MU Press Release Season 2
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 
AMERICAN FESTIVAL OF MICROTONAL MUSIC
Presents
MU – MICROTONAL UNIVERSITY
 
MU – a virtual microtonal university - is a program of the American Festival of Microtonal Music, under the direction of Johnny Reinhard (since 1981). MU began September 5, 2021 through Zoom to offer all manner of microtonal instructions, performance premieres, presentations and interviews, forums, and instrument festivals, exclusively on Sundays and accessible worldwide. 12-month membership is $200 (US). [Become Part of MU]

A sample of last season’s highlights saw composer La Monte Young hold court, as well as exciting visits by Gloria Coates, Paul Dolden, Kyle Gann, Stephen James Taylor, along with international microtonal festivals for violin, acoustic/electric guitar, flute, and homemades. Guest performers giving virtual master classes included Dave Taylor, Ned Rothenberg, John Schneider, and Robert Dick. MU Global special Saturdays took us to Australia and Japan. Additionally, MU produced a 145-page pdf, “Well Temperament Before Werckmeister.”

Season 2 began September 4, 2022 with a Microtonal Theremin Festival featuring Lydia Kavina, Rob Schwimmer, David Simons, and Yonat Hafftka, available on MU’s YouTube channel – MicrotonalVision; MU will live stream for the entire month of September. This present season brings David Hykes, Michael Hicks, as well as our returning faculty – Manfred Stahnke, Jon Catler, Meredith Borden, Michael Vick, Svjetlana Bukvich, Philipp Gerschlauer, and Johnny Reinhard. On November 5, 2022 we feature JAPAN & MICROTONALITY presenting Hidekazu Wakabayashi, Hitomi Shimizu, and Mari Kimura. Additional MU festivals this season highlight microtonalists in the fields of electronic music, keyboards, cello, clarinet, acoustic/electric guitar, double/electric bass, and percussion.

Of special note is the resumption of an annual Christmas Day Microtonal Bach Radio Broadcast, December 25, 2022, live streamed (independently of WKCR). 2 virtual AFMM concerts are planned for February 18, 2023 and June 11, 2023. The first concert on February 18th premieres original compositions performed live over Zoom by Stephen James Taylor (LA), Svjetlana Bukvich (NYC), Marcus Hobbs (LA), Michael Vick (SC), Witold Maciak (Warsaw), and Amelia Huff (LA).

Contact:
Johnny Reinhard AFMM/MU
afmmjr@aol.com
www.microtonaluniversity.org / www.afmm.org
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New Musical Resource
MU 2022 Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
AMERICAN FESTIVAL OF MICROTONAL MUSIC
  introduces
MU – MICROTONAL UNIVERSITY
Sunday Sessions on Zoom
            MU – a virtual microtonal university - is a new program of the American Festival of Microtonal Music Inc., under the direction of Johnny Reinhard (since 1981).  MU began September 5, 2021, using Zoom to offer all manner of microtonal instructions, performances, presentations and interviews, forums, and festivals, exclusively on Sundays and accessible worldwide. For the first time, MU is reaching out to music educators to offer Music Institutions a single access link to MU for students and faculty in 2022.  One Zoom Link per week would be useful for a student, teacher or scholar working in microtonality, and it could also be used in classroom settings, and seminars. An annual membership of $200 (US) is payable here: Become Part of MU.
 
You may find the full MU schedule linked here: www.microtonaluniversity.org. The curriculum has been detailed for an additional three years. The MU Recording Library is available to experience previous MU events, particularly the instrumental “festivals.”  There is a physical Microtonal Archive located in the Special Collections Department of Furman University: Furman Libraries acquires unique music collection - Furman News. Additionally, Bandcamp has made it possible to provide easy access to AFMM’s treasured sound archives: www.johnnyreinhard.bandcamp.com. Private instrument lessons with notable experts in the field are available upon inquiry (with terms dictated by the individual private instructors). 
At the core of MU is the faculty, chosen from among the most accomplished microtonal musicians on the planet with each being a composer and an improviser, someone who demonstrates an outstanding commitment to scholarship and to music performance pedagogy.  Meredith Borden (voice), Svjetlana Bukvich (electronic music), Jon Catler (rock), Philipp Gerschlauer (jazz), Johnny Reinhard (classical/intersylistic), Michael Vick (technology), and Manfred Stahnke (music composition).  A MU FACULTY ALBUM has been created to highlight examples of the many accomplishments of our esteemed faculty, and linked here: MU (MICROTONAL UNIVERSITY) FACULTY ALBUM | Johnny Reinhard (bandcamp.com).
 
MU’s Definition of “Microtonal Music”
All music is microtonal music cross-culturally.  Twelve-tone equal temperament is in itself
a microtonal scale, only it enjoys exorbitant attention and hegemonic power, so,
we focus on the other tuning arrangements.
    
Microtonal music may be recognized today as a spectrum of music containing a myriad of styles made up of an infinity of musical intervals.  Microtonality is the domain for its discipline.  A microtone is any note that is of a relatively “unusual” relationship with another note and is distinctive. 
MU is a community of helpful individuals worldwide, from California to Armenia, and with special recorded events from Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.  Composers and instrumentalists, vocalists, theorists, scholars, and those interested in the latest technologies can all benefit this singular resource.
At the instigation of the pandemic, we turned to MU to continue our activities as a not-for-profit corporation in the State of New York by expanding through the Internet.  If you have a needy microtonalist among your students or faculty, why not reward them with this singular opportunity to MU.  They will likely be most grateful.  And they will be better able to integrate their studies.  Please pass this announcement on to whomever might be interested.
In a paramount sense, MU is a place to meet multiple brilliant and talented musicians and scholars from around the world in a safe, comfortable and affordable manner.  We offer a unique service for your students, for your colleagues, for those in the wider community who are fascinated by intonation and tuning, for the microtonalists among you.
 
BIO:  Johnny Reinhard – Director of MU/AFMM
A native New Yorker, Johnny Reinhard is director and founder of the American Festival of Microtonal Music (AFMM) since 1981, specializing in all manner of microtonal performance. Reinhard performs as a solo bassoonist, as well as a soloist on recorder, and as a vocalist specializing in the works of Harry Partch.  Reinhard has performed as a bassoon soloist throughout Europe and the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. Reinhard authored the book Bach and Tuning (published by Peter Lang Verlag).  He has played with such artists as kavalist Theodossii Spassov (Bulgaria), Thereminist Lydia Kavina (Russia), Baul master Babukishan Das (India), and the FLUX String Quartet (USA).  He was featured on bassoon by Ornette Coleman to critical acclaim in The New York Times on the Verizon Jazz Festival in 2000. For fifteen years he played electric bassoon with Jon Catler’s rock band, The Microtones.  He had featured solo appearances in London’s Barbican, Paris’ Centre de Pompidou, Venice’s Teatro la Fenice, Moscow’s Alternativa Festival, St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Home Museum, Croatia’s Fortress of Knin, Ukraine’s 2 Days & 2 Nights Contemporary Music Festival in Odessa Philharmonic Hall, Salzburg’s Mozarteum; and festivals in Monterrey (Mexico), Kazan Tatarstan (Russia), Bergen (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Vancouver (Canada), and Copenhagen (Denmark). Notable music partners include bass trombonist Dave Taylor, cellist Dave Eggar, violinist Tom Chiu, guitarist Jon Catler, percussionist Rashied Ali, and trumpeter Lew Soloff.
Reinhard has notably completed previously unheard works of composers in exemplary performance, which include his realization and subsequent premiere performance of Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony in 1996 in New York’s Lincoln Center, and the premiere of Edgard Varèse’s “Graphs and Time” in 1987 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Reinhard’s transcription of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Meditation sur deux themes (1917) for bassoon and piano was recorded for the Between the Keys CD for Newport Classics, with different performances recorded for Solyd Records (Russia), and the AFMM organ PITCH CDs. Reinhard produced world premieres in the AFMM concerts such as Lou Harrison’s “Simfony in Free Style,” Terry Riley’s “In C - Just Intonation Version,” Percy Grainger’s “Free Music” for Theremin quartet, the original version of Harry Partch’s “Ulysses Departs From the Edge of the World” for trumpet, double bass, and Boobams, Wendy Carlos’s “Afterlife” for choir, violin, cello, electric fretless bass, timpani/percussion, and electronic parts, La Monte Young’s “Vision” for chamber ensemble, and Mordecai Sandberg’s orchestral “Psalm 51” featuring soprano Dorein Verhijden of Arnhem (The Netherlands).  
As a composer, Reinhard’s original compositions often feature polymicrotonality – either the active mixing of microtonal tunings in a single composition, or the invention of fresh pitch relationships (e.g., harmonic 17, quadratic prime just intonation, collapsed just intonation). Among his works are a cello concerto (Odysseus), string quartet, (Cosmic Rays and Trespass), numerous chamber works (Raven, Vibra, Trees), a corpus of virtuoso solo works for different instruments (e.g., Zelig Mood Ring, Sleep, Dune, Zanzibar, Rama, Chaco Canyon, Asteroid Belt). Johnny Reinhard’s compositions may be heard on the Raven CD released by Stereo Society and Michael Throne.  In the early ‘90s he published the 4-part serial journal “PITCH for the International Microtonalist,” which later evolved into the PITCH CD label, and eventually into Microtonal University (MU).
In addition to playing and creating, Reinhard actively extends his knowledge to students of music. Formerly Professor of Bassoon at New York University, Reinhard also taught music composition and theory at C.W. Post, Long Island University, Western Art Music at Columbia University and chosen “Outstanding Music Humanities Professor”by Richard Taruskin, and a sabbatical semester at Bard College for Kyle Gann. Renowned universities around the world made invitations to make presentations, including the Manhattan School of Music, CalArts, Indiana University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Hamburg Hochschule in Germany, Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, York University in York, England, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, and the Odessa Conservatory in Ukraine.
Reinhard introduced as vocalist the first performances of Harry Partch’s 43-tone just intonation works in Norway (International Bergen Festival), France (M.A.N.C.A.), Switzerland (RoteFabrik), Italy (Teatro la Fenice), Canada (Toronto, Winnipeg, and St. John’s), England (London’s Barbican), and The Juilliard School (NYC).  Reinhard has premiered compositions by Georg Friedrich Haas, Harvey Sollberger, John Eaton, LaMonte Young, Ben Johnston, Svjetlana Bukvich, Monroe Golden, Anatol Vieru, Halim El-Dahb, Manfred Stahnke, Tui St. George Tucker, Harold Seletsky, Jon Catler, and Skip LaPlante. Reinhard has presented microtonal concert features for Odetta, John Zorn, David Hykes, Theodosii Spassov, Toby Twining, and Ed Sanders. He has conducted world première performances of works by Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, Harry Partch, Toby Twining, Wendy Carlos, Percy Grainger, Julian Carrillo, and Mordecai Sandberg. In the past ten years, Johnny Reinhard has been working almost exclusively with a tuning system he calls simply: 128 tuning, whose origin is found etched in the 8th octave of the overtone series.
Johnny Reinhard's Home at the Stereo Society | The Stereo Society

 Contact:
Johnny Reinhard AFMM/MU 
afmmjr@aol.com   www.afmm.org
www.microtonaluniversity.org