New Remote Recording Works by Bay Area Composer Brian Baumbusch Scheduled for October Release on Other Minds Album

San Francisco, CA – September 1, 2020 – Two brand new remote recording works by Alameda-based composer Brian Baumbusch will be highlighted on an upcoming album release by Other Minds, scheduled for release in October 2020. Commissioned by the University of California Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble, Isotropes was written in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and consists of a sequence of varied musical fragments chosen and recorded by each participating musician from their respective homes during quarantine. Together, these fragmented recordings combine to create an ambitious 25-minute work for large ensemble. Also featured on the album is Tides, a piece commissioned by the Creative Work Fund in collaboration with video artist Ian Winters and recorded remotely in lockdown following the cancellation of its March live premiere. Full details about the album release will be announced at a later date.
 
Originally scheduled to be premiered at the end of March 2020, Tides is a chamber work for quintet of harp, piano, vibraphone, violin, and clarinet that reflects on the 21^st century crisis of rising global sea levels, and the Bay Area regions that are projected to be affected by this over the coming century. Ian Winters captured video footage while walking a pilgrimage around the Bay and will use this footage together with 3D body-scans of the musicians performing their parts in the virtual production of the piece. Due to the complexity of the multiple simultaneous tempo changes, coined by Baumbusch as “polytempo,” click tracks were incorporated into the work to ensure performance accuracy. When the pandemic hit and concerts were cancelled, Baumbusch decided to shift the concept of the piece to a remote recording production. The October recording release will mark the first time that this work will be heard since its creation.
 
Based on an interest in the remote recording techniques that Baumbusch used in Tides, UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble Director Nat Berman commissioned Baumbusch to create an entirely new remote-recording piece for his wind ensemble that would explore Baumbusch’s technique of composing with polytempo. After a library of musical fragments of varying pitch ranges, tempos and rhythmic notations was created and made available online, each musician independently selected, recorded and submitted fragments of their own choosing en route to compiling all of the fragments in the piece. Each musician recorded the fragments in their own homes using whatever equipment they had readily available, such as phones or laptops, and a downloadable click track provided by the composer. The work received its premiere online in June 2020 with another online performance by Cal State Unversity Fullterton Wind Ensemble scheduled for this Fall.
 
Composer Brian Baumbusch comments: “Isotropes has evolved into a unique composition for the time that we currently live in rather than as a means of getting around the limitations of technology to deliver an approximation of live performance. Not only are composers questioning how we can create art in a meaningful way while concert halls remain shut but also how these works can endure and remain a part of our evolving musical tapestry. Composers throughout history have created great works of art during times of great struggle and I believe that we must all approach our efforts in the same way during these uncertain times, adopting new performance practices rather than adapting or compromising existing ones.”
 
Praised by the Washington Post as “exuberantly complex, maddeningly beautiful, and as intoxicating as a drug,” composer and multi-instrumentalist Brian Baumbush has written works and collaborated with musicians such as the JACK Quartet, Pauline Olivieros, Paul Dresher and Larry Polansky, among others. In June 2019, Other Minds premiered Baumbusch’s The Pressure at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an evening length large ensemble work commissioned by the Gerbode Foundation that draws inspiration from the myriad of works synonymous with the horror genre and is told through live narration synchronized to a mechanical piano and silhouetted images projected on a slide-projector. The premiere was led by Baumbusch’s frequent collaborator, conductor Nat Berman of UCSC’s Wind Ensemble.
 
To listen to a recording of Isotropes by Brian Baumbusch, click here: www.soundcloud.com/brianbaumbusch/isotropes 
 
ABOUT BRIAN BAUMBUSCH
Brian Baumbusch is a composer based in Alameda, California, whose "harmonically vivid... intense... simmering" (The New York Times) compositions push the boundaries of new music. He has spearheaded projects of both western and non-western music, which are considered a “cultural treat” (Maryland Gazette). His 2015 composition, "Hydrogen(2)Oxygen" for the JACK Quartet and Lightbulb Ensemble is described by the Washington Post as being "exuberantly complex, maddeningly beautiful, and as intoxicating as a drug," and will be released on New World Records in the fall of 2021. He has headlined performances at the Bali Arts Festival in Denpasar, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, The Clarice Smith Center of Maryland, Kresge Hall at MIT, Cambridge, and The Yerba Buena Center of San Francisco, among others. He has collaborated with musicians such as The JACK Quartet, I Made Subandi, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Paul Dresher, Evan Ziporyn, and Larry Polansky.
 
Baumbusch has conducted extensive research and collaborated with a variety of musicians from around the globe. In 2009, he founded the Cacho Ensemble in Madrid, dedicated to reviving traditional Argentinean folk music. Baumbusch has also performed with many Balinese gamelan groups across the U.S., including Sekar Jaya of the Bay Area, Dharma Swara of New York, and Galak Tikka of Boston, among others. He is currently the director of the U.C. Santa Cruz Balinese Gamelan ensemble, and he founded the Santa Clara University Balinese Gamelan ensemble in 2016.
 
In 2012, Baumbusch produced a collaboration with the JACK Quartet and Balinese choreographers Dr. I Made Bandem and Dr. Suasthi Bandem, together with Dr. Bandem's performing group Makaradhwaja. They premiered their collaboration at the Bali Arts Festival in June, 2012. The Jakarta Post described the premiere saying "Baumbusch overture was a grand and rich musical epic and instantly drew the crowd’s amazement. Its patterns were intricate, a testament of Baumbusch’s virtuosity and his ability to push the musicians to reveal the astounding ability of their instruments."
 
In 2013, Baumbusch founded The Lightbulb Ensemble, a neo-gamelan performing on instruments built and designed by Baumbusch. In the beginning of 2017, Baumbusch was awarded the Gerbode music commission award as the lead artist to produce a new evening-length work for the Lightbulb Ensemble, The Pressure. For this project, he built a new set of seven-tone “gamelan” instruments using aluminum and bronze, and combined them with a set of two vibraphones that incorporate a twelve-tone temperament that Baumbusch created to fuse with the seven-tone gamelan tuning.
 
In March-June of 2020, Baumbusch was commissioned to compose Isotropes for the U.C. Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble, a 25-minute piece that allowed for each performer to record their part along to an individualized click track. This remote-learning piece allowed the ensemble to stay active during shelter-in-place restrictions due to COVID-19.
 
Baumbusch received his undergraduate degree from Bard College, where he studied microtonal composition with Kyle Gann and performance with Luis Garcia Renart. He received his M.A. in composition from Mills College, where he studied under various composers including Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, and Zeena Parkins. He received his DMA from UCSC in 2020 studying under Larry Polansky, David Evan Jones, and David Dunn. From 2016-2018, he taught composition, music theory, and music history on the faculty at Santa Clara University where he also directed the Balinese Gamelan ensemble. Baumbusch has lectured on composition and world music at Stanford University, the University of Maryland, The Smithsonian Institution, CalArts, Union College, Holy Cross, U.N. Reno, and the Escuela TAI of Madrid. He has additionally presented electronic music performances and lectures at UCSD, UCSB, CalArts, UNR and Mills College.
 
PHOTO CREDITS
Brian Baumbusch / Myles Boisen

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