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contemporary music and arts festival
SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2012
2PM TO 10PM
ND 501 : 501 North I-35 : Austin, Texas
(just east of I-35 on 5th street) Follow Us!
Category Archives: FFA 2011
FFA 2011
Posted in FFA 2011, front page
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ACE Innovation Fair
This Saturday, April 16, at 3PM, Fast Forward Austin co-directors Ian Dicke and Steve Snowden will give a short presentation at the ACE Innovation Fair about new music in the community. They’ll play some highlights from last weekend’s festival and talk about the process of bringing cutting edge music to new audiences. The workshop will take place at the ACE Academy Campus, 3901 Shoal Creek Blvd, at Congregation Beth Israel in the Education building, near the intersection of 39th and Shoal Creek Blvd. Check it out. More information here.
Also not to be missed, Line Upon Line percussion will perform a set tarting at 2:15 PM! If you didn’t get a chance to hear Line Upon Line last weekend, come on down to ACE and catch them rock some hardcore percussion tunes. More information here.
ACE Innovation is an all ages oriented, public event celebrating Austin’s community of creative entrepreneurs. Showcasing inventions and enterprises created by students, visitors will also be dazzled by interactive educational exhibits, guest speaker presentations, an artisan food and craft market, and live entertainment.
Thank you!
With over 150 people in attendance, 8 hours of music, 8 ensembles, one killer In C jam, a food truck, baked goods, koozies, tats and tees, the first ever Fast Forward Austin was a HUGE success. We are so grateful to EVERYBODY who attended, volunteered, or performed. To top it off we’ve been able to give Anthropos Arts a healthy donation in support of their excellent programs that support free music lessons, workshops and performances in economically disadvantaged schools. Sometime during the raucous and joyful performance of In C, featuring artists from throughout the day and students from Anthropos, it became clear that Fast Forward Austin had struck a nerve and was here to stay. We can’t wait to start planning for next year!
Fast Forward Austin call for scores results
After much deliberation a winner has been chosen in the Fast Forward Austin call for scores.
We received 113 entries. The quantity and quality of these submissions was humbling and overwhelming. There were many many excellent pieces to choose from. After carefully considering all submissions, the selection committee and the Aeolus quartet picked Dan Visconti’s Black Bend as this year’s winner. Dan will attend the festival and Aeolus will perform Black Bend during their set at Fast Forward Austin.
Additionally, we would like to recognize runners-up Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang and Michael-Thomas Foumai.
Thank you to all who entered this year’s call for scores!
Kickstarter
Putting on a music festival takes a lot of resources and we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund some of this year’s event. It’s our first time presenting Fast Forward Austin and we need your help bringing it to life. Check out our kickstarter page and promo video, and help bring this vital music to the Austin community. As a small token of our enormous gratitude, we’re offering a host of delightful goodies for every contributor. Not to be missed!
Anthropos Arts
For people who make music of any kind it’s important to ask ourselves who is going to care about that music twenty years from now? Answer: Kids! That’s the audience of the future. Kids are the people who will keep music alive, who will take music to new places and carry old traditions over to new generations of listeners. This is one of MANY reasons why music education is so crucial to the survival of every type of musician. Many of us were fortunate to have parents who could afford to pay for our music lessons. Not everyone is so lucky. Anthropos Arts is an amazing organization that brings free music lessons, workshops, master classes, and performance opportunities to economically disadvantaged youth. They do this by pairing some of Austin’s finest professional musicians with kids seeking lessons. This is a truly vital service to both the kids receiving lessons and the community at large. We at Fast Forward Austin are thrilled to donate all net proceeds from this year’s festival to Anthropos. Check out the Anthropos site here and this video showing off what they do so well:
Bel Cuore
Check out 2010 FFA artist, Bel Cuore Sax Quartet, play some Marquez-Barrios. These guys don’t mess around.
To hear more check out there site here. And, of course, come April, 9th to hear their set at Fast Forward Austin.
Aeolus Shredding
Check out Aeolus rip out some Bartok. Not only are they playing a set on this years Fast Forward Austin, they’ll also perform a score by the winner of the call for scores. Mark your calendars!
To hear more check out their site here.
ÆOLUS QUARTET
Praised by Strad Magazine for their “high-octane” performance and by the Reading Eagle for their “spirited and precise” playing, the Aeolus Quartet is among the finest young string quartets performing today. Formed in 2006 under the tutelage of William Preucil, Peter Salaff, and the Cavani Quartet, the Aeolus Quartet is currently the Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Texas at Austin. Their activities include extensive teaching and performing, educational outreach, and intensive work with the Miró Quartet. Luke Quinton of the Austin-American Statesman writes, “The Aeolus Quartet is a powerful and thoughtful group of young musicians who are plotting an ascending course…this vibrant group shows great promise.”
The Aeolus Quartet are winners of the Coleman-Barstow Prize for Strings at the 2009 Coleman International Chamber Music Competition, and they have won awards in the 2010 New England International Chamber Ensemble Competition and the 2010 Plowman Chamber Music Competition. Their 2010-2011 season highlights include a two-week tour of China, as well as concerts featuring American composers across the United States made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in conjunction with the University of Texas. The Quartet has collaborated on stage with such artists as Eugenia Zukerman, Brian Lewis, DaXun Zhang, Zuill Bailey, Peter Salaff, and the Miró Quartet. They have premiered works by many composers including Alexandra Bryant, Steven Snowden, and Evan Premo.
In the summer of 2010, the Aeolus Quartet was the Young Quartet-in-Residence at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Vail, CO. Summer 2010 also included performances at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the Perlman Music Program, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, and the Sunflower Music Festival. The Quartet has participated in the Aspen Music Festival’s Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Young Quartet-in-Residence Program at the Pine Mountain Music Festival, and the Jeunesses Musicales International Chamber Course in Weikersheim, Germany.
Dedicated to bringing music into the community, the Aeolus Quartet designed and performed a program for elementary students in the Cleveland Public School system in an April 2009 project made possible by the Frances E. Sykora Outreach Performance Fund. The significant impact of this program has led to its becoming an ongoing project in the Cleveland Public School system. Working in collaboration with the University of Texas through the Rural Chamber Music Outreach Initiative, the Quartet presents educational programs and performances in communities throughout Texas.
The Aeolus Quartet has studied extensively with the Miró, Juilliard, Takács, Artemis, and Cavani Quartets. The Quartet’s other mentors include artists such as Peter Salaff, William Preucil, Donald Weilerstein, James Dunham, Roger Tapping, Heime Müller, and Itzhak Perlman.
The Quartet is named for the Greek god Aeolus, the keeper of the four winds. He is known for welcoming Odysseus and his crew with music during their journey back to Ithaca in Homer’s Odyssey.
Austin New Music Co-op
The Austin New Music Co-op is a community of composers and performers dedicated to promoting awareness and understanding of new music. Since 2001, the NMC has presented over 30 concerts featuring over 150 new works, many of them premieres. Notable New Music Co-op concerts have included a commission of a program length work by Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a realization of John Cage’s Songbooks, music for the extinct instruments of Luigi Russolo, Pauline Oliveros’ Four Meditations for Orchestra (with the composer in attendance), a three-day series of the works of the New York School, and Terry Riley’s In C. New Music Co-op members come from highly diverse backgrounds, from classical performance to electronic music to formal composition to rock bands. The group runs by consensus and gains its strength from its members’ varied experiences and interests.
