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Gregory Oakes Performs Ken Ueno at the 2016 New Music Gathering

The New Music Gathering, an annual conference that brings together composers, performers, scholars, presenter, and administrators, is happening this weekend at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Founded and organized by four musicians, the New Music Gathering this year is focusing on communities—local, sustainable, networks of musicians and supporters that form the backbone of New Music in America. 

This year's program features a diverse cross-section of differnt communitis involved with New Music, from notable figures such as conductor Marin Alsop, ensembles such as So Percussion and the Mobius Trio, scholars such as Will Robin, and musicians such as percussionist Douglas Perkins and pianist R. Andrew Lee

Kicking off the morning of Friday, January 8th, the conference opens up its "instrument room", where featured performers give lecture-performances that demonstrate the state of their particular instrument. Clarinetist Gregory Oakes will feature Ken Ueno's composition, I screamed at the sea until nodes swelled up, then my voice became the resonant noise of the sea. Commissioned and premiered by Oakes, this work enmeshes Ueno's bold experimentation with extended techniques with the Korean tradition of Pansori singing, where singers develop an intimate vocal relationship with the sea. In keeping with the conference theme of "community", Ueno's work shows how a work with a discrete connection with a specific time and place can become part of new communities of musicians through performance. Check out a recording of the work below, and a video of Oakes demonstrating his technique.