Paul Dresher, Composer, Quadrachord

Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and unique personal style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Walker Arts Center, University of Iowa, Meet the Composer, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, National Flute Association, and the American Music Theater Festival. He has performed or had his works performed throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at venues including New York Philharmonic, the Munich State Opera, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia ‘95, Festival Interlink in Japan, and five New Music America Festivals. Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp & Dancers, Wendy Rogers Dance Company, and Allyson Green Dance.

In November 2004, his contemporary chamber group, the six-member Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band, made its Carnegie Hall debut, performing a concert of Dresher’s chamber works as part of the “In Your Ear Festival” curated by John Adams, in conjunction with the New Albion release of Dresher’s CD Cage Machine. In the winter and spring of 2005, the 20th anniversary remount of Slow Fire, Dresher’s seminal music theater collaboration with writer/performer Rinde Eckert, toured to multiple venues in the United States.

In April 2008, the San Francisco Ballet premiered Dresher orchestral score for Thread, his collaboration with choreographer Margaret Jenkins, commissioned for the Ballet’s 75th anniversary celebrations. In May 2006, Dresher’s chamber solo chamber opera The Tyrant, for tenor John Duykers, premiered in five performances at Opera Cleveland and has now been produced in Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago and San Francisco.

Other recently completed composing projects include the acclaimed score for the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s premiere production of To The Lighthouse, an adaption of Virginia Woolf’s novel by playwright Adele Shank and directed by Les Waters Snow in June, a collaboration with playwright Charles Mee and director Chen Shi-Zheng, commissioned by the American Repertory Theatre; and the cello concerto Unequal Distemperament, a collaboration with former Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.

Current projects include a solo piano work for Sarah Cahill and new music theater work using large-scale invented musical instruments for percussionist/performer Steven Schick, Created in collaboration with mechanical sound artist Matt Heckert, instrument builder Daniel Schmidt and writer/director Rinde Eckert, will premiere in March, 2009 at Stanford University.

Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music and Arts, 0.0. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels.

Joel Davel, Marimba Lumina

Joel Davel has been a member of the Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band for over a decade, premiering work by some of today's leading composers. In addition to being a member of Dresher's Ensemble, he has collaborated with him in duos and in live accompaniment of dance companies including the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Nancy Karp + Dancers, ODC/SF, and the Allyson Green Dance Company. Davel's diverse percussion career also includes performance and recording credits with groups led by electronic-diva Amy X Neuburg, percussionist William Winant, violinist Kaila Flexer, guitarist Jack West and guitarist David Tanenbaum. In the role of composer, Davel has performed live on-stage solo accompaniment for The California Shakespeare Theater, choreographer Claudine Naganuma, and earlier in his career in theater and circus. Davel is noted for his musical approach to the use of electronics. His appearance at a Lincoln Center event prompted the Wall Street Journal to comment: “percussionist Joel Davel blew everyone away with his virtuosic improvisation on the Marimba Lumina, an electronic invention that emulates and extends the vocabulary of conventional mallet instruments, and the [Buchla] Lightning, played by waving wireless wands in space.” He has consistently worked with the infamous Don Buchla since 1993, building innovative electronic music instruments including the Buchla Lightning, an infrared interface, and Marimba Lumina, an RF interface. In 2008, Davel created Absolute Deviation, a venture dedicated to building and supporting Marimba Luminas. He holds degrees from Northern Illinois University and Mills College.

Lisa Moore, Piano

Australian-American pianist Lisa Moore lives in New York City where she collaborates with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists. The New York Times says "her energy is illuminating" and the New Yorker magazine called her “visionary” and "New York's queen of avant-garde piano". Moore has released 5 solo discs (Cantaloupe and Tall Poppies labels) and 30 collaborative discs (Sony, Nonesuch, DG, CRI, BMG, Point, New World, ABC Classics, Albany and New Albion). Her latest solo recording "Seven" (music by Don Byron) has just been released on Cantaloupe. Two more solo Cantaloupe EPs are scheduled for release in 2010 featuring original music by composers Annie Gosfield and Donnacha Dennehy.

Lisa Moore's performances combine musical and emotional power -- whether in the delivery of the simplest song, the most challenging chamber work or complex solo score. She is passionately dedicated to the music of our time as well as the great musical canon. Moore has collaborated with composers from many musical genres -- Elliot Carter, Iannis Xenakis, Meredith Monk, Phillip Glass, Thurston Moore and Ornette Coleman to name just a few. Her wide-ranging repertoire spans from Robert Schumann, Leos Janacek and Modeste Mussorgsky to music and text settings by Randy Newman, Frederic Rzewski and Kurt Schwitters. Past solo shows include "ipiano: my brilliant career", "Wilde's World", "The Totally Wired Piano", "Janacek from the street" and "Musically Speaking". Moore has given concerts at La Scala, the Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. She has made many guest appearances at festivals – The Holland, Lincoln Center, Schleswig-Holstein, BBC Proms, Israel, Warsaw, Uzbekistan, Musica Ficta Lithuania, Prague Spring, Istanbul, Athens, Taormina, Southbank's Meltdown, Dublin's Crash, Graz, Huddersfield, Scotia, Paris d'Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Turin, Palermo, Barcelona, Heidelberg, Berlin, Perugia, Tanglewood, Houston Da Camera, Jacob's Pillow, Aspen, Norfolk, Sandpoint, Saratoga, Victoriaville, Ojai, Other Minds, NY's Sonic Boom, BAM Next Wave, MassMoca, Bang on a Can, Keys to the Future, Healing The Divide, Mizzou, Music 10 Blonay, Adelaide, Perth, Queensland, Canberra, Sydney, Sydney's Olympic Arts, Sydney Spring, Sydney Mostly Mozart, Brisbane Biennale, and the Darwin Festival.

Lisa Moore has performed with the New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, BargeMusic, St. Lukes Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Steve Reich Ensemble, So Percussion, Don Byron Adventurers Orchestra, Signal, Third Coast Percussion,, Da Capo Chamber Players, Paul Dresher Double Duo, Mabou Mines Theater, Susan Marshall Dance Co, Sequitur, Newband, Music at the Anthology, The Crosstown Ensemble, Australia Ensemble, Westchester Philharmonic, New York League of Composers ISCM, Newband, Alpha Centauri Ensemble, Terra Australis, Essential Music, and the John Jasperse Dance Company. As a concerto soloist she has appeared with the London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Albany, Sydney, Tasmania, Thai and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi and the Queensland Philharmonic, under the baton of conductors Reinbert de Leeuw, Pierre Boulez, Jorge Mester and Edo de Waart.

Lisa Moore won the silver medal in the Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition. From 1992-2008 she was the pianist and founding member for the Bang On A Can All-Stars -- the New York based electro-acoustic sextet and winner of Musical America's 2005 "Ensemble of the Year" Award. As an artistic curator she produced Australia's Canberra International Music Festival “Sounds Alive ‘08” series, importing musicians from around the world for 10 days of music making at the Street Theatre.

Lisa Moore teaches at the Yale-Norfolk New Music Workshop Summer Festival and at Wesleyan University as well as making guest teaching appearances at conservatories around the world. She was born in Canberra and raised in Australia and London before moving to the USA in 1980. Moore is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stonybrook.

For more Moore please visit www.lisamoore.org

Karen Bentley Pollick, Violin

Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as violinist with Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999. She performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian hardangerfele. “Pollick pretty much lit the house on fire with her movements as well as her playing. But after having played the piano and violin simultaneously, she deserved to go wild.” (Birmingham News re Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano)

A native of Palo Alto, California, she was concertmaster and conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra and studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. While attending Indiana University she studied violin with Josef Gingold, chamber music with Rostislav Dubinsky and received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance.
She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her own record label Ariel Ventures she has produced Dancing Suite to Suite, <amberwood> and Homage to Fiddlers. Pollick has also recorded for Bridge Records, Albany Records, Mode Records, Numinous Records, CRI, Sony, RCA and Camel Productions.

Pollick was concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984 and has participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences. She has performed in recital with Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome, throughout the Czech Republic with cellist Dennis Parker in the 2007 and 2008 American Spring Festivals, and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. She has appeared as soloist with Redwood Symphony in the world premiere of Swedish composer Ole Saxe's Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony and orchestras in Panama, Russia, Alaska, New York and California. Recent collaborations include the Seattle Chamber Players, the Ensemble for the Romantic Century and appearances at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival.

Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, Pollick is a recipient of a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists. Their original music and choreography premiered at Birmingham-Southern College in May 2009. With Australian pianist Lisa Moore, Pollick formed the duo Prophet Birds in spring 2009. “The stylistic cohesiveness in the "Prophet Birds" program Monday at Hill Recital Hall was made all the more convincing by Karen Bentley Pollick's and Lisa Moore's determination to make it lucid and palatable.” (Birmingham News)

Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a 1987 viola by William Whedbee of Chicago.

For more information: www.kbentley.com