University of Baltimore Arts Professor Ian Power Releases His Debut Album
July 6, 2020
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Ian Power, assistant professor in the University of Baltimore's Klein Family School of Communications Design, director of the undergraduate program in Integrated Arts in the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, and a noted composer of challenging but inviting music for ensemble and solo performance, has released his debut collection, Diligence, on Germany's Edition Wandelweiser Records.
Both physical and digital editions of the album are now available.
The label describes Diligence as consisting of two solo works, each 30 minutes long, built of "long, itinerant drones," and written for cello and clarinet.
"Each drone starts from the fullest of tone and moves to the timbral extremes of the instrument, and the works end with plaintive, pulsing rhythms," Editions Wandelweiser writes in its announcement about the recording. "The music is suspenseful, comforting; intense and immersive. The word 'diligence' is from the Latin for 'to love,' as in St. Augustine's Dilige, et quod vis fac — 'Love, and do what thou wilt.' These performances are diligent, from that love: love for craft, love for instrument, pride in the movement that music puts to work."
Dusted magazine says of Diligence, "Power's music is both at home on the label, with its penchant for alternating phrase and pause, and a boundary-breaker, constituting one of the best things coming from the label in some time."
Prof. Power, whose music has been noted for its "resolute ooze and elemental graininess" by The New York Times, earned his Ph.D. in Composition (music) from Harvard University in 2015. He also holds an M.A. in Composition from the University of California, San Diego and a B.M. in Composition from Ithaca College. Since 2017, he has served as UB's director of Integrated Arts. Prior to that, he taught courses at the University beginning in 2013. He also has taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in both musicology and music theory. Prof. Power served as a visiting lecturer in music at Harvard University in 2016 and as an adjunct in musical composition at UMBC in 2014. In 2018, Power won the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award.
As a composer and performer, Ian Power has achieved global reach, with solo and ensemble concerts in the U.S., the UK, Germany, Denmark, and Israel. He performs both his own work and that of others on piano, electric organ, and other instruments. In Baltimore, he has performed at the Red Room, UB's Wright Theater, EMP Collective, the Copycat Building, Cork Factory, An die Musik!, MICA, the War Memorial, Baltimore Theater Project, and several house and underground venues. His writing on rhetoric in new music and reviews of recordings and performances are published in TEMPO. He has delivered lectures at the American Musicological Society, the American Studies Association, and at universities in the U.S., the UK, and Turkey.
Learn more about Prof. Ian Power and the Integrated Arts program at UB.
The University of Baltimore is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the College of Public Affairs, the Merrick School of Business, the UB School of Law and the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences.