New Music reBlog

« September 2005 | Main | November 2005 »

October 31, 2005

Striking a bum note

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Revolution 3

By now, we've realized that the web has changed the topography of today's music scene. It's taken classical music and new music (the punk rockers of classical music) a little more time than the popular music industry to realize this, but I think most understand the importance of this movement in terms of getting your music heard whether you are a composer or performer, building a loyal fan base, and staying in touch. Some have chosen to harness this power and some have not. Lest those who haven't need any more convincing, here are a few quotes from an article about MySpace.com in this month's WIRED magazine:

"For this generation of musicians, the mass market and the hit-making apparatus it supports are relics of a bygone age. The new reality is that their audience isn't listening to radio or vegging out in front of MTV. The audience is online."

. . . the virtue of blogging:

"By frequently updating their blog and swapping in new songs on their page, the Hawthorne Heights guys were able to give fans a reason to return [italics mine]. That increased the online buzz, and the fan club grew fast, eventually, topping 200,000--a direct marketing list that any major-lavel act would kill for."

. . . the impact:

"But whether MySpace ultimately succeeds or fails is beside the point. Its dramatic emergence is the first conclusive evidence of a new era in which the distance between audience and artist is greatly diminished."

I don't have any illusions. Classical and new music will never rise to the popularity of indie rock or popular music. That's not to say that these strategies won't help us reach a wider audience online. MySpace might not be the answer for us--a lot of the pages look very cookie-cutter, and now that it's emerging from the underground, the culturati may deem it passé (especially since Rupert Murdoch owns it now). No matter, take the idea of MySpace--delivering all the stuff that's cool to do online on one site (Friendster, Blogger, MP3, craigslist)--and do your own thing with it. But while I'm working on those changes to my site, I set up a page on MySpace.

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pierre Boulez’s 80th Birthday Concert

BBC3 will feature part one of Boulez’s birthday celebration, where he conducts Debussy and his own works.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kurt Schwitters

Ursonate

Rondo allegro largo

Scherzo

Presto Finale

performed by Ensemble Ordinature, directed by Andre Cormier

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Of our time.

"The world turns on its dark side. It is winter."

I wish I could claim that I was reminded of the opening words of A Child of Our Time as I arrived in Boston via the Fung Wah bus by fits and starts on Saturday afternoon, thanks to an unseasonable, slushy snowstorm. But to be honest, I didn't make the connection between the conditions of my trip and its objective until some hours later, when Michael Steinberg brought it up in the lucid, personable pre-concert lecture he delivered before that evening's Boston Symphony Orchestra concert.

2005 is the centenary of British composer Sir Michael Tippett's birth, an occasion that is going almost completely unobserved in New York City. As a deeply passionate admirer of Tippett's work, I complained about that situation in an article I wrote in March, previewing a performance by British choir The Sixteen that included the "Five Negro Spirituals" from A Child of Our Time. (I'd provide a link to that article, for which I interviewed Tippett boosters including Sixteen conductor Harry Christophers, Sir Colin Davis, Peter Cropper of the Lindsay String Quartet, pianist Steven Osborne and composer Steve Martland, but sadly, it hasn't made it into the Time Out New York online archives just yet. That's also true of the sidebar list of recordings recommended by those artists and myself.)

I'm pretty sure those spirituals were also sung by the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus in a midday concert at Trinity Church during the LSO's recent three-concert run at Lincoln Center. And Osborne will be playing Tippett's Piano Sonata No. 2 on his Zankel Hall debut recital -- along with Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata, Debussy's first book of Preludes and three Novelettes by Poulenc -- on December 8. (He was also supposed to have a recording of Tippett's complete sonatas and Piano Concerto on the shelves this year courtesy of the Hyperion label, but begged off for more time to master the works. Let's hope Hyperion is still there when he's ready...)

And that's pretty much it for New York. Rah, rah. Elsewhere, attention has been paid -- and not just in England, where there's been a predictable and welcome gush. Mark Wigglesworth alone conducted the Symphony No. 4 in Cleveland, Detroit, Melbourne, Montreal and Munich. A Child of Our Time has popped up all over the globe. And Tippett's first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, comes to Chicago's Lyric Opera in November -- not coincidentally, my next major musical field trip.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The performance of A Child of Our Time that Sir Colin Davis led on Saturday night at Boston's Symphony Hall was the first time I'd ever heard the work played live, an encounter I'd been hoping for since 1989 -- the year I heard Tippett's fifth and final opera, New Year, in its world-premiere run at Houston Grand Opera, which was where I was bitten with the Tippett bug in the first place. Yes, I know Sir Colin brought Child to the New York Philharmonic in 1999, but at that point I was in the final throes of my rebellious four-year exile from classical music. (Go here for Peter G. Davis's lucid response to the Phil's performances.)

For all of the the idiosyncrasies and challenges that much of Tippett's music presents, A Child of Our Time is surely the composer's greatest hit. I've long cherished recordings by Davis, Previn, Hickox and Tippett himself, the last now available at super-budget price on Naxos. Still, that didn't quite prepare me for the awe inspired by sharing physical space with the piece -- and in particular, this physical space, arguably the finest concert hall in... the United States? North America? The western hemisphere?

Clearly, Sir Colin has full measure of this score's workings -- every plush climax and purposefully bothering dissonance was laid perfectly clear. The orchestra, it might well go without saying during this, the Levine era, played with consummate beauty, precision and commitment. Of the fine quartet of soloists, only Indra Thomas's diction was less than exacting, and with a voice as lovely as hers, you tend to forgive. Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Paul Groves and Alastair Miles were as ideal as you could want, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus did itself proud, the altos especially moving to hear (and watch).

The performance was everything I'd hoped it might be, and at least one moment -- the combination of Thomas's vocalise, a luminous chorus and radiant trumpet accents in the line "The trumpet sounds within-a my soul," in "Steal Away," the first of the five spirituals and the climax of Part One -- registered as one of the finest experiences I've had in any concert hall, ever. (One of the least pleasant followed, as I caught Alastair Miles watching a couple in the right balcony clumsily exiting during the hushed string harmonics that open Part Two, rolling his eyes at the sight. Who wouldn't?) Happily, that kind of behavior was at a minimum; most of the notably less-than-capacity audience hung rapt on the performance.

A fair number of seats occupied during Mozart's "Posthorn" Serenade, elegantly played on the first half of the concert, were vacant after the break. I suspect that wouldn't have been the case had more than a few dozen people attended Michael Steinberg's unusually personal pre-concert lecture. Steinberg, a hero of mine for his exemplary program notes, took the opportunity to reveal why A Child of Our Time has long meant so much to him: During Kristallnacht, the horrific event that prodded Tippett into action, Steinberg was himself a 10-year-old boy in Germany. Talking about the experience, he twice mentioned "the sights, sounds and smells..." he yet recalls of the night when he witnessed the burning of the synagogue at the end of his block.

That last word -- smells -- drove home the point of this oratorio in a way that any amount of analytical jargon might well fail to do. Tippett wasn't inspired to create A Child of Our Time by lofty philosophical concerns. He was compelled, driven, by the needless deaths of his fellow human beings. I'm hard pressed to think of any piece more relevant in the here-and-now. The bigger question is, do symphony concert audiences want to think, to react, to be moved in this manner?

I know it made the desired impact on me. All day long, I'd schlepped around a portable CD player and a handful of Tippett discs for the return trip on the 11:30pm Fung Wah bus. But after this concert, I didn't want to hear anything else for a while. Don't you love it when that happens?

One last comment: Saturday night's concert was dedicated, by way of a program insert and a mention by Steinberg, to the memory of Rosa Parks. There's no question whatsoever in my mind that Tippett would have wholeheartedly approved.

Originally posted by NightAfterNight from Night After Night, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Invitation to the dance.

I had a bad feeling as I sat in Zankel Hall late this afternoon, waiting for the concert by James Levine and his MET Chamber Ensemble to get started. Frankly, it was impossible not to notice the strikingly large number of empty seats. For a while, it seemed that the event might have been better suited to the smaller Weill Recital Hall.

Levine's penchant for programming works by tough, so-called "academic" composers is well known by now, but this particular bill pushed that passion to the limit (at least, until the Babbitt 90th birthday concert coming up at Weill in May). Not only did it bring the New York premiere of Elliott Carter's Dialogues for piano and chamber orchestra, it also included the first local complete performance of Charles Wuorinen's Dante Trilogy -- chamber-scale versions of the three ballets the composer wrote for Peter Martins and the New York City Ballet. That's a full 66 minutes of Wuorinen (not counting stage resettings) before intermission, with the Carter and Darius Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit to follow.

As it happened, I needn't have worried. Latecomers rushed to take their seats as the lights went down, filling Zankel to somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of its capacity, I'd guesstimate. And the Wuorinen pieces, it turned out, were some of his most crowd-pleasing scores. Not that they pandered in any way -- far from it. But The Mission of Virgil, The Great Procession and The River of Light were all lively, varied and imminently parsable, and the audience awarded each a rousing reception. (Almost unbelievably, I saw only one patron pack up and leave, between the second and third pieces.)

The Mission of Virgil was rescored for two pianos. Howard Watkins and Linda Hall made a feast of the work, dispatching its giddy chases, elegant reveries and stolid marches in a sumptuous feast of ivory sonorities. At times, the piece suggested a combination of Stravinsky's "Infernal Dance of King Katschei," Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" and a boogie-woogie contest, mingling striding rhythms and bluesy chords with surprising outbursts. The two pianists dug into Wuorinen's seven-section score with gusto, if inadvertently punctuating the performance with emphatic page turns.

Even better was The Great Procession, for violin, cello, flute doubling piccolo, clarinet doubling bass clarinet (although here and in The River of Light, different players handled each instrument), piano and two percussionists. This score, too, followed a seven-part layout, with a boisterous refrain recurring four times. That refrain grew more familar with each pass, quickly becoming a recurring gag. All of the players gave knockout performances, but cellist Kari Jane Docter and flutist Stephanie Mortimore deserve special attention, the latter especially for the way she launched the genial waltz that opens "The Griffin," the big central movement. (I'll also state for the record that I can't think of another composer who writes more effectively and excitingly for percussion than Wuorinen -- every time I hear one of his pieces, it makes me wish I was still playing. Gregory Zuber and Duncan Patton were kept hopping all evening.)

If The River of Light suffered slightly by comparison, it was only because the piece offered less sense of narrative flow (even though it, too, was episodic in design). Still, again and again it offered instances of timbral gorgeousness, in particular a luminous passage for harp, celeste and tubular bells. Gracious melodies flitted from player to player like a butterfly lighting on one blossom after another, and the ending was breathtaking.

Wuorinen's brand of modernism may currently be out of favor in new-music circles, but these three scores were apt reminders of why he is unquestionably one of America's great composers. Carter's Dialogues -- a brief but densely packed conversation between brilliant, exacting pianist Nicolas Hodges and the ensemble -- seemed somewhat dry by comparison. Still, it was music worth playing and hearing, and it remains a signal pleasure of this decade to see Carter greeted again and again with towering ovations in the biggest musical establishments. (English horn player Pedro Diaz deserved an ovation of his own for the intimate exchanges between his instrument and the soloist -- allow me to offer one here.)

Just as Levine ended his much-lauded recent Boston Symphony Orchestra feast of American modernism at Isaac Stern Auditorium with a plush, fizzy performance of Gershwin's hyper-caloric Piano Concerto, this afternoon's heavy meal ended with the mango-and-lemon sorbet of Milhaud's Bouef, sweetly singing melodies and affably swinging rhythms tarted up with pungently tart dissonances.

(Warmest regards to my dear Vilaine Fille for the welcome this afternoon. Happy anniversary, and continued thanks for the gorgeous prose.)

Playlist:

Charles Wuorinen - Percussion Symphony - New Jersey Percussion Ensemble/Charles Wuorinen (Nonesuch)

Charles Wuorinen - Time's Encomium; Lepton; New York Notes; Epithalamium - Group for Contemporary Music (Tzadik)

Charles Wuorinen - On Alligators - Group for Contemporary Music/Charles Wuorinen; Fourth String Quartet - Brentano Quartet; Natural Fantasy - Kevin Bowyer; Third Piano Concerto - Garrick Ohlsson, San Francisco Symphony/Herbert Blomstedt (Tzadik)

Originally posted by NightAfterNight from Night After Night, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Musical events

In the New Yorker's seventy-year history, seven people have written the column Musical Events: Robert A. Simon (1925-1948), Philip Hamburger (1948-49), Douglas Watt (1950-53), Winthrop Sergeant (1953-1972), Andrew Porter (1972-92), Paul Griffiths (1992-96), and yours truly. I've been going through old editions of the column, by way of the New Yorker DVD edition. I know Sergeant and Porter from bound collections; Simon is new to me. An early column, from February, 1926, begins: "Enter into the conductorial arena Otto Klemperer, the seven foot dynamo from Wiesbaden, the terror of second trombonists, the cave man who yanks 'em by the collar and shakes sweet music from their quivering instruments, the wild bull of the symphony, Brann the Iconoclast, and all the rest of it.... [we] hope we're not shooing you away from his concerts, for he's worth hearing and seeing." There follows a report on an International Composers' Guild concert that included the premiere of William Grant Still's Levee Land (not named), in which Harlem theater star Florence Mills delivered the solos. Simon doesn't get the bluesy grandeur of the piece, chiding Still for ruining "mellifluous jazz" with "modern music" touches. The column ends with a note on the "fascinating Edna Kellogg," singing Jerome Kern. Simon's breezy, irreverent tone was typical of conversation around classical music in the twenties, thirties, and forties. The critic often zig-zagged among classical, jazz, and popular song. He seems to have taken a break from journalism in the late twenties to pursue a career on Broadway: he wrote lyrics for Ups-a-Daisy, The Gang's All Here, Hold Your Horses, and Champagne, Sec. You'll be happy to hear I'm working on my own Broadway show, Zemlinsky in Larchmont. First number: "One Cannot Find Even a Good Glass of Coffee."

By the way, Paul Griffiths's new Penguin Companion to Classical Music is as successful an attempt at a one-man, one-volume music encyclopedia as you could hope for.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Good news

Steve Smith of Time Out New York has started a blog. A man with all-devouring ears, Steve has already waxed intelligently enthusiastic about Charles Wuorinen, Robert Ashley, Peter Mennin, and electric Miles. He's criticism without politics.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Orpheus and Euridice (2005). Ricky Ian Gordon

In a recent New York magazine, Alicia Zuckerman interviews Ricky Ian Gordon on his new song cycle, Orpheus and Euridice, written for clarinet and soprano. The composer was struggling as his partner died of AIDS and came up with a middle-of-the-night idea:

I see Todd [Palmer] as Orpheus with his clarinet, and Euridice gets a mysterious virus that steals her from him incrementally.

Gordon is currently working on an opera of The Grapes of Wrath.

Village Voice: The production alludes to AIDS, the score is "lovely."
New York Blade: The composer's first line:  “Orpheus played his pipe, music like a cool blue stripe circling the heavens.”
New Jersey Star-Ledger: It didn't work to have the musicians also dance.
Financial Times: "Morose."
Associated Press: Praise for the dancers but choreographer Doug Varone didn't take enough artistic risk.
The Well-Tempered Blog: It's really a ballet.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trio for Strings (1958). La Monte Young

Alex Ross has a brief review of the Eternal Music String Ensemble 70th birthday concert performance of Young's Trio for Strings ("an awesomely strange landscape of slowly shifting tone"). He also comments:

The experience wavered between the unbearable and the transcendent, coming to rest on the latter.

The same comment may also apply to the music of Philip Glass, although more often coming to rest on the former...

Young in a Music Mavericks interview:

It's interesting that even at the age of 2 or 3, I began to get an intuition about the way to create music. I didn't really start to do it until 1958, when I wrote the Trio for Strings, which is the first work in the history of music that is completely composed of long sustained tones and silences.

This reminds me of one of those Rob Kapilow lectures on why Mozart is so great:

Things are never as simple as they seem.... The next phrase of music continues elegantly...followed by an astonishing measure of complete silence.

Ok, I'll grant the music is graceful and elegant but after hearing the art of Cage, Young, and Johnson, sorry, "classical" silence like this no longer astonishes.

Although I don't want to cause Fred dismay, in order to re-calibrate my ears for "legacy" music, I'm taking Hucbald's suggestion to focus on Haydn rather than Mozart. And I have yet to decide if I'll  attend Kapilow's Stanford program on Copland's Appalachian Spring.

rgable: aworks american high era young: official del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish trio for strings: aworks octet version current track: and now, revelation!/rob kapilow/mozart

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams

In doing a little investigation about Adams' (annoying albeit American) use of banjo in his Gnarly Buttons, I found this prognostication in a Fanfare review by Christopher Abbot:

I think Adams's true genius lies in pieces like these [Gnarly Buttons and John's Book of Alleged Dances] and Grand Pianola Music, rather than in the operas or the Chamber Symphony (the Violin Concerto is an exception -- I think that will endure).

Dunno but after the Doctor Atomic extravaganza (and a run-through of the so serious Varèse), the small-scale works sound refreshing. Moo.

---

Update: I'm reading Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. I never knew the banjo had West African predecessors. Wald also makes the point of how whites have romanticized blues history; we forget that rural legends like Robert Johnson were basically unknown at the time compared to more polished and professional urban black artists that still get tagged with the "country blues" label e.g. Leroy Carr. (Checking, I see that Carr doesn't even have an entry in Wikipedia. I'll start the stub). Finally, he points out classifications like classical, jazz, country, and blues only became common as a way to market records and that in the early 1900s, musicians were likely to play a variety of styles, even if they only recorded in one. This includes concert pianists who would add arrangements of say, Yankee Doodle Dandy, to their usual repertoire of European concert music. Most interestingly, Wald cites textual evidence canonical bluesman Muddy Waters, early in his career, played such pop songs as Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Deep in the Heart of Texas, and Down by the Riverside.

rgable: aworks culture wars era adams: official aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon gnarly buttons: official aworks tweeness current track: déserts/varèse/chailly.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

beyond aworks :: World on Fire (2003). Sarah McLachlin

Via a great product development blog, Sarah McLachlin has a radical music video that threatens to cast every other video as trivial and wasteful if not worse. 

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

women in the composing world

After the recent storm of commentary on the representation of women composers here and in concert programming, I’d like to offer a few meditations on being a woman composer. It’s an issue that I can’t help but be aware of and devote a least a little thoug

Originally posted by Stefanie Lubkowski from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Last Night in L.A. - Messiaen Marathon

Paul Jacobs is still young enough to undertake physical challenges and make them musical events. (Remember? He’s the one who did the complete organ works of Bach in an 18-hour marathon.) In the past two years he’s visited cities to perform the complet

Originally posted by Jerry Zinser from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 31, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 30, 2005

Work Song (). Olgivanna Wright

Three recent concert reviews touch on music beyond the 19th-century:

Steven Cornelius reviews the Toledo Symphony playing Copland etc.:

Twentieth-century music, long the bogey of classical music's mostly conservative fans, seems finally to be coming into its own, at least if last night's near sell-out audience at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle is any indication.

Marc Shulgold over-generalizes in reviews of Ars Nova and Jeffrey Kahane with the Colorado Symphony:

Classical music fans are creatures of habit. They like to be comfortable. They embrace the predictable and avoid the new. They're human.

And Matthew Erikson, in previewing Music in the Life of Frank Lloyd Wright, reminiscent of this comment by Morton Feldman, points out Wright's less than modern musical tastes:

Those who might anticipate the visionary, cutting-edge music of, say, Charles Ives or Henry Cowell will be disappointed. Rather, it was Beethoven, Palestrina, J.S. Bach and Boccherini whom Wright favorably commented on in his writings.

Erikson also mentions a credo written by Wright and set to music by his wife Olgivanna:

I'll live / As I'll work / As I am! / No work in fashion for sham / Nor to favor forsworn /Wear mask crest or thorn / My work as befitteth a man."

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 30, 2005 at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gnarly Buttons (1996). John Adams

In doing a little investigation about Adams' (annoying albeit American) use of banjo in his Gnarly Buttons, I found this prognostication in a Fanfare review by Christopher Abbot:

I think Adams's true genius lies in pieces like these [Gnarly Buttons and John's Book of Alleged Dances] and Grand Pianola Music, rather than in the operas or the Chamber Symphony (the Violin Concerto is an exception -- I think that will endure).

Dunno but after the Doctor Atomic extravaganza (and a run-through of the so serious Varèse), the small-scale works sound refreshing. Moo.

rgable: aworks culture wars era adams: official aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon gnarly buttons: official aworks tweeness current track: déserts/varèse/chailly.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 30, 2005 at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From Start to Finish

The compositional process may be broken down into three stages: starting, continuing and finishing. Each stage has its own challenges and rewards, and every composer addresses each stage in a unique way. Some composers have a hard time starting a new pi

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 30, 2005 at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mr. Postman, If You Please

Sara writes: hello my name is sara and i am doing a project for school and i was wondering if you could give me a job description of a composer or a brief detail of what they do thank-you sara Blackdogred ponders Brian Eno in his post today and in t

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 30, 2005 at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 29, 2005

The search for music

Here's a fascinating article in Wired by Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt : How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. The article describes how he went from partial deafness to full deafness, his cochlear implant, and the search to make Bolero enjoyable again. Chorost communicates his passion for music well, describes the science and technology clearly, and carries us through the excitement and disappointments he experienced.

(via Mind Hacks)

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All of Naxos’s catalog is now on eMusic

Another timely move by Naxos: All of their music is now on eMusic.com as well as available via streaming broadcasts. An article covers the details.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

DMG Newsletter

Another week, another DMG Newsletter

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Week in the life

Here are scattered notes on recent concerts, of use to unknown persons. Oct. 20: Christopher Maltman at Zankel Hall. I first encountered this vibrant baritone singing Britten's Fourth Canticle with Ian Bostridge in London. Here he wasn't in best voice — he hit a dry patch in Mahler's Rückert Lieder — but a ringing declamation of "Um Mitternacht" saved the day. If Gerald Finley tires of singing Oppenheimer, Maltman could take over. Oct. 21: Così fan tutte at the Met. In a fine cast, the standout was Mariusz Kwiecien, as Guglielmo. He has liquid legato, superb diction, charm to burn. Terfelesque. Oct. 23: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic at Carnegie. What I liked most about Alan Gilbert's confident handling of the Prokofiev Fifth was that he brought out the quality of instability, the hint of terror, that lurks in the music right at the end. Oct. 25: Caught the first part of the Two Sides Sounding recital at St. Peter's, then the last part of Youssou N'Dour at Zankel. Corey Dargel's Condoleezza Rice song cycle — setting three passages from the Secretary of State's speeches — sounded prankish in concept, but was surprisingly moving in execution; the prosody was immaculate, the accompaniment achieved a certain Handelian grandeur. I recommend these songs to sopranos of daring. More on the joy-bringing Youssou another time.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Halloween Agenda

Hey kids, come and get that scary modern music! Saturday night, Christopher Taylor plays Ligeti's ecstatic and demonic Etudes at Miller Theatre. Sunday, the International Contemporary Ensemble gives the last of a series of performances of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King (in a production "drawing inspiration from 'videocam diary' culture"). Monday, remember River Phoenix. Tuesday, the Chamber Music Society presents two bone-chilling late Shostakovich works, the Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok and the Viola Sonata. Wednesday, Philip Glass's Eightieth Symphony — no, sorry, Eighth — chugs into BAM. Thursday, Gidon Kremer, whose new ECM recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas is extraordinary, delves into Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 5 at the Philharmonic. Or, if you want something a little less fraught, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini accompanies Nancy Armstrong in songs by the excellent Boston-based composer Scott Wheeler. A major event on Friday, Nov. 4: the fearless Flux Quartet plays the string quartets of Giacinto Scelsi, one of the masters of the late twentieth century. Same night, the Chicago Symphony plays this week's new Elliott Carter composition. And, Sunday after next, the Meredith Monk marathon at Zankel brings together Monk herself, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Bruce Brubaker and Ursula Oppens, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and a certain Björk.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Friday Informer: Living the Music Life

Big money, sweaty musicians, drug busts, and the complete works of John Cage.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 29, 2005 at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

Fred Frith & Ensemble in Vancouver

A review of Frith’s latest performance is available.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Week in the life

Here are scattered notes on recent concerts, of use to unknown persons. Oct. 20: Christopher Maltman at Zankel Hall. I first encountered this vibrant baritone singing Britten's Fourth Canticle with Ian Bostridge in London. Here he wasn't in best voice — he hit a dry patch in Mahler's Rückert Lieder — but a ringing declamation of "Um Mitternacht" saved the day. If Gerald Finley tires of singing Oppenheimer, Maltman could take over. Oct. 21: Così fan tutte at the Met. In a fine cast, the standout was Mariusz Kwiecien, as Guglielmo. He has liquid legato, superb diction, charm to burn. Terfelesque. Oct. 23: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic at Carnegie. What I liked most about Alan Gilbert's confident handling of the Prokofiev Fifth was that he brought out the quality of instability, the hint of terror, that enters into the music right at the end. Oct. 25: Caught the first part of the Two Sides Sounding recital at St. Peter's, then the last part of Youssou N'Dour at Zankel. Corey Dargel's Condoleezza Rice song cycle — setting three passages from the Secretary of State's speeches — sounded prankish in concept, but was surprisingly moving in execution; the prosody was immaculate, the accompaniment achieved a certain Handelian grandeur. I recommend these songs to sopranos of daring. More on the joy-bringing Youssou another time.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Post-Anti-Antiestablishment

Maybe the new establishment isn't quite where you think it is.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jumping the Ring of Fire: The Impact of Genre on Judgment

The buzz for the Fiery Furnaces' new disc, Rehearsing My Choir, is shooting its way through the music community. Could failure in one genre mean success in another?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I Come in Peace Edition

Bob Shingleton, who produces the extraordinarily classy On an Overgrown Path from a bosky little corner of England and shares his thoughts with us a couple of times a week under the nom de blog, Pliable, writes: Jerry, just loved your The Fiery Furnaces

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blackdogred Friday aka Scooter's Lament

We have liftoff. Blackdogred's Indie Beat is up and running. Blackdog is coming into this from the rock side so he's depending on our very hip readers (as opposed to a not-so-hip editor) to help him sort out the connections. Should be fun. Our buddy (

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 28, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2005

'Applicability' in music: towards a definition

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Landmarks (9)

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cartesian memories

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Return

Life has settled down a bit, and I have a few minutes to blog.  Long time, huh?

I did a recital in New Haven last month - the final hoop jumped through to achieve the coveted Yale DMA.  I must say that I owe it to some pretty amazing performers that were so overflowing with talent I didn't know how to contain myself. 

Planning and executing a full-length recital from 1,500 miles away was tough, but a good learning experience.  I suppose that's the gist of the DMA program.  You can read about Yale's program here.  It's....unique.  But like all things Yale, it's a tradition.  Now that it's over with I'm glad I was a part of it.

From the recital, Lucy Yates, Mingzhe Wang and John Orfe gave a stellar premiere of Songs from Rock Hill.  Here's the final movement, "Lament", a setting of Walter Savage Landor's "Mother, I cannot mind my wheel". 

Originally posted by Marcus Maroney from Marcus Maroney - Sounds Like New, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ligeti’s Private Passions

Ligeti’s favorite music is featured on a radio show. Find out about the musical influences on one of our leading contemporary composers in György Ligeti’s Private Passions. During the fall On An Overgrown Path is running a weekly feature on the music that has influenced leading arts and music personalities

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Week in the life

Here are scattered notes on recent concerts, of use to unknown persons. Oct. 20: Christopher Maltman at Zankel Hall. I first encountered this vibrant baritone singing Britten's Fourth Canticle with Ian Bostridge in London. Here he wasn't in best voice — he hit a dry patch in Mahler's Rückert Lieder — but a ringing declamation of "Um Mitternacht" saved the day. If Gerald Finley tires of singing Oppenheimer, Maltman could take over. Oct. 21: Così fan tutte at the Met. In a fine cast, the standout was Mariusz Kwiecien, as Guglielmo. He has liquid legato, superb diction, charm to burn. Terfelesque. Oct. 23: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic at Carnegie. What I liked most about Alan Gilbert's confident handling of the Prokofiev Fifth was that he brought out the quality of instability, the hint of terror, that enters into the music right at the end. Oct. 25: Caught the first part of the Two Sides Sounding recital at St. Peter's, then the last part of Youssou N'Dour at Zankel. Corey Dargel's Condoleezza Rice song cycle — setting three passages from the Secretary of State's speeches — sounded prankish in concept, but was surprisingly moving in execution; the prosody was immaculate, the accompaniment achieved a certain Handelian grandeur. I recommend these songs to sopranos of daring. More on the joy-bringing Youssou another time.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

DBA: Three Good Notes, Three Necessary Initials

There are two important reasons for a composer to acquire a DBA ("Doing Business As"): one has to do with money, the other with privacy. And if you are doing business under any name other than your own, it's required by law.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Study No. 3a (late 1940s). Conlon Nancarrow

Via sequenza21, On an Overgrown Path describes an interesting BBC program where Gyorgy Ligeti picks as a favorite one of Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano. I'll choose the slow-motion, odd gate of Study No. 5, at least in the orchestrated version by ensemble modern. Amazon has a one minute sample of 5.

rgable: aworks great depression/world war 2 era nancarrow: aworks list of works del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish current listening: the black gondola liszt/adams 

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

“The Mines of Sulphur” at City Opera

Once again City Opera’s fall schedule features a contemporary modernist opera. Last year we had Wourinen’s overwrought “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.” This year the company presents Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s 1965 work “The Mines of Sulphur.” A hit

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Granny Rehearses the Choir

I haven't bought a new pop album in years; somewhere around Michael Jackson's "Killer" days and Mariah Carey's $20 million buyout I lost interest. Too silly, as the Monty Python lads used to say. Pop music had reached a deadend...or so I thought. I

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 27, 2005 at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

Classic Postmodern PBS-think

So I tune to PBS for this wildlife film on eagles. Great birds, eagles. Splendid birds. Majestic birds. Birds of prey and born killers. During...

Originally from sounds & fury, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Show us your URLs

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

György Ligeti's Private Passions

BBC Radio 3's Private Passions is one of my favourite radio programmes. The format is deceptively simple. Personalities from the arts and public life are asked to play the music that is important to them, and explain why. Central to the success of the programme is the presenter Michael Berkeley, who has pretty impressive credentials. He is a well known broadcaster and journalist, son of Sir Lennox Berkeley, was a very successful Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music, and is one of our leading contemporary composers with commissions including a Concerto for Orchestra for the 2005 BBC Proms season. The programme has led me on several invaluable overgrown paths, including those to Swedish pianist Jan Johansson, and Norwegian singer Radka Toneff's sublime interpretation of Weill. You can listen to the latest Private Passions programme with this link.

In 2005 Private Passions celebrated ten years of broadcasting. And to celebrate Faber have published an eponymous book (right) compiled by Michael Berkeley. Again the format is deceptively simple. The musical choices (including recording and catalogue number) for every guest on the programme are listed, together with very brief notes. There is also a fascinating league table of composer popularity. Not surprisingly J.S.Bach is top with 222 airings, John Adams ties with William Byrd and Lennon and McCartney at 15, while Pierre Boulez at 8 playings ties with Rodgers and Hart! The book runs to 386 pages, and makes the most fascinating reading. This is a book to savour, to dip into, and return to time and time again.

So for the autumn On An Overgrown Path is going to include a weekly spot featuring the musical choices of one interesting guest on Private Passions, starting this week with György Ligeti (lead picture) whose choices were:

* Nancarrow, Study No. 3a, Conlon Nancarrow (player piano) Wergo WER 6168-2
* Trad., 'Gending: Dhenggung Turulare', Langen Praja Seven Seas KICC 5184 (Pliable - Javanese gamelan, follow this link for audio files)
* Trad., 'Piere', Etienne Ngbozo (small sanza and voice) / Joseph Sasmba (large sanza) / Daniel Hgadike, Robert Tarapai, Raymond Doko (voice, rattle and percussion sticks) Ocorra c 580008(Pliable - African drumming)
* Trad., Whistle Ensemble, Banda-Linda Ensemble Auvidis/UNESCO 8020 (Pliable - African ethnic music)
* Claude Vivier, Lonely Child, Susan Narucki (soprano) / Schonberg and Asko Ensembles / Reinbert de Leeuw Philips 454 231-2
* Beethoven, Sonata in C minor, Op. 11 (second movement), Alfred Brendel (piano) Philips 446 701-2

Programme broadcast on 22nd November 1997
Listen to the latest BBC Radio 3 Private Passions programme with this link
Information taken for promotional purposes only from Private Passions by Michael Berkeley published by Faber ISBN 0-571-22884-4 which you are strongly recommended to buy.
Image credits:
György Ligeti - Musikmesse Frankfurt
Private Passions book - Faber

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to My first classical record

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Playing Music: The Lost Freedom

A rather lengthy book review discusses how recording has changed music in the last century or so.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Edgefest 2005 Review

A review of some of this year’s Edgefest is available.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Free Albums Galore

The Free Albums Galore review free albums that have been posted on the web, focusing on non-pop offerings.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Early early Feldman

From a New York Times article of April 16, 1943: "MUSIC STUDENTS WIELD THE BATON ... Yesterday was the day of days — for this year — at the High School of Music and Art. It was the fifth annual concert of original compositions by the school's budding geniuses.... The composition, 'Dirge,' scored for orchestra, found the composer Morton Feldman, 17, in a mellow mood. 'This work is in memory of Thomas Wolfe, my favorite novelist,' said he." He stayed mellow. The manuscript of Dirge can be found in the Sacher archives in Basle. I wonder what it sounds like? Perhaps something for Mode's Feldman edition to look into. The program also included Spanish Dances by "Alan Blank," who must be Allan Blank, an overlooked master craftsman among American composers. His clarinet trio Links, recorded by Centaur some years ago, is a piece I return to often. Two others from this group went on to have distinguished careers: Manus Sasonkin and composer-conductor Charles Schiff.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Just Get Up and Go!

Perhaps if we had to travel further away to hear a concert, we'd value the experience more.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions Finalists Announced

Eight finalists for this year's reading sessions and composer institute have been selected from a total of 174 entries from 39 states.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Boston: Here Comes Everybody, Toy Pianos Included

A roundup of new music happenings during Boston's 2005-06 music season.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Percussive Guitar of Arthur Kampela

As I perused the monthly schedule at Satalla before Arthur Kampela kicked off his set, I realized that a new music writer should feel a bit out of place here. Satalla bills itself as the "Temple of World Music," and its schedule is filled with acts rangi

Originally posted by Lanier Sammons from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Once More Into the Breach

Ed Note: William Osborne sent me the following note with the suggestion that I publish it on the frontpage of S21. I am doing so because I think the whole subject of women in music is an important and provocative one. I do have some reservations, howev

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

György Ligeti's Private Passions

Find out about the musical influences on one of our leading contemporary composers in György Ligeti's Private Passions. During the fall On An Overgrown Path is running a weekly feature on the music that has influenced leading arts and music personalities.

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

The Evolution of Music

I've written about various evolutionary theories of music before. Now I point you to a good radio program from the BBC that interviews Steven Mithen, Professor of Early Prehistory at Reading University and Lawrence Parsons, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Sheffield University, on this subject. Mithen, the author of The Singing Neanderthals, discusses the archeological record of music. I've read before about the 30,000 year old flutes, but Mithen makes an interesting claim. By looking at the anatomical design of vocal tracts in proto-humans, he feels that our ancestors were singing millions of years ago, before the development of language. Mithen bases this argument on the facts that there are no records of symbols used that far back, and that behavior was not languag driven. I'm not sure what he means by this, I'll have to read the book to find out. Parsons describes all the interesting research in functional imaging of the brain. Comparisons of the brains of musicians and nonmusicians, and scans of brains while listening to or performing music have revealed some fascinating data. Take a listen, the interviewer does a good job of keeping things interesting, understandable, yet rigorous.

(via Mind Hacks. Also note the article about hearing implants and musical appreciation.)

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /still in beta/

The second time around (Saturday night was the last of ten San Francisco Opera performances):

Better

• Attendance. The performance sold out and I didn't see anyone leave early.
• Act 1. The libretto was more coherent and significant the second time, and a result, the act had more dramatic tension. Last time, a "mythic" engineering lab seemed preposterous, even to this engineer-by-training; this time, maybe it could be.
• Gerald Finley. Listening to his new Ives CD this week helped me calibrate his baritone, and I enjoyed his performance. Or maybe he just had a better night.
• "Oppie." Maybe it was Finley, but this time I actually cared about Oppenheimer as a character.
• Love scene. Although still odd in both music and text, the Baudelairean rhapsody clicked.
  
• Batter My Heart. Last time, I liked the way Findley acted. This time, I also liked how he sang. A lot.
• Pasqualita. Barely remembered from the first performance (due to operatic sensory overload), this time Beth Clayton's contralto was other-worldly.
• Sound. Before, we were row P in the orchestra; last night, I was upstairs in balcony circle. The result? The chorus in particular had more presence and the electronica sounded better integrated. The opening sounds last week gave a ping-pong effect, as if being at a cinema multiplex. Of course, I couldn't see much from the cheap(er) seats. Does Findley actually smoke that cigarette?
• Stage: Actually, from the balcony, I noticed for the first time that "ground zero" circle on the stage, where much of the action was centered.
  
• Spouse. Without Laura, it's not as fun. No strangers complimented me on my clothes last night and unlike last time as I excitedly parked, no one asked if I was going to run to the opera house.
• Pre-concert lecture. Adams talked more about his other operas and how in all of them, he clearly was aiming for an American response rather than a purely mythological one as in say, Faust or the Greeks. He also was gratified it might be necessary to attend several performances to fully grasp the opera. Finally, he mentioned receiving a letter from the retired director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator that suggested, if I got this right, there is no historical proof to indicate Oppenheimer had, er, marital relations. [Is the SLAC guy wrong given that Lisa Hirsch points out they did have children? Is he suggesting "relational disconnect" only occurred during the Trinity Project? Or is he just being, at best, facetious?]  Adams said we were free to leave during that scene if it bothered us.

Worse

• Act 2 libretto. I found this part of the libretto even more tedious. At some point, I quit listening to and reading the text and just waited for the countdown.
• The ending. This time, I just felt the horror of the atom bomb. Last time, I felt a breathtaking sense of compassion.
• Groves and the Meteorologist. Confused by them the first night, I was annoyed by them the second.
  
• Pre-concert lecture. This time, Adams explicitly described the ending. While he pointed out one aspect I hadn't comprehended, I wonder if overall, he weakened its impact. It was like that old presentation saw "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you just told them." Fine for tech presentations but too explicit for art?
• Teller. I understand he's there to advance the story but especially during the second act, I found myself annoyed hearing speculative pessimism about the pending explosion from a government guy a WWII technical authority wearing jeans.
• Electronica. The introduction to Act I sounds "Euro avant-gardish" where the rest of the opera sounds contemporarily traditional. The latter is what Adams does best, I suppose. The former, along with the truck, airplane and radio fragments, was superfluous disjoint from the rest of the opera. This from a listener who enjoys John "nihilism" Cage, who thinks organized sound is inherently musical and who bought the new Boards of Canada CD in a harried trip to the Castro before the show.
• Chord. The chord at the beginning of Act 2 startled me last time, this time not so much.

Same

• Set: No change from my original feeling of abhorrence.
• Kid: That kid in pajamas strikes such an innocent note.
• Da Bomb: Less obtrusive from the balcony although this time it reminded me a bit of a fish with eyes.
  
• Melodic material: I walked to the car with a melody from I Looked through the Ceiling... playing in my head.  Not a good sign.
• Orchestration: Again, maybe Adams' best use of percussion since the first movement of El Dorado.
• Kitty. The line about her motive being loneliness is still vivid but I still don't see Kitty as the Gaia-like humanist that Adams suggests. Are we still disappointed about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson?
  
• Earbox. At the store, people inspected the $99.99 John Adams CD collection but no one bought it.
• Orchestra. Sounded fine again, especially the solo instrumental lines. There's a second act string passage that shows Adams is in fact entering a phase of "new complexity," at least relative to the old Adams. He's not likely to turn into Brian Ferneyhough, though.
• Target list. The sense of foreboding and doom when they review the potential target list was still powerful, especially when the horns played as they mentioned Hiroshima.
• Dance. The Gap Kids were great again, e.g. when a couple of them are carried by the others during Act 2.

Different

• Audience. Compared to the Sunday matinee, the Saturday night crowd was older and I heard more foreign language spoken. The guy next to me dozed off half-a-dozen times. During some line about the US being a great, honorable nation, somebody laughed. And on the way out, I heard this exchange:

Opera-goer: That's why they call it an experiment.
Spouse: You can't have everything.

I don't know if they were speaking of the opera or the country. On the whole, Doctor Atomic was a little better than the first time, even if it is not (yet) the all-encompassing transcendental art we might secretly hope for.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I Am Blogged About

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Topography (1)

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Another New Gal

Thanks to the recommendation and encouragement of my friend, Alex Shapiro, and to Jerry Bowles who invited me to join, I would like to add my voice to the full choir (that includes the S's, the A's, the T's and the B's, no gender bias here:)) of composer

Originally posted by Adrienne Albert from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Where Are the Gals? (Again)

Once more the question of why Sequenza21 seems to be an all-boys, no-girls-allowed treehouse has been raised. Alex Shapiro passed along a post from William Osborne on the IAWM e-list, which reads: I've been reading the blogs at Sequenza 21-- a site devo

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Skating on Thick Ice

Speaking of feisty gals, I personally can hardly wait for Nancy and Tonya: The Opera coming up at Tufts University next spring. With a libretto by Elizabeth Searle and music by Tufts graduate student Abigail Al Dorry, the saga of ice skating's most famou

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 25, 2005 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 24, 2005

Espace Reviewed at Free Albums Galore

A MP3 blog, Free Albums Galore is currently featuring my electronic album, Espace.   I've recieved hundreds of downloads from the feature (and no doubt its buzz).  Free music works!  From the review,  ...I was particularily impressed by Espace, a lush, ancient and modern ambient album that employs granular resynthesis and time warping of timbres; with a variety of strange acoustic and electronic instruments.

Originally posted by jeff from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 02:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rockin' Theorists

The latest issue of Music Theory Online is out. Three of the four articles are part of the latest initiative to prove that theorists can be cool. Mark Spicer's review of The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul is the lamest effort. While the Beatles can be cool, liking them is so universal among old people (over 25) that the book cannot be cool itself. Allan Moore has a better effort with his article on The Persona-Environment Relation in Recorded Song. Moore describes how the accompaniment of popular songs (guitars, drums, etc.) interact with the lyrics to flesh out the characters in the songs. Still somewhat geeky, but he does mention AC/DC, Laïs, Iggy Pop, and (as a negative) the Carpenters. However, Luis-Manuel Garcia has done the best job of proving how hip theorists are, with his article On and On: Repetition as Process and Pleasure in Electronic Dance Music. That's right, Dance Dance Revolution has made it to the academy. As it turns out, the highly repetitive nature of electronica is perfect to stimulate the experience of pleasure through process.

One guy apparently didn't get the memo, and had to write an article on key signatures. This is not helping the cause, Dmitri!

Warning: This post is highly sarcastic, with the tongue firmly pressed into the cheek. The author appreciates the fine efforts in all four articles, and encourages everyone to read all of them.

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Recent Listening

Cold Blue Complete 10-Inch Series

It's easy to forget about California. Aside from the occasional glamorous premiere, it's...you know... all the way over there. East coast pretensions aside, it's inspiring to see such sophisticated and flat-out beautiful music outside of the classical mainstream. Every time I hear something from Daniel Lentz, he just seems more and more like an undeservedly under-appreciated composer. That Gann guy might be onto something...

Nude Rolling Down an Escalator

Speaking of which, I finally got a chance to sit down with Kyle's Disklavier studies. I could see these becoming very popular if they were heard by people who aren't necessarily connoisseurs of 'serious' music (where's our post-classical A&R rep...or is that Kyle?). Texarkana is laugh-out-loud funny and Petty Larceny bears a freakish resemblance to the sounds in my sleep-deprived mind the night before a music history exam.

Stravinsky and Stravinsky

The wind ensemble at Eastman just did a concert bookended by the Octet and Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Among other things, it confirmed my thought that Stravinsky, perhaps more than other composers, really needs to be heard in person. For one thing, his ensemble choices often have striking presences on stage. When I first saw Symphony of Psalms, I had an experience similar to those New Yorkers who thought a UFO landed when the Guggenheim came to town. In the Octet, there was something just intriguing about the three pairs and a couple loners. Seems like a great-uncle or something to Carter's Triple Duo.

I don't know if this is a stretch, but the physical gestures needed to produce the sounds seemed linked in character to the sounds themselves. All the head bobs and 1-2 1-2 breathing felt like expressions of the same underlying idea.

Lastly, the sounds. Particularly in Symphonies. It's just full of killer sonorities. There were a couple other piecs on the program based on chorales. To my ears, their sonorities were a little off-balance. They were essentially solid, but they had a few parts which felt glued on — flute solos which got too glossy and some bass brass that overwhelmed the texture a little much. Stravinsky... when he laid down a chord the harmonic structure just felt total. Everything flowed smoothly, from the ground all the way up. Perhaps composition curriculums would benefit from the addition of a requirement in masonry...

Originally from Form/Content, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's all in . . .

. . . the annotations! Heather muses about the plight of the repertoire list and provides a titillating way of livening up the static, alphabetized, itemized, and categorized lists that adorn so many performer websites--annotate them. Not with historical, factual, and other "interesting" tid-bits, but with personal experiences from performances of those works. While a repertoire list suggests a performer's aesthetics, an annotated repertoire list would tell you why a performer believes in a particular piece he/she's chosen to display to the world as a work that they perform in public. What about telling about your personal relationship with the piece--both great performances and ones that tanked? We're all human, nonetheless. Today's performers--especially new music performers--need to reach out to audiences, to seem "real" to them. Blogging is one way performers have tried to do this, but the annotated repertoire list--now that's the next step!

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Unpretentious music

This past Wednesday, we had Alvin Lucier come to Eastern CT, speaking to a combined audience of a few of my classes. Most of my students did the usual complaining, but quite a few enjoyed it, which made me happy. Most students are still baffled at the i

Originally posted by Anthony Cornicello from Anthony Cornicello, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Giacinto Scelsi

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Charlemagne Palestine

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Luigi Nono - vocal music

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friendly Oscillation

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Breakthrough

Drew McManus and Molly Sheridan at NewMusicBox note that the Milwaukee Symphony is offering live performances on iTunes — including the premiere of Roberto Sierra's Third Symphony, which took place in September. It's a great thing, first, that a new work can move into circulation so soon after its premiere. (Sierra's piece is a vibrant fantasy on salsa themes. Tom Strini tells more.) It's also great that an orchestra has figured out how to put recordings on the Internet. For some years, union requirements for advance payments have made recording financially unviable. Milwaukee has capitalized on an Internet policy that was set forth five years ago by the American Federation of Musicians, but which no other orchestra has acted upon; they've fashioned a revenue-sharing agreement among musicians, conductors, soloists, and publishers. That agreement should become a model for orchestras across the country. Notice, though, that in the comments section of Drew's blog some musicians have raised doubts about the Milwaukee plan; one says that revenues will be minimal, and that musicians will therefore "give away their compensation for the recordings." Minimal's better than nothing, right? Most orchestras are getting no compensation for recordings because no recordings are taking place. This is progress. You can find the MP3s by searching for "Milwaukee Symphony" in iTunes Store.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /still in beta/

The second time around (Saturday night was the last of ten San Francisco Opera performances):

Better

• Attendance. The performance sold out and I didn't see anyone leave early.
• Act 1. The libretto was more coherent and significant the second time, and a result, the act had more dramatic tension. Last time, a "mythic" engineering lab seemed preposterous, even to this engineer-by-training; this time, maybe it could be.
• Gerald Finley. Listening to his new Ives CD this week helped me calibrate his baritone, and I enjoyed his performance. Or maybe he just had a better night.
• "Oppie." Maybe it was Finley, but this time I actually cared about Oppenheimer as a character.
• Love scene. Although still odd in both music and text, the Baudelairean rhapsody clicked.
  
• Batter My Heart. Last time, I liked the way Findley acted. This time, I also liked how he sang. A lot.
• Pasqualita. Barely remembered from the first performance (due to operatic sensory overload), this time Beth Clayton's contralto was other-worldly.
• Sound. Before, we were row P in the orchestra; last night, I was upstairs in balcony circle. The result? The chorus in particular had more presence and the electronica sounded better integrated. The opening sounds last week gave a ping-pong effect, as if being at a cinema multiplex. Of course, I couldn't see much from the cheap(er) seats. Does Findley actually smoke that cigarette?
• Stage: Actually, from the balcony, I noticed for the first time that "ground zero" circle on the stage, where much of the action was centered.
  
• Spouse. Without Laura, it's not as fun. No strangers complimented me on my clothes last night and unlike last time as I excitedly parked, no one asked if I was going to run to the opera house.
• Pre-concert lecture. Adams talked more about his other operas and how in all of them, he clearly was aiming for an American response rather than a purely mythological one as in say, Faust or the Greeks. He also was gratified it might be necessary to attend several performances to fully grasp the oepra. Finally, he mentioned receiving a letter from the retired director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator that suggested, if I got this right, there is no historical proof to indicate Oppenheimer had, er, marital relations. Adams said we were free to leave during that scene if it bothered us.

Worse

• Act 2 libretto. I found this part of the libretto even more tedious. At some point, I quit listening to and reading the text and just waited for the countdown.
• The ending. This time, I just felt the horror of the atom bomb. Last time, I felt a breathtaking sense of compassion.
• Groves and the Meteorologist. Confused by them the first night, the characters annoyed me last night.
• Pre-concert lecture. This time, Adams explicitly described the ending. While he pointed out one aspect I hadn't comprehended, I wonder if overall, he weakend its impact. It was like that old presentation saw "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you just told them." Fine for tech presentations but too explicit for art?
• Teller. I understand he's there to advance the story but especially during the second act, I found myself annoyed hearing speculative pessimism about the pending explosion from a government guy wearing jeans.
• Electronica. The introduction to Act I sounds "Euro avant-gardish" where the rest of the opera sounds contemporarily traditional. The latter is what Adams does best, I suppose. The former, along with the truck, airplane and radio fragments, was superfluous. This from a listener who enjoys John "nihilism" Cage, who thinks organized sound is inherently musical and who bought the new Boards of Canada CD in a harried trip to the Castro before the show.
• Chord. The chord at the beginning of Act 2 startled me last time, this time not so much.

Same

• Set: No change from my original feeling of abhorrence.
• Kid: That kid in pajamas strikes such an innocent note.
• Da Bomb: Less obtrusive from the balcony although this time it reminded me a bit of a fish with eyes.
  
• Melodic material: I walked to the car with a melody from I Looked through the Ceiling... playing in my head.  Not a good sign.
• Orchestration: Again, maybe Adams' best use of percussion since the first movement of El Dorado.
• Kitty. The line about her motive being loneliness is still vivid but I still don't see Kitty as the Gaia-like humanist that Adams suggests. Are we still disappointed about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson?
  
• Earbox. At the store, people inspected the $99.99 John Adams CD collection but no one bought it.
• Orchestra. Sounded fine again, especially the solo instrumental lines. There's a second act string passage that shows Adams is in fact entering a phase of "new complexity," at least relative to the old Adams. He's not likely to turn into Brian Ferneyhough, though.
• Target list. The sense of foreboding and doom when they review the potential target list was still powerful, especially when the horns played as they mentioned Hiroshima.
• Dance. The Gap Kids were great again, e.g. when a couple of them are carried by the others during Act 2.

Different

• Audience. Compared to the Sunday matinee, the Saturday night crowd was older and I heard more foreign language spoken. The guy next to me dozed off half-a-dozen times. During some line about the US being a great, honorable nation, somebody laughed. And on the way out, I heard this exchange:

Opera-goer: That's why they call it an experiment.
Spouse: You can't have everything.

I don't know if they were speaking of the opera or the country. On the whole, Doctor Atomic was a little better than the first time, even if it is not (yet) the all-encompassing transcendental art we might secretly hope for.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NOISE at the Library Concert, San Diego

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rix Piano Quartet in Seattle

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chanticleer rocks with Sound in Spirit

Concept albums have been at the cutting edge of rock music for decades. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released by the Beatles in 1967, was the definitive concept album which set the ground rules of a common musical theme with linked liner art, an

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 24, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2005

Mode Records New Releases

A few new things out on Mode Records. mode 153 John Luther ADAMS: Strange and Sacred Noise - performed by Percussion Group Cincinnati. mode 152 Iannis XENAKIS: Music for Strings - Syrmos, Aroura, Voile, Theraps, Analogique A B, Ittidra; John Eckhardt, Ensemble Resonanz, Johannes Kalitzke. mode 151 Frank DENYER: Faint Traces - Out of the Shattered Shadows 1 [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pierre-Laurent Aimard Mixes the Old and New

An article reviews Aimard’s penchant for throwing a difficult modern piece in with the “regular” stuff at piano recital.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Extensible Toy Piano Project

A Toy Piano mini-festival will take place at Clark University in 2 weeks. Featured are the Callithumpian folks, as well as a keynote by Kyle Gann.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Internet - The End of MusicoPolitical Theatre?

A few more words about Rzewski's comments during Kyle Gann's pre-concert interview Thursday night.  He recommeneded an 'open source' approach to all musical scores.  He claimed that he was putting all of his scores that weren't under contractual agreements online for free download.  'Music should be free' he claimed.  This was after his previously mentioned comments bashing the iPoddification of music away from live performance.  I'm just trying to figure this guy out...  So he sees the Internet solely as a means to promote performances but not listens.  Now, why would someone pitch that to an audience of Columbia students/New Music Fans?  My theory is that there is a confusion at work here with regards to what listening is.  If the Internet essentially functions as asynchronous radio, how is that a bad thing for music?  It seems that Rzewski, because he looks at his ouevre as very political and ritual music theatre, needs to believe that the iPod will never become the predominant venue.  His extra-musical message is lost.  You can't insist that the listener to 32 Variations look at a red curtain for an hour like he could at the concert.  This extra-musical infatuation with ideas, ultimately is what is problematic about Internet distro.  Heh, he also could not explain the dearth of political music.  It's my guess that he blames the Internet for that too.  Right, the 60's were not a generation of me-obsessed narcissists.  The draft drove the anti-war movement.  Not music.  Duh?  Old Hippies... what can I say.  Do everything my way cuz I'm old and angry and know better!  I kid... good concert after all, but strange interview....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Carnegie Hall Dispatch

Went to hear Mahler 5 last night at Carnegie with Alan Gilbert and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. Didn’t realize I’d also be hearing some new music. But, indeed, courtesy of Benny Andersson and Anne Sofie Von Otter, some new music I got. Turns out

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arc de Cercle

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What, though, is a clownsilly?

A sharp and funny appreciation of Thomas Adès by Tears of a Clownsilly, the composer-blogger who created the already legendary Which Major Work of Alban Berg Are You? quiz. He relates that when he returned an Adès CD to the library he said to the librarian "This guy knows what he's doing" — inadvertently pointing not at the CD but at a copy of Paul Reiser's Babyhood. A confirmed eclectic, he also speaks in praise of Guided By Voices, bemoans the psychoanalyzing of Benjamin Britten, and writes an ode to New Jersey Guidos.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apotheosis of the toy piano

New England noise-mongers might be interested in checking out a Toy Piano Festival and Symposium that's being held on Nov. 3 and 4 at Clark University in Worcester. Thus spake the press release: "The compositions range from a microtonal / related-complex-tempo-structures tape piece built from toy piano samples to an extended free improvisation by Steven Drury's Callithumpian Consort with an 'extensible' toy piano instrument (a computer-assisted, post-prepared-piano noise-maker). Music will be performed using laptop computers as instruments, and computers will be used to process live-performed toy piano. Symposium presentations are divided into two sessions: 'listening' and 'composing/performing.' The listening topics include a discussion of Milton Babbitt's and John Cage's writing in the context of Frederick Hollander's toy ballet from Dr. Seuss's film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T., a narratological analysis of Radiohead's 'Idioteque', and a theoretical account of listening to 'ubiquitous' music. In the second category, there are talks on German techno-chameleon Uwe Schmidt, 'networked performance blogs' and a recent public space installation. Kyle Gann, composer and music critic from The Village Voice, will deliver the keynote address, 'The Toy Piano in the Post-Prohibitive Age,' on Saturday, November 5 at 7 p.m." I haven't encountered this many scare-quotes since David Spade was on Saturday Night Live, but it all sounds cool.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NOISE at the Library Concert

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Auden on Mozart et al

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NYME At Julliard

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Oy, Vey

Every few months I write something here about needing CD reviewers and two or three people respond and I go to the post office and mail a batch of ten or so disks by priority mail. Sometimes, I get a review or two back in a couple of weeks and then there

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Medieval or Modern?

Question: When does Jerry Bowles allow me to write about Tallis' sublime motet Spem in Alium, composed in the 16th century, on Sequenza21? Answer: When it is playing as part of a performance installation in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Back in

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 23, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 22, 2005

4' 33" (1952). John Cage /nothing/

Rajeev Nair, a journalist from the United Arab Emirates, reflects on John Cage's 4'33" and how nothing is something:

A realization that from your vantage position at “nature’s intimate theatre,” the Nothing around you is deceptively devoid of emptiness.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Terry Riley - Requiem for Adam

Thirty-nine years ago today on 21st October 1966 144 people, 116 of them children, died when abnormal rainfall caused a mountain of coal waste to collapse onto a school at Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. The disaster happened just as pupils of Pantglas Junior School (right) were starting their morning lessons. It took nearly a week to recover the last body. An inquiry found that the National Coal Board was wholly responsible, and ordered them to pay compensation. Both the National Coal Board and the UK Treasury refused to accept full financial resposibility, and the cost of removing the coal waste from the disaster site fell partly to the charitable Aberfan Disaster Fund. It was not until 1997 that the fund was repaid by the UK Government.

The death of a young person is a most tragic and moving event. It is also one of the hardest to express through music. Gustav Mahler set the bar very high with his song cyle, Kindertotenlieder. But contemporary American composer Terry Riley responded to the challenge beautifully with his Requiem for Adam.

Terry Riley pioneered what came to be known as minimalism with his In C which was premiered at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1964. While teaching composition, improvisation and North Indian Music at Mills College in Oakland he started working with the Kronos Quartet who had a residency there in the late 1970s. This was the start of a string of collabarations which resulted in works including the two hour long Salome Dances for Peace (1985).

Requiem for Adam is rooted in another tragedy. On Easter Sunday 1995 Adam Harrington died of natural causes while walking with his family on Mount Diablo, near San Francisco. Adam was the sixteen year old son of Kronos leader David Harrington. Terry Riley knew Adam well, and was moved to write a string quartet memorial. The work is in three movements. The two outer ones are for string quartet alone. The middle movement, Cortejo Funebre en el Monte Diablo, combines the quartet with an electronic soundtrack of horns, bells, electronic percussion and gongs in a moving procession of sound. The superb Kronos recording includes a coda in the form of a solo improvisation by Reilly inspired by Pandit Pran Nath. (Photo at the head of the story is Reilly with Pandit Pran Nath in 1981).

Requiem for Adam is one of those works we all wish had never been written. It must have been very difficult for Riley to write, and even more difficult for the Kronos to play. Terry Riley says that he composed the Requiem to resolve the sadness shared with Adam's family, and we are privileged to be able to share in that experience on today of all days.

For a very informative research project on the Aberfan tragedy follow this link
There are some immensely moving pictures of Aberfan today at this link
Picture credits:
Aberfan - Wilson Almanac
Terry Riley and Pandit Pran Nath - Terryriley.com
Album sleeve - Musicweb

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Rare Romantic Requiems in Avignon

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

DMG Newsletter

Another weekend, another DMG Newsletter with lots of new release info.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Soprano Sings Beefheart

A new music ensemble is performing a Beefheart arrangement. A fascinating concert programme which includes an unusual new arrangement of Bat Chain Puller has been announced by Zeitgeist, the eclectic new music ensemble from St Paul, Minnesota. Zeitgeist’s Bat Chain Puller is scored for MalletKat (a mallet keyboard synthesizer), another keyboard synthesizer, bass clarinet, and drums. Perhaps [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Friday Informer: Music by the Numbers

17 Days, 75,000 Tracks, 2000 Guitarists, and ?44,000

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We Cannot Retrace Our Steps (1946-47). Virgil Thomson

Via tingilinde, Apple and Stanford University combine to present Stanford on iTunes. From the link, click on Open Stanford on iTunes, then from iTunes click on Music, click on the Concerts tab and finally, click on the Get Tracks button. Voila, thirty free downloads of concert music presented at Stanford for the Daniel Pearl concerts including tracks by Mark Applebaum, Virgil Thomson, Mozart et al:

Stanford on iTunes provides university-related audio content via the iTunes Music Store, Apple’s popular music jukebox and online music store.  Stanford on iTunes gives alumni and the general public free access to a wide range of Stanford-specific digital audio content.

Only one Stanford Marching Band track though (and it was sedate)...

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

David's Lamentation (1778). William Billings

Slight listening tonight: a slightly sinister North by Northwest by Bernard Herrmann, a slightly precise Chanticleer performance of William Billing's David's Lamentation and a slightly incisive Aspen Quartet by Burt Goldstein.

Art of the States streams a slightly rural version of David's Lamentation.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Listening to the Freed

While setting up the Listening Room at the Sequenza21 wiki I remembered a cool Webjay feature, InstaM3U. Basically use the URL, http://webjay.org/insta.m3u?url=url by passing in your URL and it'll automatically generate a stream-worthy correctly mime-typed M3U file. I'm sure I'm missing quite a few listens, because of IE's inept handling of MP3 files and naive users not knowing to right-click and save when that happens etc. Now I'll be taking all of my MP3 url's and turning them into streamers. Which got me thinking, how many more ways are there that I'm losing listens by not handling naive users better. And I know for a fact many of my listeners are newbies because the whole classical music world is barely web literate. They've missed the heady MP3.COM online independent artist hysteria, the rush to try micro-payments, the selling of CD's online. The new world is scary, free and a little lonely. A world of zero CD sales, reviews only if you pay, and distribution only if you pay. Many classical artists now assume that giving away a recording for 300 copies of a CD is the norm for distribution. I think of course, that all channels must be used to make your music heard, but I just can't get up the whatever, to cut that check, to print those CD's, to buy that ad, to mail that CD off for review. Not when I"m getting 10,000 or more downloads a month. Come on down real classical music world. It's hopeless, it's hot and it's lonely not knowing who your listeners are but there are greedy ears everywhere. The BBC proved that this week with their BBC giveaway! Beethoven Downloads. Free stuff rules. When will it stick as legit?...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mashups and Ives and Everything All at Once

I've recently been listening to some excellent mashups, most notably found through the Radio Clash (at least I was, before it turned into a gay audioblog - since issue #29). I've been into mashups since they first started coming out, and it's been easy to notice the increasing slickness in the combining of the tunes. Elsie pointed out to me after hearing the Clash Killers that this was the first completely successful (iho) post-modern art form. That all the pieces had maintained their integrity while allowing for a new content layer to be created. This got me thinking as to why I was enjoying them so much. It wasn't just the raw humor of hearing Abba plus Echo and the Bunnymen, it was something else, something Ivesian. Living in a big city, I've always enjoyed the all-at-onceness of the sound experience. The halal meat market blaring Umm Kulthum over a car's subwoofer beats with the police improvising a car siren solo on top. (Some cops should really become noise artists - they do the weirdest things with their sirens). Being forced to experience a sonic space in this way, has gotten us all used to parallel musical streams as a part of our daily experience. The simultaneity of this new art form in its paradoxical at-onceness can allow for a thrilling artistic exposure of parallelism - unparallelled since Ives. As we all have heard, Ives' father would forceably expose him to exprerience multiple brass bands simultaneously, make him sing in parallel keys, etc. This experience is now a part of our daily lives. I realized that this parallellism of musical streams has been a musical interest for years of mine. My music has always tried to force a melodic layer to the middle and the bass line to a melodic theme. Its an area, that many artists have explored, certainly, from Ockeghem's simultaneous use of chanson in his secular works to Bach's quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations. Of course one could cite Cage and the other Chance-aholics in this vein also, but I find the intentionality of the musical parallelism to be the key to its enjoyment. The skill of finding the right moment to bring in the hook after absolutely the 'wrong' chorus can be amazing and a real commentary on our audio experience today. Obviously, the hooks, the choruses, all function potentially as symbols, which can be a source of amusment (Abba and Echo for example). This symbolic mixing is something that not many composer's have taken advantage of. One thinks of Stockhausen's Hymnen, a monumental failure of symbolic musicality but an amazing one nonetheless. Hymnen is a mashup in that context of course. (Even given the ring modulations - today's pop mashups employ bandwidth filtering frequently to bring in new elements)....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Wiki as 2nd Generation New Music Community

This Monday I installed and configured a new music wiki at the Sequenza21 web site. At first, I was questioning why bother, given my experience with MP3.COM. For those that don't remember those good old days, MP3.COM started out focussed, progressive and then slowly slipped into an anything goes type of scene which ultimately led me to start NetNewMusic and The Classical MP3 Portal. Curation seemed to be a necessity to keep every kid who had an MP3 that used a string patch from claiming their music was contemporary or classical. Now that the site is up, I'm beginning to see some interesting differences. For one, there are a zillion places to promote your music now, so the S21 site is probably off of most spammers scopes. Perhaps another reason the S21 scene is working is that the good folks at S21 never seemed to go through the MP3.COM era of new music excitement, disappointment and then disgust. They seem to think that sharing MP3's is fun, hence the Listening Room. Ouch I had thought that after 150,000 downloads BlueStrider had been heard by everyone on the web. It seems not to be the case and from that participation, my piece is now being featured at Kyle Gann's PostClassic Radio. As the web has become the primary music distribution system, perhaps micro-communities can thrive now without stepping on each other's toes? Is it possible that there won't be the need to have genre cops anymore because there will be super obvious places to place your links? Does that mean that these communities might actually thrive and promote each other's music in a genre-relevant manner? Wo... You just never know where the web is going to turn or what opportunity is going to present itself to you. I see that I have to not make assumptions about how web communities are built, what they know, how they're going to react, how they work together. It's all exciting again. Who'd have thunk it?...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Online Audience Building and a Flood of Pirates

Sorry about the dearth of postings recently; it's been a rough few months. The crazy real estate market forced us to leave our super-cheap apartment of 16 1/2 years, the move was physically exhausting to illness. Big cities can seem like mere traps for artists these days, providing little or no real benefit while sapping every ounce of your strength. On to the topic. We did luckily have a vacation planned - planned one week after our move! But after returning I noticed that my MP3 hosting site - Harrington MP3's was down. In a mere two days, I had had 16 GB of downloads. Now who or what power in the world could promote my eccentric classicisms towards that lofty audience size? Russian MP3 collectors. Pirates. Piano Funky - Collection. There I was - sandwiched between Gorillaz and Chill Out Dreams. Featured like a commercial artist of value and not the forgotten American 40 something 'artiste de demain'. The unwashed, uncultured masses were downloading and sharing my music in an unprecedented manner - as if I were worthy of their criminality. And what had happened of the barriers between classical music and pop? Where were the 'Serious Concert Music' banners that my genre absolutely requires to be intelligible? Where were the provisors - 'If you like Stravinsky or Schoenberg - this music might be up your alley'. They were non-existent - I had been curated as if I were a pop star, another underground hero to be mixed in with the eccentric noises of today's genre-bending multitude. I felt honored and then I felt a bit frightened. If every Russian, Chinese, Indonesian, Turkish illicit MP3 site (a few other pirate sites I've found mention of myself) were going to feature my music - I wouldn't be able to afford to provide MP3's to the (ahem) civilized and cultured American/European audience that my career requires! Now the pirate free-for-all was turning my music into another online commodity that you had to have now and I wouldn't have the bandwidth to be ready to tackle the world of the real if and when it ever comes calling for 'yours truly'. The net has opened up vast vast vast audiences. I know, I hope, that my music can speak to millions of them - I am that deluded. And I know, I hope that many musics of all flavors will be able to be heard by these audiences, also. But how can 'le deluge' of anybody with a PC and a wire be controlled? Of course it can't. It can't be channeled, it can't be charmed. It is the Baudrilliardian mass that lurches one way and the other. I played a game - a game of creating a site that looked like a pirate MP3 site and I became a pirate player. I've merged the roles of apparently illegal sharing and music promotion and been burned. Now how do I proceed? Since that happened (actually even before as my 40GB limit had been approached) I've had to take my site offline the end of each month. I've been mirroring my site at Parnasse, but Elsie needs her share of the bandwidth for all the people looking for 'Anime' and finding her painting called 'Anime.' The web's chaotic audience takes and takes and takes... when will it give?...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Criticism and Legitimacy - Net vs. The Real

Reading some of the discussions at other blogs on this issue, I came upon a comment about a fellow electronic musician who had just gotten signed onto an IDM label. He'd been forced to announce that all his tracks were coming down and that he'd no longer be giving them away for free. So, what did he accomplish? Why was he willing to risk losing his entire net audience? People now would have to buy his album to hear his music. Would they follow him into being an artist they would pay to hear? That was the risk. And it is a huge risk because labels that don't cater to popular tastes typically do CD pressings of less than a thousand copies. So, there's a hope this musician will sell that many CD's. An unknown electronic musician would stand a better chance of getting into the record stores and getting heard by giving away his CD's; sneaking fake-barcoded home-made CDR's into Tower herself! And in a year from now, without his net audience, he'll be a nobody, with perhaps a few hundred bucks in his pocket but many less ears jamming to his work. Two worlds are colliding. The net music world, with its assumptions of popular validity and sharing, typically beyond fair use standards, and the old music world, with its hierarchies, promotional methodologies and assumptions about fat paybacks. I believe, of course, as an early net music adopter, that the net music world is destined to win; one can't fight free music; the net will encompass everything at some point and become the global library. So we're fighting for what now? Sales as a symbol of legitimacy? Print reviews or awards as a symbol of quality? That is bordering on pointless now. A write up now, a feature in say, Computer Music Journal or even Rolling Stone haha would produce in my life nothing. I've heard that even Putlitzer prizes now no longer guarantee a string of commissions. Without the metric of the sale, legitimacy has become the playground of the elites. In the contemporary classical world, its increasingly reverting back to the playground of the idle rich. I don't believe its unconnected to point out that the first composer of my generation to win the incredibly prestigious Grawemeyer prize (first awards went to Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Takemitsu) is coincidentally a multi-millionaire, George Tsontakis. I'm not sure how it helped; he's a good composer IMO, but I am absolutely certain that without his fortune he'd likely be in the same boat as the rest of us poor mugs. Nowhere. The rich have to hide their connectedness or their privilege would be exposed. And the rich, still control, to an astonishing degree the playing field that we play on, when we engage the real world. Another reason the real music world, within the arts, is crumbling. We want a world without favorites. We want a world that rewards attentiveness not mere connectedness. We want a world where what I say to my bud matters, that artist X does in fact rock even though he's a poor shmuck working at Kinko's during the day. For most musicians, frankly, who are not pandering to the popular tastes, any review, is to the point of being practically futile. I won't get a record deal, I won't get a fat commission from the NYPO, even if Alex Ross calls me the next Beethoven. That is how impotent the print media has become and its partially a consequence of the blogosphere and partly a consequence of the increasingly non-hierarchical way that fame is being distributed. Again, what are we fighting for? I think we're fighting for listens, and if the audience is receptive, we're fighting for a type of placement in a loosely defined database of musical references. We're fighting to get listed in web wikis, and in directories of personal faves. We're fighting for more listens to the point where a rave review by a big name critic - even a cover feature in a magazine - become a mere anecdote in the well-linked conglomeration of pointers to one's favorite musics. Another example. Yesterday I received a fund raising mailing from Elliott Carter. The man himself, my very very old ex-teacher and not coincidentally a multi-millionaire himself, begging at my door for the American Music Center. Curious as to what they were up to lately, I read the usual hype and noticed one intriguing new program. They're going to be putting up some type of online radio show. Maybe something like Kyle Gann is doing. Of course, the station will represent, not the desparate futile masses who are the AMC membership, but instead, the selected favorites of both non-members and members alike. How do I know this? Because I know the AMC. (They can prove me wrong, but I'm certain it won't be a random selecting of member MP3's). So if I join, I have a shot at getting featured in their radio show. What would happen, in the best possible situation if I were featured on every radio show they put on? Nothing. I'm not being bitter or cynical, I am beginning to recognize the futility of combatting the hiearchies of the real musical world AS THEY CRUMBLE. The real music world, won't commission a piece from a nobody. They need the map of the resume, to prove that the artist is in fact on the road to Rome. Without this certified map of on the wayness that artist is a nobody. This dependency on mapped legitimacy, with the implicit recognition all players in this world have - that it is in fact bullshit; a pointless listing of favoritisms, connections through friends, and lucky happenstances - is one reason these hierarchies are crumbling. If there are 20,000 American composers all with vaguely interesting resumes how can we make our decision as to who to promote - or even who to listen to? Organizational recognition is pointless and only feeds the aspirations of the most mediocre careerist today. So what does web recognition look like? I've noticed over the years, web pages that list my name, right underneath Beethoven and before Haydn. Are these listings incompetent? Are they a rave review of my genius? Neither - I believe. They are indicators of 'check this shit out' by amateurs; they point but do not praise. They nestle together in the Googlesphere like the crowds at a red carpet reception. Given enough of these pointers anything is possible. The real world cracks. The critics gasp at their pointlessness. And billions of friendly ears begin to listen. Why risk that for a few sales? The real world exists today to be the audience. Not to be the critic. We are bees in a hive singing and listening to each other without concern for symbolic hierarchy. The real critic today is the multitudinous fluidity of the net....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ReBlogoSpherical Contextual Distortion Devices

This week I started the New Music reBlog as a way to promote and disseminate new music blogginess throughout the galaxy. It uses software from Eyebeam called, reBlog which lets you subscribe and aggregate multiple RSS feeds for later commenting, quoting, or merely pointing to. Several issues about identity and authorship have come up by Robert Gable at awoks, et al because reBlogging essentially creates blog entries from RSS feeds and their inherent context is morphed by the act of re-associating the texts away from their home space. Also, some feeds quote in their entirety the blog entry while others have no text at all. Kyle Gann's PostClassic blog's RSS feed doesn't even have his name in it, nor his text. I've been trying to hand-edit those, but at a certain point, the RSS feed itself determines the reblogged content. I use RSS readers from time to time (when I remember to look at them) but I've noticed I'm reading more music blogs since I set up this reBlog. So, maybe, the loss of context will encourage a curiosity about their home blog planet and the reader will voyage into their native blogospace. Although it's been talked about a bit already, I'm heartened by the recent news that studies have proven that people who Online file sharers buy 5 times the amount of music that non-pirates do. Sounds like all this talk about attacking piracy is just hurting their strongest and fastest growing customer base. Who'd have thunk it!...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Flocking Luddites

I'm typing this from the new Flock browser with builtin blog editor.  It's built off of Firefox and looks like a great new tool.  Maybe this will get me off my ass to post more and probably shorter commentaries.  Went to the Rzewski concert at Miller Theatre last night for the premiere of "Bring Them Home".  Kyle Gann interviewed Rzewski before the concert where he made some entertainingly luddital views (like a luddite) about how music was going to shortly return to a live-performance centered activity and that iPods would no longer rule.  Almost fell out of my seat.  ;)The music was well performed and reminded me how, Rzewski can really write great music.  Too bad he seems he'd rather play with ideas.  I don't mean the politics.  I just don't find watching two great pianists slapping their knees intersting.  Call me a luddite in that regard!  ...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Getting with the Program

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard composers say, “This piece isn’t program music, but…” with the “but” followed by a description of all the things – poetic, philosophic, personal – the music depicts. The more I hear this, the more I feel like

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Terry Riley - Requiem for Adam

Thirty-nine years ago today on 21st October 1966 144 people died, 116 of them children, when abnormal rainfall caused a mountain of coal waste to collapse onto a school at Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. The disaster happened just as pupils of Pant

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

reBlogging Podcasts/Playlists

While thinking about how this reBlogging stuff is going to change the nature of RSS distribution it became apparent that it would change not just blogs, but Podcasts and Webjay playlists, too. Microcontent aggregation is how the general process is being described and now Yahoo is supposedly building a tool to do just what reBlog does now. For a Podcast reblogger to be interesting, I think you'd need to have it be able to stream Podcasts as easily switchable auto-pausing channels. So you'd have an app that would essentially let you 'scan' the dial for new Podcasts. And when an ad or a boring part came up, the app would pause that channel as you switched to another. Something like that... Just an idea... iTunes of course is already doing this to a certain extent. What other features would a playlist reblogger have? Faster scanning, of course, is the reblogging feature and direct contact with content....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the Music Like Water World Flows the True Artist

Gerd Leonhard, self-proclaimed Musical Futurist writes an article getting a lot of attention at NewMusicBox. In it he examines the implications of a world where music is so commoditized, through online subscription services, such as Yahoo and the new Napster, that music has become a utility, like water. From the article, Once music is unleashed and the dinosaurial fight for the simple privilege of having access to it is over for good, distribution ceases to be a barrier to entry: all music, all artists, and all writers will be in those pipeline... ...the real challenge and the real opportunity going forward: getting exposure and being discovered—the rest is already built into the pipeline. What Gerd misses out on, is the fact that this is a great thing, because, it levels the playing field. In this type of world, the cream rises to the top, not the merely over-promoted and well-connected. Music that matters will be noticed because it is listened to. Other writers including Pliable at On an Overgrown Path fears for the artists. His blog haiku: Water from faucets sounds like a listener's dream - will hurt true artists Hurt true artists? Huh? The majority of true artists now are fighting to get through the ear canal. They're not the ones on the radio, getting recorded. They're the artists that are not getting promoted in record stores, getting performed in concert halls. They're the ones that didn't spend the money to hire an agent like so many composers, didn't spend the money to hire an orchestra and record their own music while pretending its a real record company recording and promoting their music. The Music Like Water flow will be huge, it will be meritocratic and it will create giant new opportunities for curators, critics, musician-networks. The main problem in getting paid, which is what everybody always focusses on, in this world is the over-abundance of musicians, not the collapse of the inherent assumptions about music distribution. This glut of artistry is one of the real problems and its a good problem. We need competition, to make better music. We need to hear everybody so that for once, the Nancarrow's don't have to almost die in obscurity. The big question, is will we be up to building the future curatorial forums? I see the music blog as a prime contendor and the reblogging movement, re-mixing aggregated micro-content into forms that will promote more better variety and more better personalization....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Audience Like Flood's Problems

Since I've been so forthright in my promotion of the music like water service, I'd like to backtrack a second and point out my views of the problematic nature this system will create. What are the problems inherent in creating a primarily online audience base? In my experience, there are several important ones, including: 1. Anonymity of Audience I have no way of knowing that some taste maker, somebody who could potentially shift some $$$ or audiences or performances my way has downloaded and totally dug my music. There is an implicit assumption that the downloading of music is always anonymous and not something such as a purchase that might benefit from some type of validation. Admittedly, this is a leftover part of the online::offline critical machine, but it still effects how the online audience responds and how even millions of downloads can produce no effect whatsoever in the offline audience. 2. Assumptions about offline credibility There are still assumptions that if you deploy your content primarily offline that it is because you have to. That you've been forced to, from a lack of interest in the real world, typically because you suck. Amazingly, my friends who shell out $$$ to record and press their CD's in what used to be called vanity projects can more easily get online reviews with 1/100th of the number of listeners. 3. Bandwidth Costs Even one recommendation can lead to a catastrophic failure in your ability to maintain a decent pipe of content. 4. Limited Offline Recognition No matter how many listens I've received, the offline critics are primarily focussed on live performances and real CD's. No matter the size of the audience (often miniscule) or the number of CD's the musician has sold. Anyways, I've been pitching more musicians get their music online and give it away... these are a few of the pitfalls that await this type of distro methodology. I'll be adding a few more as they wack me across the head....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sony Fake Critic - Class Action Lawsuit Won

From BoingBoing.net not exactly a new music-related story, more of an indicator of things to come as industry embraces viral/subversive marketing techniques; another indicator of an industry OUT OF CONTROL!. Sony has been forced to pay $5 to any moviegoer who can claim they were tricked into seeing a movie based on a review by their David Manning, fake film critic. Not only do we have government producing fake criticism (US Agriculture Department, US Education Department), now industry is doing it to itself. Claim Form...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brian Eno on the Microsoft Boot Sound

'I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.' Q and A With Brian Eno...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music and Fascism in Utah

Watch this video. Save it and spread it around. This is the U.S. military attacking ravers in Utah. Police Raid Outdoor Music Event. These are not police. Seems like a warm-up for Bush's visit and the ensuing anti-war protests? First hand account on Daily Kos....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mashups and Quodlibets Have Driven Us Apart - BBC in Hot Water for Huh?

Talking with a friend about the mashup phenomenon this morning got me thinking. The effect certainly is musico-symbolic; the tunes resonate in the memory as past experience signifiers and having those points morph into other points is interesting and pleasurable. We have in a sense, created with mashups a musical gateway into Kierkegaardian moments of rotational and repetitional experience. Nostalgia triggers, apperception moments, all rolled into one piece of sonic experience. The real paradigm for a many of these morphogenetic musical anomalies is the classical variation. Harmonies, tunes, are essentially intact but the backing tracks are replaced in a way that Beethoven, Brahms or Bach would have found interesting - because - the accompaniments are from other pieces of music. Maybe Bach's quodlibet from the Goldberg Variations is the original mashup. In that short, final movement, Bach used 4 pieces of street music (including the ever popular, "Cabbage and turnips have driven me away, Had my mother cooked meat, I'd have chosen to stay"). Through these contrapuntally-expressed street songs, Bach melds pop music, the Goldberg harmonies and original music. It's not the greatest piece of music, but conceptually it is mind-boggling and Bach knew it. One of his last pieces, it represents a return to the use of musical symbolism inherent in the Renaissance when composers would use tunes from pop songs in their masses and these tunes would represent, of course, emotional symbols of their prior uses. Probably my favorite mashup so far, for its technique and for its emotive value is DJ Earworm's Stairway to Bootleg Heaven. A re-assemblage of Dolly Parton - Stairway to Heaven vs. Eurythmics - This City Never Sleeps vs. Beatles - Because vs. Laurie Anderson - O Superman vs. Art Of Noise - Moments in Love vs. Beastie Boys - So Whatcha Want vs. Pat Benetar - Love is a Battlefield into one smooth and poignant package. Downloading trouble at the BBC Speaking of free music, the BBC has got itself into hot water from the big classical record companies for uh.... popularizing a dying art form?, re-invigorating the symphony? No! But for undermining the value of music and unfair competition! Sorry, it's hard to type when I'm laughing so hard. The record companies shall reap what they have sown....

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Zen and the Art of Composing

Those of you of a certain vintage will recall a bestselling book from some years back called Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. For those who missed it, I'll summarize: there are two kinds of motorcycle enthusists. One is romantics, for whom the

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 22, 2005 at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2005

New music on a showestring: addendum

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pre-Stockhausen round-up

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Keep twiddling the knobs Stocky............

The Guardian's arts correspondent Charlotte Higgins on the price of tickets for tomorrow's Stockhausen concert in London....

'I was taken aback to be told the price was £35 ($63) per ticket. After all, it's not much more tha an hour of music. And, though he's a living legend and all that, he's only one bloke twiddling some knobs. It's not like there's an orchestra, a choir and five expensive divas to pay for. '

Photo credit: Soeren Stache/EPA via Guardian

If you enjoyed this post follow an overgrown path to Paying the piper

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Catch up

Wow, looking at that picture from the last post--it seems like that was so long ago and two and a half weeks ago really isn't that long. A lot has happened since then and here's a quick recap. On October 12 I gave my first UA faculty recital, accompanied by Wenli Zhou at the piano and Gary Cook on percussion (and also Sarah, Kendra, and Scott, three very able crystal glass players). It was a good time and a great success. My parents even came all the way out from New York for the occasion. Featured on the program were three world premieres--ahem--I mean two world premieres and a "workshop performance" (more on that later)--David T. Little's descanso (after omega), Per Bloland's Quintet for alto sax and interactive electronics, and Michael Djupstrom's Walimai (the workshop performance). I was surprised at the reaction to Per's piece. I didn't think that many people would care for it even though I thought it was a very successful and cool piece. But everyone was talking about that piece. The interactive part was what seemed to interest them the most. Done well, I think interactive music can be much more engaging for audiences than pieces with playback, no matter how bad-ass the playback piece might be. Much to my surprise, my parents even liked the piece (and, yes, they would tell me if they didn't--really!).

Three days after the show at the U of A, I headed back to Ann Arbor to give the "official" premiere of Mike Djupstrom's piece. Explanation: I commissioned the work jointly with my mentor Donald Sinta at the University of Michigan and Mike also received funding from the Michigan Music Teacher's Association. The agreement with them was that the premiere was to take place at their conference on October 16. So it was "officially" premiered there and not in Tucson. Don't believe anyone if they try to tell you different!

Going back to Ann Arbor felt like going home after having lived in the desert southwest for the past four months. It was also a beautiful time to be there--the air was crisp, the leaves were changing, and the Arbor Brewing Company was serving their Oktoberfest. Sigh.

Up next: NZ and National Insecurity 2.

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yet Another Stockhausen Interview

This time from The Independent, in anticipation of his upcoming London appearance.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Philadelphia: Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be

Cynthia Hopkins's Accidental Nostalgia is a stand out during the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bat Chain Puller (1976). Don Van Vliet

Minnesota new music ensemble Zeitgeist will play an arrangement of Captain Beefheart's Bat Chain Puller:

Zeitgeist's Bat Chain Puller is scored for MalletKat (a mallet keyboard synthesizer), another keyboard synthesizer, bass clarinet, and drums. Perhaps most interestingly the vocal part is taken by a soprano, Janet Gotschall Fried.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

They Are There! (1942). Charles Ives

I hope your Charles Ives birthday celebration went well today...

Recently, Kyle Gann has had some important and surprising posts on Charles Ives:

Of course, Ives was actually a Wilsonian Democrat whose ideas were too radical even for 1930s Democrats, let alone today’s: he favored a world government to prevent wars (the League of Nations being a first step), a cap on annual salaries of executives, national phone voting for national issues to more directly register the national will, and a prohibition on any rich person having the right to interfere in government. Oct 19

Ives assigned the royalties for his Third Symphony to Lou Harrison, who conducted its premiere in 1946 (and gave him half of the Pulitzer Prize money he won from the work). I don’t know how “out” Lou was by that point, but I find it difficult to believe that Ives was in complete ignorance of his sexual orientation. Oct 17

When we’re through this cursed war,
All those dynamite-sneaking gougers,
Making slaves of men (God damn them),
Then let all the people rise and stand together in brave, kind humanity. (from Ives'  They Are There!) Oct 14

For my celebration, I just bought the Gerald Finley Ives recording on Hyperion titled A Song - For Anything. By the way, anyone who sings both Ann Street and opera by John Adams is by definition exceptional.

Ives birthday posts: - Jeremy Denk, Jerry Bowles, Voices, and MCI Journeys
Gann PostClassic/Ives comment: David McIntire
New doctoral dissertation on Ives' use of hymn tunes in his Third Symphony (via Bluescreen): Mark Alan Zobel

Since it's still Thursday here on the West Coast, I get the last word on Ives (unless any Hawaiian classical bloggers want to chime in). For today anyway, what's the last word that best captures Charles Ives and his works?

enigmatic

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rzewski Tonight

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Day Revisited

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Singende Säge

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Keep twiddling the knobs Stocky...........

The Guardian's arts correspondent Charlotte Higgins on the price of tickets for tomorrow's Stockhausen concert in London.... 'I was taken aback to be told the price was £35 ($63) per ticket. After all, it's not much more tha an hour of music. And, thoug

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Breaking News

Charles Ives and Tom Petty were both born on October 20.

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 21, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2005

“One who did no harm to our poor earth...”

One last post on Charles Ives (previous ones here and here), and if you’re tired of the subject, read no further. I got a bug up my ass about his reputation after running across a reference to him on the internet by a composer who casually referred to him as politically rightwing, as though that were something everyone knew about Ives. Of course, Ives was actually a Wilsonian Democrat whose ideas were too radical even for 1930s Democrats, let alone today’s: he favored a world government to prevent wars (the League of Nations being a first step), a cap on annual salaries of executives, national phone voting for national issues to more directly register the national will, and a prohibition on any rich person having the right to interfere in government. Today we would have to call him a socialist or worse, because there is no major political party with ideas remotely as democratic, liberal, and left-leaning as Ives’s. A self-made millionaire who funded liberal causes and voted against his pocketbook, he was kind of a minor George Soros of his day. And yet, ludicrously, his reputation, now based more on innuendo than fact, has become such that musicians routinely bring him up as a parallel to Wagner, as someone whose music one can only like despite his personal failings.

Antonio Celaya writes to remind me that when Lou Harrison had a nervous breakdown and needed several months’ hospitalization, John Cage applied to Ives...

Originally posted by Kyle Gann from Kyle Gann: PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:59 PM| Comments (0)| TrackBack (0)

Posted by jeff at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And Speaking of Dr. Atomic

Since childhood I've been something of a mathophobe, a coinage of mine to denote a psychoneurotic condition wherein the sufferer virtually breaks into a cold...

Originally from sounds & fury, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Envoys

There has always been a deep connection between ethnography and poesis; the encounter with "the other" provokes precisely the kinds of misunderstandings and speechlessness that productively feed the imagination. The encounter with the unfamiliar is an opportunity to rediscover the strangeness of the familar. The habit of ethnographic production is addictive and infectious, and even forgoing physical travel altogether is insufficient propholaxis. Marco Polo's diaries or Castaneda's Don Juan "field notes" are not less readable because they are frauds; the imagined lands of Swift or Nabokov's Zembla are not less ethnographic because they are fictions.

Some musicians reimagine musical history and ethnography: Bach's "French" music is not French music, but German Baroque music with French music as a topic. Stravinsky played this game all the time; his music is inevitably music about some other music. But some musicians have gone beyond purely musical concerns, and have found that they need to imagine the whole culture around their music. Two favorites: Kraig Grady, an Angeleno composer and just intonation instrument builder in the Partchian tradition has become our Ambassador to the Island nation of Anaphoria, not only providing us with the music, music theory, and instrumentation, but also the shadow theatre, mythology, cultural geography, and fragments of everything else that is anaphoriana. This is a project of decades, no sudden impulse, and the development in his instrumental design, performance practice, and the emerging clarity of his compositional project show that. Another musician, Herman Miller, has chosen to report from several lands elsewhere unknown, and provides us with information about both their languages and musics (mostly in non-12-tone-equal temperaments).

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The composition is the instrument

I went to a concert two weeks ago of music by Volker Staub, a local Frankfurt composer and instrument builder. Live performances by Michael Weilacher on a variety of percussion instruments and Staub himself on a long steel wire resonated by an oil drum were accompanied by a recording of Staub's "Witterungsinstrumente", weather-controlled instruments in an urban soundscape. The steel wire instrument was much less interesting than the percussion (to be fair, perhaps I am biased by a long relationship to extraordinary works of Lucier and Ellen Fullman for related long wire instruments), and the recording was often more vividly "composed" than the live performances, which sounded sometimes more like instrumental demos than compositions. However, this may be an altogether misplaced criticism on my part: none of Staub's instruments was built as a "general purpose" instrument for a large repertoire of music (for example, they don't try to represent all of the tones of a tuning system), but rather the instruments and compositions were built together, so that the instrument's resources and the demands of the score are mapped one-to-one.

One of Staub's instruments is a set of sliced and suspended glass bottles. Partch's Cloud Chamber Bowls are clearly an inspiration here, but the smaller, more fancifully-shaped, and multi-colored glass bells in Staub's instrument have a quality that sound (and look) more delicately chamber-musick'd than orchestrally cloud-chambered.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Catch up

Wow, looking at that picture from the last post--it seems like that was so long ago and two and a half weeks ago really isn't that long. A lot has happened since then and here's a quick recap. On October 12 I gave my first UA faculty recital, accompanied by Wenli Zhou at the piano and Gary Cook on percussion (and also Sarah, Kendra, and Scott, three very able crystal glass players). It was a good time and a great success. My parents even came all the way out from New York for the occasion. Featured on the program were three world premieres--ahem--I mean two world premieres and a "workshop performance" (more on that later)--David T. Little's descanso (after omega), Per Bloland's Quintet for alto sax and interactive electronics, and Michael Djupstrom's Walimai (the workshop performance). I was surprised at the reaction to Per's piece. I didn't think that many people would care for it. But everyone was talking about that piece. The interactive part was what seemed to interest them the most. Done well, I think interactive music can be much more engaging for audiences than pieces with playback, no matter how bad-ass the playback piece might be. Much to my surprise, my parents even liked the piece (and, yes, they would tell me if they didn't--really!).

Three days after the show at the U of A, I headed back to Ann Arbor to give the "official" premiere of Mike Djupstrom's piece. Explanation: I commissioned the work jointly with my mentor Donald Sinta at the University of Michigan and Mike also received funding from the Michigan Music Teacher's Association. The agreement with them was that the premiere was to take place at their conference on October 16. So it was "officially" premiered there and not in Tucson. Don't believe anyone if they try to tell you different!

Going back to Ann Arbor felt like going home after having lived in the desert southwest for the past four months. It was also a beautiful time to be there--the air was crisp, the leaves were changing, and the Arbor Brewing Company was serving their Oktoberfest. Sigh.

Up next: NZ and National Insecurity 2.

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Philly’s Ars Nova

A article features the Philadelphia organization Ars Nova Workshop, which is going to be working with the AACM.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Prepared Trumpet

Istvan B'racz scored Mark Saba's film He Was a Poet with plenty of wood samples (yeah, that's right) and quite a bit of prepared trumpet, provided by yours truly. In this case, Istvan asked for the removal of the valve slides in different combinations, which yields an enormous range of new sound possibilities. Without the third valve slide, for instance, the trumpet can be made to sound rather like an angry goose, and without the the second valve slide, it can be mistaken for the death throes of an elderly woman:

He Was a Poet



The Liddell Gallery in New Haven, CT is hosting a screening of Mark's film at 7 PM on Veteran's Day.

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Song of the Aspens

Several composers, most notably Phil Kline, have set to music the press-conference poetry of Donald Rumsfeld — "There are known knowns / There are things we know we know." Scooter Libby's recently published correspondence with Judy Miller cries out for a similar musical treatment, perhaps in the lyrical-melancholy American Romantic style of Samuel Barber:

You went into jail
In the summer. It is fall now.
You will have stories to cover —
Iraqi elections and suicide bombers,
Biological threats and the Iranian
Nuclear program. Out West,
Where you vacation, the aspens
Will already be turning.
They turn in clusters, because
Their roots connect them.
Come back to work — and life.
Until then, you will remain
In my thoughts and prayers.
With admiration,
Scooter Libby.

I hear a prolonged melisma on "turning"....

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

yet another version...

Originally from david's waste of bandwidth..., ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Feeling Absolutely Famous: A View from Beijing

An American pianist takes a program of new music from the US to the 2005 Beijing Modern Music Festival.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Death of Klinghoffer (1992). John Adams

This week's theme here at aworks is apparently "visualizing minimalism." Kirk McElhearn commented that yes, seeing Steve Reich's music performed does enhance it. On the other hand,  Michael Kaulkin on About the Composer, blogging about Doctor Atomic, puts more emphasis on an opera's libretto:

People go to operas looking for different things. Some are in it for the singing, some go for the music, and some go merely for the experience. When I hear an opera, I expect it to meet the same dramatic requirements as a straight play. No matter how good the music is, or the staging or the costumes or indeed the budget, if the libretto doesn’t work, the opera as a whole is in jeopardy.

This has me thinking that I very much favor the visual and the musical, but the textual is subordinate. Then, cidhou, in a comment, pointed out that the bomb in Dr. A that I said looked like a Christmas ornament may in fact be historically accurate. A-ha. What I really want in my operas are abstract, intuitive presentations. I can think of several minimalism-based works where I prefer the abstract to the realistic:

• I still get thrills thinking about the stage for The Death of Klinghoffer. It was this large, metal, abstract representation of the ship, the lighting was vivid and even glaring, and the fact the Mark Morris Dancers were running through it in colorful costumes only added to the effect (not sure yet about Doctor Atomic's Gap-flavored khaki and white-shirted dancers). But in the film version of The Death of Klinghoffer, the realistic style alienated me such that I couldn't finish watching the DVD ("Oh my God, they're going to kill Sanford Sylvan").
• Similarly, I'll argue that Koyaanisqatsi's time-lapse photography is also a means of abstraction and makes it superior to the down-in-the-dirt realism of Philip Glass' second film -- Powasqatsi.
• Even in narrative film, I like my music linked to the more intuitive (if not actually weird). Bill Murray, Sharon Stone and others were great in Broken Flowers but a month later, all I really relish is the soundtrack (Hello, Holly Golightly). But with the recent Chinese film 2046, although the writing was confusing and occasionally tedious, and the music was annoyingly dated (although maybe appropriately so), I still find myself thinking, in a kinesthetic way, about the science fiction scenes.

Let's explore character portrayal and specifically, Philip Glass' quote about the influence of Beckett, Brecht, and others:

These writers took the subject out of the narrative. They broke the pattern of the reader identifying with the main character.

I don't think this was the intent of Sellars/Adams/Goodman in any of the Adams operas. But I have to say in none of them do I strongly identify with the lead character. I may have been sympathetic to Nixon, Klinghoffer, and Oppenheimer, but for example, several days later, who's the first character from Doctor Atomic that comes to mind?  General Groves, in spite, or maybe because of, his tedious diet problems, (although even he isn't rich enough to carry the opera). 

All this just confirms I need the visual and the aural for an opera to succeed, but narrative and characterization? Not so much. The five hour Einstein on the Beach would test that hypothesis.

FInally, can we swap in the set from The Death of Klinghoffer for Saturday's finale of Doctor Atomic?

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Composers Competition 2nd Brandenburg Biennial

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Discount Tickets for S21 Readers

Howdy folks. As co-producer of the "MTC at the MERC" concert series, I'm pleased to offer discounted tickets to readers of Sequenza21. Tomorrow's concert (October 19th at 6:30pm) features composer/accordionist Pauline Oliveros and spoken word artist I

Originally posted by Corey Dargel from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Becomes a Legend Most?

An accordian, of course. Corey Dargel has details on a rare Pauline Oliveros appearance in these environs tomorrow night and there's a discount for Sequenza21 readers...Which reminds me that Arnold Rosner has some free tickets to his 60th birthday concert

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Operation Sweet Dreams

Check this out: a musical pillow to help troops in Iraq sleep well.

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Criticism and Mortality

The most notorious response to a music critic ever is probably that of Max Reger who famously wrote to one tin-eared antagonist: "I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me." Our e-mail p

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 20, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2005

Paradoxes and Conundrums from the Classical Music Terrain

If you've already heard the new music that you're currently listening to, maybe it isn't so new.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 19, 2005 at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Six Pianos (1973). Steve Reich

Via Bruce Umbaugh, episode 2463 of WNYC's New Sounds has Steve Reich's You Are (Variations), Six Pianos, and an excerpt from Cello Counterpoint. I just tuned in and it's Six Pianos which means I missed You Are (Variations). John Schaefer goes on to suggest Cello Counterpoint may be the most difficult to play of Reich's Counterpoint series. Hard to tell from the minute or so actually streamed.

The Rambler relates how minimalism in general is best live (and how his mum couldn't drive and listen to Six Pianos):

In this respect Six Pianos shares something with the work of Brian Ferneyhough - an awareness of the potency of live performance.

I can't really comment since, despite hearing and owning pretty much all of Reich's work, I've never seen any of it performed live. I've tried to remedy this situation several times but to no avail (yet). Maybe next year at the Minimalist Jukebox series by the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall, curated by John Adams (and as advertised in the Doctor Atomic program). Unfortunately, the Reich-only concert has Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards, Three Movements, and Tehillim -- nothing for me there. Better, a couple of days later, Gloria Cheng et al play Four Organs, Cage's In a Landscape, and music by Riley, (Colin) McPhee, Pärt, Glass, (David) Lang, and Andreesen. The last night is Adams conducting selections from Glass' Akhnaten and also his own Harmonielehre. Those concerts coupled with a trip to the world's best Amoeba Records and maybe the marionnette theatre again. Hmm...

Update: MP3 stream of yesterday's New Sounds program on the "confluence" of Steve Reich releases here. Schaefer suggests You Are (Variations) "is already being received as one of Steve Reich's masterpieces in a career..."

rgable: aworks consciousness revolution era reich: aworks del.icio.us i love music pick only ten wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish the steve reich killed in afghanistan six pianos: wikipedia la scena musicale tehillim: the standing room current listening: eric owazen sinfonia for strings

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 19, 2005 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Indiana State U, 39th Contemporary Music Festival

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 19, 2005 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A SCELSI CENTENARY, Toronto

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 19, 2005 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Musicc for Chinese Zither

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 19, 2005 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

From One of the Horses’ Mouths

In 1999 Joseph N. Straus published an article in Musical Quarterly entitled “The Myth of Serial ‘Tyranny’ in the 1950s and 1960s.” In it he claimed that, contrary to the common belief, there had never been any pressure on young composers to use 12-tone technique in their music, that the 12-tone composers wielded no power in academia, and that 12-tone music was just a hunky-dory little movement that attracted scads of converts because it was just so damn fun. As I believe I’ve written about here, Anthony Tommasini took him neatly apart in a response in the Times for putting his thumb on the scales by limiting his statistics to pre-1970, the period in which the serialists were not yet firmly established in academia. Here’s another, more recent reaction:...

Originally from PostClassic,
ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:41 PM

Posted by jeff at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Relevance and applicability in music

Ach, go on then, here's something half thought-through. A little while ago, in this post-Dr Atomic world, Greg Sandow was defending his stance on 'relevance' and classical music. Greg makes some fine points, and I appreciate where he's coming from on all of this. However, by the end of his post, I started to wonder whether he actually did want to jettison all music that isn't new (yes, this is me questioning the wisdom of this), and therefore relevant. This is an unfair over-simplification of Greg's conclusion, but the simplification set me thinking: if we buy (as I do) the idea that 'relevance' of some sort is part of the complete musical experience, then how can the continuing performance of anything but the most contemporary, and politically explicit, music be valid? What does this 'relevance' actually mean?

Relevance I take to mean something that can be taken into real life outside the world of your headphones and the concert hall. Messiaen, for example, is a composer who is no longer up-to-the-minute contemporary, and who didn't generally worry much in his music about pressing political (or even earthly) concerns. Yet listening to it gives you an experince of pulse and time that very few composers in the West were even aware existed, or bothered to attempt. Even more so, this is wedded in Messiaen to a vivid holistic view of the world and its heavens. If you listen to Chronochromie, Des canyons aux étoiles, Eclairs sur l'Au delà or Quatour pour la fin du temps and don't take something - at least a question that you disagree with and need to resolve - into your life with you the next morning when you wake, you are, I'm certain, missing something. To name some others in my own experience, similar goes for Dowland, Purcell, Monteverdi, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Chopin, Shostakovich, Cage, Feldman. There are things in the music of all these composers that can enhance my day-to-day life beyond the closed intellectual/aesthetic/sensual pleasure of the notes themselves as they are played or as I recall them. God knows what these things are all the time, and you surely have a list of your own, but it's something to do with the way in which these composers' approach to material, sound, time, form, intersects with and illuminates my daily experience. Amongst those big names who are still alive (or recently deceased), I have found analogous experiences in Berio, Ferneyhough, Kurtág, Max Davies, Birtwistle, early Penderecki, earlier Adams, Grisey and Murail, to name a few.

J.R.R. Tolkien said something useful on this score when defending Lord of the Rings against readings of it as allegory: it's not allegorical, it's applicable, he says in the novel's foreword. And I think that's what I actually mean by relevance: applicability. There is still something applicable to be found in Cage, or Messiaen, that carries meaning forward from the music and into life outside the score. Amazingly, I find it still in Dowland. Schoenberg, less so - and I think most of my generation might agree, no matter how much we may or may not appreciate the music itself, as music. Future generations might. It has less to do with contemporaneity - I could name plenty of living composers whose music, beautiful though it may be, evaporates as soon as it has finished - and more to do with a trick of capturing something in sound.

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music Since 1960: Cage: Apartment House 1776

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music First, Excitement Later in von Eckardstein's Recital

The 40th season of the Washington Performing Arts Society’s popular Hayes Piano Series opened this Saturday at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater with the German pianist Severin von Eckardstein. Highly decorated with prizes (including a third and special at Leeds and a win the following year at the Queen Elizabeth), he seems one of those players that steadily and smartly build their career over the years rather than being teenage flavors of the day, catapulted to instant fame by marketing campaigns. (It makes for the kind of career that sacrifices material gains in the early years for the small chance of achieving lasting greatness… although I am probably wrong in assuming that either type of artist ever really had a choice.)

Eckardstein played the Schumann Fantasie in C Major, op. 17, as his first piece – a substantial and challenging work for any pianist. Programming the Fantasie pleasantly put the emphasis on interpretive qualities rather than mere technical skill. If the motivation behind it was a good one, the execution may have been, too, but no more than that. None of the three movements consistently convinced on an emotional level. Between nice touches here and there (especially in the more fulminant passages) the playing veered dangerously close to routine. When I read about him in the Financial Times well over a year ago, David Murray effusively praised Severin von Eckardstein’s performance at Wigmore Hall, pointing out “ultra-deft” pedaling and “ultra-lucid” everything; playing that has “infinitely precise graduations of touch and timbre […] lending astonishing depth.” The risk he was taking in the same Fantasie then was conspicuously absent at the Terrace Theater.

Other Reviews: Tim Page, Von Eckardstein: A Real Earful (Washington Post, October 17)

His widely praised qualities (in the Dutch press this “introverted young man” has been called “a new Horowitz” and a “genius”) came out much better in the Franck Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue. Whereas critics from past performances heard harp and organ sounds elicited, I still heard only a piano. But his undeniable quality started shining through the music in subtle ways. There was an assurance in his way of creating sound that can come across as rather plain one second and then suddenly points to unfailing and deep musicality. Instead of being bored at the sound, you settle for observance of nuances while awaiting the glorious. The result is that you are drawn into the music. The outward ‘glory’ never comes but the more intimate relation to the music begins to show its rewards after a while. (Anyway, most great soloists were and are great not on account of superior ability of playing but because of their ability to make the audience listen to the music better.) Just as much as the performer had warmed up, my ears, too, started to understand his playing.

Only a few of the surprising amount of unclaimed seats (the series is sold out on subscription, but it is always worth checking on the day of the performance to get a returned ticket) were filled during the Schumann. But the shuffling and huffing during the second movement was much less disturbing than one painfully slowly yet very audibly unwrapped piece of candy. It caused me a seemingly endless minute of anguish.

Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit – interrupted only by a cell phone and the subtle white noise of either the loudspeaker or AC system – once more took the listener on the trip towards the music. With the playing almost self-effacing on the surface, one went from curiously untouched to almost unwillingly seeking more – only to be surprised when there was more to find, after all. Eckardstein’s unsentimental, intelligent and mature playing can, depending on the occasion, be refreshing and presumably be worth all the past praise. I doubt if this particular recital showed enough to elicit such a rapturous response, though. It turned out to be a more educational experience, sprinkled with very impressive moments such as the dreamlike and precise Scarbo movement of Gaspard.

In a concert awash in Romantic pianism where all borders, lines, and structures were soft, faded, or hazy, a hard-edged Prokofiev sonata could have been relief; a well-defined and graspable raft amid the sea of sound. Not the ‘soft’ fourth sonata, however, which came out curiously if appropriately French. It was not missing in power, and the Allegro molto sostenuto’s rounded corners and mellow core were very well done even where I was wishing for the bite of some of the other sonatas. The third movement (Allegro con brio, ma non troppo) was a highlight of an unflashy, unspectacular recital that was the piano connoisseur’s prerogative to enjoy.

Severin’s encore of choice is Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, the fourth of Rzewski’s North American Ballads. A work that slowly works itself away from repetitive Darmstadt-type of muzak in the left hand (swelling to the point where the piano and some of the audience were at the breaking point) into a blues that is so infecting and surprising to the suspiciously reserved audience that it caused chuckles of delighted relief when the blues first set in. A gasp went through the hall when he came to the passage that is played with the elbow. The mechanical repetitions (one may think of the left hand in Chopin’s A-flat major Polonaise, op. 53) release a storm of energy that Severin knew to unleash better even than the composer himself on his Nonesuch recording. Needless to say that the ten/eleven-minute piece made for a tremendously effective concert closer.

Von Eckardstein has just released a Scriabin album, his second, on MDG. The Hayes Piano Series's next peformance will feature this year's Van Cliburn Competition winner Alex Kobrin on November 12th.

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Sounds Downtown

New Sounds Downtown is a San Diego organization that puts on new music shows in that area. Recently, a review of their latest show was posted.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Song of the Aspens

Several composers, most notably Phil Kline, have set to music famous poetic passages from the press conferences of Donald Rumsfeld — "There are known knowns," and so on. Scooter Libby's recently published "Aspen" letter to Judy Miller cries out for a similar musical treatment, perhaps in the lyrical-melancholy American Romantic style of Samuel Barber:

You went into jail
In the summer. It is fall now.
You will have stories to cover —
Iraqi elections and suicide bombers,
Biological threats and the Iranian
Nuclear program. Out West,
Where you vacation, the aspens
Will already be turning.
They turn in clusters, because
Their roots connect them.
Come back to work — and life.
Until then, you will remain
In my thoughts and prayers.
With admiration,
Scooter Libby.

I hear a prolonged melisma on "turning"....

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Six Pianos (1973). Steve Reich

Via Bruce Umbaugh, episode 2463 of WNYC's New Sounds has Steve Reich's You Are (Variations), Six Pianos, and an excerpt from Cello Counterpoint. I just tuned in and it's Six Pianos which means I missed You Are (Variations). John Schaefer goes on to suggest Cello Counterpoint may be the most difficult to play of Reich's Counterpoint series. Hard to tell from the minute or so actually streamed.

The Rambler relates how minimalism in general is best live (and how his mum couldn't drive and listen to Six Pianos):

In this respect Six Pianos shares something with the work of Brian Ferneyhough - an awareness of the potency of live performance.

I can't really comment since, despite hearing and owning pretty much all of Reich's work, I've never seen any of it performed live. I've tried to remedy this situation several times but to no avail (yet). Maybe next year at the Minimalist Jukebox series by the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall, curated by John Adams (and as advertised in the Doctor Atomic program). Unfortunately, the Reich-only concert has Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards, Three Movements, and Tehillim -- nothing for me there. Better, a couple of days later, Gloria Cheng et al play Four Organs, Cage's In a Landscape, and music by Riley, (Colin) McPhee, Pärt, Glass, (David) Lang, and Andreesen. The last night is Adams conducting selections from Glass' Akhnaten and also his own Harmonielehre. Those concerts coupled with a trip to the world's best Amoeba Records and maybe the marionnette theatre again. Hmm...

rgable: aworks consciousness revolution era reich: aworks del.icio.us i love music pick only ten wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish the steve reich killed in afghanistan six pianos: wikipedia la scena musicale tehillim: the standing room current listening: eric owazen sinfonia for strings

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Makes It Seem So Exciting?

The sun is out, the server is up, it's an autumn in New York kind of day. Lawrence Dillon has some well-chosen words for Our Leader; Anthony Cornicello comes to praise Apple's customer service for understanding that a guy just doesn't want to be separate

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Last Night in L.A. - Beethoven With a Knussen Touch

Yesterday’s Phil concert continued the Salonen mix of contemporary works with the Beethoven symphonies; this program combined the Fourth and Sixth symphonies with Oliver Knussen’s Violin Concerto (2002). We last heard this work in June when the Cleveland

Originally posted by Jerry Zinser from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Xenakis and alternatives to the internet

'The internet is transforming our relationship with recorded music and with musicians. The virtual world of the internet shatters the record as an object into sound files of poor quality, ignoring the attractions of a stimulating editorial approach: the h

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 18, 2005 at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

Gerald Barry: The Bitter Tears of Petra Kant

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Media world

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What if you gave a concert ....

... and (almost) no one showed up? Well, that was the case last night in Berkeley. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music's first BluePrint concert of the season was at the Northbrae Community Church in North Berkeley, and was a repeat of Friday night's concert which was at the Conservatory's Hellman Hall in San Francisco. But for whatever reasons, only 24 people (by my count) were in the audience. Which was really too bad because it was a good concert.

This year's BluePrint series is their fourth and is subtitled Schoenberg: Insights on Expressionism, and claims to focus on the thread of expressionism beginning with the so-called Second Viennese School that circled around Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg during the first decades of the 20th century. This weekend's program featured Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie from 1906, along with the works of two of his post-WWII students John Cage (Third Construction, 1941) and Leon Kirchner (Trio II, 1993), and two much younger composers Laura Schwendinger (Lady Lazarus, 2005) and Olga Neuwirth (Spleen, 1994). And, except for the Cage, the emphasis was surely on expressionism.

It's always sad to be at a concert when the hall is nearly empty. Do you bother with the formalities? Should you start on time or delay until more people show up? Should you ask everyone to move up close and intimate, or just ignore the empty seats and go ahead as planned? They decided to just go ahead with it.

John Cage's Third Construction for percussion ensemble starting things off. But apparently they couldn't fit the array of instruments and performers into the small space on the stage of the chapel, so they moved everything into the foyer at the back of the hall, which meant you had to strain your neck to see what was happening behind you. But no matter, the performance by the New Century Percussion Ensemble was brilliant even if you couldn't see the action.

Leon Kirchner's Trio II for violin (Yuri Cho), cello (Adrian Fung), and piano (Keisuke Nakagoshi) was a typical Kirchner sturm und drang piece of alternating sections of harshness and sweetness. I found my mind wandering somewhere in the middle, not having anything to latch on to. It was very well played by these young performers, altho there was some risky upper register work. But if by expressionism you mean exaggerated histrionics and drippy sweetness, this one filled the bill.

Laura Schwendinger's Lady Lazarus employed the Ensemble Parallele, conducted by the energetic Nicole Paiement, and mezzo Patricia Green. This setting of Sylvia Plath's poem was no Pierrot Lunaire. Rather, a full blown operatic incantation of Plath's invective on male oppression and victimization. I found the vocal line a bit overdone where understatement might have been more effective (but that's just me). But the ensemble writing was excellent. Still, I wish younger composers with leave off the flute trills and the bowed xylophone bits. The last minute, after the vocal line had played itself out, was unexpectedly quiet and shimmeringly devine. To my ears, it would have been much better to have started out that way. But then, it would be a different piece.

After intermission, there were even fewer people left. But Jeffrey Anderle gave an incredible performance of Olga Neuwirth's Spleen for bass clarinet. What a beautiful instrument, especially when played standing up. It reaches to the floor, much like a mini Alpine horn. And such a sound! Austrian born Neuwirth's piece, based somewhat on the Baudelaire's poem, takes us on a tour of extremes, thankfully understated and carefully woven into a narrative that evokes the human voice, the wind, breathing, and everything in between. An extraordinary performance!

The evening closed with Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony from 1906. This is one of my own favorites in my top ten picks for the first half of the 20th century. And it was refreshing to see it performed the way it was intended with a very small ensemble rather than a full orchestra. And these Conservatory players did a great job. I would have wished for a bit more edge in the tempos, a heightened level of anxiety in the playing. It seemed a bit to staid for me, but it's not an easy piece, especially in the mid section with its borderline schmaltz and tricky rhythmic changes. And I heard the connection between Schoenberg's sturm und drang and Kirchner's, but the teacher, a native, did a much better job of it.

Again, sad about the turnout. But Nicole expressed it best when accepting the applause from the mini audience: "it's not the size but the quality of the audience that counts". Kudos all around.

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I Was Looking at the Ceiling (1995). John Adams

Naxos has a new recording of my least favorite John Adams work. If I weren't an Adams completist...

Andrew Clements reviews: Dramatically, it is not entirely convincing but there are some good tunes. Adams's own recording on Nonesuch may be definitive in its own way, but this German version, conducted by Klaus Simon and sung in excellent idiomatic English, has a bite and immediacy in the performances that make it a genuine bargain.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /what it isn't/

Yesterday, I asked what is Doctor Atomic? Today, after attending the first of two performances in a week, I still can't answer. The gestalt requires more assimilation, which indicates the complexity and depth of the work's themes and music. I will say I found the opera interesting, with several moments of transcendence, a scene or two that dragged on, and a last scene that left me stunned (I had the good fortune of reading the spoiler and then forgetting about it).

So, what isn't Doctor Atomic?

• It isn't an homage to Edgard Varese. Although it had some modernistic touches and some provocative percussion, how could any work of art, especially one on the scope of an opera, truly be Varesian? I believe Varese's early Oedipus Und Die Sphinx didn't survive so can't be used as a baseline which makes it difficult to imagine a full-blown opera by the composer. Also, Sellars and Adams are far too genial to produce a truly "out-there" (and alienating) experience. Having listened to the works of Varese for the last several weeks, in comparison, Doctor Atomic isn't dour, confrontational, confusing, overwhelming etc. It still has its challenges, though.
• It isn't this production's staging. In the first act, I half-seriously saw a race of tiny people trapped in a gigantic, sloped, movable, wooden baby crib. ("For God's sake, help free those poor folks!") Fortunately, by the second act, the crib had shrunk to normal size. Of course, "crib" was not the intent for the first act but nonetheless, the scenery was disorienting. Probably because of my crib-obsession, it took awhile to sink in that the color in the background represented the mountains around Los Alamos. Also, it wasn't clear why the mountains sometimes changed size. Finally and most detrimentally, the bomb, visible through much of the opera, looked like a gigantic tattered Christmas tree ornament rather than a potentially ominous death machine. So, compared to the effective abstract-metal-ship for the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer, Doctor Atomic's scenery and set were a let-down. I liked the lighting, though. Since I prefer my singing via more intimate recitals, set production is key, along with dance, to a satisfying operatic experience.
• As far as I can tell, it is not an anti-semitic embarrassment. It wasn't even particularly political, although Adams in the pre-opera lecture indicated Oppenheimer was tightly monitored by the government ("No wonder the FBI hated him. 'He's saying something by Vishnu; must be a code'").
  
• It isn't heavy on pathos, compared with the impact of, say, Adams' The Wound-Dresser. The latter had Walt Whitman, Dr. A mostly had the original (and often mundane) text of the participants. The latter also had Sanford Sylvan, although that's not meant to slight Gerald Finley. Regardless, today had some very moving and thought-provoking moments.
  
• It isn't an electronic piece. I don't yet know what to think about the electronic passages there were. Maybe Adams is finally seeing a payoff fron his Hoodoo Zephyr MIDI CD a decade ago.
• It isn't as tuneful as Nixon in China. Something light and fun like A Chairman Dances is not likely to emerge, although a hinted-at symphonic arrangment of Doctor Atomic would be welcome.
  
• It isn't as abstract as say, Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach.  Still, it would have been appropriate to see Einstein come out and play some violin. Picture of the two greats together here (Mr. E and Mr. O that is, not the two composers).
• It isn't simplistic nor comic book-ish. According to the composer, the title is the only overt nod to pop sci-fi culture. General Groves provides the humorous moments, for example, as he describes his failed dieting plan (although why do we care?).
• It isn't a commerical failure. The house was full and even the pre-concert lecture by Adams was well-attended. In an encouraging note, he commented there were more people just at the lecture than would normally attend a contemporary music concert. By the way, this is the first opera I've ever heard advertised on KCBS news radio ("sung in English"). It's also the first opera where I've seen someone attired in a Wikipedia sweatshirt ("Edit this page"). Finally, Adams commented he's happy the Bay Area has absorbed his opera into its "collective unconscious" even if it means people on the street come up to him to suggest cuts and improvements...

Recommended with reservations, based on a first look.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

beyond aworks :: feed reading

Since I am a voracious blog reader, this is an important topic. Today's news is that I've flipped back to Bloglines from Google Reader. Google Reader's shortcut keys were the appeal (the j and r keys ad infinitum). However, to use a John Cage term, the interface was indeterminate. I never knew how many unread posts were left, or if I had, in fact, read all unread posts, or if the feeds I thought I had unsubscribed were in fact unsubscribed, etc. Indeterminicy as an artistic goal may be good -- as a side effect of user interface software implementation, not so much. And then, probably not coincidentally, Bloglines added their own keyboard shortcuts this week (for my purposes, the s and r keys ad infinitum). In this round, Bloglines wins the use case of "perusel blog feeds in a fast, reliable, and coherent manner." As always, I'm open to the new (leading to the better).

One more observation: Google Reader has two modes in presenting individual entries -- by relevancy and by freshness. Two years of fiddling with iTunes smart playlists has me convinced relevancy is a hard personalization problem i.e. I have no idea how to simplify, scale (and monetize) my current iTunes formula, which is working well. My next project is to figure out a methodology for applying iTunes principles to arranging my feeds in Bloglines. [Get a life. -Ed.]

Kudos to both Google and Ask Jeeves for the courage to support export, allowing this RSS round-trip. Unexpectedly, it had the side-effect, in the manner of Tim Gallway's Inner Game of Tennis re: playing with a new racket, of making me more aware of all the interesting feeds I've been tracking in the blogosphere.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Genesis of the Flexible Orchestra

"a new idea for a real orchestral sound with rotating instrumentation —finally we surmount the rigidity of the historical orchestra with a section of one instrumental family plus a smattering of others; changing every year or two." Whenever it was that I

Originally posted by Daniel Goode from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Webwork

Drew MacManus’s recent concerns about orchestra websites have me wondering how S21 readers use the internet. I find that I seldom go online to find out about anything in my local area – I use the internet more to learn about what is going on elsewhere.

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

One Step Ahead of a Rapidly Approaching Birthday

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Server Down

Remember the good old days when your server is down meant your waiter had slipped on a potato peel? Sorry if you tried to visit earlier and found nobody home but the problem appears to be fixed now. We may be revisiting the matter of switching service p

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 17, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 16, 2005

Messiaen stars in early music festival

The early music festivals at the King of Hearts, Norwich, UK have always been noted for their breadth of repertoire. And the 2005 Festival, which closes tonight, explored new extremes with a concert of 20th century music for flute and piano. Last night (Friday 14th Oct) pianist Peter Hill and flautist Sarah O'Flynn gave an outstanding performance of an adventurous programme including Frank Martin's Ballade, the flute sonatas of Poulenc and Prokofiev, and Debussy's Syrinx.

But the highlight of each half of the concert was a work by Messiaen. In the first half Peter Hill played the Première Communion de la Vierge from the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, and in the second half he was joined by Sarah O'Flynn for one of only two chamber works that Messiaen composed. Le Merle noir (the blackbird) for piano and flute, composed in 1952, is important as it is the composer's first free-standing 'birdsong' work, and was the start of a ten year period of composition inspired by birdsong.

Flautist Sarah O'Flynn has worked with many leading UK orchestras, but is best known for her work with new music group Chroma. Their recent projects have included working with John Woolrich and Robin Holloway in London, and on The Memory of Colour by Ed Hughes for ensemble, tape and live electronics written in response to an art installation by Teruyoshi Yoshida, and a new work by the leading contemporary Czech composer Pavel Novak.

Pianist Peter Hill studied both with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He recorded, with the composer's help and guidance, all the piano works of Messiaen in a 7 CD set. His other recordings include the complete piano music of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern for Naxos. He is also a noted interpreter of Xenakis, Pousseur and Crumb. Next week Yale University Press publish his new book, co-authored with Nigel Simeone, titled Messiaen. The authors were granted unprecedented access to Messiaen's private archives by his widow, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Research uncovered considerable new information, including that, after release from a prisoner of war camp in France, Messiaen worked for twelve weeks for a cultural organisation under the Nazi puppet Vichy government. During that short period he contributed to a patriotic cantata for performance by schoolchildren, the score of which is lost. The new book also debunks the myth that the Quartet for the End of Time was given its premiere in front of 5000 prisoners. In fact records showed that the first performance was in camp hut holding less than three hundred.

The venue for this concert of Messiaen and other 20th century composers, The King of Hearts, is an illuminating study in how a 'niche' performance venue can consistently attract both international calibre performers, and a loyal audience. The conversion of the city centre Tudor (16th century) building into a superb performance space was the brainchild of the Director & Artistic Manager Aude Gotto, ably assisted by her husband, and master-builder of superb harpsichords, Alan Gotto. The ancient building was converted from a derelict state fifteen years ago, and is run as a charitable (not for profit) community centre for both the visual and musical arts. (The painting above is Evelyn Williams' Mother and Child, and the scuplture is Jiggilipuff by Vanessa Pooley, both from the Gallery's collection).

The gem of The King of Hearts is the music room, This is a medieval complete with beamed ceiling and oak floor. The room is acclaimed for its excellent acoustics and intimate atmosphere, and is ideal for chamber music and solo recitals. It houses both a Steinway piano and double manual harpsichord by Alan Gotto. The music room can only seat an audience of seventy-five, but such is the reputation of the venue and the appeal of the performing space, that top international musicians regularly accept reduced fees to perform there, and return frequently. Among the performers in the 2005 season are Andrew Manze, Richard Egarr, and James Bowman.

The flute and piano recital was the penultimate event in an outstanding week of music-making. I will have had the pleasure of attending all the concerts, which were:

9th Oct: London Baroque with Lorna Anderson, soprano. Purcell, F.Couperin, Marin Marais and Montéclair.
12th Oct: Passacaglia baroque ensemble. Dornel, J.S. Bach, de la Barre, Le Roux, Hotteterre, Marin Marais, Blavet.
13th Oct: Carolyn Gibley, harpsichord. Scarlatti, Handel, Froberger.
14th Oct: Sarah O'Flynn (flute) and Peter Hill (piano). Martin, Poulenc, Debussy, Messiaen and Prokofiev.
15th Oct: Mitzi Meyerson, harpsichord. F. Couperin, Rameau, Forqueray, and D'Englebert.

The harpsichord used in the concerts, other than the 20th century repertoire, was made in Norwich by Alan Gotto after an original by Donzelage made in Lyon in 1716. The lid painting is by Angie Maddigan after a 17th century Flemish original. This harpsichord is the property of Charles Hoste who loaned it for the Festival.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Paying the Piper

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music as an Aesthetic Object

Originally from Form/Content, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Magnatune Sticks IT To The Record Industry

Another article on the e-label Magnatune has been posted. The next couple of years will be critical for such a venture.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New on Tzadik

The latest from Tzadik include three new CDs. Brad Lubman : Insomniac One of the premier conductors of New Music, Brad Lubman has worked closely with some of the greatest contemporary composers (Berio, Boulez, Reich, Wuorinen, Lachenmann) and has appeared with some of the world’s most illustrious ensembles (Ensemble Modern, ASKO Ensemble, London Sinfonietta). Here he [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Wuorinen Piece Performed

A brief review of the performance of a few modern classical pieces, including some by Wuorinen and Jhn Zorn, has been posted.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Just Out on New World Records

New World Records has released a few new ones. Terry Riley Assassin Reverie Description: ARTE Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone; Terry Riley, vocals, piano and harpsichord (Uncle Jard). A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Friday Informer: Composers Gone Wild

Noizepunk & Das Krooner (off the wall); Karlheinz Stockhausen (off the planet); Ubu web (back online); and more...

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /tomorrow's question/

Is it: drama spoiled via a Leah Garchik gossip column, an homage to a tormented French-American, an anti-semitic embarrassment, the baby boomers' penultimate response to the Good War, a populist's mirroring of our current unraveling era (also here), or a first hint about the American future?

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /tomorrow's question/

Is it: drama spoiled via a Leah Garchik gossip column, an homage to a tormented French-American, an anti-semitic embarrassment, the baby boomers' penultimate response to the Good War, a populist's mirroring of our current unraveling era (also here), or a first hint about the American future?

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

North by Northwest (1959). Bernard Herrmann /top tracks/

Top tracks...

1. There Is an End. The Greenhornes featuring Holly Golightly. 60s feel via the Broken Flowers soundtrack. I have no idea who Holly Golightly is.
2. Frère Jacques. Matthew Shipp. Best jazz version of a children's song ever?
3. Sweet Home Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd. An I Love Music thread about whether or not Neil Young and LS really hated each other pointed out the drummer plays the ride cymbal only for  the guitar solo; I never noticed this in twenty-five years of hearing SHA.
4. Goin' Home. Albert Ayler. I very much prefer the full-bore tone of say, Dexter Gordon but this is a great track.
5. North by Northwest. Bernard Herrmann. Snatches of proto-minimalism?
6. Coulibaly. Amadou & Mariam. Vibrant. Not sure of the significance of this yet but I went to Tower Records the other day and made a beeline for the African section first.
7. Lufuala Ndonga. Konono Nº1. Congotronics. And this is what I bought. Five seconds into the track, it's obviously something special for us timbre fans.
8. Hyperprism. Edgard Varèse. Chailly. Exotic in its own way, not even considering the siren.
9. Funeral Song. Sleater-Kinney. My token indie-rock track of the week. Christhgau gave their new album an A and describes Corin Tucker's voice as an "abrasive warble."
10. Mice. Terry Riley. Via ubuweb.

Holly Golightly
Mathew Shipp
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Bernard Herrmann (alternate recording)
Amadou & Mariam
Konono Nº1 (clip is not the intro, though)
Edgard Varèse (rass brass but no siren)
Sleater-Kinney

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Advance of a Rapidly Approaching Birthday

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wet Ink at Tenri

For the past few years the Tenri Cultural Institute has been creeping into the limelight of the New York music scene. Its beautiful galleries have proven to be an ideal setting for new music concerts, and last night Tenri played host to Wet Ink, a new mu

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Messiaen stars in early music festival

The early music festivals at the King of Hearts, Norwich, UK have always been noted for their breadth of repertoire. And the 2005 Festival, which closes tonight, explored new extremes with a concert of 20th century music for flute and piano. Last night (F

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 16, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2005

North by Northwest (1959). Bernard Herrmann /top tracks/

Top tracks...

1. There Is an End. The Greenhornes featuring Holly Golightly. 60s feel via the Broken Flowers soundtrack. I have no idea who Holly Golightly is.
2. Frère Jacques. Matthew Shipp. Best jazz version of a children's song ever?
3. Sweet Home Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd. An I Love Music thread about whether or not Neil Young and LS really hated each other pointed out the drummer plays the ride cymbal only for  the guitar solo; I never noticed this in twenty-five years of hearing SHA.
4. Goin' Home. Albert Ayler. I very much prefer the full-bore tone of say, Dexter Gordon but this is a great track.
5. North by Northwest. Bernard Herrmann. Snatches of proto-minimalism?
6. Coulibaly. Amadou & Mariam. Vibrant. Not sure of the significance of this yet but I went to Tower Records the other day and made a beeline for the African section first.
7. Lufuala Ndonga. Konono Nº1. Congotronics. And this is what I bought. Five seconds into the track, it's obviously something special for us timbre fans.
8. Hyperprism. Edgard Varèse. Chailly. Exotic in its own way, not even considering the siren.
9. Funeral Song. Sleater-Kinney. My token indie-rock track of the week. Christhgau gave their new album an A and describes Corin Tucker's voice as an "abrasive warble."
10. Mice. Terry Riley. Via ubuweb.

Holly Golightly
Mathew Shipp
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Bernard Herrmann (alternate recording)
Amadou & Mariam
Konono Nº1 (clip is not the intro, though)
Edgard Varèse (rass but no siren)
Sleater-Kinney

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 15, 2005 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Heroic Ride to Heaven

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 15, 2005 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rzewski and Gann, Together Again

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 15, 2005 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2005

Newbies

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 08:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

They're Trying to Wash Us Away

Corey Dargel explains why there is no music theory book out there with examples from pop songs. As I should have guessed in my quest-for-a-singing-nun post below, it's all about money. Being an innovative guy, though, Corey has a solution. Not all musi

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 08:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And I thought the height of operatic catfights was The Jealousy Duet from Threepenny Opera...

Librettist Elizabeth Searle and composer Abigal Al Doory are writing an opera about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding: http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/moreTrack/view.bg?articleid=106771 I'd like to see Renee Fleming as Kerrigan, Cecilia Bartoli as Hardi

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 08:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beam me up, Stocky

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Big Plate of Americana for My Birthday

A recent Boston Symphony Orchestra performance including works by Ives and Carter, is reviewed.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Boston Creative Music Alliance Schedule

The Boston Creative Music Alliance is featuring the following jazz shows. Toby Delius Quartet Featuring Han Bennink Tuesday, October 18, 8 pm One of the brightest new stars to appear on the Dutch improvised music scene in recent years, Delius fronts an all-star quartet that is as unpredictable as it is swinging. Cultural Constructions VI Saturday, October 22, 8 pm Cultural [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lutoslawski Society Hands Out Medals

An article briefly discusses the Society and the medal winners.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Stone in December

The Stone’s calendar for December includes a few days of Zorn as well as several artists from Japan: Yoshida, Haino, Yoshihide, and Makigami. December 2005 at the Stone curated by Makigami / Haino /Yoshida / Otomo 12/1 Thursday 8 and 10 pm John Zorn Improv Night Many Special Guests a Stone benefit 12/2 Friday 8 and 10 pm John Zorn Improv Night Many [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Newband Instrumentarium

Newband Instrumentarium contains the Harry Partch instrument colleciton, and features pictures of many of these contraptions.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Discord over BBC Beethoven Downloads

The music industry is griping about the BBC allowing 1.4 million people to download Beethoven symphonies. While the industry (labels, etc.) are blowing things out of proportion as usual, they have a small point in that the government probably should not fund a organization that disrupts commerce. However, the disruption in this case [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Extreme piano agenda

Musically alert New Yorkers will have noticed that Symphony Space has beefed up its musical programming lately, with a bent for the new. Jenny Lin gives a recital Thursday night entitled The 11th Finger, featuring several of Ligeti's Etudes — much in the air these days, with a complete cycle by Christopher Taylor forthcoming at Miller Theatre on Oct. 29 — together with James Tenney's Chromatic Canon, Claude Vivier's Shiraz, Randy Nordschow's Detail of Beethoven's Hair, and a new piece entitled pAt by the aggresive young Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy ("There is a whiff of high-class vandalism about my work"). Also, percussionist-composer Jim Pugliese has written a new work for the occasion. Lin recently released a formidable disc of early twentieth-century Russian-Soviet piano music, the highlight of which were the eerie and powerful Preludes of the obscure mystic composer Nicolas Obouhov. As Nicolas Slonimsky unforgettably recounted, Obouhov used his own blood as ink on certain pages of his scores. Will we ever hear his purported masterpiece Le Livre de vie, excerpts of which Koussevitzky once conducted in Paris? In any case, Lin's site has audio samples and scores of various pieces she's played.

I don't know if I have any readers in or around Allentown, Pennsylvania, but I've been forwarded a notice of an event that sounds intriguing: "Two of Juilliard's most innovative young graduates, keyboardist Cameron Carpenter and dancer/ choreographer Luke Wiley, will perform on the Civic Theatre stage for one night only, Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m. Parade, a two-act performance piece for two soloists, explores what happens when two artists who normally stand alone investigate the possibilities of poetic collaboration. At parts, the performance will make innovative use of the theatre's recently restored and enhanced theatre organ, and Civic looks forward to challenging some of the stereotypes of the instrument. Over the course of an evening, Carpenter, through the keyboards, and Wiley, dancing in a role that ranges from the balletic to the interpretive, move from solo performance through increasingly unified works. With musical influences ranging from Bach to Björk, Wiley and Carpenter offer a celebration of collaboration, and of art's ability to transcend borders of genre." Incidentally, Carpenter's on-line essay on music-education issues is totally worth reading, and totally right. Money quote: "The classical music community must demonstrate more flexibility, more spontaneity, and more adaptability than it has demonstrated thus far. Simply throwing up one's hands and exclaiming 'How can we compete with MTV?!' is ridiculous; one must get inside the minds of the audience one is trying to reach."

On the following night, at the New York Public Library, Nico Muhly will unveil his musical adaptation of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Unfortunately, I will miss both these events, on account of my journey to Iowa.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's gonna rain

Kyle Gann reminds me that the amazing UbuWeb resource is up and running once again. I'm listening now to Satie's beautifully boring Furniture Music. Happy seventieth birthday to La Monte Young tomorrow. It's a very dreary day in New York City, but, all things considered, it's good to be alive.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Acid Rain vs. Acid Jazz

How does the weather affect music and vise versa?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mr. Postman

Just found this soggy communication from Jenny Lin on the front porch: Hi everyone, This heavy rain won't stop (backstage was flooded during our tech yesterday), so kayak to my show tonight at 7:30 pm at Symphony Space Thalia Music! One hour show withou

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The other Dr. Atomic

Do you suppose there were DEA undercover agents in the audience at San Francisco Opera? I googled "Dr. Atomic" and look what came up as no. 2 on the hits: http://www.overgrow.com/strainguide/Dr_Atomic/ apparently inspired by this popular book, still in

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brain Drip

You know what we need around here? I'll tell you. We need somebody like that weird little nun on PBS to explain classical--and especially new classical--music to readers who don't know a cadenza from a credenza but know what they like and might become c

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beam me up, Stocky

Follow this link for an excellent, and rare, interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen in today's Guardian. (Well actually it's done by email, but don't let that put you off.) He is playing a concert in London on October 22nd, his first since 2001. The works a

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 14, 2005 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2005

Economies of scale

I've come to a tricky place in a new piece. I've been composing it without much in the way of pre-compositional planning and it's still unclear whether it'll be eight or 28 minutes long, or whether it'll be for a smaller or larger ensemble. My sense of the potential economics of a piece of music based upon the materials assembled so far is that the longer the piece, and the larger the ensemble, the less material and the courser or broader the contrast levels should be. As it now stands, I have about 7 minutes of fairly dense music in short score, which would -- with a few details and some brief connecting passages added -- probably make a decent piece for a small group of instruments. However, the very same material, though strategic repetition and variation and some thinning out or trimming, might just as well turn into something for many instruments with a duration three or four times longer.

This piece is composed "on spec", without a commission, so the precise make-up of the ensemble and the duration have not been set or determined externally. I have the luxury to let the materials themselves speak to me a bit before making these decisions. In other words: I'll have to sleep on it.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EEE!

Yes, it's been a while, but I've been busy. One of the things that keeps me busy is my performance group, EEE!. It's an all electronic group; well, mostly electronic: sometimes the students use guitars and didjeridos (is that the proper pluralization

Originally posted by Anthony Cornicello from Anthony Cornicello, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The day after

There have been dozens of reviews of Doctor Atomic, the new John Adams opera. Lisa Hirsch has collected links at her blog. Most critics acknowledge the power of Adams's writing, but many detect problems in one or another part of the score. What's striking is that there's little agreement on what and where those problems are. Joshua Kosman, in a generally enthusiastic review, took a dim view of the ending: “After three hours of waiting for the bomb to drop, the audience is surely entitled to a more emphatic rendering than a quiet rumble and a few desultory lighting cues.” Janos Gereben thrilled to Act I but wrote off most of Act II: “Boiling Act II down to its indispensable dramatic core and adding it to a slightly edited Act I could create an awesome 90-minute one-act opera... all of one piece.”

Timothy Mangan, though, believed that the ending made up for an opera consumed by inert worrying: “The culmination — the countdown and explosion — is handled magnificently by Adams.” Andrew Clark also praised the ending as a “surprisingly apposite way to bring the curtain down on a work predicated on the moral and historical ramifications of the first nuclear test. You can't begin to depict a bomb of such magnitude in the representational language of theatre.” Clark disliked the earlier arias, saying that “much of the vocal music is effortful: ‘Batter my heart’, the John Donne poem with which Oppenheimer brings Act 1 to a close, see-saws self-consciously.” For Rich Scheinin, “Batter My Heart” was one of the few highlights: “The orchestra's stuttering figures, its tremulous chords and rumbling drums, said everything one needed to know about Oppenheimer's inner state.” Heidi Waleson thought that Act II was stronger than Act I: “The bulk of Act II, the final countdown to the Trinity test, dropped the pretentious arias to let the orchestra and chorus carry the momentum.” Scott Cantrell thought that the arias were the only thing worth saving: “The poetic arias might be excerpted and turned into a marvelous orchestral song cycle. But, at least on first sight and hearing, Doctor Atomic is not a satisfying opera.”

Tony Tommasini, Justin Davidson, Mark Swed, and Alan Rich, among others, praised the score as is. Rich writes in LA Weekly (not yet online): "The wonder of Doctor Atomic, overriding the timelessness of its subject matter and the intelligence in the way it has been set forth, is the deep penetration of Adams’s music into the troubled souls of his characters. More than in any large-scale work of his to date, I get the sense here of extraordinary mastery over a vast spread of expressive technique, and the intelligence to summon its variety at the proper moment. This is operatic writing in the grandest sense, the more so for it being entirely of its own time – and ours." That's my take, too.

There are five more performances of Atomic, and tickets are becoming scarce. The score won't be heard again until 2007.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Extreme piano agenda

Musically alert New Yorkers will have noticed that Symphony Space has beefed up its musical programming lately, with a bent for the new. Jenny Lin gives a recital Thursday night entitled The 11th Finger, featuring several of Ligeti's Etudes — much in the air these days, with a complete cycle by Christopher Taylor forthcoming at Miller Theatre on Oct. 29 — together with James Tenney's Chromatic Canon, Claude Vivier's Shiraz, Randy Nordschow's Detail of Beethoven's Hair, and a new piece entitled pAt by the aggresive young Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy ("There is a whiff of high-class vandalism about my work"). Also, percussionist-composer Jim Pugliese has written a new work for the occasion. Lin recently released a formidable disc of early twentieth-century Russian-Soviet piano music, the highlight of which were the eerie and powerful Preludes of the obscure mystic composer Nicolas Obouhov. As Nicolas Slonimsky unforgettably recounted, Obouhov used his own blood as ink on certain pages of his scores. Will we ever hear his purported masterpiece Le Livre de vie, excerpts of which Koussevitzky once conducted in Paris? In any case, Lin's site has audio samples and scores of various pieces she's played.

I don't know if I have any readers in or around Allentown, Pennsylvania, but I've been forwarded a notice of an event that sounds intriguing: "Two of Juilliard's most innovative young graduates, keyboardist Cameron Carpenter and dancer/ choreographer Luke Wiley, will perform on the Civic Theatre stage for one night only, Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m. Parade, a two-act performance piece for two soloists, explores what happens when two artists who normally stand alone investigate the possibilities of poetic collaboration. At parts, the performance will make innovative use of the theatre's recently restored and enhanced theatre organ, and Civic looks forward to challenging some of the stereotypes of the instrument. Over the course of an evening, Carpenter, through the keyboards, and Wiley, dancing in a role that ranges from the balletic to the interpretive, move from solo performance through increasingly unified works. With musical influences ranging from Bach to Björk, Wiley and Carpenter offer a celebration of collaboration, and of art's ability to transcend borders of genre."

On the following night, at the New York Public Library, Nico Muhly will unveil his musical adaptation of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Unfortunately, I will miss both these events, on account of my journey to Iowa.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Across The Universe

Ives wrote that the themes and general plan for the Universe Symphony are quite clearly indicated in the sketches he left behind. Johnny Reinhard recounts how he curated this great American work to life.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The View from Ararat

The ark is coming along nicely and I'm looking for a mate for my cat as it hasn't stopped raining in New York for four or five days. I took yesterday off from blogging out of respect for the Yankees and went instead to a small press luncheon for an upcom

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Philadelphia Sounds: Network for New Music's Flying Solo

The Network for New Music's "Flying Solo" program was built around pieces selected by the soloists themselves for the concert, so the styles and choices were eclectic and varied widely in style. The program included two world premieres. Hirono Oka opene

Originally posted by Deborah Kravetz from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Still raining here in the Center of the Universe but considering all the natural and man-made disasters going on out there in the real world I suppose I shouldn't complain. Woke up this morning with this thought: One of the best things about getting older

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 13, 2005 at 03:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 12, 2005

A Big Plate of Americana for My Birthday

There is no better birthday gift I could have given myself than two hours of 20th-century American orchestral music. Lucky for me, the Boston Symphony Orchestra offered just that this weekend, featuring three pieces by American composers - Three Places in New England by Ives, Three Illusions for Orchestra by the venerable Elliot Carter, and Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F - and one by an émigré, Time Cycle for Soprano and Orchestra by Lukas Foss.

The concert was anchored by the Ives and Carter triptychs, which is fitting, as Ives encouraged the teen-aged Carter to pursue music. By all accounts, Ives was a ball-buster, and a man who could get things done. (Oh, to be able to write with that level of courage!) Three Places in New England, the opener for this performance, is a glorious, dignified representation of the visionary quality of Ives’s work. Far ahead of the avant-garde that attempted to forge a “new” kind of music in the middle part of the century (Three Places was written between 1912 and 1917) the piece is built of a translucent texture that is stripped away like layers of onion skin to reveal a seemingly never-ending depth, but never gets convoluted.

Other Reviews: T. J. Medrek, BSO embraces American masters (Boston Herald, October 7) Richard Dyer, BSO delights with American fare (Boston Globe, October 8) Anthony Tommasini, Levine and the Boston, Still Made for Each Other (New York Times, October 11) Alex Ross, Boston by a Mile (The Rest Is Noise, October 11) Anthony Tommasini, The Growing Impact of the Levine Era (New York Times, October 12)

This quality was translated successfully by the delicate treatment of the BSO and its director, James Levine. Levine is a superbly economical conductor – it seemed as though he barely moved during the first movement of the Ives – and the ensemble responded in kind. The orchestra’s control can be summed up in the term “headroom”: a quality that suggests, as described to me by my jazz teacher, that as you move to the extremes of your performance, you give the feeling that you can always push it further. Even when the brass was mimicking six different amateur gazebo bands at once, as in the second movement of the Ives, they never lost control and could even add a few more folk songs melodies into the texture. The piece and the orchestra were a perfect complement to each other.

Elliot Carter, who is damn near 100 years old and still writing, supplied the first in a number of pieces the BSO commissioned for its 125th anniversary. Each of the 180-second Three Illusions for Orchestra (which opened the second half of the concert) are program pieces that display concise, idiomatic writing that are actually easily digestible at a first listening (for me at least – my fiancée, a DMA voice candidate at the New England Conservatory, shared the experience of most of the septuagenarians around us by describing the first movement thusly: “…ninety seconds of ambient noise, at which point, someone throws a bowling ball into the percussion closet…”). Carter’s piece, like the Ives, brought to the fore the strengths of the sections (most notably the strings) in conversation with each other, and the BSO rose gracefully to the demands of the clever orchestration.

The closing pieces of each half - the Foss and Gershwin, respectively – were a harder sell. Time Cycle for Soprano and Orchestra, by Lukas Foss (whose long history with the Boston Symphony was celebrated all over the program notes), was performed with stunning emotion by the generally stunning Dawn Upshaw. The piece, which really should have been scored for a chamber ensemble, consisted of four art songs written around texts (two English, two German – the composer’s native tongue) musing on perspectives of time. Upshaw breathed life into the texts with her own emotional pendulum that likewise left plenty of headroom. My fiancée explained to me some of the controversy surrounding Upshaw’s “emotional modification” as opposed to technically accepted practices of dealing with 20th-century works, but I felt as though Upshaw really dug into those texts that were otherwise mired in a thick mud of writing for an ensemble larger than the purpose of the piece. There were also moments of beautiful and romantic clarity, found especially in the smart orchestrations of the first two songs. Creatively doubling the voice with clarinet and harp, for instance, ingratiated the vocal line into the texture of the ensemble. Things sort of came crashing down in the third movement, however, when the language and the sentiment changed, and an Alban Berg-ish “I am, at heart, a miserable, introspective German, and don’t you forget it” attitude descended on the work – a downer from which things never recovered.

The second guest soloist for the program was pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who took up the diva slack that Upshaw left backstage (his bio actually talked about who does his concert wardrobe). Thibaudet’s playing had no headroom – when he got louder, the fast notes became muddled, and he rushed badly. The sensitivity he displayed in the more tender moments of the piece, however, were very moving. At the first entrance of the piano – on that delicately static, syncopated melody – the whole room absolutely melted. More problems crept up on both sides of the stage when the “swing” sections came into play. Swing in orchestral settings sounds bad, unless it’s done correctly, and it never is. It’s like when white choirs try to sing Negro spirituals – something is horribly lost in the translation. Thibaudet’s idea of swing and Levine’s idea of swing were not the same.

The Boston Symphony is repeating this program on October 8 at 8 pm in Boston, and again on October 10 at 8pm in Carnegie Hall.

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rare Works by Antheil

A lukewarm review of performances of several Antheil pieces is available.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Obituary: Warren Benson (1924-2005)

Composer Warren Benson died on Thursday, October 6, 2005 at the age of 81.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why It's OK (and Unavoidable) To Be Yourself

If being forced to work quickly doesn't guarantee that you'll create something outside what you normally do, what would guarantee such a result? Is it really ever possible to escape yourself in your work?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Getting Political: Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra

When the announcement came through that Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra was in town supporting their new release Not In Our Name, I felt both musically and politically compelled to be there...

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Good, The Bad, and The Embarassing: A Marketing Brainstorming Session

Greg Sandow recently posted about some classical music PR and Advertising flops, and closes with “We don't realize that the people we're talking to are smart, and have plenty of contact with music of other kinds, and with art and media generally. In fact,

Originally posted by Galen H. Brown from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Oh, Palestrina

I’m about ready to give my first midterm as an academic, and I thought a look back on the experience of teaching first-semester music theory at Brooklyn College wouldn’t be inappropriate. I absolutely love it. I also teach third-semester ear-training an

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Finding NWEAMO

Based on this preview in last Friday's San Diego Union-Tribune (our sole major daily paper, and an unusually conservative one at that), looks like I picked the wrong night to attend the San Diego leg of the New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization tou

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Atomic is no Klinghoffer, and far from another Nixon

After Sunday's performance of Dr. Atomic, my wife and I had dinner with three other composers who were at the show. All of us are in our early 40s or late 30s, and, with the exception of my wife, a civilian who likes opera, none of us would object to be

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 12, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

New DVD Release on Tzadik

Tzadik has released a DVD by Ken Jacobs, which features the music of John Zorn. One of the most consistently experimental and prolific filmmakers in Avant Garde Cinema, Ken Jacobs has produced enough work for several lifetimes, and continues on stronger than ever into his seventh decade. From film and shadow play to magic lantern and [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Happy Birthday to Me

I suppose curmudgeonly bitterness has dominated my Sequenza blogs thus far - two long ones and even the silly one about blogules. I promised to be nice with the next one and here it is. There are certain things just about all of us face, or will face.

Originally posted by Arnold Rosner from Arnold Rosner, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's 1878 to you?

It's the answer to our contest question:
What's the average year of composition of the repertoire in the New York Philharmonic's 2005-2006 season?

1878 saw America's first daily college newspaper (at my alma mater, no less), in addition to the arrival of Cleopatra's Needle in London. It was the year that Tokyo founded its stock exchange, and that the yellow fever claimed 13,000 in the Mississippi Valley. 1878 saw the birth of Stalin and the death of Pope Pius IX, but more importantly, at least for this space, it was the year that Edison patented the phonograph, launching the torturous history of recording copyrights, and changing forever the way that we perceive music.

The New York Philharmonic is only performing three pieces that actually originate in that year: Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, his Violin Concerto, and Brahms' (both posted below). Lorin Maazel is spending 37% of the season with his orchestra, and he's going heavy on the Mozart. The orchestra will perform five each of his piano concerti and symphonies, with an apotheosis in Maazel's programming of the last three symphonies on one concert.

The oldest piece they'll perform is an excerpt from Bach's fourth Brandenburg Concerto, dating back to 1720, and they'll give the world premieres of three new works by Peter Lieberson, Colin Matthews, & John Harbison. Most surprising of all, is their top five composers list, with Mozart at the head, Brahms in second, Bartok at third, and Elliot Carter in a three-way tie with Dvorak and Wagner for fourth. My hunch is that we're seeing another prolonged centennary celebration. Carter will be 100 in 2008. Remember how the Gershwin centenary stretched through the last half of the 90's?



Johannes Brahms, Violin Concerto in D Major

Allegro non troppo
Adagio
Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D Major

Allegro moderato
Canzonetta: Andante
Allegro vivacissimo

Note: ANALOG is conducting a survey of orchestral programming in the current season at America's major orchestras. We'll be noting trends from major to minor, for instance, you'll note that both Brahms & Tchaikovsky are bearded and wrote their violin concerti in the same key.

Further Note: The above is an example of a minor trend.

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"The most ... orchestra!"

Peter Davis gives the New York Philharmonic a superlative that the marketing department will have a hard time using in the brochure: "the most boring major orchestra in the world." Let's be fair and add that it's a sensationally good boring orchestra.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CLASSICAL PONTIFICATIONS

I enjoyed some extra time in my recording studio last week due to a foot injury which is keeping me from getting around very well. As a result, I'm happy to announce the premiere of CLASSICAL PONTIFICATIONS, a spinoff of COMPOSERS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE

Originally posted by Corey Dargel from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brilliant Corners

Jacob Sudol wants to wish everyone a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving and a Happy Monk Day.

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:01 PM | TrackBack

Viva Mexico!

After hearing the Orquesta de Baja California (it's really more of a chamber symphony, a little bigger than the London Sinfonietta) play an all Mexican composer concert at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido (about 30 miles north of downtown S

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 11, 2005 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 10, 2005

Paging Arnie's Army

Our "resident curmudgeon, and compositional non-minimalist, non-atonalist old-liner" Arnold Rosner is having a 60th birthday concert at Merkin Hall on November 8 and he's set aside 40 free tickets for readers of Sequenza21. See the details in Arnold's bl

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More Thoughts about George

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Last Night in L.A. - Lindberg and the Master

There’s always a special feeling about the first Philharmonic concert of the season: the music is back! No matter what else is happening in the world, we still have our music. In its third season, going to Walt Disney Concert Hall (to use the official,

Originally posted by Jerry Zinser from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Landmarks (5)

Boudiwijn Buckinx: 1001 Sonates (BBWV 1988.09) for violin and piano. (In this series of Landmarks, I promise that this will be an exception in that I have not heard the piece in its entirety. I have heard about 100 of them, via a cassette on loan from Hauke Harder.) In these Sonates, some for the duo, and some for each soloist, Buckinx works simultaneously at the extremes of the miniature (most

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tōru Takemitsu Concert at the Library of Congress

Apocalyptic, diluvial rain fell on the District of Columbia all day Friday and Saturday. The bad weather probably accounts for the unusually small audience in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress on Saturday night, although by the time I left the house the rain had finally stopped. This October 8 concert was not the first of the Library's 80th season of free concerts in the excellent hall provided by the generosity of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, one of the great music patrons of the American 20th century. It was, however, the first one Ionarts has attended this fall, and so it was with great joy that I sat down again in the room where Copland's Appalachian Spring and countless other new works have been premiered.

In this case, it was a special tribute concert ("Mirror of Tree, Mirror of Field") celebrating the life and music of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996). As Jon Newsom, retired Chief of the Library's Music Division, explained in his brief introduction, the composer's wife, Asaka, and daughter Miki had flown all the way from Japan to attend this event. I guess they had arrived not long before, because the composer's poor daughter proceeded to sleep, or so it seemed, through most of the concert. Even those not suffering from jet lag were tempted to doze off, however, because the selection of works on the program were uniform in style, mostly rather slow in tempo and homophonic in texture. If this sort of concert, featuring the music of a single composer from all periods of his career, is the musical equivalent of a retrospective exhibit, this one had a fairly narrow stylistic variety. Perhaps Takemitsu just simply did not write any music that was not meditative or elegiac.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Toru Takemitsu, Timelessly Contemporary (Washington Post, October 11)

Takemitsu is most familiar to a broader audience, I would imagine, as a film composer. In fact, the Library of Congress has been showing a selection of the 93 movies with scores by Takemitsu, the most famous probably being Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985), during the past two weeks in the free film series in the Mary Pickford Theater. He made his mark beyond Japan with the performance of Requiem for Strings in 1957, which Stravinsky admired. The success of that work may have had something to do with the predominance of a lamentational character in Takemitsu's music. His work to bridge the distance between east and west made him a lot of friends, and some excellent musicians joined forces at the Library of Congress to present a range of his compositions.

Pianist Audrey Andrist, whom we heard a couple weeks ago at the Corcoran, performed two works with violinist Syoko Aki, who teaches at Yale, and one with the rich viola sound of Maria Lambros. As an example of Takemitsu's experimental side, harpist Naoko Yoshino played Stanza II (1971), with a tape of sounds on a loudspeaker. Takemitsu's relationship to France and its composers -- Debussy, Messiaen, Boulez, Schaeffer, especially -- was evident in the program. The Potomac String Quartet brought us A Way a Lone (1981), which is typical of Takemitsu's literary leanings, based as it is on the final sentence of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, inasmuch as either "final" or "sentence" can be applied to that book. All of the playing was excellent.

Conductor Masatoshi Mitsumoto marshalled a large group of string players for two chamber symphonic works, beginning with the series of pointillistic penstrokes called Le Son Calligraphié I and III, from 1958 and 1960, respectively. Even more players entered the stage for Scene (1959). Somehow, the players understood Mitsumoto's batonless motions of stabbing and swirling and provided a lush cushion of dissonance for cello soloist Evelyn Elsing, whose part mimics the human voice in a slow lament.

For me, the highlight of the concert was the contribution of superlative flutist Paula Robison. She began the second half with another experimental work, Voice (1971). From the first moments of this piece, the performer blowing through the instrument and then yelling out on nonsense syllables sent the Japanese couple in front of me into laughter that they tried to restrain. Judging by the words that Robison pronounced from the score, first in French and then in English ("Who goes there? Whoever you are, speak, transparence!"), the work is either an exorcism or a summoning of a spirit. It was in the same vein as the work of Robert Dick we heard at La Maison Française this summer. Far more moving was the late work And then I knew 'twas Wind (1992), for flute, viola, and harp, which is the only work that seemed to integrate film score sounds with Takemitsu's literary and musical sensibility. A haunting arpeggiated motive on the harp returned again and again in a piece that was, once again, static but full of gorgeous, dissonant color.

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Newsbits

The Association of Improvising Musicians, Toronto are trying to foster an environment supportive of improvised music in their home city. Forecast Music is a new musicians collective in New York and they put on performances as well. Jeff Arnal hosts a periodic performance in Brooklyn, NY called On the Way Out, which features [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NWEAMO Festival

The recent NWEAMO Festival is reviewed. The mission statement of NWEAMO proposes “to forge connections between the composers, performers and lovers of avant garde classical music and the DJ, MCs, guitar-gods, troubadours and gourmets of experimental popular music.”

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Classical music in small bytes

Are cheap downloads the savior of classical recording? An article explores the issue.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Luigi Nono Site

Just about anything you might want to know about Nono is at this site.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

1.37 million Beethovens and counting

Via ArtsJournal, a good piece by Marc Shulgold on classical downloading. Shulgold writes: "Naturally, we're not talking huge volume here: According to [Naxos's Mark] Berry, classical downloads account for only about 6 percent of the total of all music downloaded on the Internet." But note: classical music has had 3 percent of the CD market in recent years. So it's twice as popular on the Internet, and growing. The death of the death of classical music continues. By the way, Naxos's $19.95 offer — which gives you Internet access to their entire catalogue for a year — is quite a deal. I signed up when I needed to listen to Bruckner's Fourth in San Francisco, and ended up spending an utterly smashing day with Bax.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What a Wonderful World

So what if Louis Armstrong provided the backbone of Britney Spears' career? The bizarre results are here.

Originally posted by Alan Theisen from Alan Theisen, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Peter Garland, Out of Phase

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Journey with Jack Reilly

is the story On An Overgrown Path of a contemporary composer and musician who can effortlessly cross boundaries. From jazz to classical, to Eastern harmonies, and back. From composer to live performer, to recording artist, to teacher, to author, through t

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shoot the Piano Player

The line between sanity and the streets is a finer one then most of us realize. L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez takes a homeless street violinist with Juilliard credentials to Disney Hall. A sad and touching tale about the limits of good deeds and the

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Is Corey Losing His Religion?

For those of you fortunate enough to catch Corey Dargel's Friday night performance at Location One, I have a question: what's not pop about his music? Reviews of Dargel's music uniformly mention that he traverses the boundaries of pop and contemporary c

Originally posted by Lanier Sammons from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 10, 2005 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 08, 2005

Ornette...

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This year's model

The novelty of musical devices, special effects, or extended techniques is usually inversely proportional to the antiquity of the device. The composer or performer who uses the device first gets a free ride, but everyone after that is obliged to come up with a convincing musical context for repeated usage.

Some devices allow themselves to be dated with fair precision, and first compositional usage can be determined with similar accuracy: Cowell gets hands inside of the piano, Cage gets nuts and bolts, Stephen Scott gets bowed and stroked piano wire. Varese gets sirens. Salzedo gets a near-monopoly on harp effects. Crumb gets seagull calls on cello harmonics, maybe cymbals on timpani, too. Lucier gets a rare trifecta with brain waves, re-recording in the same space, and long wires. Partch gets a railroader's chorus of "Chicago, Chicago" (sorry Mr. Reich). Leedy was the first to have a player speak through a wind instrument (for the record: the instrument was horn and the words were "if elected I will go to Korea." Rzewski gets settings of "El Pueblo Unido" (sorry Mr. Spahlinger). I think we can safely assign roto toms to the year 1976, but mutiphonics will need some binding arbitration. A bit of research will surely yield definitive dates and composers for fluttertongue and velcro tap-dancing. But who gets to keep the farfisas? Heck, we're getting close to a dissertation here.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Density 21.5 (1936). Edgard Varèse

Instead of random Friday tracks, I'll offer random Friday thoughts:

1. It feels like I spent all week camped out on memeorandum, tracking how crazy the world has been become (OU suicide bomber, NY terrorism alerts, Rove/Fitzgerald/Miller et al, Harriet, DeLay/Earle etc.)
2. I work two blocks from the California Theatre in downtown San Jose. Walking by today, I saw bunches of people with Apple badges. Were they coming from the robot convention or were they preparing for the Steve Jobs announcement next week?
3. For at least two years, I've been using bloglines to read my blog feeds. Today, I switched to the new google blog reader (basic operation with one finger). So far so good.
4. Do I really need to read 577 personal and 130 job-related feeds? For example, although Lars von Trier' Five Obstructions was a peak experience, do I really need to continue to read every blog mention of it? (I won't delete the feed until I see this post showing up in it, of course).
5. My tactic of adding a dose of the same composer's music to my daily iPod regimen for several weeks at a time is proving worthy. After so much Aaron Copland, I began to view the world as a melodious if occasionally bittersweet place.On the other hand, after a week or so of Varèse's music in preparation for next week's performance of Dr. A-, life is dark, complex, and confusing. Actually, I should be ok over the next week unless my skull cracks open or something.
6. Density 21.5 is solo music for flute that doesn't strike me as particularly dense, compared to say orchestral works like Arcana. All of which is a lead-in to how come I don't know of any flute blogs? (This assumes Terminal Degree plays another instrument).
7. Today, after ten or so tracks of Varèse, Be-In by Evan Ziporyn came on.  Light, fun, and probably not a by-product of impossible parent/child dynamics.  I don't mean this perjoratively, but it was like the difference between reading the NY Times and USA Today at least in terms of effort required. After reading all those blogs on Miller and the press and then trying to read the source articles, I think the comparison apt although to be fair "Be-In" is much more satisfying than the "McPaper."
8. For the record, I do look forward to again hearing Poème èlectronique, Ionisation, Amériques, and Un grand sommeil noir.
9. Change is in the air but I don't know if it just seasonal* or generational, which is I why I am interested to see if Doctor Atomic reflects this unraveling era or moves beyond it. Presumably, it is not a triumphalist portrayal as might be seen in the American High of the 1950s. I also wonder if Hunt Lieberson was missed. (On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not going to see that Elvis Costello opera instead.)
10. Most importantly, tomorrow brings the new Wallace & Gromit movie, although a review I read today may have provided a cheese-related spoiler.

*Keeping in mind that California only has two seasons -- six months of summer and now six months of spring. That unwatered grass will be turning green soon...

rgable: aworks american high era culture wars era varese: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish If Varese, Ives, and Stravinsky had a four-way with Frida Kahlo ziporyn: aworks doctor atomic: aworks 

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

DMG Newsletter

The usual plethora of releases are listed in the DMG Newsletter.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Russian Association Of Independent Genres

The Russian Association Of Independent Genres is an organization supporting creative music in Russia. Some interesting information on artists you might not have heard of is on their site.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stockhausen at the Frieze Art Fair

The Frieze Art Fair in London will feature a talk and performance by Stockhausen. Legendary composer and acknowledged pioneer of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen makes a rare visit to London and delivers his own, unique brand of lecture. Musical examples played by Suzanne Stephens (basset-horn) and Kathinka Pasveer (alto flute). Stockhausen’s lecture takes place on the [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Appearances

Eighth Blackbird will shortly go on tour with Dawn Upshaw and Gustavo Santaolalla to present Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre, which I got excited about a couple of weeks back. The stops are La Jolla, CA; Disney Hall in LA; Stanford and Davis, CA; Iowa City; South Bend, IN; and Severance Hall in Cleveland. I'm relatively sure this will be something worth seeing. Incidentally, I my own self will be in Iowa City on Oct. 19, as part of the New Yorker College Tour. I'll be talking about the "art" of criticism with two favorite colleagues, Nancy Franklin and Sasha Frere-Jones. The event is at noon at Iowa Memorial Union, and it's free.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Friday Informer: Stop me if you've heard this one

The NEA deathwatch, pop culture vs. classical values, and a mop up of all the ink on Doctor Atomic.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 01:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chasing Rabbits the High-Tech Way

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 8, 2005 at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2005

Isabel Mundry's New Opera in Berlin

Last month, German composer Isabel Mundry (b. 1963) premiered a new opera, Ein Atemzug — Die Odyssee, in a production at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, performed on September 7 to 11. I found only a couple articles in the German news, beginning with a preview article by Volker Tarnow (Odysseus in der Warteschleife, September 7) in the Berliner Morgenpost (my translation):

The idea dates from 1998, and the composer has had the contract in the bag since 2001. But the wanderings of the Deutsche Oper mean that this premiere was delayed by more than just one year. Odysseus is fearsome. Not only to his wife Penelope's 110 suitors, whom he murders when he gets back to Ithaca, but Odysseus just frightens people. Unlike writers and painters, few composers have ever been interested in Homer's epic. Well, with any success. The story is probably cursed. Still, Isabel Mundry had to learn this for herself.

Udo Carpenter [Zimmerman], who was head of the Leipzig Oper in 1998, first agreed to mount the opera, a plan that fell through but that Berlin tentatively took up when Carpenter moved there.

"Naturally, I was afraid of Homer," Isabel Mundry confesses. "This is not modesty, and I don't want to make the idea of composition a mystery. I work hard, with a pocket calculator, making sketches. I do research. I don't want to manipulate the lister: I just want to create sincere music." Therefore, there are no mystical chords, no allusions to ancient Greek music or instruments.

Klaus Geitel reviewed the opera (Tief durchatmen, September 9) for the Berliner Morgenpost. He reported that the audience gave a unanimous standing ovation to the cast and composer at opening night, although he also admits that it is a difficult work, although it is brief at 90 minutes in length. I also found an interview with the composer, by Georg Friedrich Kühn ("Odyssee - ein Atemzug", September 8) for German radio (Deutschlandfunk).

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Music Festival in St. Petersburg

A festival opening this evening will feature a number of cutting edge jazz, classical and rock musicians. To bring some American pizzazz to St. Petersburg, festival highlights include the Kingston, New York-based avant-garde accordionist Pauline Oliveros, Californian minimalist pioneer Terry Riley and the New York-born, Berlin-based vocalist and percussionist David Moss. Performance artist Shelley Hirsch, saxophonist [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Zappa DVD

Yet another archival release of rare Zappa footage. Previously released on VHS and Beta and only available through mail order, Frank Zappa’s Dub Room Special is an extremely rare TV special comprising two live performances from one of Rock’s great individuals. Zappa’s unparalleled abilities as a composer, guitarist, and absurdist/social commentator run rampant on The Dub Room [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Atomic wrap-up

Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?

— Richard II

I returned to San Francisco for the premiere of Doctor Atomic on Saturday night. I've said more than enough on this subject already, so I'll let fellow critics thrash it out. Reviews have been all over the map, perceiving everything from a "masterpiece" to a "fizzle." Lisa Hirsch has links, and it's interesting to note that while many people think there's something wrong with the score there's little agreement about what it is. Justin Davidson's review in Newsday comes closest to matching my feelings. I share Tony Tommasini's reservations about the balance of voices against orchestra, particularly in the magically intimate Act 1 Scene 2, which shows the Oppenheimers at home. The staging there and elsewhere needs to be reconfigured in more singer-friendly fashion. Otherwise, Peter Sellars and his creative team have unleashed some genuinely astounding images and tableaux; the Corn Dance in Act II made my hair stand on end. Take note of The Standing Room's commentary on the ending. I might try to write more observations later, but the season is churning on. Suffice to say that Doctor Atomic is the most complexly enthralling thing that's come along since I've been a critic.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

new version of textbook now online

Originally from david's waste of bandwidth..., ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Conversation with Walter Simmons

An interview with the author of Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Voices in the Wilderness: Paul Creston

An excerpt from Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Premature Capitulation

As they say in the corporate world, time is money, but is there really any correlation between the amount of time a composer devotes to his or her own work and its aesthetic value?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Who's Your Enemy?

Some interesting discussions on the home page lead me to wonder about categories of “good” and “bad” music. Is there a genre of music (popular, unpopular, new, old, local, international, etc.) that you feel has no redeeming value? And, a related quest

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

computer-generated music (CGM)

There's been a lot of discussion recently about using electronics/computers to perform and record new music, which I'm going to refer to as computer-generated music or CGM. I'd stated that I use performances generated by my computer all the time out of ne

Originally posted by David Toub from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Crossover music

Nice article by Allan Kozinn that mirrors my own feeling on rockers' attempts to raise their Satanic chalices on high to the Goddess of Classical Music and quaff the heady ambrosian mead of Sonata-allegro form (or however Jack Black would phrase it): It s

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I'm Ready for My Close-Up Now, Mr. DeMille.

It's now official. Sequenza21 has been chosen as this year's ASCAP Deems Taylor Internet Award winner. The awards ceremony will be at Ross Hall at the Time-Warner Center on December 15 from 5-7 pm. (Apparently, some other people will be getting awards,

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 7, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 06, 2005

Discoursing on art

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Coming up on HatHut

The latest set from HatHut is being released this fall: hat(now)ART 161 Stefan Wolpe (1902–1972) Enactments Total time 54:59, DDD, Barcode: 752156016120 The piano was Stefan Wolpe’s instrument, the playground of his imagination, and most of his pieces have a part for at least one piano to play. — Austin Clarkson hat(now)ART 162 Pierre Boulez (1925) Notations & Piano Sonatas Total time 75:20, DDD, [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Six Organs of Admittance Article

An article features this “freak-folk” outfit.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blackbird Flying High

Yet more positive words about the Eighth Blackbird ensemble.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Richard Teitelbaum to Present on Music of Japan

The Bard College professor will give a slide show on the new and old of Japanese music. Teitelbaum will present “Travels in Japanese Music from Ancient to Avant Garde,” a discussion and slide show of his experiences working with and observing a variety of Japanese composers and musicians, from Buddhist monks practicing ancient shomyo chants to [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Corey Relief Effort

Okay, folks, this is a call to action. Corey Dargel's folks are coming all the way from south Texas to catch his performance (with César Alvarez and Sheila Donovan) tomorrow night at Roulette at Location One, 26 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand). T

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 06:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Content

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 01:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

About the book

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 01:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

R. I. P.

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Oct 6, 2005 at 01:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Furtwängler and the forgotten new music

When, in November 1943, Furtwängler returned to Berlin from a concert tour abroad, he was informed that the Philharmonie Hall had been bombed during an attack on the night of November 22-23. The facade had been badly damaged, and so had the front rooms in which the irreplaceable muisc library had been kept. Important letters, files, documents, orginal scores - everything had been destroyed. The concert hall itself remained intact, but the windows had been blown out, and glass, at the time, was not available. Besides, concerts could no longer be given there because high piles of rubble cut off the hall from the outside world. And before it could be cleared away, more bombs fell on the Philharmonie Hall on January 30, 1944, when the Anhalter Station, near the hall, was the target. This time the Philharmonie was completely wrecked.
From Wilhelm Furtwängler a biography by Curt Riess, 1955

Following the destruction of the Philharmonie Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in nine more concerts before the Nazi forces surrendered. Six were in the Staatsoper, and when this was damaged by bombing the last three were held in the Admiralpalast. The last concerts under Nazi rule were held on 22nd and 23rd January with a programme of Mozart’s ‘Die Zauberflote' overture, Mozart Symphony no 40 (first two movements only for reasons not given), and Brahms First Symphony.

Those final two concerts took place just four months before the collapse of Berlin. Allied forces were closing in on the stricken city, and air raids continued night and day. Remember that Hitler was not a democratically elected leader, and many of those, musicians and others, trapped in the beleagured city were not rabid Nazis. Like those in the Twin Towers, New Orleans and the London Underground history dictated that many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The predicament faced by the performing arts in the 21st century palls into insignificance compared with the conditions that the inhabitants, and musicians, of Berlin faced in the final months of the war.

Yet not only did the music continue, but quite remarkably the final nine concerts in those last torrid months included the first performance of one new work (by Gerhart von Westerman, and played in two successive concerts), and one Berlin Philharmonic first performance (Kurt Hessenberg’s Second Symphony).

Today Wilhelm Furtwängler's name is irrevocably linked to the Nazis. It is not the purpose of this article to cover that ground again, too many apologias have already been written. The fact is he remained in Germany as Director of the Berlin Philharmonic through the darkest hours of the Nazis. But a lot of great music was performed in the years between 1922 and 1954 when Furtwangler led the orchestra. Although his political compromises were deplorable, they should not prevent study of the music that was an integral part of the culture during those turbulent years.

Furtwängler is remembered today as an important interpreter of the Austro-Germanic repertoire, from Mozart through Beethoven to Bruckner. He is also known as a composer; the very last work he conducted with the Berlin Philharmonic in concert was his own Second Symphony on 20th September 1954. He died just three months later in December 1954.

During his thirty-two years as Director of the Berlin Philharmonic a surprising amount of 20th century music was performed under his baton. (Don’t forget his tenure at the orchestra only covered the first half of the century). Some the new music has endured. There was much Schoenberg (including the first performance of the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31 2nd version in 1928), much Pfitzner and Hindemith (the Nazi banning of his opera Mathis del Maler provoked Furtwangler’s resignation from the Berlin Opera in 1934), plus Bartok, Prokofiev and more.

But he also performed a large amount of 20th century music that has not stood the test of time. For research purposes I have taken a subjective definition of a ‘forgotten composer’ as one whose work is not performed with any regularity today. Using this definition, I researched every one of the four hundred and seventy-three concerts Furtwängler conducted with the Berlin Philharmonic. This identified forty-five 20th century works, from thirty composers who have subsequently slipped into varying degrees of obscurity.

The results of my research are given below (more details of the research are given as a footnote). The history of these composers varies. Many remained in Germany through the Nazi period and beyond. Some such as Ernst Toch (right) fled to the US when the Nazis came to power. There are very few non-Germans, but these include the Italian Alfredo Casella, who was a known Fascist sympathiser. Interestingly one fellow conductor-composer is included, the Polish-born Paul Kletzki. Some works remain in print, if not in performance. These include the two works performed in 1944 after the destruction of the Philharmonie; Gerhart von Westerman's Divertimento and Kurt Hessenberg's Second Symphony, op. 29.

Looking at frequency of performance, the name that jumps out is Max Trapp. Six of his compositions were given over a twenty-eight year period, three of these in first performances. His works were performed both during the Nazi period (1935 and 1939), and after the war in 1951. Trapp lived from 1887 to 1971, and taught in various positions in Berlin throughout his life. His works included seven symphonies, and chamber music. The only one known at all today is his Piano Concerto, and he is largely forgotten. Why?

There is no suggestion that a body of forty-five neglected masterpieces awaits discovery in Berlin archives. (But how many perished in the fall of Berlin?) But what was this music like? Furtwängler was a brilliant conductor and accomplished composer – does his programming of these composers bestow some merit on them? Or were many of them politically convenient commissions? (This argument falls on the fact that many of the performances were pre-1933). Is the comparative obscurity (I can find no information at all on two) of these composers simply typical of the casualty rate among new works? Have I misrepresented these artists who lived through such difficult times? Do any readers know more about these thirty forgotten composers?

More questions than answers, but an overgrown path that is well worth exploring. Please add further information and views using the comments (or email) feature at the foot of the article.

And here is my analysis of Furtwängler's forgotten modern music:

Max Trapp:
Symphonie Nr. 11 in h-moll op. 15 (BPO first performance)
28/29 January 1923.
Symphonie Nr.IV in b-moll op. 24 (BPO first performance)
14/15 December 1930.
Sinfonische Suite op. 30 (BPO first performance)
3 & 4 December 1933.
Orchesterkonzert op. 32 (First performance)
29/30 September 1935.
Konzert Nr. II f. Orchester op. 36 (First performance)
3/5 December 1939.
Symphonie Nr. Vl op. 45 (First performance)
25/26 February 1951.
Walter Braunfels:
“Don Juan”, eine klassich-romantische Phantasmagorie op. 34 (BPO first performance)
16/17 Novembber 1924.
Vorspiel u. Prolog aus “Die Vogel.”
20/21 December 1925.
Georg Schumann: (photo right) Variationen und Gigue uber ein Thema von G. F. Handel op. 72 (BPO first performance)
22/23 February 1925.
Variationen uber “Gerstern abend war Vetter Michel “ da op. 74 (First performance)
2/3 February 1930.
Philipp Jarnach:
Morgenklangspiel op. 19 (First performance)
7/8 November 1926.
Musik mit Mozart. Symphonische Variaten f. Orch op. 25 (BPO first performance)
15/17 February 1942.
Ernst Toch:
Komodie f. Orchester op. 42 (BPO first performance)
13/14 November 1927.
Kleine Theatersuite op. 54 (BPO first performance)
8/9 February 1931.
Karl Marx:
Konzert f. 2 Violinen u. Orch. Op. 5 (BPO first performance)
30 Nov/1 December 1930.
Passacaglia ((First performance)
18/19 December 1932.
Heinrich Kaminsky:
Dorische Musik
25/26 November 1934.
Konzert f. Klavier u. Orch (BPO first performance, the composer conducted this work, Furtwangler conducted the balance of the programme )
28/29 November 1937.
Gottfried Muller:
Variationen u. Fugue uber ein deutsches Volkslied (“Morgenrot Morgenrot”) op. 2 (BPO first performance)
5/6 Feb 1933.
Konzert f. gr. Orchester op. 5 (BPO first performance)
17/19 December 1939.
Theodor Berger: (photo right)
Rondino giocoso (BPO first performance)
15/17 December 1940.
Ballade f. Orchester op. 10 (First performance)
2/4 November 1941.
Karl Holler:
Konzert f. Violincello u. Orch. Op. 26
16/18 October 1949.
Konzert f. Violincello u. Orchester op. 26 (First performance)
19/21 October 1941.
Heinz Schubert:
Praludium u. Toccata f. Streichorch (BPO first performance)
5/7 February 1939.
Hymnisces Konzert f. Orgel, Orch. Mit Sopran- und Tenor-solo (BPO first performance)
6/8 December 1942.
Bernhard Sekles: Gesichte. Fantastiche Miniaturen f. kl. Orch. Op. 29 (BPO first performance)
11/12 November 1923.
Alfredo Casella: Partita f. Klavier u. Orchester (BPO first performance)
19/20 December 1926.
Karol Rathaus: Ouverture fur grosses Orchester op. 22 (First performance)
4/5 March 1928.
Gunther Raphael: Thema, Variationen u. Rondo f. Orch. Op. 19 (BPO first performance)
24/25 March 1929.
Paul Kletzki: Orchestervariationen (BPO first performance)
19/20 January 1930.
Botho Sigwart: Melodram “Hektors Bestattung” op. 15
2/3 February 1930.
Wladimir Vogel: 2 Etuden f. Orchester (BPO first performance)
25/26 October 1931.
Paul Graener: Die Flote von Sanssouci. Suite f. Kammerorch. Op. 88 (BPO first performance)
20/21 December 1931.
Max Ettinger: Altenglische Suite op. 30 (BPO first performance)
3 & 4 April 1932.
Hugo Reichenberger: Zwei Mariensbilder
18/19 December 1932.
Max v. Schillings: Symphonischer Prolog zu “Konig Odipus” f. gr. Orch. Op. 11
15/16 October 1933.
Sigfrid Walther Muller: Heitere Musik op, 43 (BPO first performance)
14/15 January 1934.
Hans Brehme: Triptychon (BPO first performance)
26/28 November 1938.
Heinrich Zilcher (should this be Hermann Zilcher, a composer who lived from 1881 - 1948?) : Konzert f. Violine u Orch. In A-dur op. 92 (First performance)
2/4 February 1941.
Paul Hoffer: Symphonische Variatonen uber einen Bass von Bach op. 47 (BPO First performance)
1/3 March 1942.
Gerhard Frommel: Symphonie in E-dur op. 13 (First performance)
8/10 November 1942
Ernst Pepping: Symphonie Nr. II f. Orch. In f-moll (BPO first performance)
31 October/3 November 1943.
Gerhart v. Westerman: Divertimento f. gr. Orch. Op. 16 (First performance)
22/23 October 1944.
Kuert Hessenberg: (photo right) Symphonie Nr. Ll in A-dur op. 29 (BPO first performance)
11 December 1944.

Notes on the research:
1.The analysis was carried out specifically for this article using Wilhelm Furtwängler Die Programme Der Konzert Mit Dem Berliner Philharmonischen Orchester 1922-1954 published in 1965 by F.A. Brockhaus Wiesbaden.
2. I have not translated the composition titles from their original German. This is because many have never been translated, and I would prefer a more skilled linguist to undertke this important work.
3. I have added hyperlinks to web resources where available. Not surpisingly some of these are in German. Details of further resources will be gratefully