Thursday, March 5 | 2:30 pm
Western New England University -Rivers Memorial Hall, Room 140
1215 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01119
*Free Event
In a talk entitled “Composing with Embodied Gestures”, the 2015 Composer-in-Residence Lisa Coons will be discussing her creative process of integrating choreography, sculpture, and composition as a means of connecting the performing body to music. She will focus on three different works: MESH (for ensemble and dance), Percussion Sculpture No. 1 (for amplified percussion sculpture), and Music Painted from Memory (for violin, cello, and video).
About Lisa Coons
2015 Composer-in-Residence Lisa Renee Coons is a composer and sound artist with a special affinity to noise composition, collaboration, and experimentation. She is dedicated to progressive art and focuses on partnerships with other artists and musicians as a means of developing innovative new works. Presently an assistant professor of music composition at Western Michigan University, Lisa Renée received her PhD in Composition from Princeton University, her Master’s from SUNY Stony Brook and studied at the University of Missouri-Kansas City during her undergraduate degree. Before joining WMU she was a Jackie McLean Fellow and visiting professor at the Hartt School in the University of Hartford. Her portfolio includes music for acoustic and electronic instruments, turntables, traditional ensembles, and her own welded percussion sculptures. She has received awards and support from the Other Minds Festival (a 2011 Composer Fellowship), ASCAP (Morton Gould Young Composer Award 2005/Honorable Mention 2009), and Meet the Composer, among others. Recent commissions include an evening-length work for The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and pieces for The California E.A.R. Unit, The Machine Project for the Hammer Museum of Los Angeles, the Violin Futura Project, and Dither Electric Guitar Quartet. Lisa Renée is a founding member of the bicoastal composers collective called, simply, The Collected (thecollectedmusic.org).