Meet The Commission 2016 Artists
French visual
artist Anne Ferrer and American composer John Nichols III are the winning team
for The Commission 2016. The two met
at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) this fall when they were
both in residence.
Ferrer arrived at VCCA the Tuesday following the Bataclan Terrorist
attacks. Ferrer, who is French and lives in Paris quite close to one of the
attack sites, was at home on November 13. "The day I arrived at VCCA I
decided to make something that was happy and playful in reaction to the
Paris attacks. I needed it. I was miserable.” So Ferrer got to work and a sculptural
“garden” soon was blooming in her studio. The piece is a commission for the
Allentown Museum in Pennsylvania.
Ferrer received her
B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and her M.F.A. from Yale University. When Ferrer
returned to France, she settled in Paris. Living in a city obsessed with
fashion, food, perfume and the luxury culture fascinated and amused her and she
started to play with these ingredients as materials for her work, which uses
bold, insolent shapes and colors. Direct and efficient to construct, Ferrer’s
sculptures give off a feeling of joy with a touch of subversion. The rapidity
of the work’s construction, its easy transportation (her pieces fit into a
suitcase or even a purse), and installation became part of the creative
process, offering a performative work that inflates, breathes and invades the
space.
Ferrer begins by making shapes with fabric on the floor. Once
she’s gotten the general idea figured out, she does drawings inspired by these
shapes. “The drawing is very important because it starts to give me what I
want.”
Ferrer says of the piece she worked on at VCCA: “I wanted to do
something where there was happiness, but also anger and strength. Anger in a
good way—something constructive and powerful. I decided to make flowers. I
think flowers have that power to make people happy, but also to give them
energy to say: Hey, I won’t give up. Let’s not be depressed because that’s what
they want. Life goes on and we have to make the best of it.”
About VCCA, Ferrer has nothing but praise. “I love this place so
much. Oh my God, it’s so inspiring. I saw the space, I saw the light in my
studio and I said: I've got to do something ambitious here. I’m
having so much fun. It’s insane how much I’ve gotten done. I’ve been here
seven, eight days… The really nice thing about being here at VCCA,
is being around the other artists. I’ve had long talks with them,
they came to an open studio I hosted. I have already started a
collaboration with one of them (composer John Nichols), so my
piece will literally breathe with his amazing sound. “
Ferrer’s playful
approach is a welcome salve on the wounds inflicted by those who use terror to
prey on innocents. Her pieces speak with joy and optimism about the indomitable
mettle of the human spirit.
Ferrer’s work has
been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and the fashion houses of Sonia Rykiel
and Nina Ricci. In this country, Ferrer’s work has been exhibited at the
Taubman Museum (Roanoke, VA) and the the Telfair Museum (Savannah, GA). It is
the collection of many international collections. anneferrer.com
John Nichols III’s compositions are incredibly complex featuring
a wide diversity of sonic phenomena melded into a profoundly expressive
form. The work is bold, loud and ornate with cascading arpeggios, crashing
chords and extremes of timbre from deep bass to fragile tinkling of notes at
the upper register.
Nichols composes acousmatic and electroacoustic music. Acousmatic music
is written for loud speakers and is sometimes performed in the
dark. During performances, the loud speakers are arranged in a
configuration around the audience. Many times it’s eight loudspeakers, but it
can be more. Last year, Nichols won the ASCAP/SEAMUS Student
Composer's Commission Competition that was presented this year at Virginia
Tech’s Cube, an electronic marvel boasting over 100 loudspeakers on four
different levels.
Nichols’s focus on electronic music was a gradual evolution. He
began composing pieces at age 12 for his first instrument, the trombone. He
turned his attention to the piano “rather late”, at age 16. He then moved on to
orchestral instruments, a high school rock band and jazz ensembles. “Gradually,
I began experimenting with electronics, although they were always an
influence.”
Eventually, Nichols realized the potential for electroacoustic
sound design. “When you stop to consider what the instruments of our time
are, it’s clear, they’re loudspeakers. These are sounds that would be entirely
impossible with instruments, and most wouldn’t be imaginable even 30
years ago."
While at VCCA, Nichols was busy at work on his doctoral
dissertation in music composition (from the University of
Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, a leader in the field of experimental music))
focusing on the Yamaha Disklavier’s abilities and limitations. VCCA
acquired its Yamaha Disklavier in 2007 thanks to a generous gift from the
Charles Jacob Foundation.
The Disklavier is a computerized "hybrid" piano that
features an acoustic piano with an electromagnetic mechanism that gives users
the ability to record and play back performances note-for-note, with the piano
keys, hammers and pedals moving up and down, like an old fashioned player
piano. Introduced to the U.S. in 1987, the Disklavier was originally conceived
of as an aid for education and recording virtuoso performances. In recent
years, Disklaviers have been embraced by composers like Nichols.
As part of his dissertation, Nichols composed a large-scale
work for the Disklavier and electroacoustic sounds and Nichols soon
discovered that while mostly miraculous, the Disklavier presented some problems
depending on the number of notes and how rapidity they are played. “I
discovered that if one exceeds six notes simultaneously playing at a
certain speed things start to malfunction. I wanted to figure out how fast can
one repeat 16-note sonorities. Ten note clusters are too many notes, but it
shouldn’t be because the instrument is supposed to accommodate 16.” Nichols’s
dissertation explains how to work within the limitations of the Disklavier to
accomplish the desired effect.
In addition to the Disklavier, Nichols uses
the Digital Instrument for Sound Synthesis and Composition: DISSCO
to generate sounds and also records sounds in the studio and outdoors.
Nichols has received international recognition for his
electroacoustic works and has had compositions performed at Gaudeamus
Muziekweek, International Computer Music Conference, and Society for
Electroacoustic Music in the United States –among others. Nichols' compositions
have won numerous prizes including the Grand Luigi Russolo
Prize and 1st Luigi Russolo Prize in the XXVIII Luigi Russolo
International Sound Art Competition (2014, France, Spain), First Prize Absolute
in the “Città di Udine” International Composition Competition (2014, Italy) and
First Prize in the WOCMAT International Phil Winsor Young Composers Competition
(2013, Taiwan). His compositions are published on
Musique & Recherches, SEAMUS, Monochrome Vision, and ABLAZE
Records.johnnicholsiii.com
The winning The
Commission 2016 team is awarded residencies at VCCA to help them with
the project. Ferrer and Nichols will be in residence in May to prepare the
piece ahead of its installation.
We are very excited to see their piece: Composites installed at Pharsalia! For information and tickets for the
event: kstiffler@vcca.com
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