FERUS Festival 2019: Miranda Cuckson and Katharina Rosenberger
"Folds"
6pm doors • 7pm show
About
The FERUS festival is an annual showcase of untamed voices. Presenting the latest in cutting–edge new music with an emphasis on performances that push the envelope, the festival invites artists to perform their newest work in music, multimedia, and beyond. A showcase for all that National Sawdust stands for as a venue, FERUS transcends traditional tropes to let audiences Hear It New!
Acclaimed violinist Miranda Cuckson was an original National Sawdust Curator in their inaugural season, and she returns now with intermedia artist Katharina Rosenberger and projection designer John Burnett to develop a new work that uses innovative techniques to chart a sensory journey exploring the dichotomy between the material and the immaterial. A striking array of paper objects — sculptures, manuscripts, scraps woven between the strings of a violin — will represent the tangible world, while ghostly noises and phantasmagorical lighting effects represent a world that cannot be touched.
The piece will use music from adventurous masters of the late sixteenth century, dovetailed with mysterious electroacoustic sounds drawn out from Rosenberger’s papers and Cuckson’s violin by a unique system designed by Burnett. In a digitized world, these three artists ask, what keeps us engaged with physical objects? This show is their question, and also their answer.
FUNDING
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Tickets
The Artists
Violinist Miranda Cuckson delights audiences in the US and abroad with her playing a large range of repertoire, from the newest creations to older works. Combining a deep background in the classical repertoire with an adventurous and probing spirit, she works at the forefront of today’s music scene. She appears worldwide as soloist and chamber musician at venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Teatro Colón, Suntory Hall, the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y, the Guggenheim Museum, Monday Evening Concerts in LA, and the Marlboro, Bard, Lincoln Center, West Cork, Bridgehampton, Music Mountain, Portland, and Bodensee festivals.
She made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Walter Piston’s concerto with the American Symphony Orchestra. Her performances in 2017-18 include premieres of a violin concerto written for her by Georg Friedrich Haas in Tokyo, Stuttgart, and Porto, and the New York premiere of Michael Hersch’s concerto. Recent recitals include ones at the Miller Theatre, Strathmore, the Art Institute of Chicago (Frequency Fest), and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music. Her discography includes, most recently, music of Wolpe, Carter, and Ferneyhough (Urlicht) and Bartók, Schnittke, and Lutoslawski (ECM). The New York Times named her recording of Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” a Best Recording of 2012. Her albums also feature the Korngold and Ponce concertos and music by Finney, Shapey, Martino, Sessions, Eckardt, Xenakis, Glass, Fujikura, and more.
Katharina Rosenberger, born in Zurich, is Associate Professor in Composition at the Department of Music, University of California, San Diego. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from Columbia University, under the mentorship of Tristan Murail.
Her compositions, installations and interdisciplinary stage work have been featured at festivals such as the Klangwerkstatt, Berlin, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hannover, Weimarer Frühlingstage, DE, Tage für Neue Musik, Zürich, Festival Archipel, Geneva, CH, Festival Les Musiques, Marseille, FR, Festival Bernaola, Vitoria-Gasteiz, ES, Felicja Blumental Festival, Tel Aviv, IL, Festival reMusik, St. Petersburg, RU, Festival Visiones Sonoras, Morelia, MX, Shanghai Electronic Music Week, Shanghai New Music Days, CN, October Contemporary, Hongkong, HK, as well as in many concert series throughout Europe and the United States.
Katharina‘s installation work VIVA VOCE and Room V have been awarded with the “Mediaprojects Award” / Sitemapping of the Swiss Federal Agency (OFC), Berne. She is a past recipient of the Hellman Fellowship, San Francisco, the Sony Scholar Award, and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Commission for her composition Gesang an das noch namenlose Land. Her portrait CD TEXTUREN with the Wet Ink Ensemble, released on HatHut Records, has been awarded the prestigious Copland Recording Grant and was selected for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Bestenliste 4_2012.
Her music can be heard on Hat Hut Records, Unit Records and Akenaton.
John Burnett (b 1993) is a multimedia artist based in San Diego, California. Drawing from a background in music composition, sound design, and technology, they create technologically augmented and reactive multimedia installation works, sound and projection design for dance and theater productions, concert works, and film scores. Most recently, John collaborated with the art collective AUDINT to create a sound installation based on the sonic attacks at the American embassy in Cuba. This work was premiered at the Gallery@Calit2 in San Diego, California and shown for a period of two months. John also created the sound and projection design for Before the horses crash into the ground, and then the ground…, a hybrid dance and music performance piece by Verónica Santiago Moniello that was premiered at the Potiker Theater at the La Jolla Playhouse. Additionally, John worked with a team of playwrights to create And then you wait…, a sound installation shown at the gallery Bread and Salt as part of the 2017 WOW Festival, a theater festival put on by the La Jolla Playhouse. John has recently ventured into film scoring with the film NON, a feature–length film directed and produced by Zebulon Zang that was premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2018. John is also a member of the Sonic Arts research team, based in the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego, where they research audio-spatialization and audio–visual technology. John is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and is currently a PhD candidate in music at UC San Diego.
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