Ben Leeds Carson spent the bulk of his early childhood living in a white van with geologist-naturalist parents, surveying roadcuts and riverbeds at rest areas in 47 U.S. states by his eighth birthday. His sense of purpose in music developed under the influence of Argentine composer José Rambaldi (d. 1989) and comedian-singer Bradley Hunt (d. 1988), whose lives were cut short by AIDS while Ben was still a teen. He was later fortunate to have the mentorship of John Peel, John Rahn, and Roger Reynolds, inflected by the thought of teachers like Robert Morris, Jann Pasler, Brian Ferneyhough, Chaya Czernowin, Jerry Balzano, George Lewis, and many others. His music explores “the establishment and erosion of musical boundaries, the evolution/devolution of melody, and the use of silence as a structural component” (Robert Schulslaper, Fanfare Magazine July/ August 2012), and has been performed widely, including at the New School’s iLand “Cage Centennial,” the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City, the Smithsonian’s Meyer Series, with concerts dedicated to his music at Sydney Conservatory, at Columbia University’s Music Performance Program (in an 11-work retrospective with Yarn/Wire and distinguished guests in 2008), and at the 2009 Festival of the International Society for Improvised Music.
Hamburg/Berlin-based lied and opera singer Pia Davila enjoys longstanding collaborations with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Stadtteiloper Bremen, and has more recently premiered main roles with Städtische Bühne Osnabrück, and Theater Bremen, including roles as Wagner’s Flower Maiden and Mozart’s Barbarina, Staatsoper Hamburg’s production Ring and Wrestling, and Purcell’s Fairy Queen, and leading roles with Dutch National Opera in Pierre Audi’s production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus Licht, and Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Ein Geschäft mit Träumen by Alexandra Filonenko. She has placed in numerous competitions, including Franz Schubert and Modern Music, Gustav-Mahler-Liedwettbewerb, and the Gebrüder-Graun-Prize competition. She is supported by grants from the Claussen-Simon- Stiftung, the Oscar und Vera Ritter-Stiftung, the Gotthard-Schierse- Stiftung, the Schloss Rheinsberg International Opera Academy, and the Lied Academy of the Heidelberger Frühling.
Born in 1992 in Shanghai, composer-media artist Dong Zhou has studied electroacoustic music composition in Shanghai conservatory and multimedia composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama. Her work has been featured at a wide range of international festivals, including Shanghai International Art Festival, Blurred Edges Festivals, EUROMicroFest, KlingtGut, Evimus, Split Art Convention, ZKM Next Generation, New Music Miami, Echofluxx New Media, and Serials Festival Évora. Her collaboration with Deborah Kim was awarded first prize at the 2018 International Computer Music Conference’s Hacker-n- Makerthon, for a collaboration with composer Deborah Kim, and was 2019 Deutscher Musikwettbewerb finalist. As a sound designer and composer for theater, Zhou’s work has been premiered at Peony Pavilion Yin Yang (Shanghai Theatre Academy), Miss Shanghai, A Fairy Tale (Staatsoper Hamburg), Sweet Dreams (St. Pauli Theater), Lichtof Theater’s Strandrecht, and A Way (Monsun Theater). Her installations were exhibited in Hangzhou City Library, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, and Museum of Perception Graz.
As a composer and contrabassist, the work of Christopher Williams—running the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists—has appeared in North American and European experimental music circuits, and on VPRO Radio 6 (Holland), Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, Volksbühne Berlin, and the American Documentary Film Festival. His writings appear in publications such as the Journal of Sonic Studies, Journal for Artistic Research, Open Space Magazine, Critical Studies in Improvisation, TEMPO, and Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance (Routledge). He co-curates the Berlin concert series KONTRAKLANG. He has co-curated the salon series Certain Sundays, and serves a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz.
Hanne Franzen
Hamburg-based pianist, répétiteur, and musical director Hanne Franzen is currently working as a piano teacher and accompanist at the Staatliche Jugendmusikschule Hamburg. She plays at the Theaterakademie of the Hamburg Conservatory of Music and Drama and takes assistant parts at the Staatsoper Hamburg. She has played e-piano and mini keyboard in the band Fuo, has been featured at the Blurred Edges Festival, and is one part of a Lied duo at the Festival for Contemporary Music Mouvement Saarbrücken. She has played live and studio recordings at the Norddeutscher and Saarländischer Rundfunk and performed premieres of works from Javier Party, Dong Zhou, Ben Leeds Carson, and Benjamin Gordon. Hanne Franzen has studied piano, including an emphasis on lied and accompaniment, and completed her postgraduate course in contemporary music with honors; she is currently a Richard Wagner scholar at the Bayreuth Festival.
Robin Hayward
Tuba player and composer Robin Hayward introduced radical playing techniques to brass instruments, initially through the discovery of the ‘noise-valve’ in 1996, and later through the development of the first fully microtonal tuba in 2009, and has developed a web application—Hayward Tuning Vine (https:// www.tuningvine.com/)—in order to visualize the harmonic space implicit within the instrument. Hayward tours extensively and has collaborated with Charles Curtis, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, and Christian Wolff, among others. He founded the ensemble Zinc & Copper to explore brass chamber music from an experimental music perspective. He has been featured in such festivals as Maerzmusik, Fri Resonans, Donaueschingen, TRANSIT festival, Ghent Festival of Flanders, Ostrava New Music Days, Sound Symposium, Kieler Tage für Neue Musik, and Wien Modern.
Recorded 9 June 2021 Jenö-Takacs-Saal,
Kunstuniversität Graz, Austria
Reidemeister Move is:
Robin Hayward, microtonal tuba
Christopher Williams, contrabass
Engineering, mixing: Ludwig Frühschütz Eleton Audio
Space management: Astrid Grill Kultur-Betriebe Burgenland (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
IN MARSHALL FIELD (2020) Recorded 29 November 2020 Halcyon Records, Hamburg, Germany
Pia Davila, soprano Hanne Franzen, piano Dong Zhou, sampler
Engineering, mixing: Lukas Tügel Halcyon Records
Additional mixing: B Carson
Pre-mastered for vinyl by Chris Mercer
Produced by Chris Mercer and Hans Thomalla
