David Felder

Early career

Felder was born in Cleveland, Ohio on November 27, 1953, and as a youth joined the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus where he sang as a tenor under Music Director Pierre Boulez. He later received a Bachelor of Music in 1975 and a Master of Music in 1977, both from Miami University. Felder spent the next two years in Cleveland teaching Electronic Music and Recording at The Cleveland Institute of Music and studying composition privately with Donald Erb, until Spring of 1979, before pursuing his Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of California, San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds, Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, and Joji Yuasa, and which he completed in 1983.

Music and style

Felder's music has often been noted for its virtuosic instrumental writing, integration and juxtaposition of contrasting stylistic influences, unpredictable and often explosive energy, and remarkable directness. In Neue Musikzeitung's review of the 1995 Bridge Records release, "The Music of David Felder", they offer an overview of the contrasts and stylistic forces at play in Felder's musical works,

It would be possible to extract a philosophy from the unbroken thread appearing through the chamber music-like five pieces represented as an example: the dazzling antagonism between dangerous and graceful activity, and static, distanced tranquility; the complexity and virtuosity in the handling of the ensemble and instrument; finally, the varied harmonic "colorfulness". Immediate access to this music that does not compromise or subordinate to a "saleable" idiom is undeniable; as well, its unique strength/power and vitality creates a sound-aesthetic full of sensual eruptions. This is especially true for the two pieces for chamber orchestra Three Lines from "Twenty Poems" (1987) and Journal (1990). In these pieces, David Felder proves himself not only as a composer that knows how to concentrate and use the subtle nuances of the instruments, but also as a composer that can use at the same time an extreme sense for the right balance between different tension-fields. November Sky (1992), for flute, incorporates the addition of a NeXT Computer to bring to reality a multi-layered, enhanced, sound-variability; (it is) an "in and out swelling" Lied of more than 16 minutes of duration in contrast exchange of joyfulness and melancholy. The movement for string quartet, Third Face (1988-98), startles through its unpretentious aggressiveness and drama, in which the few quiet passages contribute to the intensification of the climax rather than the relaxation. With Canzone XXXI (1993), Felder devotes himself to the refreshingly direct manner of the Brass Music of the 16th-century Venetian tradition. These few examples show a directness free from any coercion, individualistic, and dictated exclusively by the suggestive power of the music.

In the liner notes of Felder's 2013 CD release, "Tweener", Paul Griffiths describes Felder's style as a whole,

Different currents, and strong ones, are driving beneath the turbulent surfaces of David Felder’s music, where a still-robust modernism, with inheritances in particular from Stravinsky and Varèse, sports with aspects of popular music from big-band to electronica. At the same time, though, we are being taken back to the most basic elements of music: a single note (the start of Requiescat), a single interval (the start of Incendio), pulse (everywhere). Across the range of more than a quarter-century, from Rocket Summer (1983) to Requiescat (2010), Felder’s imperatives have remained remarkably stable, and yet the variety of his means and aims makes it useful to have, almost like a museum guide taking us through the collection...

Paul Griffiths delves into Felder's ability to creatively manage musical inheritances and use the basic elements of Western music in fresh and original ways in his liner notes to the 2009 Albany Records release, "BoxMan",

Another musical gene these pieces share, already implicated in the above, is their rhythmic dynamism, the way pulses bounce off tight metrical frames. Yet another is the containment of rhythmic—and harmonic—tensions in small motifs, out of which a whole stretch of music can spring, almost as of itself. Like the bouncing octaves and the equally fearless triads, these are character traits that Felder uses as sources not so much of retro reference (though there is that in Memento mori and partial [dist]res[s]toration) as of freshness and vitality. The electronic world towards which this program moves is also that of the live world we are hearing all through, an energetic modernity.

Nils Vigeland describes a similar play of contrasts in Felder's music in his liner notes to "The Music of David Felder",

The main characteristics of Felder's music are, I think, two in number. The first is a fierce opposition of states of activity -- muscular, often violent fast music with static remote music of repose... The second major characteristic of Felder's music is its insistent virtuosity of instrumental projection. In a Felder score, the performers are not only required to execute music of great difficulty, but must respond to both notational complexity and ensemble virtuosity. Although Felder... is very much concerned with the realities of performance, he has not wavered in his demand for the solution of difficult performance problems.

June in Buffalo Festival

The June in Buffalo Festival was founded at the University at Buffalo in 1975 by composer and UB Professor Morton Feldman, with sponsorship by the Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and the University at Buffalo. The festival was originally dedicated to emerging composers and to presenting and exposing new music to the world. The festival ran until 1980 and took a brief a hiatus until 1985 when David Felder revived the festival.

Since 1985, Felder has been the Director of June in Buffalo, and expanded the program to include student composers, as well as, recently, student ensembles. June in Buffalo has run every June since 1985, and offers a week-long intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics. Each of the invited composers has one of their pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music.

Slee Sinfonietta

June in Buffalo boasts a resident ensemble that performs regularly at the festival, the Slee Sinfonietta, which Felder co-founded with conductor Magnus Martensson, and began as Artistic Director in 1996. The Slee Sinfonietta is the professional chamber orchestra in residence at the University at Buffalo and presents a series of concerts each year that feature performances of challenging new works by contemporary composers and lesser-known works from the chamber orchestra repertoire. The Slee Sinfonietta consists of a core group including UB faculty performance artists, visiting artists, national and regional professionals and advanced performance students, and conducted by leading conductors and composers.

Center for 21st Century Music

The June in Buffalo Festival enjoys sponsorship from the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, which Felder founded in 2006, and has acted as Artistic Director since. In The Center for 21st Century Music's mission statement they commit that they are, "dedicated to the creation and production of new work upholding the highest artistic standards of excellence while simultaneously fostering a complementary atmosphere of creative research." In 2015 he was named Co-Director of the University at Buffalo's Creative Arts Initiative, a plan to bring major international creative artists to the region as guest artists.

Published works

All works are published by Theodore Presser, Inc., and Project Schott New York

Orchestra and chamber orchestra

Choral

Large ensemble

Brass

String quartet

Electronics

Solo and small ensemble

Discography

Felder's music is featured on several solo discs, and included on many albums released by individual artists and new music groups, as well as on a joint release with Morton Feldman. His works have been released on a variety of labels including Bridge Records, Mode Records, Albany Records, and many others.

Solo releases

Releases with other artists

Notable students

As an active teacher and mentor, he has served as Ph.D. dissertation advisor for nearly fifty composers at Buffalo, many of whom are actively teaching, composing and performing internationally at leading institutions.