The Music of Gina Biver Fuse Ensemble

• 1Mirror05:32
• 2Girl Walking13:06
• 3We Meet Ourselves10:16
• 4The Cellar Door07:04
• 5No Matter Where08:25
• Total Runtime44:23

Info for The Music of Gina Biver

On 3: THE MUSIC OF GINA BIVER, her debut recording on Ravello Records, composer, guitarist, vocalist and producer Gina Biver presents five selections featuring the concept-based new music/new media performing collective Fuse Ensemble, a group in which she has played an integral part for the past decade. Not only did Biver compose the five tracks on the album, she either performed on, produced, mixed and/or engineered many of them.

On the opening track, Mirror, which draws its inspiration from the poem “Empress in the Mirror” by the American poet Colette Inez – who joins the composer in contributing spoken word to the track – Biver begins her exploration into the very nature of identity. Girl, Walking continues that exploration, flowing through five sections that are shaped as they go along by improvisations of the parts of the bassist, flutist and guitarist. Those improvisations unfold and force the unexpected; awakening new shapes and realities while the repetitive nature of the Biver’s electric guitar maintains an underlying continuing, eternal presence.

We Meet Ourselves is dedicated to fellow Fuse Ensemble member Scott Deal, whose solo marimba triggers audio samples which represent Jung’s theories about the impact of confrontations with the unconscious and of the messages we receive as we go through life. On The Cellar Door, Biver musically explores Jung’s theory of individuation, the process by which the psyche becomes integrated and whole. Its audio track, with the vibrant and ethereal sounds of the waterphone, represents the unconscious, while the piano and cello represent the conscious life.

Perhaps the only piece on the album not deriving inspiration from psychological inquiry is the closing track, No Matter Where. Biver states that she interpreted “No Matter Where, Not Pictured Here,” a painting by the notable American artist Jackie Tileston, as a journey and so decided to sonically travel around it. Captured sound (trains) is constant, suggesting unending movement; piano floats like water. The Asian influenced leg of her journey features tablas and ascending violin and piano lines made from Indian ragas and prepared piano with small Tibetan bells sitting atop the strings. Trains trail off, slowly fading away as the piece ends.

Gina Biver is a composer, guitarist, vocalist and producer. She composes electro-acoustic music for chamber ensemble, choirs, dance, multimedia and film. Since 1991 she has scored music for television and film, winning multiple awards for her work. Biver’s work in inspired by the written word and by visual art. Her life and work involve collaborations with other musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, poets, computer artists, sculptors, painters and video artists.

Fuse Ensemble

Fuse Ensemble
is a concept-based new music/new media performing ensemble. Each season a concept is presented, giving voice to new music composers and creating musical happenings with visual elements of live, interactive video and/or kinetic installations. The musicians of Fuse perform on an eclectic mix of flute, clarinet, electric violin, electric guitar, cello, piano, electronic playback, percussion, and invented instruments. Linked by the insane possibilities of software such as MaxMSP/Jitter and Processing, sometimes using sensors on the musicians and live interactive cameras on stage, the artists create an experience that fuses sound, video and humans into a liquefied state and gives each concept a setting -- a visual and kinetic environment to experience it in that furthers communication and unifies the concept.

Fuse Ensemble is: Gina Biver, composer, director, electric guitar, electronics/laptop; Pam Clem, cello; Ethan Foote, contrabass; Greg Hiser, violin; Jenny Lapple, flute; Ina Mirtcheva, piano, Angela Murakami, clarinet. This season, Fuse Ensemble is presenting "SKETCH, an Exploration of Identity, Image, and the Art of Becoming". We are excited to be joined onstage this season by percussionist Scott Deal.

Fuse Ensemble has performed at IUPUI Indiana University's intermedia Festival, American University's Katzen Arts Center, the Schlesinger Center, Wooly Mammoth, the Kreeger Auditorium/Gildenhorn Speisman Center for the Arts in Rockville, Maryland and the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington DC as part of the 2009 CrossCurrents New Music Festival, and Sonic Circuits DC Festival, Andrea Clearfieldʼs Salon in Philadelphia and the Firehouse Space in Brooklyn, NY, the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in January 2013 and UMBC's LiveWire4 Festival in October 2013. Recent shows include the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC on November 7, 2014.

Gina Biver
is a composer of electro-acoustic music for chamber ensemble, choir, multimedia, dance and film. She has won numerous grants and awards including those from the American Music Center and American Composers Forum. Her music has been performed worldwide through her collaborations with choreographers, filmmakers, and multimedia artists, and has been performed in venues such as the Kennedy Center and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, the Firehouse Space in Brooklyn NY, IUPUI in Indiana, UCal Fullerton, UMBC Baltimore and Andrea Clearfield’s Salon in Philadelphia and several others. Gina recently performed with the National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble in the atrium of the National Gallery East Wing as part of the John Cage Centennial in September 2012, and as electric guitarist with the National Gallery of Art Modern Music Ensemble at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC as part of the Andy Warhol: Headlines 2011-2012 exhibit. She is the Composer/Director of Fuse Ensemble, a performing group based in Washington DC that actively promotes new music as well as the work of video artists, kinetic sculptors and other visual artists. She lives in Falls Church, VA, with her husband Steve Biver, photographer and author, and their three children.

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