News, March 2014

Dear friends and fans, here’s the latest update of happenings.  Hope to see you at an event, Ned

Alumni Achievement Award

I am honoured to announce that my Alma Mater, the Cleveland Institute of Music (US), has awarded me their Alumni Achievement Award for 2014.  This year their theme is composer/performer virtuoso.  While I was a simply a student of classical flute during my study there, the seeds for new music and improvisation were planted which helped to shape me into a composer.  In May I will perform at the commencement ceremonies.

Cleveland Institute of Music

premier of a new work for fortepiano

March 14 and 15, de Bijloke, Ghent

The Voorwaarts Maart / En Avant Mars Festival is a fresh creative festival in Ghent, Belgium curated by composer Frank Nuyts. For the next edition on March 14 and 15, they commissioned me to compose a work for the fortepiano.  Written to follow the Fantasia in A major by C.P.E. Bach, I took Bach’s material and developed it in my own way, taking some of his motives and harmonic sequences into different directions. Called ‘Hallucination’, it will be played by my wife Keiko Shichijo on her special Viennese Frere et Soeur Stein fortepiano from 1802 and accompanied by a choreography and dance by Chloë Geers.

Voorwaarts Maart / En Avant Mars

premier Rhythmic Etudes

29 March, 14.00, RASA, Utrecht

As a performer turned composer, I have always been interested in how complexities can be notated to achieve the best result from the player, particularly in the area of rhythm. Thanks to a grant from the Fonds Podiumkunsten in the Netherlands I have been able to spend time last year exploring rhythm and the result has been a set of Rhythmic Etudes for piano.  Each of the five etudes focuses on a different subdivision of the beat and several of them will be premiered on March 29th at RASA in Utrecht by Laurens De Boer.

Concert link

Etudes link

contrabass flute

new video

Last December I performed solo contrabass flute with electronics at Calefax’s yearly PAN concert at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. It was a great night of all kinds of interesting performances.  Here is a video of my performance.

youtube

Stockhausen's Beethoven in one second

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture on the perception of time at the Studium Generale in Arnhem.  One of the musical examples I prepared was based on a comment by Stockhausen during his lecture at Oxford in 1972.  He theorised about compressing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony into one second.  For comparison, I created versions of 60, 20, 5 and 1 second(s).

Stockhausen's Beethoven in one second