Steve Antosca Ensemble
In-Gallery Concert
Artist Image
Program
Washingtonian composer Steve Antosca presents a delicate balance..., a two-movement composition exploring the delicate expressions and sounds produced from a small ensemble with voice and computer processing. Presented in conjunction with the museum’s spring 2016 exhibition Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Collection, the work includes strategic placement of surround-sound audio, allowing for the specialization and creation of antiphonal groupings of pointillist sounds to generate an environment of acoustic intimacy.
a delicate balance (2014-2016)
I tessera (2014-2016)
selected text
II myself it speaks and spells
from the poem As a kingfisher catches fire, dragonflies draw flame (March
or April, c. 1877, published 1819) by Gerald Manly Hopkins (1844-1889)
About the Artist
The music of American composer Steve Antosca integrates instruments with computers for real-time processing and pre-recorded audio processing and spatialization. Through the realization of scores which juxtapose elements of non-determinacy with traditional notation, musicians craft a sonically rich performance environment. In 2010, after years of collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Antosca was invited to form the National Gallery of Art new music ensemble and was named the Artistic Director. He is currently a co-director of the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC 2012.
Among his numerous commissions and awards are a McKim commission from the Library of Congress and a Fromm Fund commission from Harvard. For the McKim, he composed kairos ~ time outside of time for violin, harpsichord and computer in celebration of Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday. For the Fromm, he is composing elements ≃ five transfigurations for cello and computer. His work, chamber set ~ threads for ensemble and computer was premiered at the prestigious new music festival June in Buffalo 2009.
One becomes Two, premiered by violinist Lina Bahn at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, in March 2007, was described by the Washington Post as being “performed with knowing sensitivity by Bahn, her violin plugged into Antosca’s laptop, her fiddle generating ambient electronically controlled responses that were repeated or transformed into vaporous, liquid reflections of her sound.”
Antosca has a Master’s degree in Computer Music Composition from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. He lives and teaches in the Washington, DC area. He has received numerous grants for teaching technology, including a three year award from the US Department of Education for a music technology teacher education program and has been an Artist in residence at the Duke Ellington School for the Arts.
Watch & Listen
The opening of Steve Antosca’s program HABITAT at the National Gallery of Art in 2014.