Portato Portato

Portato Portato is an Oakland/Santa Cruz based quartet that performs original works and select compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. They are committed to presenting experimental and underrepresented music, as well as highlighting the processes of the composer-performer relationship in new music creation. The ensemble’s 2018 program features works by living composers, including premieres of new music by David Dunn, Julie Herndon, Laura Steenberge, and Declan Seifkas.

About the Performers

Jacob Lane is a composer, pianist, and teacher who lives in Oakland, California. He works with Sleight Ensemble and Portato Portato. Jacob is a member of the Music Teachers Association of California, and teaches piano performance and music theory at The Alameda School of Music and New World Music Academy.

In 2011, Jacob received his BA in Music Performance from Johnson State College, in Johnson, Vermont where he studied composition with Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, and piano performance with Diane Huling. In 2015, he received his MFA in Chamber Music Performance from Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied composition with Zeena Parkins and Roscoe Mitchell, and piano performance with Robert Schwartz. Jacob was a composer in the 2017 Atlantic Music Festival.

Jon Myers (b. 1988 in Boston, MA) is a composer and percussionist based in Santa Cruz, CA. He creates music for a variety of settings, from fully notated acoustic pieces to live electronic feedback music. Much of his output has been rigorously process-based and statistically controlled, often involving repetition and cycles to shape the flow of time via mnemonic markers and temporal shifting. Lately, he has been working on quarter-tone Disklavier studies and just-intoned fanfares for arbitrarily tuned choirs of bamboo flutes. Myers’ compositions have been performed by Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), S.E.M. Ensemble (New York), Wild Rumpus (San Francisco), Now Hear Ensemble (Santa Barbara), and the Lightbulb Ensemble (Santa Cruz).

Myers is a doctoral student in Algorithmic Music Composition at UCSC, working primarily with Larry Polanksy. In 2014, Myers completed a Master of Arts in Music Composition from Mills College in Oakland, CA, where he studied with James Fei, Zeena Parkins, and Chris Brown. Previously, he studied with Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, where he was awarded the Gwen Livingston Pokora Prize for music composition.

Bay Area flautist Michelle Lee is a classically trained performer, new music enthusiast, improviser, and composer of electronic and electro-acoustic music currently living in Oakland, CA. Lee has attended the Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific, and holds a degree in flute performance from Mills College. Her teachers and mentors include Michelle Caimotto, Matt Krejci, Bonnie Lockett, Maggi Payne, and James Fei. Her works and practice draw from extended techniques, natural and scientific worlds, and mysticism, as well as explore the ambiguity of reconciling the disparate: her artistic and cultural influences, the seen and unseen, texture and feeling. Current works investigate the body, ritual, intuition, and text through both traditional and experimental notation, multimedia, and performance art.

John Ivers is a bay area composer, clarinetist, sound artist, and improviser known for his dynamic compositions and aural explorations. Traversing both acoustic and electronic mediums, his work explores intimate musical textures, symmetrical constructions, structured improvisation, and multiple temporal spaces. Ivers’ work has been featured at the soundSCAPE, highSCORE, Walden CMR, Cluster, and Atlantic music festivals. He has written for ensembles such as Quartetto Indaco, Amaranth Quartet, Brooklyn College’s ConTempo Ensemble, for the Leftcoast Chamber Ensemble’s Intersection workshop, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

His recent work on Distant Radio Transmission with Roscoe Mitchell has been featured by the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble directed by Petr Kotik, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna conducted by Tonino Battista, at Ostrava Days Festival, and at the de Young Museum, San Francisco conducted by Steed Cowart. He is the co-founder of H/I ensemble, develops free, accessible, and collaborative music software for BandLab, and has recently guest lectured at UC Irvine and for WAC at Queen Mary University of London. John is currently pursuing an MA in Music Composition at Mills College studying with Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, and Fred Frith.

Indexical’s Santa Cruz concert series is made possible through generous support by Arts Council Santa Cruz.