Colin McAllister - Mark Menzies - Christopher Adler - Morris Palter - Franklin Cox - Lisa Cella

Colin McAllister, guitar

Guitarist Colin McAllister is widely recognized for his innovative concert programming, versatility, and dedication to adventurous contemporary repertoire. He is currently on the faculty of the music department at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the classical and jazz guitar programs and teaches a course in western music history. In performance, Colin plays both classical and electric guitars, as well as the 11-string altgitarre. He maintains an active performance schedule throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Mexico. Recent highlights include the XIII Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra (Tijuana, Mexico), Pacific Rim Music Festival in Santa Cruz, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, San Francisco sfSoundSeries, Unruly Music (Milwaukee), Breda Jazz Festival (NL), Bohem Ragtime and Jazz Festival (HU), Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, and the Colorado College New Music Symposium. As a devotee of new music, Colin has given the world or U.S. premieres of over 50 works, including pieces by Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, Vinko Globokar, Helmut Lachenmann, and Stuart Saunders Smith. As an educator, he has presented performances, seminars and masterclasses at major universities including CIEM in Mexico City, Depaul University, Stanford University, California Institute of the Arts, University of Maryland, Arizona State University, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and the Oberlin Conservatory, where he was a visiting artist-in-residence. With xylophonist Morris Palter, he performs in the SpeakEasy jazz and ragtime duo. His transcriptions and compositions are published by Les Productions d’Oz (Saint-Romuald, Québec), and he has recorded for the Innova, Old King Cole, and Tzadik record labels. Colin earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego in 2004.
Colin is a founding member of NOISE and the Executive Director of San Diego New Music. www.colinmcallister.com

Lisa Cella, flute

As a champion of contemporary music, Lisa Cella has performed throughout the United States and abroad. She is Artistic Director of San Diego New Music and a founding member of its resident ensemble NOISE. With NOISE she has performed the works of young composers all around the world including at the Acousmania Festival in Bucharest, Romania in May of 2004, the Pacific Rim Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz in May of 2005 and as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2007. Lisa is also performs with Jane Rigler in the flute duo inHale, a group dedicated to developing challenging and experimental repertoire for two flutes. inHale was an invited ensemble at the National Flute Association Convention in San Diego in August of 2005. She, along with Franklin Cox, is a founding member of C2, a touring flute and cello duo. C2 has commissioned and premiered at least seven new works in the 2006-2007 season. As a soloist, she has performed in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and is a faculty member of the Cortona Festival of Contemporary Music in Cortona, Italy. She is an assistant professor of music at the UMBC and a founding member of its faculty contemporary music ensemble, Ruckus. Her undergraduate work was completed at Syracuse University under the tutelage of John Oberbrunner and she received a Master of Music degree and a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Conservatory where she studied with Robert Willoughby. Lisa received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in contemporary flute performance under John Fonville at the University of California, San Diego.
Lisa is a founding member of NOISE and the Artistic Director of San Diego New Music.
Lisa Cella page at University of Maryland Baltimore County

Morris Palter, percussion

Born in Canada, Morris's wide range of musical interests have found him performing throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at various festivals and concert venues. Some of these have included the Acousmania Festival in Bucharest, the Agora Festival (IRCAM) in Paris, Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, as well as at the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall under famed conductor/composer Pierre Boulez. Morris has also performed solo recitals and guest lectures at various conservatories and universities including the University of Birmingham, UK, Arizona State University, Stanford University, and the Oberlin Conservatory. As a Novelty Jazz Xylophonist, Morris founded the Speak-Easy Duo (Colin McAllister, guitar) in 2003, and in 2006, co-founded the duo group Metasax/DRUMthings with composer/saxophonist/technology artist Matthew Burtner. Morris is the Artistic Director of Ensemble 64.8 (UAF percussion ensemble), the Artistic Director for the University of Alaska Fairbanks New Music Festival, and the World Music Artistic Coordinator for the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. Morris is dedicated to commissioning both solo and chamber works and has collaborated with artists such as Bob Becker, Pierre Boulez, Roger Reynolds, Cho-wen Chung, John Luther Adams, Scott Deal, Evelyn Glennie, David Lang, Stewart Saunders Smith, Thomas DeLio, and Philip Manoury. Morris is a member of the Percussive Arts Society New Music/Research Committee and has been published in PAS Magazine and the San Diego Troubador Newspaper and is currently endorsed by Black Swamp Percussion and Paiste Inc., and is a Yamaha Perofrming Artist. Morris can be heard on New World Records, Tzadik Records, Mode Records, Innova, and RCA/BMG. His solo CD was released on Centaur Records in 2006. He Has received degrees from the University of Toronto, the Koninklijk Conservatorium, Den Haag, and the University of California, San Diego where he received his Doctorate of Musical Arts in 2005. Morris was a Lecturer in Music at UCSD during the 2006/07 academic year and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Morris is a founding member of NOISE. Morris Palter's website

Christopher Adler, piano and composer-in-residence

Christopher Adler is a composer, improviser and performer living in San Diego, California. His compositions draw upon over a decade of research into the traditional musics of Thailand and Laos and a background in mathematics and computer modeling. He is internationally recognized as a foremost performer of new and traditional music for the khaen, a free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand. As a pianist and conductor, he has performed with many of the West coast’s finest improvisers and is active in performing new music. As a soloist, he has performed in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, at the University of Pennsylvania, the City University of New York, the Bang on a Can marathon, Music at the Anthology, and he has appeared with the Seattle Creative Orchestra and members of the string quartet Ethel. He has premiered solo works by Sidney Marquez Boquiren, David Lipten, David Loeb, Alan Lechusza and Gustavo Aguilar. Christopher has been commissioned by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and the Silk Road Project, San Diego New Music’s NOISE, the Durham, NC ensemble pulsoptional, the Seattle Creative Orchestra, the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, the Eighth International Biennial of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador, the improvising ensemble soNu, guitarist Colin McAllister and choreographer Hyun-mi Cho. He received Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in composition from Duke University and Bachelor’s degrees in music composition and in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego. His work may be heard on Tzadik, pfMENTUM, Nine Winds Records, Vienna Modern Masters, Artship Recordings, Accretions, Circumvention, and WGBH’s Art of the States.
Christopher joined NOISE in 2003 after appearing as a guest in 2002. www.christopheradler.com

Franklin Cox, cello and composer-in-residence

Dr. Franklin Cox received B.M. degrees in cello and composition from Indiana University, and composition degrees from Columbia University (M.A.), and the University of California,  San Diego (Ph.D.), where he also served as adjunct faculty member from 1993 to 1995. He studied piano with Phyllis Katz and Richard Morris, cello with Gary Hoffman, Janos Starker, and Peter Wiley, and composition with Steven Suber, Fred Lerdahl, Roger Reynolds, Joji Yuasa, Brian Ferneyhough, and Harvey Sollberger.  Dr. Cox has received numerous fellowships, prizes, and commissions from leading institutions and festivals of new music, including fellowships from the Schloss Solitude, Künstlerhaus Wiepersdorf, and the Sacher Stiftung, and commissions from the 1998 Berliner Biennale and 2001 Hannover Biennale. He is the only person in the history of the Darmstadt Festival to be awarded the highest awards for both composition and  performance.  From 1988-1992 he attended the Darmstadt Festival on scholarship, and in 1994 served on the faculty. As a cellist, he has performed for over thirty years with a wide variety of classical chamber ensembles and orchestras.  He has played with many leading new music groups, including the Group for Contemporary Music, Exposé, Surplus, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and Ensemble Köln. For Chaya Czernowin's opera,  See under Love,  he was selected to perform as solo cellist at the 2000 Munich Biennale, and he has also performed as soloist in the 2005 Maerzfest (Berliner Biennale).  He has also founded and directed numerous groups, including the Extended Vocal Resources Ensemble from 1990-1993. In January 2006 he formed the duo C-squared with flautist Lisa Cella.  Together they have commissioned numerous new works from composers and have performed throughout the United States and in Mexico. Since 1993, he has presented  a solo  recital entitled  "The New Cello," focused on original new works for the cello, more than 100 times throughout  Europe and North America.  This recital includes a large number of notoriously difficult works written for the instrument, and has received great acclaim from a wide variety of audiences. As a lecturer on new music, he has given more than 50 presentations over the last decade, and as a theorist, he has published 15 articles on new music since 1997. He is co-editor of the international book series, New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century, which has published six volumes of essays by theorists and leading younger composers. He is also founding co-editor of Search, an on-line/print journal focused on new music and culture. In 2002 he began teaching on the faculty of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and in 2007 he joined the faculty of Wright State University.  His works are published by Rugginenti Editions and Sylvia Smith Publications and can be heard on Rusty Classica,  Neuma Records, Solitude Edition, and Centaur Records. He has recorded as well for Mode Records, TEXTxtend,  Einwurf,  and CRI.
Franklin joined NOISE in 2008 after appearing as a guest in 2002, 2006 and 2007.

Mark Menzies, violin

Residing in the United States since 1991, Mark Menzies has established an important, world-wide reputation as a new music violist and violinist. At 39 years, his career as a viola and violin virtuoso, chamber musician and advocate of contemporary music, has seen performances in Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and across the United States, including a series of appearances at New York's Carnegie Hall. Mark Menzies is renowned for performing some of the most complex scores so far written and he has been personally recommended by composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Roger Reynolds, Michael Finnissy, Vinko Globokar, Philippe Manoury, Jim Gardner, Elliott Carter, Liza Lim, Christian Wolff, Richard Barrett and Sofia Gubaidulina for performances he has given of their music. There has been considerable international critical applause for Mark Menzies' leadership in ensembles formed to perform contemporary and twentieth century, such as the Bloomington-based New Vienna Ensemble, Los Angeles's Southwest Chamber Music, San Diego's Sirius Ensemble and the New York-based Ensemble Sospeso. It was with Ensemble Sospeso that he organized a joint venture with the California Institute of the Arts to present the first professional concerts in the US dedicated to Brian Ferneyhough's music in December 2002. Mark Menzies has a considerable reputation as a chamber music performer. He is the director of a new collective ensemble based in Los Angeles, called inauthentica; with members drawn from the Southern California area, including young musicians and recent graduates from CalArts, inauthentica has been featured on an innova CD release of Mark Applebaum's recent compositions. inauthentica's recording of Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire has recently been released on MSR Classics label. In the spring of 2007, he led a newly formed string quintet belArtes Quintet (formely Ensemble du Monde) in a rapturously received tour in Germany, France and Poland, which featured the Ravel Duo Sonata with renowned Los Angeles cellist John Walz, along with quintets by Schubert and Boccherini. Mark Menzies is featured on a large number of CD recordings. This includes Process and Passion, a Pogus label release of chamber music by Roger Reynolds, as well as the world premiere recording of ...above earths shadow by Michael Finnissy to be released shortly. Mark Menzies is a National Recording Artist of Radio New Zealand for whom he has made numerous studio recordings and he is featured on a further dozen chamber and contemporary music releases. Mark Menzies is currently viola and violin professor at the California Institute of the Arts where he also coordinates their chamber orchestra, new music ensembles and conducting studies. Drawing from his innovative professionalism and artistic leadership, he initiated a successful collaborative series called Chamber Music Wednesdays that has contributed to the programming content of concerts presented by CalArts at their new theatre RedCat at the Disney Hall complex. He currently curates a series called Classics at CalArts, a chamber music series presented annually at the Valencia campus.

NOISE
c/o San Diego New Music
PMB 316
9700 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-5010

(858) 232-3388
sdnm@yahoo.com

musical excerpt:
Illuminaciones, by Juan Campoverde Q.
photos by Supeena Insee Adler