Faculty Choice

Faculty Choice provides a forum for the exchange of ideas among Center curators, Stanford University faculty, the university community, and the general public. Individual faculty members are invited to select a work or works of art from the Center’s collections, identify the visual and conceptual ideas that have drawn his or her interest, and conceive a project or program in any format to engage museum visitors in the inquiry. The Faculty Choice series is supported by the Barbara Silverman Fund.

The Metaphysics of Notation
April 2009 - February 2010
Rowland K. Rebele Gallery and Geballe Family Balcony

The Faculty Choice series continues this year with a new acoustic twist. Mark Applebaum, associate professor of composition and theory in Stanford’s Department of Music,
has composed The Metaphysics of Notation specifically for installation at the Cantor Arts Center. This unique and unusual work will wind its way around the Geballe Family Balcony before reaching its destination in the Rowland K. Rebele Gallery. The score will be on display during museum hours
for 11 months and will be performed by musicians—Stanford students, faculty, and visiting artists—on site at midday
each Friday.

Applebaum’s score is a work of visual art teeming with evocative glyphs and densely arranged pictographs. The meaning of these visual figures is deliberately left undefined by the composer; each performer is invited to make a sonic realization of the score by articulating its signs according to a personal interpretation.

Presentation of The Metaphysics of Notation is a collaboration that represents the Center’s highest intentions to involve Stanford faculty and students in ways meaningful to their own work and studies and to bring their work to the attention of the visiting public.

Applebaum’s solo, chamber, orchestra, choral, operatic, and electroacoustic music has been performed throughout the
Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, with notable premieres at the Darmstadt Summer Sessions. He is active as a jazz pianist and especially as a designer of new, experimental instruments, which he calls “soundsculptures.” These instruments—tangles of junk, found objects, and hardware mounted on electroacoustic soundboards—illustrate Applebaum’s current preoccupation with visually arresting music notation. In this
work, it is as if the three-dimensional instruments have been compressed onto the two-dimensional surface of the paper, thus engendering the eccentric and peculiar pictographs of the installation.

Interested in participating as a performer? Download the Open Call for Performers here.

Friday performances between 12 noon and 1 pm, Rowland K. Rebele Gallery and Geballe Family Balcony

April 3, 2009: Margaret Schedel, electric cello, and Corey Fogel, percussion
April 10, 2009: RTD3: Tom Nunn, sound-sculptures; Ron Heglin, trombone/tuba/voice; and Doug Carroll, cello
April 17, 2009: Ge Wang and Rob Hamilton, cell phones and electronics
April 24, 2009: Erik Ulman, violin
May 1, 2009: Andy Meyerson, laptop
May 8, 2009: Chris Costanza, cello, and Debra Fong, violin
May 15, 2009: Jane Rigler, flute
May 22, 2009: Sam Adams, contrabass
May 29, 2009: [sic--Stanford Improvisation Collective] All-Stars: Devin Mooers, saxophone; Blair Foley, violin; Michael Berger, trumpet and electronics; and Laura Chau, clarinet
June 5, 2009: Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, electronics
June 12, 2009: MC Lars, rapper
June 19, 2009: Graeme Jennings, violin
June 26: 2009: Jonathan Erman, cello and keyboard
July 3, 2009: Alan Shockley, melodica and electronics
July 10, 2009: Phillip Gelb, shakuhachi
July 17, 2009: Stanford Jazz Workshop: Ivor Holloway, saxophone, and Noah Phillips, guitar
July 24, 2009: Stanford Jazz Workshop: Victor Lin, violin
July 31, 2009: The Pink Canoes: Zachary James Watkins, SuperCollider; Noah Phillips, prepared electric guitar; Aram Shelton, woodwinds; and Travis Johns, home-built electronics
August 7, 2009: Stanford Jazz Workshop: Rob Kohler and Joshua Crumbly, upright bass
August 14, 2009: Stanford Jazz Workshop: Patrick Wolff, saxophone, and Dave Mihaly, percussion
August 21, 2009: Stanford Jazz Workshop: Josh Thurston-Milgrom, upright bass
August 28, 2009: Dennis Shafer, saxophone
September 4, 2009: Ed Silberman, Dale Boland, and Patience Young, vocals, harmonica, body percussion
September 11, 2009: Gino Robair, percussion
September 18, 2009: Matt Ingalls, clarinet, and Liz Allbee, trumpet
September 25, 2009: Chris Chafe, celleto
October 2, 2009: Tim Feeney, percussion and electronics, and Vic Rawlings, cello and circuits
October 9, 2009: Brian Ferneyhough, electronics
October 16, 2009: Scott Jones, electric guitar
October 23, 2009: Alison Lowell, oboe
October 30, 2009: Anthony Green, voice & laptop electronics
November 6, 2009: Adam Sheppard, guitar
November 13, 2009: Be'eri Moalem, violin and Julia Jurkiewicz, cello
November 20, 2009: Fernando Lopez-Lezcano and Rob Hamilton, electronics
November 27, 2009: no performance due to holiday
December 4, 2009: Cobi Van Tonder
December 11, 2009: Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, electronics
December 18, 2009: T2: Terry Longshore, percussion, and Todd Barton, electronics
December 25, 2009: no performance due to holiday

The schedule will continue to be updated as performers are confirmed.

RELATED LINKS
Margaret Schedel performs The Metaphysics of Notation on electric cello.
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