Ellen Weller

Friday, May 10, 2024

7:30 PM

Join multi-wind player Ellen Weller and friends in an evening of collaborative real-time soundscapes and interactive audience experience.

"1918" is a piece for piano, winds and community. When the audience enters, they will be given different colored stickers. The first part of the piece is a little "training" session, where they watch the screen for their sticker color and make the indicated sound with hands, mouth or feet. Once we have that down, the piece will start, everyone is engaged, listening to each other in their group, and the improvising musicians respond to them and each other. It is an adventure in sonic collaboration.

Performers:

Ellen Weller, woodwinds
Dr. Peter Gach, piano
Mark Dresser, bass
Sharon Taylor, cello
Kris Apple, violin
Nathan Hubbard, percussion
Stephanie Richards, trumpet
Robert Zelickman, clarinets
Bob Weller, piano

About Ellen Weller:

Multi-winds performer, pianist, and conductor Dr. Ellen Weller is Professor of Music at Palomar College in California, where she teaches classes in music theory, ear-training, and music literature, and directs the Palomar Symphony Orchestra.

Ellen Weller divides her performance activities between improvisation, jazz, klezmer and classical music. An active member of San Diego’s Trummerflora Collective and one of the original members of Maiden Voyage, an all-female big band out of Los Angeles, Weller has performed with musicians including George Lewis, Mark Dresser, Bert Turetzky, Vinny Golia, Muhal Richard Abrams, Lisle Ellis, Vanessa Tomlinson, Mike Wofford, Holly Hofmann, Joe Marillo, Anthony Davis, David Borgo, Jason Robinson, Nathan Hubbard Skeleton Key Orchestra, Lesli Dalaba, Carla Kihlstadt, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Hans Fjellestad, Marcos Fernandes, Michael Dessen, Michael Friedman, Dorbel Persian Music Ensemble, and the Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble.

Weller has two CDs on the Circumvention label: her widely-acclaimed first CD as leader, Spirits, Little Dreams and Improvisations (2004) and “Point of Contact,” featuring her husband Bob Weller and internationally acclaimed bassist Mark Dresser (2008). Her compositions include works for orchestra, solo piano, flute, voice, and chamber ensembles, some exploring improvisation and graphic notation, and have been performed in New York, Detroit, San Diego and Los Angeles. Recent works include “Intervals of Peace” for viola soloist with orchestra and choir, “Tears of Babylon” for brass ensemble, “Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn: A Yiddish Swing Fantasy,” “Prior’s Waltz” for orchestra, “1918: for two pianos and community,” incidental music to “Angels in America” and “Pine Apple Rag” for piano solo and orchestra. Selections from her composition, “Jazz Suite for Piano” were recorded by Peter Gach on the 2010 recording, “Fresh Piano.”

About San Diego New Music:

San Diego New Music is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the public performance of notated music of the highest integrity and artistic caliber from the 20th and 21st centuries. We seek to advance the art form by promoting music composed with conceptual rigor, passionate energy and singular artistic vision. SDNM enriches the artistic culture of San Diego through the presentation of an annual concert series and the soundON Festival of Modern Music, and through fostering its resident performing ensemble, NOISE.

In 1994, the only place in San Diego where you could hear an entire concert of 20th-century music was on a college campus. San Diego New Music pitched the idea of a concert series devoted to modern music and 20th-century classics at the Athenaeum. The concerts of modern music perfectly complement the exhibitions of modern art held in the Athenaeum’s galleries. In 1996, San Diego New Music presented its first season. The series was called "Noise at the Library," and the ensemble would later adopt the name, as well.

San Diego New Music and the Athenaeum have been happily co-presenting concerts of new music ever since.

For more information on the organization go to www.sandiegonewmusic.com.

The concert will be in person at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. There are no physical tickets for this event. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. Seating is first-come; first-served. This event will be presented in compliance with State of California and County of San Diego health regulations as applicable at the time of each concert.