Abstract
Each senior composer invited to participate will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances will feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music. The senior composers also will give a public lecture as part of their participation in June in Buffalo. Lectures will take place from 10 a.m. to noon each day of the festival in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus.
The composers are:
- David Felder, Birge Cary Chair in Composition at UB, a major award-winning and internationally celebrated composer who has served as artistic director of June in Buffalo since 1985. Felder will lecture on June
- Raphael Cendo, in his first June in Buffalo appearance. This popular young French composer has an illustrious career that has included works commissioned and performed by major European ensembles at an array of important festivals. He will speak on June 3.
- Brian Ferneyhough has returned as a resident composer. He often is referred to as “The Father of New Complexity,” a movement that produces works of abstract and dissonant sound marked by complex musical notation. Widely known and celebrated throughout the U.S. and Europe, his work has been performed at JIB festivals more than 15 times since 1989 and has been taken up by a wide range of ensembles, including the JACK Quartet, which will perform at this year’s festival. He will lecture on June 4.
- Augusta Read Thomas, considered one of the most beloved figures in American music, has produced a body of work that has been called “breathtaking” and cited for its “unbridled passion and fierce poetry.” She has long been at the top of her profession and her work is frequently performed here. She will speak on June 6.
Charles Wuorinen, the eminent and enormously productive Pulitzer prize-winning composer with a long history of performing and teaching at UB—and specifically for June in Buffalo—again will serve on the JIB faculty. His honorary doctorate will be awarded on June 4. He will lecture on June 5.
- Yehudi Wyner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator, has been recognized for nearly half a century as one of the country’s most gifted composers. He headed the Yale music composition faculty for 14 years and has written a diverse array of orchestral, chamber, choral and incidental theatrical, solo vocal and instrumental music. The New York Times noted that his music, while reflecting Jewish life, is dissonant, often severe in style, and marked by unusual sonorities and instrumental virtuosity. He will speak on June 8