This fall I switched back to standard 4ths tuning on my bass guitars. I had been playing bass guitar tuned in 5ths (an octave lower than cello) for the last 7 years!! So it’s been a totally mind bender to relearn the fretboard in 4ths. 🤪 Transitioning back really makes me appreciate all of the great things about a 4ths tuning system. Truth be told, I hadn’t been practicing bass much in the past 5 or so years, I’ve mostly been focused in on cello. But! Changing my tuning back to 4ths is forcing me to practice 😁 So! Every time I practice, I create multiple exercises and then work on it until I have it in the hands. Sometimes it is hyper focused on a certain technique or theory, but other times it is free spirited. This one came out of pure improvisation, and it is a finger twister! The concept is to play Root 5th 4th in the hand (ex 1 3 1) then Root 5th 4th again but as a 1×2 extension where 2nd finger replaces 3 (or stays put if already extended) in order to shift up a position to play the 4th on the lower string with your 4th finger (1×2 / 4). Then you are a up in the next position and can start the climbing cycle all over again! The key to this exercise is to lift 1st finger off the board when you are on 2nd finger and about to shift up, leading with the 4th finger. Good Luck!
You can purchase the sheet music for this exercise above and hear my play through the exercise (1) slow and staccato and (2) trying it out a little faster in the Instagram post below!
Serbian flutist Iva Ugrčić is organizing this year’s LunART Festival for women composers – taking place in Madison, WI from June 28-30th, 2018! This three-day festival features a remarkable range of women, diverse and varied in their artistic visions, but with the shared passion and desire to make their voices heard!
The vision for LunART festival is to empower women in the arts by fostering originality, honoring diversity, and strengthening equality – and to put Madison on the world map as mecca for women artists.
Festival Events include four classical concerts presenting the work of women composers, a musicological lecture about women in the arts, as well as “Starry Night” after hours performances featuring local women jazz and hip hop artists, and singer-songwriters. Visual art, photography, and spoken word will be woven into all Festival events, and we are thrilled to include the Madison Youth Choir in our Closing Gala Concert.
Our 2018 Composer in Residence is award-winning composer Jenni Brandon, whose instrumental and vocal music will be showcased in our Gala concerts, including two world premieres! She will coach the LunART Festival “From Page to Stage: Emerging Composers Workshop,” offering master classes, lectures, and discussions about collaboration and tools necessary for a successful freelance career in the arts. Additionally, we have created an annual Call for Scores, open to women composers from around the globe.
Designed for professional composers. Up to three works will be chosen and then presented each night of the Festival. Composer can come and she will have free housing provided.
Performances
Thursday June 28 @ MMoCA Lobby 7pm
Friday June 29 @ Promenade Hall, Overture Center 7pm
For younger composers and students that still need guidance and tools for professional careers. The Page to Stage concert will be Saturday June 30 @ Capitol Lakes 2pm. Fee for this is $150 for the professional concert and recording, workshop with musicians, and masterclass with the composer, + all events for free.
LunART Festival Mission
The mission of the LunART Festival is to support, inspire, promote, and celebrate women in the arts through public performances, exhibitions, workshops, and interdisciplinary collaboration; thus enriching our community and creating a welcoming space for learning and experimentation.
About Dr. Iva Ugrčić FOUNDER & ARTISTIC/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
“There is a place for everyone under the Sun.”
Serbian flutist Iva Ugrčić is one of the most exciting and adventurous young flutists in the international pantheon. Described as “a natural star on her instrument,” Iva has been featured as a solo artist and a chamber musician at numerous music festivals, touring and performing around Europe and the United States. She is a musician who has worn many hats throughout her professional career: flutist, teacher, artistic director, entrepreneur, freelance musician and recording artist, among others. Since moving to the United States (2014), Iva has performed with many orchestras and chamber groups.
She currently plays with Black Marigold Wind Quintet, ID flute and percussion duo, and Sound Out Loud contemporary chamber music ensemble.
After completing her Bachelor and Master’s degrees at the University of Belgrade Academy of Music, Iva Ugrčić moved to Paris, where she studied flute performance and chamber music for three years with Pierre-Yves Artraud and George Alirol.
Iva Ugrčić’s solo album, The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi was released in September 2014. The same year, Ms. Ugrčić was awarded the prestigious Paul Collins Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, where she completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree (2017), studying with flutist Stephanie Jutt. Iva won the Shain Irving Duo Competition in 2015 as well as multiple concerto competitions, performing as a soloist with the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra and Miami Summer Music Festival Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, Iva received a James R. Smith Orchestra Award for excellency and leadership. She is finishing up her second solo album Cries and Whispers – Flute Works by Doina Rotaru, and currently serves as Artistic Director for the Rural Musicians Forum in Spring Green.
Tontine Ensemble was founded in the spring of 2014 with the mission to perform improvisational and contemporary chamber works, as well as champion the compositions of Milwaukee composers. Its four current members first played together for a Blank Radio recording session and immediately began rehearsing regularly. Allen Russell, Molly Lieberman, Pat Reinholz, and Barry Paul Clark are all classically trained musicians who teach and regularly perform in a variety of styles around the Milwaukee area and beyond.
Tontine Ensemble has appeared as guest artists at Mike Neumeyer and Friends, Danceworks, Inc. (Paleontology of a Woman – 2014, Footsteps, Shadows & Whispers – 2015), Milwaukee Follies, Formations Series for New and Improvised Music, Alverno Presents (Prince Uncovered – 2015) and The Pre-Maturely Air Conditioned Arts Collective.
The ensemble has shared the stage with JOBS, Netmoiré, Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps, Geodes, Trench, Jonah Parzen-Johnson, and Jamison Williams.
CYRUS PIREH
Cyrus was born in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA on March 22, 1981. Cyrus studied violin, electric guitar, saxophone, and percussion as well as composition, music theory, electroacoustic music, and electrical theory. Cyrus holds bachelor’s and graduate degrees in Music Composition from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a composer, Cyrus’ works involve sign manipulation with the purpose of keeping the interpertive field open. As a performer, Cyrus is interested in the limits of the body and the self: always pushing towards a physical transcendence but working to situate the transcendence in the quotidian in order to live an every-day-life-transcendence. As an anarchist, Cyrus actively works to dismantle hierarchy and to heal the damages done by industry’s division of people into performers and audience; producers and consumers. In music, it is not possible to obstruct on sound with another. All sounds combine to create one harmony. Humans in harmony liberate each other.
Cyrus has a LP release! See the press release below!
Sat, 7/18 | Strollin Park Street (Mad) Jazz Festival
Produced by the Greater Madison Jazz Consortium, the season’s second Strollin’ event offers a family-friendly 5 ½ hours of continuous and stylistically-diverse live jazz in the afternoon in and around the Villager Mall at the south end of South Park Street, followed by an “after-party” at north end of the Street, at The Mason Lounge. As always with Strollin’, there’s no cover charge. Here’s the line-up.
One City Early Learning Stage at the Villager Mall (South East Corner of the parking lot, across from McDonald’s): Noon-2:30pm
Madison Music Foundry Student Jazz Ensemble: Noon-12:30pm
Fountain of Life’s Rivers of Madison: 12:45-1:45pm
Black Star Drum Line: 2pm-2:30pm
The Urban League Community Room: 2pm-3:30pm
Rick Flowers Quartet
Madison Police Station- South District (outdoor stage, or the community room if weather is bad): 3:15pm-5:30pm
Mad City Funk 3:15-4:15pm
Golpe Tierra 4:30pm-5:30pm
The Mason Lounge: 7-9:30pm
bpmTrio: 7-8pm Five Points Jazz Collective: 8:30pm-9:30pm
Strollin’ South Park Street is made possible by a grant to the Jazz Consortium from the John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation, by sponsorships from Prime Urban Properties, One City Early Learning Centers, the South Metropolitan Business Association, Sergenian’s Floor Coverings, Uncle Joe’s Shoes and Sportswear, with additional support from media sponsors WORT-FM and Isthmus and from the Urban League of Greater Madison and Lane’s Bakery.
