Saturday, 29 November 2008, 8:00 P.M.
Edmonton Public Library, Stan A Milner Theatre
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door
 
 

ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI
Gerry Morita, dance; Michelle Milenkovic, voice; Felix Pławski, visuals; Charles Stolte, alto saxophone; Jerry Ozipko, electric violin; Piotr Grella-Możejko, piano

GUEST ARTISTS/PERFORMERS (before intermission):
Gerald St. Maur, poetry; Reinhard von Berg, prepared piano; Melissa Thingelstad, actress; Garett Spelliscy, actor

Music by: Georges Aperghis, Earle Brown, Eugen Gomringer, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Udo Kasemets, Ferdinand Kriwet, Jerry Ozipko, Charles Stolte, Sydney Wallace Stegall.

Note: The concert will also feature Reinhard von Berg creating musical background for the poetry of Gerald St. Maur, to be presented live, utilising both conventional and extended techniques on the concert grand piano. Actors Melissa Thingelstad and Garrett Spelliscy will read the poetry. This set will open the concert.

ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI

Formed in 2008, the Edmonton avant-garde multi-media performers Ensemble Mujirushi was founded to present new graphic, visual, conceptual, verbal, and open scores by the European and North American experimental composers, as well as experimental poetry. The group, which began as a quintet, was first conceptualized in the spring of 2008 but finally came together to rehearse and perform at the end of the summer of the same year. Their public performance debut during an Explorations Concert Series presentation at the Stanley Milner Library Theatre on 5 September 2008 received a slew of enthusiastic reviews and comments from those in attendance. The ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary experimental scores and poetry, which more often than not resemble abstract paintings. Because they were “nameless,” the group adopted the Japanese moniker Mujirushi (literally “no name”).

The six original members of the ensemble are all local musicians-performers. Composer and educator Piotr Grella-Możejko, who initially conceived of the group and became its wellspring, is pianist and keyboardist. The well-known performance artist Gerry Morita, the Artistic Director of the Mile Zero Dance Company, provides visual dance interpretations of the music. The brilliant mezzo-soprano and actress Michelle Milenkovic adds her interpretive skills to broaden the range of the group’s repertoire. The distinguished Canadian-Polish photographer and artist, Felix Pławski, offers visual complementation for the music. Musician, educator and writer Jerry Ozipko performs on acoustic and electric violins, while composer, performer and educator Charles Stolte rounds out the sextet on saxophones.

Mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic is a dynamic performer. After a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Michelle went on to the Banff Centre for the Arts (as student, performer and teaching assistant) under the mentors: Director Keith Turnbull and Extended Vocal Technique specialist Richard Armstrong. Michelle is known as an integral stylist with a boundless palette. She has performed with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the NOWAge Orchestra and is the lead singer for Regina’s blues/rock band Frog’s Back. Select credits include Weill in Weimar (Edmonton Opera), UBU: the Opera (Banff Centre) and The Star Catalogues (Vancouver New Music); the plays Kafka’s Amerika and Silence (Northern Light Theatre), and the musical Spitfire Grill (Leave it to Jane Theatre Company).

Dancer Gerry Morita is interested in performance art, and how it values honesty towards the body and communication with the audience. She is constantly interested in blurring the boundaries between performance art and dance, since both fundamentally use the body as medium. Choreographically, Gerry has been highly influenced by contact improvisation, and Japanese contemporary dance forms (butoh and Noguchi taiso). Her technical training encompasses ballet, modern, pow wow, Highland, jazz and high jump. The vocabulary for each piece she creates is distinct to the artistic or intrinsic message of the work, and Morita is known for a wide-ranging style. Collaboration is key to her way of working. She flourishes in an environment in which she is able to communicate her artistic goals to others who are able to develop them in parallel artistic directions. Morita feels that this helps to create meaningful layers within the final work. Physically Morita incorporates Noguchi Taiso based movements into her works. This style, which she studied intensively in Japan with Mari Osanai and Hideo Arai, is used to move bodies in extreme ways, but in the most natural manner possible, using imagery from nature.

Described by the German press as demonstrating “uncompromising honesty” (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), praised for his unorthodox aesthetics (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung), and whose work is called “brawny, high-contrast… full of rich counterpoint and compelling textural changes” (The New York Times), “strikingly individual” (The Toronto Star), and “wonderful-sounding” (The Buffalo News), Piotr Grella-Możejko holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and an M.Mus. in Composition degrees from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. As a youngster, he took private composition courses in his native Poland with the late Prof. Edward Bogusławski and Prof. Bogusław Schaeffer. So far presented in twenty-two countries in centres such as Antwerp, Athens, Basel, Berlin, Bilbao, Dublin, Geneva, Kassel, Kaunas, Kraków, London, Los Angeles, Lausanne, Mexico City, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Prague, Princeton, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Toronto, Turin, Ulaanbaatar, Utrecht, Vancouver, Vienna, Warsaw and Zürich, in recent years Grella-Możejko’s music has been commissioned, played and recorded by symphony and chamber orchestras as well as numerous outstanding chamber groups and soloists. At present, the discography of his works includes twenty CD titles.

Music has always been the passion and life of Jerry Ozipko, a native Edmontonian, who began his musical career with violin lessons from the age of seven. A graduate of the University of Alberta (B.Mus. in Violin Performance, 1968) and Truman State University (M.A. in Education, 1970), he has been a supporter of contemporary music from his stu-dent days at the University of Alberta, where he was involved in performances of works by the likes of John Lewis, Vernon Murgatroyd, and other budding student composers. He studied com-position variously with Violet Archer (University of Alberta), Frederick Kirchberger (Truman State) and Joan Panetti (Yale). His first exposure to Avant-Garde Music came during his Graduate Studies in 1968 and 1969 – involving concerts by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The first was a performance by the seminal Moog synthesist, Walter Carlos (later: Wendy Carlos), which opened up new sound vistas to his still young musical ears. However, it was the second concert that was a sort of “musical epiphany” with respect to contemporary music. At that concert, the only one he has ever attended where the audience “booed,” featured two works in particular which had a deep impression on his musical mind: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki, Pithoprakta by Iannis Xenakis and Ionisation by Edgard Varèse. After that, he was “hooked.”

Felix Zbigniew Pławski was born in Olecko, Poland. He received his formal training from the Institute of Photography in Warsaw where he studied photography and filmmaking. After his brief carrier at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Felix emigrated to Germany where he was mainly focused on his personal projects. In 1989, Felix moved to Edmonton where he decided to settle. In 1996 Felix moved to New York City, USA, to work on his personal projects and to do commercial work in photography. From there he returned to Edmonton to join his family and opened a photographic studio in 2000. Beside photography, Felix Plawski has produced and directed a number of short films. First, in 1988 he produced and directed a short story based on writing by Julio Cortázar, Un tal Lucas. As well, Felix did many documentaries during his stay at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Poland. In Canada, he produced and directed a video project What is Art, 1997. Felix’s work has been present in private collections and has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, Poland, and the United States, to mention just a few.

Charles Stolte is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Saxophone at The King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta and Instructor of Saxophone at Alberta College Conservatory of Music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has broadcast his per-formances and compositions across Canada and his music for saxophone has been performed throughout North America and in Europe. He can be heard on recordings as soloist, as alto saxophonist with the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet and as tenor saxophonist with IMPULS Saxophone Quartet. He has enjoyed enthusiastic reviews in many prestigious publications, including the Chicago Tribune and Classical Music magazine, and has received grants from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. Dr. Stolte has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University, and University of Alberta. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University, and degrees from University of Alberta and The King’s University College. His teachers include Frederick Hemke, William Street, Malcolm Forsyth and M. William Karlins.