Ashland-based performer/composer Tessa Brinckman brings a new solo work to Portland and joins members of the Extradition Ensemble for a group performance.
> Tessa Brinckman, Box | Grown Men Sing (2019): A 35 minute electro-acoustic meditation on loss, seen through the lens of solitary confinement, its connections to colonization and climate change, and our yearnings beyond dehumanization. Performed by the composer on bass flute and waterphone with fixed audio and video, the piece incorporates interview recordings with three survivors of solitary within the US prison-industrial complex. What did they hear, smell, taste, dream, remember, resist? What did they love?
> Eva-Maria Houben, Haiku for Seven (2003–2019): A simultaneous realization of seven interlocking solo scores from the composer’s Haiku series, performed by Tessa Brinckman (flutes), Loren Chasse (percussion), Lee Elderton (clarinet), Annie Gilbert (trombone), Matt Hannafin (percussion), Jacob Mitas (viola), and Collin Oldham (cello)
New Zealand flutist Tessa Brinckman has been described by critics as a “flutist of chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent…flutist” (Willamette Week), and a “highlight of Portland” (New Music Box) who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand). She enjoys a versatile career, having worked in many classical music ensembles and concert series in the United States, South Africa, France, and New Zealand. Her orchestral, chamber, and solo music performances include the Oregon Symphony, New Haven International Arts, Festival of New American Music, Britt Festival of Music & Arts, Ashland Independent Film, Oregon Bach, Oregon Shakespeare, Ernest Bloch, Bumbershoot, Oregon Fringe, and Astoria Music Festivals. Performing on flute, piccolo, alto, bass, contrabass, and baroque flutes as well as miscellaneous keyboards, Ms. Brinckman also co-directs the ever-polymathic duo Caballito Negro with percussionist Terry Longshore, and is a member of Collectif Impulsion in France. She has recorded, composed, and performed in major regional theaters across the United States and internationally, as well as for radio, TV, and film. Her co-composition for Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s White Snake was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award in 2014.
Over the past 15 years Ms. Brinckman has received local and international grants to commission, curate, and perform unique programs that blend technology, tradition, and contemporary geo-political themes. The music is often interwoven with her own visual and narrative work, in concert with diverse, global artists. Recent collaborations/commissions include taonga puoro master Horomona Horo, live electronics composer Nicolas Vérin, theorbist Caroline Delume, microtonalist Pascale Criton, avant-rock composer Randy Woolf, poets Angela Decker and Tricia Snell, electronic composer Jeremy Mayall, composer-scholar Martin Lodge, multi-media composer Nissim Schaul, and koto-player Mitsuki Dazai. Ms. Brinckman’s composition for flute and string trio, Glass Sky (2005), can be found on the critically acclaimed CD Glass Sky, and is featured in the South African documentary Inner Landscapes (Climax Films), centering around outsider artist Helen Martins and her Owl House creation. She has served on the music faculties of various Oregon universities and colleges and now teaches workshops and masterclasses in the USA and abroad. Recent solo projects include performance (“When Flutes Spoke Words”) and teaching residencies (“Building for the (Un)Reliable Narrator”) at Waikato and Canterbury Universities (2017); ongoing recording projects for upcoming CD and video release; and a residency at Centre Pompadour (2018) to compose the piece she’ll be presenting at Extradition: Box | Grown Men Sing (2019).