For Immediate Release
NDSU Composers and Dr. Martin Van Klompenberg Featured in The Contrabassoon Character Piece Project at the 54th International Double Reed Society Conference
Fargo, ND – North Dakota State University (NDSU) is proud to announce that Dr. Martin Van Klompenberg, instructor of bassoon, will present The Contrabassoon Character Piece Project at the 54th International Double Reed Society (IDRS) Conference, taking place this summer in Indianapolis, Indiana. This exciting program highlights the work of NDSU composers and brings new, original repertoire to the contrabassoon, an instrument often overlooked outside the orchestral context.
In addition to his role as a collaborator, Dr. Van Klompenberg has composed a new work for the contrabassoon as part of this program. The Contrabassoon Character Piece Project also includes works by Snow Kim (DMA Candidate, University of Kansas), along with NDSU composers Kyle Vanderburg (Composer in Residence), and Jonathon Erickson (Composition student). Dr. Van Klompenberg’s own contribution to the program further underscores the depth of talent within the NDSU composition community.
The program addresses the need for expanded repertoire for the contrabassoon with piano accompaniment, and Dr. Van Klompenberg’s leadership in commissioning these new works underscores NDSU’s commitment to fostering connections between students, faculty, and professional musicians. The inclusion of current students and faculty members in this project is a testament to the collaborative spirit and creative energy that defines the NDSU Composition Program.
The IDRS Conference, renowned for its dynamic programming of recitals, masterclasses, and workshops, will provide an excellent platform for these innovative works. The presence of NDSU composers at this prestigious international conference reinforces the university’s role in shaping the future of contemporary music performance and composition.
About Dr. Martin Van Klompenberg
Dr. Martin J. Van Klompenberg is a bassoonist, composer, and educator at North Dakota State University, where he teaches bassoon and chamber music. A former member of the United States Army Band program, he holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Arizona and degrees from Arizona State University and Western Michigan University. Dr. Van Klompenberg is an advocate for new music, commissioning and premiering works by several composers. He is the contrabassoonist for the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra and has performed with numerous ensembles, including the Louisville Orchestra and the West Virginia Symphony.
For more information about Dr. Van Klompenberg, see https://martinvanklompenberg.com.
About NDSU Composition Program
The NDSU Composition Program is dedicated to nurturing the next generation of composers, fostering an environment where students engage with the creative process, collaborate across disciplines, and contribute to the future of contemporary music.
For more information about the NDSU composition program, see https://ndsucomposition.com.
Dear Kyle,
We have now had time to review your submission for this year’s Radiophrenia broadcasts.
After careful consideration we are pleased to inform you that we have selected your work (Creatures from the Black Bassoon) for broadcast.
We very much appreciate the time you took in sending us your ideas. We will be in touch again if we require any further information from you. It will take us some time to contact everyone who took part in the open call so we’d appreciate it if you didn’t share this news on social media, etc. until the end of January.
The schedule of programmes will appear on our website towards the end of March. There will be a search function so you can find when the work will be broadcast.
Just in case the message hasn’t reached you please note that the broadcast dates have now been rescheduled to April 7th – 20th.
Many thanks and best wishes,
The Radiophrenia team
I set out to do a monthly update at the end of November, but then finals week got the best of me. So here’s November AND BONUS December.
November started out with a trip to the annual College Music Society conference in Washington, DC. I had a tape piece (The Earth Shall Soon Dissolve Like Snow) on one of the CMS concerts, and a demonstration for the Association for Technology in Music Instruction side of the conference. This was the one conference that I allowed myself to go to this year (aside from the regional CMS that I hosted during a blizzard in March). It was great to get back into the researchy-creativey side of things.
Later, I was able to run out and do a bit of sightseeing. Here’s a view of Capitol Hill from the Library of Congress.
Here’s a closer picture of the Washington Monument. I didn’t really plan to go here, I was just on the subway heading back to the airport and was looking for a public restroom, and the restroom situation on the Washington Metro is a whole saga unto itself.
Oh and also the conference hotel (the Washington Hilton) was where Reagan was shot.
The paper/demonstration I gave was about a program I’ve been writing for tracking the composition process–essentially, it’s an app that has a bunch of buttons you push while composing to track your progress, and then it gives you a transcript and stats. It turns out I take way more breaks than I thought. WAY MORE. Here’s what the app looks like on the right monitor. (Also this is clearly a staged shot, because my desk was not previously and has not been since this clean.)
Meanwhile in Fargo, progress continues on our building addition to the Challey School of Music. Cassie is moving into one of the new offices on the second floor; I’m moving to an office that will be vacated also on the second floor. My plans for a composition emporium on the third floor were rejected.
Bartleby and Erin are getting along.
Tape Piece showed up on an album that was released.
I got the paperwork started to teach a music tech course at Concordia this spring, due to Doug Harbin’s sabbatical. I had to look up “Precept.” I also have to remember what it’s like to not know all the insane idiosyncrasies of MaxMSP.
We drove the cats and the kiddo to Montana for Christmas. Bart was thrilled. (Also, we have a second cat, Lorraine, who doesn’t appear here because all her pictures are blurry or because she is hiding at any given time. At this point in the trip, she was in the back passenger floorboard.)
Erin got to ride a horse!
And I finished a couple of pieces. Hey! Composing! (Miniwashitu for Contrabassoon and Piano (for Martin Van Klompenberg), and Last-Minute Waltz for solo flute (for a 15-minutes of fame call for scores featuring Lisa Bost-Sandberg)). Note to self: do more of this in 2025.
It’s going to be a good year.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kyle Vanderburg
Email: info@kylevanderburg.com
Website: https://KyleVanderburg.com
Fargo, ND – 12/19/2024 – Composer and sound artist Kyle Vanderburg is proud to announce the release of his fixed media work, Tape Piece, on Electronic Masters Vol. 10, which became available worldwide on November 29, 2024. The Electronic Masters series from ABLAZE Records is celebrated for highlighting cutting-edge electronic compositions and providing a global platform for exceptional artistry.
Chosen from submissions spanning the globe, Tape Piece stands out for its immersive sonic quality. ABLAZE Records’ Douglas Knehans remarked, “The piece has a great atmosphere, excellent realization, immense subtlety, and beautiful audio quality. Congratulations on a wonderful work!”
The Electronic Masters series has earned high praise as a platform for new and experimental works. Recent reviews have celebrated its “positively vibrant” contributions to contemporary electronic music, affirming its role as an essential series for modern listeners.
Vanderburg’s music, which often navigates the relationship between nostalgia and innovation, explores familiar sounds in unexpected contexts. Tape Piece uses the sounds of adhesive tape–masking, scotch, aluminum, packing, and duct–to transform a mundane office supply to a new sonic world.
Kyle Vanderburg (b. 1986) is a composer and sound artist based in Fargo, ND. His music blends nostalgia with innovative sonic worlds, often recasting familiar sounds in fresh and unexpected contexts. His work has been presented globally at festivals and conferences such as ICMC, SEAMUS, and NYCEMF. He is currently Composer in Residence at North Dakota State University’s Challey School of Music. Learn more at KyleVanderburg.com.
ABLAZE Records is a premier platform for emerging voices in contemporary classical and electronic music. Through its Electronic Masters series, ABLAZE provides a global stage for composers who redefine and expand the possibilities of sonic artistry. Learn more at AblazeRecords.net.
Electronic Masters Vol. 10 was released on November 29, 2024, and is available worldwide on streaming platforms including iTunes, Naxos Music Library, Amazon MP3, and Spotify, with physical copies distributed through ABLAZE Records.
For more information and updates, visit: KyleVanderburg.com.
I didn’t take a ton of interesting pictures the past two months–lots of teaching and organization and tech support. But here’s the interesting bits of the middle of the fall semester.
I finished writing a piece for Bassoon and Electronics. This isn’t what it’s called now, but it was called this very briefly (more info on that piece coming up in the next few days)
I started work on a contrabassoon piece, and I’m using a tool I developed for tracking the composition process (which I have a presentation on next week at CMS, which I need to finish). Here’s a quick shot of me composing while on an NDSU Press field trip (staying at Nineteen26 Campground and Lodging in Steele, ND).
(That same field trip, the NDSU Intro to Publishing class printed, folded, collated, and trimmed 275 copies of this year’s chapbook. I drove the van and drank a lot of coffee.) Here’s a photo of the group (courtesy Allan Burke):
A few weeks later, we took the same class to Altona, Manitoba, to tour Friesens Corporation. Friesens is one of Canada’s largest book printers. Here we are next to several tons of rolls of paper. I drove the van and drank a lot of coffee.
We turned Festival Concert Hall into a Black Box theatre again for our fall Thundering Heard! student composers recital. This year we’re trying to build an audience with New Music Punchcards.
Ooh! Also, the NDSU University Symphony Orchestra premiered my work The Uncertainty of Joy. (https://vimeo.com/1018999619, at about 50:30. Updates to the website coming soon!)
Back at home, we got a new gate for the backyard (we lost the old one when we expanded the garage door at the beginning of covid times)…
I hit 1,450 days on Duolingo…
Bartleby claimed more of Erin’s furniture…
And Erin went for a stroll.
Next week I’m off to the 2024 College Music Society/Association for Technology in Music Instruction conference, at the Washington, DC, Hilton. That’s right. Washington, DC. During election week. I can only assume that the conference hotel was cheaper for those dates.
From the inbox:
Dear composers,
Thank you all for your submissions to the Trans-Pacific Trio call for scores! We would like to extend a special thank you to those who composed music specifically for our ensemble. Part of our reason for this call for scores was simply the lack of repertoire for our instrumentation, and it means a lot to us that you took this opportunity to create more pieces as options for us to play! We also want to acknowledge that many of you wrote worthy pieces that we were unable to program this season, but certainly hope to play in the future!
2024-2025 is rare in that the Trans-Pacific Trio is all residing in the same location for the entire season. For this reason, we wanted to give preference to submissions that included all three members of our group. The works we have selected for our “Trios Only” concert in early February are the following:
For Clarinet, Bassoon, and Piano:
Angelo Bruzzese – Lumen
David Snow – A Baker’s Tale
David Vayo – Seis Cosechas
Bernie Walasavage – Trio
For Voice, Clarinet, and Piano:
Carter Crosby – Enacting Travesty
Nicole Knorr – Waiting to Speak
Kyle Vanderburg – Letters to the Poetry Editor (III and VI)
Because we received so many excellent pieces, the Trans-Pacific Trio has decided to incorporate several of them into an additional concert in May. The pieces we have selected for that concert include:
Paul Ayres – The Cloths of Heaven
David Crumb – Soundings
Allen Molineux – A Terse Terzetto
Concert dates and venues are being finalised, and will be posted on the Trans-Pacific Trio page of my website once confirmed:
https://www.marialordknivetonmusic.com/trans-pacific-trio
We will be in touch with those of you whose pieces we have programmed for this season!
Maria Lord-Kniveton
Trans-Pacific Trio
I’ve worked on some projects this summer (furniture, writing, parenthood), and I’ve been trying to stay away from social media, with varying results. So here’s a brain dump of things from this summer.
I finally refinished the last of the six mission-style chairs I bought from the University of Oklahoma in the mid-2010s. And then I refinished another that apparently hadn’t been glued properly. And then I reupholstered them all with new foam because dorm chairs from the 90s don’t have the best support.
I finished an orchestra piece I intended to finish in March. I’m very pleased with the result, but I can think of a half-dozen better ways I could have written it more efficiently. (The opening tempo isn’t “TEMPO,” I’m just scrolling through my camera roll and this is the pic I have).
The Uncertainty of Joy premieres this fall by the NDSU University Symphony Orchestra
I migrated the entire NDSU Performing Arts website to WordPress, for the second time in three years. When I abandoned the project a few years ago, I apparently saved nothing. We’re going to migrate it again later this year to Drupal (for reasons), but having the website in a content management system is a significant improvement. It also allowed me to learn Fedora Linux (we were initially going to host it at NDSU, and they only support Red Hat, which Fedora is related to. Letting programmers name things was a mistake. Hats.). Here’s how we update websites now, versus how we used to:
I taught at one of my favorite places, the International Music Camp, for half a week in July. I wasn’t comfortable being away the whole week, and OU colleague extraordinaire Steven Eiler taught the other half of Audio Technology. Here’s me and some of the class, up to no good.
I completely rewrote the instrument/equipment/locker checkout system in Liszt, which was one of the most complicated programming things I’ve done. Formerly, there were individual checkouts for lockers and instruments, and some people checked out lockers, and some people checked out instruments, and you put instruments in lockers, so it got complicated. Now checking out a locker checks out the instrument inside it, and vice versa. It also means you can check out every single NDSU piccolo instantly.
We (me, Cassie, Erin, Bartleby, and Lorraine) took a trip to Montana. Lorraine loves car rides!
On the way back we saw some NDSU fans.
Here’s one up close
Bonanzaville repaired the foundation to the Hunter Times building, so I spent a little time getting type cases put back in order. Working with the equipment at Bonanzaville helps to prevent me from buying a printing press and putting it in my basement.
Speaking of printing, I wrote and published a book for my Music Skills for Academic Success class. It’s definitely a work in progress. (This whole ordeal deserves a writeup of its own).
One of the other projects from this summer was organizing and preparing a high school composition competition called Score Wars. We did some publicity for that, including a radio interview on Prairie Public (to be aired at a later date) and an eeeeaaaarrrlllyyy morning spot on one of Fargo’s local TV stations.
Of course, school started at the end of August, and I started teaching the freshmen important things about Music. And, as it turns out, typefaces.
Cassie and I also spent the entire summer navigating becoming parents, which is a whole other story arc entirely.
But now, school has started, and we’re off to new and exciting projects–some of which I’ll write about later.
I’m spending the week working on some publishing updates, getting some scores up and ready to distribute, and finishing up an orchestra piece, But meanwhile, from the inbox this week:
Dear artist
After an arduous task by our evaluation commission, the works listed below have been selected for our “Fourth Cycle of Virtual Concerts” of “La Hora Acusmática”.
We will shortly send you the schedule of the four concerts planned for 2024.
Congratulations
.Works selected:
“Flutervoice II” Gustavo Chab
“Hiperaural” Ricardo De Armas
“Fire and dice 2014” Eric Delgado
“Spider web” Benjamin Fuhrman
“Beyond 88” Mattew Lam
“Noturno” Eduardo Nespoli
“Bayou” Michael Rosas Cobian
“Post Anthropocene” Edmar Soria
“Tape piece” Kyle Vandenburg
“Glitch Mass” Davide Vannuccini
“Abedul” Cami Albarracin
“7 minutes of recistance” Cristian Biasin
“Filo entre los espacios” Francis Rodriguez
“Sancocho” Sergio Flórez Rincón
“Mental upgrade” Simón Hutchinson
“Antithesis” Maxwell Miller
“Onirico y perpetuo” Rafael de Rioja
“Grind” Droki Ouro
“Parallaxe Parataxe” Nicola Cappeletti
“Watching time” Adolfo Núñez
“Granciporro” Leonardo Vita
“Thales from Dylawerson” Onur Dülger
Ausdrüecke – Jakob Gruchmann
“Bound” Lack Ballard
“Cloud chamber Remix” Heinz-Josef Florian
“Theurgy” Elliot Yair Hernández López
“Mutations” David Jason Snow
“Digital Hymn” Masafumi Oda
“Dolente” Piotr Pawlik
“Dim life” Seokmin Kang
“Le bruit de suspirs” Roxanne Turcotte
“YTEcho” Andreja Andric
From the inbox:
Dear Kyle Vanderburg,
We are happy to inform you that your presentation, “Debugging the Composer: designing a tool for self-reported composition processes” has been accepted to ATMI 2024 in Washington, D.C. November 7-9. Congratulations.
We ask that you 1) reply to this email confirming your intentions to present at the conference by May 15, and (2) register for the conference by June 20. Participants are also required to be active members of ATMI at least 1 month prior to the National conference. Information about hotels and ATMI member discount will be sent in the next few weeks.
CMS Registration link:https://www.music.org/index.php?option=com_eventbooking&task=register.individual_registration&event_id=138&Itemid=5784
ATMI Registration link: https://www.atmimusic.com/join/
Important Dates
May 15- Declare interest in presenting at conference
June 20th – Presenter Registration Deadline
July 1st – Bios/abstracts/headshots due
August 1st – Schedule Finalized
September 19th – Hotel Reservation Deadline
Please look for further correspondence regarding the date and time of your presentation. Due to shared programming with CMS, requests to present on specific dates may not be granted.
Congrats again and we look forward to welcoming you to Washington DC in November. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions at all before the event.
Sincerely,
ATMI 2024 Programming committee
Jason Fick, Chair
Kyle Vanderburg
Teresa Nakra
VJ Manzo
Peter Webster
Last week, as I was working on preparations for the College Music Society’s regional conference at NDSU, I received notification about an acceptance to their national conference this fall in Washington.
Dear Kyle Vanderburg,
Greetings from The College Music Society. I am pleased to inform you that your proposal for the 2024 CMS National Conference has been accepted! Below you will find a link to an official letter of invitation to participate in the conference, which will take place in Washington, D.C., November 7-9, 2024.
If you have any questions about your proposal’s acceptance or the conference, please contact Charlie Chadwell of the CMS office.
We look forward to your participation!
Sincerely,
Rachel Roberts
Chair, Program Committee
2024 CMS National Conference