Emory CompFest 2025: Featuring Alvin Singleton & Bent Frequency
Free
- Jan Berry Baker, saxophone
- Stuart Gerber, percussion
Adam Mirza — Paresthesia
Alvin Singleton — Argoru VII
Dwight Andrews — Three Baldwin Poems
CompFest 2025 "In Our Own House" looks local to explore building creative arts community within and around Emory. The Festival features Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency and composer Alvin Singleton. Each of the works on the Festival program were selected for the different ways they build community as an experimental art practice. Singleton's chamber quartet In Our Own House, whose title inspired the Festival theme, opens the first night's concert. It invites a question: what is "our" house?
This past fall, Bent Frequency worked with six Emory student composers in an extended residency to create a suite of miniatures. These will be presented on the first night's concert, which also includes Emory Professor Dwight Andrews' Three Baldwin Poems (sung by the brilliant Maria Clark, Emory Artist Affiliate in voice) and Paresthesia, a new electronic piece by Emory Assistant Professor Adam Mirza.
There is a free pre-concert talk starting at 7pm prior to the concert: Creativity Conversation with Alvin Singleton.
CompFest 2025 is sponsored by Emory Arts, Hightower, Emory Friends of Music, Emory Visual Arts, Theater, Dance, and Music departments.
About Emory University Music Department
The Department of Music at Emory recognizes the many and varied manifestations of music and hears in them a powerful means of understanding the human experience.
The mission of the department is to provide a dynamic and ever-changing environment in which students, faculty, and the greater Atlanta community can encounter music through performance, creation, listening, reflection, and analysis. We fulfill our mission by offering a broad array of courses and experiences in which students make and study many different kinds of music.
https://music.emory.edu/About Bent Frequency
Bent Frequency, ensemble in residence at Georgia State University, is a professional contemporary music ensemble based in Atlanta. Hailed as "one of the brightest new music ensembles on the scene today" by Gramophone magazine, Bent Frequency engages an eclectic mix of the most adventurous and impassioned players from the greater Atlanta area. Founded in 2003, Bent Frequency (BF) brings the avant-garde to life through adventurous and socially conscious programming, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and community engagement. One of BF's primary goals is championing the work of historically underrepresented composers—music by women, composers of color, and LGBTQIA+. Its programming, educational outreach, and community events aim to be inclusive of the diverse and dynamic community they are a part of.
http://bentfrequency.com/About Jan Berry Baker, saxophone
Canadian American saxophonist Jan Berry Baker has performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician on many of the world’s great stages. An advocate of contemporary music, Jan is Co-Artistic Director and saxophonist with Atlanta-based new music ensemble Bent Frequency.
Jan regularly performs with orchestras such as the LA Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Grant Park Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet.
As an artist and educator, Jan has held residencies at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), Nürnberg Tage Aktueller Musik, Sam Houston State New Music Festival (TX), Charlotte New Music Festival, University of Georgia, New Music on the Point (VT) and Dakota Chamber Music Festival. She is highly sought after as a masterclass teacher and speaker, and has given presentations on contemporary music, entrepreneurship, nonprofits and grant writing, community engagement, socially conscious programming, career development and mentoring at major schools of music across the country.
Dr. Baker is Professor of Saxophone and Woodwind Area Head at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA and currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Department of Music and Special Assistant to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring. Prior academic appointments include Georgia State University, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, Northwestern University and University of Alberta. She earned a Doctor of Music degree in saxophone performance from Northwestern University. She is a founding member of the Committee on Gender Equity in the North American Saxophone Alliance and served as the inaugural leader of the CGE Mentoring Program. Jan Berry Baker is a Selmer Paris, Vandoren, and Key Leaves performing artist.
https://janberrybaker.com/About Stuart Gerber, percussion
Lauded as having "consummate virtuosity" by The New York Times, percussionist Stuart Gerber has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Mexico as a soloist and chamber musician. He is Professor of Music at Georgia State University in Atlanta. As an active performer of new works, Stuart has been involved in a number of world-premiere performances. He gave the world premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s last solo percussion work Himmels-Tür in Italy, and his percussion trio Mittwoch-Formel at the annual Stockhausen-Courses in Kürten, Germany.
Stuart is a founding member of the Atlanta-based new music group Bent Frequency, performs internationally as one half of the synthesizer-percussion duo Poèmes Électroniques, and is regularly heard as extra percussionist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Dr. Gerber received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin College Conservatory and a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).
https://stuartgerber.net/