CONCERT PREVIEW: Cornish Presents: A Tribute to Janice Giteck

by Maggie Molloy

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Seattle-based composer Janice Giteck has a long list of music accomplishments. Not only is she an award-winning composer and a beloved professor, but she is also a historian, an ethnomusicologist, an anthropologist, and an activist.

“As an artist, I strive to articulate my experiences of the world in which I live,” Giteck said. “My work challenges the paradigm of hierarchy and embraces a spirit of transformation through relationship. I make music, knowing that it can be a source of profound connection between people.”

Next week, Seattle celebrates the myriad accomplishments of this exceptional composer with a tribute concert at Cornish College of the Arts’ Kerry Hall. We’ll get to those details later—but first, here’s a bit more about the woman of the hour:

Though originally from New York, Giteck has firmly rooted herself in the music and art of the Pacific Northwest. Whether composing for the concert hall or writing music for dance, theater, film, or multimedia performances, Giteck has always been inspired by cultural diversity and social issues both within and beyond the Pacific Northwest community. Her compositions combine elements of the Western classical tradition with a unique blend of Buddhist, Hasidic, Javanese, and African influences.

“My style is very pitch oriented, polytonal/modal, extremely melodic, rhythmic, with specific textures or qualities of sound—very frontal, and a generous amount of silence,” Giteck described. “I often juxtapose specifically notated sounds with instructions for improvisation. The elasticity of this format allows the music to have clear direction compositionally, and also to ‘breathe’ with a sense of play and spontaneity.”

Her compositions are deeply spiritual, thoughtful, reflective—ritualistic, even. Her music has a way of filling the entire space and immersing the audience in its tremendous emotional energy.

“My music is often combined with text and ethno-poetic materials of ritual,” Giteck said. “The pieces serve as dramatic microcosms, rich juxtapositions of different aspects of humanness, intensely emotional, both primal and sophisticated. There is also space for contemplation.”

Giteck began her multifaceted compositional studies with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, and on a French government grant, attended the Paris Conservatory as a student of Olivier Messiaen (yes, the Olivier Messaien). She went on to study West African percussion with Obo Addy, and Javanese Gamelan with Daniel Schmidt, fueling her interest in non-Western musical idioms.

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“Musically, my style comes from a personal hybrid culture:  Euro-American concert music, Eastern European Jewish music (my great, great grandfather and his father played klezmer for the last Russian czar), Native American chant, African drumming, and Indonesian gamelan,” Giteck described.

Fascinated by the relationship between music and healing, Giteck went on to study psychology, resulting in a master’s degree from Antioch University in Seattle, followed by work as a music specialist at Seattle Mental Health Institute. Currently a professor at Cornish College of the Arts, Giteck teaches a variety of music courses, including classes focused on how artists respond to their social environments.

Most recently, as composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony from 2013-2015, Giteck co-created the “Potlatch Symphony” with the orchestra and members of several regional Native tribes. The piece has had three performances, including a premiere to a capacity audience at Benaroya Hall.

This Tuesday, Cornish alumni, faculty, students, and friends are gathering to honor the long and dedicated compositional career of Giteck with a concert of her music performed by long-time friends and former students. The concert features performances and presentations by long-time “Janice-collaborators” Paul Taub, Roger Nelson, Matt Kocmieroski, Laura DeLuca, Walter Gray, and Lucas Werdal.

“In my music I want to give energy, to fuel, rather than exhaust the listener with heady, difficult to understand aggregates of sound,” Giteck said. “I aim to dance with a kind of ‘uranium’ powerful enough to lure the soul, to surrender to ‘what is’. I hear music as a portal, a physical entry into the psyche, where it can engage a deep, inner-life channel.”

The Janice Giteck tribute concert is on Tuesday, April 12 at 8 p.m. at Cornish College of the Arts’ Kerry Hall on Capitol Hill. For more information, please visit this link.

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LIVE CONCERT SPOTLIGHT: February 13-15

by Maggie Molloy

Messiaen, new music marathons, and more are bound to make your Valentine’s Day weekend memorable!

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SSO Musicians at LPR (c) Brandon Patoc

(Photo Credit: Brandon Patoc)

Get into the Valentine’s Day spirit this weekend with an intimate late-night contemporary music performance in Benaroya Hall’s breathtaking Samuel and Althea Stroum Grand Lobby. Seattle Symphony musicians will be performing the second installment of this season’s [untitled] series, a unique musical sequence which presents new and contemporary music in a more casual concert setting.

This Friday’s performance features Jacob Druckman’s avant-garde “Synapse” for tape as well as his virtuosic “Valentine” for solo double bass. The program also includes Vladimir Martynov’s timeless “Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished)” and John Adams’ dynamic String Quartet, a piece which restlessly explores elements of minimalism, folk melodies, and more.

Here’s a great interview feature produced by Seattle Symphony!

The performance is this Friday, Feb. 13 at 10 p.m. in Benaroya Hall’s grand lobby.

 

Bang on a Can Marathon

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(Photo Credit: Peter Serling)

An entire marathon of new music is coming through Seattle this Sunday—literally. Six full hours of new music, to be exact. This Sunday the New York-based contemporary classical music collective Bang on a Can is taking over Seattle’s Moore Theatre to present a wide variety of new musical works by local, national, and international artists.

One of the evening’s highlights includes the electric chamber band Bang on a Can All-Stars and red fish blue fish performing the Seattle premiere of Steve Reich’s masterwork, “Music for 18 Musicians.” You can also look forward to a performance of Brian Eno’s ambient classic, “Music for Airports” and a musical set by Seattle’s own experimental hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces. The jam-packed program also includes an indie-orchestral collaboration featuring Seattle composer Jherek Bischoff with Scrape Ensemble and Jim Knapp, a piano-percussion duo featuring Gust Burns and Greg Campbell, signature works by Bang on a Can co-founders, and so much more!

The marathon kicks off this Sunday, Feb. 15 at 4 p.m. at the Moore Theatre. Doors open at 3 p.m.

 

Simple Measures Presents “Messiaen Around with Time”

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What classical music enthusiast doesn’t love a good music pun? Fill your weekly corny music joke quota this weekend at Simple Measures’ “Messiaen Around with Time.”

Celebrate 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen as Seattle artists bring to life his enduring eight-movement masterpiece, “Quartet for the End of Time.” Messiaen wrote and premiered the piece while in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany in 1940. The piece combines birdsong and beautiful imagery to create poignant and powerful music. Simple Measures will share the full story behind the piece before clarinetist Sean Osborn, violinist Cordula Merks, pianist Mark Salman, and cellist Rajan Krishnaswami perform it.

The performances are this Friday, Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford and this Sunday, Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. at Town Hall in Seattle.