Thollem

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Thollem/Scodanibbio unveil a sound scape of subtle complexities and lyrical dissonances. With eyes closed, you hear a symphonic array. Opened, you see an ensemble of two masters
in a spontaneous musical conversation. Stefano Scodanibbio, world-renowned innovator of the contra bass and Thollem McDonas, international touring pianist, are:

"Awesome, well matched virtuosos in the ocean of sound!"
- Terry Riley

On September 29th, 2008, Thollem McDonas and Stefano Scodanibbio were invited by the city of Brive-la-Gaillarde, France, to play an historic concert on the only piano Claude Debussy owned the last 14 years of his life. The live recording was the first ever on this instrument and will be released later this year. For this rare event, Thollem devised a new scheme for improvisation. The results inspired the two musicians to arrange a California tour in October/November 2009. The music is improvised within a structure. This structure gives the music a similar quality to each performance yet its extemporaneous nature results in a unique experience every time.

Thollem McDonas, pianist and composer, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. Not long after birth he began studying the keyboard repertoire from the medieval to the 20th century. He studied with many notable teachers including Aiko Onishi, Lou Harrison and Allen Strange. He is currently touring perpetually, back and forth between Europe and the States, mostly as a soloist but also in collaboration with many other individuals and groups. Thollem's travels as a performer and teacher have covered much of the North American continent and Europe (he often leads listening and group improvisation workshops as well as master-classes). He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles. Thollem's albums have been released on labels from Europe and the US, and include solo piano works, large ensemble pieces and various collaborations, such as an upcoming release on the legendary ESP Disk this spring. His music is diverse, with each album and every concert exploring a variety of approaches and paths, resulting in dramatically different outcomes.
Thollem is a 2006 recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant. He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale piece in commemoration of their 50th year anniversary. Last Autumn he spent 15 weeks playing 65 concerts while circumnavigating the U.S. covering over 19,000 miles. This past September he was invited to perform the late works of Claude Debussy on the piano on which they were written, as well as his own comprovisations with Stefano Scodanibbio. This is the first album of music ever recorded on Debussy's piano.
Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, riots and on television and radio. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in West African drumming troupes, Javanese Gamelan ensembles, an Afro-punk band, with hundreds of free improv groups, and as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance. His music appeals to a wide variety of audiences because of these rich and wildly disparate experiences. Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls Confluence Music: for people and everyone else. www.thollem.com

"Thollem does what few can: He combines extreme imagination with terrific post-classical chops and an ability to communicate through melody."
- Greg Burk, L.A. Times

"Thollem has that rare gift of soulful equilibrium, which he alternates with digital dexterities that have few equals on the current scene."
- Massimo Ricci, TouchingExtremes

"McDonas' piano are Defalla (driving rhythms and Iberian modes), Schoenberg (unresolved dissonances a mile high),
the collapsing/expanding tempi of Nancarrow, and splatterings of Cecil Taylor..."
- Tom Djll, Signal to Noise

"With each piece McDonas creates a universe of its own...very original...a fresh voice."
- Dolf Mulder, VitalWeekly

"Thollem dives headlong into fascinating unforeseen and bold musical adventures that make
him one of the most interesting pianists of the current improvised music genre."
- Eduardo Chagas, TomaJazz

Stefano Scodanibbio, contra bass soloist and composer, was born in Macerata , Italy, June 18th 1956. In the 1980s and 1990s his name has been prominently linked to the renaissance of the double bass, playing in the major festivals throughout the world dozens of works written especially for him by such composers as Bussotti, Donatoni, Estrada, Ferneyhough, Frith, Globokar, Sciarrino, Xenakis. He has created new techniques extending the colours and range of the double bass heretofore thought impossible on this instrument. In 1987, in Rome, he performed a four-hour non-stop marathon playing 28 pieces by 25 composers.
Stefano collaborated for a long time with Luigi Nono ("arco mobile à la Stefano Scodanibbio" is written on Prometeo's score) and with Giacinto Scelsi. He regularly plays in Duo with Rohan de Saram and, furthermore, with Markus Stockhausen. Since the 1990's, Stefano Scodanibbio has taught Master Classes and Seminars at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, University of California Berkeley, Stanford University, Oberlin Conservatory, Musikhochschule Stuttgart, Conservatoire de Paris, Conservatorio di Milano, etc. In 1996 he taught Contrabass at Darmstadt Ferienkurse.
Active as a composer, his catalogue consists of more than 50 works principally written for strings (Sei Studi for solo contrabass, Three String Quartets, Concertale for contrabass, strings and percussions, Six Duos for all possible combinations of the four strings, etc.) and he was chosen four times for the ISCM, International Society of Contemporary Music (Oslo 1990, Mexico City 1993, Hong Kong 2002, Stuttgart 2006).
In June 2004 he premiered the "Sequenza XIVb" by Luciano Berio in his own version for contra bass, from the original for cello. His Music Theatre work "Il cielo sulla terra" has been premiered in Stuttgart (June 2006) and Tolentino, Italy (July 2006) and was performed again in Mexico City in the fall of 2008.
He has recorded for Montaigne Auvidis, col legno, Mode, New Albion, Dischi di Angelica, Ricordi, Stradivarius, Wergo. Active in theatre and dance, he has worked with authors, choreographers and dancers including Rodrigo García, Virgilio Sieni, Hervé Diasnas and Patricia Kuypers. Of particular importance is his collaboration with Terry Riley and with Edoardo Sanguineti. In 1983 he founded the "Rassegna di Nuova Musica", New Music Festival held every year in Macerata, Italy. www.stefanoscodanibbio.com

"Stefano's music is original both in his understanding and exploration of string techniques and the sound..."
- Irvine Arditti

"Stefano Scodanibbio is amazing, I haven't heard better double bass playing."
- John Cage

"A superb exhibition of the double bass's potential for virtuosic writing."
- Clive O'Connell, The Age (Melbourne)

"Scodanibbio...lifted the instrument into new realms. For him the bass is an instrument of fantasy...an astonishing variety of sounds..."
- Mark Swed, L.A. Times

"The program came to life with the appearance of Italian contra bass virtuoso... from the orthodox to the highly surprising...seven-minute bravura exhibition of bowing technique...
breathless harp-like attack on the contra bass played pizzicato with both hands...Scodanibbio's technical dexterity was astonishing..."
- Joshua Kosman, S.F. Chronicle

Thollem/Scodanibbio
www.thollem.com/thollemscodanibbio.html