Frances-Marie Uitti
Encyclopedia
Frances-Marie Uitti is composer
and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music
. She was born in Chicago
to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie Parnas and University of Texas with George Neikrug. In Europe she worked at the Academia Chigiana with Andre Navarra, winning their top award two years in a row.
Uitti invented a radically extended technique
using two bow
s simultaneously in one hand- being the first to transform the cello into a 4 part chordal instrument. This technique expands the harmonic
and timbral
possibilities of the instrument in extraordinary ways: for example, one can play simultaneously 4, 3, 2, and 1 string, with contrasting polyrhythmic articulations between the two bows. Non-adjacent strings can also be accessed. One bow can be played near the bridge while the other is near the fingerboard.
She has used over 75 different tunings
in her compositions using this technique, each producing new harmonic possibilities and exotic timbres plus a polyphony and independence of voices that her previous work with a single curved bow couldn't obtain.
Early on, she combined singing with the cello and premiered Louis Andriessen
's masterpiece La Voce which is dedicated to her. Other works featuring her voice include James Tenney's concerto, "Ain't I a Woman?" with text by Sojourner Truth, David Dramm's Crosshair, Rodney Sharman's The Ecstacy of St. Teresa, Vinko Globokar's Janus, William Kirkpatrick's Stations of the Cross.
Uitti has collaborated with and is the dedicatee of composers Luigi Nono
, Louis Andriessen
, James Tenney
, Jonathan Harvey
, John Cage
, Karen Tanaka
, Per Nørgård
, Giacinto Scelsi
, Elliott Sharp
, György Kurtág
, Richard Barrett
, Guus Janssen
, Jay Alan Yim
, Vinko Globokar
, Clarence Barlow
, David Dramm, Geoffrey King
, Martijn Padding
, Horaţiu Rădulescu
, Calliope Tsoupaki
, and Peter Nelson, among many others. She collaborates in duo with Mark Dresser, and with Evan Parker, Joel Ryan, Misha Mengelberg, David Wessel, and other legends out the jazz world as well as with DJ Low, Scanner etc, and artists Stansfield / Hooykaas, Marina Abromovic, Steina Vasulka, Frank Scheffer.
While living in Rome, she worked closely with Giacinto Scelsi, not only as dedicatee of all the cello works, but also transcribing from his archive and improvising together- from 1975 until his death in 1988. Uitti premiered his newly discovered cello concerto at the Angelica Festival, Teatro Communale Bologna in 2006.
She was guest professor at Oberlin Conservatory for 2 years, and was awarded the Regents' Lectureship both at the University of California Berkeley and at University of California San Diego. She gives master classes worldwide for composers and string players at conservatories and universities including Yale, Princeton, Stanford, University of Illinois, as well as having the Fromm Foundation Fellowship to teach a residency at Harvard University. Ms. Uitti is finishing a massive book commissioned by the University of California Press on New Cello Techniques covering music from 1915 Kodaly Sonata, to the present day.
In 2003, Uitti commissioned a custom-designed electric 6 string cello from Seattle luthier, Eric Jensen, which she later enhanced ergonomically with sensors at CNMAT (University of California, Berkeley) working with David Wessel and Adrian Freed and Michael F. Zbyszynski. She is returning to CNMAT in 2008 to design and construct a 12-stringless meta cello with Adrian Freed. She recently acquired an aluminum cello made by the Pfretzner luthier family in 1929- aluminum instruments were also used by Jasha Heifetz and Efram Zimbalist. She has recorded and performed on the Mongolian Morin Choor, a custom built Uzbeki Sato, and an original Stroh one-stringed cello.
As inventor Uitti has developed a difference-tone resonator that strongly amplifies the beating and subtle "ghost tone" produced by chordal playing. She has redesigned and built 5 prototype-bows under tutelage of bowmaker Andreas Grutter, to further facilitate her work with two bows in one hand. At the request of G Scelsi, she redesigned the metallic mutes used in the String Quartet #2 and Triphon for solo cello.
Uitti has recorded on ECM records
, Wergo
, Hat Hut Records, CRI
, and BvHaast, JdKproductions, Cryptogrammophone, Sargasso, CRI, .
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
. She was born in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie Parnas and University of Texas with George Neikrug. In Europe she worked at the Academia Chigiana with Andre Navarra, winning their top award two years in a row.
Uitti invented a radically extended technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
using two bow
Bow (music)
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
s simultaneously in one hand- being the first to transform the cello into a 4 part chordal instrument. This technique expands the harmonic
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and timbral
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
possibilities of the instrument in extraordinary ways: for example, one can play simultaneously 4, 3, 2, and 1 string, with contrasting polyrhythmic articulations between the two bows. Non-adjacent strings can also be accessed. One bow can be played near the bridge while the other is near the fingerboard.
She has used over 75 different tunings
Musical tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...
in her compositions using this technique, each producing new harmonic possibilities and exotic timbres plus a polyphony and independence of voices that her previous work with a single curved bow couldn't obtain.
Early on, she combined singing with the cello and premiered Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
's masterpiece La Voce which is dedicated to her. Other works featuring her voice include James Tenney's concerto, "Ain't I a Woman?" with text by Sojourner Truth, David Dramm's Crosshair, Rodney Sharman's The Ecstacy of St. Teresa, Vinko Globokar's Janus, William Kirkpatrick's Stations of the Cross.
Uitti has collaborated with and is the dedicatee of composers Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
, James Tenney
James Tenney
James Tenney was an American composer and influential music theorist.-Biography:Tenney was born in Silver City, New Mexico, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado. He attended the University of Denver, the Juilliard School of Music, Bennington College and the University of Illinois...
, Jonathan Harvey
Jonathan Harvey (composer)
Jonathan Harvey is a British composer. He has held teaching positions at universities and music conservatories in Europe and the USA and is frequently invited to teach in summer schools around the world.-Life:...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Karen Tanaka
Karen Tanaka
-Biography:Karen Tanaka was born in Tokyo, Japan where she started piano and composition lessons as a child. After studying composition with Akira Miyoshi and piano with Nobuko Amada at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, she moved to Paris in 1986 with the aid of a French Government Scholarship...
, Per Nørgård
Per Nørgård
Per Nørgård is a Danish composer.-Biography:Nørgård studied with Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. To begin with, he was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe...
, Giacinto Scelsi
Giacinto Scelsi
Giacinto Scelsi , Count of Ayala Valva was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French....
, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...
, György Kurtág
György Kurtág
György Kurtág is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.- Biography :György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania.In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend...
, Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett (composer)
Richard Barrett is a British composer.-Biography:Barrett began to study music seriously only after graduating in genetics and microbiology at University College London in 1980 . From then until 1983 he took private lessons with Peter Wiegold...
, Guus Janssen
Guus Janssen
Guus Janssen is a Dutch composer of contemporary music and a recording artist. A pianist and harpsichordist, he is also active as a jazz performer....
, Jay Alan Yim
Jay Alan Yim
Jay Alan Yim is an American composer living in Chicago. During the 1995-96 concert season, he served as Composer/Fellow for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra...
, Vinko Globokar
Vinko Globokar
Vinko Globokar is a French avant-garde composer and trombonist of Slovene descent.His work is noted for its use of unconventional and extended techniques, closely allying him to contemporaries Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann...
, Clarence Barlow
Clarence Barlow
Clarence Barlow is a composer of classical and electroacoustic works.-Biography:Barlow was born in Calcutta, a member of the anglophone minority, of British and Portuguese descent...
, David Dramm, Geoffrey King
Geoffrey King (composer)
Geoffrey King is a British composer and teacher.-Biography:Born in Croydon, England, King's first musical studies were at the Royal School of Church Music at Addington Palace. Later, at the Royal College of Music, he studied with Humphrey Searle, Justin Connolly and Alexander Goehr...
, Martijn Padding
Martijn Padding
Martijn Padding is a Dutch composer. Taught by Louis Andriessen , Geert van Keulen and Fania Chapiro . He also studied sonology at the University of Utrecht. He is a teacher at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag.-References:*-External links:**...
, Horaţiu Rădulescu
Horatiu Radulescu
Horaţiu Rădulescu was a Romanian-French composer, best known for the spectral technique of composition.-Biography:Rădulescu was born in Bucharest, where he studied the violin privately with Nina Alexandrescu, a pupil of Enescu, and later studied composition at the Bucharest Academy of Music ,...
, Calliope Tsoupaki
Calliope Tsoupaki
-Biography:Calliope Tsoupaki was born in Piraeus, Greece. She studied piano and music theory at the Hellinicon Conservatory in Athens and composition with Yannis Ioannithis. She continued her studies with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and graduated in 1992.After ending...
, and Peter Nelson, among many others. She collaborates in duo with Mark Dresser, and with Evan Parker, Joel Ryan, Misha Mengelberg, David Wessel, and other legends out the jazz world as well as with DJ Low, Scanner etc, and artists Stansfield / Hooykaas, Marina Abromovic, Steina Vasulka, Frank Scheffer.
While living in Rome, she worked closely with Giacinto Scelsi, not only as dedicatee of all the cello works, but also transcribing from his archive and improvising together- from 1975 until his death in 1988. Uitti premiered his newly discovered cello concerto at the Angelica Festival, Teatro Communale Bologna in 2006.
She was guest professor at Oberlin Conservatory for 2 years, and was awarded the Regents' Lectureship both at the University of California Berkeley and at University of California San Diego. She gives master classes worldwide for composers and string players at conservatories and universities including Yale, Princeton, Stanford, University of Illinois, as well as having the Fromm Foundation Fellowship to teach a residency at Harvard University. Ms. Uitti is finishing a massive book commissioned by the University of California Press on New Cello Techniques covering music from 1915 Kodaly Sonata, to the present day.
In 2003, Uitti commissioned a custom-designed electric 6 string cello from Seattle luthier, Eric Jensen, which she later enhanced ergonomically with sensors at CNMAT (University of California, Berkeley) working with David Wessel and Adrian Freed and Michael F. Zbyszynski. She is returning to CNMAT in 2008 to design and construct a 12-stringless meta cello with Adrian Freed. She recently acquired an aluminum cello made by the Pfretzner luthier family in 1929- aluminum instruments were also used by Jasha Heifetz and Efram Zimbalist. She has recorded and performed on the Mongolian Morin Choor, a custom built Uzbeki Sato, and an original Stroh one-stringed cello.
As inventor Uitti has developed a difference-tone resonator that strongly amplifies the beating and subtle "ghost tone" produced by chordal playing. She has redesigned and built 5 prototype-bows under tutelage of bowmaker Andreas Grutter, to further facilitate her work with two bows in one hand. At the request of G Scelsi, she redesigned the metallic mutes used in the String Quartet #2 and Triphon for solo cello.
Uitti has recorded on ECM records
ECM (record label)
ECM is a record label founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a wide variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres...
, Wergo
WERGO
WERGO is a German record label focusing on contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1962 by the art historian Werner Goldschmidt and the musicologist Helmut Kirchmayer and is currently based in Mainz, Germany....
, Hat Hut Records, CRI
CRI
-Business:* Community Rowing, Inc.* Composers Recordings, Inc.* Computer Resources International, a Danish aerospace company* Copyright infringement* Cricklewood railway station, London; National Rail station code CRI...
, and BvHaast, JdKproductions, Cryptogrammophone, Sargasso, CRI, .
Films, DVDs
- 13AL. DVD with Yota Morimoto. KoK and jdkproductions.com.
- "Alyssa in Concert" Eric van Zuylen feature length
- "Frank Scheffer" Elliott Carter
- "Rescue Dawn" Werner Herzog (various tracks)
- "Solstice" Stansfield/Hooykaas, Uitti
- "Re:Vision" Stansfield/Hooykaas, Uitti
- "De Val van de Goden" Uitti, Koek, van der Meer, Goebbels, Hollandia
Publications
- Zorn, John, ed. (2000). Arcana: Musicians on Music. New York: Granary Books/Hips Road. ISBN 188712327X.
- "Cambridge Companion to the Cello" New Frontiers of Music
- "Contemporary Music Review" 2008 Improvisation (interviews by and with F M Uitti)
- "Music Texte" The Second Bow 1999
- "Tempo" Preserving the Scelsi Archive 2000
- "Augmenting the Cello" NIME, Uitti, Freed, MichaelZ 2006