Other Minds Festivals ➔ Charles Amirkhanian, Lisa Bielawa, Jürg Frey, and Clemens Merkel, seated, during panel discussion, ver. 01, San Francisco, CA (2010)
Still image
Identifier
IM.OM.FP.0015b.001Dates
2010-03-04 | createdWork Type
Digital photographImage Class
Composer & Performer PortraitsImage Series
OM15: Shershow-Peña JpegsDescription
Charles Amirkhanian, Lisa Bielawa, Jürg Frey, and Clemens Merkel (l to r), during OM 15’s pre-concert panel discussion at the Jewish Community Center, in San Francisco CA, on March 4, 2010. As with all Other Minds Festival concerts, the evening’s featured composers and some of the performers participate in a discussion before the live audience, moderated by Charles Amirkhanian.Born in San Francisco into a music family Lisa Bielawa has played the violin and piano, sung, and written music since early childhood. After graduating from Yale in 1990, Bielawa has toured with the Philip Glass Ensemble as a vocalist, and composed a number of works, often taking as her inspiration various literary sources as well as close artistic collaborations. Her music has been described in the “New York Times” as “ruminative, pointillistic and harmonically slightly tart,” and “Time Out New York” praised her “prodigious gift for mingling persuasive melodicism with organic experimentation.”
Jürg Frey was born in 1953 in Aarau, Switzerland. Following his musical education at the Conservatoire de musique de Geneve, he truned to a career as a clarinetist, but his activities as composer soon came to the foreground. Frey developed his own language as a composer and sound artist with the creation of wide, quiet sound spaces. His work is marked by an elementary non-extravagance of sound, a sensibility for the qualities of the material, and precision of compositional approach. His compositions sometimes bypass instrumentation and duration altogether and touch on aspects of sound art. He has worked with compositional series, as well as with language and text. Frey is a member of the Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble, and has organized a number of concert series.
Clemens Merkel is a violinist for the Canadian based Quatuor Bozzini, and is considered one of the most versatile interpreters of contemporary music. Integrating a large variety of different styles into his repertoire, he has performed at numerous concerts and festivals throughout Europe and north America. well known for his innovative and highly individualistic interpretations of such contrasting composers as Bach and John Cage, Merkel has made a name for himself for creating his own unconventional style, often characterized as intense precise and sensitive at the same time. Born in Freiburg, Germany, Merkel has lived in Montréal since 1999. He studied at the Musickhochschule Freiburg with Joerg Hofmann and Nicolas Chumachenco and is a former member of Thuermchen Ensemble and Ensemble SurPlus. He currently teaches at Concordia University in Montréal.
Charles Amirkhanian is the Executive and Artistic Director of Other Minds, and for over 40 years has been a tireless promoter of New Music and a champion of under recognized composers and performers.
Genres & Subjects
Group portraits--2010Men
Women
Composers
Discussion
Image Ownership
Ellen Shershow Peña / Other MindsPhoto Credits
Ellen Shershow PeñaRelated Event
Other Minds Festival 15Related place
San Francisco (Calif.) (was created at)Related Entities
Shershow-Peña, EllenAmirkhanian, Charles
Bielawa, Lisa
Frey, Jürg, 1953-
Merkel, Clemens, 1968-
Other Minds Festival