DALLAS, TX.- Dallas Contemporary opens Part II of its sound art concert series New Sounds for a New Space Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 7 p.m. The event begins with open doors at 6 p.m. and performance at 7 p.m. FREE for members of any arts organizations in Dallas – please present member card at door; non-members enter for $10.
The sound art performance includes presenting composers Cindy McTee, Christina Rusnak and David Stout addressing sound, space and place.
In the raw setting that inspired the music, emerging Dallas composer Christina Rusnak unveils the second movement with 161 Glass: Light Matters (movement II), played by a selected group of performers. The composition 161 Glass is a site-specific musical work in which the intersection of mid-century architecture, and the art and culture of a dynamic city are inextricably linked. This second movement, "Light Matters", metaphorically stems from Dallas Contemporary's location name and the properties of glass as an architectural, transparent and reflective element. This movement focuses on exploring the reflective quality of glass, and also contemplates the functionality of Dallas Contemporary as an incubator for artists and the experimental nature of the organization
Inspired by the sounds and reverberations of the 1950s industrial building’s concrete stone walled, high, vacuous space, Rusnak builds her site-specific work around the former functionality of the building. The multi-talented musician composed the work as the key element in her master’s degree program at University of North Texas (UNT). For the audience, the music will reverberate from the 20-foot rafters, clerestory windows, and vast concrete floors. Composer Rusnak gathered glass, pipes, blocks, tubes, metal, and wood, incorporating them with traditional percussion instruments to articulate her sound piece.
Cindy McTee is hailed by critics as a composer whose music reflects a "charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America.” McTee “brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice.”
McTee has received numerous awards for her music, most significantly the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's third annual Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award, a "Creative Connections Award" from Meet The Composer, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also winner of the 2001 Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, and in 2002 was selected to participate with the National Symphony Orchestra in "Music Alive," a residency program sponsored by Meet The Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League.
Her music has been performed by leading orchestras, bands, and chamber ensembles in Japan, South America, Europe, Australia, and the United States in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Sydney Opera House. Among the many ensembles to have performed her music are: the Nashville Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the North Texas and Dallas Wind Symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the President's Own U.S. Marine Band, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra, London's Philharmonia Orchestra, the United States Army Field Band, Voices of Change, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Rochester, Saint Louis, San Antonio, Seattle, and Sydney.
Christina Rusnak, a multifaceted composer reflecting different styles, seeks to integrate artistic and geographic elements in her work. With a goal to engage performers and audience, she was awarded the Paul Loomis and David M Schimmel Memorial Composition scholarships and the Priddy Fellowship in Arts Leadership. ERM Media selected her pieces Cloudburst and Kyripo for their Masterworks of the New Era series. Completing a Master’s Degree in Composition at UNT with a Minor in Art History, Rusnak interned at Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia.
David Stout is an interactive video-sound artist and one of the worlds leading laptop performers exploring real-time cross-synthesis of sound and image. He is the recipient of the Harvestworks Interactive Technology Award and the Sun Micro Systems Award for Academic Excellence (2004) and a nominee for the both the WTN World Technology Award (2003) and the International Media Art Prize (2004). His work in interactive media includes electro-acoustic scores for stage and screen, live cinema, video-dance, data-base narrative, noise performance and telematic video events that emphasize multi-screen projection as an extension of performer, audience and environment.
