It was a joy for us to recently premiere four new works for flutes, saxophones, and electronics in St. Paul, MN on our concert series James Carville and Mary Matalin are Impressive. We played at Studio Z and Dreamland Arts, which also featured a pre-concert talk by the composers on their works. Thanks to everyone who came out! We also spent an afternoon recording at the Art Institute in downtown Minneapolis. Stay tuned for some new sounds soon! 

If you want to read the program from the event it is online HERE!

FREE concerts coming up in St. Paul, MN! Come hear us Friday night, April 10 at Studio Z then come back Saturday April 11 for another round at Dreamland Arts. We will have the composers with us Friday night for a pre-concert talk with a small reception to follow! 

The past two weeks, we performed our Different Worlds program and gave lectures and masterclasses at Northeastern State University, Millersville College, and Lafayette College! We were delighted to perform on the Old Wood New Sounds concert series as well which had amazing wine pairings by The Vineyard at Grandview. After our tour, we spent a few days in New York visiting the Yamaha Atelier, seeing some amazing art exhibits, and visiting old friends! 

AVIDduo will play a recital in the Old Wood New Sounds at St. James Episcopal Church. Several pieces on the program will have wine and cheese pairings from The Vineyard at Grandview, which is included in the ticket price. Audience members will also receive a live recording of the concert delivered to their inbox.

Program consists of music by Joshua Clausen, Anna E. Garman, Kendra Kestner, Tyler Kline, Marc Mellits, Sam Melnick, Mark Oliveiro, and Kirk O'Riordan.

Hope to see you there!

First stop on our Different Worlds tour! Come see us this Friday, September 12 at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Join AVIDduo for a lecture on Contemporary Music at 2 pm and then hear a full concert of works for flute and saxophone at 7 pm in the NSU Jazz Lab. Free event!

Hello Friends!

This fall we're playing a concert in the Old Wood New Sounds series! Our performance will be September 15, 2014 at Sugar Tank Studio in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Buy your tickets through the Kickstarter and receive a free live performance download of the show. If you can't make it to Lancaster, donate at the $25 level and receive a live recording of the entire AVIDduo concert.

Program consists of music by Joshua Clausen, Anna E. Garman, Kendra Kestner, Tyler Kline, Marc Mellits, Sam Melnick, Mark Oliveiro, and Kirk O'Riordan.

Support live music and new music by donating; see the video below for more information from Kate Umble, founder and director of OWNS.

Composer Ted Moore was commissioned by AVIDduo through funding from the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation to write for the 2013-2014 season.  We included his piece "deepities" on our debut CD "Interactions". Additionally, we toured throughout Iowa with Ted in March 2014, performing his pieces "Is himself no more" and "of circumstance" in addition to our commission and a few other works. We hope you enjoy Ted's music as much as we enjoyed performing it over the past year! This interview was transcribed from an interview with Ted in March 2014.
-BP & KH

AVIDduo: You are a Minneapolis based composer, sound designer, and music educator. What are your current musical projects and how would you describe your style?
Ted Moore: I am writing a piece for a dance performance that is going to happen at Luther in May. I'm collaborating with a choreographer that teaches at Luther. I am writing a piece for Sarah Porwoll-Lee, a bass clarinetist. That piece is being premiered in June. I am writing a piece for the Spektral Quartet and Tim Monroe, the flutist of Eighth Blackbird. I'm also working on a project that is going to be in the Northern Spark Festival, a Twin Cities Arts Festival that happens every summer from dusk until dawn. And my style- I often describe my stuff as electro-acoustic because it uses electronics and acoustic instruments. I really like trying to find new sounds and techniques and things to use in my pieces, which is why electronic music is appealing because it lets me do that. 

AD: You often collaborate with theater groups and dramatic productions; when did you start these partnerships and what are they? 
TM: I started in the fall of 2011, when I moved to the cities.  The group is called Sound Design, so it's creating any and all of the sounds that happen on stage. So, if there's a telephone call on stage, I have to get the speaker placed and make that sound happen. That's part of it. The other part of it, the more creative part, is composing music to support the story, underscore certain scenes, help with transitions, create sound cues that create and release tension, build suspense, create emotions, or set the scenes. For example, a scene in a TV studio- what does that sound like? So, I like it because it's thinking about making art, but perhaps with more plot and more character driven art making and I think that thinking about it in that way helps me with my music, as well. And collaborating is something that helps me think about my stuff and other peoples work in a different way and makes me a better artist. 

AD: You began your musical career by playing trumpet. When did you start composing?
TM: I started writing songs and sort of playing guitar and creating on the guitar in high school. It was just for fun and I didn't write it down, but it was the spirit of starting. And then in college, in Theory II, one of our assignments was to write a piece. We were given some text and told to write a piece. I really liked it and then Spring of my sophomore year I started taking comp lessons and the rest was history. 

AD: AVIDduo won a sizable grant to, among other things, commission you to write a work for flute and saxophone. Tell us about your piece and the inspiration for this work, which is now on our debut album Interactions. 
TM: The piece is called deepities. The inspiration started from the face that the two instruments are pretty similar in range, and by comparison of most instruments, they are pretty similar in timbre, too. So I was thinking a lot about how to use that or emphasize those similarities and de-emphasize those similarities. The piece became about playing in unison and what that sounds like and changing the timbre and how that timbre changes. The piece starts on a unison pitch and then diverges from the unison and there is a big shout section in unison. And at the end of the piece, extended techniques take the two instruments and separate them even more by using unique timbres that are unique to each instrument.  The form of the piece is- I think as many juxtapositions of pretty contrasting material, so by analysis, by some sort of traditional analysis, one might find it to be disjointed. But I think it works. A deepity is something that on the surface appears to be true, but isn't. That is where the title came from. 

AD: How was it working with AVIDduo? What did you think of the instrumentation?
TM: Working with AVIDduo was great because they were really receptive to working through the piece and taking feedback and working on it together in rehearsal. I really feel like this piece in particular benefitted from getting to work with the performers that way. The piece turned out the way I wanted it to because of that reason especially. It's about exploring what you have with the instrumentation and being about to create something out of that. 

AD: Where can musicians go to hear your work, obtain your scores, or commission you?
TM: They can visit www.tedmooremusic.com

AD: Do you have any advice for young composers?
TM: One of the mantras I use, which comes from a friend of mine, is "Keep the notes that sound good and get rid of the notes that don't"

A few weeks ago, AVIDduo collided in Dallas, TX to play an Educational Community Tour sponsored by Music-1st. We gave performances and presentations on contemporary music to students at fourteen different schools in the Metroplex followed by a final recital at Rock & Bach Performing Arts School in Frisco. 

AVIDduo traveled with composer Ted Moore to Iowa to perform at Luther College in Decorah, IA and Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA. Many thanks to Brooke Joyce and Zach Zubow for hosting us! Following our trip to Iowa, AVIDduo traveled to the University of Illinois for a performance at the NASA2014 Conference.