Cage Machine
with David Abel, Joel Davel, Paul Dresher, Julie Steinberg, Yuri Mershevsky, and The Electro Acoustic Band: Craig Fry, Philip Aaberg, Paul Hanson, Amy Knoles, Gene Reffkin, and Paul Dresher
 
These chamber works from 1994 to 2002 include many of my favorite concert works, and represent a cross section of approaches I've taken and musical media I've utilized in concert music recently. By the end of 1993, I had spent the better part of 12 years focusing on composing for opera/music theater and for modern dance, involving live music with other performing disciplines. The success of many of these projects led to more and more similar commissions. However, the kind of problems encountered in creating music for opera, music theater, or for dance are often not of a purely musical nature, but are rather more the result of the collaborative process and aesthetic goals that are not specifically musical. I felt, at the end of this period, that my own musical vocabulary was in some sense stagnating, and felt a need to devote the next period of work to creating works exclusively for the concert stage. This coincided as well with a desire to return, as I had done regularly throughout the 1970's, to performing works by other composers. To meet both this and the goal to compose primarily for the concert stage, I decided to form the Electro-Acoustic Band, a new chamber ensemble that would offer to composers (including me) a group of virtuoso musicians able to use the extraordinary advances in music technology of the past 15 years and who possessed the ability to genuinely perform music possessing roots in very diverse traditions including contemporary classical, rock and roll, jazz and various world musics.
Most of the works on this CD were premiered by or on concerts performed by the Electro-Acoustic Band.


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Fragmentos del Posado
with Robert Black, Cuarteto Latinamericano, Daniel Kientzy, Jaime Marquez, Reina Portuondo, Orquesta Sinfonica Simón Bolívar, Alfredo Rugeles, Conductor

This collection of new classical Latin American work by the Cuban born, Miami based composer is a series of pieces that invoke an abstract expressionist sensibility set against a time free present. Repetition and slow evolution of materials result in a temporal stasis which is similar in effect to some Asian and Latin American musics—the perception of the moment is of great importance. Explorations of the counterpoint between register, density, timbre and pacing are the aesthetic basis. Extreme care is given to the nuances of entrances and exists, to the points where silence begins and sound ends. At times the music feels far away, set in a vast distance—like a night sky or memory; and at other times it is strongly present, full of current and emotion, with deep colors and powerful gestures.
Through some one hundred works composed for a wide range of performance genres, Orlando Jacinto García has established himself as an important voice in the new music world. The distinctive character of his music has been described as "time suspended—haunting sonic explorations" with "a certain tightness and rigor infrequently found in music of this type"—qualities he developed from his studies with Morton Feldman among others. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1954, García emigrated to the United States in 1961. In demand as a guest composer and lecturer at national and international festivals, he is the recipient of numerous honors and awards from a variety of organizations and cultural institutions, most recently including the Nuevas Resonancias, American Composers Forum Sonic Circuits, and Salvador Martirano awards, a State of Florida Composers Fellowship, several Rockefeller and Fulbright residencies, as well as fellowships from the Dutka and Cintas Foundations. With performances in most of the major capitols of the world by numerous distinguished soloists, ensembles, and orchestras, his works are recorded on O.O. Discs, CRI (Emergency Music and eXchange labels), Albany, North/South, CRS, Rugginenti, Capstone and Opus One Records and are available from Kallisti Music Press, the American Composers Alliance, BHE and North/South Editions. The founder and director of several international festivals including the New Music Miami Festival and the Music of the Americas Festival, he is Professor of Music and director of the Composition Program as well as Graduate Studies for the School of Music at Florida International University.

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