The Ensemble:
SonLingua Ensemble is a new music collective based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The ensemble’s instrumentation consists of soprano (Liz Pearse), flute/electronics (Jane Rigler), guitars (Colin McAllister), and piano/composition (Andrés Carrizo). Its members are drawn to the many possibilities inherent in the human voice, language’s multiplicity of phonemes, the sounds of nature, and the combinations of acoustic and electronic music.
SonLingua frequently collaborates with poets Mikeas Sánchez (México) and Esteban Sabino (Guatemala). Both are indigenous poets, who write poetry in their native languages as an anti-colonialist gesture of defiance and as a means of cultural preservation.
The Musicians:
Andrés Carrizo was born in Panama City, Panama, in 1982. He has degrees from Williams College (B.A. in History and Music, Honors in Music Composition), Bowling Green State University (M.M in Music Composition) and The University of Chicago (PhD, Music Composition). Him and his family moved to the Colorado Springs area in 2020. He works as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Colorado College, and is the pianist and composer of the new music ensemble SonLingua. His music has been performed by Callithumpian Consort, Pacifica String Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, and many others.
Colin McAllister is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he is a 2021-2022 Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Fellow. His performances as a guitarist and conductor have been hailed as ‘sparkling….delivered superbly’ (San Francisco Chronicle), ‘ravishing’ (San Diego Union Tribune) and ‘an amazing tour de force’ (San Diego Story), and he has recorded on the Summit, Innova, Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier and Tzadik labels. A dedicated performer of contemporary repertoire, Colin has given over 100 premieres, including works by leading composers Chaya Czernowin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, and Helmut Lachenmann. He is equally comfortable performing on either classical or electric guitar.
Flutist/composer/improviser Jane Rigler has always been moving and reshaping her worldviews through discoveries in music performance. After her flute orchestral training at Northwestern University (B.M. 1998), Jane soon found her calling as a specialist of contemporary music at UCSD (M.M. 1991, Ph.D. 1996) performing works by Ferneyhough, Czernowin, Saariaho, Takemitsu, and Globokar, among others. Through her study of phonological musical sounds that emerge from the combination of singing through the tube, she developed a variety of ways the voice can be sung through the flute by studying techniques used in many different cultures. She has lived in Spain and New York, where she has performed as a guest artist with a variety of established contemporary ensembles (Either/Or, Wet Ink, etc.) and continues to be a featured soloist in many international music festivals (SEAMUS, NYCEMF, SIGGRAPH, etc.) Today, her acoustic and interactive electronic works push the flute to new limits. She regularly uses Ableton Live, and has configured a performance rig to amplify her creative output.
Vocalist Liz Pearse has alternately been described as a “badass”, having “a near-psychic understanding of what a composer is trying to accomplish”, and possessing “a voice made of arrows forged in a volcanic pit, transforming the didactic and mundanely intellectual into actual fire”. After a childhood spent playing every instrument she could find, Liz has focused her career on exploring the infinite possibilities of the human voice. Though Liz is known as a specialist in contemporary vocal repertoire, she enjoys a well-aged song. Liz enjoys work as a solo artist and as a chamber musician, and has performed all over North America (from Canada to Mexico and coast-to-coast in the USA) and in both Europe and the United Kingdom. Liz has commissioned and performed over a dozen works for solo singer/pianist, and the focus of her dissertation, Roger Reynolds’ Sketchbook for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was recently recorded and released on the double album For a Reason with Neuma Records. Though solo performance and self-accompanying is a large part of her practice, Liz has a voracious appetite for the camaraderie of chamber music, mostly with her quartet Quince and the SonLingua Ensemble.