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The Next Moment

The next concert in my Birmingham New Music Festival schedule is The Next Moment, tonight at East Village Arts in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m playing a new piece for extended banjo and live electronics that uses automated phone system samples (“To speak with a customer representative…press 9…”). Craig Hultgren will premiere As Safe As If It Were In The Fire for ecello and live electronics.

Saturday, May 11, 2024 5pm
The Next Moment: Mostly Improv
2024 Birmingham New Music Festival
East Village Arts
7611 1st Ave N
Birmingham AL 35206

Other composers and improvisers on the program include Rob Voisey, the festival’s guest composer visiting from NYC, LaDonna Smith, Michael Coleman, and Joshua David Davis.

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Around Stravinsky

An excerpt from the score for Extras

The BAMA Players will premiere my septet, Extras, on a concert titled Around Stravinsky presented by the Birmingham Art Music Alliance as part of the 2024 Birmingham New Music Festival.

Friday, May 10, 2024 7:30pm
Around Stravinsky
2024 Birmingham New Music Festival
Samford University
Brock Recital Hall
800 Lakeshore Dr
Homewood AL 35209

All of the works on the program are inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s Septet (1953). Other composers on the concert include Wesley Johnson, Mark Lackey, Jody Landers, and Matthew Scott Phillips.

My work uses the last few bars of the last movement of Stravinsky’s piece as a jumping off point. The pianist serves as a kind of conductor for the open score. The wind and string players choose which phrases they play in each section as the music unfolds. Every performance is unique. The title comes from an analysis of Stravinsky’s score which declared certain notes “extra.” I wrote Extras to create a kind of foster home for Stravinsky’s orphans.

The BAMA players featured in this concert are

  • Brad Whitfield, clarinet
  • Cameron Bonner, bassoon
  • Valerie Sly, horn
  • Sarah Norlund Dennis, violin
  • Chris Lowry, viola
  • Peter Garrett, cello
  • Eun-Hee Park, piano
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Forest in the City

I had a great time at the recent Forest in the City event at Eyedrum in Atlanta, Georgia. The hybrid installation/concert featured the Bent Frequency Duo and was organized by Adam Mirza. The event was part of the SEAMUS 2024 distributed national conference. The event featured custom-built wooden panels outfitted with transducers so that they function as speakers.

Saxophonist Jan Berry Baker of the Bent Frequency Duo
Saxophonist Jan Berry Baker of the Bent Frequency Duo

My work A Record of the Air from the Middle of a Cloud was adapted for percussionist Stuart Gerber and saxophonist Jan Berry Baker of the Bent Frequency Duo. They played beautifully and the sounds were truly immersive with the speakers arranged throughout the space.

Read a review of the event at EarRelevant.

Program

David George HASKELL: Field Recordings from Georgia Woodlands
Alex CHRISTIE: tuning for now & again
Daniel SMITH: Side B
Iddo AHARON: Xylem Dreams
Giorgio MAGNANENSI: il Guadagnini, sound sculpture, 2017
Kerrith LIVENGOOD: the smallest flock
Jeremy Castro BAGUYOS: Respite
Daniel KARCHER: Circles of the World
Holland HOPSON: A Record of the Air from the Middle of a Cloud
Kittie COOPER: the lightest things float to the top
Garrison GERARD: Within Ice
Nicholas CLINE: When We Speak of the Land
Adam MIRZA: Cracks
John MOELLER: Induction/Transduction
Scott L. MILLER: A Garden Within a Forest

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Brush Mind: Begin To – Screening and Performance

The University of Alabama Art and Art History Department will present Hank Lazer and me in a poetry and music performance along with a screening of our latest collaborative video Brush Mind: Begin To.

Holland Hopson (L) and Hank Lazer (R) at the Blue Ridge Art Center, Seneca South Carolina

Wednesday February 7, 2024 at 12pm
Brush Mind: Begin To – Hank Lazer and Holland Hopson
Sarah Moody Gallery of Art
Tuscaloosa AL
part of the 2024 Biennial Faculty Exhibit

Hank and I have collaborated over the last four years on a variety of projects including three installments of the Brush Mind series, the book with accompanying album field recordings     of mind     in morning, and recent performances at the New Orleans Poetry Festival and Blue Ridge Arts Center.