Guitarist Colin McAllister has many reasons he keeps returning to perform in the yearly soundON Festival of Modern Music, held at La Jolla’s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library.
“A lot of the draw is the people,” said McAllister, a founding member of both soundON and its ensemble-in-residence, NOISE, which was formed in 2000. “Not just making music with my musical brothers and sisters. It’s also coming back to the Athenaeum. I’ve played more concerts there than anywhere else.
“This is my only chance to see our loyal audience, too. I’ve gotten to know them over the years. It’s a great homecoming.”
Another incentive is escaping winter weather for McAllister, a University of California San Diego alum and now an assistant professor in visual and performing arts at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
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The festival has been presented by San Diego New Music and the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library since its inception in 2007.
During soundON, which begins next Thursday, McAllister will conduct three pieces and play solo guitar on “Giants,” one of two world premieres at the festival.
The guitarist visited noted composer Stuart Saunders Smith at his home in Vermont to work on “Giants,” which McAllister said has complex rhythms and “luscious chords.”
The other world premiere, also by Saunders Smith, is “Peace.” It will feature flutist Lisa Cella, a founding member of NOISE and artistic director of soundOn. She is now an associate professor at the University of Maryland.
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Because Cella, McAllister and other NOISE members eventually moved away from San Diego, the ensemble morphed from quarterly concerts to the yearly soundON festival. Clarinetist Robert Zelickman and pianist Christopher Adler are the only members still based here.
As curator of this year’s soundON, McAllister chose the theme, “Thresholds.” The selections are varied in length and tone. They include duos, trios and larger-scale works.
“The challenge with curating is that you want to come up with a concept, plus have pieces you want,” he said. “You don’t want to construct a theme without them. I had ideas for (different kinds of) thresholds.
“Two pieces are by colleagues, Mark Osborn and Nathan Brock, both good friends of ours who passed away. I think of those being thresholds — thresholds of death.”
Those compositions will be played at the Jan. 9 concert, appropriately titled “on the edge of forever.” Other works on the repertoire include “Sin ir mas lejos (Without going further)” by the late Argentine-Uruguayan composer Graciela Paraskevaídis and “Endlessnessnessness” by Anthony Tan, McAllister’s colleague at the University of Colorado.
Pieces by Paraskevaídis and Tan will also be showcased at the Jan. 12 “the edge of perception” concert. On the second night, “liminal space and the archetypes of time,” NOISE will perform compositions by Alberto Posadas and Gerard Grisey, book-ending Smith’s “Peace.”
When McAllister tours, he plays a combination of traditional classical and new music. He is excited to come to the Athenaeum and concentrate on contemporary music with other like-minded musicians.
“If it weren’t for NOISE, I don’t know that I could find the musicians that understand the language,” he said. “Finding the time and space is difficult and the music is hard for an audience not expecting it.
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“It’s neat to have an audience that resonates with the music. It’s a collaborative experience.”
13th annual soundON Festival of Modern Music: “Thresholds”
When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 9 and Jan. 11; 2 p.m. Jan. 12
Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla
Tickets: $20 (members), $25 (non-members) for single tickets; $55 (members) to $70 (non-members) for festival passes; student discounts available
Phone: (858) 454-5872
Online: ljathenaeum.org
To ensure contemporary music will thrive in the future, San Diego New Music commissioned two student works to be performed at soundON. The students — Diego Rodriguez (UC San Diego) and Ezekiel “Zeke” Mortensen (Palomar College) — were chosen after participating in San Diego New Music’s “Emerging Composers” concert last August.
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Annual soundON festival keeps Colin McAllister coming back - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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