2015 AAASI Research Grant Fellow MARIE INCONTRERA

Marie Incontrera 2015 Fred Ho Fellowship RecipientThe Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Hosted MARIE INCONTRERA’s Public Presentation at the University of Connecticut – Storrs Campus on Tuesday, April 14

The AAASI Research Grant was awarded in 2015 to Marie Incontrera who addressed the 95+ students in rapt attention to her presentation/performance seminar “The Colors of Resistance: A Musical and Sociopolitical Analysis of Fred Ho’s Revolutionary Big Band Aesthetic”, which was co-organized with Prof. of Music and AAASI Affiliate Faculty Robert Stephens. Ms. Incontrera explicated the arc of Ho’s music-making since the terminal stage of his cancer diagnosis. She demonstrated several of the more complex movements of Fred Ho’s compositions, as the Music 1004 students who were familiar with reading music were treated to handling and examining one of his original notations/score that was bequeathed to her. She hopes to expand the findings of this research fellowship into a book-length manuscript.

Marie Incontrera is the conductor and band-leader of the Green Monster Big Band (Fred Ho’s premiere big band) and the Eco-Music Band (a smaller, variable ensemble), both ensembles for which she also composes and arranges. The Eco-Music Big Band is a 15-piece, multi-generational big band that is committed to continuing the prodigious compositional and creative legacy of Fred Ho. The ensemble also performs the works of the overlooked composers of 20th century (such as Cal Massey), and provides a platform for the next generation of big band composers. She has conducted as a band-leader as well as in classical and operatic settings at Brooklyn Academy of Music, WOW Cafe, Red Rooster Harlem, BarnArts Center for the Arts, and others. Marie conducted the Green Monster Big Band for Fred Ho’s final album, which has an international release date for later in 2014. Marie was Fred Ho’s last composition and conducting protégé before his death in April of 2014.

Marie Incontrera’s work spans queer opera, political big band, and music-for-the-oppressed. As a composer, Marie has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, the 2011 Vocalessence / American Composers Forum “Essentially Choral” readings, and a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition. She has been awarded grants from Meet the Composer Metlife Creative Connections, Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, Puffin, and New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant. Commissions have come from the Young New Yorkers Chorus, Remarkable Theater Brigade, ANALOGarts, Brooklyn Art Song Society, ANIKAI Dance Theater, MOIRAE Ensemble, Beth Morrison Productions, and Atlanta Opera. Her work has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Meridian Arts Festival in Bucharest, Roulette, Galapagos Art Space, WOW Cafe Theatre, highSCORE Festival, and other respected venues across the United States and internationally. Her first string quartet, Limbic Breath, has been released on PARMA Records.

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