The Department of Music is pleased to announce loadbang as the ensemble to hold the next Steven Stucky Memorial Residency for New Music. The group will visit campus Oct. 3-8 and April 10-16 to collaborate with music students and faculty on composition and performance projects.
Based in New York City, loadbang features a unique instrumentation of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as “cultivated” by The New Yorker, “an extra-cool new music group” and “exhilarating” by the Baltimore Sun, and “inventive” by the New York Times, and called a “formidable new-music force” by TimeOutNY. Creating “a sonic world unlike any other” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), the group has a unique lung-powered instrumentation that has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. Recent performance highlights include the Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA, the Look and Listen Festival, Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University, and internationally they have performed at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China), and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China).
Dedicated to education and cultivation of an enthusiasm for new music, loadbang has premiered more than 450 works written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today’s leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellows Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, and Alex Mincek. They are an ensemble-in-residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival, and through a partnership with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, they are on the performance faculty of Divergent Studio, a contemporary music festival for young performers and composers held each summer.
At Cornell, loadbang will collaborate with graduate composers on new works to be performed in April, and they will engage with students in a variety of ways, including open rehearsals, master classes, chamber music coaching, and discussions about musicianship and innovation. Both visits will feature a concert performance by the ensemble involving Cornell students and faculty.
Andy Kozar, trumpeter of the ensemble, says that “one of the most rewarding aspects of this work is ability to work with students and collaborate with the next generation of creatives. This residency at Cornell gives us the opportunity to work with students and the community in the most complete way we’ve ever experienced! We’re so looking forward to performing new works by the student composers, coaching and performing alongside the student performers, and offering ourselves as resources to the entire student body as they develop their own unique creative voices.”
The ensemble was selected by a music department faculty committee, co-chaired by Kevin Ernste (Composition) and Xak Bjerken (Performance). Ernste says of the selection, "We're excited to engage with loadbang, whose unique instrumentation and instrumental capacities presents interesting challenges for composers, affording insights for composers and performers alike into more expansive ways of thinking about instruments, instrumentality, and ensemble."
The Residency for New Music was founded to honor the memory of beloved colleague, educator, and composer Steven Stucky. The Endowment was funded through the generosity of more than 50 donors, including substantial leadership gifts from devoted music department supporters Priscilla Browning, Ronni Lacroute, and Elaine Sisman and Martin Fridson.
