[ISEA97] Artists Statement: Daniel Hosken & Julia Bentley – Peace

Artists Statement

Performed by Julia Bentley, soprano, Peace, for soprano and tape, presents a succession of sound-images from the ancient to the modern. The primordial white noise and simple hums are followed by chantlike textures, tribal or primitive societal sounds, ringing bells (perhaps church bells), and violent sounds of war. The piece and the performer are eventually destroyed by this “progress” in a series of brutal explosions. A brief return of the simple hums is quickly destroyed again in a rather pessimistic conclusion.

The tape part for Peace was created using a mixture of old and new technologies from tape splicing of recorded sounds, to Moog and Electrocamp analog synthesizers, to computer sequenced Yamaha and Roland digital synthesizers. The voice parts on the tape are based on processed recordings of the voice of Melanie Mitrano, for whom the piece was written. The center of this?tumult is struggling to find a voice that the violent rhetoric of the tape finally silences.

  • Daniel Hosken (USA) is currently completing a D.M.A. in composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he manages the computer music studios and teaches courses in music technology and computer music. Hosken’s music has been performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, The Cube at the MIT Media Lab, and at such festivals as the National Conference of the Society of Composers and the National Conference of SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the US). His honors include prizes from the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers, Honorable Mentions in the ASCAP Grants to Young Composers competition, and a grant from the MIT Council for the Arts. Hosken is a co-founder of AUROS, a Boston-based new music ensemble, for which he has served as co-director and conductor. He is currently a codirector of the Madison Chapter of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers. Hosken holds an M.M. in composition from New England Conservatory of Music and an S.B. in music and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has studied composition with John Harbison, Stephen Dembski, and William Thomas McKinley,and computer music with Barry Vercoe, Tod Machover, and Robert Ceely. csun.edu/~dwh50750/Hosken_bio.html
  • Mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley received her musical education in Bloomington, Indiana and Vienna, Austria. She has been an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera, and has appeared as a principal artist at operas throughout the country in roles including Carmen, Rosina, and Cinderella (by both Rossini and Massenet), receiving praise as being one of the finest singing actresses on any stage. She is an active recitalist, and has been featured as an oratorio soloist with George Manahan, Raymond Leopard, John Mauceri and Robert Shaw. Noted for her passionate interpretation of contemporary works, she has appeared in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall as a featured artist for the Illinois Humanities Festival, and performed Le Marteau sans Maitre with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in honor of Pierre Boulez’s 70th birthday.  juliabentley.net