RED NOTE New Music Festival Featured Artists
Peiying Yuan, composer
Winner of the 2011 RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition
Peiying Yuan (b. 1984) is a young composer from Singapore. Her music is frequently inspired by philosophical thought and Eastern musical systems and soundscapes. Presently, her work is directed at exploring aspects of time and the relationship between structure and function. She is currently a doctoral student and Sage fellow at Cornell University. She previously received degrees in music composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the National University of Singapore. Her mentors include Steven Stucky, Kevin Ernste, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, Kawai Shiu, and Chee-Kong Ho.
Peiying’s music has been performed by ensembles such as Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, newEar, Ensemble BE, Ensemble TIMF, Quadrivium, Luna Nova Ensemble, and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble. Upcoming performances and premieres in 2011 are scheduled with the Argento ensemble, Momenta Quartet, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and Ding Yi Music Company. In the electronic medium, she has worked primarily with digital sampling and processing, creating fixed media compositions that confront the nature of the electronic environment.
Peiying is a 2010 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award recipient, 2010 Missouri and Kansas Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer, 2010 Libby Larsen Prize winner, First Annual newEar Composers’ Competition winner, second prize winner of the SCI/ASCAP 2009 Composition Commission, second prize winner at the 2009 Beethoven Club of Memphis Composition Competition, and selected composer for the inaugural Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance Newbie Commission.
Peiying holds a Diploma (DipABRSM) in piano performance from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (UK). She performs on the sheng and has premiered several new compositions for the instrument. Prior to her studies in the United States, she was the principal sheng player for the National University of Singapore Chinese Orchestra. In Ithaca, New York, she recently began studying the erhu, and also enjoys weekly rehearsals with the local Brazilian samba music group.
Due East, flute and percussion duo
Featured artists, Concert II
DUE EAST has performed in Brazil, Europe, Canada and the USA at venues such as the Warsaw Crossdrumming Festival, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the State University of São Paulo, and the Percussive Arts Society International Conventions in Texas, Tennessee and Ohio. Most recently, they were named winners of the 2008 National Flute Association Chamber Music Competition, held in Kansas City.
The duo has given recitals at universities across the United States, including Southern and Western Oregon Universities, Lewis and Clark College, Lawrence University, Northern Illinois University, Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University and Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. In the summer of 2005, DUE EAST was invited to be an ensemble-in-residence at the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival.
DUE EAST actively promotes new music, and has commissioned several works. They have premiered works for Wet Ink Musics (NYC), Composer’s Concordance (NYC), Columbia University Composers Ensemble, Princeton University Composer’s Ensemble, and the 21st Century Schizoid Music Series at Cornelia Street Café (NYC). In conjunction with performance, Lesser and Beyer are frequently asked to present workshops for composers and instrumentalists on contemporary music and its various extended techniques for their respective instruments.
Hailed a “fine percussionist” in The New York Times, Greg Beyer specializes in repertoire that places non-western instruments into the context of contemporary musical thought. Second-prize winner of the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition, Beyer has given solo performances and masterclasses throughout the United States, Europe, South America and in China. Beyer is an Assistant Professor of Percussion at Northern Illinois University, and endorses Bosphorus cymbals, Innovative Percussion sticks and mallets, and Pearl/Adams percussion instruments.
Recently called a “superb flutist” in The New York Times, Erin Lesser has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout Canada, Europe, China, Brazil and the USA. She is a founding member of Argento Chamber Ensemble, Due East, and Scarborough Trio, and also performs regularly with Wet Ink Ensemble. Festival appearances include: Shanghai Electroacoustic Music Festival, Kilkenny Music Festival, Holland Festival, Ojai Music Festival (CA), International Spectral Music Festival (Istanbul), and Sounds French Festival (NYC). She is currently a fellow of The Academy, a program run by Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute and a doctoral candidate at the Manhattan School of Music. Ms. Lesser is a Pearl Flute Performing Artist.
David Feurzeig, piano
Featured artist, Concert IV
Composer-pianist David Feurzeig is the silver medalist of the 2001 World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and recipient of the 2003 “Best New Rag” competition of the Old-Time Music Preservation Association (OM-PA). He specializes in eclectic lecture-recitals featuring music from the classics to stride piano, jazz, and new music. His programs feature surprising juxtapositions that call into question standard notions of genre and style, educating and challenging audiences as they entertain. He has given these informative concerts all over the world, from Bangkok to Paris, and they have been broadcast on WFMT Chicago, Vermont Public Radio, and KUSF San Francisco, among many others.
His own music has been performed throughout the United States as well as in New Zealand, Asia, and Europe. He was twice a featured guest (2005/2006) at the International Composer’s Festival in Bangkok. His Songs of Love and Protest were selected by the Dresden Chamber Chorus for the city’s 800th jubilee in 2006 and premiered in the fabled Semper Opera House. His work has been awarded the Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Arts (London), the Hugh MacColl and Thomas Hoopes prizes from Harvard University, a Beebe fellowship, and a John James Blackmore prize, as well as grants from the American Composers Forum and the Vermont Arts Council. His research interests range from the playing of James P. Johnson to the music of György Ligeti; an article on Thelonious Monk’s pianism and “mistakes” is forthcoming in Jazz Perspectives this summer.
Feurzeig received the Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from Cornell University, where his teachers included Karel Husa and Steven Stucky, and the AB from Harvard College. In 2008 he joined the faculty of the University of Vermont, having held previous positions at Illinois State University and Centre College.
