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THE BUGALLO-WILLIAMS PIANO DUO has been presenting innovative programs of contemporary music throughout North America and Europe since 1995. Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams perform cutting-edge new works and masterpieces of the twentieth century for piano four-hands and two pianos, including works by Cage, Debussy, Feldman, Kagel, Kurtág, Ligeti, Nancarrow, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Stravinsky and Wolpe. They have premiered dozens of works, many of which were written especially for the Duo, and they have worked directly with such renowned composers as Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Jukka Tiensuu, Kevin Volans and Bernard Rands. They also collaborate with composers who explore new approaches to the piano through multimedia applications, electronics, and extended techniques. They frequently perform with additional players in works for multiple keyboards, chamber works for duo piano and instruments, and concertos. The Duo has been featured at the NUMUS Festival (Aarhus), UNAM (Mexico City), Miller Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, and Symphony Space (New York City), CAL Performances (Berkeley), Sound Field Festival (Chicago), Spring Festival of New Music (York, UK), Cutting Edge (London), Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Witten), Subtropics Festival (Miami) and Ojai Festival, to name a few. As part of their mission to expand the repertoire for piano duet, the Duo has undertaken an extensive transcription project of the Studies for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow. This has resulted in a critically acclaimed recording of Nancarrow’s music for piano duet and solo piano, released by Wergo in 2004. Their new CD "Stravinsky in Black and White" (Wergo, 2007) includes original arrangements for piano duet and two pianos by the composer, two of which are world premiere recordings. They have also recorded the music of Jorge Liderman (Albany Records, 2005) and Erik Oña (Wergo, 2007). Avid proponents of contemporary music, they frequently present master classes and lecture-demonstrations at colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. The Duo's debut CD, Conlon Nancarrow: Studies and Solos, is available on Wergo and Amazon. Their new release "Stravinsky in Black and White" is also available on Wergo and Amazon.
HELENA BUGALLO a native of Argentina, has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, and Japan, appearing at international festivals such as Tanglewood, Warsaw Autumn, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Musica Viva Munich, Festival del Centro Histórico Mexico, and Ciclo de Música Contemporánea Buenos Aires. In addition to her work with the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, she has collaborated with numerous established groups, including the Meridian Arts Ensemble (New York), the SWR Vokalensemble (Stuttgart), Thuermchen Ensemble (Cologne) and Ensemble Resonanz (Hamburg). Since 2006, she has been a member of the Ensemble Phoenix Basel, a contemporary music group active in Switzerland and abroad. In 2007, she was featured as a soloist with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rudfunks in Munich, offering the premiere of María Cecilia Villanueva's Escenario. Engagements for 2008 include her participation in Hellhoerig, a new piece of music theater by Carola Bauckholt to be premiered at the Munich Biennale, with subsequent performances in Cologne and Basel. Ms. Bugallo’s teachers have included Lía Konias, Roberto Caamaño, Haydée Schvartz, Yvar Mikhashoff, and Alan Feinberg. She holds music degrees from the Conservatorio Provincial de La Plata (Argentina) and the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA), where she obtained a Master's degree in piano performance and a Ph.D. in musicology. Her doctoral dissertation is on the music of Conlon Nancarrow. Between 2001 and 2003, she was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham (UK). Ms. Bugallo presently lives in Basel, Switzerland. QUOTES FROM REVIEWS: "Helena Bugallo gave an agile reading of Nancarrow’s
spare-textured but rhythmically tricky 'Canon A for Ursula'….
Mr. Barber’s 'Semahane—Whirling Wall' (1993) was enlivened
by a combination of vigorous, high-energy brass playing [by the
Meridian Arts Ensemble] and delicate, almost Bachian pianism [by
Helena Bugallo]." "Emil Harnas’s 'Trio' (2000) was written especially for
the musicians on this recording. Two fast movements surround a longer
slow movement, the whole thing held together by Helena Bugallo’s
intense pianism." "The most familiar score on the program was Olivier Messiaen’s
'Oiseaux Exotiques', a work for piano, wind ensemble and percussion
with the talented young pianist Helena Bugallo as soloist…the
conductor was able to coax results from his forces, with special
kudos to Bugallo’s powerful keyboard artistry." "Bugallo's interpretation of 'Triadic Memories' (1981) was
truly exceptional, not only in the precision of touch but also in
the general approach, which was justly neither too dry nor too brilliant.
Bugallo established in an exquisite, yet natural, way the particular
tone of Feldman's music." "Pianist Bugallo was continually impressive [in Hindemith’s
'Four Temperaments'], and more for her musicianship than for her
technique, which was secure enough to be taken for granted by the
listener. Her rhythms were crisp but not mechanical, and she had
an intuitive sense of the piano line's narrative quality." "The late Morton Feldman undoubtedly was smiling down from
somewhere up there in the nether regions on Helena Bugallo’s
rapt reading of his 1977 'Piano'. Ms. Bugallo’s performance
was poised, committed and sensitive to the chord voicings, colors
and sympathetic vibrations set up in the score."
AMY WILLIAMS has appeared as a pianist and composer at renowned contemporary music venues in the United States and Europe, including the Logos Foundation and Ars Musica (Belgium), Musikhöst Festival (Denmark), Gaudeamus Musik Week (Netherlands), Tanglewood Festival, Subtropics Festival (Miami), North American New Music Festival (Buffalo), Sound Field (Chicago), LA County Museum, Mondavi Center (Davis) and Dresden New Music Days (Germany). Her compositions have been performed by leading contemporary music soloists and ensembles, including the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Empyrean Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, CUBE, California E.A.R. Unit, North/South Consonance, Monarch Brass, Ensemble Aleph, Due East, Bent Frequency, Maverick Ensemble, Duo Diorama, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Amy Dissanayake, soprano Martha Herr, bassist Robert Black, and a recent piano concerto for Ursula Oppens and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. As a pianist, Ms. Williams has recorded for MODE and HAT-ART Records. She has received awards from ASCAP, the Thayer Award for the Arts, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the 2002 Wayne Peterson Prize in Music Composition. She has had residencies at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany) and Bellagio Center (Italy). She holds a Ph.D. in composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she also received a Master's degree in piano performance. Her principal teachers were composers David Felder, Charles Wuorinen and Nils Vigeland and pianists Yvar Mikhashoff and Alan Feinberg. Before her current position as Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, she taught at Northwestern University and Bennington College. QUOTES FROM REVIEWS: "'Refined Art,' by Pitt composer Amy Williams, was inspired by pianist Art Tatum. Originally a piece for four hands, fitting for Tatum's prodigious ability, the captivating work took [pianist Margaret] Kampmeier to the breaking point with florid runs, blues touches and hints of walking bass until a sudden and arresting cadence--a reference perhaps to Tatum's life cut too short at 47." —Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (2007) "Amy Williams' 'Sala Luminosa' for piano soloist and chamber orchestra is a beautiful paraphrase of a work by Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla. Williams expanded Piazzolla's characteristic block-like sectional structure, harmonic progressions, repeated rhythmic patterns, ornamental gestures and melodic fragments into a modified rondo. The "A" section is marked by fast, toccata-like figures in the high registers that Oppens played brilliantly, with hands displaying equal virtuosity." —Eric Haines, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (2006) "Amy Williams’ 'Sextet' (2001), this year’s winner
of the Wayne Peterson Prize in Music Composition, sponsored by San
Francisco State University, opened the program. This sextet, scored
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, was based
on a textural dichotomy—a hyperactive, anarchic opening section
out of which smoothly emerged a passage of quiet, sustained sonorities.
Williams managed the connection beautifully, without any awkwardness
or disjunction, continuing this pattern throughout the piece. At
the end of a calm, static interlude, a few sudden notes on the chimes
or a jangling piano cadenza would set off the next frenzied episode.
Daring in its premise and refreshing in its textural immediacy,
this piece made a good impression." "Never have I learned so much about new American music, serious
music, than with this concert by the young and incredibly accomplished
Amy Williams. She played the music with both her ear and heart and
was never the least bit shaky—her rhythm was formidable. In
over 20 works, we traveled through piano music from the other side
of the Atlantic, year by year. Or rather, we flew! Amy Williams'
concert, a full two hours of concentrated and demanding music, was
an achievement, one that not many pianists in the world could have
done as she did." "[Williams],who played those works [by Vigeland and Rzewski]
with energy, finesse and feeling, also was impressive in some gentle
folk song arrangements by Peter Maxwell Davies and Cornelius Cardew."
"Williams' work [Mørkekammer, with] its gauzy, hollow,
astringent string sonorities, with many difficult syncopations and
cross rhythms, presented a consistent musical point of view. Williams
knew exactly what she wanted and got it." "Williams' evocation of these spine-tingling moods [in Cowell's
music] was extraordinarily effective.... She produced something
of a surprise by brilliantly hurling out the torrential sweep of
notes in Frederic Rzewski's 1977 'Piano Piece No. IV.' Its fearsome
minimalist prestidigitation has a hypnotic effect on audiences,
and Williams made it convincing both as music and gutsy dramatic
gesture."
Copyright © 2004 The Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo All Rights Reserved |
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