Guitarist Jim Bonney performs with BSC Wind Ensemble

Post Date: Apr 11 2016
Guitarist Jim Bonney performs with BSC Wind Ensemble
Bismarck State College ArtsQuest welcomes guest artist Jim Bonney for a performance Monday, April 18, with the BSC Wind Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. in Sidney J. Lee Auditorium.
 
The award-winning composer, sound designer and guitarist premieres his new work, “DARKlightNESS,” for electric guitar and band.
 
Ensemble director John Darling organized the entire concert around works by composers commissioned by organizations and individuals who come together as a consortium to fund new music.
 
“This concert contains all commissioned works for which the BSC Music program has been a consortium member,” Darling said. “All of them are North Dakota premieres except for ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ which our band premiered several years ago.”
 
“Twilight of the Gods” by Andrew Boysen, Jr. is a multimedia presentation combining music and images by graphic artist Erik Evensen. Composer and artist worked together to interpret the apocalyptic story of Ragnarok from translations of the Old Norse “Prose Edda” and “Poetic Edda.” Visual and musical sketches were storyboarded concurrently from the narrative to produce a work similar to an animated movie.
 
The Wind Ensemble performs two compositions by Benjamin Taylor, a three-movement piece titled “Trailing Clouds of Glory,” and “Shattering Infinity,” a work inspired by fractals, an infinitely repeating pattern that looks the same at every scale. This work uses a recurring five-note riff in large and small scale dimensions.
 
Darling conducts his own arrangements of “Amazing Grace” and “Down to the River to Pray,” selections written as part of a commission process with the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra.
 
During his ArtsQuest residency, Bonney addresses BSC students in the Digital Audio Technology program on writing music for videos and a Graphic Design & Communications program class.
 
The concert is presented at no charge during ArtsQuest, BSC’s month-long celebration of the arts. For more information, visit bismarckstate.edu/artsquest.
 

About Jim Bonney
Recipient of a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for original music, Bonney’s passion for innovation and interactivity led him to create music and sound for video games such as the “Mortal Combat” and “BioShock Infinite” AAA series. His concert works have been performed in more than 25 countries with ensembles as large as 1,400 musicians in venues ranging from New York City’s Carnegie Hall to the Great Wall of China. Clients include NASA, CBS-TV’s “Chicago Hope” and Manhattan Bagels. Bonney operates BigLoudSound, a full service music production company that designs for video games, trailers, podcasts, jingles, film, television, documentaries and industrial videos.
 
About Bismarck State College
Bismarck State College, an innovative community college in Bismarck, N.D., offers high quality education, workforce training, and enrichment programs reaching local and global communities.