2023/2024 Concert Season
Fuse Ensemble Presents: Both Sides of the Mirror
Fuse Ensemble presents their newest season of work entitled Both Sides of the Mirror, a multimedia concert in two parts, beginning Spring 2023 and continuing through 2024. Both Sides of the Mirror: Side A explores reflection, imitation and the current mirroring of our world through technology. We ask the question: Are we seeing nature and humanity as simply raw material for our social media personas? We draw upon the ideas of Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who posits that contemporary society is increasingly dominated by narcissism and self-reference, and “humans, in the place of building relationships with others, are increasingly mirroring themselves.”
In the second half of the concert, Both Sides of the Mirror: Side B examines the mystical, even psychedelic worlds that lie on the other side of the looking glass. We pull inspiration from the ancient Chinese myth the Fauna of Mirrors through The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957) by Jorge Luis Borges which tells the tale of when the mirror people invaded the earth, the magic arts of the Emperor imprisoned them in their mirrors and forced on them the task of repeating as though in a kind of dream, the actions of men." We ponder the words of Lewis Caroll, "nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't…” and Cocteau’s poetic language, “Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you’ll see death do its work.”
Modern-day reflection, self-reference, re/presentation - and portals to mystical dimensions are richly explored in Both Sides of the Mirror as Fuse Ensemble calls upon the audience to contemplate and explore along with them. Premieres of new music commissioned by the ensemble for this season by Steve Antosca, Nicole Mitchell, Gina Biver and Ethan Foote, plus work by Juan Carlos Vasquez and Sophia Jani will be presented. In the visual realm, there will be an original film by Galacian filmmakers Also Sisters, an animation by Michael Edwards, and a playable sculpture by artist Jeremy Thomas Kunkel (February 2024), all coalescing to create a fully immersive and engaging concert experience.
Collaborators and Composers for
Both Sides of the Mirror
Flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, having started as a co-founder of the all-woman group Samana, and a member of the David Boykin Expanse. Mitchell’s music celebrates contemporary African American culture with a creative process informed by narrative and science fiction. A former president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), she composes for contemporary ensembles while incorporating improvisation and a wide aesthetic expression. Mitchell has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Newport Jazz Festival, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Nicole is a recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, the United States Artist Award, the Herb Alpert Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a professor of music at the University of Virginia.
Galician Filmmakers, Sonia and Miriam Albert-Sobrino (together known as Also Sisters) have since 2011 been navigating the fluid world of Film and Media Arts from the United States. In the span of 10 years, The Also Sisters have directed a number of films with selections at major film festivals such as Sitges, Edinburgh, Raindance, Cinespaña, Chicago Underground, etc.
The work of these twin sisters, whose peculiar collaboration has often been characterized as the result of two heads thinking as one, does not stop on a movie set or in an art studio; committed to teaching the upcoming generations of filmmakers, the Also Sisters work as professors at the University of Utah’s Film and Media Arts Department.
His process usually involves starting from a drawing and generating an animated loop of that drawing. After adding sounds to the loop the imagery becomes evocative. These initial loops become the engine parts that move the film forward.
“I rely on this abstraction process to propel itself forward, and then I sort of depart from the loop structure when I feel like I know where it wants to go, that’s when interesting things can happen.”
Michael currently teaches animation at the University of Utah. He completed his BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, and received his MFA in Film and Media Arts from the University of Utah.
The music of American composer Steve Antosca blends acoustic instruments with computers to create an atmosphere rich with immersive audio processing and spatialization. Through the realization of scores that juxtapose elements of indeterminacy with traditional notation, musicians craft a sonically rich performance environment. The Washington Post has described his concerts as “spectacular, wonderfully provocative”, “formidable” and noted that “he has brought wildly imaginative concerts … to Washington for more than a decade.” “Antosca revels in pushing traditional instruments (and instrumentalists) beyond their limits”
Sophia Jani is a Berlin- and Munich-based composer of contemporary classical and electronic music who writes poetic minimalist works.
Jani studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and the Yale University School of Music with Martin Bresnick and David Lang. Her music has been performed by the New Jersey Symphony, the Munich Symphony, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival Fellows, musicians of the Dallas Symphony, the Goldmund Quartet, the Omer Quartet, the Sirius Quartet, the Kontai Quartet, and the Dandelion Quintet, among others. She has also written commissioned works for pianist Eunbi Kim and violinist Teresa Allgaier, and has contributed music to successful film, theater, and dance projects. She is currently Composer in Residence at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
Juan Carlos Vasquez is an award-winning composer, sound artist, and researcher. His electroacoustic music works are performed constantly around the world and to date have premiered in more than 30 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Vasquez has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions, including the ZKM, the International Computer Music Association, the Nokia Research Center, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland, the Finnish National Gallery, and CW+ in partnership with the Royal College of Music in London, UK.
Fuse Ensemble director Gina Biver is a composer of electroacoustic music for chamber ensemble, choir, multimedia, dance, sound installations and film. Her work is inspired by the written word and by visual art, both static and moving; she collaborates with other musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, poets, computer artists, sculptors, painters and video artists. Hannah Rosa Schiller from I Care If You Listen writes “Biver creates a playground for internal exploration that is both fascinating and deeply effective.” From Midwest Review: “She doesn’t look like an art chick that would show up in a dress made of meat but I guess looks can be deceiving… Prepare for a sonic walk on the wild side.”
Longtime bassist with Fuse Ensemble, Ethan Foote is a composer and performer working in jazz, the Western classical tradition, folk, rock, and genres in between. He writes and performs in many contexts, including theatre and interdisciplinary art. He received a Master of Fine Arts in music composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2020 and is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at Duke University. His work is oblique, expressionistic, and plays with the mirroring of form and the structures of human consciousness.
Jeremy Thomas Kunkel is an American sculptor, broad-based artist known for post-modern conceptual art utilizing debris and discarded objects. Working from entanglements between art and life, he orchestrates work through a hybridized process of fluid conceptualization and making, informed by the work's evolution and threads of influence connected to it., creating a direct dialog with humanity, and inquiries between reality and human centric notions of perception.