide. He currently works as a freelance artist, creating, performing, and teaching in Los Angeles.

Shih-Wei Wu

Shih-wei is a non-binary composer-performer on multiple instruments. They compose music that ties together storytelling, activism, and shamanic ritual practice. Having grown up as a bi-cultural expat in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Shih-wei finds constant inspiration in the resilience of their immigrant community. Shih-wei combines their training in Western Classical music, Japanese folk drumming, shakuhachi playing and Korean shamanic singing to create songs of diasporic grief, struggle, achievement and celebration. They hope to bring those stories to life as a balm and mirror for their community and to further enrich the greater American understanding of the lives of those who recently landed on this soil.

Shih-wei has recently finished their residency at La Jolla Playhouse as the composer and musician for the world primere of ‘Sumo’ by Lisa Sanaye Dring.

Lisa Yoshida

Lisa Yoshida is a violinist, composer, and educator in Orange County, CA, and a 2nd year PhD student in the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program at University of California Irvine.

She is passionate about contemporary music, and has participated in Domaine Forget Music Festival’s New Music Program, Nief-Norf’s Composer-Performer-Improvisor summit, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses’ Violin Studio. Through her interests in playing contemporary music, she started composing in 2020. Her composition for solo violin and electronics titled Finally Alone (2021) has been selected as a Finalist and in the Top 10 for Black House Collective’s 2021 Soloist Competition. Lisa’s works are approached through a narrative approach, often about exploring identity as an Asian American and immigrant, which take form in interdisciplinary works that combine electronics, videos, actors, and/or dancers. She received her M.M. in Violin Performance from CSULB, and B.M. in Violin Performance from Chapman University.