Press Release - Ruckus Concert 3/14/02

by Thomas Moore

For the past several months, the three performers, joined by guest pianist Kazuko Tanosaki, have been preparing for their debut concert, which will be held on Thursday, March 14, at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Recital Hall. "This concert," says Goldstein, "is the result of many hours of playing together, and of sharing our individual perspectives on each composition." The program includes music by Giacinto Scelsi, Jo Kondo, David Macbride, and UMBC's Stuart Saunders Smith.

But the program isn't only the premiere of Ruckus; it will also be the first performance of magnificat 1, a new work composed by department chair Linda Dusman. "When I heard the UMBC Concert Choir perform J.S. Bach's Magnificat last fall," says Dusman, "I became fixated on the opening line of the Virgin Mary's song: 'My soul doth magnify the Lord.' What would it mean to conceive of the soul as a lens for something greater than oneself, rather than the essense of oneself? And how can one shape the fragments of one's life into that unified vision? I had stayed home on September 11, 2001 to compose. The events of that day added another layer to the piece, for with horror I was reminded that terrorists also imagine their souls as lenses of God, with devastating results. So magnificat 1 has both elements at work -- the yearning for clarity, and the twists that easily shift into distortion."

The concert also will feature some short works by a loose-knit group of composers and artists who call themselves Fluxus. Often humorous or irreverent, Fluxus pieces usually aren't scored like traditional music, but rather are written instructions. To commemorate the Ruckus kick-off, President Hrabowski agreed to help perform the first Fluxus piece on the program, Two Inches by Robert Watts.

New music, stemming from a long classical avant garde tradition, isn't heard widely outside of academic environments. But Ruckus intends to change that: "I see our mission in two areas," says Richards. "One is to establish the group (and UMBC) as a local, regional, and national/international research center for composers and performers of contemporary music, where we can explore new musical vocabularies. The other is to serve to educate listeners through performances of music and musical ideas that they may not have previously experienced." With that mission in mind, Ruckus intends to embark on national and international tours, representing both contemporary music and UMBC.

Admission to the Ruckus concert is free with a UMBC ID. Regular general admission is $7, and $3 for students and non-UMBC students. For more information, call the Department of Music at x52942 or visit the online arts calendar.

FRANK COX received Bachelor of Music degrees in cello and composition from Indiana University, a Master of Arts degree in composition from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California, San Diego. He studied cello with Peter Wiley, Janos Starker, and Gary Hoffman, and has performed in numerous festivals and new music ensembles, including Ensemble Koln, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, the Group for Contemporary Music, and SONOR, as well as at the 1980 and 1982 Spoleto Festivals, the 1983 Banff Summer Chamber Music Festival, the Xenakis Festival and Darmstadt Revisited Festivals at UCSD, and at the Darmstadt Festival since 1988, where he received a special citation for cello performance in 1990. Dr. Cox also received a Stipendium composition Fellowship at the 1990 Darmstadt Festival, won 2nd prize in the Los Angeles Arts Commission competition in the spring of 1991, and was co-winner of the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (highest award for composition) at the 1992 Darmstadt Festival. He will join the faculty of the music department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as an Assistant Professor of Music from August 2002.

KAZUKO TANOSAKI, a first-prize winner of the La Jolla Young Artists Competition, has performed as a guest artist at the Piano Panorama of Twentieth Century Music in Rotterdam, Holland, on French National TV, with I Musici de Montreal, and as a concerto soloist with the Syracuse Symphony, and Hamilton College Orchestra on their tour of Romania and Bulgaria. As a member of the Tanosaki-Richards Duo, active since 1982, she has performed recitals in Europe, Australia, Japan, and the US, including concerts at the American Academy in Rome, the Camargo Foundation (France), Lincoln Center (NY), the Guggenheim Museum (NY), the Tokyo American Center (Japan), and at international new music festivals in Melbourne, Kobe, Kyoto, and Sendai. Dr. Tanosaki holds a B.A. from the Kunitachi College of Music (Tokyo), M.A. from UC San Diego, and DMA from the Eastman School of Music.