FIRSTAVENUE celebrating its 20th season presents COMING FROM US Music of Constance Cooper for members of the Violin Octet Family (built by Carleen Hutchins) with improvisatory commentaries by FIRSTAVENUE. Saturday, Feb. 10, 2001 at 8pm (open dress rehearsal at 5pm) The Church of the Holy Apostles 296 Ninth Avenue (at 28th St.), NYC Suggested Donation $15 Info: (212) 674-6386 FIRSTAVENUE William Kannar Double Bass, Electronics, Computer C. Bryan Rulon Piano, Synthesizers, Electronics,Computer Matt Sullivan Oboe, English horn, WX7 Digital Horn , Electronics Joined by John Lad - treble & mezzo violins Matt Goeke - tenor violin Kurt Briggs - soprano & mezzo violins Vernon Regehr - baritone violin Erich Schoen-Rene - alto violin Dominic Duval - "small" bass In a concert format pioneered by FIRSTAVENUE, composed works by Constance Cooper, employing her own special brand of extended techniques, alternate with improvised commentaries both in reaction to and as extensions of the compositions. This concert is made possible with grants from The New York State Council on the Arts, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Aaron Copland Fund and The American Composers Forum. "It was like Alice in Wonderland stepping into a land of seriousness and yet whimsy: each of eight violin-shaped instruments seemingly shrunk or grown in response to Alice-like 'eat me' or 'drink me' instructions. The smallest violin was half the size of a 'real' violin. The largest (the only member of the Violin Family absent from this concert) was a monster with a huge and booming tone. All were more or less scale-models of a 'normal' violin, like Alice in her original form. All those years of musical training to make the connection between physics and music -- and here was the example, the sound of the violin throughout an enormous spectrum." Firstavenuenyc@aol.com - (212) 674-6386 The creator of the Violin Octet, Dr. Carleen Hutchins, resembles in her iconoclasm and firm will other American masters such as the writers Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville, the choreographer Martha Graham, and the composers Charles Ives, John Cage, Lucia Dlugoszewski, and Henry Brant. (It was in fact Brant who told Carleen Hutchins that he wanted a "true" viola sound, unencumbered by the acoustic compromises of the modern viola.) Hutchins, working with the physicist A. R. Schelleng, eventually built an entire Violin Octet, gleaming with heretical newness and delightful subversiveness. That same alto violin that was just an idea a generation ago is now the famous instrument on which Yo-Yo Ma recorded Bartok's Viola Concerto; and Dr. Hutchins, now nearly ninety, is well known to scientists and musicians alike. Over thirty years and about $500,000 have gone into work on the acoustic properties of the Violin Family. On file at the offices of the Catgut Acoustical Society, in perfect order, and available to anybody who wants to build them, are the blueprints for the Octet instruments. In the New Jersey house that she has lived in since the age of two, Dr. Hutchins still builds instruments full-time. In Coming From Us, a collection of pieces for string instruments commissioned by the American Composers Forum, Constance Cooper has replaced familiar musical intervals with microtonal ones that are unique to each player's hand-size and finger-sizes. No performers will ever get exactly the same results, hence the title "Coming From Us." Miss Cooper's goal is twofold: 1) to compose into her music artifacts of players' physical individuality, and 2) by means of these individual hand-position-artifacts to employ string instruments in their, as it were, natural, non-tempered state. In using these new hand-positions, players will feel themselves closer to a virtuosic, rubato- and emotion-filled style of delivery that is the music's best expression. Solo and chamber works by Miss Cooper have been played by the Arditti Quartet, Speculum Musicae, bassist Robert Black, and the Brentano Quartet. Where the River Turns Like an Elbow into Dusk, for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, was issued on Opus One Recordings' first CD and was broadcast over National Public Radio as one of that year's best recordings. The premiere of her opera Easter Eve was "...a strange and affecting evening of music...great dramatic effect [and] emotional authority...Cooper's music...painted every bit as gaudy and crowded a scene as could be imagined." Harvey Sollberger, Steven Mackey, and Lawrence Leighton Smith have conducted her orchestral works; Harold Farberman will record her Amoroso with his orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, this spring. And, for Coming From Us, Miss Cooper finds herself an inventor for the first time; she has thought up a bow that can play pizzicato as fast as a standard bow can execute arco.. The rapid-fire plucked phrases in Coming From Us cannot be played without the pizzicato bow, which will make its international debut at this concert. FirstAvenue is an extraordinary trio that redefines chamber music performance by combining conventional instruments with live, interactive electronics, computers, video graphics, and improvisation, producing events that are original, entertaining, and provocative. Forged in the artistic hotbed of New York City's East Village nearly twenty years ago, FirstAvenue presents an annual series of concert collaborations with dancers, poets, painters, and actors of international stature in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Knitting Factory. From 1993 to 1997 FirstAvenue was Ensemble in Residence at Princeton University and currently is in residence at the Earth School in New York City. FirstAvenue has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and has been featured on National Public Radio's New Sounds with John Schaefer and on New Sounds New York. The group's recordings are available on the Newport Classics and O.O. Discs labels. John Lad (treble and mezzo violins) is a violinist and violist with many years of interest and experience in contemporary music: he has been a member of the American Composers Orchestra since 1979 and performed for years with Bang on a Can and with many other contemporary ensembles. He also teaches philosophy at Barnard College and is a long-time student and teacher of taijiquan. Kurt Briggs (soprano and mezzo violins), appears with many orchestras and chamber ensembles in the New York area. He is the founder and music director of the chamber orchestra di.vi.sion, whose wide-ranging programs are based on the principles of concerts in pleasure-gardens in London and New York in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is currently developing a concert series with The New York State Historical Society of Middlefield, NY. Mr. Briggs has recorded for Sony, Koch International, Newport Classics, Iota, Amphonic, and Hallmark. He is a member of London's Performing Rights Society and New York's NARAS. Erich Schoen-Rene (alto violin) was a student of Maxine Neuman at Bennington College and subsequently at Bard College. He has a growing reputation as a freelance cellist. Matt Goeke (tenor violin), is a cellist who performs both traditional and new music with the EOS Orchestra, Musica Sacra, Collegiate Chorale, Stamford Symphony, North/South Consonance, SEM Ensemble, and the CrossTown Ensemble. He has worked with Butch Morris, Zeena Parkins, and Elliot Sharp, most recently on a "House Blend" concert at The Kitchen, and plays and records with the bands Church of Betty (Fruit on the Vine) and Voltaire (The Devil's Bris, Almost Human). His trio Eight Strings and a Whistle (flute, viola, cello) has been heard throughout Maine and on Maine Public Radio. Vernon Regehr (baritone violin) was a Tanglewood Fellow during the summers of 1999 and 2000 and has performed at summer festivals in Colorado Springs, Banff, and Taos. He is a member of the Festival Chamber Players and the Contemporary Chamber Players at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dominic Duval ("small" bass) is best described as a virtuoso improviser and generator of contemporary classical music. His many CDs, including those with the string quartet he founded, The New Pyramid Quartet, constitute a small library of new music cultivated by constant exploration of the musical world and, as Duval sees it, one's own nature, psychology, and personal history. On his international tours with Cecil Taylor and Joe McPhee, his instrument of choice has been the Hutchins small bass.