Jay C. Batzner (b. 1974) is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida where he teaches music composition and technology courses as well as coordinates the composition program. In his first year, Jay received two prestigious grants: one to create collaborative works with visual artist Carla Poindexter and the second to initiate electroacoustic music concerts in Orlando. Prior to this position, Jay was an active adjunct professor at several colleges in the Kansas City area while he completed his D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory. While at UMKC, Jay received honors including a Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship and a Dean's Doctoral Scholar Fellowship.
Jay's music ranges from instrumental chamber works to electroacoustic compositions. He has participated in numerous national and international festivals including the Wellesley Composers Conference and the International Young Composers' Meeting in the Netherlands. His music is published by Unsafe Bull Music and has been recorded on the Capstone and Vox Novus labels. Jay is a frequent contributor to the new music website Sequenza21.com and a founding member of the composers organization The Collected.
Jay is a sci-fi geek, an amateur banjoist, a home brewer, and juggler.
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10/11/2008
The word
This week I was at Southeastern Louisiana University doin' the Guest Composer thing. It was fun. I stayed with my friend Jeremy Sagala, a composer whose life seems to be on a parallel track to my own. We have experienced a lot of similar things in similar ways even though our music bears almost no relationship to each other. It is interesting how much sameness there is even when the music is totally different.
Anyhow, Jeremy said The Word to me. No, nothing religious. Nothing like that. This word was basically the single word summary of my musical language: recontextualization. My music runs on changing relationships between various amounts of material. It could be throwing very different things into a piece and showing how they connect or it could be moving quotations through various levels of ambiguity.
I've been saying for a while that the more I compose the less I really understand what I'm doing. Jeremy's observation was incredibly astute. I don't think I would have seen it, even though it has been starting at me for the last decade or so.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
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