8:00 PM; $5 - $15 sliding scale donation (cash or check only) at the door.Nonsequitur proudly presents the first Seattle concert devoted entirely to the music of Alaskan composer John Luther Adams. The program opens with two solo piano pieces, Nunataks and Among Red Mountains, performed by Seattle pianist Cristina Valdes, and concludes with The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies, a monumental recent work for solo percussion and electronics performed by renowned percussionist Steven Schick.
John Luther Adams has created a musical world grounded in wilderness landscapes, indigenous cultures, and natural phenomena, from the songs of birds to elemental noise. His music includes works for orchestra, small ensembles, percussion and electronic media, and is recorded on Cantaloupe, New World, Cold Blue, Mode, and New Albion. He is the author of the book Winter Music (Wesleyan 2004). His sound and light environment The Place Where You Go to Listen is a permanent part of the new Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the subject of his second book (Wesleyan 2009). In 2006, Adams was named one of the first United States Artists Fellows, and has also received fellowships from the NEA, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Mr. Adams has served as composer in residence with the Anchorage Symphony, Anchorage Opera, Fairbanks Symphony, Arctic Chamber Orchestra, the Alaska Public Radio Network, and as president of the American Music Center.
For the past thirty years, Steven Schick has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher, commissioning and premiering more than one hundred new works. He is Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California San Diego and a Consulting Artist in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. He was the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002, and from 2000 to 2004 served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. Schick is founder and Artistic Director of the percussion group, "red fish blue fish," and in 2007 assumed the post of Music Director and conductor of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus. Steven Schick recently released three important publications: a book on solo percussion music, The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams (University of Rochester Press); his recording of The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies by John Luther Adams (Cantaloupe Music); and, a 3-CD set of the complete percussion music of Iannis Xenakis, made in collaboration with red fish blue fish (Mode Records).
Committed to both contemporary and standard repertoire, pianist Cristina Valdes is known for presenting innovative concerts with repertoire ranging from Bach to Xenakis. She has performed across four continents and in a multitude of venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Recital Hall and the Kennedy Center. Her passionate interest in new music has led to a variety of collaborations with many composers including performing side by side with Joan Tower and Terry Riley, recording the works of Ezra Laderman and Ned Rorem, and premiering works by Evan Ziporyn, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Oliver Schneller among others. Her festival performances include the Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva in Mexico City, the Brisbane Arts Festival, the Festival of Contemporary Music in El Salvador, Theater de Welt in Stuttgart, the New Music in Miami Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the Singapore Arts Festival.
