June in Buffalo to mark 25 years at UB
Director expects "a spectacular festival this year" featuring work by renowned composers

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

David Felder, artistic director of June in Buffalo, the pioneering festival for emerging composers of new music, promises "a spectacular festival this year, as deserves an event that has contributed so much to American music."

June in Buffalo, presented annually by the Department of Music, will mark its 25th anniversary, and Felder says there will be plenty of well-known candles on the cake this year. They will present lectures, master classes and what Felder calls "an expanded series of concerts starring work by many of the most prominent and respected composers active today."

The 2000 June in Buffalo composition faculty will include Philip Glass, Lukas Foss, Donald Erb, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds, Charles Wuorinen, George Crumb, Augusta Read Thomas, Steve Reich, Roger Reynolds, Harvey Sollberger, Nils Vigeland and Joji Yuasa.

There also will be a concert featuring important work by Felder, an internationally regarded composer and UB professor of music who has received a number of distinguished awards and commissions, and has represented the United States at major festivals of new music held overseas.

And that's just the beginning.

June in Buffalo is dedicated to both new composers and to the exposure of new music around the world. Its reputation is based on its ability to serve the emerging composer in ways that other festivals and academic programs cannot.

Activities specifically designed for them focus on presentation of their work and include intensive interaction with a distinguished group of senior composers, extraordinary musicians and performance ensembles, and professional representatives of performance-rights organizations, publishers and music critics.

Many composers of new music, particularly those new to the field, seldom have the opportunity to actually hear their work performed. The thorough preparation and rehearsal of participants' work-followed by its performance by superb musicians who specialize in new music-is a particular boon offered by June in Buffalo to its participants.

Each of the 15 emerging composers selected to take part in the festival this year will have one of her/his solo pieces performed in afternoon workshop presentations and will receive a master tape for study and demonstration purposes. Performances will feature renowned resident ensembles and soloists with international reputations as interpreters of contemporary music.

The festival has earned a notable reputation among composers and performers alike, not only for its distinguished composition faculty, but for the outstanding professional musicianship of its resident ensembles and individual performers.

This year, the resident performance ensembles will include the New York New Music Ensemble, Slee Sinfonietta, June in Buffalo Chamber Orchestra, Cassatt String Quartet, Amherst Saxophone Quartet, Bugallo/Williams Piano Duo and Blum/Vigeland/Williams Trio.

Among the concert highlights will be "An Evening with Philip Glass" on June 8, including performances of Glassworks, Floe and Island, followed by a lecture by Glass, a performance of his Concerto for Saxophones and a screening of his film "Koyaanasquatsi," considered to be one of the finest marriages of late-20th century music and filmatic art.

On June 5, a concert of work by Feldman, Foss and Felder will be presented by the June in Buffalo Orchestra, preceded by a talk by Felder, Foss, Jan Williams and Jesse Levine.

Composer/performer Steve Reich of the Amherst Saxophone Quartet once again will perform his popular "Clapping Music," whose mathematical structure generally is discussed with the audience before the quartet's performance.

The festival also will present "The Feldman Soloists" in a performance of his work Crippled Symmetry. This concert will be reprised June 16 in New York City in the Goethe Institut-German Cultural Center.

Other notable concerts will include works by John Cage, Vigeland and Gyorgy Ligeti; "The Three Basses"-featuring three double-bassists in a performance of works by Rands, Erb, Wuorinen, Iannis Xenakis, Brian Ferneyhough and Jakob Druckman, and a performance by the New York New Music Ensemble and friends.