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The month-long April in Santa Cruz Contemporary Music Festival - April 5-27, 2012

Thursday, April 5, 2012 - 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Music Center Recital Hall (UCSC)
Presented by: 

 Music Department

 

The month-long April in Santa Cruz Contemporary Music Festival opens with a performance by special guest pianists Joseph Kubera and Marilyn Nonken.

The series continues with concerts through the month of April. Click date links below for complete information.

April 6   •   April 13   •    April 20    •    April 27

 

April 5 program features:

John Cage -  Music of Changes, Book 3 (1951)  

Joseph Kubera, piano

 

Paul Nauert - Episodes and Elegies

Marilyn Nonken, piano

 

Larry Polansky - Three Pieces for Two Pianos

Kubera and Nonken

 

FREE admission

Doors open at 7:00 PM

 

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Pianist JOSEPH KUBERA has been a leading interpreter of contemporary music for the past three decades. He has been soloist at such festivals as the Warsaw Autumn, Berlin Inventionen and Prague Spring, and has worked closely with such legendary composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, and Robert Ashley. Among the composers who have written works for him are Michael Byron, Anthony Coleman, David First, Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Larry Polansky, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. A longtime Cage advocate, he has recorded the Music of Changes and Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and toured widely with the Cunningham Dance Company through the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Kubera has been awarded grants through the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.

 

Mr. Kubera is a core member of S.E.M. Ensemble, the DownTown Ensemble and Ostravska Banda, and he has performed with a wide range of New York ensembles and orchestras ranging from Steve Reich and Musicians to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. His duo-piano team with Sarah Cahill has commissioned works by Terry Riley and Ingram Marshall and toured widely. Mr. Kubera’s playing may be heard on the Wergo, Albany, New Albion, New World, Lovely Music, O.O. Discs, Mutable Music, Cold Blue, and Opus One labels.

 

 

MARILYN NONKEN is one of the most celebrated champions of the modern repertoire of her generation, known for performances that explore transcendent virtuosity and extremes of musical expression. Upon her 1993 New York debut, she was heralded as "a determined protector of important music" (New York Times). Recognized a "one of the greatest interpreters of new music" (American Record Guide), she has been named “Best of the Year” by some of the nation's leading critics.

 

Marilyn Nonken's performances have been presented at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, the Guggenheim Museum, (Le) Poisson Rouge, IRCAM and the Theatre Bouffe du Nord (Paris), the ABC (Melbourne), Instituto-Norteamericano (Santiago), the Music Gallery (Toronto), the Phillips Collection, and the Menil Collection. Festival appearances include the Festival d'Automne (Paris) and When Morty Met John, Making Music, and Works and Process (all, New York), American Sublime (Philadelphia), The Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), Musica Nova (Helsinki), New Music Days (Ostrava), Music on the Edge (Pittsburgh), Piano Festival Northwest (Portland), and the William Kapell International Piano Festival and Competition.

 

Nonken has recorded on over a dozen labels, and her solo discs include "American Spiritual," a CD of works written for her, “Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories,” “Tristan Murail: The Complete Piano Music,” and “Stress Position: The Complete Piano Music of Drew Baker.” A student of David Burge at the Eastman School, Marilyn Nonken received a Ph.D. degree in musicology from Columbia University. She is currently writing a monograph on spectral piano music for Cambridge University Press, and is Director of Piano Studies at New York University's Steinhardt School.