2006: NIRISU III

Susan Allen, Nicholas Chase, Rus Pearson

NIRISU III work improvisationally with graphical video imagery, electronics and harp/kayageum sounds in cutting-edge explorations of state of the art music and visuals.

Susan Allen is widely known for her premiere performances of new music for harp throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Australia and Europe.

She has appeared on the NBC Today Show, National Public Radio with the Vermeer String Quartet, New York Philharmonic's Horizons Series, Carnegie, Weill, Alice Tully, Merkin and Symphony Space halls in New York, the Kitchen, the Smithsonian Institute, Gaudeamus Contemporary Music Week in the Netherlands, the Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany and the Festival de Caracas, Venezuela.

With jazz great Yusef Lateef she performed at the Los Angeles Festival, the Verona Jazz Festival in Italy, the World Music Institute's Concert Series in New York, the Jazz Bakery, and the Jazz and Blues All-Star Festival in Stockholm, Sweden. Susan performs on the concert harp, the electric harp and the Kayagum (Korean zither).

Susan has performed and toured with SONOR, Composers in Red Sneakers, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Musica Viva, Speculum Musicae, and many orchestras. She has been active in studio recording in the Los Angeles area for Universal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. She received grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, the Massachusetts Arts Council and the Gaudeamus Foundation. She has lectured internationally on both the harp and music pedagogy and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her records are on the Flying Fish, Black Saint/Soul Note, 1750 Arch, Meta, Vox, Galaxia, Nonesuch, and Opal/Warner Brothers labels.

Alpert Award Nominee Nicholas Chase holds an MFA in Composition - New Media and Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts from whom he is the first recipient of the President’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in Music (2000). Mr. Chase’s work has been hailed by Strad Magazine as ‘brilliant,’ the Los Angeles Times as ‘flamboyant, avant-garde’ and ‘brawling yet taut…the Rite of Spring meets Metallica,’ by the Albuquerque Journal as ‘crackling, witty,’ by the Whittier Press as ‘seamless, powerful…spectacular’ and the LA Weekly writes of his short opera 22 (Taker of the Total Chance), ‘the human brain at its most imaginative.

Chase studied composition with Stephen L. Mosko, Bunita Marcus, Morton Subotnick, Annie Gosfield, Anne LeBaron and Mary Jane Leach and additionally worked with Ziad Bunni of the Aleppo Conservatory of Arabic Classical Music, James Tenney, Christian Wolf and Zhou Long.

As a performer Mr. Chase is former frontman to the pop act Soul Parish, who topped the European Indie/Gothic club charts in 1995 with their single Lilith. Chase has since appeared performing electronics and DJ turntables with the Los Angeles Music Studio Ensemble, the California E.A.R. Unit. Chase is founder and director of the Musical Arts/Sound Laboratory (www.mas-lab.org) who will premiere Chase's new trans-media collaboration Dali's Egg in 2007.

Rus Pearson was born in Wolverhampton, England on June 22nd 1981. He was drawn to music at an early age starting with clarinet and guitar at age 8 and eventually the bass guitar at 14. Rus began professional engagements at 16 and was selected to perform with the Southampton Youth Jazz Orchestra, touring New York and Boston in the summer of 1998.

His passion for Jazz and experimental music was nurtured by his tutors and Rus moved to Leeds to study Jazz with Contemporary Music. It was here he was persuaded to switch from electric to double bass and began to juggle his studies with gigs.

Upon obtaining a 1st Class BMus Hons degree from Leeds College of Music, Rus began performing and touring with various ensembles and soloists.

As a composer Rus has written music for productions by the BBC, Channel 4, E4 and soundtracks for promotional material for various companies. He has also composed and arranged for both Theatre and Dance performances.

Rus currently divides his performance time between Jazz, Free Improv and Experimental music.

NIRISU III utilizes Isadora, a graphic programming environment that provides interactive control over digital media, with special emphasis on the real-time manipulation of digital video.

Through presentation they will demonstrate Isadora and its ability to manipulate live and pre-recorded video showing how response to the live video helps in creating a group composition.

Artist (photo by Photographer)