Visiting Artist Fellowship at Stanford University
January 4th, 2017
For the first half of 2016 I was fortunate to be the Visiting Artist at Stanford University. My position there continues through February of this year, on a non-resident basis. I’ve worked on a number of multi-disciplinary projects during this time, taking advantage of the school’s incredible depth and breadth of resources and talent. Here are a few highlights:
My biggest project will culminate on February 4th, when I’ll be back at Stanford for three performances of a collaborative work of sculpture, choreography, and musical composition that I developed with two very talented faculty members: ‘A Winter Garden’:
| February 4th, 2017 at 1:30, 5:30, and 6:30 pm Bing Concert Hall Atrium, Stanford campus Free; no tickets necessary |
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‘In a Winter Garden’ is a dance performance and sculptural installation that investigates the shared signature elements of Will Clift’s large-scale sculptures, Diane Frank’s site-specific choreography, and Jarek Kapuscinski’s music: intervals of balance, imbalance, and breathed connection within an ever-shifting environment. The performance will feature both student and alumni dancers, and Japanese master musician Ko Ishikawa will play the score in live performance on the “sho,” or ‘mouth organ.
The Japanese aesthetic concept of “ma” runs through all three art forms in this work. Ma is the interval of time and space that extends within and between objects and events. Breath as a measure of time is unique to some traditional Japanese music and essential in the Gagaku music for the sho. It is relevant to this contemporary work, in the music, dance and sculpture alike. ‘In a Winter Garden’ is part of this year’s Pan Asian Music Festival at Stanford. Biographies of my collaborators: Diane Frank has enjoyed a long career as a professional choreographer, dancer, and teaching artist. She has received numerous NEA fellowship grants and awards for her choreography which has been produced by noted venues in New York, London, Paris, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. She trained extensively with Merce Cunningham, drawn to both the aesthetic sensibilities and radical beauty of his work. She was member of the Cunningham Studio teaching staff for many years. She also danced with Douglas Dunn & Dancers for eleven years, touring domestically and abroad. At Stanford since 1987, she continues to train and mentor a long line of Stanford dance professionals. In 2012, her choreography (performed by Stanford dancers) was selected by the American College Dance Association for the National Gala performances at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ko Ishikawa is a Sho (Japanese bamboo mouth organ) player who studied Japanese traditional Gagaku music under his masters Mayumi Miyata, Hideaki Bunno, and Sukeyasu Shiba. A performer of Gagaku music as well as contemporary and experimental music, he is widely acclaimed on the national and international scenes. Ko Ishikawa has performed with Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Otomo Yoshihide’s FEN Orchestra, and Multiple Tap. Selected performances include Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon), Soundfield (Philadelphia / New York), Miji + Multiple Tap (Beijing), Cha’ak’ab Paaxil (Mexico), and Festival Hue (Vietnam). Jaroslaw Kapuscinski is an intermedia composer and pianist whose work has been presented at New York MOMA; ZKM in Karlsruhe; Centre Pompidou in Paris; and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, among others. He has received awards at the UNESCO Film sur l’Art festival in Paris, VideoArt Festival Locarno, and FNCNM in Montreal. He was first trained as a pianist and composer at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and expanded into multimedia during studies at the University of California, San Diego (1992-1997). Currently, he is Associate Professor of composition and intermedia and Chair of the Music Department at Stanford University. |
I also completed a number of other projects, including working with students on various projects, investigating sculptural applications of cutting-edge material science, and adapting biocomposite research from the Civil Engineering Department to creating ephemeral, decomposable sculptures. More images on these will come later!
