Press Release: Barbara Monk Feldman

Monday, March 5, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Arraymusic Studio, 60 Atlantic Ave., Suite 218, Toronto

Arraymusic is pleased to present composer Barbara Monk Feldman as part of our ongoing "Composer Talks" series at the Arraymusic Studio on Monday, March 5th, 2007, at 7:30 p.m.. Ms. Monk Feldman's talk, entitled "The Chaco Wilderness", will elucidate the compositional ideas and techniques in her most recent work.

Please join us at the Arraymusic studio for Barabara's lecture, which includes recordings of her work, as well as a post-lecture discussion. The composer's two compositions, Verses and Glockenspiel, are featured on Arraymusic percussionist Rick Sack's new CD, which is being released at Rick's solo concert at the Music Room, Hart House, University of Toronto, on March 9th at 8 p.m.. Rick will perform "Glockenspiel" at this event. Both Arraymusic's "Composer Talks" and Rick's solo concert are free-admission public events.

Barbara Monk Feldman is a Canadian composer of mostly chamber works which have been performed in Asia, Europe and North America.

Ms. Monk Feldman studied composition with Bengt Hambræus at McGill University in Montréal from 1980-83, where she earned her MMus. She then studied with Morton Feldman, whom she later married, at the State University of New York in Buffalo from 1984-87. There she earned her PhD on the Edgard Varèse Fellowship.

Numerous performers have played Ms. Monk Feldman's works, including the Arditti String Quartet, clarinetist Roger Heaton, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff, Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski, and Aki Takahashi, percussionists Steven Schick, Robyn Schulkowsky and Jan Williams and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti.

Her music has been premiered at Darmstadt and the festivals Inventionen in Berlin, Nieuwe Muziek in Middelburg, Other Minds in San Francisco and Toronto New Music and in the Rotunda in Tokyo. BBC, BRT, CBC, HR, and WDR have recorded her works. She served on the faculty at Darmstadt in 1988, 1990 and 1994 and has guest-lectured at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and has lectured and taught at universities in Canada and the USA.

Her research in music and the visual arts has led to collaborations with numerous artists, including Stan Brakhage, whose hand-painted film "Three Homerics" was created specifically for use with her piece "Infinite Other".

She founded the "Time Shards Music Series" at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe in 2001 and has since served as its artistic director. Ms. Monk Feldman's article "Music and the Picture Plane" has appeared in the RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics (1997) and Contemporary Music Review (1998).

The Canadian Music Centre and Frog Peak Music distribute her music.

ARRAYMUSIC RECEIVES FINANCIAL SUPPORT FROM CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, THE ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL, THE TORONTO ARTS COUNCIL, THE ONTARIO TRILLIUM FOUNDATION, THE SOCAN FOUNDATION and CANADIAN HERITAGE