June in Buffalo 2013: Felder, Cendo, Ferneyhough, Read Thomas, Wuorinen, Wyner and 29 new composers

June in Buffalo (JIB) is back, and it is even more high-end than usual this year with a spectacular selection of internationally known senior composers and critically acclaimed individual artists and guest artists, one of whom, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Charles Wuorinen, will receive an honorary doctorate from SUNY.

JIB is an illustrious festival and conference dedicated to established and emerging composers of new music and—new this year—to emerging performers as well. It will be presented June 3-9 by UB’s Department of Music and its Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music.

The festival will feature an intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals, along with afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics that will feature outstanding senior composers, ensembles and individual performers.

Performance venues will be Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, the Drama Theater in the Center for the Arts and Baird Recital Hall, all at UB, as well as One M&T Plaza in downtown Buffalo.

A schedule of June in Buffalo events and biographies of JIB instrumentalists, conductors and guest artists be found on the June in Buffalo website.

Seven of the evening concerts are ticketed ($12 in advance for the general public, $20 at the door; $9 in advance for UB faculty/staff/alumni and seniors, $15 at the door; $5 in advance for UB students, $8 at the door). To purchase tickets, contact the Slee Hall ticket office at 716-645-2921. Afternoon concerts and other events are free of charge.

Ensemble performers will include the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; the JACK Quartet; the Talujon Percussion Ensemble; the Slee Sinfonietta, UB’s professional chamber orchestra in residence; the Talia Ensemble; Linea Ensemble; and Ensemble Signal; individual artists include the faculty of the JIB Performance Institute (see below).

Special guests at this year’s festival will include the distinguished British violinist Irvine Arditti; author and influential music theorist James Baker; classical and jazz pianist Geoff Burleson; JoAnn Falletta, conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra; Brad Lubman, conductor of Ensemble Signal; pianist Geoff Burleson; and well-known classical saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, who frequently performs new music.

Twenty-nine emerging composers have been invited to participate and the senior composition faculty once again features some of the most important composers of our time, three of them members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, whose 250 members include only 52 composers.

Each senior composer invited to participate will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances will feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music. The senior composers also will give a public lecture as part of their participation in June in Buffalo. Lectures will take place from 10 a.m. to noon each day of the festival in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus.

The composers are:

• David Felder, Birge Cary Chair in Composition at UB, a major award-winning and internationally celebrated composer who has served as artistic director of June in Buffalo since 1985. Felder will lecture on June 7.
• Raphael Cendo, in his first June in Buffalo appearance. This popular young French composer has an illustrious career that has included works commissioned and performed by major European ensembles at an array of important festivals. He will speak on June 3.
• Brian Ferneyhough has returned as a resident composer. He often is referred to as “The Father of New Complexity,” a movement that produces works of abstract and dissonant sound marked by complex musical notation. Widely known and celebrated throughout the U.S. and Europe, his work has been performed at JIB festivals more than 15 times since 1989 and has been taken up by a wide range of ensembles, including the JACK Quartet, which will perform at this year’s festival. He will lecture on June 4.
• Augusta Read Thomas, considered one of the most beloved figures in American music, has produced a body of work that has been called “breathtaking” and cited for its “unbridled passion and fierce poetry.” She has long been at the top of her profession and her work is frequently performed here. She will speak on June 6.
• Charles Wuorinen, the eminent and enormously productive Pulitzer prize-winning composer with a long history of performing and teaching at UB—and specifically for June in Buffalo—again will serve on the JIB faculty. His honorary doctorate will be awarded on June 4. He will lecture on June 5.
• Yehudi Wyner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator, has been recognized for nearly half a century as one of the country’s most gifted composers. He headed the Yale music composition faculty for 14 years and has written a diverse array of orchestral, chamber, choral and incidental theatrical, solo vocal and instrumental music. The New York Times noted that his music, while reflecting Jewish life, is dissonant, often severe in style, and marked by unusual sonorities and instrumental virtuosity. He will speak on June 8.

The final lecture of the series will be given by British violinist Irvine Arditti at 1:30 p.m. June 8 in Baird Recital Hall.

This is the inaugural year of the June in Buffalo Performance Institute, directed by pianist Eric Huebner, UB assistant professor of music. It will run May 30 to June 6.

“This is the first time we have invited performance students to be a part of this storied new music festival,” Huebner says. “The institute will offer performers interested in contemporary music the opportunity to study and collaborate with experienced faculty members and attend June in Buffalo concerts and composer lectures.”

The institute’s faculty will include Huebner; the JACK Quartet; the Talujon Percussion Ensemble; cellist Jonathan Golove, UB associate professor of music; and percussionist Tom Kolor, UB assistant professor of music.

For more information on the performance institute, visit the June in Buffalo website.