Chen-Hui Jen and Jacob David Sudol – New Music for Piano and Electronics

Concert Description

Taiwanese composer/pianist Chen-Hui Jen and Miami-based composer/computer musician Jacob David Sudol present a concert of music for piano and electronics that explores, amplifies, and expands some of the poetic imagination and hidden acoustic beauty of the piano.

Jonathan Harvey: Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and pre-recorded audio

Kee Yong Chong: Time Flows II for piano and live electronics

Georg Friedrich Haas: Ein Schattenspiel for piano and live electronics

Chen-Hui Jen: d’un songe for piano and live electronics

Jacob David Sudol: “…wash yourself of yourself” for piano and live electronics

Biographies

Chen-Hui Jen

Chen-Hui Jen’s music features an imaginative and spiritual poeticism with subtlety and sophistication. She composes music for orchestra, choir, Western and Chinese instruments, including ensemble, chamber, and solo. Her works have been performed in the ISCM World New Music Festival (2006, Germany), the Acanthes Music Festival (2009, France), the ACL Music Festival (2011, Taipei), the EarShot San Diego Workshop (2012. USA), as well as multiple concerts in Taiwan and the United States. Jen’s works have won prizes in the Kuan-Du Arts Festival Competition (2004), the Literature and Fine Arts Composition Competition (2004, 2008, 2009), the Formosa Composition Competition (2005), the International Tsang-Houei Hsu Music Composition Competition (2006), and the International Taiwan Music Center Composition Competition (2011). In recent years, she has also received commissions from the Ching-Yun Chorus, the Taipei Chamber Singers, the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, the Kaohsiung Chamber Choir, and the Palimpsest Ensemble. As a pianist, she has a duo with her husband Jacob David Sudol that has performed across the USA and Taiwan.

Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Mrs. Jen received her B.F.A. at the Music Department of the National Sun Yet-San University (1999-2003) and M.F.A. at the Graduate School of Music at the Taipei National University of the Arts (2003-2005), majoring in composition under the instruction of Professor Hwang-Long Pan and Tzyy-Sheng Lee. She obtained a scholarship from Taiwanese Ministry of Education in 2006 to study in the United States, and earned a Ph.D. in Music Composition in 2012 at the University of California, San Diego, where she worked with Professor Chinary Ung. She currently lives in the United States.

Jacob David Sudol

Jacob David Sudol (b. Des Moines, Iowa, 1980) writes intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena and the inner nature of how we perceive sound. He currently is an Assistant Professor, the Coordinator of Music Technology area, and on the composition faculty at Florida International University. He received his in Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego where his mentor was the Grawemeyer Prize-winning composer Chinary Ung.

Over the last five years some of Jacob Sudol’s mentors have also included John Rea, Alvin Lucier, Roger Reynolds, Rand Steiger, Denys Bouliane, Philippe Leroux, and David Dunn. He has also participated in master classes with Beat Furrer, Helmut Lachenmann, Fred Lerdahl, and Bent Sørensen.

Jacob Sudol has been commissioned and/or performed by many prestigious ensembles and performers such as the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Chai Found New Music Workshop, cellist Jason Calloway, the Contemporary Keyboard Society, the Little Giant Chinese Orchestra, pianist Xenia Pestova, flutist Solomiya Moroz, percussionist Nathan Davis, flutist Carla Rees, the rarescale duo, Taiwanese pianist and composer Chen-Hui Jen, pianist Keith Kirchoff, clarinetist Krista Martynes, guzheng-performer Yi-Chieh Lai, Brazilian percussionist Fernando Rocha, and the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble in collaboration with the McGill Digital Composition Studio. These works have received numerous domestic and international performances. Jacob Sudol also frequently performs his own works for instruments and electronics in diverse settings such as the Taiwan National Recital Hall, the New Music Miami Festival, Florida International University, Bangor University, the Cluster Festival, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the International Computer Music Conference, the Taiwan National Chiao Tung University, the University of California at San Diego, the wulf in Los Angeles, the MATA Festival, and the Issue Project Room in New York City. As a record producer he has produced CDs that have been released on Bridge and Mode records.

During his free time Jacob Sudol takes an interest in religious phenomenology, literature, acoustics, psychoacoustics, visual art, cinema, and world musics. As a composer he always attempts to bring insights from these other fields into his work.