2009 Music Omi International Musicians Residents

Minako Arai

The improvised music of “Instrumental voice player,” composer and arranger Minako Aria doesn't stick to any one genre, moving freely through jazz, rock, classic, and folkloric music. Living in her native Japan, she appears regularly in festivals, concerts and with such musicians at Satoh Masahiko, Hino Terumasa, Takase Aki, and Kan Te Fan both inside and outside of the country. She was awarded 1st 'Grand Prix' at the 1993 Yokohama Jazz Promenade competition and has been the subject of a TVK Television documentary. She has released four albums and is currently researching new methods for breathing and body maintenance toward increasing her performance potential, combining oriental marshal arts and western exercise physiology.
http://homepage2.nifty.com/arai-m/

Ricardo Cavalli
Ricardo Cavalli received a scholarship to study Jazz Composition at the Berklee College of Music in 1995, where worked with Frank Tiberi and Greg Hopkins, Joe Maneri and Jerry Bergonzi. Later, at the New York Lake Placid Institute, he worked with Bob Brookmayer, Jim Mc Neely, Maria Schneider and others. After working professionally in the New York scene, he returned to Argentina to take part in some of most important bands, being considered by the press as 1999 Revelation Artist. He won a contest to teach in a public music conservatory, and also teaches reeds both privately and in both an elementary and high school. In 2000 he was selected by the Argentine press as the best saxophone player of the year, and in 2002 his first work as a soloist was declared the Best Jazz Album of the year by the local press. Currently, his band performs his original music, inspired by Afro-American roots, expressing the spirit of the great musicians that inspired his style.

Alberto Fiori

Alberto Fiori is an Italian composer and pianist, concentrating in recent years in the field of improvisation. He has produced work for theatre, films, dancers and other performers, and played in festivals and theatres throughout Europe, as well as for broadcast. He is interested in all forms of arts exchange.
www.myspace.com/albertofiori

Guitarist composer Anthony Garcia is a soulful artist who touches audiences with his unique ability to blend formality with colourful improvisatory flair. A highly trained classical musician well versed in styles such as jazz, Latin folk and popular music, Anthony manages to bring together the threads of these genres to create an original and communicative soundscape of universal appeal. Anthony has performed his original music for classical guitar as soloist and in collaboration with a diverse array of musicians throughout Australia, Japan and Mexico.

Arnold Hammerschlag

Arnold Hammerschlag: trumpet, composition, improvisation. Arnie Baby first picked up a trumpet near Seattle Washington. That trumpet sailed him above vast symphony orchestras, inside carpeted homes of brass quartets, up and down tiered jazz bands with drum kits, and landed him gently in front of a beautiful brown upright piano. There he plunked every single Bb with the dampers off, laid his head on the wood for what seemed like eternity, and was introduced, first hand, to the spinning wheels of the universe. Then he began plunking. First alone. Then with Bartok. Then with Hemphill and Threadgill. Plunk, plunk, plunk. After piano pieces, chamber pieces and piano jams, finally, out came what he was longing for…a tune! A jazz tune! With a lead sheet! He could use a drummer! So he took his tune around and it was drums, piano, bass and flugelhorn. The tunes kept coming. Then he took a T’ai-Chi class with an elderly woman from a bygone era in black and said, “Wow, I wanna write something that moves like that!” He had flown east. The tunes were changing. Things were shifting. These tunes didn’t always have chords. He called up his pals Ethan, Owen and Michel and performed them on the old wooden stage. Jon recorded and out came Sailing Neptune’s Waters Pluto Looks Like the Moon. The journey had come full circle. But then it came back in. What about Brahms? So he visited the composer lady and started studying. Note against note. New grooves were forming. After laboring very hard, he saw it fit to pursue a bit of spinal alignment. And then up he flew to a monastery in the evergreen moose land and meditated on the noisy Tibetan clangor there. He saw a bald eagle nearby. It was time to fly. “Back to The Big City,” he said. “I’m goin’ back to The Big City.”

Cory Hills
Percussionist, composer, and improviser Cory Hills thrives on breaking down musical barriers through innovative and creative endeavors. He received his bachelor’s degree (percussion performance and music education) from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his master’s degree (percussion performance) from Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane, Australia. In 2005, Hills was awarded a research fellowship to Institute Fabrica, United Colors of Benetton’s research center for the contemporary and exploratory arts located in Treviso, Italy. Currently, Hills is a doctoral fellow in percussion performance and music theory at the University of Kansas. An advocate of new music, Hills has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for solo percussion. He is the creator of The Percussive Art of Storytelling, an interdisciplinary arts performance that brings contemporary music to children in accessible ways. As a member of SI2, an interdisciplinary arts duo with Matthew Coley, Hills has been a featured performer at the 2008 convention for the International Society for Improvised Music and the Days of New Music Festival (Chisinau, Moldova; June 2009). In addition, Hills sponsors the annual Con/un/drum Solo Percussion Composition Competition designed to increase repertoire for solo percussion. Hills is a frequent guest artist and clinician throughout the United States and Europe, giving numerous master classes and recitals.
www.coryhills.com

James Ilgenfritz
photo: Scott Friedlander
Bassist/Composer James Ilgenfritz approaches the double bass as an archeologist, examiningrarified aspects of the instrument's sonic palette to confound thestatus quo. His work has been praised in Time Out New York, Signal ToNoise, All About Jazz – New York, and Downbeat Magazine. Recentperformances include work with George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Dick, John Zorn, Gary Lucas, Marilyn Crispell, Ned Rothenberg, Lukas Ligeti, and Dave Ballou. In 2007 James received a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum for a cross-country tour, performing newly commissioned semi-improvisational notated works for contrabass by composers Jeffrey Treviño, Stephen Rush, and Gordon Beeferman, culminating in a performance at Roulette in New York. Other notable performance venues where James has performed include The World Financial Center Winter Garden, Tonic, The Stone, Symphony Space, The New Museum in SoHo, and the Knitting Factory Main Stage. Improvisation is central to James’s work, and he has written and lectured on the art of improvisation and its metaphorical relationship to the practical complexity of daily life.
www.jamesilgenfritz.com and www.myspace.com/jamesilgenfritz  

Hyelim Kim
photo: Trent Barton
A native of Korea, Hyelim Kim is a pioneer musician in fusion music developing a new aspect of Korean traditional music in Daegum (Korean traditional flute) performance, improvisation and composition. She earned a BA and an MA in Korean traditional music, which is her original resource of musical inspiration. Upon graduating, she was recommended as an excellent performer to enter the “Nationwide Korean Traditional Music Concert for New Performers”. She has been appointed as Young Artist from the Korean council in 2009 and Kumho Cultural Foundation in 2006. Along with the practical activities, Hyelim Kim has a further commitment to explore the way Korean music has interacted with various kinds of music to make a new heterogeneous musical culture by doing a research at Queensland Conservatorium in Australia. http://www.myspace.com/hyelimkimdaegum

Almut Kühne

Almut Kuehne is a singer/composer living in Berlin. She improvises, sings composed contemporary and old music, jazz, german chansons and sang in several music theater productions. She worked with Georg Graewe, Gebhard Ullmann, Phil Minton, Tobias Delius, Ann le Baron, Kent Kessler, Dresden Chamber Choir and others in Europe, the US and Mexico.


Dennis William Lee

Dennis William Lee is a composer/drummer/guitarist/vocalist living in Montreal. He plays traditional thrash metal, post-free jazz, fourth-wave ska-core, Canadiana singer-songwriter folk and some other stuff too. His favorite dinosaur is ankylosaurus.
www.dwlee.com

Celia Malheiros

Composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, producer and educator Celia Malheiros was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her performances and works include: recordings with Hermeto Pascoal on her CD Sempre Crescendo, and João Bosco on her CD Cenario Brasileiro; performances at jazz festivals; composer of film scores and video sound tracks; director of the Brazilian All Star Big Band for 13 years; world tours in 2006 and 2007, and a new CD release in 2009—After the Carnaval—available on Sundance Music. www.celiamalheiros.com


Angelika Niescier

Angelika Niescier is through her lively style one of the most independent and exciting voices of the german jazz scene and has created a genuine style of her own uniffying both: unusual, modern compositions and intensive improvisation.The idiosyncratic nature of her music, her saxophone playing, based as it is on her outstanding musical technique, is totally convincing. With her imaginative, energy-laden, highly expressive mode of playing, which she infuses with musical elements from other cultures, she is able to awaken in her audience an enthusiasm for the broad many-facetted appearance of modern jazz.
www.angelika-niescier.de; www.myspace.com/angelikaniescier

Angelo Sturiale

Angelo Sturiale—Participation at International Summer Courses of Darmstadt (Germany); Master's Degree in Piano at Conservatory of Music in Catania (Italy); Bachelor's Degree in Humanities at University of Catania (Italy) with a thesis on Japanese Butoh Dance and its the relationships to Zen Buddhism. Fellowship in dance notation and visiting composer at Laban Conservatory of Dance in London (UK); Laureate Artist by “Pépinières Pour Jeunes Artistes Européennes; Composer in Residence at Conservatorio Superior de Musica de Zaragoza (Spain); Honorable mention at EMS Text-Sound International Composition Prize (Sweden). Composer in Residence at EMS Stockholm Studios (Sweden); International Award UNESCO-Aschberg; Resident Composer at Conservatorio de Las Rosas in Morelia (México). Third Prize winner at Zeitklang International Composition Competition, St. Pölten (Austria). Composer in residence at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Professor of Experimental Music and Sociology of Music at ITESM – Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Monterrey (Mexico); founder and director of EXPERIMENtec Ensemble, Monterrey (México). His compositions have been performed in various festivals of Contemporary Music and Performing Arts in Italy and abroad by Sicily Simphony Orchestra (Italy), Trachia Philarmonic Orchestra (Bulgaria), Orchestra of Zaragoza Conservatory (Spain), Tonkünstler Orchestra (Austria), London Chamber Group (UK), Salzburg String Quartet (Austria), Decigramma Ensemble (Italy), Ensemble de Las Rosas (Mexico), Nure Ensemble (Mexico), VERSUS8 Percussion Quartet (México), etc.
http://angelosturiale.webs.com

Wilfrido Terrazas

Mexican flutist Wilfrido Terrazas is mainly interested in collaborating with composers and improvisers, in premiering new works, and in the interpretation of recent (and daring) flute repertoire. He is a member of the Mexican improvisation project Generación Espontánea.
www.myspace.com/torrehomerica