Music
Crossing 32nd Street
Crossing 32nd Street, named Phoenix’s “Best New Classical Music Ensemble” by the Arizona Republic, strives to increase the awareness and understanding of modern music through an aggressive commitment to performing relevant contemporary works at the highest level. Performances routinely include the music of the modern masters, including, among others, John Cage, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Iannis Xenakis, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, John Luther Adams and James Tenney, as well as the exciting new works of emerging composers.
Garth Paine
Garth Paine is internationally regarded as an innovator in the field of interactivity in electronic music and media arts (some papers here). He gained his PhD in interactive immersive environments from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia in 2003, and completed a Graduate Diploma in software engineering in the following year at Swinburne University. All a long way from his Bachelor of classical Flute performance from the conservatorium of Tasmania.
Garth has composed several music scores for dance generated through video tracking of the choreography, and more recently using Bio-Sensing on the dancers body. His immersive interactive environments have been exhibited in Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, Canada, UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
http://www.activatedspace.com
LOrkAS – Laptop Orchestra of Arizona State
Laptop Orchestra of Arizona State (LOrkAS) is an experimental sonic performance troupe consisting of graduate and undergraduate researchers from various academic backgrounds and disciplines. We are a student-initiated, student-led, and student-managed ensemble that spawned from the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) in Fall 2010. Performers explore the possibilities of technology for sonic art, visual displays, and interactive expression, and push the envelope of integrating arts and technology by contemporizing the performance paradigm into a trans-disciplinary entity.
Courtney Brown
Courtney Brown is a composer, performer, and computer programmer. She has long harbored aspirations of becoming an Edward Gorey heroine, but her attempts have thus far been foiled. In lieu of her unlikely but tragic demise, she makes strange dark music and fiddles with electronics.
Her work ranges from the composition of instrumental music to the creation of musical robots and novel interfaces. She has been featured in many festivals / conferences in the U.S. including the Chosen Vale Trumpet Seminar, SEAMUS, NYCEAMF, Dartmouth Festival of the New Musics, Vox Novus’ 60X60, and she has toured her solo cabaret, Every Night I Lose Control, throughout the east coast including The Tank in NYC, the Red Room in Baltimore, and more. She founded and curated the performance series Sidewalk Tzara in Boston in 2008-9. She also founded and performed accordion, voice, guitar, and live electronics with the experimental groups Electrocab and The Woo Brown Duo. She has collaborated with many dancers an choreographers, including Nu Dance Theater and Insurgio Stage Project. She was an associate artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts, as well as the software developer for the audio engine of DJ Scratch Academy’s Mix, software for amateur DJs and beat-matching. She is a graduate of Dartmouth’s Electro-Acoustic Master’s Program and holds a B.S. in Music (concentration in soprano voice) and Computer Science from Loyola University New Orleans. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Music composition with a concentration in Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University.
Yi-Chia Chen
Percussionist Yi-Chia Chen received her D.M.A. (2011) and M.M. (2008) in Percussion Performance from Arizona State University, and her B.M.E. (2006) from National University of Tainan, Taiwan. As an active marimbist and chamber percussionist, Chen has made numerous appearances in festivals and conferences, including 2012 College Music Society Pacific Southwest Regional Conference (Tucson, AZ), 2011 Xenakis Festival (Tempe, AZ), 2011 College Music Society 30th Great Plains Regional Conference (Omaha, NE), 2011 Adria Summer Percussion Course (Adria, Italy), 2010 Macau Band Fair (China), 2010 Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra Percussion Ensemble Tour (Hong Kong, Taiwan), 2009 Phoenix Experimental Arts Festival, Percussive Arts Society International Convention (2007, 2006), and Arizona Percussive Arts Society Spring Festivals (2011, 2009, 2008).
Chen is the first-prize winner of 2009 Classical Marimba League Marimba Artist Competition and 2007 Percussive Arts Society International Convention Solo Marimba Competition. Her repertoire focuses on contemporary solo marimba literature and contemporary chamber music. Her current projects including a recording project features contemporary marimba solo literature, and commission-performance projects that research and promote percussion works and chamber music by Taiwanese composers.
Chen also studied West African Drumming: Djembe, Sabar, Tabala, and Sorouba with African music scholar Dr. Mark Sunkett, and is frequently performing with Dr. Mark Sunkett and ASU African Drum Ensemble in the Phoenix metropolitan area in promoting music of West Africa. She is currently assisting with the Contemporary Percussion Ensemble, African Drum Ensemble, and percussion area performances at Arizona State University.
Jeremy Muller
Jeremy Muller is a contemporary percussionist often performing as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America. He is dedicated to exploring new aesthetics of music by collaborating with performers, composers, and experimental artists. Jeremy has worked with groups like the world-renowned Percussion Group Cincinnati, Phoenix’s premier contemporary music ensemble Crossing 32nd Street, and the New Paradigm Percussion Quartet. He has also worked with composers Stuart Saunders Smith, Alexandre Lunsqui, Andréas Stauder, and David Maslanka. An ongoing project of Jeremy’s is the continual development and experimentation of the music of virtuosic maraca traditions as well as the Brazilian caxixí, and other subtle means of texture and sound. As a composer and arranger, he has written many chamber works and arrangements for solo and large ensembles.
Jeremy is adjunct faculty with Paradise Valley and Glendale Community Colleges in Phoenix, and currently a Doctoral candidate at Arizona State University. Prior to ASU, he earned his MM from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and BM from Appalachian State, both in percussion performance while studying under Allen Otte, Jim Culley, and Rob Falvo.
Dance
Dulce Dance Company
Dulce Dance Company under the Artistic Direction of Candy Jimenez is a contemporary Modern Dance Company emphasizing in technical artistic expression. Its’ mission is to choreograph and perform ideas, emotions, and stories through dance. To instill the passion of dance in each and every member of our audience, by performing interesting, athletic, passionate, and provocative movements of inspiration. To enrich our community through the timeless universal language of dance. It’s dance is highly technical, full of emotion, and striving movement. Candy Jimenez, Artistic Director and Liliana Gomez, Associate Director believe that in addition to achieving technical and challenging dance, it is imperative that we find an emotional connection to movement as that connectivity and growth of emotion from within the core of our being is what makes dance unique, addictive, and genuine for anyone that ventures in. The company is in it’s 6th season and will be closing the season with a show full of this years current repertory. For more info about shows, dancers, events, and classes, visit www.dulcedancecompany.com and our Facebook page.
Billbob Brown
Billbob Brown is associate professor of Dance at UMass Amherst. He received his BFA from Arizona State University and Master of Arts (in Dance History and Criticism) from the University of New Mexico. Billbob was the co-founder and artistic director of Desert Dance Theatre, in Phoenix, AZ, now in its 29th year, from 1979-1989. He has created and directed shows at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and choreographed and performed in TV work and commercials for the Chicago Cubs, Molson Canadian Beer, Disney Studios, and ABC-TV, several of which have received national advertising awards. He has toured nationally with the Bill Evans Dance Company, and, in Albuquerque, was director of Buen Viaje Dancers, a group of people with disabilities. His Emmy-award winning video, “Opening Doors,” with Buen Viaje, continues to be seen on PBS stations across the country. He has taught and performed in Japan, England, Switzerland, and throughout Mexico and the United States. Billbob presently performs and choreographs around the country with Rebecca Nordstrom and others, as part of Chaos Theory Dance, a science- and video-based dance company.
Jessica Rajko
Jessica Rajko, a native of Kalamazoo, MI, received her MFA in Dance and Interdisciplinary Digital Media at Arizona State University in 2009. As a dance teacher, performer, choreographer, and digital artist she is involved in several dance and movement practices. Jessica is currently Faculty Adjunct at ASU’s School of Dance and Grand Canyon University’s College of Fine Arts and Production. Jessica is co-owner of Stunt Weasel, LLC; a video documentation and editing business that provides services to both local dance companies and others clients with video related needs. She is Executive Director of Public Relations for urbanSTEW (urbanstew.org). urbanSTEW is non-profit organization collaboratively directed by four interdisciplinary artists, who seek to build broader partnerships for the creation of art and technology. Jessica has had the opportunity to work with several artists such as Mary Fitzgerald, Nora Chipaumire, Ashleigh Leite, Carley Conder, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Ann Ludwig, and Karen Schupp. She enjoys exploring the many ways in which dance can be created, fused with other mediums, and celebrated through performance..
Artists / Interactive Installations
David Tinapple
David Tinapple is part artist part engineer. Central to his art practice is the creation of his own tools for capturing and exploring images, video, sound, and human interaction. Tinapple creates automated systems that collect and analyze media, real-time performance tools, interactive video environments, image capture devices and large scale computational photos. His aim is to illuminate the forces at work around us and within us, explore our assumptions about the world and reveal surprises about everyday life. Tinapple completed a Master’s of Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University and currently is Assistant Professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University.
Galina Mihaleva
Galina Mihaleva (Costume/Fashion Designer) was born and raised in Bulgaria and earned a master’s degree in fashion design and textiles from the Academie of Fine Arts in Sofia. In 1992 she emigrated to the United States where she later received the grand prize in the International Furnishings and Design Association competition. The US Department of Justice in 1997 awarded her the honor of Alien of Extraordinary Ability in the Arts. Most recently her designs have been featured on live television and in printed publications, which include Trends and Sonic magazines as well as the Arizona Republic and the East Valley Tribune newspapers. Her innovative designs are commissioned privately and by a growing number of fashion leaders. She has been commissioned to design costumes for Ballet Arizona, Sister Sledge and Bill T. Jones. In addition, she was responsible for original designs for the following choreographers: Jo Kreiter, Yin Mei, Neta Pulvermacher, Thadius Davis, Tere O’Connor, Ron Brown, Fred Darsow and David Dorfman. Unbounded by the old rules, Galina now offers her work as a joyful testimony to the power of beauty and expression, and to the transcendent human spirit.
Cristyn Magnus
Cristyn Magnus received her PhD in Music from University of California, San Diego in 2010, where she studied music technology with Miller Puckette and composition with Philippe Manoury and Rand Steiger. She has a Bachelors in Cognitive Science and her musical interests lie at the intersection of the two fields. She likes playing with algorithms and interactivity. Her work explores the way groups of performers, audience members, and computational agents interact to make music. She’s written pieces for performers whose interactions are defined by rules with no computational mediation, pieces where sounds map onto video game controls so that the act of playing games will produce musical output, pieces for recorded sounds that exist as artificial life forms interacting in artificial worlds, and so on.
Peter Bugg & Melissa McGurgan
Peter Bugg was born and raised in Madison, WI, where he ran track and cross-country and was an active member of the Boy Scouts of America. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, he continued to run competitively and studied photography under Laura Letinsky while he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. After graduating, Bugg took some time off and eventually decided to pursue an MFA. He was accepted at Arizona State University’s photography program in 2006. After arriving in the Valley of the Sun, Bugg acknowledged his fascination with celebrities, tabloid magazines and paparazzi and began making art about America’s obsession with celebrity gossip. In 2008, he curated an exhibition inspired by the number one singles of Britney Spears entitled Number Ones. Most recently he interned at a paparazzi photo agency in Los Angeles, CA, where he gained an inside perspective on the industry. His work was featured in the 2009 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art. He graduated from ASU in May of 2010 and is currently focused on making art, and making art happen.
Melissa McGurgan is an artist, graphic designer and print enthusiast living and working in Tempe, AZ. After receiving her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2004 where she studied visual art and music, she completed her MFA in Printmaking from Arizona State University in 2008. She is the membership chair for the international printmaking association, the Southern Graphics Council International. She possesses a diverse range of printing skill sets, incorporating both in digital and analog processes. During her time in Arizona, she has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including the Arizona Biennial, Tuscon Museum of Art, 2007, New American City: Artists Look Forward, ASU Art Museum, Tempe, AZ, 2006-2007 and the Martha + Mary Street Party, Phoenix, 2009. Her most recent projects include a public art installation, entitled Bubble Fountain, commissioned by Scottsdale Public Art in 2009 and UNSEEN FOOTAGE, a collaborative interactive installation, at local gallery Eyelounge in the spring of 2010. In addition to exhibiting her own work, McGurgan takes an active role as a curator and arts administrator. She currently works as an Outreach Specialist for Arizona State University and a free-lance graphic designer.
Ben Luke
Ben Luke is an aspiring game developer and student in the Digital Culture Program at Arizona State University. His work seeks to explore the challenges of designing games within a restrictive environment by reducing one of the major aspects of common video games: visual feedback. Such a strategy prompts the question of how to create an interactive gaming experience without relying on common gaming tropes.
DIY Community
MakerBench
Maker Bench in Tempe is a DIY workshop where members can access advanced tools for electronics, metalworking, and laser cutting. It is a place for creative, artistic, hobbyist and business customers to access advanced tools including laser cutters, metal working, wood working, basic tools and work space to complete projects in.
Maker Bench offers classes and retailing for kits, electronics, crafts and has a project bar that is open to everyone. and serves a variety of crafts, electronics, CAD training and kit projects on a rotation basis.
Special Guest
Tania Katan
Tania Katan is an award-winning author, keynote speaker and solo-performer. Katan has spoken and performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ACT Seattle, NPR Snap Judgment, Loyola Marymount University, The Painted Bride, Comedy Central Stage, TEDx, and more. Katan is currently the SMoCA Lounge Program Coordinator. The SMoCA Lounge is an active laboratory within the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Real people, in real time, with real ideas, stories, concerns, poetry, films, music, and humor all converging to create refreshing cultural compounds. For more info on how to become an Active Lounger, contact Tania at: taniak@sccarts.org /
Tania Katan
writer. humorist. activist.
www.taniakatan.com
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