High Tides Festival of New Music - 1996

High Tides New Music Intersects the Arts will allow five innovative and accomplished Bay Area composers to develop an evening of his or her own creation. This unusual opportunity has in the past, inspired artists to create a new piece for this prestigious High Tides Festival. This years program will expand this concept even further as the composers integrate their music with visual, literary and performing arts. This is a unique opportunity of curating an evening with the purpose of intersecting the arts, as well as presenting a new work which is not available from other musical presenting programs.

The Artists

Elyzabeth Meade, who for the last 12 years has been composing for the concert stage, dance/theater, and video as well as her own performance works. Ms. Meade has worked with a variety of media including electronic found objects, tape concrete, extended voice, and traditional orchestral instruments. She is also noted for her performance poetry - poems in which the play of pitch, rhythm and texture of words is integral to their compositional structure.

Her Performance Works have been presented in the Bay Area at New Langton Arts, Theater Artaud, Cowell Theater, Footwork, 8th Street Studio, Julia Morgan Theater, Centerspace and most recently "Catastrophe Practice" presented at New Performance Gallery in September of this year. A CD of her orchestral arrangements of Korean Art Songs with tenor Jeong Kyu Lim was released in 1993. Ms. Meade hopes to integrate dancers into her work, as she has done in the past as well as sculpture, a new "intersection" for her, into her evenings performance.

Sam Ashley and Ben Azarm will present the collaborative work-in- progress On Happiness and the Virtues of Field Transit during this years High Tides Festival. This is a site specific performance installation piece which uses computer generated and driven sound, processed tape, modified broadcast broadband noise and text. Mr. Ashley has pioneered an approach to art that incorporates trance-mysticism. Ben Azarm's work incorporates modern automation principles and innovative concepts. Mr. Azarm uses a wide range of media including computers, text, special function devices, surveillance circuitry, the human nervous system, and video. Mr. Ashley's and Mr. Azarm's work has been presented at the Lab, Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Interpretations Series, Merkin Hall, New York; Oliveros Foundation, NY; Wesleyan University; Mills College Songlines; Exploratorium; Wires, LA; Alternative Museum, NYC and KPFA Radio. This performance of On Happiness and the Virtues of Field Transit will utilize the Intersection;s space to increase the theatrical and sculptural elements latent in this piece.

Miya Masaoka is a performer/composer creating a new voice in contemporary Asian American music. She has received critical, international recognition as an innovative and virtuostic performer on the Koto. She is currently the director of the San Francisco Gagaku Society which performs Japanese court music and has studied numerous genres of Japanese music. Ms. Masaoka has performed all over the world including programs on England's BBC, Netherlands National Radio and Japanese Television NHK. She has received numerous commissions, has a new CD on Asian Improv Records entitled Compositions/Improvisations and was recently recognized as one of the "Top Ten of 1994" by both the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly. Ms. Masoaka is starting to work with the sounds of live insects and hopes to amplify and incorporate these sounds into her live performance at the Intersection.

Tim White is a composer for experimental theater and independent film. He has performed and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians including Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, the Rova Saxophone Quartet and the Turtle Island String Quartet. Mr. White has also worked with experimental artists including George Coates, Rinde Ekert, Karina Epperienin, Bob Ernst, Whoopi Goldberg, Leonard Pitt and Ellen Sebastian.

He is a founding member of the just intonation Good Sound Quartet and the Good Sound Band. The Good Sound Band's recent collaboration with Terry Riley can be heard on the latest recording of In C, (New Albion records, San Francisco). Mr. White combines both western and eastern musical styles, jazz elements, Indian music and complex rhythms from around the world. He recently composed in Indian classical style for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's 1995 version of As You Like It. He produces and hosts the Classical Music of India Radio Show and has participated in residencies at the Djerassi Foundation and Headlands Center for the Arts, CA, and Banff Center for the Performing Arts, Canada.

Paul Pena will create an evening entitled Spirit Voices - An evening of Overtone & Harmonic Tuvan Throat Singing. Blind since birth, Paul has performed extensively around the world. His passion for throat singing has occupied his musical career for the last ten years. Recently he was awarded first place in the prestigious Kargyraa throat singing contest held in the capitol of Tuva, Kyzyl. Mr. Pena has worked extensively with legendary bluesman T-Bone Walker and has performed at the Newport Folk Festival with James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Chris Christopherson. His forthcoming CD Ghengis Blues is a collaboration with Tuvan throat singer Kongar-ool Ondar which incorporates elements from traditional blues, Tuvan throat singing, as well as music from the home(?jh), The Republic of Cabo Verde, a group of islands off the coast of west Africa. His evening will include a variety of artists who practice this singing style.

Biographies - Administrative Staff

Kate Eilertsen, Executive Director, Intersection for the Arts - has been Executive Director of Intersection for the Arts since September 20, 1994. Formerly a board member of The Intersection since 1993 Kate has been the director of the University of California Museum of Art, Science & Culture, (?jh)The Museums at Blackhawk.

She has organized installation projects for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard University Art Museums. Kate was formerly Administrator of Exhibitions, Harvard University Art Museums in charge of the installation of the permanent and special exhibitions for the three Harvard University Art Museums; the Fogg, Arthur M. Sackler and Busch Reisinger Museums. She has trained staffs in museum methodology, installation and exhibitions processes for, among others, Columbia University, The New York Historical Society, The Jewish Museum and the Fraunces Tavern Museum. From 1977 to 1987 Kate was Installation Supervisor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she managed and supervised the installation of The Rockefeller Collection of Primitive Art. Kate's professional affiliations include the American Association of Museums, the Western Museums Association, the California Art Educators Association and is a consultant to the Museum of Children's Art.

Joe Catalano, the guest curator and original conceiver of this festival, will continue to act as the key organizer of the festival. This will be Joe's fourth year coordinating High Tides. Joe is a composer and performer himself and has written music for concert halls, theater and gallery spaces. He has curated an interactive teleconferenced concert of experimental music, poetry and performance art and has received several awards in support of his own work. He is the Co-artistic Director of the Oliveros Foundation, Oakland Chapter. His recent composition for Kwan and Iger's Pins and Noodles premiered at the Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens in 1993 and is currently being transformed into a film for the PBS series POV.