FEATHERMUCKER by Ted Moore featuring The Dream Songs Project with text by Timothy Otte

Timothy Otte’s text sets a crumbled, post-apocalyptic world in which he describes the creative process of making idiosyncratic meaning where objective meaning cannot be found. Musically, feathermucker is a combination of folk, experimental, and electronic music; cinematic sound fx; and sound art installation. The varied genres represented in feathermucker mimic the varied tones and forms in the poetry. The musical and textual themes are constantly being recast in new contexts, forcing a listener to be constantly revising one’s understanding of the material, much like our constant recalibration to the varying messages and contextualizations in contemporary society. Using a programming language called SuperCollider, Moore processes the soprano and guitar in real time to create a third character in the drama of the performance. The middle section of the work features a solo for feeding-back guitar, which, through live processing, gives a sound often considered harsh a rebirth into something beautiful.

The commission of feathermucker, in 2015, was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

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Ted Moore is a composer, improviser, intermedia artist, and educator based in Chicago. His work focuses on fusing the sonic, visual, physical, and acoustic aspects of performance and sound, often through the integration of technology. Ted’s work has been reviewed as “an impressive achievement both artistically and technically” (VitaMN), “wonderfully creepy” (TC Daily Planet), and “epic” (Pioneer Press). Ted’s work has been premiered by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, The Dream Songs Project, Yarn/Wire, Splinter Reeds, Quince Vocal Ensemble, AVIDduo, Imani Winds, and others, and has been performed across the country including at The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Mass MoCA (MA), Spectrum (NYC), NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, Root Signals Electronic Music Festival (GA), MOXsonic (MO), and the Electroacoustic Barn Dance (VA), among others.

Ted also frequently performs solo on electronics using his laptop, modular synthesizer systems, resonant physical objects, lighting equipment, and video projection. He has been featured as an installation artist by the Northern Spark Festival (Minneapolis), Studio 300 Festival of Digital Art and Music (Lexington, KY), New York University (NYC), St. Paul Public Library, and TC Make (Minneapolis). As an improviser, Ted is one half of Binary Canary, a woodwinds-laptop improvisation duo alongside saxophonist Kyle Hutchins. In collaboration with Scott Miller, he curated and performed in the free improvisation series Ars Electroacoustica in Minneapolis. As a theater artist, Ted has worked with many independent companies, notably with Skewed Visions and Savage Umbrella. He has taught in a variety of capacities, including at The Walden School’s Young Musicians Program and Creative Musicians Retreat (Dublin, NH), MacPhail Center for Music (Minneapolis), and Slam Academy (Minneapolis).

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Timothy Otte is a poet, critic, and sometimes playwright.

His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Denver Quarterly, Fence, Sixth Finch, Painted Bride Quarterly, SAND Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Structo, among others. His criticism and reviews have appeared on LitHub, Colorado Review, and Chicago Review of Books. For five years, he served as Senior Editorial Associate at Hazel & Wren, curating a submissions deadline calendar and writing monthly book reviews.

Otte was a 2014-15 Loft Mentor Series winner and a fellow at the 2017 Poetry Incubator organized by Crescendo Literary and the Poetry Foundation.

The Sometimes Grace of Saint Simon of the Water is Otte's first play. It is a long poem with stage directions meant to be both read and performed, and was first produced in 2011. Directed by Ted Eschweiler and performed by Matt Ouren, it was described as "what a one-person show can and should be at its best, but rarely is" (here).

He is from and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and works at Coffee House Press. Otte hosts and curates the monthly Poetry Book Club at Subtext Books in St. Paul. This is his home on the internet.

Say his last name like body.

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Since forming in 2010, the dream songs project has engaged audiences across the Midwest through performances of a wide range of repertoire spanning from Renaissance lute songs to Romantic arias, 20th century masterpieces, and newly commissioned music. TDSP's artistic mission is to entertain and educate while bringing together performers, audiences, and composers through high quality chamber music concerts.

TDSP has self-produced numerous chamber music concerts in Minneapolis/St Paul and Madison, WI, and has been invited to perform for the Minnesota Guitar Society Local Artist Series, Farley's House of Pianos Concert Series, Thursday Musical Artist Series, Friday Noon Musicale, Macalester College Noon Concert Series, the Schubert Club's Courtroom Concert Series, and Zeitgeist's New Music Cabaret.

In 2011, TDSP released its first recording, Mauro Giuliani: Songs for Voice and Guitar, which includes the classical composer's well-known op. 89 Sechs Lieder, the operatic op. 95 Sei Ariette, and his rarely heard op. 13 Trois Romances. This recording has been featured on Minnesota Public Radio and several public radio broadcasts in Wisconsin, and was described by MPR host Steve Staruch as "superb" and "clean and colorful."

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Mezzo-soprano Alyssa Anderson's vocal repertoire spans the ages from Baroque masterpieces to contemporary experimental music, with a focus on American and twentieth/twenty-first-century artsong and chamber music.

A native of Falconer, NY, Alyssa received her BM in Vocal Performance summa cum laude from the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, and she completed her MM in Performance summa cum laude at the University of Minnesota. She was recently awarded the Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Minnesota for her thesis on the solo vocal music of American composer Henry Cowell and a recital performance of a number of his unpublished, and virtually unknown, songs for voice and piano.

While working towards her graduate degrees, Alyssa peformed numerous leading roles with the University of Minnesota's Opera Theater, including the Komponist in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, Giulietta in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and Margaret Elliott in the Minnesota premiere of Eric Hermannson's Soul by Libby Larsen.

As a founding member of the Twin Cities based contemporary music ensemble RenegadeEnsemble, Alyssa has performed premieres of several new works for voice with the ensemble including Peter Billam's Tres Casidas del Divan del Tamarit, Ton Bruynel's Le Jardin, Zac Crockett's Dance 1, and Eric Schwartz's The Owl and the Pussycat.
In her third year with The Rose Ensemble, Alyssa is thrilled to explore early music and performing with this award-winning vocal ensemble.

Notable performances include the title role in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Stockhausen's Stimmung, and Gyorgy Ligeti's Sippal, dobbal, nadihegeduvel for mezzo-soprano and four percussionists. Alyssa has appeared as a soloist with the Minnesota Bach Ensemble, the Minnesota Oratorio Society, Metamorphosis Opera Theater, Zeitgeist, the Kenwood Symphony Orchestra, the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, Twin Cities Lyric Theater, the RenegadeEnsemble, the University of Minnesota's New Music Ensemble, the University of Minnesota's Bach Festival, the Jamestown Choral Society, the Fredonia College Choir, and Fredonia's Festival Chorus.

Alyssa won first place in the Minnesota District Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions multiple times; other awards include the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Encouragement award, the McGough Opera Award, the Ted Mann Scholarship, and the David F. Evans Performance Award.

In 2010, Alyssa and guitarist Joseph Spoelstra formed a classical voice/guitar duo, the dream songs project. They can be heard in a number of venues in Madison, WI, the Twin Cities, and a variety of other areas in the Upper Midwest. Their debut CD of songs by Mauro Giuliani was released in 2012. Through generous grants from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and their many donors, TDSP has commissioned and premiered ten major works for the ensemble.

Alyssa was a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, which was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Alyssa currently resides in Minneapolis.

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A passionate, thoughtful guitarist and teacher, Joseph Spoelstra shares his enthusiasm and love of music with audiences and students.

Frequently collaborating with other musicians and composers, Joseph has given numerous premieres of new works throughout the US. In addition to championing new works for guitar, he performs solo and chamber works from the guitar's long history. With mezzo soprano Alyssa Anderson, he formed The Dream Songs Project, a group dedicated to enriching and expanding the repertoire for voice and guitar through commissions, recording, performance, and educational outreach.

As a teacher, Joseph maintains active teaching studios in Culver City and Pasadena, California. He is a trained Suzuki guitar instructor and is committed to the development of young students (ages 3 & up) through the pursuit of music education and the belief that every child is capable of playing music given a nurturing and supportive environment. He has been sought out as a teacher at workshops, universities, and Suzuki institutes across the country. Joseph currently serves as the President of the Suzuki Music Association of California, Los Angeles. His students of all ages have received awards and honors in recitals and competitions.

Joseph holds his Master of Music degree from the University of Southern California and his Bachelor of Music from the University of Minnesota. His primary teachers were William Kanengiser, Brian Head, and Jeffrey Van, in addition to classes with Scott Tennant, Pepe Romero, Sharon Isbin, David Russell, Paul O'Dette, and many more.

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recorded at Wild Sound Recording Studio, October 8, 2016 by Steve Kaul, produced by Ted Moore
edited, mixed, and mastered by Ted Moore at CHIME Studio, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

cover art: painting by Kyle Hutchins
http://exulansisrake.tumblr.com/

cover design and layout by Kyle Hutchins

AVID Sound Records
ASR20181

© 2018 All rights reserved.

Ted Moore is a composer, improviser, intermedia artist, and educator based in Chicago. His work focuses on fusing the sonic, visual, physical, and acoustic aspects of performance and sound, often through the integration of technology.

Currently, Ted is pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of Chicago.

tedmooremusic.com
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