Southern California based ensemble et cetera comprises clarinetist Curt Miller, percussionist Dustin Donahue, and bassist Scott Worthington. They seek to create a repertoire for their unusual instrumentation through new commissions, electro-acoustic works and realizations of unconventional scores reflecting their myriad interests in the American and European avant-garde.
Emerging from the University of California, San Diego's vibrant contemporary music program, et cetera began playing together on a brief tour of the California coast in 2010. The ensemble presented a program of works by Kaija Saariaho and Salvatore Sciarrino as well as newly composed pieces by Paul Hembree and Scott Worthington at the Swarm Gallery (Oakland), the San Francisco Community Music Center (San Francisco), and the University of California, San Diego. The ensemble was also featured in Paul Hembree's new score for F.W. Murnau's classic film Nosferatu in 2011.
Et cetera is devoted to the commissioning of new works and continues to present concerts in collaboration with young composers. Recently et cetera performed and recorded Scott Worthington's epic Even the Light Itself Falls, an evening-length work composed for the ensemble. Other premieres have included works by Matthew Barber, Kurt Isaacson, and Jon Forshee. Seeking a more diverse repertoire, et cetera recently concluded a composition competition resulting in five winners from over 250 applicants from around the globe.
Along with these new works, et cetera performs classic open scores of the twentieth-century avant-garde. In this vein, et cetera has made new realizations of John Cage's Variations I (1958) and Earle Brown's Folio (1954). Et cetera clarinetist Curt Miller and bassist Scott Worthington have also prepared and performed an updated version of Pierre Boulez's seminal work for clarinet and electronics, Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (1985).
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San Diego based clarinetist Curt Miller specializes in the performance of contemporary chamber music. A frequent collaborator with composers, Curt has performed in dozens of premieres and worked with established composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Rebecca Saunders, Roger Reynolds, Josh Levine and Lewis Nielson on performances of their solo and chamber ensemble works. He has performed internationally in ensembles and as soloist at venues such as the Lucerne Festival, Harvard's Fromm Players series, Monday Evening Concerts and Miller Theatre and in San Diego with new music ensemble Palimpsest and Camera Lucida. As member of the trio Ensemble et cetera he has begun to expand the repertoire for clarinet, double bass, and percussion through commissions and realizations of works for open instrumentation. Through his more recent interest in electronics and sound installation Curt works with visual artist Nichole Speciale on installations which reference and extend drawing and painting through sound and video.
Curt received his BM in clarinet performance under Richard Hawkins at Oberlin Conservatory and an MA in contemporary music performance at the University of California San Diego under Anthony Burr where he is currently studying for a DMA. In addition to his active performing schedule Curt educates through private clarinet instruction and work as a teaching assistant at the UC San Diego in music theory and history.
Dustin Donahue is a percussionist residing in San Diego, California where he performs regularly with the percussion group red fish blue fish under the direction of Steven Schick. As a chamber musician, Dustin has performed in venues across North America, such as the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, the Ojai Music Festival, the Banff Centre, the Aspen Music Festival, and Disney Hall in Los Angeles. With red fish blue fish, he has performed alongside Dawn Upshaw, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. As a soloist, Dustin has also appeared at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington D.C., the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Carlsbad Music Festival, and the soundSCAPE Festival in Pavia, Italy. Dustin has recorded for Populist Records as part of composer Nicholas Deyoe's debut album, with throbbing eyes, and appears on several upcoming releases from Mode Records, including the late works of Iannis Xenakis, a portrait of composer Lewis Nielsen, and the complete percussion works of John Cage.
Alongside flutist Rachel Beetz and pianist Martin Hiendl, Dustin recently mounted several performances of the late works of Morton Feldman, including a brief tour of the nearly five-hour For Philip Guston in 2011. Over the last several years, Dustin has commissioned a substantial body of repertoire for solo percussion from a new generation of composers including Andrew Allen, Wojtek Blecharz, Carolyn Chen, Paul Hembree, Martin Hiendl, and Kurt Isaacson. Most recently, Dustin's work has focused on the 'open' works of the post-WWII avant-garde. His realization of John Cage's Variations II for four snare drums and sine tones has been released on UC-San Diego's soundcheck six and was featured at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, D.C.
Dustin received his BM in percussion performance from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he studied with Anthony Di Sanza. Dustin received his MA from the University of California – San Diego, where he is currently a doctoral candidate under the guidance of Steven Schick. In addition to performing, Dustin currently teaches undergraduate percussion at UC-San Diego and runs the school's first undergraduate percussion ensemble, one fish two fish.
http://dustindonahue.bandcamp.com
Scott Worthington is a double bassist and composer based in Los Angeles. As a chamber musician and soloist he largely focuses on contemporary music and frequently commissions and premieres new works. These commissions have resulted in solos and concertos by Robert Morris, Juan Trigos, and numerous young composers. Upcoming premieres include a solo work by Kurt Isaacson and solo works with electronics by Clarence Barlow and Gary Philo.
Worthington is a founding member of ensemble et cetera, a trio for clarinet, percussion, and double bass. Since 2010, eleven works have been composed for their unique instrumentation and they have realized many open-score works by composers such as John Cage and Earle Brown. Et cetera is currently preparing to premiere and record a series of works from their 2013 international composition competition.
As a composer, Worthington focuses on chamber music, often with electronics and non-standard ensembles. He strives to write music that evokes a timeless, meditative state with spacious and resonant sounds. A recording of his concert-length work, Even the Light Itself Falls, performed by ensemble et cetera, was released by Populist Records in 2013 and has been praised by NewMusicBox (Sounds Heard) and Steve Smith (Night After Night playlist). Other upcoming recording projects include his work Infinitive by the ensemble loadbang and a portrait CD of his own works for bass.
Other projects span a variety of areas in contemporary music. His interest in concert-length music led to many performances of Wolfgang von Schweintz's epic Plainsound Glissando Modulation, an eighty-minute duet in just intonation, with violinist Andrew McIntosh. Through his interest in electronic music, he has worked as a sound engineer for performances of a variety of electro-acoustic works by Boulez, Lucier, Meadowcroft, Reynolds, Sciarrino, and Stockhausen. He is also active in promoting contemporary music as a concert organizer. He served on the board of Ossia New Music for two years helping to expand their concert series and present 20th century repertoire pieces alongside premieres. In 2013 he co-founded wasteLAnd, a concert series in Los Angeles which presents Southern-Californian composers and performers.
Worthington has performed around the world at the the Carlsbad Music Festival, the Chihuahua International Festival, June in Buffalo, the Lucerne Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, MicroFest, and the WithOutWalls Festival and spent three summers at the Lucerne Festival Academy working with Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Intercontemporain. His music has been performed around the United States by ensembles and soloists in art galleries, concert halls, and venues such as the Carlsbad Music Festival, the DiMenna Center, The Stone, and Roulette. He can be heard on Albany Records, Bridge Records, Hat Hut, Naxos, Populist Records, and Tzadik.
Worthington studied at the Eastman School of Music with James VanDemark and the University of California, San Diego with Mark Dresser. While in San Diego, he also studied the Alexander Technique with Eileen Trobermann.
http://www.scottworthington.com
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