Primavera

Festival of Contemporary Arts
and Digital Media

April 26–30, 2010, UCSB

April 30 — RedBlack

RedBlack is an avant-garde concert event that will highlight emerging trends in crushed electronica music and new media art blended with dance and “flash mob” dance.  Directed by Ron Sedgwick, it features work by composers Ron Sedgwick, Salman Bakht, Tim Beutler, Scott Cazan, and Luke Thomas Taylor; composer-dancer Alysia Michelle James; artist Elizabeth Folk; movement artist Rachel B. Lindt and choreographer Abigail M. Linton, among others.

Sponsored by Associated Students, the New Music and Dance Collective, the HUB, and the College of Creative Studies.

Image on left by Ron Sedgwick; images on right by UCSB Dance Divsion (top), Leslie Hogan (bottom).

Contributors

Salman Bakht is a new media artist and composer currently studying in the Media Arts and Technology Program at UC Santa Barbara. Salman's work focuses on the reproduction and transformation of recorded audio through algorithmic and natural processes. Combining the fields of media ecology, information theory, soundscape composition, and sound installation art, his dissertation research explores an artistic approach to the representation of media types as sonic environments.  

Scott Cazan is a performer and sound artist specializing in the composition of works for chamber ensembles and the performance of live electronic music where he explores human relations with technology, the act of listening and the physicality of sound. Scott has performed and shown his installation work in various parts of the United States, France and Germany, most recently acting as an artist in residence with the CENTQUATRE (France), PACT Zollverein (Germany) and CalArts. Scott holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He has studied with Mark Trayle, Michael Pisaro, Sara Roberts, Ulrich Krieger, Clay Chaplin, Jeremy Haladyna, Julio Estrada, and Zbigniew Karkowski, among others. He currently teaches and performs regularly in the Los Angeles area.  His music can be heard on Khalija Records.  

Elizabeth Folk received her Masters of Fine Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009, and her Bachelors of Fine Art from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2007.  She is currently a Lecturer for the College of Creative Studies and the Art Department at UCSB. Website: www.elizabethfolk.com 

Alysia Michelle James is a senior in the College of Creative Studies music composition program and Founder/Artistic director of the New Music and Dance Collective, an organization with the goal to create a pathway from the dance department to the music department. Through the organization, composers and dancers learn to work together, learn parts of each other’s process and craft and create new pieces of music and dance. It also provides a more open opportunity for student choreographers to share their vision as well as give music students another outlet for concerts.

Ron K. Sedgwick is a PhD. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a five-year UC Regents Special Fellowship.  Both his acoustic and electro-acoustic works have received numerous awards and have been performed and broadcast in the United States and Europe.  He has studied composition with Professors Joel Feigin, Karen Tanaka, and Kurt Rohde, computer programming with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, and computer music with Professors Curtis Roads and Clarence Barlow. 

Luke Thomas Taylor is currently studying for a Ph.D. in music composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his B.A. in music at University of California, San Diego summa cum laude and his M.F.A. in composition at California Institute of the Arts. He has had the privilege to study composition with Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Sean Franz Griffin, Rand Steiger, Chinary Ung, James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Stephen "Lucky" Mosko, Mark Trayle, and is currently studying with Clarence Barlow.  He is interested artistically in many things including: continuous change, self-similarity, homemade electronics, circuit bending, and absurdity.

Scott Tooby is a music composition student of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB.  He enjoys composing for a wide range of mediums and styles, but has fostered an interest in electronic music since childhood. Some recent activities include premiers and performances of new electronic works such as Window Spooks and My B-I.V.  in the 2009 spring UCSB Composer's Concert series, the subsequent receipt of a 2009 Corwin Composition Award for My B-I.V., and the performance of Word to Your Mother – a work which was choreographed and featured in the premier performance of the UCSB New Music and Dance Collective. Scott is currently pursuing a career in the film and commercial music industry.  Website:  www.scott-tooby.com.