Industrial Foundations – An Interdisciplinary Project

The Latest Update
Photos from Railyards Performance

Photo Credit: Randi Thompson
Video Selections from Santa Fe and Albuquerque
This project was so rewarding to work on for everyone involved. Engaging each space individually over the course of the three concerts was a unique challenge and we feel that we produced a program that desired not only to entertain but to push our audiences’ notion of space. We look forward to bringing more projects like this to the communities in New Mexico in the future. A huge thank you to all of our friends and family and also to New Music USA for the opportunity to create a project that allowed us to collaborate and create.
Personnel:
Ian Brody – Cello
Clara Byom – Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Yakima Fernandez – Violin
Peter Gilbert – Live Electronics
Luke Gullickson – Keyboard
Dalton Harris – Trombone
Will Kramer – Percussion
Chris Ogden – Bassoon
Rehearsals are underway!

We’ve been practicing, rehearsing, and taking care of final details all week! First concert is just a few days away!
Score Sample

The composers have been working hard on the piece and this is part of the score that has thus far been provided to the ensemble.
Video check-in from Peter
Peter took some time to put together a video that covers the compositional process of working on this piece for our ensemble. He discusses the collaborative compositional approach at some length and how he and Karola have found a productive way to work as a successful compositional unit.
We hope you enjoy the message from one of our composers and we look forward to posting more updates soon!
Overview
“Industrial Foundations” is a collaborative project between New Mexican composers, dancers, and performers that will be presented three times at the end of August 2017 throughout the state of New Mexico. Venues include the historic Albuquerque Railyards, Rio Grande Theatre in Las Cruces, and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe. University of New Mexico faculty members and renowned composers, Peter Gilbert and Karola Obermüller, will compose an electroacoustic piece for the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble Collective to perform. Choreography and movement direction will be done by Naomi Elizabeth Montoya and Rhea M. Riley.
Obermüller and Gilbert have collaborated on numerous projects including the multi-media, live-electronic chamber opera “dreimaldrei gleich unendlich”. We have asked them to create a work that responds to unique locations in New Mexico with a significant piece for our group to perform with spatialized multi-channel electronics. They said, “The Albuquerque Railyards are a fascinating and enthralling location. They bring some of the magical vastness of New Mexico’s dramatic but inhospitable landscape indoors and humanize it with an industrial foundation. Interestingly, the history of decay there has begun to inflect the crisp man-made lines in the place, ultimately connecting the industrial back to the natural.” In addition to spatialization and movement, a sense of experiencing different cycles of time (like the life-span of man-made structures vs the mountains we see out the crumbling windows, for instance) will be an important way for the music to connect to the physical space surrounding us.
Because our venues are primarily not traditional concert spaces, we can arrange the musicians and loud-speakers in such a way as to allow the audience to move through the piece while it is happening, something like a mobile. In addition, Naomi Elizabeth Montoya and Rhea M. Riley will be developing movement and dance to further connect the moment with the space.
Project Media
“Healing Waters” by Maxwell R. Lafontant
Recorded Live at the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble’s concert on May 16th, 2016 at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque, NM.
Bass Clarinet- Clara Byom
Trombone- Dalton Harris
Vibraphone- Will Kramer
Piano- Chris Ramos
The title is from a quotation of Rainer Maria Rilke.
Instrumentation: flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, bassoon, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, & percussion
Dedicated to the “Arditti Quartet”
World premiere on April-02-2006 in Cambridge, MA / USA, Harvard University, Department of Music, by the “Arditti Quartet”
Start and End Dates
08/24/2017 — 08/30/2017
Location
Albuquerque, New Mexico
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