This concert is supported in part by the Richard Wood Professorship in Teaching of Philosophy.
David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. He is the author of Why Birds Sing, on making music with birds, also published in England, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It was turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song, is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for ... view more »
This concert is supported in part by the Richard Wood Professorship in Teaching of Philosophy.
David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. He is the author of Why Birds Sing, on making music with birds, also published in England, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It was turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song, is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for French television.
As a composer and jazz clarinetist, Rothenberg has sixteen CDs out under his own name, including On the Cliffs of the Heart, named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995 and a record on ECM with Marilyn Crispell, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House. Other releases include Why Birds Sing and Whale Music. He invited many musical colleagues to join him on Whale Music Remixed, with contributions from noted electronic artists such as Scanner, DJ Spooky, Lukas Ligeti, Mira Calix, Ben Neill, and Robert Rich. Rothenberg’s duet CD with keyboardist Lewis Porter, is Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast. Next is a duet with British electronic music wizard Scanner, called You Can’t Get There From Here.
In 1982, Iva started studying with Professor Rudolf Šťastný, the primarius (first violin) of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years, the violin has become her life’s passion and the most inspiring musical instrument in her professional life. Iva firmly believes that, as playing the violin places extreme demands on musicians, the composer’s work depends utterly on commitment and diligence. After living in the countryside near Brno for 25 years, Iva decided to relocate her personal and professional life to the United States. In the summer of 2007, she settled amid the splendors of nature in upstate New York. Iva shares her Hudson Valley home with her younger son Antonín (born 1991), also a dedicated musician and another chip off the Bitto block. In 2015, she studied at the Academy of Ancient Music / Musicology at the Masaryk University in Brno, where she received her bachelor’s degree and, in 2018, graduated with her masters degree.
“Traces of Bittová’s life, from her formative years in tiny villages to her apprenticeship in a toy shop to her performances with an avant-garde theater troupe, creep into every shadowy corner of her music. Her violin playing can be lilting and lovely, infused with nostalgia, and it can also splinter into shards of scraped, raw sound or constrict into tense clusters of pizzicato. Her singing ranges from lullaby-sweet to tunelessly feral.” –L.A. Weekly
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