Divergent Studio

Pamela Z

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live looping, she processes her voice to create complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. She has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, the Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Julia Bullock with SF Symphony, and the LA Philharmonic New Music Group. Her interdisciplinary performances have been presented at venues including The Kitchen (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations have been presented at such exhibition spaces as MoMA (NY), the Whitney (NY), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), and the Krannert (IL). Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can (NY), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Dak’Art (Sénégal) and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal). She’s a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MIT McDermott Award, United States Artists, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Herb Alpert Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Learn more…

Oscar Bettison 

Bettison’s music lives, thrillingly, on a razor’s edge between unpredictability and a groove wrought of full-bodied play. Born on the United Kingdom’s Channel Islands to Spanish and British parents, Bettison was fascinated from an early age by the interplay between the “weird, hazy, tenuous aural image” in his imagination and the wild effort to wrestle it onto the page. After studying in Amsterdam with Louis Andriessen and Martijn Padding, he learned to embrace this creative discomfort, crashing through challenges with fantastic, imaginative twists. As Bettison has said: “It’s not that refinement is a bad thing. But there are times when it can get in the way.” Watershed ensemble works like O Death and B&E (with aggravated assault) drew attention from press and audiences for their free-spirited play and integration of popular musical styles. Bettison was recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. Bettison continues to find inspiration in experimenting with different forms of music, composing more for orchestra in recent years: Remaking a Forest for Oregon Symphony premiered in 2019, Pale Icons of Night—his first violin concerto—for Courtney Orlando and Alarm Will Sound debuted in 2018, and Lights in Ashes (an orchestral reimagination of a movement from O Death) was premiered by the New World Symphony in 2017. Bettison’s first opera, The Light of Lesser Days premiered in September 2021 in the Netherlands with the Asko|Schönberg ensemble. Bettison currently lives in New Jersey and a Professor of Composition at John Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. Learn more…

loadbang

New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a ‘formidable new-music force’ by TimeOutNY. Creating ‘a sonic world unlike any other’ (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. loadbang has premiered more than 500 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today’s leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners Raven Chacon, David Lang, and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellows Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, and Alex Mincek.  Learn more…

Divergent Trio

Divergent Trio is comprised of three leaders in the international contemporary music community who offer extensive experience bringing new works to life.  Soprano Corrine Byrne is a member of Lorelie Ensemble, violist Ralph Farris is a founding member of the ETHEL string quartet, and pianist Donald Berman is a soloist and President of the Charles Ives Society.

Led by members of one of the country’s most active new music ensembles, loadbang, and the virtuosic pianist Donald Berman, you will plunge into an intensive 13 days of studying and performing works by some of the most exciting composers of our time!  With daily coaching by the members of loadbang, Mr. Berman, and our performance faculty, performers at Divergent Studio will be featured in composer portrait concerts for Pamela Z and Oscar Bettison, be partnered with Divergent Studio composers to bring brand new works into the world and perform in a final marathon concert, featuring pieces by many of the most influential composers of our time. Join us and make connections, make discoveries, and make new music together! 

With guest composers Pamela Z and Oscar Bettison alongside Longy’s own composition faculty Alexandra du Bois, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Pablo Santiago Chin, and John Morrison, Divergent Studio’s composition program provides the freedom to develop your own individual voice in a collaborative and community-driven setting. Divergent Studio Composers will have the opportunity to write for one of out two ensembles of new music specialists. This includes loadbang, and Divergent Trio (Donald Berman (soloist), Corrine Byrne (Lorelie Ensemble), and Ralph Farris (Ethel).