| margaret
jenkins |
Paul
Dresher,
Composer
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Paul
Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability
to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and
unique personal style. He is pursuing many forms of musical expression
including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral
composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic chamber music performances,
musical instrument invention and scores for theater, dance, and
film.
He has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint
Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet,
the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, Walker
Arts Center, University of Iowa, Meet the Composer, and the American
Music Theater Festival. He has performed or had his works performed
throughout North America, Asia and Europe. Venues have included
the Munich State Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Festival
d'Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival,
the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia '95, Festival Interlink
in Japan, and five New Music America Festivals. His evening-length
collaboration with choreographer Margaret Jenkins, THE GATES, premiered
at Jacob's Pillow and opened the 1994 Serious Fun Festival at Lincoln
Center. In addition to his many collaborations with Margaret Jenkins,
Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including
Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp & Dancers, Wendy Rogers
Dance Company, and Allyson Green Dance.
In November 2004, his contemporary chamber group, the six-member
Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band, made its Carnegie Hall
debut, performing a concert of Dresher’s chamber works as
part of the “In Your Ear Festival” curated by John Adams,
in conjunction with the New Albion release of Dresher’s CD
Cage Machine. In March of 2005 the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra
premiered Dresher’s Still, Rise, Fall, Again, a commission
from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation. And in May of 2005,
The Tyrant, a solo chamber opera for tenor John Duykers and six
musicians premiered in Seattle to critical and audience acclaim.
And throughout the winter and spring of 2005, 20th anniversary remounting
Slow Fire, Dresher’s seminal music theater collaboration with
writer/performer Rinde Eckert, toured to multiple venues in the
United States.
Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his BA in Music from
U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where
he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros
and Bernard Rands. He has had a long time interest in the music
of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla
Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well
as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available
on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music
and Arts, O.O. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland and New Albion
labels. |
Laura
Hazlett,
Costume Design
|
Laura
Hazlett designed the costumes for MJDC’s “A Slipping
Glimpse,” and enjoys the challenge designing for dance brings.
Laura’s work has been seen on the stages of The Magic Theater,
Marin Theater Co. (Lady in the Dark, Wonderful Town, Me and My Girl,
The Women), Word for Word, and innumerable live corporate shows
(Disney, Cisco systems, SBC, Levi Strauss & Co.) over the past
twenty years. In her spare time, Laura paints photo surrealism on
black velvet. |
Bun-Ching
Lam,
Composer
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Born
in the Macao region of China, Bun-Ching Lam began studying piano
at the age of seven and gave her first public solo recital at fifteen.
In 1976, she received a B.A. degree in piano performance from the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. She then accepted a scholarship
from the University of California at San Diego, where she studied
composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds,
Pauline Oliveros, and earned a Ph.D. in 1981. In the same year,
she was invited to join the music faculty of the Cornish College
of the Arts in Seattle, where she taught until 1986.
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, she also won the
Rome Prize and was awarded first prizes at the Aspen Music Festival,
the Northwest Composer's Symposium, and the highest honor at the
Shanghai Music Competition, which was the first international composers'
contest to take place in China. She has also been a recipient of
grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,
Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, New York
Foundation for the Arts, King County Arts Commission and Seattle
Arts Commission. She was in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's
Bellagio Study and Conference Center and was awarded a fellowship
from the Asian Cultural Council for a three-month study trip to
Japan. she also received a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. |
Alexander
V. Nichols,
Visual Design
|
Alexander
V. Nichols, the Berkeley, California native, joined the Margaret
Jenkins Dance Company in 1986 as Technical Director and has since
designed scenery and lighting for 14 pieces including Georgia
Stone, The Gates, May I N, and DANGER ORANGE.
He served as Resident Designer for Pennsylvania Ballet, Hartford
Ballet, American Repertory Ballet and as Lighting Director for American
Ballet Theatre. Other dance credits include San Francisco Ballet,
Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Hubbard Street, Royal Winnipeg Ballet,
Hong Kong Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, Axis, Zaccho, ODC/SF,
Cincinnati Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. He has collaborated
with choreographers Christopher d’Amboise, Ann Carlson, Val
Caniparoli, Sonya Delwaide, Marguerite Donlon, Joe Goode, Bill T.
Jones, Jean Grand Maitre, Mark Morris, Mikko Nissinen, Kevin O’Day,
Kirk Peterson, Stephen Petronio, Dwight Rhoden, Michael Smuin and
Brenda Way.
In theater, Mr. Nichols’ credits include designs for American
Conservatory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory
Theater, Arena Stage (Washington D.C.), Alley Theater (Houston,Tx.),
Center Stage (Baltimore, Md.), Huntington Theater Co. (Boston, Ma.),
California Shakespeare Festival, National Theater of Taiwan and
The Culture Project (NYC). Recent Bay Area projects include Marga
Gomez’s LOS BIG NAMES, Charles Mee’s FETE DE LA NUIT
and Culture Clash’s ZORRO IN HELL.
Mr. Nichols experience also reaches to live music where he got his
start by assisting Lighting Designer Harri Kouvenen in the garage
band days of the heavy metal bands Metallica, Exodus and Laaz Rockit.
He has since developed collaborations with: Kronos Quartet, The
Paul Dresher Ensemble, performance artist Rinde Eckert and Gamelan
Sekar Jaya. He also designed the lighting for “Aid and Comfort
II”, an AIDS benefit in collaboration with Eiko Ishioka featuring
Laurie Anderson, Herbie Hancock, Phillip Glass, John Adams and the
Kronos Quartet. Currently he is participating in the development
of a multi media performance piece in collaboration with renown
photographer Frans Lanting set to the music of Phillip Glass.
Mr. Nichols created the exterior lighting design for the Sentinel
Building, Francis Ford Coppola's historic headquarters in San Francisco
and is presently designing the lighting for the courtyard fountain
at the Niebaum Coppola Winery in Napa, CA. He is currently structural/lighting
designer for “Circle Of Memory”, an installation project
created with Eleanor Coppola, Richard Beggs, Jean McMann, Elizabeth
Macdonald and Robilee Frederick.
Awards include four Isadora Duncan Awards, a Bay Area Critics Circle
Award and four Dean Goodman Awards. |
Michael
Palmer,
Artistic Associate
|
Born in Manhattan, poet and translator Michael
Palmer has lived in San Francisco since 1969. He has worked with
the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for over thirty years and has
collaborated with many visual artists and composers. His most recent
collections are At Passages (New Directions, 1995), The Lion Bridge
(Selected Poems 1972-1995) (New Directions, 1998), The Promises
of Glass (New Directions, 2000), Codes Appearing (Poems 1979-1988)
(New Directions, 2001) and Company of Moths (New Directions, 2005).
A prose work, The Danish Notebook, was published by Avec Books in
1999. Among his awards, Palmer has received a Guggenheim Fellowship,
a Lila Wallace – Reader’s Digest Fund Writer’s
Award, two National Endowment for the Arts grants in poetry, and
the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America. From
1999 to 2004, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American
Poets. He has taught at various universities in the United States
and Europe, and his writings have been translated into more than
twenty-five languages. |
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