PSP Ensemble Call for Works

PSP Ensemble announces a call for compositions, songs, or other performative works by Pittsburgh-area musicians, to be performed at City of Asylum on March 18, 2024 at 7pm. The submission deadline is February 1, 2024. There is no application fee.

Detailed profiles of Ensemble PSP members are provided below. While we can all handle traditional notation, we are also accomplished improvisors in jazz, experimental, and other idioms. We encourage applicants to take advantage of our range of skills. Works tailored to particular individuals in the ensemble will receive special consideration. You may also perform with the ensemble yourself if you so choose.

Application Requirements

  • Applicants must be based in Greater Pittsburgh (i.e., you must be able to easily travel to Pittsburgh proper for rehearsals and performance)

  • Applicants are limited to one submission each, to be emailed to psp-board@googlegroups.com. The submission must contain:

    • A PDF of the work (musical notation, text instructions, graphic score, etc.)

    • A list of Ensemble PSP members whom you want to play the work (at least two)

    • Optional: a recording of the work if you have one

    • Optional: any supplemental materials required to understand the work (e.g., electronics, backing track, etc.)

  • The submission deadline is February 1, 2024. There is no application fee.

  • If selected, artists will receive a small honorarium of $100. All selected artists must attend the performance at City of Asylum on October 24, 2023 plus at least one rehearsal at a time and place to be determined in Pittsburgh.

Ensemble Member Profiles

If you are interested in joining the PSP Ensemble and playing other pieces besides your own, reach out to psp-board@googlegroups.com ASAP!

Tre seguritan Abalos (she/they)

  • Instruments – flute, alto flute, piccolo, Boss RC-202 Loop station

  • Notable skills – free improvisation

  • Website – tresoundartist.com 

I’m a sound artist drawn to traditional music, improvisation, and field recordings. My background is in Western classical flute. While my strengths have been sound & lyricism, I enjoy percussive techniques, singing while playing, dense passages, funky rhythms, & improvising with electronics. 

I love improvising in dialogue with dance, movement, poetry, visual art, and many other forms. Influences include Nicole Mitchell, Lorna McGhee, Hailu Mergia, Susie Ibarra, & aja monet.

Mai Khôi (she/em/chị)

  • Instruments – voice, đàn goong, guitar, piano

  • Notable skills – extended vocal techniques, free improvisation, pop vocals, opera vocals, writing lyrics and poetry in Vietnamese

  • Website – mai-khoi.com

I began learning music from my father when I was six years old, and by age twelve I was singing and playing keyboard in his wedding band. After high school, I studied opera in the Hồ Chí Minh City Conservatory of Music for three years, until dropping out to become a pop singer. I began singing with Cadillac, a popular Vietnamese background vocal group, until rising to stardom as a solo artist. In 2010, I won the Vietnam Television Song and Album of the Year Awards and began touring around the world. In 2016, I became involved in activism and was banned from performing in public in Vietnam. I moved to Hanoi and began studying music and instruments from Vietnamese ethnic minority groups, including the đàn goong, a type of tubular zither.

My vocal range is C3 to D6. I enjoy making many different sounds with my voice that express a range of emotions and meanings… joy, life, love, spiritual knowledge, culture, politics…

Adam Kantz (he/him)

  • Instruments – percussion, electronics

  • Notable skills – improvisation, rhythmic interpretation, interpretation of experimental / graphic notation

  • Website – adamkantz.info

As an experimental musician, I explore a variety of sounds and techniques to create music that is both innovative and thought-provoking. I enjoy experimenting with unconventional instruments, electronics, and other tools to create immersive soundscapes that challenge traditional notions of music.  My creative process involves a lot of experimentation and exploration. I often begin with a simple idea or sound and build upon it through improvisation, responding to the moment and the other musicians around me. I believe that improvisation is a powerful way to create new and unexpected sounds, and a means of pushing the boundaries of traditional music and expanding the possibilities of what music can be. I am open to any combination of percussion with or without electronics from the instrument list below.

Instrument List:

  • Bass drum (18” or 20”)

  • Floor toms (up to 3)

  • Rack toms (up to 5)

  • Snare drums (14” or 13”)

  • Cymbals (various collection of rides and crash cymbals)

  • Marimba

  • Vibraphone

  • Glockenspiel

  • Max MSP

  • Supercollider

  • Puredata

  • Ableton 11

Mark Micchelli (he/him)

  • Instruments – piano, electric keyboard, electronics, accordion, toy piano

  • Notable skills – jazz improvisation, free improvisation, prepared piano, complex rhythms, music theory, Max/MSP programming

  • Website – markmicchelli.net

As a pianist, I’ve received classical and jazz training in roughly equal measure. My tastes run on the outré/experimental side, but I also have a soft spot for Chopin and stride. In addition to practicing idiomatic jazz improv and “unidiomatic” free improv, I also collect stupid improvisation tricks, including improvising with both hands in strict parallel (major thirds and perfect fifths) or inversion (I4 and I9), improvising using exclusively whole-tone dyads, and doing an 85%-accurate imitation of Cecil Taylor. You can look at my book of études to get a fuller picture of my improvisational language. Lastly, I own a wide array of piano preparations and tools for manipulating the inside of the piano; if it’s listed in Alan Shockley’s The Contemporary Piano or Denman Maroney’s website, I’ve probably got it.

Electronics-wise, I’m highly skilled with Max/MSP and would be happy to assist applicants in building and/or running patches. While I don’t currently own any gestural controllers, I have done live performance with electronics in the past and can do so again if provided with the appropriate equipment.

I own two electric keyboards: a Yamaha CP-88 and a Nord Wave 2. The Yamaha has 88 keys, weighted action, and is better for piano/electric piano sounds; the Nord has 61 waterfall keys, semi-weighted action, and is better at organ/synthesizer sounds. My accordion has a full contingent of keys and buttons, but only two stops. I’m more of a converted pianist than an accordionist, so my left hand chops aren’t the strongest. My toy piano is the 37-key F3-to-F6 Schoenhut Grand that they don’t make anymore.

Eli Namay (he/they)

  • Instruments – upright bass, electric bass, misc. electronics, & prepared guitar

  • Notable skills – jazz improvisation, free improvisation, complex rhythms, interpretation of experimental / graphic notation

  • Website – elinamay.org

Being a chameleon has been my guiding mode of operation musically. On upright bass I have formal training in both classical and jazz traditions, though this has been weighted more toward the jazz side of things. I have a deep understanding of extended techniques on the upright bass, a la Mark Dresser's Guts. I have also spent extensive time playing and studying old time fiddle music (Appalachian Folk) and Arabic classical music (maqam based musics). From 2008 to 2020, I was rooted in Chicago’s improvised and experimental music communities where I frequently collaborated with both jazz based and “new music” based performers and composers. This experience has given me skills to interpret a wide variety of notation types and improvisational modes. I have done work in more DIY & popular styles as well, studying, playing, and smashing together funk, hip-hop, death metal, etc. I have also been known to throw down on some performance art from time to time. I have a large pedal board set up that includes reverb, a freeze pedal, a whammy pedal, a Boss RC-500 looper, a Boss SY-200 synth pedal, and a boss ME-50b multi-effects pedal. You can hear and see examples of my playing and composing at elinamay.org.

Jay Rauch (he/him)

Let’s get super noisy, super quiet, improvise, and play around! I’m conservatory-trained as a composer and classical bassoonist and I’ll read your notation—tuplets, tablature, video, etc.—but I’m also happy to use my body (in a dance/performance art sense), voice, electronics, percussion/found toys, wear costumes, or otherwise get weird. Here’s a collection of ideas that that might help you: For me, music is science fiction. I’ve been playing around a lot with bassoon reeds on cornet and trombone (this sounds great with vacuum attached). In addition to bassoon, I play a lot of clarinet, but more for improvised music or klezmer than for classical-flavored stuff. Clarinet sounds great without mouthpiece—lots of air, buzz, noise, and whistle sounds. Key clicks also sound great with my clamp-on contact mics. My own work usually explores musical extremes—really loud, quiet, physically strenuous, or impossible tasks. You can check out some of my projects at jayrauch.com. Consent and communication is essential for experimental collaborations, so absolutely shoot me a message if you have questions about techniques, instructions, tasks, etc. Here’s a full list of instruments/gear I have at my disposal: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mhL0ONc2YKppe_z8YiP4ZC6Q9P2dTW4Y/view?usp=sharing

Devon Osamu Tipp (they/them)

  • Instruments – shakuhachi, bassoon, some voice, live processing via Ableton

  • Notable skills – classically trained bassoonist, free improvisation on bssn and shakuhachi, both instruments can be disassembled to alter playing styles etc, microtonal music theory

  • Website – greengiraffemusic.info

I went to undergrad for music theory and composition. During this time, I also had the good fortune of playing and studying the Harry Partch instruments and developed an understanding of microtonal music theory. I have studied shakuhachi for 8 years and consider this my primary instrument. My training is in the Kinko-ryū style. My favorite thing here on this instrument is to produce multiphonics.

I studied bassoon for 15 years and am a failed orchestral musician. After a long hiatus from it, I have refound my love for bassoon by being able to explore multiphonics on it. I cannot tongue very well, preferring to do fast runs and fun noodly bits instead.

Electronics – I mostly do live processed sound through Ableton Live. I do not have the capability to do bassoon processing at this point, so please limit electronic processing to shakuhachi and voice.

I’m tremendously fond of taking apart my shakuhachi and/or bassoon and using the shortened versions of the instruments to produce funky sounds for them.

Alec Zander Redd (they/them)

  • Instruments - alto saxophone, baritone vocals (best as backup/harmonies...can sing with good tone, tuning, and feel, but not trained as a lead vocalist)

  • Notable skills - 20 years experience between all saxophones, multiphonics on all three saxes (most controlled/precise on alto, “biggest” and funkiest on bari), beginner slap-tongue, blues/jazz improvisation, “jam band” improvisation, some free improvisation, some music theory (from a solo-ing perspective, not a compositional one), complex rhythms

  • Website – https://www.facebook.com/Alec.Redd

I am directly the product of a few public school music teachers who cared very deeply about their students. As an adult, I’ve sat down for a couple small batches of private lessons with local saxophonists, but the vast majority of my experience has been gained playing in school ensembles, playing in the various groups I’ve been with since graduating, or self-taught. This experience was largely based in classical and jazz while I was in school, and has since moved to a WIDE variety of genres across the groups I've participated in, such as: blues, funk, rock, jam band, hip-hop, pop, Afrobeat, 3rd/4th wave ska, reggae, EDM, experimental, and even a little bluegrass and country!

If saxophonists generally fall on a spectrum from dark/soft/breathy to bright/sharp/punchy, I would say I’m pretty close to the middle, with my tone leaning towards the dark/breathy side but my rhythmic sense and articulation leaning towards the bright/punchy side.  My main influences include funk and R&B singers of the 60s & 70s (think folks like Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin, Bill Withers), classic video game music (such as from Super Mario, Final Fantasy, and The Legend of Zelda), and saxophonists like Kenny Garrett, Grace Kelly, Grover Washington Jr., and Masato Honda.

Electronics – I unfortunately own none of my own, but I have a small amount of experience using pedals in a performance setting, and think they're super fun and want to do more of that in the future!