Jack Straw Composers
Tom Baker and Peter Vukmirovic Stevens with Mara Gearman
Friday, July 21, 7pm
Jack Straw Cultural Center
4261 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle
FREE
Jack Straw is pleased to present an evening of new music and conversation with resident artists Peter Vukmirovic Stevens and Tom Baker.
Peter Vukmirovic Stevens is in the studio at Jack Straw this month with a quartet featuring members of Saint Helens String Quartet and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, recording three string quartets for his current Artist Support Program project. On July 21st he will discuss the quartets, as well as his 2014 Artist Support Program project, the solo viola release Feral Icons. Violist Mara Gearman will play selections from the album.
Tom Baker will play recorded excerpts from his recent Jack Straw Artist Support Program project Deeply Lodged, and discuss the compositional process and intention behind the piece. Deeply Lodged explores our relationship to memory: its powerful hold on us; how it changes and warps as it deceives us; the ways in which we share our memories with others; and the fear that our own memory ultimately disintegrates even as we cling desperately to it.
Peter Vukmirovic Stevens is a composer, pianist, and visual artist. He studied composition with Bern Herbolsheimer at Cornish College, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. After graduation, he went on for further orchestration studies with Samuel Jones, former composer-in-residence with Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He also studied composition and piano performance abroad with Bodhan Bubak in Prague, and Indian vocal music and composition in Varanasi, India.
Peter has two widely-released albums of his works: August Ruins for cello and Feral Icons for viola. In 2015, he was awarded a one-year residency at the renowned Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris to compose and premier new string quartets and to perform newly written works for piano. Recent awards include a grant from the Allied Arts Foundation, as well as two awards from The Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
Tom Baker has been active as a composer, performer, and producer in the Seattle new-music scene since arriving in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers' Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), an advisory board member of the Washington Composers' Forum, founder of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings, and is currently professor of composition at Cornish College of the Arts.
Tom has received awards and grants for his work from many organizations, including Jack Straw Cultural Center, Meet The Composer, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida and the Montalvo Arts Center in California. His works have been performed throughout the United States, in Canada and in Europe.