Live Music By The Verbal Transcription
The Verbal Transcription will be performing at the Fayetteville Underground, Wednesday, March 20th.
The Verbal Transcription, consisting of Emily McPherson (flute) and Brian Glass (trumpet) is a new music duo dedicated to multi-media collaborative performances. We value the relationship between performers and living composers and strive to present musical innovations by incorporating visual art and literature into performances. Our style ranges from improvisation and graphic scores to conventional notation and new pieces written for the ensemble. We also engage in educational outreach and give concerts, graphic score workshops and improvisation workshops at colleges and secondary schools.
Verbal Transcription was recently an ensemble-in-residence at the Music Today Festival at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR. We worked with composers in the department and premiered several new works for the event.
Other recent projects include collaboration with poet Gerald Sloan. We were struck by the tender depth of Sloan’s recently published collection of poems entitled Paper Lanterns, an homage to Hiroshima victims and survivors that confronts the horrific capabilities and vast loneliness of humanity. Working closely with Sloan, we produced electronic tracks interlacing text fragments with sound samples and performed free improvisation over these electronic backings. This project explores the connection between the artifact of the written word and the immediacy of improvisation.
Currently, we are undertaking a project that demonstrates our commitment to the composer-performer relationship. We have commissioned five new works from emerging composers from across the United States for 2013 premieres. Works by James Bean, Fjóla Evans, Scott Scharf, Molly Fishman and Jason Gerraughty will be performed at the National Flute Association summer convention in New Orleans and in recital at Stony Brook University. As we receive the diverse scores from these unique and creative composers, we look forward to the ways in which this project will push the boundaries of possibilities for our duo performances.
Flutist Emily McPherson is an adjunct instructor in the music department at the University of Arkansas. She has been a performer at the Bang on a Can summer festival in North Adams, MA and at the Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory. She has also performed in the North Arkansas Symphony, Fort Smith Symphony and Arkansas Philharmonic. Trumpeter Brian Glass is a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University in New York and is an adjunct instructor at Suffolk Community College and the Stony Brook School. He has also performed with the North Arkansas and Fort Smith Symphonies.
