attention all composers! Volta Trio's new project "Themes and Variations and Bridges" needs you to write us a variation! We will provide you with a theme (in this case, Mark Applebaum's "Theme in Search of Variations I"), you write us a variation/bridge, and we perform the entire work in a concert next year (date, time and location TBA). Please contact me for more info, and pass this along to all of your friends.
-Chris

Our recording of "SUN" is now available online!  Below is the YouTube video of the piece.  For a better quality picture, visit http://www.vimeo.com/glasstreepress/sun 

The audio recording session last Thursday was surprisingly quick.  We only took around 2 hours in EEW 415 to get enough takes for a clean, final version.  
Today's video recording session took a little longer.  We spent almost 5 hours in Hatch Recital Hall recording clips of the piece at around 40 different camera angles.  Looking forward to the finished product!

Also, Happy Birthday to Erik Lutters!  His 24th birthday is tomorrow.

We will be recording "SUN", a piece we commissioned by Baljinder Sekhon, at 11am today.  Paul Coleman is our sound engineer.  Our video session will be on Saturday.  Looking forward to the finished product!

Hey Volta fans, it's Chris Clarino.  Welcome to the Volta blog!  We'll keep you up-to-date with everything we're doing right here.

We've had a lot in the planning over the last few weeks:


•  Thanks to some much-needed funding from Dean Lowry at The Eastman School of Music, Volta Trio will be competing in the 2012 International Percussion Competition in Luxembourg.  We're very excited about this, and we'll be meeting up later this week to discuss repertoire.

•  Our commission with composer Baljinder Sekhon is finished!  Our new piece, SUN, is a 12-minute tour-de-force for percussion trio.  Each player has a keyboard instrument (marimba, vibraphone, and xylophone) as well as a skin, metal, wood and a few other things.  One of the most intriguing aspects of the piece is the "very large cymbal" in the center of the setup, shared by all players.  We will be working with Baljinder in early July to make an audio/video recording of the piece.  

•  The three of us will be traveling down to NYC to perform in John Luther Adams's "Inuksuit" in Morningside Park, as part of Make Music New York.  The piece is scored for 9 to 99 percussionists.  Last summer, we made the premiere recording of JLA's "Always Very Soft" and gave the New York premiere last March, so we're super excited to finally meet him in person.

•  We're working on a grant proposal through the Orange County (NY) Arts Council to present a 5-concert tour at various venues across the county.  So far, we've got the Up Front Exhibition Space and Valley Central High School on board as venues.

•  Have any recommendations for repertoire?  Let us know!


-Chris