Impulse Response - Jorrit Dijkstra and Neil Rolnick - Thursday 11/7 - 8 PM - Troy, NY

[jason steven murphy <murphj@xxxxxxx>]

Impulse Response Presents:
Jorrit Dijkstra, solo saxophone + electronics; and Neil Rolnick, laptop +
electronics
Thursday, November 7, 2002
8:00 PM, $5/3
For info contact: i@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Arts Center for the Capital Region
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An Enfant Terrible meets a Progenitor

Jorrit Dijkstra has been critically acclaimed for pushing the current
boundaries of sonic exploration; Neil Rolnick is one the first classically
trained composers to embrace free and structured improvisation and
electronics.  Thursday the generation gap will fill slowly with both
musician's fresh take on music made in the moment.

IR presents two solo sets, the first by Jorrit Dijkstra on saxophone and
electronics, followed by solo electronic music by Neil Ronick and his laptop
and other gadgets. Most likely, we will pair the two together at the end.

Extended Bios:

(((((Photographs available at:  http://www.ir-music.org )))))

JORRIT DIJKSTRA

Dutch saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra (1966) has been an active
member of Amsterdam¹s vivid jazz and improvisation scene since 1985. His
music shows strong influences from the American and European improvisation
traditions, as well as from ethnic, contemporary classical and electronic
music. The critical press compares his clear, flexible sound and lyrical
improvisation to Ornette Coleman, Paul Desmond and John Zorn, showing the
broad spectrum of his saxophone style. Besides the alto saxophone, he plays
soprano saxophone, Lyricon, clarinet, and tin whistles, and uses electronics
such as loop and delay machines, a pitch shifter and an analog modular
synthesizer to process his saxophone sounds live on stage.

Jorrit toured Europe with Trio Jorrit Dijkstra (3 CDs on BVHaast Records),
featuring Mischa Kool (bass) and Steve Argüelles (drums), with guests Stuart
Hall and Benoît Delbecq. He has received the prestigious Podium Prize from
the Dutch Jazz Foundation, and various composition commissions from the
Foundation for the Creation of Music and the NPS Radio. In 1998-99 he
studied and taught at the New England Conservatory in Boston MA on a
Fulbright grant. His collaboration with Vancouver based Talking Pictures has
led to two tours and the CD Humming (Songlines 1533-2). He has performed his
solo project in various venues and festivals in the USA, in the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam and he has written and performed the music for the
theatre production Dangerous Passes Road by Ruby Slipper¹s Theatre Company
in Vancouver BC. Jorrit is currently working on his project Jorrit Dijkstra
+ Strings, live processing and looping a number of Dutch string players such
as Wiek Hijmans (guitar), Maurice Horsthuis (viola) and Paul Pallesen
(banjo), He is also leading the electro-acoustic trio Tone Dialing, and the
cool-jazz Quartet Sound-Lee! (with Guus Janssen, playing the music of Lee
Konitz).

NEIL ROLNICK

Neil Rolnick's career since the late 1970s has spanned many areas of musical
endeavor, often including unexpected and unusual combinations of materials
and media. He has performed his music around the world, exploring forms as
diverse as digital sampling, interactive multimedia, and traditional musical
theater. Throughout the 1980s and '90s he has also been responsible for the
development of the first integrated electronic arts graduate and
undergraduate programs in the US, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's iEAR
Studios, in Troy, NY. Rolnick's innovation as an educator has been to bring
together the commonality of artistic creation across many disciplines, and
this has led to his varied work with filmmakers, writers, and video and
media artists.

Though much of Rolnick's work has been in areas which connect music and
technology, and therefore considered in the realm of "experimental" music,
his music has always been highly melodic and accessible. Whether working
with electronic sounds, improvisation, or multimedia, his music has been
characterized by critics as "sophisticated," "hummable and engaging," and as
having "good senses of showmanship and humor." His current major project,
The Rise and Fall of Isabella Rico, with writer Larry Beinhart, is a musical
theater piece which is being developed by the Director's Company (New York,
NY) for the legitimate theater. With 25 songs and two full years' worth of
active workshop development, including extensive re-writing and
collaboration on both musical and narrative issues, this work clearly ushers
in a new stage to Rolnick's development as a composer. Besides the work on
Isabella Rico, Rolnick also collaborated with six other artists in the
development of The Technophobe & The Mad Man, a performance work for
Internet2, sponsored by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts,
which premiered in February 2001. In April 2001 he premiered a new video
performance piece, Good Night, Sweet Elks, at the Boston CyberArts Festival.
He is also working on the completion of a new CD with his improvisational
ensemble, FISH LOVE THAT. From 1996-1999 FISH LOVE THAT presented monthly
concerts at the Knitting Factory and HERE in New York City. The group
explores the convergence of composed music and multimedia improvisation in
an ongoing performance format. From September 1995 through February 1996,
Rolnick spent five months in Japan on a fellowship from the Asian Cultural
Council. During 1994-95 Neil Rolnick created and premiered HomeGame, a full
evening length performance work for actors, instruments, interactive video,
and computer mediated story generation. In 1994, along with Albany Symphony
Orchestra music director David Alan Miller, Rolnick was co-founder of the
new "multimedia orchestra of the future," Dogs of Desire.

In the fall of 1994 Rolnick was in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's
Bellagio Center in northern Italy. In the fall of 1989 Mr. Rolnick was
composer-in-residence at the Music Academy, University of the Arts, in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on a Fulbright Grant. As part of his residency, he
performed concerts of his music throughout Yugoslavia. Mr. Rolnick has
toured extensively, with performances in New York City, Tokyo, London, San
Francisco, Amsterdam, Washington, Reykjavik, Zurick, Los Angeles, Vancouver,
Toronto, Montreal, Banff (Canada) and numerous other venues. His music was
included in the 1994 Barber Festival in England; in the 1990 Aspen Music
Festival; in the 1985, 1986 and 1990 New Music America Festivals; and in the
1985 Whitney Biennial Exhibition.

Mr. Rolnick's music appears on ten records and CDs, on the Albany (Troy
188), Cuneiform (55011), Bridge (BCD 9030), O.O. Discs (O.O. #8), Nonesuch
(9-79235-2), Centaur (CRC 2133, 2039, 2047), CRI (SD 540) and 1750 Arch
(S-1793) labels. He has received fellowships and grants from the Asian
Cultural Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, New
York State CAPS, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Alice M. Ditson
Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the University of California, and
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Neil Rolnick was born in 1947, in Dallas, Texas. He earned a BA in English
literature from Harvard College in 1969. He studied musical composition with
Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music School, with John Adams and Andrew Imbrie
at the San Francisco Conservatory, and with Richard Felciano and Olly Wilson
at UC Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in musical composition in 1980. He
studied computer music at Stanford with John Chowning and James A. Moorer,
and worked as a researcher at IRCAM in Paris, France, from 1977 to 1979. He
currently is Chair of the Arts Department and directs the iEAR Studios at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY. At Rensselaer he has led the
development of unique undergraduate and graduate programs in Electronic Arts
which focus on a truly integrated approach to time-based art and performance
with the electronic media.

-- 
jason steven murphy
production and publicity manager
iEAR studios and iEAR presents!

rensselaer polytechnic institute
107 west hall - arts department
110 8th street, troy, ny  12180
518.276.4829 (office phone)
518.276.4370 (fax)
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/events

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