James DeMars
Professor
Office: MUSIC-E 520
Phone: 480.234.8602
Fax: 480.965.2659
E-mail: demars@asu.edu
http://music.asu.edu
Bio:
James DeMars has written numerous works that frequently explore intercultural collaborations:
GUADALUPE, (120’) an opera in two acts
“As the last notes faded I sat awe-struck. I recognized that this new opera was a milestone in the history of contemporary music… (with a) vibrancy of the romantic vocal melodies, haunting strains of indigenous woodwinds and percussion, and dramatic choral harmonies. –Ruben Hernandez, Latino Perspectives Magazine
TWO WORLD CONCERTO, for Native American flutist, R. Carlos Nakai "...on epic scale, sweepingly dramatic & rhythmically concise." –L.A. Times
NATIVE DRUMMING, for the Black Lodge Pow-wow Singers & Orchestra "...searingly honest, by turns mesmerizing, haunting, hair-raising and astonishing... just plain gorgeous in its sonics, with strings racing over the singer-drummers like a veil of night over the desert, and brass harmonies moving like sunlight across a mesa." –Arizona Republic
SABAR, a concerto for African Drums & Orchestra for Mark Sunkett "DeMars brings the orchestra into direct union with ritual music and dance from Senegal in a sonic travelogue, that was stunningly entertaining as well as culturally engaging." –Arizona Republic
An American Requiem (75') for chorus, soloist & orchestra: "At the close of last night's national premiere performance (Kennedy Center, 1995, with Mormon Tabernacle Choir) there could have been little doubt that James DeMars had met the standards of the death masses of Brahms and Britten; grand and spacious, stately, ethereal, glorious, inspired and quintessentially American, (it) speaks of untarnished dreams and naive yearnings; an intensely hopeful conjuration of all that is best about the nation's peoples." –Washington Post
Violin Concerto (for Boro Martinic-Jercic and Phoenix Symphony) "...strongly profiled, sumptuously scored, contoured lyricism and a vivacious sense of rhythm." –Arizona Republic
James DeMars (b.1952) Composer/conductor James DeMars belongs to a generation that is revealing a new integration of world music with the range, depth and stylistic variety of the classical tradition. His critically acclaimed works include orchestral concertos for violin, piano, African drum ensemble, pow-wow singers, Native American flute, several cantatas, chamber music, a requiem mass and an opera.
Ensembles that perform DeMars' music include the New York Choral Society, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Phoenix Boys Choir, Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, California Symphony, Utah Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and I Solisti di Zagreb.
As a conductor, DeMars' performances include the national premiere of his work, AN AMERICAN REQUIEM, at the Kennedy Center in Washington and nationally televised performances at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. In 1998 he conducted the European premiere of the requiem in Paris at Église La Trinité with Choer et Orchestre Francais D'Oratorio and was inducted to the French Order of Arts and Letters.
With Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai he has created four CDs for Canyon Records. TWO WORLD CONCERTO received two Native American Music Awards and led to the 2008 release of DeMars' inter-cultural opera, GUADALUPE.
DeMars grew up in the small town of Battle Lake, MN, attended Macalester College, the University of Sothern California and earned his doctorate from the University of Minnesota following studies with Dominick Argento. He received the 2010 Governor’s Arizona Artist of the Year Award and currently teaches composition at Arizona State University. His aesthetic influences include the writings of Joseph Campbell and Albert Camus.
Garth Paine
Associate Professor
Office: Stuaffer B 265
Phone: 480.965.0972
Fax: 480.965.0961
E-mail: garth.paine@asu.edu
http://www.activatedspace.com
Bio:
Garth Paine holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the School of Arts Media and Engineering and the School of Music.
His specialities are digital music and sound and interactive performance. He is particularly fascinated with sound as an exhibitable object where the listener can spend time with the sonic artefact so that they feel truly present. This passion has led to several interactive responsive environments where the inhabitant generates the sonic landscape through their presence and behaviour, to fixed media compositions and to several music scores for dance works, generated through realtime video tracking and or bio-sensing of the dancers. His work has been shown throughout Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, Hong Kong, Korea and New Zealand.
Paine is internationally regarded as an innovator in the field of interactivity in experimental music and media arts. He is an active contributor to the International NIME conference and has been guest editor of Organised Sound Journal on several occasions. He has lead the Taxonomy of Interfaces/Instruments for Electronic Music performance (TIEM) projects with partners McGill University and the Electronic Music Foundation, resulting in on online database (vipre.uws.edu.au/dmi/) of current practice and opening up the discussion of a taxonomy for classification of new instruments to assist research in the field.
He regularly performs internationally. His work can be found at www.activatedspace.com
Jody Rockmaker
Associate Professor
Office: MUSIC-E519
Phone: 480.965.2534
Fax: 480.965.2659
E-mail: jody.rockmaker@asu.edu
http://www.public.asu.edu/~jodyrock/
Bio:
Jody Rockmaker (born 1961, New York City) received his Ph.D. in Composition from Princeton University. He has studied at the Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. His principal teachers have been Erich Urbanner, Edward T. Cone, Milton Babbitt, Claudio Spies, Malcolm Peyton and Miriam Gideon. Dr. Rockmaker is also the recipient of numerous awards including a Barlow Endowment Commission, Fulbright Grant, two BMI Awards for Young Composers, an ASCAP Grant, the George Whitefield Chadwick Medal from New England Conservatory, and a National Orchestral Association Orchestral Reading Fellowship. He has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and Villa Montalvo, and has been a Composition Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center. He taught at Standford University and is currently an Associate Professor at Arizona State University School of Music.
Rodney Rogers
Professor
Office: MUSIC-E525
Phone: 480.965.4842
Fax: 480.965.2659
E-mail: rodney.rogers@asu.edu
http://music.asu.edu
Bio:
Rodney Rogers writes music for a variety of instrumental and vocal combinations, from orchestral music to works for solo performers. A recent CD of his compositions entitled Complicated Optimism (Albany Records) contains works for solo, instrumental and vocal groups. In addition, his music appears on solo albums by various concert artists in both the United States and England. Air Mosaic appears on four CDs produced by nationally recognized university wind ensembles.
Four of Rogers' works received their New York premieres at Carnegie Recital Hall (Weiss Hall). Performances of his compositions for winds and brass have taken place at Juilliard, Eastman, the Royal College of Music (London), Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Florida State University, Indiana University, the University of Michigan, the University of North Texas, Northwestern University and the University of Washington. European performances have taken place in Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Italy; those in Asia and the Pacific Rim include Australia, China, Japan and Korea.
Rogers is the recipient of composition awards from BMI, ASCAP, and the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). He has received commissions from the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA, 50th Anniversary), the MTNA, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA Consortium Commission), and numerous individual performers and chamber groups. Fellowships in composition include Tanglewood, the MacDowell Colony, and the Yaddo Artist Colony. His music is published by Hal Leonard and Carl Fischer and is also available through the composer. Rogers' received his PhD. from the University of Iowa, has taught composition at Louisiana State University and Lawrence University (Appleton, WI), and is currently on the composition faculty at Arizona State University.
Kotoka Suzuki
Assistant Professor
Office: MUSIC-E503
E-mail: kotoka.suzuki@asu.edu
http://www.kotokasuzuki.com
Bio:
Kotoka Suzuki is a composer focusing on both multimedia and instrumental practices. She has produced several large-scale multimedia works, including spatial interactive audio-visual work for both concert and installation settings, often in collaboration with artists and scholars from other disciplines. Her work reflects on life, breath and wind, and often conceives of sounds as physical form to be manipulated through the sculptural practice of composition.
Suzuki’s work has been featured internationally by performers such as Arditti String Quartet, Pacifica String Quartet, Continuum, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra (Germany), and Earplay Ensemble, at numerous venues and festivals such as Ultraschall, ISCM World Music Days, Inventionen Festival, The Stone, International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) and Music at the Anthology (MATA). Among the awards she has received include DAAD Artist in Resident Berlin (Germany), Bourges Prize in Multimedia, Robert Fleming Prize from Canada Council for the Arts, and Howard Foundation Fellowship. She has held residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Djerassi, and Center for Arts and Media (ZKM).
She received a B.M. degree in composition from Indiana University and a D.M.A. degree in composition at Stanford University, where she studied with Jonathan Harvey (to whom she submitted her Doctoral thesis). She taught at the University of Chicago and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Her work is published on Edition RZ, EMF Media, IMEB records and Signpost Music. She is an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre since 2001.
