ABOUT THE FESTIVAL Schedule of Events

The New Music & Art Festival at BGSU has traditionally brought international musicians and artists to Bowling Green for a celebration of current art and music. The work of over two dozen composers and artists will be presented at the 25th Annual New Music & Art Festival on Oct. 21-23, 2004. The festival includes concerts, film screenings, lectures, exhibitions, workshops and other exciting opportunities. Organized by the directors of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and the Fine Arts Center Galleries, Burton Beerman and Jacqueline Nathan, the Festival supports the creation of new work and engages both the University and city communities in the process of art appreciation and awareness. The majority of events are accessible, free and open to the public.

This year's featured composer is Shulamit Ran, who "has never forgotten that a vital essence of composition is communication." So ran the review in the Chicago Tribune following the premiere of Legends by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is hardly surprising, then, that her Symphony, which has drawn references to "the superior quality of her musical imagination and artistic invention" and "a work that will reward each new listening" was awarded the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the First Place Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1992. She has won numerous other major composition awards and her works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Amsterdam Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others; conductors include, Zubin Mehta, Gary Bertini, Christoph Von Dohnanyi and Pierre Boulez. Recent honors include a 1998 Koussevitsky Foundation Grant, as well as commissions from the American Composers Orchestra and the Brentano String Quartet. Her works are published by the Theodore Presser Company.

Special guest performers this year include clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, whose performance is also part of the CMA Festival Series, and guest ensemble Pinotage. Fiterstein, the First-Prize winner in the 2001 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, is quickly becoming recognized for his technical prowess and intuitive and sensitive playing, and has received critical acclaim for his concerto and chamber music appearances. Born in Minsk in the former Soviet Union, he emigrated with his family to Israel when he was two years old. After studies at the Israel Arts and Sciences Academy, he attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and Juilliard.

Pinotage was formed in 1998 and specializes in works written after 1900. Since their first performance, this chamber ensemble made up of flute, harp, viola and voice has been working closely with composers, inspiring them to write for this distinctive quartet. They have performed works by many composers including Robert Lombardo, Marta Ptaszynska, Elizabeth Start and Jan Bach. In 1999 they were in residence at Columbia College, offering master classes and performing for young composers. Pinotage premiered works written for them by members of the American Women composers organization, and have been regularly featured on the Mostly Music and Music in Small Places series. In June 2000 they recorded a song cycle by New York composer Arnold Rosner for Albany Records. They have performed at De Paul University, Northwestern University, Northern Illinois University, Columbia College and in 2002 appeared on the Jewel Box Series at Northeastern University, broadcast live on WFMT.

This year's featured exhibit is INterVENTIONS, which showcases the work of Ken Aptekar, ChanSchatz, Mark Dion and Ellen Harvey. Each of the remarkable artists in this exhibition uses aesthetic analysis or intervention to address an established system of representation. Each asks us to re-view a traditional hierarchy and use its own conventions to invent a new way of perceiving it. BGSU Galleries and the Digital Arts division in August invited the artist team ChanSchatz (Eric Chan and Heather Schatz) to create a site-specific work with BGSU students that will be featured in the exhibition.

Other exhibitions at the festival include Crucial State: Selections from Ohio Arts Council 2004 Fellowship Award Winners, which features works by a selection of major visual arts fellowship awardees, including Ellen Grevey, Robert Moore, Migiwa Orimo, Brad Phalin and Lisa Tilder, and The Proper Inflection by Mille Guldbeck. As a painter and printmaker, Guldbeck seeks to exploit conditions of visual and psychological indeterminacy. Her work explores the complicated relationships of ordering within nature and our need to make sense out of very complex, non-hierarchical systems. This BGSU assistant professor and area head of painting has studied in Croatia and Denmark, and received her MFA from the University of Iowa in 1995. She has been awarded grants from the Iowa and Ohio Arts Councils and a residency at Ragdale Artist Colony. Her current exhibitions include the Artemesia and Melanee Cooper Galleries in Chicago and the Toyahashi Museum in Japan.

The complete program and schedule are available in .pdf format.