New Music reBlog

French fancies
The Guardian
24 September – 9 October, Festival Musica, Strasbourg This energetic contemporary music festival highlights significant works in modern classical music. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2010

NAT: Pintscher, Beethoven – 7:00 pm

PINTSCHER, Hérodiade – Fragmente
BEETHOVEN, Symphony No. 9
Marisol Montalvo, soprano
Yvonne Naef, mezzo-soprano
Nikolai Schukoff, tenor
John Relyea, bass-baritone
The Choral Arts Society of Washington
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor

NY: Mahler – 7:30 pm

MAHLER, Symphony No. 6
Alan Gilbert, Conductor

CIN: Strauss, Rossini – 7:30 pm

STRAUSS, Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus Spake Zarathustra”)
ROSSINI, “Une voce poco fa” (“A voice has just echoed”)
STRAUSS, Ich wollt’ ein Sträusslein binden (“I would have made a bouquet”)
STRAUSS, Wiegenlied (“Lullaby”)
STRAUSS, Muttertändelei (“Mother-chatter”)
STRAUSS, An die Nacht (“To the Night”)
STRAUSS, Der Rosenkavalier Suite
Kathleen Battle, soprano
Paavo Järvi, conductor

SEA: Kernis, Dvorak… – 7:30 pm

KERNIS, On Wings of Light (World Premiere)
KERNIS, Air for Violin
BLOCH, Baal Shem (Three Pictures of Chassidic Life)
DEBUSSY, Pelléas et Mélisande Suite
DVORAK, Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
Elmar Oliveira, violin
Gerard Schwarz, conductor

BAL: Adams, Mendelssohn… – 8:00 pm

John Adams – Doctor Atomic Symphony
Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto
Dvorák – Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”
Marin Alsop, conductor
Stefan Jackiw, violin

PHI: Grieg, Shostakovich – 8:00 pm

GRIEG, Piano Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH, Symphony No. 4
André Watts, piano
Charles Dutoit, conductor

CHI: Haydn, Mozart – 8:00 pm

HAYDN, Symphony No. 39
MOZART, Symphony No. 25
MOZART, Symphony No. 34
HAYDN, Symphony No. 89
Riccardo Muti, conductor

ATL: Beethoven, Mahler – 8:00 pm

BEETHOVEN, Piano Concerto No. 4
MAHLER, Symphony No. 1 in D major “Titan”
Emmanuel Ax, piano
Robert Spano, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

A focus on the new, and the new to Vancouver - Vancouver Sun

A focus on the new, and the new to Vancouver
Vancouver Sun
A lavish assortment of events begins at Music on Main ground zero, Heritage Hall, with flutist Laura Barron and friends playing Steve Reich's Vermont ...

and more »

Playing on the edge - Prague Post

Playing on the edge
Prague Post
A performance of Stockhausen's Harlekin by Czech clarinetist Karel Dohnal (Feb. 22, 2011) will include a light show in what Danel calls "a performance on ...

Allan Pettersson, Viola Concerto (1979) Part 1 of 2

	Allan Pettersson, Viola Concerto (1979) Part 1 of 2 When he died in June 1980, Allan Pettersson left a significant number of sketches and various other manuscripts. Some years later the German composer Peter Ruzicka, who was very interested in Pettersson's music, discovered a previously unknown Viola Concerto among these manuscripts. Not even Pettersson's widow knew of the existence of the work, which was written in 1979. As manager of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ruzicka requested her permission to mount the premiere of the piece in Berlin, and this took place eight years after the composer's death, in September 1988. The Romanian conductor Sergui Comissiona, for some time a champion of Pettersson's music, was on the podium and the viola soloist was Yuri Bashmet. During his years as a performing musician Pettersson had been a viola player, and it is therefore not at al surprising that he wrote a concerto for this instrument. One may indeed wonder why the work was composed so late. In order to find a possible, if by no means certain, explanation, we must examine the character of the music. As we know, Pettersson's output had its center of gravity in the symphonic arena, where he often combined massive formal construction with a correspondingly huge orchestral apparatus. In contrast, the Viola Concerto can be seen as a dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, and the texture as a whole is more tender. This is by no means the first time in the history of music that a composer writes a sort of transfigured summary towards the end of his life; a famous example is Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs. It may also have a symbolic significance that Pettersson "reserved" his own instrument for this occasion, and that he kept the existence of the piece secret. The concerto, which plays for roughly half an hour, has no beginning in the customary sense, but starts I medias res with the aforementioned dialogue. As so often with Pettersson, the construction is ina single movement, and the solo part is extremely difficult -- one could maybe call it "ungrateful" in that many of the difficulties remain hidden from the listener. The work ends as abruptly as it began, with a climax which is suddenly interrupted. Is it an exclamation mark ? -- a question mark???	From: lendallpitts Views: 2 0 ratings
	Time: 15:00	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by lendallpitts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

Music Review: Local composers featured in VCME opener - Barre Montpelier Times Argus

Music Review: Local composers featured in VCME opener
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
The VCME, now in its 23rd year as the state's contemporary classical music proselytizers, is presenting four programs this season in Montpelier and ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

Frith, FURT and Friction highlight 8th annual SPARK Festival of Electronic ... - MinnPost.com (blog)

Frith, FURT and Friction highlight 8th annual SPARK Festival of Electronic ...
MinnPost.com (blog)
The dynamic nature of the global electronic music scene, with its mixture of technology and DIY aesthetics, makes it a fast-moving target for all but ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

SFJazz presents Henry Threadgill's Zooid - Jazz Police

SFJazz presents Henry Threadgill's Zooid
Jazz Police
“The jazz avant-garde has produced relatively few great composers. Henry Threadgill is a member of that exclusive club.” All Music Guide Henry Threadgill's ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Oxford Contemporary Music season - The Oxford Times

Oxford Contemporary Music season
The Oxford Times
... specialises in miniature pianos, children's toys and bells, and their music is infused with the styles of jazz and contemporary classical music. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Spontaneous combustion - Ottawa Citizen

Spontaneous combustion
Ottawa Citizen
Soon after he left Davis, he led a more avant-garde, esoteric group called Circle. Almost as a reaction to Circle's abstraction, Corea went in the other ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Wednesday Links

Here’s what’s been taking up precious tab real estate this week in Miss Mussel’s browser:

Tired of looking like a dork on your bike? Miss Mussel can’t help you with the spandex but she can point you in the direction of the coolest helmets ever. In the whole world. Stamped it, no erasies.

Journalists’ top secret article templates revealed in the Guardian and on Proper Discord. Looks like the game is up.

Have a listen to Vittorio Grigolo’s new album “The Italian” for free over at NPR.

This town recommends that you hold it!

The basis of a 10,000 exegesis on the medium/message debate or just a really catchy tune. You decide. [mit swears]

“Regret is a form hindsight bias: the irrational idea of having seen it coming when we didn’t.” Is regret for suckers?

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Interview Extras

Earlier this summer Miss Mussel interviewed French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Here are some of the bits that didn’t make it into the original story.

You were a treble for many years as a child. Did your parents get you into singing?
“It was actually the other way around. I got my parents into it. It was just a recruiting they were doing at school. In my elementary school the two responsible for the children of that choir came and made us sing and said if you’re interested. Since I was already playing the piano it got my attention and I said, why not try to sing? After a few months my mother entered the choir and then after a year my father as well and actually one of my sisters, it became a very family thing.”

When I think of sacred music I think of it having to be functional first before it is art. It is working music, like a march or a dance accompaniment.
“I never saw it this way. In terms of how the functionality for me I saw it more on the spiritual side. What was getting my attention as a little boy was more the sacred aspect of the music, the fact that it was related to church. It was very special. For me it is sacred to make music even if it secular – it has nothing to do – there is a ceremony, an offering about it and I think that was the main thing that I can take from those years.”

Conductor who work primarily with choirs often have trouble when they conduct an orchestra because of their circular beat. Since you were a choral conductor first, did you find that to be a problem?
“No, I don’t think so. It’s hard for me to say because I’ve just always been really myself. I’ve worked with quite a few conductors but not so much. I didn’t get so much choral conducting training and I didn’t get so much orchestra training. I just did it. I’m not saying that I did it myself, because I am thankful for all my teachers. My piano teacher has shaped the way I am now as a musician and also how I make an orchestra work.”

Is there such a thing as a definitive interpretation of a work?
“I feel that sometimes people confuse both. When we give a concert, obviously at that moment it is the way it should be otherwise if we’re not believing it in the moment, I guess it will never be as powerful as the creation of the composer.

On the other hand, if we keep doing the same pieces over and over for centuries now it is because there is always an attempt to get to some kind of truth. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but the truth can be of multiple faces and we’re trying to get as close as possible to this.”

You’ve just been announced as the music director of a major American orchestra at age 35. Did you ever think it would work out like this?
“No I didn’t honestly but I always dreamt of it. There was a force in me that always – because there are so many moments of doubt – there was somewhere, somehow, something telling me that was the right choice. Also, my doubts had a lot to do with my road through studies.

After one year of my conducting studies – I can compare it to a minor – major in piano, minor in conducting – I quit that because there was something about the teacher that would shut me down completely if I would remain there. That was difficult for a few years because I said ‘Am I doing the right choice?’ – not to go into a major of conducting and keeping the piano. Somehow I had to trust in a certain instinct somewhere.”

Is this success something that happened to you or did you make it happen?
“It seems like it happened to me and in a way there was an explosion in engagement and interest in myself but I was able to sustain that and accept those engagements because I had been working for quite a long time towards that.”

What are you going to do if they make you wear a Flyers jersey? [Philadephia had just put Montreal out of the playoffs in the semi-finals]
“I think my way around that is to go to Philadelphia more towards the Phillies. Anyway, baseball is bigger there than hockey and the Phillies are such a top team. Then I can remain of good allegiance everywhere!”

What about new music?
“I’m not coming from a background with a lot of modern music unlike some of my younger colleagues. For me it was not really part of my background because I came from the choral and also baroque side of things. But for me, this is all part of the same thing.

In my programming, I want to bridge as much as possible these things. In my second visit to Philadelphia I had the task of also bringing Claude Vivier, which they have never performed. I don’t want to make a feature of it but it’s part of the same tradition to me and I will be committed to all of it. ”

You have always conducted opera and orchestra. How does one help the other?
“It’s part of the same ecosystem for me as an artist. If I look at every great artist I admire, Furtwangler, Walter, Giulini, Abaddo, Karajan, Solti, Rattle – they all did both. As an orchestra I think it’s as important as well . Some orchestra like Vienna Phil or Dresden do this on a regular basis – they are a pit orchestra that give concerts.

In symphonic music – you always have the first violin singing a phrase and then everybody accompanies or the oboe or the horn or the trumpet. It’s always accompaniment and someone who is important so it’s the same principle and I think opera makes you realize this. Obviously symphonic music gives me a lot to deal with in terms of the importance of the orchestration, which also helps my opera conducting. I see this as very much part of the same thing. I would hate that some people would see me more in one than the other. It’s already starting and I would never cave in to that.”

[Photographs are of Basilique Marie-Reine-Du-Monde in Montreal, the church at which YNS was a chorister and conductor. Credit:Marcia Adair]

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Classical concert review ECAT - Scotsman

Classical concert review ECAT
Scotsman
The instrumental grunting in Xenakis' Charisma was strangely compelling while Harrison Birtwhistle's exquisitely delicate Linoi for clarinet and piano would ...

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Music in the World of Islam: The Human Voice/Lutes

various artists compilation - Music in the World of Islam: The Human Voice/Lutes In 1976 Tangent Records released Music in the World of Islam as a series of long-playing analogue records. With the advent of the compact disc and its attendant extended playing time we are able to present two LPs on one compact disc. The first two records in the series - The Human Voice/Lutes are presented here....

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

Classical concert review ECAT - Scotsman

Classical concert review ECAT
Scotsman
... fiendishly intense Shiraz, its punishing fingerwork patterns more flowing and captivating than Wolfgang Rihm's rather fragmentary trio Chiffre IV. ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 30, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2010

Music review: Gloria Cheng begins Piano Spheres season - Los Angeles Times (blog)

Music review: Gloria Cheng begins Piano Spheres season
Los Angeles Times (blog)
I hope he finds the time, Boulez having spent much of this year, his 85th, on the podium. Boulez writes hyper-active music. Sonorities change constantly. ...

Stage Listings: Sept. 30-Oct. 7 - Vancouver Sun

Stage Listings: Sept. 30-Oct. 7
Vancouver Sun
... the Music on Main All-Star Band, and others, playing music by Steve Reich, JS Bach, Lisa Bielawa, Gyorgi Kurtag, Giorgio Magnanensi, and more. ...

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Two Faces of Polish Folk Music in Madison - World Music Central

World Music Central

Two Faces of Polish Folk Music in Madison
World Music Central
It came to life as an artistic meeting of two duets: Hob-beats Duo (more than a dozen percussion instruments) and Lutoslawski Piano Duo. ...

Jason Moran Awarded 2010 Macarthur Fellowship - Top40-Charts.com

Jason Moran Awarded 2010 Macarthur Fellowship
Top40-Charts.com
NPR Music and WBGO will be live webcasting their 9:00pm ET set on Wednesday, October 6 as part of their monthly series Live At The Village Vanguard. ...

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Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Jean Michel Jarre reclaims the future - Telegraph.co.uk

Jean Michel Jarre reclaims the future
Telegraph.co.uk
“I remember Stockhausen, when I was studying with him for a few months, saying, 'All that is close to emotion in music is suspect. ...

Somebody scream

Without giving away anything from my forthcoming New Yorker review of Rheingold at the Met, I'd like to join the chorus of praise for the bass-baritone Eric Owens, who, on Monday night, gave a tremendous performance as Alberich, lord of the dwarves. So, how does a man unwind after forging the dread ring that masters the world and enslaves its wearer? The video above tells all. (Via Amanda Ameer, Mr. Owens's publicist.)

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Babadjanian - Prelude

	Babadjanian - Prelude Armenian Composer Arno Babadjanian	From: fyrexia Views: 37 2 ratings
	Time: 01:23	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by fyrexia, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Babadjanian - Vagarshapat Dance

	Babadjanian - Vagarshapat Dance Armenian Composer Arno Babadjanian	From: fyrexia Views: 2 0 ratings
	Time: 01:49	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by fyrexia, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

That’ll do for lunch

'In 1990, when I was Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, we put on a series of modern music concerts, under the title Musica Nova, the originator of this series being Sir Alexander Gibson. We were greatly helped financially by the City of Glasgow, which had been made City of Culture that year.

Among the composers featured was John Cage. I well remember meeting him at the airport, and taking him to Glasgow University. Cage was a great specialist in mushrooms, and on seeing some rather sad specimens growing on a patch of grass in the university precincts, he said ‘Ah! That’ll do for lunch.’ He invited me to join him, but I was cowardly enough to decline. I regretted this later, since, as the concerts progressed, I found he was one of the most delightful and engaging musicians I have ever met. His brilliant music made a great impact on the Musica Nova audiences.'

That previously unpublished reminiscence comes from an unlikely source. Former EMI producer and orchestra manager Christopher Bishop is best known for his recordings of Elgar and Vaughan Williams with Sir Adrian Boult, of Sibelius and other composers with Sir John Barbirolli, and of early music with David Munrow. But while managing the Philharmonia and later the Royal Scottish National orchestras he commissioned and programmed much contemporary music and his EMI producing credits include Messiaen, Webern and Koechlin as well as Britten and Shostakovich.

John Cage's interest in botany was reflected in his music and I was prompted to share that anecdote from Scotland by the release of a new CD which includes his Child of Tree and Branches I & II for amplified plants. These are on a new disc of Italian born and US resident Simone Mancuso playing solo percussion works for wooden instruments which also includes pieces by Salvatore Sciarrino (b1947) and Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988).

The three pieces for amplified plants are of particular interest as I heard Branches I & II in a rare concert performance at the John Cage happening in Bruges in 2008, which is where the two photos above were taken. This new disc from the Italian Stradivarius label is very welcome, but I have to express some reservations. The playing time of the full price CD is 46.40" and this includes Silences I, II & III which last for 11.00". The cover, seen below, somewhat misleadingly suggests the three silences are separate Cage compositions. In fact, as explained in the accompanying notes by Benjamin Levy, they are the silences of duration determined by the I Ching that are stipulated when Child of Tree and Branches I & II are performed sequentially.

But the problem with the silences is more than a typographical one. Benjamin Levy's note highlights John Cage's preoccupation with environmental sounds, a preoccupation which was expanded by the composer himself in an interview with Peter Dickinson recorded for the BBC in New York in 1987:

John Cage - It's the presence in those sounds of non-intention and the awful presence of intention in music that makes the non-intentional ambient sounds more useful. By more useful I mean less irritating.

Peter Dickinson - Do you mean more attuned to somebody's spiritual development?

JC - All of that - more possible to live affirmatively if you find the sound of the environment beautiful. Irish musicians had a contest of heroes and the question was , "What is the most beautiful sound?" The one who won the contest said the most beautiful sound is the sound of what happens.

The problem is that during Silences I, II & III on Simone Mancuso's new disc nothing happens. It may be because the silences were recorded in the same acoustically isolated studio (Gizmo in Silver Springs MD) as the Cage percussion tracks. Or it may be, as I believe is the case after listening on monitor quality headphones, that the three tracks, which comprise a quarter of the discs short playing time, are simply blank. Whatever the reason, surely this is not what John Cage intended?

Surely it would have been closer to John Cage's intentions if the 35 minute sequence had been recorded in a single patched take. This would have captured the non-intentional sounds of the percussionist rearranging his exotic performing materials and the engineer repositioning the microphones during the silences between the three works. But maybe I am wrong; guidance from the Cage authorities among my readers on how silences should be performed is welcome. Meanwhile there is a chance to hear Simone Mancuso's new CD, without the silences, in my Chance Music programme this Sunday (Oct 3), full details are below.

On Sunday October 3 I will be playing Simone Mancusco's performances of Salvatore Sciarrino's Il legno e la parola (a world premiere recording) and Giacinto Scelsi's Maknongan in their versions for marimba plus John Cage's three pieces for amplified plants on Future Radio. The stipulated silences are clearly not feasible in a broadcast, so I have adopted the following solution. Each of the five percussion works will be followed by a prelude or fugue from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier played on the piano by Bernard Roberts. The Bach preludes and fugues have been selected by chance using dice; proof that my method outweighs my madness comes in the form of the timings of the chance selection from the 48 plus the percussion works neatly fitting the length of the programme slot.

Even without the silences broadcasting the works for amplified plants presents a technical problem due to the very low level of parts of the recordings. I have consulted with Tom Buckham, the station's ever rotating manager, and we are fairly confident the silence detector is not going to kick in and take me off air. But the programme is being presented live on Sunday and, as ever, anything could happen. Whatever the outcome Future Radio should be praised for backing projects which nobody else would dare to, including the complete Alvin Curran Inner Cities and Gnawa trance ritual broadcasts plus, of course, the Jonathan Harvey interview and other adventurous experiences.

* Podcast of this Chance Music programme is now available here.

** The following instruments are used by Simone Mancuso in his performance of John Cage's three pieces for amplified plants. Branches with leaves, bamboophone (invented by Simone Mancusco), bamboo wind chimes, bamboo xylophone, pod rattle, water gourds, cacti (spider and golden barrel)), and shells from dried plants.

*** The John Cage interview quoted above is transcribed in the invaluable CageTalk edited by Peter Dickinson (ISBN 1580462375).

**** Amusing to note that Silences I, II & III can be bought as MP3 files at a cost of 79 pence per track.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. The Stradivarius CD of solo music for wooden percussion was bought at FNAC in Perpignan. CageTalk was supplied as a requested sample. Header photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Any other copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mark McGuire: the antithesis of the axeman - The Guardian (blog)

Mark McGuire: the antithesis of the axeman
The Guardian (blog)
There are certainly clear influences on his playing – Manuel Göttsching's funky yet unmoored noodling; the serene pulse of Cluster, and of Steve Reich's ...

Eclectic pop artist arms herself to face the audience - Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney Morning Herald

Eclectic pop artist arms herself to face the audience
Sydney Morning Herald
Simon studied at IRCAM, a music research institute founded by Pierre Boulez, where she met Cyrille Brissot, who worked with her to create the electronic ...

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Chacona, Lamento: The Video

Here's a little explanatory video that my publisher and I made in support of the new book. It contains quick musical excerpts from Dowland, Monteverdi, and Purcell, in somewhat offbeat arrangements for voice, piano, and electric guitar. I sought out...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Energized

Dana Huyge & Carolyn Ray's performance last night was simply a joy for the ears to drink in. On top of that, that they were playing a piece of mine — words fail.

Dana's teacher, George Taylor, spoke kindly of the piece. 'It's long," he said, "but always interesting." He is considering the piece for performance himself, which I take as a great compliment.

Carolyn is originally from Boston, and there is a plan to bring the piece to Boston. The piano writing is apt to entangle the fingers, so I am especially gratified that Carolyn should like the piece.

Dana's dad is both a jazz saxophonist and a school band director, and the two of us spoke at some length at the reception after the concert. I was deeply impressed by the warmth of his response to the sonata, even while we both agreed that the nature of the piece is such as to almost require repeat listenings.

This morning I'm taking a relaxing cup of Sulawesi at Java's, the very place where, long since, I once perused the classifieds, and found an ad for native speakers to teach English in St Petersburg and the Baltics …

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Houston Mixtape #5: Back To Imagined Spaces

Pyramid and Michelle Yom at Labotanica (Houston, TX)

This Saturday, October 1st at 7pm, Michelle Yom will present her sound performance installation Back To Imagined Spaces at Houston’s alternative arts and music venue Labotanica located at 2316 Elgin Street. This is a part of Labotanica’s ongoing Hear/Her/Ear series spotlighting women in experimental music.

I got a chance to hear Michelle last month in a solo vocal set at Avant-Garden where she recorded and looped her singing in real time to additively build a series of haunting chorales. Michelle is perhaps best known as a flautist with a strong classical technique and the skills and imagination of a great improviser. Her flute and drums duo Doggebi features Michelle with drummer Spike The Percussionist – a musician I name checked in my Houston Mixtape #3: The Epicenter Of Noise – freely and (almost) breathlessly improvising music that is somehow stark yet filled with a minutiae of details.

Back To Imagined Spaces imagines the human body as a collection of cells that sing and are heard in a “self-imposed timeless space” contained within the pyramid Michelle has constructed inside Labotanica. Regarding the music she will perform, Michelle writes: “The first set is a series of staccato vocalizations with syllables from the mantra, Asato Ma Sad Gamaya, processed through seven delays. The second set will be a live performance of tonal pieces titled Heart, Ears, Kidney, and Stomach, also using vocal sounds. The pieces are intended to capture a version of imaginary but prudent sounds, much like taking a microscope and focusing the lens into singing, living cells.”

Also on Saturday’s program are performances by vocalist and electronic composer Melanie Jamison and Labotanica’s tireless curator visual and sound artist Ayanna Jolivet McCloud.

There is a $5 cover charge for the show. All proceeds go to the musicians. Michelle Yom’s installation will be up October 1st through October 9th, 2010.

Originally posted by Chris Becker from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Priaulx Rainier, Cello Concerto - Part 1 of 2

	Priaulx Rainier, Cello Concerto - Part 1 of 2 Priaulx Rainier was born on 3 February 1903 at Howick, Natal, South Africa, of English-Huguenot parents. Her early childhood was spent in a remote part of the country near Zulu land, where the liquid language and music of the indigenous people, the sounds of wild animals and the calls of the birds were to prove a lasting influence. As a violin student, at the age of ten, she entered the South African College of Music and, under the stimulating influence of the Principal, W. H. Bell, played a great deal of chamber music. In 1920 the University of South Africa Overseas Scholarship brought her to the Royal Academy of Music where she studied violin. Subsequently she settled permanently in London. Priaulx studied briefly with Nadia Boulanger in Paris followed, before the outbreak of theWar. She also met Michael Tippett at Morley College which thereby became a centre of considerable activity. Here Priaulx became acquainted with Tippett himself, as well as with the conductor Walter Goehr; the critic and administrator William Glock, the composer and teacher Matyas Seiber; the concert promoter Gerald Cooper; the singer Peter Pears, and many others. She was especially at home in the company of writers (David Gascoyne, Arthur Waley), artists (Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson), and dancers (Pola Nirenska). Among her many friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson occupied a special category. Their ideas about space-construction and geometric forms of abstract art found a receptive listener in Priaulx as she herself forged her own style; moreover Hepworth's belief in the reality of the world of ideas, and of the new vistas opened up by abstract scientific thought, struck forcibly home with the composer; who went so far as to buy a studio in St Ives, where Hepworth and Nicholson lived. There was, however, a primitivism at the heart of Rainier's music which called for particularly personal expression, and which was at variance with the tradition of Western classical music. As long as she used notes of determinate pitch it was necessary for her to come to terms with tonality; for pitched notes imply tonality if not necessarily a key The risk she ran was that her use of chromaticism might become uncontrolled, chaotic. In June 1982 the University of Cape Town honoured her with a Doctorate in Music (Honoris Causa). Priaulx Rainier died in France on 10 October 1986. [In case you have not noticed, one of the themes of this channel -- in facet one of the reason for its existence -- is the appreciation of women modernist composers of the 20th century. Our favorites include Priaulx Rainier, Elisabeth Lutyens, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Barbara Pentland -- and we are always on the lookout for more. If you have suggestions please send us a message here on YouTube. Thank you very much.	From: lendallpitts Views: 123 2 ratings
	Time: 07:41	More in Music

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Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (II)

	Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (II) Pantcho Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 Krassinir Gataev - Piano / Alexander Vladigerov - Conductor	From: fyrexia Views: 1 0 ratings
	Time: 12:50	More in Music

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Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (III)

	Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (III) Pantcho Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 Krassinir Gataev - Piano / Alexander Vladigerov - Conductor	From: fyrexia Views: 0 0 ratings
	Time: 13:00	More in Music

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Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (I)

	Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 (I) Pantcho Vladigerov - Piano Concerto No.2 Op.22 Krassinir Gataev - Piano / Alexander Vladigerov - Conductor	From: fyrexia Views: 32 0 ratings
	Time: 13:32	More in Music

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September 29, 2010

NY: Mahler – 7:30 pm

MAHLER, Symphony No. 6
Alan Gilbert, Conductor

SF: Debussy, Berlioz… – 8:00 pm

RAVEL, Rapsodie espagnole
DEBUSSY, Première Rapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra
DEBUSSY, Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra
BERLIOZ, Scenes from Roméo et Juliette
Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, piano
Carey Bell, clarinet
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - Irish Times

The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Irish Times
Formerly a string quartet that enhanced even further the music of Sigur Ros, Iceland's Amiina have advanced from being known merely as an adjunct to ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:38 AM | Comments (0)

Why small is so beautiful - Herald Scotland

Why small is so beautiful
Herald Scotland
... a full-scale, weekend-long survey of minimalist music, featuring music by all the giants of that genre, from Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Steve Reich and ...

Stockhausen celebration - Denver Post

Stockhausen celebration
Denver Post
Besides changing the course of contemporary classical music, the composer went on to influence jazz musicians like Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:31 AM | Comments (0)

Neil Young: Le Noise - The Guardian

Neil Young: Le Noise
The Guardian
It is almost avant garde. There's Young, bereft of band, playing guitar, periodically ambushed by some woo-woo sound effects. That's it. ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:31 AM | Comments (0)

Belgium Brings the Avant-Garde, Probably No Waffles - Village Voice

Belgium Brings the Avant-Garde, Probably No Waffles
Village Voice
"In VSPRS, it was the music of Monteverdi. In Pitié!, the music of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion was used. For this performance, I just wanted to continue ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:31 AM | Comments (0)

John Cale will always have 'Paris 1919' - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

John Cale will always have 'Paris 1919'
Los Angeles Times
As a solo artist, Cale has also proved compellingly unpredictable, alternating between the impenetrably avant-garde and edgy, nuanced rock right up to today ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:30 AM | Comments (0)

5 Lone Star State classical musicians to make us proud - Houston Chronicle

Houston Chronicle

5 Lone Star State classical musicians to make us proud
Houston Chronicle
Musiqa: The five composers who make up Musiqa are looking for a few good audiences, listeners who want to open their minds to contemporary classical music. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:30 AM | Comments (0)

DJ Spooky at Monaco Glacier - Huffington Post (blog)

DJ Spooky at Monaco Glacier
Huffington Post (blog)
Music is a powerful tool to foster more climate change literacy." He is spending his time with the Cape Farewell expedition as a collector of impressions, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 29, 2010 at 06:30 AM | Comments (0)

Symphony with touch of Japan - Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser

Symphony with touch of Japan
Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser
... 2010 contemporary music program curated by Matthew Hindson. The orchestra will also include works by Xenakis, Yun and Tchaikowsky in their performance. ...

Claudia Quintet With Gary Versace - Chicago Reader (blog)

Claudia Quintet With Gary Versace
Chicago Reader (blog)
... carefully placed within his cyclical, post-Steve Reich compositions so that it's difficult to tell where the written material ends. ...

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
Henri Dutilleux's Ansi la nuit (literally translated, [Thus (at) night] ), is a spiritual awakening of discordant notes and alarming unpredictability. ...

September 28, 2010

Sylvano Bussotti ~ Aquila Imperiale con l'Allodola e il Topino

	Sylvano Bussotti ~ Aquila Imperiale con l'Allodola e il Topino ....For bassoon and piano....	From: stanchinsky Views: 62 1 ratings
	Time: 10:44	More in Music

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Tristan Murail ~ Cloches d'adieu, et un sourire

	Tristan Murail ~ Cloches d'adieu, et un sourire (in memoriam Olivier Messiaen) ....For piano....	From: stanchinsky Views: 28 1 ratings
	Time: 04:13	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by stanchinsky, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Terry Riley ~ Lands End

	Terry Riley ~ Lands End ....For piano.... just intoned....	From: stanchinsky Views: 4 0 ratings
	Time: 06:50	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by stanchinsky, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Earle Brown ~ Forgotten Piece

	Earle Brown ~ Forgotten Piece (1954) ....Originally written for four pianos.... ....Just 1 here....	From: stanchinsky Views: 18 1 ratings
	Time: 07:37	More in Music

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Giacinto Scelsi ~ Dharana

	Giacinto Scelsi ~ Dharana (1975) ....For cello and double bass....	From: stanchinsky Views: 1 0 ratings
	Time: 08:54	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by stanchinsky, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

New-Music Benefit Becomes the Art Itself - New York Times

New-Music Benefit Becomes the Art Itself
New York Times
The Xenakis moves in the opposite direction, starting as a burst of noisy, gritty, variegated textures with an almost orchestral heft, and crawling toward ...

Another book

My long-awaited second book, Boozehound, is now in stores. No, wait, mine is Listen to This. Today is the official release date, and I will celebrate, as is my long-standing custom, by placing a signed copy of the book in...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Jason Moran Awarded MacArthur "Genius" Grant

The only composer among this year's 23 fellowship recipients, the so-called $500,000 "Genius grants," Jason Moran (b. 1975) has been recognized as "the most provocative thinker in current jazz" by Rolling Stone magazine.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Istanbul 1925

various artists compilation - Istanbul 1925 CD released in 1994; music remastered from metal master 78 rpm discs recorded in 1925Istanbul 1925 presents a collection of legendary performers from one of the most exciting periods in Middle Eastern music. Belly dancing, folk music and classical styles were merged together, creating a sound that became the rage of Istanbul - a city situated literally

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Return to Rochester

I am finding it all astonishingly hard to believe, really. Music which I only started plotting in July, and quite challenging technically (my friend Luke chid me for understatement there), Dana is going to play to an audience tonight.

All the travel has been smooth; and I am for all practical purposes in a state of bliss.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Maurice Ohana ~ Kypris

	Maurice Ohana ~ Kypris ....For oboe, viola, bass, and piano....	From: stanchinsky Views: 25 1 ratings
	Time: 11:30	More in Music

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Stefan Wolpe ~ Trio in two parts for flute, cello & piano ~ II

	Stefan Wolpe ~ Trio in two parts for flute, cello & piano ~ II II ~ quarter-note = ca. 80	From: stanchinsky Views: 3 0 ratings
	Time: 05:31	More in Music

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Stefan Wolpe ~ Trio in two parts for flute, cello & piano ~ I

	Stefan Wolpe ~ Trio in two parts for flute, cello & piano ~ I I ~ quarter-note = ca. 132	From: stanchinsky Views: 3 1 ratings
	Time: 11:08	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by stanchinsky, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Sounds Heard: David First—Privacy Issues

While using the "droneworks" moniker perhaps warns folks away from David First's 3-CD Privacy Issues who are unable to deal with unwavering musical processes, the results in these compositions spanning the past 14 years are extraordinarily varied and sonically bountiful.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

It's Too Darn Hot

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
I am tossing coherence out the window in honor of a proper fan, so here are a few random thoughts to underscore this scorcher.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Alternative Music Venues in New York City - Venere Travel Blog (blog)

Alternative Music Venues in New York City
Venere Travel Blog (blog)
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue that is well known as a centre for progressive and avant garde performance. As well as music, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Young Mahler

While on a long cross country drive on Saturday I heard Matthew Herbert's recomposition of Mahler's Tenth Symphony on BBC Radio 3 - there is a valuable video interview with the recomposer here. Kudos to Deutsche Grammophon, who take a lot of stick here, for challenging silly conventions with this new release which may well appeal to younger as well as older audience. For me, no more justification is needed for the recomposition than Carl Nielsen's words:

'The right of life is stronger than the most sublime art, and even if we reached agreement on the fact that now the best and most beautiful has been achieved, mankind thirsting more for life and adventure than perception, would rise and shout in one voice: give us something else, give us something new, indeed for Heaven's sake give us rather the bad, and let us feel that we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.'

All of which leads me to the 2 LP set seen above. It is Simon Rattle's first recording of Deryck Cooke's revised performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony made for EMI in 1980 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra when the conductor was 25. (Deleted CD transfer here). This was an early digital recording and I was involved in bringing it to market. When I took the records down from the shelf to play as I write this post I saw that the following copy, edited by me, is on the packaging:

In his biography of Mahler, Kurt Blaukopf wrote: "Mahler's prophecy 'My time will come' has been fulfilled in the 1960's. Many diverse factors have contributed to this, but perhaps the most decisive of all was the advent of the technically perfected stereo record'".

More young Mahler here while Beethoven is re-envisaged here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Evan Ziporyn embarks on a season of major musical events - MIT News

Evan Ziporyn embarks on a season of major musical events
MIT News
Evan Ziporyn, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music and an award-winning composer and performer, has a lively musical calendar in any given year, ...

Chattoisau

Sound Clip: Chattoisau by Collectif Tralala

Sound painting of the birds behind the pines.

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Late to the Party

By David Smooke
Last week, Baltimore's City Paper published its 2010 Best of Baltimore issue, and the experimental music scene cleaned up in shocking fashion.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Ferneyhough: Mort Subite (1990) w/ score

	Ferneyhough: Mort Subite (1990) w/ score Brian Ferneyhough's short "Mort Subite" for piccolo/piano duo and clarinet/vibraphone duo, with the score. * A note on the format of the piece and, thus, the score and video: Mort Subite is written as a series of 6 metrical phases, each of a duration of 20 eighth notes. In each phase, the metrical relationship of the piccolo/piano duo with the clarinet/vibraphone duo is transformed (phased) through slight metrical/rhythmic alterations in one or (in the later phases) both of the duos. Throughout the piece, the two duos are synchronized through a click track (heard by the players but not heard in the final recording). In accordance with the structure of the piece, the score is thus broken into a piccolo/piano part, a clarinet/vibraphone part, and a click track synchronization reference page. To present this in the most concise and coherent form possible, I've broken this video up by the 6 phases, with each of the slides showing one of the phases. On each slide, the piccolo/piano part is presented at the top; the clarinet/vibraphone part in the middle; and the click track reference at the bottom. In some cases, the clarinet/vibraphone part takes up two lines; in all the slides, each new line is labeled for clarity. While the two duos are not rhythmically aligned in the slides, the click track reference at the bottom should help one to mentally do so. * Ferneyhough writes about the compositional ideas behind this piece at some length in the essay "Duration and Rhythm as a Compositional Resource," included in his Collected Writings; part of this can be viewed on google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=TyquPRg7f34C&printsec=frontcover&dq=ferneyhough+mort+subite&hl=en&ei=vPVXTNa3BoHdnAeW7ayXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=subite&f=false I am not sure who's playing here; if anyone has an idea, please do let me know. And finally, a fun fact for the next time you find yourself involved in a heated game of Trivial Pursuit Ferneyhough Edition®: this piece is named after a pub in Brussels where Ferneyhough apparently got the idea for this piece.	From: p0lyph0nyXX Views: 198 5 ratings
	Time: 02:02	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by p0lyph0nyXX, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

Babbitt: Concerti for Orchestra (2004) [Part 1/2]

	Babbitt: Concerti for Orchestra (2004) [Part 1/2] Milton Babbitt's recent, wonderfully delicate Concerti for Orchestra; first part of two. Many thanks to flammesombres for providing me with this recording.	From: p0lyph0nyXX Views: 86 5 ratings
	Time: 10:56	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by p0lyph0nyXX, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)

Oakland Underground Film Festival - Daily Californian

Oakland Underground Film Festival
Daily Californian
Things began on an abrasive note with "We Don't Care About Music Anyway," a documentary about Tokyo's avant-garde music scene. A more apt title might have ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

A very special year - Buffalo News

Buffalo News

A very special year
Buffalo News
marvels current BPO Music Director JoAnn Falletta. At 8 pm Saturday, JoAnn Falletta will give the downbeat on the same music, kicking off the BPO's 75th ...

Orellana

I have been seriously remiss in not including a link to the very nice website dedicated to the work of the remarkable Guatemalan composer Joaquin Orellana. This is it, and it's well worth a long visit. While studying in Buenos Aires in the late 1960s, Orellana became familiar with a state-of-the-art electronic music studio, but on his return to Guatemala City, the resources available to him for making electronic music were seriously limited, so Orellana devised acoustical instruments — utiles sonoros (sound utensils) — fashioned out of available local materials, including bamboo, hardwoods, and scrap metal, which he used in place of the banks of oscillators and filters and other modules that were then featured, elsewhere, in analog synthesis studios, as sound sources. These utensils proved to be much more than simple tools for subsequent tape manipulation, and would frequently be featured as accompaniment instruments to increasingly lyrical melodic material.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

Seen on the web

I don’t go with the idea of classical music being an addiction — it’s a gateway to enlightenment, understanding, compassion and a sense of the world.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

The Shadow Theatre Of Anaphoria

From The Follies of Dr. Placebo

Originally from Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

Invisibility (2009) part one

	Invisibility (2009) part one Invisibility (2009) part one ELISION Ensemble composer: Liza Lim violoncello: Séverine Ballon director: Scott Myers editor: Matthew Dove assistant editor: Daryl Buckley sound: Bruno Silva Artists-in-Residence, CeReNeM, Huddersfield University 2009-2010 Performed on 8th February 2010 Hall Two, Kings Place London, United Kingdom	From: elisionensemble Views: 684 7 ratings
	Time: 06:08	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by elisionensemble, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

Sciarrino- Sui Poemi Concentrici I (1/5)

	Sciarrino- Sui Poemi Concentrici I (1/5) Been meaning to upload the rest of these, so decided to go ahead. Here is the first of Salvatore Sciarrino's Sui Poemi Concentrici for orchestra and various soloists (in this case, Cello and Orchestra), which are meant to represent the meaning of each of the three movements of Dante's Divine Comedy; each movement is easily distinguishable, although all three are placed against the same backdrop which is supposed to represent material earth, and the distance from and yearning for it the listener feels for it. Seeing as how this is the first one, easy to assume it's Inferno.	From: John11inch Views: 653 9 ratings
	Time: 09:52	More in Music

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Aldo Clementi: Triplum

	Aldo Clementi: Triplum Clementi's short-but-sweet 'Triplum' for flute, oboe and clarinet.	From: flammesombres Views: 88 4 ratings
	Time: 04:05	More in Music

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Babbitt: "Danci"

	Babbitt: "Danci" Milton Babbitt: "Danci" (1996) for guitar. (William Anderson -- guitar) "Danci" takes its title from the Esperanto word for "dance".	From: NewMusicXX Views: 604 13 ratings
	Time: 02:56	More in Music

Originally from Uploads by NewMusicXX, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

Percussionist revives 20th-century works - Telescope

Percussionist revives 20th-century works
Telescope
The works of 20th-century avant-garde composer John Cage are coming to Palomar in a 2005 Scion XB. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

Trouble at Mall - Independent

Trouble at Mall
Independent
Roger Wright [director of the Proms] proved with the extraordinary season this summer that people will listen to avant-garde music. ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

Yann Tiersen - Dust Lane - musicOMH.com

musicOMH.com

Yann Tiersen - Dust Lane
musicOMH.com
French musician and composer Yann Tiersen is nothing if not avant-garde. Though perhaps best known for the accordion-driven French folk fare ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Priaulx Rainier, Cello Concerto - Part 2 of 2

Priaulx Rainier's Cello Concerto was written for a Prom Concert held on 3 September 1964, where it was introduced to the world by Jacqueline du Pré and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Norman Del Mar (at the same concert, du Pré played Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto with the same orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent, the year before she made her famous recording of it under Sir John Barbirolli.) It has been claimed that du Pré "loathed every second" of the Rainier concerto, "not only because of its idiom, but also because it was technically beyond her".

Priaulx Rainier's largest work of that period was the orchestral suite Aequora Lunae, a continuous piece in seven sections, each one descriptive of one of the Moon's seas. It was dedicated to Barbara Hepworth, whose acquaintance she made in the summer of 1949 when she stayed in St Ives, Cornwall, using a fisherman's loft as a studio. She remained a close friend of Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. She claimed that only sculptors and architects fully understood her music. Another work premiered at a Prom Concert was Ploërmel (1973), an evocation of one her favourite places, Ploërmel in the North West of France, near the mouth of the River Loire. It uses an orchestra of winds and percussion, including timpani, tubular bells, hand-bells, antique cymbals, high and low gongs, xylophone and marimba.

Her violin concerto, Due Canti e Finale, was commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, who performed it at the 1977 Edinburgh Festival with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves. Menuhin described Rainier as "having a musical imagination of a colour and variety scarcely to be believed". On the other hand, after hearing her music, William Walton commented that she "must have barbed-wire underwear". Concertante for Two Winds and Orchestra was written for and dedicated to Janet Craxton and Thea King and was premiered at the Proms in 1981.

There have been infrequent performances of Priaulx Rainier's music as they are difficult for both performer and listener. Premieres of her music were not always adequate, reducing the chances of there being further performances. Her complete chamber music was recorded and broadcast by the BBC in 1976. She was awarded a Doctorate in Music (Honoris Causa) by the University of Cape Town in June 1982. She was also a passionate gardener and ecologist who helped design, and planted the exotic plants in, Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture Garden in St Ives. Her last work, Wildlife Celebration, was commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin and performed in aid of Gerald Durrell's Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Priaulx Rainier died on 10 October 1986 at Besse-en-Chandesse in France, aged 83. The date was the 70th birthday of David Gascoyne, the poet to whose words she had written her Requiem of 1956.

Most of her music manuscripts are now housed at the J. W. Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town.

On 28 March 1987 a concert in celebration of her life and work was held at Wigmore Hall. A pictorial biography, Come and Listen to the Stars Singing, written by June Opie, was published in 1988.

Her centenary on 3 February 2003 was marked by a special program on Australia's ABC Classic FM.

Her "lost" early String Quartet (1922) was given its world premiere on 8 September 2004 at the Tate St.Ives Visual Music Week.

Originally posted by jeff from new music reblog plus, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2010

NY: Mendelssohn, Hindemith – 7:30 pm

STRAUSS, Don Juan
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
DUTILLEUX, Métaboles
HINDEMITH, Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Itzhak Perlman, violin
Alan Gilbert, conductor

CHI: Berlioz – 7:30 pm

BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
BERLIOZ, Lélio
Mario Zeffiri, tenor
Kyle Ketelsen, Bass-Baritone
Gérard Depardieu, narrator
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Riccardo Muti, conductor

PHI: Mendelssohn, Mahler… – 8:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Le Corsaire Overture
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
MAHLER, Symphony No. 1
Joshua Bell, violin
Charles Dutoit, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

More on irritating our fixed orders

Let the Gypsies come and blossom.
We miss them.
They can help us by irritating our fixed orders.
They are what we pretend to be; they are true Europeans.
They do not know any borders.
Günter Grass

That quote is used by Garth Cartwright in the introduction to his portrait of the Gypsy musicians of the Balkans, Princes Among Men. The frontispiece of the book includes the following puff:

An insightful and poignant travelogue which should be handed out free to every Daily Mail reader ~ Big Issue

Please could a copy also be handed out to President Sarkozy?

Titi Robin's album Gitans, which is powered by the 'gypsy queen of Rajasthan' Gulabi Sapera, featured here. Germany's new generation of Gypsies are here, the forgotten holocaust victims are here, and before anyone points it out, yes, I know. Our pilgrimage to the gypsy shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is here.

My candid header photo, which shows some some of the new Europeans rather that authentic Gypsies, was taken in the French Catalonian town of Elne last week and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Any other copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Garth Cartwright's Princes Among Men was borrowed from Norwich Millenium Library. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

A MacArthur for Sebastian Ruth

I'm incredibly pleased to see that Sebastian Ruth, whose project Community MusicWorks I wrote about in 2006, has been named a MacArthur Fellow. My article on music education and Ruth's initiative is reprinted in Listen to This.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

Field Reporting from Ann Arbor, MI

There are few institutions in America with a richer history than the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance and the composition department there has a particularly impressive tradition. With past and present faculty and students including Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, William Bolcom and George Crumb, UM composers have had a hand in much of contemporary American music history including the homegrown Once Festival and other movements such as Bang on a Can. Moreover, with alumni currently holding faculty positions at premiere music schools across the country (including UM), it seems safe to say that – despite the impossibility of pinpointing the best composition department in the country – Michigan’s legacy is gilded with rare prestige.

I am not here to sell the UM to Sequenza 21 readers, but Michigan’s reputation in composition is a quietly held secret, becoming increasingly obscured in recent decades as the landscape of American music education gained more parity. The test of time proves Michigan is neither an aging dinosaur nor a flash in the pan, and my experience here – though a brief three weeks – has evinced further proof that the UM’s prowess in music is no accident.

With all this pomp, you may think the UM has cast a spell on me, but that is not the case. Just like any other music school, Michigan has limitations and specialties, but its environment is very special. Ann Arbor is extraordinarily supportive of the arts, particularly in relation to its population (114, 024), and in the last week I have gone to four remarkably well-attended concerts, namely because three featured contemporary compositions.

The first concert offered a selection of French organ and harpsichord music from the late 17^th and early 18^th century, which was followed later that evening by the Michigan Chamber Players’ performance of two homegrown compositions: Andrew Bishop’s The Juke Joints in Burgundy (Blues in Burgundy) and Paul Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs. The former was an exercise in timbre (scored for flute, harp and contrabass) and merging diverse influences. As Bishop explained in his program note, Juke Joints alludes to various French musical sources, but has a clear jazz orientation and climaxes with an extended jam between the three players. Ghetto Songs was decidedly more serious in tone, setting holocaust-era Yiddish poetry in a tastefully versatile musical landscape, which was at once evocative, suspenseful and somber.

To have Schoenfield and Bishop’s compositions featured on a Michigan Chamber Players concert is not unusual because both are faculty members at the UM School of Music. More remarkable is that Juke Joints and Ghetto Songs shared the stage with Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano (1905) and Johannes Brahms’ Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1891). Perhaps in larger cities, classic repertoire is frequently juxtaposed with contemporary music, but one can’t forget we are in Ann Arbor, MI with just over 100,000 residents. Moreover, two orchestra concerts from this last weekend also programmed recent compositions along side more standard pieces. Coming from my undergraduate in Houston, a city of more than 2,000,000 with an orchestra whose 2010-2011 season’s most recently written offering is Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, I am stunned in the best way possible that the Ann Arbor community so enthusiastically receives modern music.

Of course, cultural centers like Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago can provide similar experiences for young, learning composers. But, there is one thing Ann Arbor has that most other places don’t: pride in their own. As cheesy as this sounds, I think it lies at the heart of the community’s receptive attitude towards a repertoire other audiences would scoff at. As evidence I give you Sunday’s Ann Arbor Symphony concert so-called “Made in Michigan”. Here, Shostakovich and Saint-Saens sat second fiddle to Bill Bolcom, William Albright and Michael Daugherty and – with the help of command performances like flautist Amy Porter’s delivery of Daugherty’s concerto, Trail of Tears – the audience received their music with respectful avidity. Two nights prior, I witnessed an astounding display of the Ann Arbor community’s musical perspicacity as they recognized the high quality with which the University Symphony Orchestra performed Chen Yi’s Percussion Concerto and were not fooled by the familiarity of Berlioz’s Roman Carnival and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, both of which were not performed as well, and the audience’s reaction reflected the difference.

I am sure, by now, you are all wondering why this makes Ann Arbor a special place. The University of Michigan is like a jewel to the state, and its products, whether football or composers are always treated with respect by the Michigan community. The ability to hear a wide range of music on a regular basis is, by itself, no special quality, but when paired with the intimacy of Ann Arbor, the cultural environment of the University of Michigan becomes rather extraordinary. At worst, Ann Arbor is a close second to the country’s brightest cultural hotspots, but I imagine these locales don’t deliver the same nourishment of a tight-knit and supportive intellectual ecosystem. Again, I do not think this makes Michigan any better than the other places a composer can get an education these days, but it provides a rare platform for any young musicians burgeoning talents. I look forward to reporting more about his exceptional dot on the American musical map as my time here progresses.

Originally posted by Garrett Schumann from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Trouble at Mall - Independent

Trouble at Mall
Independent
Alongside Beethoven and Wagner were Cage, Stockhausen, Schoenberg & Co. In fact, 50 of the 76 concerts had 20th and 21st century composers, with an array of ...

and more »

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll - NPR

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll
NPR
Last season, he received rave reviews when, in a two-week period, he performed the Beethoven Missa Solemnis and a staged concert of Gyorgy Ligeti's atonal ...

and more »

From Rice Paddies and Temple Yards: Traditional Music of Vietnam

Phong Thuyet Nguyen - From Rice Paddies and Temple Yards: Traditional Music of Vietnamcassette released in 1990This cassette accompanied the book of the same title as the cassette.Phong Thuyet Nguyen, Ph.D. was raised in Can Tho province in the Mekong delta of South Vietnam, in a village called Tam Ngai. He was born into a musical family that played art music, music for festivals, rituals,

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

Pre-Viola Sonata Travel Shuffle

Today, to clear the palate before tomorrow evening’s event:

1. Shostakovich, Passacaglia, Intermezzo from Ledi Makbet Mtsenskovo Uyezda (Cologne West German Radio, M. Jurowski) [421/1172]
2. Nielsen, Symphony № 5, Part II (LSO, Schmidt) [896/1172]
3. Beethoven, Symphony № 3, Sinfonia eroica, i. Allegro con brio (Leipzig Gewandhausorchester; Masur) [906/1172]
4. Debussy, Hommage à Rameau, Images pour piano, Book I № 2 (Kocsis) [9/1172]
5. Ginastera, Variazione giocosa per flauto, from Variaciones concertantes, Opus 23 (Magdalena Barrera, pf; Granada City Orchestra; Pons) [1075/1172]
6. Mannheim Steamroller, “Good King Wenceslaus” (from some or other Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album) [322/1172]
7. Shostakovich, Symphony № 7 in C Major, Opus 60, Leningrad, i. Allegro (Prague Symphony, Maksim Dmitriyevich) [741/1172]
8. Bartók, Sonata for Two Pianos & Percussion, Sz. 110, iii. Allegro non troppo (Kocsis, Ránki, Cser, Rácz) [805/1172]
9. Nielsen, Symphony № 4, Det uudslukkelige, Opus 29, FS 76, iv. Allegro (LSO, Schmidt) [893/1172]
10. Shostakovich, String Quartet № 15 in e^b minor, Opus 144, v. Funeral march: Adagio molto (Emerson String Quartet) [819/1172]
11. Bartók, Divertimento, Allegro assai (LSO, Doráti) [255/1172]
12. Bartók, The Miraculous Mandarin, Opus 54, The curtain rises on a shabby room (LSO, Doráti) [255/1172]
13. Prokofiev, Ten Small Pieces, Opus 12, ii. Gavotte (Eteri Andjaparidze) [963/1172]
14. Bartók, Piano Concerto № 1, Sz. 83, ii. Andante (Anda, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Fricsay) [381/1172]
15. Shostakovich, String Quartet № 4 in D Major, Opus 83, iii. Allegretto (Emerson String Quartet) [876/1172]
16. Zappa, “The Black Page (1984)” (You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, vol. IV) [975/1172] 17. Elgar, Cello Concerto in e minor, Opus 85, iii. Adagio (Navarre, Hallé Orchestra, Barbirolli) [199/1172]
18. Prokofiev, Ten Small Pieces, Opus 12, iv. Mazurka (Eteri Andjaparidze) [965/1172]
19. Stravinsky, Agnus Dei from the Mass (Westminster Cathedral Choir, City of London Sinfonia,Jas O’Donnell) [524/1172]
20. Genesis, “Riding the Scree” (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) [671/1172]
21. Shostakovich, Ophelia’s Song, from Music for Hamlet, Opus 32 (Liudmila Shkirtil & Yuri Serov) [331/1172]
22. Zappa & The Mothers, “The Duke of Prunes” (Absolutely Free) [269/1172]

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 28, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2010

New Blogs!

Some blogroll updates first:

Do the Math has a new URL and feed. It’s no longer a band blog, but purely the work of Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson.
Brigid Slipka’s blog is now at brigidslipka.com. The feed should be unchanged.
The Future of Music Coalition blog’s feed has changed.
The Idea Feed’s, uh, feed has also changed. I was really glad to discover this one was still active but upset to realize that I’d missed several months’ worth of posts!
Community Arts Network, the publishers of both APINews and CANBlog, is no more, so I’ve removed them both from the list. The CAN website, which has a number of fantastic educational resources for arts policy nuts, is archived here.

You might have noticed a few aesthetic changes here at Createquity, as well: the rotating backgrounds form a more coherent set, and I’ve consolidated the large number of categories to four “channels” (Policy & Advocacy, Philanthropy, Economy, and Research) and begun using a tag-based system instead. Thanks once again to the talented Evan Stein for his help with this.

Art and Avarice
Voice teacher and opera singer Milena Thomas has a degree in finance and an ardent affection for the free market. It’s a dangerous combination that has caused her to take some headscratching positions, like when she argued that outlawing unpaid internships would disproportionately hurt the poor or that letting big record companies bribe radio stations for airplay would somehow create more opportunity for indie musicians. I went back and forth for a while about linking to her for this reason, but Thomas is a gifted writer whose ideas are often worth considering even when her politics are (in my opinion) misguided. The post that got me off the fence was her most recent one, a beautiful reflection on the balance between art and family. Thomas was nine months pregnant when she wrote it, so understandably she’s been a bit MIA since then, but when she comes back, I’ll be reading.

Buzzing Reed
No relation (that I know of) with his namesake above, Columbus Symphony clarinetist David H. Thomas writes this very active blog about clarinet, classical music, and audience engagement. A reader who plays clarinet will definitely get more out of Buzzing Reed than one who does not, but Thomas is a voracious reader who keeps up with some very different sources than I do, so I appreciate his bite-sized reactions to classical music articles like this one. A good way to keep up with what orchestral musicians are thinking these days.

NYFA Blog
The New York Foundation for the Arts has a long history of providing grant and technical support to artists in New York State and beyond (NYFA Classifieds, for example, is one of the key local sources for job listings in arts administration). Now NYFA has a blog written by executive director Michael Royce, and it looks pretty promising. Of greatest interest to me was an early peek into the NEA’s strategic plan framework for 2012-16, though unfortunately the link to the plan itself no longer seems to be active. Still, there’s lots of other good stuff to keep one occupied here.

OK Trends
I have to hand it to my coworker Tim Cynova: he emailed me a link to a New York Times article that discussed this blog some months ago and my life has not been the same since. Christian Rudder and Chris Coyne perform technically ambitious and highly entertaining data analysis on the 3.5 million active members of OKCupid, a well-known online dating service. The OK Trends blog bucks some pervasive blog-authoring conventional wisdom: posts are infrequent, averaging about one a month, and very, very lengthy. But hey, they’re about romance and sex, so somehow people find the time to read them (one post has, um, attracted more than 1300 comments to, um, date). Math + Cultural Anthropology + Hilarity = Awesome.

Share/Save This Article

Originally posted by Ian David Moss from Createquity., ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll - NPR

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll
NPR
By doing what makes him happy, Owens pleases his collaborators, like New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert. "Forget about singers; if you talk ...

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll - OPB News

Eric Owens: Singing Grendel, Death And A Troll
OPB News
Last season, he received rave reviews when, in a two-week period, he performed the Beethoven Missa Solemnis and a staged concert of Gyorgy Ligeti's atonal ...

and more »

Arthur Balsam plays CPE Bach

Many people have told me how much they admire Arthur Balsam's pioneering recordings of the Haydn piano sonatas. While I didn't pick up on what made them special right away, I trust my friends' taste. So I always make sure to check the used LP bins for the various pressings of Balsam's series, which is not available on CD. (As far as I know, that is. It really does get hard to keep up with these things what with labels like Brilliant Classics lobbing another megabox or two at you every 48 hours or so.)

Well, now I 'get it'. Arthur Balsam's Haydn, that is. While it's played on a Steinway rather than a period instrument, it is probably the best 'complete' set we have. And a large handful of the individual sonatas are the equal of the very best classic 'one-off' recordings by Richter, Weissenberg, Pogorelich et al. As a teaser and a taster for a complete-ish transfer of the Haydn (which I or someone else is probably working on), here is an equally-treasurable Musical Heritage Society LP of Balsam playing CPE Bach. It is frustrating that the information given is (as seen above) inadequate, at the level of a blithe 'Sonata in A major' --- it took me years to get Mozart and Bach and Schubert and Haydn straight (all of those 'K' and 'BWV' and 'D' and 'Hoboken' numbers.) I'm too old, grey and slow at this point to make any headway with the CPE Bach 'WQ' numbers. Any volunteers?

If you've played through any of CPE's piano music, you know that his harmonic and structural sense is audacious to say the least – this small program shows him at his funniest, wildest and most heartbreaking. And Mr. Balsam's playing is something else. I don't know why I couldn't hear that right away.

Arthur Balsam plays CPE Bach – FLAC and scans

(NOTE: if you got to this within two hours of my first posting it, please note that the link above was to an incorrect file – I have fixed it now.)

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

Stefan Wolpe (Série Grande Diffusion No 1)

Thanks to Columbia Masterworks, who took Stravinsky's advice and bankrolled Robert Craft's 1957 box of Anton Webern's Op 1-31 (and Boulez's stereo 'remake'), several generations of listeners have had the luxury of holding tout Webern in their hands – in good performances and in order of composition – thereby making it possible to 'hold' tout Webern in their heads. In an alternate universe, we'd make do with getting to know Webern in piecemeal fashion – a string quartet here and an orchestral work there; the lieder and gesänge for low voice on a Second Vienna School compilation on EMI, the gesänge and lieder for high voice coupled with Zemlinksy and Strauss songs on Orfeo. And how familiar would the sublime 'Quartet with tenor saxophone' be if the only source were an out-of-print Hungaroton LP?

This is roughly the situation with a slew of post-World War II composers – the craftsmen and women who worked in what I like to call common-practice post-tonal music. It takes patient detective work and a bit of cash to acquire even barely-adequate overviews of Luigi Dallapiccola, Elisabeth Lutyens, Milton Babbitt, Claudio Spies, Betsy Jolas etcetera. In some cases – Claude Ballif or Gilbert Amy, for instance – the recordings are long out-of-print. Stefan Wolpe's situation is more typical. There have been numerous Wolpe recordings, and many are easily available. But their contents can be frustratingly willy-nilly and downright obfuscating – for example, a piano disc of mostly minor works in very different styles from either end of Wolpe's career that includes none of the multi-piano works (arguably his most important achievement.)

Perhaps we'll see a chronological Dallapiccola Edition one day, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I've been cherry-picking pieces from here and there to make my own IPOD playlists. Rather than add to the glut of 'entire CD' offerings on the internet, I thought I'd share some of these with you. The first installment in this series is devoted to Stefan Wolpe's chamber music from 1961 onwards. From two LPs and eight CDs (all but two out-of-print) I put together this program:

Piece in three parts (1961) – Piece in two parts for six players (1962) – Piece for two instrumental units (1963) – Trio in two parts (1963-64) – String Quartet (1969) – Form IV: Broken Sequences (1969) – From here on farther (1969) – Piece for trumpet and seven instruments (1971).

The performers include Ensemble Recherche, Musikfabrik, Peter Serkin, the Juilliard Quartet, Frederik Prausnitz, Katharina Wolpe and others. (Complete information is provided in the enclosed text document.)

Listening to a solid 90 minutes of Stefan Wolpe's late work is a great pleasure. What I hear is supremely modest, fantastically fluent music, the closest we're likely to get to post-tonal Mozart. This has become one of my favorite A.M. listening experiences; for me, Wolpe is music for cool, sunny autumn mornings. If that sounds interesting to you, skip to the bottom for the links. You can scroll back up here while it's downloading and read the following testimonials from a few of Wolpe's students and colleagues ...

Claude Ballif:

'I met Wolpe in Darmstadt, where I went from 1956 to 1959. Wolpe was the first musician I’ve met who spoke really like an artist about music. Wolpe considered music like a physical thing. He opened my mind about the idea of register. It was really interesting for me, because, before Xenakis, Wolpe was very concerned with this idea of register and pitch. When you fix the register, you fix also the scale-harmony. Wolpe said, “one should know about all the structures of fantasy and all the fantasies of structure.” He is for me the example of freedom of structure and not mathematics, how to bring the human, physical impulse into a real composition, with the brain, with intelligence, and with the ear.

In Wolpe’s Violin Sonata what interested me was the freedom of the relation between the violin and the piano, the fresh, open feeling in the treatment, and no pretension to do a classical Beethoven violin and piano. It was the goal of Wolpe to give an impression of improvisation.

Morton Feldman:

'Wolpe was the kind of man who used all eighty-eight notes of his personality. He loved what was on the opposite side of the coin. When I first went to study with Wolpe soon after finishing high school, I was just another smart kid who thought that writing music was some clever way of pushing notes around. I soon learned differently. The rules of the game were clear enough, but how to jump the hurdles were not. I learned it was a lie, that old dictum, “Rules are made to be broken.” They were, in fact, obstacles to be jumped--that our musical history and the realities of note-pushing into shapes and forms was a treacherous steeplechase. You get a clear sense of this in his own music. It never settles, though organically its initial assumptions have nothing to worry about. Logic is more than walking a straight line, especially if there is an obstacle in front of you. Wolpe used these obstacles as part and parcel of his musical language. Though, as I have just remarked, they were referred to as opposites.'

Katharina Wolpe:

'Stefan wasn’t an intellectual composer, but he was a man of infinite variety, and his music shows this. Therefore, you can’t at first identify a Wolpe phrase just like that. One can recognize Stravinsky through five closed doors, but it’s not so easy to do this with Wolpe. Speaking as a performer, one’s got to remember that although it may be difficult, and very concentrated, his music is above all beautiful.

I think the most significant contribution of the avant-garde music of the second half of the century is its rhythmical liberation, but being liberated isn’t necessarily a piece of cake. Stefan has an enormously close relationship with this rhythmical liberation, where rhythm at one fraction of a second expresses exactly this and nothing else, and at the next exactly something else. The idea of things happening simultaneously that are exactly opposite is deeply interesting in Stefan’s music.'

Charles Wuorinen:

'... in the 1950s, we were all receiving the latest masterpieces from the post-war European avant garde. I always had a good deal of trouble with that music. What struck me about most of these composers was that they didn’t seem to know what to do with notes ... I think they lost their ears in a fundamental way and really couldn’t tell the difference between a good note and a bad one.

Take the Boulez Sonatine and the Wolpe Piece in Two Parts for Flute and Piano. My attitudes along these lines were not made more positive when we played (the Sonatine) once for Boulez, who said that it didn’t really matter if we got a sixteenth or so off in some of the fast places. I had busted my behind to learn the stupid thing as well as I could, and I was now being told that it didn’t matter whether I played it right or not. Now the second movement of the Wolpe piece also has some really impossible things in it. But that is a piece whose mission it is to make music. Like all his work, it embodies very high artistic aspirations without an extra-musical agenda. If I had to make a comparative judgment of the two pieces, there would be no question of superiority of the Wolpe: it is infinitely superior in every way.

There really is no special reason except for very general statistical ones why any of the notes in the Boulez have to be what they are. There are the characteristic tritone predominance, and fourth plus tritone sonorities, which I think of as characteristically French, but that’s about it. But I would never dignify pitch relations there or indeed in any of his music for that matter with a phrase like “structural harmony.” But in the Wolpe Flute Piece you get right away at the beginning an absolutely clear statement of the tetrachord that’s going to govern the whole work. When the second tetrachord is introduced, you get a very simple statement of that. All that pitch-relational parsimony, especially at the beginning, is balanced with an extremely fluid and flexible rhythmic, articulative, and registral behavior that makes a perfect balance. In other words, the complexity of the registral scatter and the rhythmic physiognomy of those opening pages is a perfect complement to the restricted pitch-class content. That’s very classic and very traditional at the same time as being new to the time when the piece was composed. That is the kind of progressivism or avant gardism that I have always admired in music, not the kind that says we have to invent music again every time we write a new piece.'

***

The quotes above are taken from the webstite of the Stefan Wolpe Society. A terrific program of Wolpe LP transfers is available at the Avant Garde Project, including the 'Chamber Pieces' No 1 and No 2, from 1964 and 1965 respectively, which helpfully bridge a gap in the 1960s selection I've posted here.

Stefan Wolpe - Chamber music of the 60s and 70s (Série Grande Diffusion No 1) PART ONE

Stefan Wolpe - Chamber music of the 60s and 70s (Série Grande Diffusion No 1) PART TWO

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

Inaugural Modulus Festival gains buzz thanks to Gramophone magazine - The Province

Inaugural Modulus Festival gains buzz thanks to Gramophone magazine
The Province
"But to be able to present a program where you'll hear a flute ensemble performing Steve Reich and Radiohead, followed by an intimate evening performance of ...

and more »

NY Philharmonic Executive to Leave - New York Times

New York Times

NY Philharmonic Executive to Leave
New York Times
The orchestra has major event concerts, like last year's production of the postmodern opera “Le Grand Macabre,” by Ligeti. Mr. Mehta's successor will have ...

and more »

Audience Rights

By Frank J. Oteri
If indeed music results more from the audience than the folks supplying what the audience is listening to, what should the role of the audience be and what rights does an audience have?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Less is more as Michael Nyman prepares for Glasgow's Minimal weekend - Herald Scotland

Less is more as Michael Nyman prepares for Glasgow's Minimal weekend
Herald Scotland
He was aware of the idea of minimal art in the US, but it wasn't until he met Steve Reich in 1970 that the association between the concept and the music ...

More than three decades after Oxygene, Jean Michel Jarre is still a breath of ... - Herald Scotland

More than three decades after Oxygene, Jean Michel Jarre is still a breath of ...
Herald Scotland
But Jarre traces the origins back even further – to the work of Pierre Schaeffer (“my master”) in Paris and to Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. ...

A genuinely forward looking work

While I was travelling last week the sad news came of the death of Geoffrey Burgon aged 69. Predictably the mainstream obituaries focussed on his music for the screen at the expense of his concert scores. As I wrote back in 2007, "Although his film and TV scores are well known, Burgon's concert music isn't heard often enough to generate letters of complaint these days. His choral Requiem is a genuinely forward looking work, wonderful scoring, and beautiful Kingsway Hall sound". Geoffrey Burgon was a distinctive voice who was not afraid to speak out pour encourager les autres. He will be missed.

Also on Facebook and Twitter.The Decca CD of Geoffrey Burgon's Requiem was bought at retail. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

Music - September 30 onwards - ChesterChronicle.co.uk

Music - September 30 onwards
ChesterChronicle.co.uk
... Beatrice Hubble (oboe) performing works by Lutoslawski, Boccherini, Arnold and Langley at the Royal Northern College of Music in Oxford Road at 1.15pm. ...

and more »

FAO#27 (Brave Timbers & Amiina) - DOA

FAO#27 (Brave Timbers & Amiina)
DOA
Whilst one voice and a guitar can be classified as minimal, something like Steve Reich's masterful Music For 18 Musicians is still more truly minimalist. ...

John Cage

Searching for Silence. The New Yorker, Oct. 4, 2010. The magazine is making its official iPad debut this week, and in the iPad version of the piece we've inserted a multimedia excerpt—an excerpt from the film of Cage's Variations VII....

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

New festival getting buzz - The Province

New festival getting buzz
The Province
"But to be able to present a program where you'll hear a flute ensemble performing Steve Reich and Radiohead, followed by an intimate evening performance of ...

Alex Blas: Daniel and Roger (2010)

Daniel and Roger

Daniel and Roger (2010)
oil on canvas
30″ x 40″
Painting by Alex Blas

Originally posted by Roger Bourland from rogerbourland.com, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

Karlheinz Essl & Agnes Heginger - Out of Blue

The interaction between vocalist Agnes Heginger and electronic sound artist Karlheinz Essl can be called haunting, beautiful and slightly ethereal. Heginger’s voice reminds me a little of Meredith Monk with post-modern Joan LaBarbara sensibilities. The album Out of Blue is a four track excursion into minimalist improvisation. I especially like the almost spiritual chanting of “Action Riteulle: Duo”. This is a exceptional album for those who want something on the experimental but still calming side. Out of Blue is available onXS Records as a free and legal download which you can get at the Internet Archive from the link below.

Download

Originally posted by Marvin from Free Albums Galore, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

It’s not your brain, it’s just the flame

I am not famous therefore I still get a little star struck when I interact with famous people. Maybe this sounds too “Gosh, golly gee, wow Midwesterner” to you savvy NYC boss-turbo hipsters, but I’ve been in contact with some really famous folks lately and it always makes me a little, well, giddy? On some level I know that we are all just people and everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time (unless you are Lady Gaga, I suppose) and all that blah blah blah but I still get caught up with a bit of “Wow! You are a celebrity!”

It all started with an upcoming concert. On October 1, my chamber opera is being performed at Carnegie Hall by the Remarkable Theater Brigade. I’ll hype that more a little later. The concert includes chamber operas by Mark Adamo, John Corigliano, Tania León, and George Brunner, all of whom are big names to me.

Then there is me: this nobody from smack in the flyover states and his oldest high school buddy who crafted a light and frothy opera set in an ersatz Waffle House. One of my friends described the piece as “Godot with waffles, minus the despair.” Of course, all my insecurities are going to be right on the surface at the concert. Especially if these other composers are there! I know, I should just be myself, but “myself” is a giant dork and I don’t want to look like some rube from a flyover state who visited the Marvel AND DC headquarters before the concert. Except that I am that dork. Ask my students.

I’ve also been talking to a big name composer for Central Michigan University’s New Music Symposium in this coming March. More on who that is when I get more official word from our administration but this is someone I’ve been following for a while and who I really want to impress. Then, out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from Mikel Rouse asking me if he can send me some discs (my answer, of course, was YES). My five-year old daughter was equally excited at this (Daria is a big Gravity Radio fan). It was the biggest social media event in the Batzner household since Felicia Day sent me a tweet.

Ok, now it seems like I’m name dropping. I don’t mean to. These people are all on tiers much higher than my own and yet they are interacting with me. Sometimes they are even initiating contact with me. It is hard to not go all “fanboy” on any one of them. It is also strange to think that, maybe, I might be moving up a fame tier. And that everyone I gush over feels this exact same way about other people.

Originally posted by Jay C. Batzner from Jay C. Batzner, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

Where Good Ideas Come From

This post comes from Fred Wilson’s blog. The quick video below is worth watching. Not only is the content within the video interesting, the video itself is a great example of leveraging the creative use of video to promote something else (a book in this case).

I love the final quote in this video: “Chance favors the connected mind.”

My posts on MTT…

Originally posted by Bruce Warila from Music Think Tank (primary) RSS, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

Alessi at UT. Sunday! With live webcast!

This post is short and sweet, just to let you know that this Sunday, September 26, at 7pm CST (or, as I like to call it, “7PM Elvis Time”), the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Jerry Junkin, will perform my recent piece, “Harvest: Concerto for Trombone” with Joseph Alessi — principal trombonist for the New York Philharmonic. The concert also includes the premiere of the wind version of Frank Ticheli’s piece, “Playing with Fire,” featuring the Jim Cullum Jazz Band. The full program:

Kingfishers Catch Fire — Mackey
Harvest: Concerto for Trombone (featuring Joseph Alessi, trombone) — Mackey
(intermission)
Postcard — Ticheli
Playing with Fire (featuring the Jim Cullum Jazz Band) — Ticheli

The concert is at Bass Concert Hall here in Austin. The hall seats nearly 3000, but reports seem to indicate that you should get tickets in advance if possible. Not anywhere near Austin? Then you can listen online. Just follow the link on this page starting a few minutes before concert time (which, again, is at 7pm Central Time on Sunday evening).

This concert will be, and I can’t stress this enough, epic.

Originally posted by John from John Mackey's Blog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)

Tim Benjamin & Francis Poulenc - Purcell Room, 23/09/2010

Last Thursday i journeyed to London for a small-scale concert at the Purcell Room • On paper, the concert was being given by the ensemble Radius, but in practice only the pianist was present, supporting a quartet of singers • i'll admit to being disappointed about that; i've not encountered Radius before, so it was frustrating to come away still having not encountered them • Two pieces were performed: Poulenc's one-act opera La Voix Humaine preceded by a new work by Radius' director Tim Benjamin titled Le Gâteau d’Anniversaire •

Benjamin's work can't, in any accurate sense, be called an opera, comprising a single scene of barely 30 minutes' duration • What Benjamin has produced, in fact, is akin more to a dramatic scena, except that it's intended to be funny, so i guess we should rightly call it a dramatic scena buffa (or something like that) • What unfolds is a dream sequence in which the protagonist, Louis, a baker by trade, receives visions from a pair of women who, at length, coax, encourage & downright insist that the reluctant Louis disregard bread-making for a time & bake them a cake • In the epilogue, Louis is awakened by his sisters, only to be reminded it's their birthday, & that he'd agreed to provide his services to mark the occasion; no resistance from Louis this time, & the preparations begin • That's it; except that Tim Benjamin's lengthy programme note expounds the notion that the work is a "theatrical investigation" into "the oppression of, and liberation from, accepted convention & custom" as well as "the power of the subconscious to influence the conscious self through the medium of dreams" • Freud & Jung are name-checked, & it's abundantly clear Benjamin has some fairly thought-provoking stuff in mind here, despite the comic presentation • One can't help feeling he's over-doing it, though; it's true that Louis's protracted dream sequence both turns the world on its head & takes it to extremes—Louis is implacably opposed to the suggestion of baking (or, indeed, thinking about) anything other than bread, & his sisters have become transformed into an unrecognisable pair of malevolent sirens—but that's about it • One of the sisters states in the epilogue that Louis had agreed to bake a cake for the occasion anyway, so far from than the dream influencing the subsequent behaviour, it rather seems the other way around; perhaps Louis, in his subconscious, didn't actually want to bake the cake—but come on, this is soap opera stuff, not deep, & certainly not as thought-provoking as Benjamin clearly want it to be •

So much for the concept; the music, less aspirational, was more engaging • Within about 10 minutes, it became clear that the pianist was simply not going to stop—ever • One can see some sense in this; in dreams, nothing is irrelevant, there are never occasions when things get dull or uninteresting; dreams are all action, action, action, & the piano part certainly echoed that • Furthermore, the piano's material, which seemed compelled to move from idea to idea with alacrity, occasionally throwing up references to stylistic idioms when the mood seemed to warrant it, communicates something of the stream of consciousness from which dreams are formed • But that can't change the fact that, as time went on, the piano seemed to become increasingly intrusive; an apparent interconnection between the piano & singers was—to me, anyway—lacking, resulting in an æsthetic friction that surely wasn't what Benjamin intended • The one advantage of this was that it enabled (forced) one to focus entirely on the singers, & a highly effective trio they were too • All three clearly relished their rôles; Jonathan Ainscough was splendidly henpecked as Louis, while Emma Hall & Laura Sheerin as the sisters Antoinette & Marie took to their parts with a deliciously wicked sense of glee •

Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, in the second half, made for a heavy-weight contrast • & contrast is the word; the accompaniment to the solo voice is here one in which space & a sense of dialogue are paramount • While i don't know Poulenc's orchestral original, i can't imagine it sounding anywhere near as intimate as the solo piano version we were given • The soprano spends the entire time on the phone, & Jamie Thompson's superb delivery on the piano was highly suggestive of the unseen person on the other end of the line • Composed just over 60 years ago, Poulenc's work is extremely fresh, its story—of the final conversation between two long-term lovers—timeless • In no small part, it's the slow, gradual way in which we learn the facts of their relationship that makes the piece as brilliant as it is, moving from initial elation & cheerfulness to disagreements & mentions of suicide • The occasional interruptions due to the bad connection—hilarious at first—only add to the discomfort, eventually becoming torturous knife-wounds into an already agonising situation • Poulenc's writing is masterly; throughout, the soprano is obviously dying to sing, but is reduced to phrases that halter & end up entirely fragmented; her moments of successful lyricism are rare, & become all the more painfully poignant as a result •

The success or failure of La Voix Humaine rests almost entirely on the shoulders of the solo soprano, & Rebecca Lea (who also directed both operas) gave what i can only describe as one of the finest performances i've ever witnessed on stage • Hers was no mere act; she had fully become the character of Elle, & i found myself completely drawn into her claustrophobic world • It's a horrid place, one where hope is all but gone, Elle desperately keen to keep the conversation going as long as possible, hanging on the man's every word, panicking at the slightest hint that he may find something she says remotely disagreeable • The stage design was highly effective in this regard; the telephone cord, represented by a lengthy piece of red fabric, was redolent of either a vein or blood vessel, emphasising the point that this vital conversation had become her lifeline, a delicate strand only just keeping her alive, at times lovingly caressed, at others, ominously working its way around her neck • At the work's culmination, the conversation—& with it, everything else—brought to an end, i couldn't help but share Lea's devastation & tears; it was a simply astounding performance •

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

The perfect movie soundtrack: Hans Zimmer - Inception

It's been said that the perfect movie soundtrack is one that integrates itself so well into the fabric of the film that you don't notice it's there • i suspect that belief arises as much from experiencing the jarring æsthetic bifurcation that ensues from badly-executed soundtracks as from witnessing the seamless assimilation of sound with sight • The very best soundtracks of all, to me at least, are so good, so interesting, that they're utterly unignorable • But it would be a mistake to say, in calling attention to themselves, that they're too interesting; in the same way as an outstandingly effective mise en scène, or wardrobe design, or cluster of special effects, we're conscious of their brilliance while remaining firmly locked in engagement with the film • My first podcast focussed on one of the very best examples of that, in Antichrist, & more recently Hans Zimmer has achieved something similar in his soundtrack for Christopher Nolan's outstanding film Inception • It helps that the movie is as good as it is; i've not seen a film as engrossing as Inception in a while, which therefore presents Zimmer with something already extremely impressive to work with • & yet, as Zimmer has explained, he didn't create his soundtrack with reference to any of the visuals, working instead from just the script, using that alone to ignite his imagination • It's a risky approach, but a suitably unconventional one for a film that falls so far outside the realm of conventional thrillers •

Zimmer gives himself a number of motifs from which to weave his material, the first & most immediate of which is a simple iambic (short-long) rhythm, heard in a powerful crescendo in the score's opening track, "Half-Remembered Dream", continuing as the brooding bassline in the following "We Built Our Own World" • This rhythm originates in a song significant within the film, "Non, je ne regrette rien", specifically Edith Piaf's well-known rendition recorded in 1960 • The iambic rhythm is heard in the opening of the song, but Zimmer hasn't just borrowed that; drastically slowing down the tempo transforms the chirpy trumpets into something large & imposing, like a dark, ominous choir of trombones & tubas • Zimmer has used this slow version of the rhythm as his motif, even going so far as to extract the trumpet sound from the slowed-down Edith Piaf recording & incorporating it into his score • To demonstrate this, i've taken the opening of Piaf's original & slowed it down to a quarter of the speed, causing it to drop by two octaves; compare it to the opening track from Zimmer's score & you'll hear the connection instantly •

Non, je ne regrette rien (opening, slowed down 4x) FLAC [2Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 770Kb]
Half Remembered Dream FLAC [4Mb] | MP3 [2Mb]

As the score continues in "We Built Our Own World", this rhythm becomes the heartbeat beneath Zimmer's second idea, a sequence of paired string chords, each time falling by the interval of a perfect fifth • In contrast to the insistent underlying pulse, the languor of the strings simultaneously suggests both melancholy & a hazy sense of time passing, fitting considering the film's emphasis on concentric dream-states • Both these opening tracks are short & concise (together barely lasting three minutes), & in no time the third track arrives, boldly presenting the third motif • For the most part, "Dream Is Collapsing" consists of a repeating chord progression—G minor - F# major (in first inversion, music theory fans) - Eb major - B major—over which the guitar oscillates back & forth between G & F# • This intimate opening becomes the minimalistic backdrop for a huge orchestral crescendo, culminating in a fortissimo climax that unites this chord sequence with the principal idea, the iambic rhythm • Together, these opening three tracks form a splendid exposition to the soundtrack as a whole, emphatically laying out the basic elements that will be central to much that follows •

Dream Is Collapsing FLAC [14Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 4Mb]

"Radical Notion" is the first to develop these ideas, mulling over the chord sequence in turbulent fashion; it's a pensive track, that is until around two-thirds through, when a descending scale idea begins to emerge, tentatively at first, but ultimately consuming the entire orchestra, the bass throbbing wildly underneath • The first lengthy track is "Old Souls", a 7-minute ethereal study reminiscent early on of Vangelis' music for Blade Runner • Electronics bristle & flutter at the fringes, surrounding melodic suggestions put forth by piano & guitar (beautifully played throughout by the legend that is Johnny Marr); & here's the first real proof that Inception is also a story about love & loss, with all of the horribly confused & convoluted emotions arising from that • There's melancholy aplenty in this track, although a fair dose of pent-up anger seems present too—heard more clearly towards the end, as the scalic idea starts brooding in the bass once again • The recurrence of this idea so soon suggests obsession, which ties in powerfully with the mindset of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Dom Cobb •

The cryptically-titled "528491" follows (these numbers occur throughout the film), a passacaglia built upon a 9-note ground bass that slightly hints, in its intervals, at the obsessive scalic idea from earlier • For a while it feels like a bit of 'padding' material, not really going anywhere significant, deliberately avoiding the score's main motifs • But it soon becomes clear it is most definitely going somewhere, the strings rising to impossible heights, whereupon the entire orchestra inflicts a series of hammer blows worthy of Mahler • This prepares the way for the abrupt plunge into "Mombasa", the soundtrack's central movement, that launches itself at breakneck speed, hurtling along above skittering strings & percussion (preoccupied with nicely irregular dotted rhythms) • Once again, Zimmer uses this as a backdrop over which he can lay bigger ideas, & there are several; the first is a deep, menacing idea rising from the abyss (1:06), answered by a quick, descending response, almost bludgeoning in its power (1:36); another bass idea (2:39) introduces octave-wide downward glissandi, getting the brass—especially the horns—momentarily excited • But it's the return of the first, rising, idea that decides the track's ultimate direction, building to a huge melody in octaves •

Mombasa FLAC [31Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 10Mb]

One could almost do with a few minutes to draw breath after music like that, but the score continues immediately with "One Simple Idea", which thankfully returns to a more sedate pace • The guitar returns, its circling idea punctuated by impossibly pounding bass thuds; at first, it sounds like the strings are going to bring back the falling fifths motif, but a new idea emerges, reserved at first, before rising & swelling with growing zeal • "Dream Within A Dream" returns to the chord progression motif, now stretched over a percussive underlay, the G/F# oscillation passed around from brass to strings & back again • Zimmer lets it grow before switching attention to the descending scales first heard in "Radical Notion"; for a time, things remain dense—cross-rhythms pepper the texture, & there's a brief pause on a lovely chord simultaneously major & minor—until the dissonances clear & a melody starts that seems new, but in fact was heard in germinal, even microscopic form at the start of the opening track, on the piano • Built upon rising sevenths, it takes on something of the emotional discomfort heard in "Old Souls", dominated by the brass, with occasional tutti accents that instantly bring to mind Jerry Goldsmith (think Basic Instinct) •

The delicacy of "Old Souls" is revisited in "Waiting For A Train", the aural equivalent of a warm bath, Zimmer luxuriating in delicious ambient textures • It's the soundtrack's most lengthy movement (9½ minutes), & also its most ambitious; after 3 minutes the softness breaks off, seemingly suspended in an episode racked with uncertainty, the strings reluctant to move, holding their notes for long periods of time as the brass offer a drawn out major chord by way of encouragement • Eventually, things start moving again, & the final third turns the rising sevenths idea upside down, sounding bruised & resigned as they fall • Edith Piaf briefly appears in the periphery, before being swiftly swallowed up first by the sevenths, then by the chord progression motif; it's halted shortly before the end, the music turned static, only to erupt once more in a blazing final statement • "Paradox" explores high string harmonics over hollow, whistling electronics, out of which solo strings meander, drawing on the powerful scalic idea, reducing it to something infinitely more intimate • A strange series of octave crescendos ends the track, projecting a potent sense of finality • This is extended in the soundtrack's coda, "Time", returning to the rising sevenths idea that began everything some 45 minutes earlier • It's the score's most low-key moment, the music occupying low registers for some time before working its way into loftier regions • This is turned a majestic final chaconne, broad & impassioned, before ending whence it all began, soft chords gently picked out on the piano •

Time FLAC [20Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 8Mb]

Two further tracks are available for free download from inceptionscore.com • "Projections" doesn't offer anything substantially different, to a large extent simply recycling earlier material • "Don't Think About Elephants", on the other hand, is well worth hearing, exploring the chord progression motif in a new way, one that takes some superb twists & turns, shimmering with energy •

It's a remarkable achievement by Hans Zimmer to create a soundtrack capable of being both so devastating & so delicate • Its blend of orchestral forces with electronica & pounding bass draws some comparisons with Don Davis' scores for the Matrix trilogy, but Zimmer's Inception score is amazingly fresh (a rare achievement for film scores), the basic elements superbly suited to the visuals • It integrates itself perfectly into the film—but, regardless, it's impossible to ignore; & that, to my mind, makes it a perfect movie soundtrack •

5:4 rating: 4.75/5

_______________
links:
inceptionscore.com | Hans Zimmer | Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes |

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Huw Watkins - Violin Concerto (World Première)

Tuesday 17 August's Proms concert brought the world première of Huw Watkins' Violin Concerto, the second new violin concerto heard this season • The opening movement sets a commanding tone, its fast tempo instigated by the solo violin, surrounded by pointillistic contributions from winds & upper strings, firmly drummed in place with massive bass thuds • In no time at all, the soloist seemingly accelarates... only for everything to stop abruptly, & a brief lyrical interlude ensues • Gradually, the initial mood is re-established—although not the pace, which has been seemingly blunted somewhat by the interlude • Large, looming melodic suggestions are put forward by the strings, but the violin seems quite happy to ignore them all, dancing on their surface & into another lyrical excursion; for all its romanticism, Watkins is leaving no doubt as to who wears the pants in this relationship • & this is swiftly confirmed as the violin emerges from its episode into a manic burst of notes that gets the orchestra very excited (they clearly just want to bang a lot in this movement)... whereupon, once again, all is stopped even more demonstrably than before; this violin is something of a tease, is it not? •

Huw Watkins

These assorted hints at lyricism are initially allowed free rein in the central slow movement, the violin charting a simplistic, broadly tonal path, gently supported by the orchestra • Support doesn't seem to be the only thing on its mind, though, & in an asserted act of rôle-reversal, on two occasions it brutally attempts to bring back something of the driving character of the preceding movement • The violin gives short shrift to these attempted coups, however, once again riding high before dissipating them without provoking too much protest, & the movement finally subsides into a rather lovely succession of horn chords that usher in a plain, poignant descending scale •

The surprisingly brief finale initially finds the relationship between solo & gli altri slightly less frosty, with everyone getting pretty carried away, leading to the violin exploding in a blinding, frantic passage that in its ferocity is a world away from anything else it's delivered so far • Ultimately, though, this is a violin absolutely determined to sing, & after a few minutes of this, the tone is emphatically slowed & softened, the harmonies cooled & simplified to (often) bare fifths, before evaporating completely •

At first glance, Watkins' work is staunchly conventional: standard orchestra, three movements, fast-slow-fast, each with familiar Italian tempo indications—why, the work doesn't even have a fancy contemporary title! • What is clearly suggested here is the Classical model handed down from Mozart, & Watkins' Violin Concerto certainly does capture the cut-&-thrust kind of concerto writing that Mozart instigated & of which he was so fond • Indeed, while there's little sense of material development, the work arguably doesn't need it, thriving instead on its high drama, which is superbly engaging & forms a far more cogent 'argument' than something more purely intellectual might have achieved •

Incidentally, after the applause has subsided, violinist Alina Ibragimova returns to present as an encore a delightful performance of the final movement from Watkins' Partita • Her playing, throughout the concerto & alone here, is simply astonishing •

Huw Watkins - Violin Concerto (World Première) [35:41]
FLAC [364Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 55Mb] | programme note

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

A life in dance: Akram Khan - The Guardian

A life in dance: Akram Khan
The Guardian
"It was through the joy of Indian music that I started to see the wonder of mathematics. I read about Ramanujan, about science and spirituality. ...

Americano Hand Dancing

This video has been making the rounds on Facebook and after a few run-throughs, it occurred to Miss Mussel that what these two were doing looked a lot like Irish dancing.

Turns out she was right. Speakeasy, a WSJ blog has the lowdown on Up & Over It aka Peter Harding and Suzanne Cleary.

“Irish dancers learn their choreography with their hands, usually beating on their laps or chests, Harding said, “just so your head can kind of get around it.” Harding and Clearly therefore decided to turn the practicing technique into a video. Working with film director Jonny Reed, they took five days to choreograph the dance to “We No Speak Americano,” and another five days to get it down. Then it took about two hours to film.”

Here’s one of their older videos where the hand dancing is a representation of a marital squabble rather than just a cool trick.

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Quatuar Excentrique Experience - Quad (subscription)

The Quatuar Excentrique Experience
Quad (subscription)
In his spare time, Chuck listens to Johann Sebastian Bach, Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich and Arvo Part for musical support. Elizabeth Knode can be reached at ...

'Dance With Klári Pataky', Trafó Budapest, 27 - 28 September - XpatLoop.com

'Dance With Klári Pataky', Trafó Budapest, 27 - 28 September
XpatLoop.com
The lampshades yawn like cones which turn into celestial bodies at the touch of the dancers moving to Steve Reich's hypnotic music. ...

Goings on About Town: Dance - New Yorker

Goings on About Town: Dance
New Yorker
The music for Faïn's solo, “Working with Stockhausen's Stimmung (1968),” is provided by the vocal ensemble Magic Names, which hymns divine appellations on ...

Shawn Brogan Allison

Originally from No Extra Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

Footnotes: John Cage

In this week’s issue of the magazine I have an essay on the life and work of John Cage. (Subscribers can read the full text; others can buy access to the issue via the digital edition.) If you happen to own an iPad, you will find a multimedia extra embedded with the piece—an excerpt from a film of Cage’s “Variations VII,” as performed at the Armory, in 1966. You can read more about that event here. Above is an another bit of essential Cagean footage: the composer’s appearance on the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” from 1960. Unfortunately, no footage has yet surfaced of Cage’s stint on the Italian game show “Lascia o Raddopia?”

Internet holdings on the topic of Cage are fairly vast. Laura Kuhn, the executive director of the John Cage Trust, maintains a lively blog. The site JohnCage.info has a comprehensive database. The Electronic Poetry Center in Buffalo has a good collection of Cage links. The musicologist James Pritchett has placed online his writings on Cage. UbuWeb has various sound files, including the complete 1988-89 Norton Lectures. At the German site Medien Art Netz, you can hear Cage’s pioneering electronic works “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” (from 1939) and “Williams Mix” (from 1952) in their entirety. Last fall I wrote about my visit to the “Anarchy of Silence” exhibition in Barcelona.

French fancies - The Guardian

French fancies
The Guardian
This year, the festival celebrates Iannis Xenakis, the postwar composer who applied maths to music and was an important influence on the birth of ...

Edicson Ruiz – Koussevitzky Concerto

Here’s bassist Edicson Ruiz playing the Koussevitzky concerto for double bass with Le Dude conducting. Ruiz is also a product of El Sistema and became a full member of the Berliner Philharmoniker 7 years ago, aged 18.

Musically, the concerto isn’t all that great but Ruiz makes it sound like top drawer material. Whatever they’re doing down there in Venezuela seems to work wonders.

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

Nico Muhly: Choral Music on Decca

Nico Muhly
A Good Understanding
Los Angeles Master Chorale; Grant Gershon, conductor
Decca CD

Before he became a Juilliard graduate, a session musician for stars such as Jonsi and Philip Glass, and then a famous composer with a pile of prominent performances and a bright future with lots of commissions, Nico Muhly was first a boy soprano. A Good Understanding, his latest Decca CD, one of two on the imprint more or less released simultaneously, demonstrates a strong connection to these musical roots and the choral music tradition. He’s also fortunate to have found ardent and well-prepared advocates in the Los Angeles Master Chorale and its conductor Grant Gershon. It’s a winning combination.

Bright Mass with Canons is a surprising and fascinating juxtaposition of traditional and postmodern elements. Its Kyrie is a good example of this. Underneath soaring vocal counterpoint, which often embodies the Anglican sound world of composers such as Whitbourne and Bennett is an underpinning of nervously skittering organ licks. The Sanctus thickens the broth further, its dense organ chords eliciting intriguing polychords from the voices.

The mass, as well as the cinematically swept Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis settings which follow, attractively wed these varied elements into well-crafted works. The Christmas anthem Senex Puerum Portabat is equally imaginative. It starts with long stretches of moody sostenuto cluster chords, but these give way to jubilant singing as well as bright flourishes and ebullient sliding passages for brass ensemble.

The title track, with its long legato lines for the voice somewhat curiously punctuated by boisterous percussion and a busy organ part, feels a bit more diffusely ordered, but there are a lot of very attractive moments. The LA Children’s Chorus provides a supple and affecting rendition. Expecting the Main Things from You, a triptych of Whitman settings, employs a kaleidoscope of textures circulating through the music, including pitched percussion and a prominent solo violin part. Muhly seems to favor interruptive accompaniments, and perhaps is responding to the digressive nature of the source texts with effusive variety, but the piece never quite settles in. The use of a “morse code” vocal accompaniment adds a fragmentary quality to some of the music. But again, it features affecting moments of skillful writing for both voices and instruments.

Thus, while its second half is uneven, all told the CD contains some of Muhly’s best work to date.

Originally posted by Christian Carey from CD Reviews, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

Music in Literature

There aren’t anywhere near enough references to Schoenberg in modern fiction. Glad to see that T.C. Boyle addressed that cultural impoverishment in East Is East:

. . . he laid his aquarium woes on Clara Kleinschmidt, talking to hear himself talk—and to pay her back, in small measure, for Arnold Schoenberg. (p.179)

Arnold makes a couple of other appearances through the novel, but that’s my favorite . . . even though the implication is that Saxby finds the discussion of Schoenberg a bore. Saxby’s a grown-up looking for an albino fish, in a boat called Pequod II, fer chrissake.

Boyle casts Carl Nielsen’s cameo in a somewhat more favorable light:

. . . and so while the meal cooked and Jeff swirled his half a can of warm beer round a plastic camp cup, the angst-ridden strains of Carl Nielsen floated out over bog, hammock and wallow, tempering the mindless twitter of the birds and tree frogs with a small touch of precision. (p.275)

A family of three are on a camping/canoeing trip in the Okefenokee Swamp, and Jeff, Jr, aged ten, has brought his clarinet along, to keep it in practice. It would take some musical precocity for a ten-year-old to manage Nielsen. Not saying it’s impossible—but it feels like a stretch.

Chances are the climate of the swamp is none too good for the instrument. Just saying.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

Loud and Clear sfSound

Musical programs come in all shapes and sizes, just like people. But getting a program to make sense is what separates the quick from the dead. The San Francisco-based new music chamber group sfSound usually puts on provocative programs, and their latest one, on Sept 19th at our town’s Community Music Center in the Mission, presented different kinds of musical energies, and made perfect sense.

It’s never wise to serve something heavy before the main course, and Swiss composer Beat Furrer’s 5 minute Ayer (1991), though not exactly lightweight, didn’t tax its audience unnecessarily. Sure, it was somewhat demanding–for the players–but also mercurial, with linear and disjunct material, plus a broad range of colors, which Matt Ingalls, clarinet, Christopher Jones, piano, and Monica Scott, cello, dispatched easily. The succeeding 9 minute group improvisation by John Ingle, saxes, Jones again on piano, and Kjelll Nordeson, percussion, was thicker in texture, but not especially memorable.

Hans Thomalla’s 14 minute Lied (2008), which the composer described in truly informative program note, made a far stronger impression. It didn’t sound particularly Germanic–meaning Angst-ridden or drily didactic–but was instead carefully balanced–the sections functioned like strophes in a song–and full of sonorous contrasts, especially in the tenor sax part–John Ingle again–which had a long slow sequence of closely related pitches. The piece wisely avoided closure–is anything ever really resolved?–which made it doubly poetic, with Ingle capably supported by Nordeson, vibraphone, and Jones, piano.

Matt Ingalls’ Improvisation for Solo Clarinet (2010) was both minimal–constructed from the most basic elements like scales and detached notes–and more complex musical ones like difference / combination tones, which thudded at unexpected intervals from the speakers on the stage floor. And, like any good improv sounded both spur of the moment and composed, and Ingalls’ easy virtuosity held the audience spellbound for 17 uninterrupted minutes.

Philip Glass is famous–some would say notorious–for pieces of long duration, and his first opera with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach (1975), which lasts over 5 hours, is easily one of his most seminal works, and a landmark work in recent new music. And the entire ensemble here–with the addition of Stacey Pelinka, piccolo, Kyle Bruckmann, oboe, Matthew Goodheart, electric ogan, Hadley McCarroll, electric organ and voice–she served as Glass the conductor by nodding her head dramatically before the next complex figure–and Diana Pray voice, made Train 1, from Act 1, go by in a flash , even thought it lasted 25 minutes. Glass’ work requires perfect ensemble and the ability to play, evenly, at breakneck speeds –it begins at met. 92, and moves up to met.126. The carefully prepared modulations and textural changes were breathtaking, and joyful. And it was an unalloyed pleasure to hear the great composer working his magic, and the audience respond with way deserved cheers.

Originally posted by Michael McDonagh from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

My Chicago Roots

I've always had a fascination with canons, even long before I wrote a book about a composer (Nancarrow) whose major works were mostly canons. In the late 1980s, when I was in the habit of lecturing on the history of Chicago's new-music scene at the School of the Art Institute and other places, I ran across, in a Chicago used bookstore, a little book called Canonical Studies, by Bernhard Ziehn (1845-1912, pictured). I recognized the name. Ziehn was one of two German composer-theorists who were living in Chicago when Ferruccio Busoni toured through. Busoni was trying to solve the puzzle of how the four fugue subjects fit together in the unfinished fugue from Bach's The Art of Fugue, and Ziehn solved it for him, enabling Busoni to write his Fantasia Contrappuntistica, which has long been one of my very favorite works in the world. His tour over, Busoni wrote an article about Ziehn and his colleague Wilhelm Middelschulte, titled "The Gothics of Chicago," by which term he meant that they were masters and fanatics in the ancient art of counterpoint. Ziehn and Middelschulte taught a lot of the early Chicago composers, including John J. Becker (one of the "American Five"), whose widow I knew in Evanston. So I had multiple connections to Ziehn, and snapped the book up at once.

All but forgotten today (there's a brief entry about him on German Wikipedia, none in the English one, and the second reference that came up on Google was a page of my own), Ziehn was ahead of his time. Books he published in the 1880s anticipated and classified chords (such as those based on the whole-tone scale) that the impressionists and Schoenberg would use considerably later. In the intro to Canonical Studies, Ziehn writes,

A canon is by definition strict. Our greatest authorities assert "strict" canons can be carried out in the Octave of Prime only. The examples given in this book demonstrate that real canons are possible in any interval...

And he gives examples of chord progressions that modulate to every possible interval away from the tonic, showing how one can continue repeating those progressions in ever-moving transposition to write canons not based on the octave or unison.

I was intrigued, and in 1987 wrote what I call a "spiral canon" as the third movement of my violin piece Cyclic Aphorisms, a canon at the major second. Then, more ambitiously, in 1990 I wrote Chicago Spiral, a nine-part triple canon also at the major 2nd, putting a postminimalist spin on Ziehn's idea. A canon is easy to perceive as such at the unison, octave, or even fifth; it's more challenging at a more distantly related interval. A canon is also easier to process aurally if the beat-interval of rhythmic imitation is something symmetrical like 4 or 8 beats, more difficult if it's 13 or 31. One thing I've realized is central to my music is that I love to fuse the simple with the incommensurable, making the listener think it ought to be easy to figure out what's going on, but keeping it just out of reach. My Ziehn-inspired spiral canons ought to be simple to figure out by ear - they're only canons, after all - but the complexity of the imitation intervals, both rhythm and pitch, keep the ear, I think, from ever quite settling into them. I also use the technique as kind of a postminimalist gradual-texture-metamorphosis generator, which is a little beyond what old Ziehn had in mind, I imagine. Paradoxically, the longer the rhythmic interval of imitation, the less gradual the changes can be made.

And now in recent months I've written two more such canons, Hudson Spiral and Concord Spiral, both for string quartet. Along with the middle section of my orchestra piece The Disappearance of All Holy Things from this Once So Promising World, I've produced five spiral canons altogether, at the following rhythmic and pitch intervals:

Cyclic Aphorism 3: 5 beats, major 2nd ascending
Chicago Spiral: 7 beats, major 2nd descending
Disappearance: 17 beats, minor 3rd descending
Hudson Spiral: 83 beats, major 6th ascending
Concord Spiral: 19 beats, minor 7th descending

The major 6th and minor 7th are the optimal intervals for a string quartet canon; using a major 6th, the cello can play down to its low E-flat (echoed by the viola's low C string and second violin's low A), and the first violin can play down to the F# above middle C, whereas with the 7th the cello can descend to D and the first violin only to A-flat in the treble clef. Concord Spiral generated some nice passages of what sounds like tonal Webern:

The scores are on my web site if you're interested, and no performances are yet forthcoming. Spiral Canons and Snake Dances are the two personal genres I feel I've invented for myself, along with my more generic tuning studies and Disklavier studies. And I hope Ziehn would have been happy to know that, 98 years after his death, his idea is still out there making the rounds.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 27, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2010

Metamorphosis = BARTOK: Quartet No. 4; LIGETI: Quartet No. 1, “Metamorphoses ... - Audiophile Audition

Metamorphosis = BARTOK: Quartet No. 4; LIGETI: Quartet No. 1, “Metamorphoses ...
Audiophile Audition
Ligeti's piece is supremely communicative, an early work that takes as its premise the idea of “night music” and the model of Bartok's technical facility in ...

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
Salvatore Sciarrino, who has no cell phone, and rarely picks up his land line and is obviously frustrated by the telephone, wrote one of the five works ...
Students Interpret Kafkaesque ScoreNew York Times

all 2 news articles »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 26, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

László Polgár - Telegraph.co.uk

Par-Delà des Eaux Profondes for Baritone Sax and Electronics
Par-Delà des Eaux Profondes for Baritone Sax and Electronics - Sax Part
Par-Delà des Eaux Profondes for Baritone Sax and Electronics - Score

László Polgár
Telegraph.co.uk
He won a Grammy Award in 1999 for his recording of the opera with Jessye Norman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Boulez. László Polgár was born on ...

No Age turns up the noise - Los Angeles Times

No Age turns up the noise
Los Angeles Times
The late-album tracks "Dusted" and "Positive Amputation" are implacably sad, lyric-less tone poems that feel like a chamber quartet playing Steve Reich ...

and more »

Bonjour Schiphorst! Farewell Blue Vase! (and then I joined the Avantgarde, iii)

[september 26, 2010 | #390 - sbpc/041] Hear Audio [ mp3 11MB ]

A colorful and re:sounding description of A Table's sunday morning performance at this summer's Schiphorst Avantgarde Festival, and how, by throwing in a tenner taken from their hard-earned fee, the illustrious duo together with Jean-Hervé Péron and his family became the proud co-owners of a freshly sprayed Danner.

Read more ...

Originally from HarSMedia (Feed and Podcast), ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 26, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

He thinks completely with his body

ckquote>Peter Brook told me that if you watch any cat, it isn't just that his body is so relaxed and expressive. It's something more important than that. A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing. There's no division. A thought animates his whole body. It's exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive responding whole, like the cat.

An ultimate example of this is revealed in a film of Picasso at work [see above]. In one lightning stroke you can see how the tip of Picasso's brush captures his entire imagination. His brushwork can actually be seen as his thought process. The same is true of the great orchestra conductor. After years and years of work, he thinks and transmits in one gesture. The whole of him is one.From Conference of the Birds, John Heilpern's masterly account of the 1972 expedition that took the director Peter Brook and an international troupe of actors from their Paris base through Africa. Brook was in search of the miraculous and his experiments in Africa led to some of his most influential work including Conference of the Birds, Carmen and The Mahabharata. The collection of poems titled Conference of the Birds is by the Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar. It uses a journey by a group of birds in search of the great Simorgh as an allegory of a Sufi master leading his pupils to enlightenment. As well as being adapted as a play by Peter Brook, Conference of the Birds has received treatments that include a work for piano and electronics by Ezequiel Viñao, an album by experimental rock band Om , an opera by Johan Othman and an ECM album by the Dave Holland Quartet.

After recording my recent interview with Jonathan Harvey I mentioned to the composer, whose three operas include the acclaimed Wagner Dream, that I was taking John Heilpern's book to re-read on my forthcoming travels. He told me that in the past a commission for an opera by him based on Conference of the Birds had fallen through - what a pity. The podcast of the Jonathan Harvey interview is available here. Peter Brook's 1989 film The Mahabharata features here while his earlier screen adaption of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (which had music composed by Raymond Leppard) features here. Finally a link to take this post full circle: thinking with the body is central to the Alexander Technique, which is practised by many musicians. My post on the subject contains some familar themes.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. John Heilper's Conference of the Birds was bought at retail. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 26, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Studio Recording of Sax and Electronics Piece and a New Solo Flute Piece

Sanibel Island

Kateřina Pavlíková just sent me her fantastic Czech Radio Studio recording of my piece, Par-Delà des Eaux Profondes for Baritone Sax and Electronics. It's 11 minutes of electronic and quartertone funky oceanic mayhem.

She promises a YouTube of her Prague stage performance soon!

I've also just finished a solo flute piece, En un Clin d'Oeil. It's a dense swirling piece with a spectral rhythmic quality.

En un Clin d'Oeil for Solo Flute - Synthesized Realization
En un Clin d'Oeil for Solo Flute - Flute Part

Originally from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 26, 2010 at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2010

SEA: Schwantner, Brahms… – 2:00 pm

SCHWANTNER, The Poet’s Hour…a soliloquy for violin and strings “reflections on Thoreau” (World Premiere)
FOOTE, Francesca da Rimini
BRAHMS, Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
PROKOFIEV, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16
Yefim Bronfman, piano
Gerard Schwarz, conductor

HOU: Adams, Wagner – 2:30 pm

ADAMS, Doctor Atomic Symphony
WAGNER/MAAZEL, The “Ring” Without Words
Hans Graf, conductor

PIT: Rachmaninoff, Beethoven – 2:30 pm

GANDOLFI, Garden of Cosmic Speculation
RACHMANINOFF, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
BEETHOVEN, Symphony No. 5
Yuja Wang, piano
Manfred Honeck, conductor

BOS: Pops – 3:00 pm

BOYER, The Dream Lives On
WILLIAMS, Star Wars
WILLIAMS, Harry Potter
DIAMOND, Sweet Caroline
GUTHRIE, I’m Shipping Up to Boston
BERLIN, God Bless America
Renese King, vocalist
Jeremiah Kissel, narrator
Keith Lockhart, conductor

CIN: Pops – 3:00 pm

Idina Menzel, vocalist
John Morris Russell, conductor

ATL: Mozart, Berlioz – 3:00 pm

MOZART, Jeunehomme Concerto No. 9
BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
André Watts, piano
Robert Spano, conductor

STL: Tchaikovsky – 3:00 pm

TCHAIKOVSKY, Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
TCHAIKOVSKY, Waltz from Swan Lake
TCHAIKOVSKY, Scherzo from Symphony No. 4
TCHAIKOVSKY, Finale from Violin Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY, Lilac Dance from Sleeping Beauty
TCHAIKOVSKY, Finale from Symphony No. 4
Jecoliah Wang, violin
Ward Stare, conductor

IND: Violin Competition – 5:00 pm

Encore performances and awards from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis
Samuel Wong, Conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 26, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

Drum roll: Woodstock Percussion's Kvistad college artist-in-residence - Kingston Daily Freeman

Drum roll: Woodstock Percussion's Kvistad college artist-in-residence
Kingston Daily Freeman
One of his great accomplishments was winning a Grammy for the 1998 recording of Steve Reich's “Music for 18 Musicians.” In the fall of 2002, he joined Nexus ...

REVISITING JIMI HENDRIX - Asbury Park Press

REVISITING JIMI HENDRIX
Asbury Park Press
Electronics artists such as Stockhausen were influencing The Beatles, David Bowie, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis. The Theater of Eternal Music was playing ...

and more »

Matthew Herbert's Take on the ReComposed Series - New York Times

Matthew Herbert's Take on the ReComposed Series
New York Times
Jimi Tenor turned toothy modernist works by Boulez and Varèse into unlikely digital fantasias; Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald jointly spun Mussorgsky and ...

No Age turns up the noise - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

September 25, 2010

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, CD review - Telegraph.co.uk

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, CD review
Telegraph.co.uk
... but his fabulously sensuous music has enjoyed a revival and is now practically mainstream. One conductor who ignored him until recently is Pierre Boulez ...

Milwaukee by night

I'm on a brief tour of lakeside orchestras — Muti and the Chicago, Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee. I'll report in the New Yorker soon. This weekend I have a piece on the New York Times op-ed page, and...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Odd bits for a Saturday

The contested history of the whoopie pie:

[ link → What are Whoopie Pies, anyways? ]

. . . cookie historian Nany Beckett believes whoopie pies originated in the 1920s in Boston . . .

Who knew there was such a thing as a cookie historian, anyways?

Roald Dahl, the Irascible:

[ link → Storyteller, Donald Sturrock’s authorized biography of Roald Dahl]

Waspishly opinionated, frequently offensive, a hard bargainer with publishers and a prima donna with editors, reclusive, family-focused and outrageously funny, Dahl struck me then as the Evelyn Waugh of children’s literature. One could almost imagine the savage author of Black Mischief and A Handful of Dust writing “The Twits” or “Matilda.”

Anthony Tommasini Article about Glenn Gould in the New York Times:

[ link → For Glenn Gould, Form Followed Fingers ]

Guerrero was an advocate of a technical discipline known as finger tapping. Apparently, the idea came to him while watching a young boy dancing in a Chinese circus.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Cellist Anthony Arnone to Perform at Lebanon Valley College - ReadMedia (press release)

Cellist Anthony Arnone to Perform at Lebanon Valley College
ReadMedia (press release)
The program will include music from the 17th through the 21st century and will feature the work of Bach, Ligeti, Piatti, Summer, and Arnone's own ...

September 25, 2010

NAT: Strauss, Liszt – 7:00 pm

J. STRAUSS, Overture to Die Fledermaus
STRAUSS, Four Last Songs Program Notes
J. STRAUSS, Emperor Waltzes
LISZT, Piano Concerto No. 1
Renée Fleming, soprano
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor

BAL: Bach, Mahler – 8:00 pm

BACH, Suite (Mahler arr.)
MAHLER, Symphony No. 7
Marin Alsop, conductor

NY: Mendelssohn, Hindemith – 8:00 pm

STRAUSS, Don Juan
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
DUTILLEUX, Métaboles
HINDEMITH, Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Itzhak Perlman, violin
Alan Gilbert, conductor

PHI: Mendelssohn, Mahler… – 8:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Le Corsaire Overture
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
MAHLER, Symphony No. 1
Joshua Bell, violin
Charles Dutoit, conductor

CLE: Takemitsu, Stravinsky – 8:00 pm

TAKEMITSU, Dream/Window
BACH, Lutheran Mass No. 1
DEBUSSY, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
STRAVINSKY, The Rite of Spring
Laura Claycomb, soprano
Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano
Andrew Foster-Williams, baritone
Cleveland Orchestra Chamber Chorus
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

CHI: Berlioz – 8:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
BERLIOZ, Lélio
Mario Zeffiri, tenor
Kyle Ketelsen, Bass-Baritone
Gérard Depardieu, narrator
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Riccardo Muti, conductor

CIN: Pops – 8:00 pm

Idina Menzel, vocalist
John Morris Russell, conductor

ATL: Mozart, Berlioz – 8:00 pm

MOZART, Jeunehomme Concerto No. 9
BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
André Watts, piano
Robert Spano, conductor

HOU: Adams, Wagner – 8:00 pm

ADAMS, Doctor Atomic Symphony
WAGNER/MAAZEL, The “Ring” Without Words
Hans Graf, conductor

IND: Violin Competition – 8:00 pm

Three finalists from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis
Samuel Wong, Conductor

PIT: Rachmaninoff, Beethoven – 8:00 pm

GANDOLFI, Garden of Cosmic Speculation
RACHMANINOFF, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
BEETHOVEN, Symphony No. 5
Yuja Wang, piano
Manfred Honeck, conductor

SF: Copland, Tchaikovsky – 8:00 pm

HARRISON, Parade
COPLAND, Quiet City
COPLAND, Organ Symphony
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No. 4
Paul Jacobs, organ
Russ deLuna, English horn
Mark Inouye, trumpet
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

STL: Schnittke, Tchaikovsky – 8:00 pm

SCHNITTKE, Moz-Art à la Haydn
MOZART, Violin Concerto No. 3, K. 216
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No. 5
Anne Akiko Meyers, violin
Louis Langrée, conductor

SEA: Schwantner, Brahms… – 8:00 pm SCHWANTNER, The Poet’s Hour…a soliloquy for violin and strings “reflections on Thoreau” (World Premiere)
FOOTE, Francesca da Rimini
BRAHMS, Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
PROKOFIEV, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16
Yefim Bronfman, piano
Gerard Schwarz, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

That's Another Mutter Entirely - Strings Magazine

Strings Magazine

That's Another Mutter Entirely
Strings Magazine
She and Patkoló will give the world premieres of works for violin and bass by composers Wolfgang Rihm and Krzysztof Penderecki, as well as the world ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

237 :: 24 September 2010 :: New Arrivals

Some new arrivals at the Other Minds studios

Mayke Nas Susanne van Els Evan Ziporyn Pierre-Dominique Ponnelle

Mayke Nas: To Hell (2005); Susanne van Els, viola, Schoenberg Ens, Reinbert de Leeuw, cond.
Etcetera KTC 1397 (2010) – Read about this work here.

Evan Ziporyn: HIVE (2007); Ziporyn et al, clarinets
Naxos 8.572264 (2010)

Pierre-Dominique Ponnelle: String Quartet #2 (2006); Gemeaux Quartet
Genuin classics GEN 10163 (2010)

Ann Southam: Glass Houses #9; Stephen Clarke, piano
CBC MVCD 1124 (1999)

Originally posted by rchrd from Music From Other Minds, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Brentano Quartet opens chamber Society series - Deseret News

Deseret News

Brentano Quartet opens chamber Society series
Deseret News
... spanning music by such renaissance composers as Carlo Gesualdo and Josquin des Prez to 21st century works by Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, ...

On the calendar

Here is the event whereon the Viola Sonata Opus 102 will be featured.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 25, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2010

About those landmarks

To date, over the past almost-six years, I've written about 46 personal musical "landmarks" on this blog. These are not exactly items in the usual "best of" list, but pieces that stand out, for one reason or another, as landmarks in a musical autobiography. Most of the pieces I've lived with for a longer time, but some — the most recent of which is an orchestral work by Richard Ayres — are new discoveries, Eurekas! from first hearing. With one exception (the Buckinx 1001 Sonates, of which I've only heard a fraction, as the whole lasts about 24 hours!), I've heard all the concert works live. Some I've performed myself, in most cases I've spent time with the scores, and with the electronic pieces, I've spent hours with the recordings. Charles Shere recently reminded us on his blog of the traditional sense of the term "Discrimination has to do with specific choices, not categorical ones." And discriminatory the list is, indeed, made of specific choices, allowing complete works only in the case of Machaut and sets of works in the case of the Purcell viol music. The only meaningful categories under which these landmarks fall is my own biography and taste, so it is a bit of an indulgence, but it seems the process of list-making has a life of its own and inevitably starts to assert its own set of rules. One of the rules has been that I have avoiding, to date, naming a single composer twice. This has been very hard in some cases (among them Monteverdi, Debussy, Ives, Cage, Lucier, and Young) and in one case, Berlioz, indecision over which piece, exactly, to include, has long kept me from adding a work even though it is insanely obvious that a half-dozen pieces by Berlioz ought to be long overdue for inclusion. In a couple of cases, the personality of the composer gets in the way of a piece I treasure — is Ruggles's racism a roadblock for Sun Treader or Angels, for example? (I did put Hyperprism on the list, knowing about the anti-semitic streak in some of Varese's letters, so I'm not altogether consistent on this score.) Finally, for all of the diversity on this list, it's definitely a western-classical-tradition-based assemblage and there certainly aren't enough women. I can only defend myself here in that in the cases of non-western repertoire that I value highly, even with years of exposure, I don't believe that I am always able to really discriminate wisely among the repertoire. Etenraku is a gorgeous piece, one that I've known since High School, but it's the one piece people know of Gagaku when they know only one piece of Gagaku and including it would be more a marker of my ignorance of a repertoire I don't know well enough. In the case of Javanese music, which I know much better, the more I know about fantastic pieces like Gadhung Mlathi or Gendhing Bonang Tukung, the more obvious it is how little I really know. And then, in many other cases, for example South Indian classical music or Diné (Navajo) ceremonial music, using a term like "composition" or "work" or "piece" seems so clumsily inaccurate. Finally, the list is getting close to the number 50; while it would be easy to name 100 or many 100s of landmark pieces, I think that an honest number — of pieces that I know well enough to stand behind them as a musician — has got to stop around 50 or 60, otherwise it's the equivalent of teenage boys bragging about the size of their record collections. Anything more than that would be presumptuous. Or maybe, once I reach 50 or so, the better idea would be to keep that total as a limit and then, if I decide to add anything, I have to strike something else off the list to make room...

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Don Partridge 1941-2010: In Memoriam

So: where to start? After the initial shock of the phone call from our mutual friend Patrick – to relay the news of Don struck down by a massive heart attack – the re-grouping, the business: people to be informed across networks which might not be immediately available to the family, so you distract yourself by being busy. With words: which are useless, but you go through the rituals and realise as you do so – yet again – that rituals – the informal rituals of bereavement - have a purpose. To distract... Then a fitful night and more phone calls and the process of the human placing of death into something that can be manageable. Which of course it never is – which is the awesome power of death. Hence the rituals. But the force of it all finally drops down enough for you to decide that something should be written, especially as you have spent so much time over the last couple of years digging back into the past with Don and Pat as we slowly created the manuscript we called 'Don Partridge and Company,' our on-going project, a three-way chronicle (Don, Pat, me) of the sixties busking years culminating with the famous Buskers Concert at the Albert Hall in 1969. With suddenly a final chapter...

So you place yourself in the futile position of trying to apply measure.

So: how do you measure a person? Specifically: Don Partridge, such a unique character in the myriad groupings of your friends which comprise so many characters possessed of strength, talent, creativity, belief in themselves, humour, love and that blissfully undefinable sense of – FUN. Because Don was FUN to be with. So many people who knew him - read the testimonials already and at the funeral there will be a legion more prepared to step up and say: here was someone whom we enjoyed the company of greatly, who made an impression on our lives - maybe the the link between them all will be that sense of FUN as a counterbalance to the loss. A deep FUN, manifesting in a joy in life, despite the recent tragedy that he had to bear and the resultant dark hours, the loss of Pam from the ravages of cancer last year. When I was with Don a few weeks ago, the sadness and grieving were still there but he made me welcome as usual in his house as we worked on the book and took a drink or two and laughed over our reminiscences, the triumphs and absurdities all recounted with his good humour - and his wry, hard-won wisdom. That welcome he had always provided – from the crowded flat in Archway he shared with Alan Young, Jester and Joker, his oldest perhaps sidekick, where I slept on the floor with Barbara in 1966 before we found our first apartment off the Fulham Road where we reciprocated in equally cramped conditions. The house in Hastings where he wrote 'Rosie' and drove us all mad with the first drafts of the song that would propel him to fame – to the extent that when he came into the old 'Earl of Sandwich' bar, back of Leicester Square and said he had recorded it, the general consensus was: 'Bollocks, Partridge!' So we were wrong... in spades... that song we mocked, recorded in E.M.I.'s Studio Regent B for six quid, at the instigation of the man who found him in Brewer Street market and became his manager, Don Paul, that took him to the hit parade, a certain measure of fame and money which provided a bigger house in West London we dubbed the 'Mansion' where more welcomes were offered amid mucho craziness – the first time I went he somehow drove us back from central London (both of us and Paris Nat having been thrown out of the 'Troubadour' for alcoholic crimes against folk music), despite the onrush of the acid we had both taken as a chaser. Which freaked Nat out when he realised, somewhere down the Uxbridge Road... Those were the days, as they say... That house where I heard some of the nascent formations of 'Accolade,' the folk/jazz/rock band he formed with Gordon Giltrap that should have taken him beyond the One Man Band/novelty/variety act that the Biz saw him as and which he was rapidly wearying of. And not to blame the Biz too much for that, because that was the game then and they did not have the measure of many a musician who stepped across boundaries, let alone one as idiosyncratic and wilful as Don. A band who never got the launch, maybe, they deserved, for whatever reasons, but who stand up pretty well now against much of the crap and the twee of the time, something more than hey-nonny with a clumpy rock backbeat. Pentangle aside - English folk-rock: jeez. But he eventually turned his back on the Biz to follow his own footsteps that led back to the streets. Scandinavia and back, criss-crossing Europe, Canada, hitch-hiking down the 'Trans-Canadian Highway.' One of his better songs and it should also be put down here that he was a musician of talent way beyond the sometimes stifling if necessary repetitions/confines of the busking arts, beyond the confines of the Biz as stated above. A very good songwriter when he felt the muse, a brilliant arranger of others' songs and traditional material into different formulations – because Don was incapable of copying after he had acquired his mature style early on. For a recent example of skilful adaption: dig 'The Highwayman' if you can find it, his long riff on the old Alfred Noyes poem which works so well because he gets inside it so well. Maybe he was never truly captured on record – and for all that, you could say his art was that of the busker, which is transience, a song on the wind that produces enough temporary pleasure for the bung to the bottler or the open guitar case – and the larger the better, please. We have thirsts... Don said that ultimately he preferred the natural lighting of the streets, daylight and sunshine, streetlights and shop illuminations at night, the backdrop of arenas filled with people and bustle, to the artificial sets and lighting of the Biz and the compromises that go with it. That was his true stage, his realm. Remember this: he was The King of the Buskers. Others were buskers before him and others will no doubt aspire to the crown he has sadly vacated – but he was the first to get there, by the sheer chutzpah of self-coronation and he held his kingdom down the years, against all comers.

So: you come to the measure and find, as with all great people – and I choose my words carefully – that the idea of measure, however human and hot-wired into our heads, is a paltry thing, when we consider such a man. Yes he was fickle, infuriating at times, faithful to something beyond conventions of faithfulness, yes and that is romantic and could be seen as a cop-out but Don did not, in my experience at least, ever cop-out. Wherever the road led him, he was true to its directions and imperatives. Not an easy life, as all who have travelled it know well enough. Not an easy life perhaps, for family and friends at times. The King was no saint. But when he looked down that road he saw it clearly and followed it with no small measure of courage. And love. In the end, he overflows any measure you can make and that is the plain damn truth. He was too damn big to be defined easily. He leaves a large hole in our hearts and memories as we here extend our condolences to the family - and all who knew him. He was a true friend and I loved him and I will miss him.

'If you don't see me next spring, I'll be in Berlin.'

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Chicago Greets Its New Maestro, Who Arrives With Unusual Fare - New York Times

Chicago Greets Its New Maestro, Who Arrives With Unusual Fare
New York Times
... Mr. Muti was appointed the orchestra's 10th music director, succeeding Daniel Barenboim, who stepped down in 2006. Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez, ...

and more »

Why is climbing a flight of stairs like listening to Bruckner?

In the study, published Friday in Science, they showed how they measured the effect on a scale of about one foot (33 centimeters) to demonstrate how people age faster when standing a couple of steps higher on the staircase. (Hat tip: here.)

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Andreas Canyon Mountain

Sound Clip: Andreas Canyon Mountain by Eric Van der Wyk

In May of 2006, I took a journey to the Indian Canyons Oasis in Palm Springs California to capture the sounds of the Andreas Canyon Mountain Stream and the Palm Canyon Waterfall. This was recorded using two LDC Mics spaced about 10 feet apart and about 18 inches above in a delicate sounding area of the stream. This recording was made at 24 bit 88.2 kHz sample rate to compact flash prior to studio mastering.

Nocturne #7 for Piano - Realization
Nocturne #7 - Draft Score

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

The Curtis Institute of Music announces new classical guitar department - Examiner.com

The Curtis Institute of Music announces new classical guitar department
Examiner.com
An internationally renowned guitar soloist, David Starobin is the dedicatee of hundreds of new works by composers including Elliott Carter, George Crumb, ...

Critic's choice - Buenos Aires Herald

Critic's choice
Buenos Aires Herald
... del Teatro Colón premières Le Témoin (The witness), a ballet by Claude Brumachon on music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré and Steve Reich. ...

A new maestro: VYO music director equates orchestra with family - Rutland Herald

A new maestro: VYO music director equates orchestra with family
Rutland Herald
... Braunstein graduated from New York's Juilliard School of Music, where he studied composition with American composers Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt. ...

Slee season - Buffalo News

Slee season
Buffalo News
He will be playing the colorful music of Bartok, Kodaly, Ligeti and Liszt, in addition to Dohnanyi, a 19th century virtuoso recently championed by the ...

and more »

New Nocturne, New Solo Cello Piece and a New Home

Avignon, France

After the events in the Gulf of Mexico since late April, Elsie and I decided to leave the sub-tropical paradise of Sanibel Island and brave a trans-continental move to France. It's been a dream of ours for years; Elsie has French citizenship, it was mainly a case of coming up with the nerve to risk the costs of the move, the costs of finding an apartment and the nightmare of navigating the different bureaucracies.

We've now parked ourselves in an empty 15th century apartment in Avignon, France with 5 giant rooms, 12 foot ceilings and a view of a winding street from 3 floors up that reminds one of Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies. The building we're in used to be the stables of the 15th century King Rene, his castle is around the corner. Avignon is a medieval walled city of incredible beauty and history. It hosts the largest annual festival of theatre and multi-media spectacles in Europe every July and our quarter is surrounded by theatres. We await the cross-oceanic delivery of our furniture, scores, books, cd's and paintings.

Avignon, France

While spending the summer here in Avignon, I did manage to write 2 pieces, a new nocturne for piano and a solo cello scherzo.

My new solo cello piece is a swirling, ecstatic mass of Middle-Eastern sound.

Scherzo for Solo Cello - Realization
Scherzo for Solo Cello - Draft Score

I'm presently working on a new solo flute piece, a very big new piano piece, and a piece for 2 19ET pianos. More news later!

Originally from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2010

STL: Schnittke, Tchaikovsky – 10:30 am

SCHNITTKE, Moz-Art à la Haydn
MOZART, Violin Concerto No. 3, K. 216
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No. 5
Anne Akiko Meyers, violin
Louis Langrée, conductor

NY: Mendelssohn, Hindemith – 11:00 am

STRAUSS, Don Juan
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
DUTILLEUX, Métaboles
HINDEMITH, Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Itzhak Perlman, violin
Alan Gilbert, conductor

SF: Free Concert – 12:00 pm

TBA
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

SEA: Schwantner, Brahms… – 12:00 pm

PHI: Mendelssohn, Mahler… – 2:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Le Corsaire Overture
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
MAHLER, Symphony No. 1
Joshua Bell, violin
Charles Dutoit, conductor

BAL: Bach, Mahler – 8:00 pm

BACH, Suite (Mahler arr.)
MAHLER, Symphony No. 7
Marin Alsop, conductor

CHI: Berlioz – 8:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
BERLIOZ, Lélio
Mario Zeffiri, tenor
Kyle Ketelsen, Bass-Baritone
Gérard Depardieu, narrator
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Riccardo Muti, conductor

CIN: Pops – 8:00 pm

Idina Menzel, vocalist
John Morris Russell, conductor

HOU: Adams, Wagner – 8:00 pm

ADAMS, Doctor Atomic Symphony
WAGNER/MAAZEL, The “Ring” Without Words
Hans Graf, conductor

IND: Violin Concerto – 8:00 pm

Three finalists from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis
Samuel Wong, Conductor

PIT: Rachmaninoff, Beethoven – 8:00 pm

GANDOLFI, Garden of Cosmic Speculation
RACHMANINOFF, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
BEETHOVEN, Symphony No. 5
Yuja Wang, piano
Manfred Honeck, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 24, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

Muti sparks exhilarating CSO opener with Berlioz, both brilliant and bizarre - Chicago Classical Review

Muti sparks exhilarating CSO opener with Berlioz, both brilliant and bizarre
Chicago Classical Review
Riccardo Muti opened the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's season Thursday night with music of Berlioz. Photo: Todd Rosenberg. ...

and more »

Stockhausen celebration - Denver Post

Stockhausen celebration
Denver Post
It will allow audiences to hear the full aural impact of Stockhausen's music. Wednesday's performance will feature works by three American contemporaries of ...

Dream come true for Edward Gardner - The Birmingham Post

Dream come true for Edward Gardner
The Birmingham Post
One of them is 20th century Polish music. Lutoslawski we've got coming up on Tuesday (that programme, together with Rachmaninov took us a while to get ...

Death Is A Trip In Enter The Void - UGO

Death Is A Trip In Enter The Void
UGO
It is the cinematic equivalent to the music of Steve Reich. Then in the final reel the crazy really gets loose. I won't fault you if you hate Enter The Void ...

CONCERT REVIEW Primordial Night - The MIT Tech

CONCERT REVIEW Primordial Night
The MIT Tech
Prior to Xenakis's work, the audience was warned that much of what was to be performed may not sound like music in the traditional sense; Cornell's work was ...

This season TownMusic salutes composers who perform; kickoff concert is Sept. 28 - Seattle Times

Seattle Times

This season TownMusic salutes composers who perform; kickoff concert is Sept. 28
Seattle Times
(His 2008 duet with Bill Kalinkos on Steve Reich's "Clapping Music," with both musicians playing nothing more than their hands, remains a delightful memory. ...

and more »

Marc Ribot Taps Into Lyricism for His Solo Guitar Soundtrack to Nonexistent Movies - Spinner

Marc Ribot Taps Into Lyricism for His Solo Guitar Soundtrack to Nonexistent Movies
Spinner
If you look at the music that my generation has made, there is a certain distance to lyricism. For example, Philip Glass and Steve Reich have lyrical ...

Classical CD Reviews - Audiophile Audition

Classical CD Reviews
Audiophile Audition
I quote the liner notes at length to illustrate that this is clearly not music for the great unwashed (such as me). In order to fully appreciate the Piano ...

“Oshtali: Music for String Quartet” = Works by Chickasaw Student Composers ... - Audiophile Audition

“Oshtali: Music for String Quartet” = Works by Chickasaw Student Composers ...
Audiophile Audition
Its obsessive rhythms and repetition of a brief thematic cell call to mind Steve Reich or Terry Riley. But then there is that slow section which, ...

Classical: New Releases - Independent

Classical: New Releases
Independent
Pierre Boulez's first recording of Karol Szymanowski is a magical affair, pairing the Symphony No 3 ("Song of the Night"), with the Concerto for Violin and ...

The 50 best British acts right now - Irish Times

Irish Times

The 50 best British acts right now
Irish Times
Any act inspired by Benjamin Britten, Steve Reich, Wu-Tang Clan and modern r'n'b should always feature at the business end of one of these polls. ...

'Music Makes a City' finds an unlikely hotbed for classical music - Los Angeles Times

'Music Makes a City' finds an unlikely hotbed for classical music
Los Angeles Times
The seminal story of how modern classical music turned Louisville, Ken., into a mid-20th century cultural phenomenon feels far less ...

September 23, 2010

The Big Gigs - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Big Gigs
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Music may still go on as a free show with openers Desdamona and Carnage, but details were still being worked out at press time. While we're still awaiting ...

and more »

News from the String World - Strings Magazine

Strings Magazine

News from the String World
Strings Magazine
Its April 17, 2011 appearance at the La Jolla Music Society's Celebrity Orchestra Series will be filled by the China Philharmonic Orchestra. ...

and more »

Fulcrum Point marks 12 years with a bravura program of new music - Chicago Classical Review

Fulcrum Point marks 12 years with a bravura program of new music
Chicago Classical Review
The marimba duo of Jeff Handley and Brandon Podjasek performed Nagoya Marimbas (1994) by Steve Reich, This short piece is in Reich's early, accessible and ...

Mahler: 12 Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn; Adagio from Symphony No 10 - The Guardian

Mahler: 12 Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn; Adagio from Symphony No 10
The Guardian
Boulez's virtues as a Mahler conductor have never seemed to me to match his mastery of the music of the generation of central European composers that ...

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
... of monthly programs built around Arnold Schoenberg's “Pierrot Lunaire” — includes music by Pierre Boulez, Joshua Fineberg, Beat Furrer, Tristan Murail, ...

DEBUSSY: Quartet in g, Op. 10; DUTILLEUX: Quartet, “Ainsi la nuit”; RAVEL ... - Audiophile Audition

Click here to view the embedded video.

DEBUSSY: Quartet in g, Op. 10; DUTILLEUX: Quartet, “Ainsi la nuit”; RAVEL ...
Audiophile Audition
What I mean by this is that Dutilleux's predilection for atonalism defies categorization; the subtle harmonies and gossamer textures of his music take us ...

Dance Listings - New York Times

Dance Listings
New York Times
This will apparently involve “spiritual outbursts, humor, song and examples of religious music throughout history.” There will also be a solo performed by ...

Hal Rammel - Chicago Reader (blog)

Chicago Reader (blog)

Hal Rammel
Chicago Reader (blog)
Davies earned a fair amount of acclaim and notoriety in experimental-music circles—he worked with Stockhausen, played in the pioneering Music Improvisation ...

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
Having been sidelined since February with back surgery and recuperation, James Levine returns to his post as the Met's music director to conduct. ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Persistence of Memory?

By Dan Visconti
While technological advances may be balanced out be a corresponding decrease in mental capacity, we may actually come out on top.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Working the Visual Angle

By Alexandra Gardner
Capturing photographic images of a working process helps to remind me how different pieces progressed and how the ideas rolled alongthose little sketches and lists were crucial in the moment (because if it doesn't get written down, it will be gone) and a simple image can bring it all back.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Ultima Contemporary Music Festival: Two Extremes

Over forty concerts in two-dozen venues scattered throughout Oslo!

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Sounds from underground: Flash Palace - Straight.com

Sounds from underground: Flash Palace
Straight.com
It's a two-piece with a Steve Reich influence, and they did the most minimal—but maximal-sounding—ambient music I've ever heard.” With apologies to Ke$ha, ...

Catching Trout & Minimalist Composition: S. Carey Interviewed - The Quietus

The Quietus

Catching Trout & Minimalist Composition: S. Carey Interviewed
The Quietus
Steve Reich, he writes a lot for percussion. So we would pieces like 'Clapping Music' [a piece in which slowly phasing cycles of clapping cells go in and ...

MUSIC REVIEWS - Montreal Mirror

Montreal Mirror

MUSIC REVIEWS
Montreal Mirror
Here, he blends effervescent piano ostinatos jacked from Steve Reich's playbook with dapper disco-funk recalling late-'70s TV themes, tosses some wiseacre ...

Book imminent

Did I mention that I have a new book, Listen to This? It arrives in stores and on the Internet next Tuesday. Björk.com declares it "probably the 'must' read of the autumn." The basic information is here. I've more or...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Notes for a Sonata

Viola Sonata, Opus 102

In the fall of 2006, I was still serving as a chorister at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston, where I had been singing for perhaps six years. One of the new singers brought in by the then new music director was Peter Lekx, who (I soon learnt) was enrolled in a Master’s program at Boston University in viola performance. Early on in our acquaintance, I set to work on (what at the time I was considering a single-movement work) Tango in Boston for viola and piano. When the piece reached about the 60-measure mark, I set the sketch aside — Pete was quite musically busy, and in large part he was engaged in early music projects. Most practically, probably: at the time I did not know any pianist who would be capable of the piece as I was conceiving it.

At the time, though, I had mentioned the piece to several on-line acquaintances, including Dana Huyge. And late in June this year Dana got in touch to ask about the feasibility of completing a viola sonata for a September recital. Although I had thought of Tango in Boston as a stand-alone piece, the invitation to write a multi-movement sonata fired my imagination; I decided immediately that the existing sketch would serve as the basis for the third movement, and set to work on the first & second.

With Fair Warning, I set to write a piece bristling with energy, accumulating such momentum that the charged air would continue to drive the piece even in passages where the surface tempo has relented. In short, I wanted to open the Sonata with an eight-minute spitfire which would not quit. (A clarinetist myself, I wrote the whole Sonata, really, with the thought What would I have fun playing, if the piece were for myself?) I started writing essentially with that thought, and before concerning myself with specifics of the pitch-world. Before long I found that the material I had thus spontaneously generated, hinged readily upon a kind of octatonic scale which (in a curious geographical coincidence to this performance) I first employed in my doctoral dissertation at Buffalo. In terms of sonata design, Fair Warning takes indirect cues from Shostakovich, whose first movements generally referred to the tradition (often the Tchaikovskyan tradition of a Motto, apart from the Principal and Subordinate Themes), without mapping neatly onto the tradition. So with Fair Warning, I had in view the ideas of Exposition, of how a Development might proceed, of Re-transition and Recapitulation; and although I mention Shostakovich (and Tchaikovsky), I did not take them as direct “models,” as such a tack strikes me as violating their own spirit of sonata ‘discovery’. There are passages of ‘refracted unison’ which are a loose homage to the Massachusetts-born composer Alan Hovhaness. And there are pitch ‘corkscrews’.

I knew the middle movement would be called Suspension Bridge some time before I considered how I should approach it musically. The overall movement is governed by an underlying rhythmic pattern — an irregular and long-breathed pattern, which often fights against an out-of-phase “local” pattern in any given passage. It is that sense of rhythmic ‘process’ which I thought of as the suspension. The pitch world of the piece is a lark I drew up one day, a symmetrical scale which runs a perfect 15^th, but in the center of which there is no perfect 8^ve. In a sense, I feel that what sustains the movement, is the tension between its grand ‘skeleton’, and the spontaneity with which I approached its succeeding sections. Through the course of the movement I had in mind partly an idea of succeeding variations, partly the idea of an imbalanced arch. Truth to tell, I had no idea that the movement would begin with unaccompanied viola until I sat down one evening and started writing it. (As for Dave’s Shed, it is a place of contemplation, and yet it is no place; it is Walden Pond in Minnesota, if you like.)

My loose model for the completion of Tango in Boston was Chopin’s second piano sonata, whose Presto finale seems to fly by before you’ve drawn two breaths. That is, while on one hand I wanted an energetic movement at the other end of the “Bridge” from the first movement, I approached it more with a sense of lightness than of Grand Finale. The movement incorporates a couple of artifacts from the master of the tango, Astor Piazzolla; and also hearkens back to the two earlier movements, at one point superimposing disparate passages from the first and second one upon another.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2010

SF: Copland, Tchaikovsky – 2:00 pm

HARRISON, Parade
COPLAND, Quiet City
COPLAND, Organ Symphony
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No. 4
Paul Jacobs, organ
Russ deLuna, English horn
Mark Inouye, trumpet
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

PHI: Lalo, Respighi – 7:00 pm

BERLIOZ, Le Corsaire Overture
LALO, Symphonie espagnole, for violin and orchestra
RESPIGHI, The Pines of Rome
Joshua Bell, violin
Charles Dutoit, conductor

NY: Mendelssohn, Hindemith – 7:30 pm

STRAUSS, Don Juan
MENDELSSOHN, Violin Concerto
DUTILLEUX, Métaboles
HINDEMITH, Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Itzhak Perlman, violin
Alan Gilbert, conductor

SEA: Schwantner, Brahms… – 7:30 pm

CLE: Takemitsu, Stravinsky – 8:00 pm

ATL: Mozart, Berlioz – 8:00 pm

MOZART, Jeunehomme Concerto No. 9
BERLIOZ, Symphonie fantastique
André Watts, piano
Robert Spano, conductor

IND: Violin Competition – 8:00 pm

Three finalists from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis
Samuel Wong, Conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

Stage Listings - Vancouver Sun

Stage Listings
Vancouver Sun
Music at Silk Purse » Songs of the Camino: Katy Hedalen performs songs along with a slide show of her journey through Camino de Santiago in Spain, Sept. ...

and more »

A new maestro: VYO music director equates orchestra with family - Barre Montpelier Times Argus

A new maestro: VYO music director equates orchestra with family
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Programs include five different orchestras, two choruses, music camps, master classes, the Endangered Instruments Program, music theory, sectionals with ...

and more »

Theatre preview: By Singing Light, National Dance Company Wales - WalesOnline

Theatre preview: By Singing Light, National Dance Company Wales
WalesOnline
Galili's Romance Inverse uses American composer Steve Reich's 'Six Marimbas' and a new score commissioned from the Dutch ensemble Percossa, the group that ...

Doina Rotaru's amazing fifth flute concerto, "L'Ange avec une seule aile". Mario Caroli, flute.

Originally posted by jeff from new music reblog plus, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

International Guitar Night, Marryat Hall, Dundee - Herald Scotland

International Guitar Night, Marryat Hall, Dundee
Herald Scotland
... yearning Saudade were lovely and Gismonti Snr was evoked one last time in a fine work that suggested a collaboration between himself and Steve Reich.

Faculty make it a trio - Sidelines Online (subscription)

Faculty make it a trio
Sidelines Online (subscription)
The group will play Aram Khatchaturian's folk-influenced "Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano," Witold Lutoslawski's "Dance Preludes for Clarinet and Piano ...

Wednesday Links

Peering above the parapet briefly to throw out these items of interest.

Sooooo….what exactly are orchestras supposed to be do? The times, they are a-changing.

After their brief but very public faux-pas last week, The Royal Opera House legal department has a decided to jump right into the copyright bog and insist that they have total rights control over all aspects of new productions. To Miss Mussel, the real surprise is that most the contracts weren’t work-for-hire already.

Literally what it means when you say literally. For reals.

Can a gift ever be no-strings attached. Probably not.

Oh, you meant yoooour left. Oops. Turns out the Titanic crash was down to a panicked misunderstanding of instructions.

One of the last ballpark organists, Nancy Faust is packing it in after 41 years with the Whitesox.

Reason No. 47 why the Vancouver Opera is in the black for the 11th straight season.

One of Miss Mussel’s favourite websites, Letters of Note is a year old.…huzzah!

if your iTunes is whinging that everything seems a bit samey, what with all the orchestra and stuff, treat it to some Mumf.

Behold, Miss Mussel’s new favourite band Mumford & Sons. Banjo! And also a swear in the chorus! Maybe listen with headphones at work!

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

COC Now In The Standing Room Club

Here’s the text of a piece Miss Mussel wrote for the Toronto Star last week about the Canadian Opera Company’s new standing room. Well, the un-macheted text. A nicely crafted dig at unnecessary panic and the truthiness of Wikipedia [author's assessment] didn’t make the cut along with a few other tidbits.

This season, the Canadian Opera Company joins San Francisco, Seattle and The Met in the North American Standing Room Club. 60 standing places have been added at the back of the third and fourth balconies at a price of $12 each. “It’s always been in [our] mind to do this, says COC publicist Vanessa Somarriba. It’s something [General Director] Alexander [Neef] has wanted as well and this season seemed like the right time to do it.”

[Photo credits: The Canadian Opera Company]

The COC has always offered $20 rush tickets and 50% off any remaining seats but with most of the 2070-seat hall regularly sold out, getting a ticket on the day was unlikely especially if you were on a restricted budget.

The Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London are home to Olympic-level standers. The RAH holds roughly 6,000 people of which 1500 are standing. In the gallery, people often bring a blanket and lay down with a picnic but in the arena practically everyone stands. This season, the full complement of Prommers made it through all 4 ½ hours of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersingers. If there’s something Prommers don’t know about standing, it’s not worth knowing.

Ruth Elleson, an office manager from London, is a long-standing Prommer and a regular at The Royal Opera House. “[At the Proms, we’ve got a doctor, several lawyers and lots of accountants. Standing has nothing to do with how much people can afford to pay. I’ve made a lot of friends this way, so it’s also a bit of social occasion.”

Each standing room has its own culture and everyone I spoke to described the Vienna Staatsoper as legendary.

[Credits: Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Axel Zeininger]

“It’s a zoo.” said Toronto violinist Karol Gostynski. He’s attended the Staatsoper regularly since relocating to Vienna two years ago and has seen all of the big-name opera stars for 3 Euros a show. COC tickets go on sale at 11am on the day of the performance but in Vienna, it’s much closer to performance time.

“You run in – if it’s Wagner, you elbow people, like grannies can bowl you over. It’s fun because the Wagner crowd is more aggressive than any other crowd. You have to know which way to go to your favourite spot and have a Plan B in case someone else gets there first. Then you mark your spot [with a scarf or cravat] and leave. If you come back and someone is there like a poor tourist who doesn’t know better, you just kick them out. If the person doesn’t want to leave the ushers will kick them out. Your scarf is totally legit. It’s as hard as a stone, the rule.”

To avoid this stampede, the COC – like most other opera houses – has numbered the standing places like a regular seat, so once you get your ticket at 11am, you don’t have return until right before curtain. Another advantage COC standers have is that the view with all tickets is unrestricted. This is not the case in most houses.

Because patrons need to line up during the day for standing room tickets, those that stand tend to be retired, students or tourists although everyone I talked to said it felt like a good mix of ages and social classes.

Of course, someone who is willing to queue for hours to secure their preferred place is usually a hardcore opera fan, which –depending on the atmosphere of the house – can lead to some intimidating behaviour. “There’s a lot of shushing going on”, says Gostynski of the Staatsoper. “A lot of stares. There’s often a conservative or very judgemental faction. They definitely get their boos in.”

Wikipedia advises that standing crowds can “become dangerous with the potential of riots occasionally resulting in death or injury.” Even in Vienna, where staking out your territory is a win-at-all-costs endeavour, this is unlikely. The worst you’ll get is some hissing, the occasional death stare and a couple elbow-poked ribs.

What is more of a concern is making sure you avoid exacerbating existing knee or back weaknesses. “Sometimes I come straight from work, says Elleson, in which case I take my shoes off but I do tend to wear shoes with a cushioned insole. Anything that has proper support. It’s not your feet that end up hurting, it’s your lower back and the muscles around the sides of you thighs.

A lot of people have inflatable cushions, like the thin type you get from camping shops and they quite often stand with their heels on the cushion.”

Gostynski has another strategy. “When the act ends, just when it’s over, in the lobbies there are couches and you just zoom for them.” At the Four Seasons Centre, the stairs of the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre are dream for standers looking for a bit of respite.

Another solution is to look for an empty seat. At most houses, this is tolerated although you do need to be wary of the overzealous usher and be sensitive to the fact the people who have the ticket for that seat may just be late.

When I asked the COC if they had a policy about this, Somarriba said, “We hope people will respect that they paid $12 and it is a standing seat. If the ushers need to step in, they will.”

Last Saturday I test-drove the standing room at Ben Heppner’s recital. Midway through the second half, I snagged an end seat in the row in front and was not given any trouble.

A note for shorter women: I found the rail a few inches too high to rest on comfortably. Standing on a thick book may prevent your upper back and shoulders from screaming as loudly as mine did.

For most superfans though, how the body feels is inconsequential. “Who cares about a little bit of pain?” says Gostynski. “For [$12] you get to hear the most wonderful thing in the world!”

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

Th OM New York Tour

MISS MUSSEL IS COMING TO NEW YORK!!!!

Tour dates: First two weeks of October.

She is very excited about this. Obviously [!]

On the agenda so far are Alex Ross’ New Yorker Festival lecture, a couple evenings at Le Met, a possible monster Twitter peeps meetup, loads of walking, getting outcooled by hipsters in Williamsburg, getting run over by Filipina nannies and their Bugaboo prams in Central Park and some journo work for a small west coast rag.

Three things:

1) If anyone fancies meeting up, drop Miss Mussel a line
2) What should a bivalve who doesn’t really like recreational shopping and doesn’t have a long museum attention span do in this citiest of cities? Non-Manhattan suggestions welcome.
3) Is is possible to get a pay-as-you-go SIM for an iphone in the US of A? Otherwise, $1.45 a minute for roaming and 3¢/kb? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? *ahem*

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

Eastman Broadband Featured at Miller Theatre, 11/1 - Broadway World

Eastman Broadband Featured at Miller Theatre, 11/1
Broadway World
Its repertoire includes modern classics, such as Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Birtwistle, and Carter, as well as recent music by many living composers. ...

Too much, too little

For many composers, for centuries apparently, part of the primal ritual of establishing a composerly identity is an obligatory period of conflict with one's teacher(s). I was lucky in that I was spared that period of conflict. I got along with my teachers and they (mostly) got along with me and we even continue to get along pretty well. Now, some of my teachers — Lucier and Young, in particular — came out of their own obligatory periods of conflict with composerly identities employing an absolute minimum of means to achieve a particular maximum of musical quality. For their perspective, it is probably the case that my music tends to do too much or have too much, but thankfully they have been consistently gracious about it.

On the other hand, there are certainly a large number of musicians for whom my music appears pretty minimal. I just emailed a copy of a wind quintet to a friend in the Netherlands who got rather cross with me because the score, with plenty of notes, has no dynamics. There happens to be a reason for the absence — the piece is about something other than dynamics, so as long as the loudness or softness of the players doesn't get in the way of all the things that the piece actually is about, or better yet, brings out some of those things, it's really all the same to me — but for my friend, I was was being irresponsibly minimal. No matter that I had explained that I had really worked on the issue of the dynamics, that not including them was a serious, not a casual, decision, and that while I could have come up with some system or just written in some dynamics extemporaneously, that would have been, to my ear and mind and taste and temperament, essentially an arbitrary act. Never mind, I had violated his notions about the minimum contents of a respectable score.

People really get angry about these issues and while never quite getting angry, I have worried about them as well. (See this post about fat crayons and musical pidgins from 2005.) I suspect not a few experimentalists and complexists have had some envy for the ability of mainstream composers to sort of skip the issue entirely, riding along on the autopilot of conventional practice. If I have acquired any wisdom on the topic it's this: The problem is never too many or too few notes, it's having the right ones. My own druthers are for a lower limit, but the choice of a minimum of ways or means requires a certain amount of confidence in your choices. On the other hand, being more inclusive, more expansive, and/or more complicated can be a good way of covering up a lack of confidence, with a surfeit of apparent labor providing a tempting measure of cover for that lack. Neither approach is automatically going to be more likely to produce the right notes, so if someone starts to knock you for having too many or too few notes, just knock 'em right back with notice that quantity alone is an inadequate substitute for actually having some criteria.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 23, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2010

Cellists Erik Friedlander And Emily Hope Price Join Loop 243 Percussionists At ... - Top40-Charts.com

Cellists Erik Friedlander And Emily Hope Price Join Loop 243 Percussionists At ...
Top40-Charts.com
Loop 2.4.3 is a composer/performer duo that has drawn comparisons to Steve Reich, Battles, Harry Partch, Moondog, Konono No.1, Brian Eno, ...

Stage Listings: Sept. 23-30 - Vancouver Sun

Stage Listings: Sept. 23-30
Vancouver Sun
... Grammy-Award winning soprano Susan Narucki, Lisa Bielawa, and others, playing music by Steve Reich, JS Bach, Bielawa, Gyorgi Kurtag, Giorgio Magnanensi, ...

and more »

Robert D. Levin, the Classical Improviser | Cultural Conversation by Corinna ... - Wall Street Journal

Robert D. Levin, the Classical Improviser | Cultural Conversation by Corinna ...
Wall Street Journal
He says his most recent recording project, "D'Ombre et de Silence," containing the complete piano works by Henri Dutilleux, was daunting, not only because ...

Joel Puckett & DJ Sparr dive into the online radio pool

The first episode just went up today…Joel Puckett & DJ Sparr have some brief interviews with Christopher Rouse, Robert Beaser, Augusta Read Thomas and Oscar Bettison. Keep up with ‘em online here.

Originally posted by Rob Deemer from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Don Partridge R.I.P.

With a heavy heart to write this - my good friend Don Partridge died yesterday from a heart attack. The King of the Buskers has moved on... All our condolences to the family. I'll probably write more about this unique guy - but not tonight...

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Take a walk through Carlsbad Music Fest's adventurous programming - North County Times

Take a walk through Carlsbad Music Fest's adventurous programming
North County Times
In January, Carlsbad Music Festival founder and artistic director Matt McBane announced that his 7-year-old festival had received the prestigious ...

Rediscovering the Women of Fluxus - The Awl

The Awl

Rediscovering the Women of Fluxus
The Awl
At the performance of Stockhausen's "Originale"–which Moorman helped organize–Maciunas was outside ticketing the performance as elitist. ...

Grantown pupils tune up with orchestra - Strathspey Herald

Grantown pupils tune up with orchestra
Strathspey Herald
The group took on compositions by Steve Reich and John Adams' four-movement string instrument piece, "Shaker Loops". Head of music at Grantown Grammar ...

What I Learned from George Crumb

By David Smooke
Sometimes we get stressed and tired and we hear the same pieces over and over again and we forget the most important thing.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Notation, Notation, Notation

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
More and more I find that notation reflects the action of creating new music. Beyond the speed of the creative process, notation can successfully function in many different capacities if its intention is clear.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Sounds Heard: Music Makes a City

The biggest reason for fans of culture to run out and see Music Makes a City, a new documentary directed by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler, might be the core suggestion it makes: that when times get tough, the talented get bold.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

What's the Meaning of This!?!

By Colin Holter
Rather than ask "what's really happening?", we should ask "what purely metaphorical reading of this music might reach a consensus among informed spectators?"

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mary Halvorson: Saturn Sings

The upcoming release of Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12 Records) featuring the Mary Halvorson Quintet, is very much an outgrowth of Halvorson's exploratory spirit.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Matthew McCright on Innova

Matthew McCright

Second Childhood

Innova CD 739

Pianist Matthew McCright’s recital disc on the Innova imprint has been given a cute but apt ‘in house’ descriptor: “Kinderszenen aus Northfield.” Indeed, the Carleton College professor and new music advocate has assembled a disc of new works which simultaneously channel and elevate the “music for childhood/music about childhood” genre.

For those who’ve slaved through dull character pieces and rhythmically inert etudes during childhood piano lessons, several of the pieces on Misplaced Childhood will no doubt repair these memories. Indeed, the disc replaces them with the type of fare one wishes was in the folders – and practice routines – of more students today. Namely, the composers featured here are able to evoke childhood and, often, to write with student performers in mind, while never ‘writing down’ to young musicians. One is particularly charmed by the dance compositions of Daniel Nas and Laura Caviani; both have written suites filled with jazzy character pieces which seem readymade for the student recital stage. John Halle’s “Lullaby” and “Misplaced Childhood” are both lithely evocative standouts as well.

McCright’s detailed and engaging renditions amply demonstrate that pieces for intermediate performers, as well as those for advanced pianists who are channeling memories of childhood, can still make for interesting listening and prove themselves of considerable substance.

Originally posted by Christian Carey from CD Reviews, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Show 023

The following program aired 9/8 on WRIU and 9/12 & 13 on WVVY

An Die Musik ~ Little Red Riding Hood ~ narrated by Dr. Ruth
Erin Huelskamp ~ Misfortune
Vince Raikhel ~ Mobius Ascent
Nico Muhly ~ Keep In Touch
John Luther Adams ~ Drums Of Fire, Drums Of Stone
Theo Bleckmann & Kneebody ~ Songs My Mother Taught Me ~ comp. by Charles Ives
Daníel Bjarnason ~ Bow to String
Corey Dargel ~ Ritalin
Victoire ~ A Song for Arthur Russell
Sam Sadigursky ~ Rain
So Percussion & Matmos ~ Treasure
Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble ~ Signals
Chas Smith ~ The Ghosts On Windows
Adrian Knight ~ Pink Pamphlet II
Robert Sirota ~ Triptych
Michael Daugherty ~ Deus Ex Machina

Originally from Music For Internets, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Second Republic

Back-of-the-envelope remarks on last night’s listen (Listen № 2) to De staat:

Not mad about the bleached-tofu concept of choral singing. I suppose it was something in the air at the time (in the period —after initial enthusiasm —when I wasn’t sure whether I liked The Desert Music, probably my ear’s complaint was largely the tone of the choir . . . it gets dull after a while).

That said, I think Louis creates a good balance between the presence of the choir, and the purely instrumental passages.

I understand the last note, and it’s a good note; I’m not sure that I am convinced that it’s an ending of the piece. Not that the piece need be any longer; it’s the right point at which to close the piece. The last note, though, feels to me like a hinge to a subsequent section (although, since the piece closes, there isn’t any subsequent section . . . and it’s a sonic cliff).

A couple of the busier sections feel too clunky to me. In the liner notes, Louis talks about be-bop rather than traditional orchestral writing; but the sections I am talking about lack the grace and flight of be-bop. Could well be what he wants.

Again: off-the-cuff thoughts which are more a matter of how I think differently; not presuming to send Louis back to the drawing-board.

Overall — I like it; Compositional endorsement rating — 80%.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

DiS meets Nicky Wire: "Under New Labour, Britain became a giant call centre ... - Drowned In Sound

Drowned In Sound

DiS meets Nicky Wire: "Under New Labour, Britain became a giant call centre ...
Drowned In Sound
I've never met anyone who can turn his hand to anything whether it be Stockhausen, Patti Smith or pure pop and make it sound so God damn perfect. ...

and more »

September 22, 2010

NY: Marsalis, Strauss – 7:30 pm

MARSALIS, Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3) (U.S. Premiere)
STRAUSS, Don Juan
HINDEMITH, Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Wynton Marsalis, trumpet
Alan Gilbert, conductor

IND: Violin Competition – 8:00 pm

Three finalists from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis
Samuel Wong, Conductor

SF: Copland, Tchaikovsky – 8:00 pm

HARRISON, Parade
COPLAND, Quiet City
COPLAND, Organ Symphony
TCHAIKOVSKY, Symphony No. 4
Paul Jacobs, organ
Russ deLuna, English horn
Mark Inouye, trumpet
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company - Chicago Reader

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
Chicago Reader
Ensemble dances from the same period (also set to minimalist music, by Steve Reich) have a similarly hypnotic pulse. Marimba (1976) is a perpetual-motion ...

Violinists and pianists show how to perform well together - Indianapolis Star

University of Indianapolis

Violinists and pianists show how to perform well together
Indianapolis Star
An exception was his overly impulsive, though riveting, account of the required work, Joan Tower's "String Force." (The best interpretation of that piece ...
Violin competition announces 6 finalistsIndianapolis Star

all 3 news articles »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

DREAM THEATER Keyboardist's 'Explorations For Keyboard And Orchestra' - Sep ... - Blabbermouth.net

Blabbermouth.net

DREAM THEATER Keyboardist's 'Explorations For Keyboard And Orchestra' - Sep ...
Blabbermouth.net
He adds, "'Explorations' is a total "progressive" music experience. 'Progressive' in that it is a forward thinking composition fusing my classical and ...

Generation Nico: Meet the 29-Year-Old Philip Glass Protégé You'll Be Hearing ... - New York Observer

New York Observer

Generation Nico: Meet the 29-Year-Old Philip Glass Protégé You'll Be Hearing ...
New York Observer
Nico Muhly was talking about how he determines if music is good. "It's length, pacing," he said. "Is it preferable to silence? ...

Sweetness is my weakness!

Of all the press releases I received over the summer, none made me happier than the one saying that, yes, there would be another New Music Bake Sale this year.

It’s happening this Saturday, September 25, at the Irondale Center (85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn) from 5-11:30pm and will be emceed by hosts from WQXR/Q2.

It looks like this year will be even more delicious than last year with more performances, more baked goods, and a silent auction. All of the ensembles with tables have been invited to offer special items for auction (with all the money going directly to the ensemble); look for updates to the auction items here. Want a piano lesson with Kathy Supové or a custom album written and recorded just for you by Loadbang? The silent auction is where you’ll have the chance.

There will also be a bunch of performances, and by incredibly diverse groups: the Respect Sextet, Wet Ink, Kathy Supové, MIVOS quartet, Matthew Welch, DITHER, Todd Reynolds, Mantra Percussion, and Anti-Social Music. Unbelievable. $15 gets you in the door, includes 2 drink tickets, and you can come and go as you please.

I said it last year, and I’ll say it again: even if you don’t care for all the music, it’s hard to deny the sense of community from having so many different groups all in the same room – we are all in this together! Tip of the hat to Newspeak, Ensemble de Sade, and the Exapno New Music Center for making it happen.

Finally, I’m not totally sure if you can still reserve a table as an ensemble, but if you are interested I would ask. If you are interested in helping out I’m sure they would love to hear from you as well: info@newmusicbakesale.org

New Music, Beer, and Cookies. Seriously, what else could you possible ask for?!

Originally posted by James Holt from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 22, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2010

'Music Makes a City': A film about a little orchestra that could - Los Angeles Times (blog)

'Music Makes a City': A film about a little orchestra that could
Los Angeles Times (blog)
Along with fascinating archival footage, the film uses talking heads, but what heads: Gunther Schuller, Elliott Carter (just after his 100th birthday, ...

Cage listens

"There are people who say, 'If music's that easy to write, I could do it.' Of course they could, but they don't." — John Cage

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

The Long Zoom of music

The author Steven Johnson, whom I've known for more than thirty of my forty-odd years, has a bracing new book entitled Where Good Ideas Come From. Somehow, Steven has managed to write seven books in about the time it has...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Mahler amid the motor boats

The mail brought a copy of Mahler's Concerts, a new book by Knud Martner. It's a scrupulously annotated listing of every concert that Mahler participated in or conducted over the course of his career, from Iglau to New York. The...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

'Music Makes a City': A film about a little orchestra that could - Los Angeles Times (blog)

'Music Makes a City': A film about a little orchestra that could
Los Angeles Times (blog)
(Joan Tower appears only on the DVD, due out in October, which will include over two hours of extra interview footage.) "The film resonates on so many ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Green Light for Experimentalism: Tweaking Conventions and Bending Rules - New York Times

New York Times

Green Light for Experimentalism: Tweaking Conventions and Bending Rules
New York Times
The group — part new-music band, part composers' collective — dedicated most of the first half to Salvatore Sciarrino's deftly iconoclastic reworking of ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Content Scraping Gets Respectable?

If you go to, www.paper.li/analogarts/music, you’ll see a sort of cool looking newspaper site that seems to be about music. All Paper.li is doing, though, is converting the links shared by the people we follow on Twitter into click bait.

The site grabs headlines and pictures from the sites that are being linked to and arranges them in a somewhat haphazard way onto a web page. It’s an automated version of what Huffington Post and the Drudge Report do. All I did was take 2 minutes to register and plug in the URL of our ‘music’ list on Twitter. Paper.li generated the site within a minute, and it updates the page daily.

The end product is fairly incoherent, but it does present the content in a more helpful way than the shortened URL’s on Twitter does. I’m much more inclined to click on the link that tells me “Hillary Hahn managed to catch up with Nico Muhly” than I am to click on something that reads “http://tmi.me/1yN2E”.

Paper.li is a maturation of what used to be a bottom-feeding practice (something, btw, that Jeff & I regularly get accused of with the Net New Music Reblog). AOL has publicly said that it is allowing this basic practice to dictate the content its paid writers generate. If ‘junky tomato cans’ is trending, AOL wants to be the place that’ll have an article for you to read about whatever the hell that means.

I’m sure plenty of people feel this race towards the bottom is dumbing us down, but in my experience, I don’t feel like content scraping is making me dumber. To me, it feels more like I am learning a dialect. I can look at HuffPo and decide which 24pt, bright red, all-caps headline is really worth my time and which is just going to be a copy-and-paste scrape of an AP wire article. The ‘Music Daily’ that Paper.li generated from our Twitter list looks like gobbledy gook to me, but much less so than the Twitter list itself. I can look at it and actually make sense out of it, and have clicked on things that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)

Laszlo Polgar, 63, Hungarian bass and Zurich Opera member, dies - Washington Post

Washington Post

Laszlo Polgar, 63, Hungarian bass and Zurich Opera member, dies
Washington Post
1, 1947, in Somogyszentpál, southwest Hungary, and studied at the Hungarian Music Academy from 1967 to 1972. He won several singing competitions, ...

and more »

STEVE REICH: Double Sextet; 2 x 5 - Eighth Blackbird/Bang on a Can - Nonesuch - Audiophile Audition

Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com

STEVE REICH: Double Sextet; 2 x 5 - Eighth Blackbird/Bang on a Can - Nonesuch
Audiophile Audition
Reich's Double Sextet won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music and is performed here by the six-member Eighth Blackbird new music ensemble on flute, clarinet, ...

Landmarks (46)

Karel Goeyvaerts: Nummer 1 (1950) (Sonata for two pianos).

The name of the Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts is probably encountered most in discussions over who did or didn't compose the earliest completely serialized work (a pissing contest that won't be entered here.) The handful of serial pieces Goeyvaerts composed in between 1950 and 1957, for instruments or magnetic tape, are each remarkable, on their own immediate musical terms, above and beyond their technical features. Nummer 2, for thirteen instruments, for example, is a work that finds company well next to pieces like Babbitt's Composition for Twelve Instruments or Wolff's Nine, which are a pair of pieces you wouldn't ordinarily expect to encounter in the same neighborhood.

Nummer 1, originally given the title Sonata for two pianos and also known as Opus 1, is something of a strict process piece, and to some extent, this process-character makes the piece more like some experimental repertoire than other "classic" serial pieces.* It is frequently mentioned for a controversial public reading, by the composer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, at Darmstadt, a performance that definitely troubled some critical listeners (Adorno among them) for the piece's stubborn refusal to appeal to traditional musical rhetoric. Goeyvaerts's ideal was not a music in which tonal relationships unfolded in and articulated time dynamically but rather tonal events were placed in time as elements of a larger, static tone structure. There is a closeness here, both to Cage's filling-in of a predetermined time structure from charts of possible materials and the static harmony of the radical music with reduced means that would later emerge on the west coast of the US with La Monte Young and his cohort. At the time of composition, Goeyvaerts's closest professional friend was Stockhausen, and it is impossible not to recognize shared elements of both technique and aesthetic in the subsequent work of the two composers (Kreuzspiel, for starters), but one is equally aware of the substantial aesthetic difference between the two, and that, I think, can be located in Goeyvaerts's dark, gentle, and slightly grotesque choice of tones, which would later allow the composer to fashion a more-generalized notion of a static harmony underlying materials more conventionally tonal in character (indeed, sometimes close to later minimal musics) as well.

At the time of their most active exchanges, both Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen were reading Sein und Zeit and Doktor Faustus and Das Glasperlenspiel, continental philosophical and literary sources with a mixture of ratio and mysticism which were perhaps even more urgent influences than in the music of Messiaen, Schoenberg, or Webern. The handful of works Goeyvaerts made under this influence, however, hovered around a existential minimum that Stockhausen did not seriously approach in any completed work, and this was perhaps the immediate cause of a halt in compositional output for several years until his re-emergence as a para-minimalist in the late 1960s.

*A technical footnote, for those inclined: Let me describe some of the procedures in the second (of four) movements, whose retrograde makes up the third movement. It involves the simultaneous rotation of two ordered seven-tone sets, each sharing two common pitches which are fixed in register, the eb below middle c and the second a above middle c. The remaining pitches contract in register through the movement, a process that is perfectly audible, especially when you have the two fixed-register pitches in the back of your ears. Goeyvaerts serializes additional parameters in a way that ingeniously associates pitches with durations, dynamics, and types of articulation through assigning numerical values to a pitch's intervallic distance from the two fixed pitches; a value to each available duration based on distance above or below a median durational value; a value to each of four dynamic levels; and a value to each of two forms of articulation. Each individual tone then, through the combination of interval, duration, dynamic, and articulation, has a sum numerical value that Goeyvaerts does not allow to exceed seven. The effect is a net, if subtle, reinforcement of the attraction of the two tonal poles of attraction. The ways in which the two sets are distributed between the pianos and then between each pianist's hands are fascinating as well, partitioning organized as broad gestures in pitch space, yet not parse-able as thematic material.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Music With Camera

Joachim Koester, Still from Tarantism, 2007, 16mm black-and-white film installation. Courtesy of Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, and Greene Naftali, New York.

2010-11 marks Houston based Musiqa’s year of presenting free “loft” concerts at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Each of these informal, intimate concerts is produced in conjunction with a different exhibition.

On Thursday, September 23, 2010, at 6:30 p.m., in conjunction with the museum’s exhibit Dance with Camera, Musiqa presents a collaborative “loft” concert with video artists Be Johnny that will merge live music and video. The Thursday program includes Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the SouthFrederic Rzewski’s To the Earth. Featuring Craig Hauschildt and Luke Hubley, percussion.

I wrote about Musiqa and their May 2010 Hand + Made concert in my first Houston Mixtape for Sequenza 21. Musiqa percussionist Craig Hauschildt’s solo performance of Vinko Globokar’s primal piece of performance art Corporal was one of the highlights of that program, and I can’t wait to see what he and the rest of the ensemble have cooked up for this Thursday’s concert.

Originally posted by Chris Becker from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello masterful in opening Gilmore's 2010-2011 ... - Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com

Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello masterful in opening Gilmore's 2010-2011 ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com
But it was Shostakovich's rhythmically hypnotic music that energized the hall, namely two selections — No. 2 in A Minor and No. ...

Radio Silence

Sound Clip: Radio Silence by Zach Poff

Radio Silence is a multichannel art installation that explores the silent moments of talk-radio, combining eight AM broadcasts into an expanded conversation based on the “negative spaces” between words. A pause in conversation might indicate the end of a thought or an opportunity for reflection and response. A pause in a radio broadcast offers different potentials: As radio listeners, we can’t respond but we might exercise our only form of interactivity: changing the station. On commercial radio, moments of silence are minimized to avoid losing listeners. Broadcasters use digital time-compression to shorten their programming and leave more time for advertising, and some have experimented with tiny “blip ads” to monetize every last second of the broadcast day. In Radio Silence, pauses are treated as opportunities to probe the neighboring airwaves in search of other conversations. Over time, it surveys the spectrum of viewpoints currently on the air, weaving them together through the intersections of a shared linguistic device.

In Radio Silence, eight talk radio stations are received by portable AM radios. Their audio is fed into custom computer software which makes real-time decisions about what will be heard in the exhibition. The software detects the silences between words (yellow). It also notices when two or more broadcasts share a moment of silence (green lines). 8 wire-frame radio sculptures are arranged in the exhibition space. (One for each of the real radios that feed the computer software.) The software allows one sculpture to deliver its broadcast while the others stay mostly quiet. When a moment of shared silence occurs, the conversation seamlessly shifts to the neighbor before the next word begins. Paradoxically, in order to be heard in the conversation created by Radio Silence, every broadcast must be momentarily silent.

September 21, 2010

BAL: Brahms, Stravinsky – 6:00 pm

BRAHMS, Academic Festival Overture
STRAVINSKY, Finale from the Firebird Suite (1919 version)
Marin Alsop, conductor

PHI: Tchaikovsky, Sibelius – 7:00 pm

GLINKA, Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila
TCHAIKOVSKY, Marche slave
TCHAIKOVSKY, Excerpts from Swan Lake
SIBELIUS, Finlandia
BIZET, Excerpts from Carmen
Rossen Milanov, conductor

Originally posted by rene from The Daily Rep, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

'Wake Up!' recalls soul music of Civil Rights era - Philadelphia Inquirer

'Wake Up!' recalls soul music of Civil Rights era
Philadelphia Inquirer
FUSION FUN: A lot of serious composer Steve Reich's cyclically hypnotic "math" music structures could drive ya bonkers. Not so the fascinating double ...

and more »

The Miller Theater finds its voice with new talent at the top - Capital New York

Capital New York

The Miller Theater finds its voice with new talent at the top
Capital New York
And in a city in which new-music venues are booming, the New York Philharmonic has a blazing success with a Ligeti opera, and New York City Ballet programs ...

and more »

words, words, words

Not any matter of difficulty of the task, only of finding time. But I should almost prefer writing another half hour of music, to generating a page of program notes about this.

(Oh, wait — and this is a blog, too.)

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

Blast from the Past

Last night, for the first time in decades, I listened to Louis Andriessen's De staat. I am planning to listen to this once a day for three days, and yesterday was the inaugural.

The piece has nice sentimental value for me; it was probably the first piece to which I listened (score in hand) in the Music Library of the University at Buffalo. I had just enrolled in the doctoral program in composition, basically not knowing with whom I might actually be studying; the head of the Graduate Composition program informed me that there would be two visiting composers teaching, Charles Wuorinen and Louis, that I should be taking individual lessons with Charles, and that there would be a weekly composers seminar led by Louis.

Since at the time, Louis' name was completely new to me, I wanted to listen to some of his music for orientation. I found De staat immediately likeable . . . though perhaps I was predisposed to like it . . . one piece which was then a recent obsession for me was Steve Reich's The Desert Music. The prospect of working with Louis thus struck me as eminently agreeable.

So, how do I hear it now, after so large a buffer of time? I still like it, find it largely well done. Some of the hocket technique of the two groups (sort of the same game that the composer plays in Hoketus, only with more musicians) comes across as a little clunky. The low brass "answer" to the opening oboe invention, a little clunky and blatty, too. The final note had me thinking, that's the end? The repetition strikes me as well paced and proportioned, I like the balance between the largely (or quasi-) unison passages and the block chords.

Part of my exercise in listening these three days in a row will be to observe unfiltered reactions on my own part. So, from last night: Overall - I like it; Compositional endorsement rating - 85%

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

A Far Cry showcases its free spirit in Gardner performance - Boston Globe

A Far Cry showcases its free spirit in Gardner performance
Boston Globe
... the Xenakis was on paper an impressively bold way to begin a get-to-know-you concert at the Gardner, and kudos to both the group and to Gardner music ...

Images of the future - Herald Scotland

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images of the future
Herald Scotland
... satellites in the form of an Easter festival of sacred music, a winter piano festival, and a vanguard summer academy presided over by Pierre Boulez. ...

Laura Veirs' album 'July Flame' warms hearts - Louisville Courier-Journal

Laura Veirs' album 'July Flame' warms hearts
Louisville Courier-Journal
Three albums came out on Nonesuch Records, home of Wilco, Steve Reich and Stephin Merritt. “I guess when I look back, I think, you know, some people in ...

and more »

Violin competition announces 6 finalists - Indianapolis Star

Violin competition announces 6 finalists
Indianapolis Star
Chen was the only semifinalist to program two works by living composers: the required Joan Tower piece, "String Force," and "Lachen verlernt," an intense, ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

The 411 Music Top Five 09.21.10: Top 5 Greatest Artists of the 1970s - 411mania.com

The 411 Music Top Five 09.21.10: Top 5 Greatest Artists of the 1970s
411mania.com
You had the Pop Group and Steve Reich stretching the out limits of what can be considered popular music while simultaneously you had these huge monoliths of ...

Fall Arts Preview: Classical concerts offer great options - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Fall Arts Preview: Classical concerts offer great options
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The first is an as-yet-untitled piece by American composer Joan Tower (May 13 and 14). She's the symphony's composer of the year, and during the season six ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 21, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Exclusive: NastyNasty's 'Lazer Soul' DJ Mini-Mix - SF Weekly (blog)

SF Weekly (blog)

Exclusive: NastyNasty's 'Lazer Soul' DJ Mini-Mix
SF Weekly (blog)
I didn't grow up on electronic music by any means. I listened to a lot more Misfits and Black Flag than Stockhausen or Kraftwerk. ...

Laszlo Polgar, Hungarian Bass, Dies at 63 - New York Times

Laszlo Polgar, Hungarian Bass, Dies at 63
New York Times
1, 1947, in Somogyszentpal, Hungary, and studied at the Hungarian Music Academy. He received Hungary's most prestigious cultural award, the Kossuth Prize, ...

and more »

Marc-André Hamelin, Études, at (Le) Poisson Rouge | The Musical Adventurer ... - Wall Street Journal

Marc-André Hamelin, Études, at (Le) Poisson Rouge | The Musical Adventurer ...
Wall Street Journal
Pretty soon, I was using my pocket money for music by Stockhausen, Boulez, Cage and Xenakis." Perhaps another young teenager will spend months listening to ...

and more »

September 20, 2010

The Tank Present Erik Friedlander and Emily Hope Price, 10/13 - Broadway World

The Tank Present Erik Friedlander and Emily Hope Price, 10/13
Broadway World
Their music has been described as "transportive percussion odysseys" (The Boston Phoenix), "taut compositions with a stunning improvisational sense" (Time ...

Disc of the week: John Legend - Globe and Mail

Globe and Mail

Disc of the week: John Legend
Globe and Mail
Getty With Wake Up!, John Legend and the Roots revisit the empowering music of sixties soul. Plus: Maroon 5, Laetitia Sadier and more James Brown instructed ...

and more »

The Muti has landed

Here's video from Riccardo Muti's outdoor debut as the music director of the Chicago Symphony, yesterday at Millennium Park, before a crowd of twenty-five thousand people. After the explosive finale of Respighi's Pines of Rome, Muti did some deft stand-up:...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

The Louisville experiment

Now playing at the Quad Cinemas in New York — with an engagement to follow at Sunset 5 in Los Angeles — is Owsley Brown's documentary film Music Makes a City, an absorbing study of the Louisville Orchestra's great campaign...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Maulina noir playlist

— Stile Antico, Puer natus est (Harmonia Mundi)
— Nico Muhly, A Good Understanding (Decca)
— Antony and the Johnsons, Swanlights (Secretly Canadian)
— Marc-André Hamelin, Études (Hyperion)*
— The Bad Plus, Never Stop (E1)
— Ives, Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, Jeremy Denk (Think Denk Media)
— Steve Reich, Double Sextet and 2x5, Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can (Nonesuch)

*Jed Distler's Gramophone review is great fun. Hamelin plays Poisson Rouge Tuesday night (9/21).

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Lapse

Suddenly and inexplicably I am lost, Marin Alsop stops conducting, the audience is utterly silent; I think I say, "Sorry, I have to start the third movement again."

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

That Strange Thing Called Memory

By Frank J. Oteri
Many years ago I realized that I was more likely to remember a passage of my own music if I didn't write it down than if I did.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

An Australian in Santa Cruz: An Insider's Report from the 2010 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

This was the first time I've ever experienced Marin Alsop live in concert and what a dynamic personality she is; the performance is also wonderfully precise.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

John Ogdon plays Messiaen

Despite my admiration for Olivier Messiaen as a teacher, thinker and snappy dresser, I can only take so much of his music. There's a lot of it, too – a lot of pieces, many of them very long and, after a certain point, hard to distinguish from all the other very long, very loud expressions of Messiaen's heterodox Catholic mysticism. Morton Feldman's criticism is pertinent: ('that's not orchestration ... I don't know what the hell it is! It's Walt Disney ... it's technicolor!') So is the tacit, indirect criticism which can be inferred from the many pieces that his former student Pierre Boulez has chosen not to conduct.

But I am always susceptible to enthusiasm – for instance, Edward Said wrote an engaging defense of 'Saint François d'Assise' that sent me back to the recording with good results. Thanks to the committed advocacy of Peter Serkin and Reinbert de Leeuw, a New York concert of 'Des Canyons aux Etoiles' was absolutely convincing and unforgettable. ('Des Canyons aux Etoiles' is Messiaen's 2-hours-plus U.S. Bicentennial blockbuster with solo piano obligato, walk-on parts for every bird in Utah and Nevada and a wind machine cadenza in all three of its subsections and its twelve movements.)

(You can't talk about Messiaen without mentioning birds and I want to insert a paragraph here thanking the composer for changing forever the way I hear birdsong. As a kid, I had my bird-watching phase. ((Stamp-collecting, amateur botany and model-rocketry were my other childish hobbies until I seized on music, which, despite my father's prediction that it was another piece of childish dilettantism, followed me out of my childhood and became my full-time foolish adult dilettantism.)) My big bird-watching break was spotting a rare pileated woodpecker in our backyard in Atlanta. The teenage discovery of the 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps' made me madly enthusiastic about Messiaen and his bird-transcribing. It's a fact that can't be repeated too often: birds were the inventors of music. They invented it long before people did and have passed it down unbrokenly to this day, while the tens of centuries of human musical endeavor before the advent of notation and sound recording is lost for good.)

John Ogdon's Messiaen is another piece of effective advocacy. Much of Ogdon's recorded repertoire is not to my taste. And at times he seems to have coasted on his transcendental sight-reading ability to make dazzling but incoherent recordings. Ogdon's 1969 'Vingt Regards' for Argo is an undeniable miracle, the best of Messiaen and the best of Ogdon. It is an extreme performance: much much slower than Yvonne Loriod's classic mono recording – with nearly superhuman delineation of Messiaen's superimposed rhythmic layers. The recorded dynamic range is also extreme. Unfortunately, Argo's pressings were often not very good, and this one, with side lengths averaging 32 minutes, is just about untameable. I spent months trying. I used every trick in the book, both physical (scrubbing, scraping, stroking the surfaces) and digital (from manual declicking to equalization.) I'd nearly given up for good when I found a sealed copy at the local used rock and roll emporium. I made a just-about-passable transfer and would have settled for that, but before I could post it, God placed at my disposal this now-discontinued Decca CD reissue.

Although this is taken from the CD, I have included scans from the Argo LP along with the front and back covers of Decca's out-of-print reissue (the liner notes are the same in both editions.) On a semi-related note, if anyone has made a transfer of John Ogdon's RCA LP recording of Beethoven's Op 106, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I may be forced to share my own needledrop from a badly-nicked copy (it's a very good 'Hammerklavier'.)

John Ogdon – Messiaen: 'Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jesus' SIDES ONE AND TWO

John Ogdon – Messiaen: 'Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jesus' SIDES THREE AND FOUR

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Pat Metheny -- The Orchestrion Tour Coming to UB Oct. 16 - UB News Center

Pat Metheny -- The Orchestrion Tour Coming to UB Oct. 16
UB News Center
The concert is sponsored in part by Monaco's Violin Shop & Music Center and Creekside Dentistry. Following a wildly enthusiastic reception to shows around ...

The relevance of honoring Frank Zappa - Examiner.com

The relevance of honoring Frank Zappa
Examiner.com
Some may think it out of place for a site concerned with classical music to reflect on the unveiling of a bust of Frank Zappa yesterday afternoon in ...

and more »

Bringing new meaning to “double concerto”

It is a huge day for new music new releases tomorrow, Tuesday, September 21st. Last month you might remember I interviewed Nico Muhly about his new releases before he spoke in LA about the works on the Decca label and featured an in-store performance. Tomorrow those discs will hit the stores as well as two major works by another composer, Jennifer Higdon.

Jennifer Higdon and John Clare in Dallas for her Violin Concerto performance in May 2010

What is astounding about Higdon’s cds are that they are by two different labels (Telarc & DG) and by two different violinists (Jennifer Koh and Hilary Hahn) of two different violin concertos, written closely together: The Singing Rooms and the Violin Concerto.
I was curious about how all of this came together for Jennifer.
Listen to the interview: mp3 file

Originally posted by John Clare from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

'Avant que j'oublie ... '

I am now posting at a new location and hope to see you there. I will be maintaining the Pony Archives as they stand, although some of the transfers here may eventually be replaced with improved or rearranged programs at 'Avant que j'oublie'. Thanks to everyone for their patronage, comments and contributions.

Originally from The High Pony Tail, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden: 'Soapsuds, Soapsuds' (1978 Artists House LP)

Ornette Coleman followed his first two electric albums ('Body Meta' and 'Dancing in your head', both recorded in 1976) with an acoustic album of duets with his 'classic quartet' bassist Charlie Haden. I can only take Mr. Coleman at his word that 'there is a singer named Allison Mills who makes her own soap suds'. 'Soapsuds, Soapsuds' opens with the theme from 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman', one of Coleman's rare non-originals. Louise Lasser starred as the pigtailed and depressed housewife 'Mary Hartman' in Norman Lear's 'controversial' soap opera spoof. It was on every weekday right before the evening news. The gloopy title music is a parody of standard telenovela schmaltz and has been lodged in my head now for more than three decades. In any case, it's a nice tune; Coleman and Haden play it mostly straight (although Haden's solo spot begins with his harmolodic trash compaction of the plummy open-sixth accompaniment into sarcastic double-stopped minor seconds.) 'Mary Hartman' segues into four O.C. originals, including the first appearance of 'Sex Spy' – one of my favorite of Coleman's occasionally kinky song titles.

Ornette Coleman is on tenor saxophone and trumpet; Charlie Haden is on bass. (I posted Haden's earlier duets album 'The Golden Number' on the High Pony Tail.) This is a vinyl rip with some light ClickRepair work. The surface noise at the beginning of Side One quickly improves. I have included a PDF of the booklet came with the Artists House LP. It contains transcriptions of the music, as well as discographies for both Coleman and Haden, current as of 1978.

Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden: 'Soapsuds, Soapsuds' – FLAC and scans

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Classical TV Draws a Surprisingly Young Audience for its High-Quality, Full ... - PR Newswire (press release)

Classical TV Draws a Surprisingly Young Audience for its High-Quality, Full ...
PR Newswire (press release)
Classical TV programs encompass not only opera but symphonic and chamber music, ballet and modern dance, jazz and pop music, theater and musicals, ...

and more »

Hilary & Nico

No, not that Clinton woman and the iconic, dark (& sadly now dead) singer… Hilary Hahn managed to virtually catch up with a very busy Nico Muhly, and they chat on subjects far and wide in this two-part interview:

Part 2 is here. Both Hilary and Nico have CDs dropping officially tomorrow (Tuesday Sep 21); Nico’s A Good Understanding is a compilation of choral works, while Hilary’s couples the Tchaikovsky concerto with Jennifer Higdon’s 2010 Pulitzer-Prize-winner. (For the early-birds, follow that last link and see that Hilary also just happens to be doing a live web-chat today (Monday) at 12PM ET. Hop to it, chop chop!)

Originally posted by Steve Layton from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Life is a Color Wire 2

[september 20, 2010 | #389]

How with the help of Stichting Intro's technical staff I became a telecom provider: we gave Minckeleers and 't Mooswief a 90 meters long tin can telephone connection, stretching all the way across the town hall from one side to the other of the Markt in Maastricht (the Netherlands).

Read more ...

Originally from HarSMedia (Feed and Podcast), ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

"une nouvelle approche de la complexité rythmique"

My article on Nancarrow for IRCAM's contemporary music documentation archive is now online - in French, of course. I couldn't write it in French, but I did brush up enough of my high-school French (three years) to carry on the relevant correspondence in that language. Amusingly, the archive is called BRAHMS, which musicologist Nicolas Donin tells me was originally derived from something like "Base de données Relationnelles Hypermédia sur la Musique de notre Siècle" - though no one now remembers for sure, and it's now called something else, but the nickname stuck. Book or no book, I'm surprised IRCAM entrusted it to little old Downtown me, just as I'm surprised when prestigious music schools that I assume would never consider hiring me ask me to be an outside tenure evaluator for their professors, as occasionally happens.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon

Like many deskbound Manhattanites, I take an almost desperate pleasure in jogging along the Hudson River on the west side of the city. I'm savoring the last warm days of summer before the chill sets in and I resort to...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Violinists and pianists show how to perform well together - Indianapolis Star

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Jesse Jones

Originally from No Extra Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 20, 2010 at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2010

Hungarian opera singer Laszlo Polgar dies - CBC.ca

Hungarian opera singer Laszlo Polgar dies
CBC.ca
1, 1947, in Somogyszentpal, southwest Hungary, Polgar studied at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest and joined his country's state opera in 1972. ...

and more »

Hungarian bass Laszlo Polgar dies at 63 - The Associated Press

Hungarian bass Laszlo Polgar dies at 63
The Associated Press
1, 1947 in Somogyszentpal, southwest Hungary, and studied at the Hungarian Music Academy between 1967 and 1972. He won several singing competitions, ...

and more »

Heidi Melton's recital - Examiner.com

Heidi Melton's recital
Examiner.com
Melton is well known in San Francisco as an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera; and her accompanist was John Parr, San Francisco Opera's Head of Music ...

Present Music spins US premiere of turntable concerto - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Present Music spins US premiere of turntable concerto
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The first half featured Gyorgy Ligeti's Piano Concerto, with Phillip Bush as the soloist. Present Music director Kevin Stalheim told the audience that it ...

and more »

Louisville, Ky., as a Contemporary Music Hub - New York Times

Louisville, Ky., as a Contemporary Music Hub
New York Times
By 1953, with a major Rockefeller Foun- dation grant, the orchestra was bringing in 46 originals a year, by the likes of Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter (both ...

and more »

Critic's picks - Boston Globe

Critic's picks
Boston Globe
On Sunday afternoon, the conductorless chamber orchestra A Far Cry, newly in residence at the museum, plays music by Xenakis, Mozart, ...

So Percussion will bring innovative show to Lafayette - 2TheAdvocate

So Percussion will bring innovative show to Lafayette
2TheAdvocate
The group has worked with several notable composers, including Paul Lansky, Dan Trueman, Steve Reich, Steve Mackey and Fred Frith. All events, including the ...

NY Phil adds More Social Media - Sequenza21

Sequenza21

NY Phil adds More Social Media
Sequenza21
Despite there already being many musical highlights since Alan Gilbert joined the orchestra as music director, of late the NY Philharmonic has also had its ...

NY Phil adds More Social Media

Despite there already being many musical highlights since Alan Gilbert joined the orchestra as music director, of late the NY Philharmonic has also had its share of successes offstage. Their PR office has steadily been increasing the orchestra’s presence on a variety of social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube among them. This no doubt in part helped to get out the word about their performances of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre.

Their latest addition is a Tumblr account. Tumblr is a handy platform for sharing media heavy blog posts. In addition to my blog here, I maintain a Tumblr page for File Under ?, putting up videos and audio excerpts that often dovetail with what’s going on here at Sequenza 21.

One imagines a number of ways that the Philharmonic can employ Tumblr, providing one-stop shopping for various videos, audio excerpts, program notes, and press releases: materials that inform both audience members and press folks alike.

To give people an extra incentive to visit their Tumblr blog, the orchestra is entering all of the folks who “follow” the site by Nov. 1 in a ticket drawing. A lucky social media maven will win a pair of tickets to hear them at Avery Fisher Hall!

Originally posted by Christian Carey from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 19, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
Musical excerpts and interviews by Virgil Thomson, Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Copland, William Schuman, Lukas Foss, Ned Rorem, ...

and more »

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Symphony No 3, Christian ... - The Guardian

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Symphony No 3<strong>, </strong>Christian ...
The Guardian
At 85, Boulez has already extended his magisterial coverage of 20th-century repertory to Janácek and now he the exotic, sensual music of Karol Szymanowski, ...

and more »

Project Orpheus Gets an Intense Revival From SDP - The SunBreak

Project Orpheus Gets an Intense Revival From SDP
The SunBreak
... and Olivier Wevers; and music that ranges from Steve Beresford to Steve Reich, with Anthony and the Johnsons ("Hope There's Someone") and Fauré as well. ...

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
Alex Ross's exhaustive study of 20th Century music, The Rest Is Music, inexplicably omits any reference to the Louisville Orchestra or founder/conductor ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 19, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2010

Pareidolia

I was out about town today doing some field recordings. I was focusing on public transportation, conversing passers-by, skateboarding, and water, especially public fountains. (There are vague plans to make a piece incorporating such bits of acoustical realia.) One of the most fascinating things about many continuous or repetitious sounds is that when listening, even idly, we all start grouping events into rhythmic, indeed metric, patterns, finding stress accents in stimulus that is essentially undifferentiated, vague, or random. This phenomenon, usefully, has a name, pareidolia, and is familiar with visual as with auditory sensations, whether finding poodles in cloud formations or rhythmic grooves in streetcar clatter. Pareidolia definitely has a downside, in that it can provide the stuff to feed some serious misapprehensions about the world (it may well be the root of half the conspiracy theories floating around), but the upside, as a composer, is obvious, as we're actually in the business of turning misapprehensions about the sounding world into musical surprises.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Dan Deacon, London Fabric - Muso's Guide

Muso's Guide

Dan Deacon, London Fabric
Muso's Guide
And the music-designed-to-facilitate-submission conceit isn't new either – think about hard techno clubs, or Steve Reich's 'Clapping' – it's that it's to ...

Something of a Nod to Igor Fyodorovich

It seems befitting in a summer which sees hurricanes named both Igor and Karl . . .

Last year I sent the recording of the Noise in the Library concert to Michael Karman, editor of Asymmetry Music Magazine. Recently he wrote to me:

Karl,

I had lost this immediately after listening to it only once, when my chief impression was “late Stravinsky.”

Then I found it right before leaving for a two month trip to Europe.

Now I’m back, and I’m listening to it and liking it all very much. I haven’t heard anything that’s really reminded me of late Stravinsky any more. It’s not reminding me of anything, really. I suppose it was the combination of serial-ish licks and warmth that reminded me of late Stravinsky the first time through. Now, I’m most taken with the emptiness. The space around the notes and the lines. The silence that you never really disturb — the notes never sound like they’re interrupting the silence. And as that’s become a rather favorite thing of mine (Sachiko M, Mattin, Hannifin and several others), it was nice to hear it in Henning, too, even though your aesthetic (and the actual sounds) are very different from those people.

Anyway, that’s what I think and what it is, too.

Michael

By seeming chance, today I ran across these kind remarks from composer Luke Ottevanger, as I rummaged through some messages:

As for your disc — for which thanks again - I have only been able to listen to the first half or so. There is lots to say — all positive — and I will try to get it all in order soon. The most striking impression — given that I’d never heard any Henning before, but ‘know’ you to an extent from your posts — was that your interest in Stravinsky seems to shine through, although in a personal way. No question of a simple aping of Strav’s mannerisms, naturally! Those two trombones, so powerfully linear and solemn-toned, gracefully finding a balance between independance and interactivity... within seconds I couldn’t help but remember the Canticum Sacrum, which must be one of my favourite late Strav works. And yet your music is very different in all details, of course. It’s a matter of similar tone, similar approach — and so in that sense, certainly, I’d say you have succeeded in striking a similar balance yourself.

Luke wrote in July of 2006, in response to the Evening Service in D.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Star Guitarist Joel Harrison Brings Septet to NOCCA - NOLA.com

NOLA.com

Star Guitarist Joel Harrison Brings Septet to NOCCA
NOLA.com
As a college student, he studied with the composer Joan Tower — who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her work. Later, he got hip to composers like John ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Croacatoca

Sound Clip: Croacatoca by Kikiilimikilii

Croacatoca is made of different [natural] noises recorded in the vicinity of Amanalco de Becerra, Mexico. Painting with the nature, the field is a material, it is symbiosis.

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Semifinalists find ways to stand out - Indianapolis Star

Semifinalists find ways to stand out
Indianapolis Star
This year the work is Joan Tower's "String Force," an eight-minute unaccompanied solo piece that Friday received the first four of what amounts to 16 ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

In Switzerland, jazz is in full swing - Montreal Gazette

In Switzerland, jazz is in full swing
Montreal Gazette
... where it is reverently known as "America's classical music" - which seems to put Philip Glass and Steve Reich, not to mention George Gershwin, ...

236 :: 17 September 2010 :: Dane Rudhyar 1895-1985

Dane Rudhyar

“His music does not have to be explained; it is the explanation of a puzzle of human existence; it is an answer to a question that was never asked.” –Nicolas Slonimsky

Dane Rudhyar: Sunburst (1925) from Pentagram III
Michael Sellars, piano Orion OC674 (vinyl transcription)

Sinfonietta (1925) Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jonel Perles cond
Varese International VC 81046 (1978)

Crisis and Overcoming (1978)
Kronos Quartet CRI 604 (1979/1991)

Henry Cowell: Suite for Violin and Piano (1925)
Mia Wu, vn; Cheryl Seltzer, pno Musical Heritage Soc 513109z (1992)

Dane Rudhyar: The Gates; Stars (1925) from Pentagram III
Michael Sellars, pno Orion OC674

Rudhyar in Retrospect - Join Other Minds in a special pair of concerts celebrating the 25th anniversary of Dane Rudhyar’s passing.

Monday, September 27, 2010
7pm Panel Discussion, 8pm Concert
Swedenborgian Church
2107 Lyon Street, San Francisco (map)
reception at 6:30pm

Wednesday, September 29, 2010
7:30pm Concert
Valley Presbyterian Church
945 Portola Road, Portola Valley (map)

More information at the Other Minds website.

Also, a new biography:
Dane Rudhyar: His Music, Thought, and Art by Deniz Ertan published in 2009 by the University of Rochester Press.

Originally posted by rchrd from Music From Other Minds, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 18, 2010 at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)

NY Phil adds more Social Media - Sequenza21

NY Phil adds more Social Media
Sequenza21
Despite there already being many musical highlights since Alan Gilbert joined the orchestra as music director, of late the NY Philharmonic has also had its ...

September 17, 2010

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Symphony No 3 - Financial Times

Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Symphony No 3
Financial Times
Boulez's ear for detail saves the music from over-saturation, and creates a seemingly endless string of tingling sounds, suspended between the stars and the ...

Steve Reich: Double Sextet, 2x5 - Financial Times

Steve Reich: Double Sextet, 2x5
Financial Times
The effect is more lyrical, less virtuosic, than the iconic Clapping Music, Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians, but the suspicion remains that Reich is ...

Katrina Ballads-Ted Hearne

I recently started reviewing albums for Naxos Music. Each month I will be reviewing 2-3 of the new releases. This is exciting for me to hear the latest in the classical/new music scene and I hope you find my reviews helpful and maybe even insightful. My first review is Katrina Ballads by Ted Hearne:

Katrina Ballads by Ted Hearne is an hour long song cycle ranging in many broad styles. The text was hand chosen by Hearne directly from the news coverage and interviews. It is the composer’s reaction to witnessing this tragedy unfold on live television.
As mentioned above, the music incorporates many styles including operatic arias, New Orleans jazz, and has some minimalist tendencies as well. This is a fresh take on the traditional song cycle in that Hearne approaches the entire artistic intention similarly to how a band writes an album. Each song stands on its own merit, yet is linked to a common theme that make a cohesive album.
This is a very ambitious project, and as such, not every moment is a convincing statement. But this is music of an honest, compassionate intention, and these qualities shine through each track, carrying the album.

Originally posted by admin from Ryan Manchester, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 17, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Toronto 2010 | THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS - Indie Wire (blog)

Toronto 2010 | THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS
Indie Wire (blog)
Throughout the film, Costanzo uses references to other films (for example, the music of György Ligeti from Kubrick's The Shining, shows up once again, ...

Nonesuch Events for the Weekend of September 17–19 - Nonesuch Records

Nonesuch Events for the Weekend of September 17–19
Nonesuch Records
The day's capstone event is an evening concert that brings together the gamelan and works by Steve Reich, who was influenced by that music. ...

An interactive show with unsettling devices - Financial Times

Financial Times

An interactive show with unsettling devices
Financial Times
It creates patterns that I like to compare, pretentiously, to intense minimalist music such as Steve Reich's.” “The more connections we may be able to find ...

Documentary Review: 'Music Makes a City' - The Epoch Times

Documentary Review: 'Music Makes a City'
The Epoch Times
This includes such luminaries as Paul Hindemith, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Darius Milhaud, Virgil Thomson, Gunther Schuller, Ned Rorem, and Elliott Carter. ...

and more »

Valery Afanassiev plays late Brahms

The pianist Valery Afanssiev's legendary – perhaps notorious – recordings for Japanese Denon have inspired both cultish adulation and downright derision. His trademark very deliberate tempos are always mentioned, but it is his insistence on being recognized as not just a piano virtuoso but a literary genius that seems to rankle the most. (Afanassiev is also a novelist and playwright and includes excerpts in the booklets of his CDs) Further research into this reaction would undoubtedly make a considerable contribution to the sociology of the classical music-lover.

I am proud to be an Afanassiev-worshiper, but am not foolish enough to love his recordings equally. When he is good he is very, very good and when he is bad he is rotten. His Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven sonatas and concertos are the work of a dutiful citizen of dullsville. On the other hand, I am an unreasonable admirer of his DG Schubert and Brahms (violin sonatas with Gidon Kremer) and of the best of the Denons – the Beethoven b agatelles and 'Diabellis' and 'Kreisleriana' and above all his absolutely bizarre late Schubert. (While the Denon late sonata recordings are well known, I am equally devoted to a little-noticed Forlane CD of the 'Schwanengesang' with José Van Dam.)

Afanassiev's Brahms CD is one of his best. These late works of Brahms are already known for their unbearable melancholy and an uncanny resistance to analysis. Viewed under the pianist's special microscope, the strange case of the Brahms Klavierstücke just gets curiouser and curiouser. The level of detail in Afanassiev's 'blow-ups' leads to vertigo: unlike the pixellated zoom of Google Earth, the expected distortion never sets in – yet no hidden layers or secret passageways are revealed. There is nothing to hold on to in the space between these notes. I would not recommend using LSD while listening, although hallucinations may occur even without chemical assistance.

Pretentious liner notes are not a distraction in this case (not for me, anyhow, since I don't read Japanese – or for you, as I haven't scanned them.)

Valery Afanassiev – Brahms: 3 Intermezzi Op 117, 6 Klavierstücke Op 118 and 4 Klavierstücke Op 119 – FLAC and scans

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 17, 2010 at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

NYC Events Picks - The Epoch Times

NYC Events Picks
The Epoch Times
Conducted by Alan Gilbert, Perlman will play pieces including Richard Strauss' “Don Juan,” Mendelssohn's “Violin Concerto,” and Henri Dutilleux's “Métaboles ...

Postminimalist Daddy Rock - Yale Daily News

Postminimalist Daddy Rock
Yale Daily News
It was in reaction to this world that Steve Reich's style first developed. In the 1960s, when much other music was extremely complex, abstract and ...

and more »

Louisville, Ky., as a Contemporary Music Hub - New York Times

Megafaun goes into the field - News & Observer

Megafaun goes into the field
News & Observer
The arc of our season is from Charlie Poole to Steve Reich, so I asked them to try and link those two. This is what they came up with. ...

Wagner's Ring in Melbourne - ABC Online

Wagner's Ring in Melbourne
ABC Online
I only have one The Ring on DVD - Chereau's Bayreuth version, transcribed by the BBC for television, with Pierre Boulez giving his wiry and modernist ...

Calendar: Theater and stage - Ventura County Star

Calendar: Theater and stage
Ventura County Star
The program includes Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's "Dance Preludes," selections from Max Bruch's "Eight Pieces," Bela Bartok's "Contrasts" ...

Pianist to perform concert at Seretean Center - Daily O'Collegian

Pianist to perform concert at Seretean Center
Daily O'Collegian
This past January, Oppens attended the Grammy awards for which she was nominated for her album of Elliott Carter's complete piano solo music. ...

Strung out - St.Petersburg Times.ru

Strung out
St.Petersburg Times.ru
Their repertoire includes compositions by the quartet members themselves as well as work by John Zorn, Steve Reich, Mark Stewart and Philip Glass. ...

Alim Qasimov, Interview - The Arts Desk

Alim Qasimov, Interview
The Arts Desk
He won the Unesco music award, a prize previously given to global heavyweight talents such as Ravi Shankar, György Ligeti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Yehudi ...

Woog's World / Josh Frank's musical tour - Westport-News

Woog's World / Josh Frank's musical tour
Westport-News
He sees no difference between the music of minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and Radiohead's "Kid A" or "OK Computer. ...

and more »

AUBERT LEMELAND: Symphony No. 6, “Les Eléments”; Time Landscapes; Mémorial ... - Audiophile Audition

AUBERT LEMELAND: Symphony No. 6, “Les Eléments”; Time Landscapes; Mémorial ...
Audiophile Audition
... or more properly noise, that are occasionally interrupted by the hokey strains of military band music—a Stockhausen-cum-Mahler sort of guy, I guess. ...

Fund-raiser for Special Olympics - Centre View

Fund-raiser for Special Olympics
Centre View
Dawn Sciarrino of Centreville is a friend of Whalen's through Scouting and is also friends with Caballo. "She knew I do benefits for various causes, ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 17, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2010

Critic's Choice - Chicago Classical Review

Critic's Choice
Chicago Classical Review
The program will offer music by Randall Woolf, Steve Reich, Mischa Zupko, Elizabeth Brown, Stefan Freund and Law Wing-Fai. fulcrumpoint.org The curtain goes ...

and more »

Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne - Musical Criticism

Musical Criticism

Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne
Musical Criticism
The music of Yvonne is as versatile in style as Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, in fact recalling it more than once, particularly in its Pomo regard for irony, ...

Reich: Double Sextet; 2 x 5 - The Guardian

Reich: Double Sextet; 2 x 5
The Guardian
Nonesuch has been documenting Steve Reich's career for more than 20 years now, generally with the soloists and ensembles for whom each of the works was ...

Bennett: Songs Before Sleep; Dream-Songs, etc - The Guardian

University at Buffalo Reporter

Bennett: Songs Before Sleep; Dream-Songs, etc
The Guardian
Until the end of the 60s he was a card-carrying serialist who had studied with Boulez in Paris, as well as being a film composer and an outstanding jazz ...

Let It Stew

By Alexandra Gardner
On several occasions I have been gobsmacked by late-arriving inspirations that have rather drastically changed the form or some other aspect of a composition, definitely for the better. The ideas seem so obvious—when they finally show up!

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
The transfixing Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino's chamber work “Le Voci Sottovetro” will center a program by Red Light New Music that also offers news ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Ultima(te) Contemporary Music Festival: Sensory Overload

I really wanted to attend as much of the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival as humanly possible. I picked up an all-access pass (which can be purchased at any local 7-Eleven!) which gets me into eleven non-stop days of music.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Borrowed or Purloined?

By Dan Visconti
Good composers borrow. Great composers steal.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Milko Kelemen: FIve works (Philips LP 1969)

In the near future, after a shortage of petroleum for computer chips, the digital revolution is reversed – internet access is once again for military and industrial strategists only – access to CDs and digital music players is an unthinkable luxury – catastrophic climate change leads to the the Paul Sacher Stiftung being invaded by hungry rats – the scores and sketches which remain uneaten are abandoned to fire and flood. In this dark future, an intrepid musicologist with time on his hand, an old turntable and a copy of this 1969 Philips LP might begin to reconstruct the forgotten styles and performers of post-World War II European classical music.

All five works are from the same pen – Milko Kelemen (b. 1924), a Croatian-born composer who had some international success during the late 1960s. Until now, all I knew of Kelemen was his somewhat anodyne 'Etudes contrapuntiques'. Originality is somewhat overrated; now that we are well into the 21st century there is much enjoyable research to be done on the composers who worked in the shadows of the Big Names. Milko Kelemen's music is well-crafted and constantly stimulating. His self-deprecating program notes provide an excellent precis of his modest intentions. An exclusive diet of Approved Masterpieces ('Eroica' – 'Gruppen' – 'Pli selon pli') is a distortion of musical history. It's like listening only to the Beatles and the Stones while ignoring the Pretty Things, Love and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band.

Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky are impressive in the highly-caffeineted 'Composé' for two pianos and orchestra (the bonkers double piano concerto Xenakis never wrote) – Palm and Gawriloff are eloquent soloists in 'Changeant', a kissing cousin to the more lyrical works of Nono and BA Zimmermann come to mind. 'Floréal' and 'Surprise' could be taken a Ligeti or Penderecki' greatest hit in a blindfold test. The only piece I find disappointing is a garden-variety but mercifully-concise work for acapella 'extended voices' (Helmut Rilling directs the chattering and hissing.) Mention should also be made of the presence of the phenomenal German radio orchestras whose commissions and tireless rehearsal schedules made so many gigantic post-war orchestral pieces possible (and not just for German composers): the SWF, NDR and WDR orchestras are all here, led by Ernest Bour, Christoph von Dohnányi and the composer himself.

In addition to my transfer of this LP, I have thrown in a quick needledrop of the 'Etudes Contrapuntiques', which should reappear soon as part of Wergo's ongoing first CD issue of Earle Brown's Contemporary Sounds Series – the Time/Mainstream LPs that remain primary documents of later 20th-century classical music. Squirrel has recently transferred an excellent Vanguard LP by Antonio Janigro and his Solisti de Zagreb for Vanguard which includes a folkloric piece for strings by Kelemen (as well as magnificent recordings of Webern's Op 5 and Hindemith's 'Trauermusik'.)

The larger photo above is of the artist and prolific limited-edition LP creator Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998). He does not appear on the Milko Kelemen record

Milko Kelemen – Five works Philips LP 6500 314 – FLAC with scans

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Happy Birthday Mr. Cage - A John Cage Birthday Concert - Austinist

Happy Birthday Mr. Cage - A John Cage Birthday Concert
Austinist
Ever anarchistic, Cage was as dogmatic and rigorous about removing the ego as other composers (like Karlheinz Stockhausen) were at emphasizing it. ...

Borealis to open Slee/Beethoven cycle - University at Buffalo Reporter

Borealis to open Slee/Beethoven cycle
University at Buffalo Reporter
The Borealis String Quartet will open the 2010-11 Slee/Beethoven String Quartet Cycle, the Department of Music's annual presentation of the ...

Worth The Wait - New York Press

New York Press

Worth The Wait
New York Press
He directed and choreographed Xenakis' Oresteia to open the season two years ago, and seems unfazed by the considerable challenge of choreographing a ...

Miscellany in the shadow of Bea

Possible Futures, an Atlanta foundation, has given $30,000 to ArtsCriticATL, the estimable online arts site that has filled the void created by the decimation of arts coverage at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.... A bit of controversy has flared up around Project...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

La divina

Maria Callas died on Sept. 16, 1977. What happens at 3:30 is, for me, one of the great moments in recorded music.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

New article at NewMusicBox.org

Yesterday, the good folks at NewMusicBox (the web magazine of the American Music Center) published a rather massive article of mine called “Composing a Life, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar.” It’s my plea to composers and the new music community (which is the world I come from) to get more actively involved in the conversations that affect the lives and careers of all artists. Along the way, I go into greater depth on the Pro-Am Revolution, turn a critical eye toward graduate music education, and consider the diversity problem in classical music’s shrinking audiences, sprinkling statistical nuggets and research findings throughout.

Here’s an excerpt:

What changed me the most [at business school] was the exposure to an endless panoply of other areas of human life beyond contemporary classical music. Sure, I learned about assets and liabilities and how to read a cash flow statement, but I also learned about the auction for 3G wireless ranges, competition between Target and Wal-Mart, why Turkey is an emerging power player in the Middle East, and how colleges and foundations manage their endowments. [...]

In the course of this sudden immersion into what the rest of the world thinks about and does on a daily basis, I came to realize that my former existence had been focused like a laser on about 0.00001% of everything that matters. It was like the veil had been lifted on my life: the choices I faced when I voted in an election or needed to buy produce or searched for an apartment to rent or, yes, chose a graduate school had all been determined by somebody, or more often a collection of somebodies acting in somewhat predictable ways. It became clear to me that I was never going to have control over my own destiny unless I had the capacity to see and understand the external forces that were influencing my circumstances. And if that’s true for me, it’s true for you, too. So here are a couple of vignettes from my own journey into the belly of the capitalist beast, which I offer in the hopes of connecting my experiences (and perhaps some of yours) to the bigger picture. After all, we are just variations on a theme.

Read the rest over at NewMusicBox.

Share/Save This Article

Originally posted by Ian David Moss from Createquity., ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Inside the Lennon/McCartney Connection, Part 2 - Slate Magazine

Inside the Lennon/McCartney Connection, Part 2
Slate Magazine
While John used his to record rough demos, Paul, immersed in the experimental work of composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, jiggered the ...

and more »

New Yorker Festival update

Yo-Yo Ma is sold out; some tickets for my bass-lines talk remain.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

Music to woo musicians - San Jose Mercury News

Music to woo musicians
San Jose Mercury News
"We perform far more contemporary and 20th century music than any other community orchestra, including Ives' Fourth Symphony, Lutoslawski's Third and Fourth ...

'Sounds of South' hit Hayti - California Chronicle

'Sounds of South' hit Hayti
California Chronicle
16--DURHAM -- This weekend, audiences will hear music from "Sounds of the South," a collection that folklorist Alan Lomax recorded during a tour of the ...

and more »

Home-Grown - UWEC Spectator

Home-Grown
UWEC Spectator
"All We Grow" takes pieces in Carey's classical training, such as minimalist composer Steve Reich, and Carey's more modern tastes and combines them into ...

and more »

Wigmore Hall: on top of the world - Telegraph.co.uk

Wigmore Hall: on top of the world
Telegraph.co.uk
Gilhooly is even thinking about a day devoted to Xenakis, the most abrasive of the post-war modernist composers. None of this answers the central question ...

Life is a Color Wire [i]

[september 15, 2010 | #388]

Jan-Pieter (or Jean-Pierre) Minckeleers (or Minckelers, or Minkelers), born in Maastricht in the Netherlands and baptized there on december 2nd, 1748, was (one of) the discoverer(s) of gas production by carbonization. The scientist and inventor, who in 1771 became a professor of natural philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, originally applied this technique to - successfully - produce a lighter-than-air gas suitable for use in balloons. But Minckeleers also found that the gas thus produced was highly inflammable (he himself called it 'combustible air') and could be used for lighting purposes: he used it to illuminate his workshop at the Leuven University. He thus became one of the discoverers of the principle of gas lighting.

In 1789 Minckeleers moved back to Maastricht, where he practiced as a chemist. He later became a teacher at the (French) Ecole centrale and Ecole secondaire and, as a member of the local council (1801-1815), also became active politically.
installeren Thus Minckeleers spent a substantial part of his life in Maastricht and also died in his native town, in 1824. This accounts for the fact that he is still revered there as a scientist and inventor and was honored by becoming the subject of what still is, arguably, Maastricht's most impressive, but definitely most visible statue: Jean-Pierre can be seen reaching up to a height of more than six meters above the surface of the marketplace on a monumental pedestal at the head of the Boschstraat, holding a torch with eternal burning flames that are also making an eternally restless rustling sound.
The bronze Minckeleers statue was designed by the Dutch sculptor Bart van Hove and unveiled on july 10th 1904. It originally was meant to be placed right in front of the town hall on the Markt, but eventually was set up more to the north, on the Boschstraat side of the market.

Here is a picture of the statue shot earlier this summer when, with the assistance of Intro In Situ's Paul Caron, I set out to capture the sound of the burning torch.

On the opposite side of the market and town hall, about 90 meters to the south of Minckeleers, stands a second, but very different, statue. Made in stone and about half the size of its majestic bronze opponent, it is called 't Mooswief, which is Maastricht dialect for 'greengrocerwoman'. Whereas pigeons, doves and gulls seem to mostly avoid coming anywhere near Minckeleers' head (probably because of the heat and agitation of the torch's flames), birds can be found contemplatively resting on top of the Mooswief at all time during the day. The statue's pedestal is set in a pentagonal basin, filled with water that, via a system of tubes, continuously is being pumped up into the pedestal and then spit out again into the five corners of the basin through five metal fish-heads.

Behind the Mooswief's back, just across the street, Friture Reitz (since 1908) sells the best fries in town. At business hours many of Reitz' costumers can be found emptying oversized pointy paper fry bags seated on the brim of the basin, like in the picture that I made earlier this summer while recording also this statue's sounds.

The statue of the anonymous greengrocerwoman represents the many women that formerly at cockcrow came from the surrounding rural communities to the city market, where they sold their products to the townspeople and bought colonial wares (coffee, tea, tobacco...) for their own use in return. The word - Mooswief - had (and still has) a derogative ring, being typical 'Maastricht slang' introduced by city dwellers who considered themselves to be far superior to the so much simpler souls that were living on the countryside. But of course these 'trading rural women' epitomized the fact that the marketplace was the city's center of trade, and in the early 1950s it was decided to sidestep the (playful or not) ridicule and for once and for all honor these greengrocerwomen by dedicating them a monument.

The Mooswief statue was made by Maastricht's 'municipal sculptor', Charles Vos, and unveiled on february 27th 1954, mere days after the sculptor's demise (on february 19th).

Whereas the seigneurial Minckeleers statue half a century earlier had been unveiled by Gustave Louis Marie Hubert Ruijs de Beerenbrouck, who was at the time the Queen's Commissioner (Gouverneur) for the Province of Limburg, the otherness of the Mooswief's statue's status (that of a symbol for and of the 'common people') is nicely illustrated by the fact that it was unveiled by the Prince of the 1954 Maastricht Carnival, who symbolically reigns the city for the three day duration of this major and age old popular feast (that in Maastricht is celebrated in- and outdoors on a particularly large scale).

As of its unveiling by the 1954 Carnival Prince the Mooswief became a patron of the Maastricht Carnival: a gigantic papier-mâché Mooswief doll was made, that at the beginning of each Carnival is ceremonially raised on a flagpole to be lowered and put away again three days later when the festivities officially end. And every year still the Maastricht Carnival Prince will mount the Charles Vos statue, embrace it and decorate it with a garland made out of vegetables, as shown in the two pictures below (these are stills from a uTube clip of this ceremony as it was performed during the 2009 carnival in Maastricht).

[ - to be continued - ]

tags: Maastricht, Mooswief, Minckeleers

Originally from HarSMedia (Feed and Podcast), ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

Phoenix, soaring high on the success of their latest CD, wrap up their world ... - Ventura County Star

Phoenix, soaring high on the success of their latest CD, wrap up their world ...
Ventura County Star
Steve Reich might be the one, because I feel he has secrets I want to learn. His music has a lot of mysteries that I feel would be very interesting for us. ...

and more »

Speaking of Music: Rewind - The Bay Citizen

Speaking of Music: Rewind
The Bay Citizen
... Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day Speaking of Music: Rewind–Najma Ahktar and Steve Reich; Exploratorium Podcast Series. ...

'I tell you that's IRMA herself'

Tom Phillips is best known for his 'half-a-life's work' 'A Humument', described as 'a treated Victorian novel.' He has been painting and drawing on the pages of W.H. Mallock's 1892 novel 'A Human Document' since 1965, an activity resulting in texts, paintings and the book itself (now in its fourth edition). The results are hard to describe, although once seen are hard to forget. Phillips also mined 'A Humument' for the libretto and score of his opera 'IRMA' (the characters Grenville and Irma come from 'A Human Document', although according to Phillips, the main character of 'A Humument' has, over time, turned out to be one Bill Toge.)

Here is Phillips' description of his opera:

'The score takes the form of a large sheet with prose directions (each a treated fragment of the novel) for the libretto, the mise en scéne and the sound vocabulary of the piece, together with instructions, performance suggestions and a group of melodies. It is to be thought of as the surviving elements of a lost work whose performance tradition is unknown. Realisation of the opera involves the ordering and piecing together of these fragments into a performable work; as an archeologist might reconstruct a possible coherent pot from shattered shards."

The two recordings of 'IRMA' posted here represent two possible outcomes and occasioned a minor dispute between the parties involved in their making. Gavin Bryars' 1977 recording for Brian Eno's short-lived Obscure Records is described as 'An Opera by Tom Phillips – Music by Gavin Bryars – Libretto by Fred Orton'. The style is very similar to Bryars' well-known works 'The Sinking of the Titanic' and 'Jesus' Blood' (recorded around the same time for the same label.) The roles are sung in pointedly non-operatic style: Grenville by the composer Howard Skempton and Irma by Lucy Skeaping. High-cultural references to Wagner and Brahms coyly concealed in bright clean diatonic minimalism. Originally released on LP, this 'IRMA' makes good use of the 'two-act' A-side/B-side division – an important structural device of the classic pop records of the long-playing era. (Side One is all sea and glockenspiels; Side Two somewhat darker with strings and foam.) This not-so-simple song cycle should have 'crossover' appeal for fans of Brian Eno's 'Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and the Beach Boys. It's a peculiarly moving experience and as a document of early-70s art-pop production alone it is essential.

The 1988 recording on Matchless by the improvising group AMM is entirely different. AMM normally work without written music, although they do have a repertory of graphic and instruction scores (Cardew's 'Treatise', of course, but also works by Cage and Wolff.) The AMM approach to 'IRMA' eschews the intermediary of a 'realisation'. Those familiar with the group's music will recognize it here – free-floating shards of sound that bear little resemblance to improvisation in the jazz sense. The only reference to song form is an unforgettable moment when Keith Rowe's transistor radio picks up several seconds of the Neil Diamond hit 'Song Sung Blue'. Phil Minton and Elise Lorraine sing in quasi-operatic style. Rather than resulting in a setting of Phillips' text, the worlds of 'IRMA' and 'AMM' go their separate ways, trailing behind them a human document that sounds remarkably like a 40s Hollywood melodrama overheard from the television in the other room.

Although Tom Phillips appears on both recordings, he considers the AMM recording to be the 'definitive' version. Here is his oddly-worded statement:

'Although there are some haunting moments in the (Obscure Records) performance, the music seems to have lost some of its character, smoothed out as it is to fit the Bryars aesthetic. The slightly patronizing tone of the sleeve note and the fact that Bryars billed himself ... as 'the composer' did not help me to avoid the impression that this 'IRMA' ... was somehow 'inauthentic'. Since it followed the general rules of the score this recording (for all that I participated in it and despite its featuring musicians as distinguished as Howard Skempton) led me to the regretful conclusion that, among the infinitude of feasible 'IRMA's, versions might occur which were simultaneously correct and unfaithful.'

I recently stumbled upon a CD-R copy of the Obscure 'IRMA' and was smitten like a kitten; I lost no time in tracking down the AMM recording. As I don't have a personal quarrel with any of the participants, I have no plans to give up either disc. The two 'IRMA's could be seen as exemplifying incompatible strains of English experimental music (the ultimately conservative minimalism formulated in Michael Nyman's book 'Experimental Music' / the formal and political radicalism of Cardew, the Scratch Orchestra and non-idiomatic improvisation.) Looking back from the year 2010, I'm not sure that the differences amount to all that much.

I have posted the Obscure CD in FLAC but am sharing the AMM CD as a 320 MP3 – while the latter disc is hard to find at the moment, it is sure to be available again from Eddie Prevost's artist-run Matchless label. Matchless CDs are available in the United States from Erstwhile (first choice) and Forced Exposure (second.)

IRMA by Tom Phillips – Obscure Records CD-R – FLAC with scans.

IRMA by Tom Phillips – Matchless CD – MP3 320 with scans.

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:13 AM | Comments (0)

Music of East Asia: Chinese, Korean, Japanese

Sounds of the World - Music of East Asia: Chinese, Korean, Japanese set of 3 cassettes released in 1986About Sounds of the WorldPublications in the Sounds of the World series consist of two elements: high-quality stereo cassettes containing narration, interviews, and music examples; and an accompanying illustrated teacher's guide with background information and suggestions for using these

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

Casino Vs. Japan - Hush Hush

Originally from deerhunter / atlas sound / lotus plaza, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

End of the Day

Soon I must see to program notes for the Viola Sonata, Opus 102.

Our parakeets (Trisha & Grusha) respond very interestingly, one might even say flirtatiously, to the high tweety notes Jeff Beck plays at the end of “Angel (Footsteps)” on the Live at Ronny Scott’s album.

This was the summer of rediscovering where Shostakovich: A Life has been shelved all this time.

You sometimes see “Opus 77” appended to the First Violin Concerto, sometimes “Opus 99.” Happily, Laurel Fay clarifies:

The Violin Concerto was initially assigned opus no. 99, corresponding chronologically to its date of first performance. It was subsequently reassigned opus no. 77, reflecting the actual date of composition. Opus 99 was assigned to the film music for The First Echelon.

Thanks to the as-yet-mysterious person in Italy who has ordered the string orchestra version of the Canticle of St Nicholas ! I confess to some curiosity as to when a performance may possibly ensue . . . .

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 16, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2010

A French Program With Pianist Scott Carrell Is Sept. 25 - The Chattanoogan

A French Program With Pianist Scott Carrell Is Sept. 25
The Chattanoogan
The French Piano Institute awarded him a prize for the best performance of a work by Henri Dutilleux at the 1996 FPI Festival in Paris, France. ...

Composing a Life, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar

Knowledge is power, and power is not something that composers have historically enjoyed. If you want to be in control of your circumstances instead of letting your circumstances control you, it might well be time for a different kind of education.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Perfect Timing

By Colin Holter
Give some thought to your time management strategies: They may just save your hide.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Autolux @ Belly Up and more - San Diego CityBEAT

San Diego CityBEAT

Autolux @ Belly Up and more
San Diego CityBEAT
The Monome is a step sequencer with a grid of buttons that can be used in conjunction with computer software to trigger music samples, stream video and more ...

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion Tour - October 16 at UB Center for the Arts - PitchEngine (press release)

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion Tour - October 16 at UB Center for the Arts
PitchEngine (press release)
The concert is sponsored in part by Monaco's Violin Shop & Music Center and Creekside Dentistry. Following a wildly enthusiastic reception to shows around ...

The List: Every event worth listing Sept. 16-22 - Creative Loafing Sarasota (blog)

The List: Every event worth listing Sept. 16-22
Creative Loafing Sarasota (blog)
Percussionist Michael McCurdy will join Lee for other original compositions and Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint. Lecture/demonstration 3:30 pm Sept. ...

Tocha

Sound Clip: Tocha by Luis Antero

Tocha beach in center Portugal with the sounds of sea and kids playing.

Fake Art Gallery

Sound Clip: My Fake Art Gallery by Paulo R. C. Barros

This is an imaginary art gallery on Facebook made of sounds and screen shots from a video art work.

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Sibelius, Jean Sibelius

Sibelius in 1939. White cat not pictured. The Guardian's Tom Service has noticed that the opening bars of Sibelius's 1904 piece Cassazione bear a curious resemblance to the original James Bond theme, as composed by Monty Norman. For the benefit...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Prophase Music Announces Showcase Lineup For Philly F/M Fest - Plug In music

Plug In music

Prophase Music Announces Showcase Lineup For Philly F/M Fest
Plug In music
Prophase Music has secured their showcase line-up for the Philly F/M Fest. The show will take place on the night of September 23 at the M Room (15 W Girard ...

A Taste of Spaine in Maine

Dr Paul Cienniwa playing the de Falla Harpsichord Concerto this past August, at the VentiCordi Festival in Kennebunk, Maine:

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

Venerable composer still challenging younger musicians - Toronto Star

Venerable composer still challenging younger musicians
Toronto Star
He uses the examples of avant-garde composing greats such as Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). ...

Hong Kong New Music Ensemble plays with fruits and vegetables - CNNGo.com

Hong Kong New Music Ensemble plays with fruits and vegetables
CNNGo.com
... music was improvised by ripping, chewing, chopping, and shaking the veggies, apart from "Clapping Music" by American minimalist composer Steve Reich, ...

Franck Vigroux’s Broken Circles Live

Franck Vigroux & Ars Nova Instrumental
Broken Circles Live
D’Autre Cordes CD

French composer and electronic musician Franck Vigroux has done a number of projects that straddle the boundaries between avant-pop and experimental concert music. His latest recording, Broken Circles Live enlists the help of the chamber ensemble Ars Nova Instrumental. It also features vocalist Geraldine Keller, keyboardist Matthew Bourne, and electric guitarist Marc Ducret. Vigroux contributes live electronics.

Broken Circles is a five-movement suite of pieces that feature moments of free improvisation and electronics interwoven into a composed score. Keller, in particular, is a standout. Her part is written like Pierrot Lunaire plus Circles on a psychedelic, steroid-tinged cocktail. Filled with swoops, shrieks, and sprechstimme, it is a daunting part for any soprano to assay. Keller makes a formidable and committed interpreter. Ars Nova and the instrumental guests weave a supportive accompaniment, creating a sound world that dips into both second modernist constructions and free-wheeling avant jazz excursions. Often, they match Keller’s intensity: one is particularly drawn to the dissonant crunches and soaring interplay of the suite’s final movement.

Thus, Broken Circles serves as an excellent starter kit for Vigroux’s music, as well as a bracing excursion into post-millennial polystylism.

Originally posted by Christian Carey from CD Reviews, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 15, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2010

Composer Scott Wheeler Among 2010 Classical Recording Foundation Award Winners

Composer Scott Wheeler is among the just-announced winners of the 2010 Classical Recording Foundation Awards. A total of four prizes will be presented at the foundations ninth annual awards ceremony and benefit on October 4, 2010, at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Sounds Heard: Kathleen Supové—The Exploding Piano

Kathleen Supové's release on Major Who Media, The Exploding Piano, is aptly titled in that each work includes elements, both electronic and acoustic, that make the piano larger than life.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

two recent works by steve reich

Steve Reich: Double Sextet/2×5

eighth blackbird/Bang on a Can

Nonesuch Records

Last evening, the eagerly awaited release of SR’s newest album became available on MP3 and I downloaded it. I’m going to begin with a disclaimer: I already know both works very well, and have heard at least three performances of Double Sextet through the wonders of the Interwebs, at least one of which involved 12 live musicians (rather than a sextet performing against prerecorded tape of itself, which is how both works on this album were recorded). So part of my interest in downloading the new album was to see if there were any differences, and if the overall recording quality was better. To cut to the chase, yes, these performances are somewhat different from what I’ve previously heard and come to know well. More on that in a bit.

The big attraction on this album, presumably, is Double Sextet. This is the piece that won SR a long-overdue Pulitzer, and even if it isn’t as strong or as notable as some earlier works like Drumming or Music for 18 Musicians, Double Sextet is still a very notable work. I’d gradually greeted each new Reich release over the years with a greater lack of enthusiasm. His works seemed all to be variations on 1-2 pieces written many years ago, most notably Sextet (which beget Nagoya Marimbas, You Are (Variations), and a few others. But Reich started to get back to his idea of playing multiples of the same instrument against one another using prerecorded tapes, which goes all the way back to his early phase works. If you add some more edgy rhythms and variants of the “usual Reichian harmonies,” you end up with recent works like Mallet Quartet, Dance Patterns and the two works on this album. In other words, Reich’s more recent works are quite worth listening to, and still work after repeated listenings. The last minutes of Double Sextet are amazing, at least in my opinion, and get developed a bit more in 2×5.

A lot (too much, probably) has been made of how Reich has turned to rock instrumentation for 2×5. Personally, I think this is ludicrous. Reich has composed for electric guitar in the past, and the music of 2×5 transcends any perceived gimmickry. In other words, this isn’t a crossover album or pandering to a rock crowd. 2×5 is a really good piece. There’s nothing particularly unexpected in the work, if you’ve heard Double Sextet, but it builds upon it. I think it’s a very strong piece, one I like very much.

As to the performances, I’m biased, but I think the three performances (all of which were by eighth blackbird, as well as one with eighth blackbird together with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble) I’ve heard previously seem more animated, enthusiastic and exciting than the studio recording of Double Sextet. I suspect part of this comes from the differences between performing live and melding things together in a studio; live recordings may have more energy. So while I like this recording (and the recording of 2×5 is also good, but less animated than the concert performance I’ve heard), I actually prefer the streams of live performances even if the audio quality is a bit better on the Nonesuch release.

The liner notes are okay, and include an interesting interview with SR.

So if you’re a Reich fan, buy this album (download it-it’s better for the environment). If you’re not a Reich fan, download it anyway since I think it’s better than much of Reich’s recent work, and goes in a bit of a different direction (this isn’t your father’s Steve Reich album).

Originally posted by David Toub from CD Reviews, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

First Loves: Flutist Tim Munro's Rebellious Rock 'N' Roll - OPB News

First Loves: Flutist Tim Munro's Rebellious Rock 'N' Roll
OPB News
This diverse, experimental world of contemporary classical music -- from the teeming webs of Gyorgy Ligeti and the fist-pumping anger of Brian Ferneyhough, ...

and more »

The Morning After

By Frank J. Oteri
What qualities in a performance make it seem faster or slower than its actual duration?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Making a Scene

By David Smooke
Is Baltimore ready for a new music naissance?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Look At This Music

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
The role of great album artwork in enticing a listener into a great recording has changed.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

One of the most striking things Morton Feldman said when I worked with him briefly in 1975 was, "In the '60s, my students were all using a tempo marking of quarter-note = 60. Now my students are all using 72." That was a revelation to me: that even something as neutral as a tempo marking might be a cliché, a learned behavior, an unconscious imitation, a hint of groupthink. Ever since then, for 35 years, every time I've put down a tempo marking, I've thought, is this really the tempo I want? Did I see another piece with this tempo lately? Am I using 104 because it's on the metronome, when I really want 103? Feldman taught me to question whether I was using the most quotidian devices out of reflex, or whether I was really conceiving the piece as a unique whole.

Now, I could have reacted differently. I could have attacked Feldman: "How many of your students are using 72?! I know lots of young composers who are writing at tempos other than 72! Which ones are you talking about? And what's wrong with 72?" But I didn't. Instead I learned a whole life attitude from Feldman's subtle and quick ability to detect clichés and imitative, inauthentic behavior.

It was in this same spirit that I recently mentioned that I hear a lot of young composers using devices inherited from John Adams - I might particularly mention the affectation of hammering repeated notes. Did I say that all young composers sound like John Adams now? Of course not - go back and read it again if you think I did, and if you can't see the difference, you're not literate. Since I benefitted so much from Feldman pointing out to me clichés to avoid, I've always thought younger composers might appreciate taking advantage of similar perceptions. Of course there's nothing wrong with putting hammering repeated notes in your music, but so many people are doing it right at the moment that a composer might want to stop and think, Do I really need these to fully express the idea of my piece, or am I unconsciously picking up something I heard that was really effective in someone else's piece?

For this altruistic, generously intended, and avuncular bit of advice (which I further softened with a self-effacing anecdote about my own borrowings), some composers are attacking me in the same way I mention that I could have attacked Feldman in the second paragraph above - not because I set out to disparage anyone, but because, since my opinions are rather visible, I am a convenient hook for other composers' projections of their own negativity.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

These New Puritans Present An Interactive Guide To Hidden Life - Glasswerk.co.uk

These New Puritans Present An Interactive Guide To Hidden Life
Glasswerk.co.uk
Recently described by Guardian online “ this trio make music for the early hours after the devastating night before – and their dark, drained sound could be ...

Brandt Brauer Frick prep You Make Me Real - Resident Advisor

Brandt Brauer Frick prep You Make Me Real
Resident Advisor
Made up of Daniel Brandt, Jan Brauer and Paul Frick, the classical and jazz-influenced trio play live dance music with an avant-garde twist. ...

Bang on a Can: A 10-hour trip around the world - Philadelphia Inquirer

Bang on a Can: A 10-hour trip around the world
Philadelphia Inquirer
The day began, smartly, with Steve Reich's basic minimalist manifesto Drumming Part I - a great Square One for all that came later - followed by the ...

Holloway, Dove, and the Exploding Piano - Sequenza21 (blog)

Sequenza21 (blog)

Holloway, Dove, and the Exploding Piano
Sequenza21 (blog)
I guess Elliott Carter has raised the average age of composers. I turn 50 in November, and I just started writing pieces again. Wow, I'ma young composer! ...

The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival; Thursday, September 9; The ... - C-Ville Weekly

The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival; Thursday, September 9; The ...
C-Ville Weekly
Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint for clarinet and tape took the audience deep into American minimalist music. New York Counterpoint is similar to Reich's ...

Holloway, Dove, and the Exploding Piano

Two more pieces of recommended listening from the BBC Proms concerts: Robin Holloway’s Reliquary transforms Schumann’s, er, problematic Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart into a genuinely beautiful, affecting work. It’s reminiscent of reconstructions and expansions of 19th century music by Berio and Schnittke, and you can listen to it here until Thursday.

Jonathan Dove’s A Song of Joys for chorus and orchestra is a brief and buoyant setting of Walt Whitman. How appropos to see Galen’s post on the influence of John Adams, because that’s who I would have guessed composed this work if I heard it without knowing the composer. However, Dove isn’t an upcoming student composer–he’s 51 years old, and was influenced by Adams ahead of the curve of plenty of other composers his age. The BBC disagrees with me about Dove’s youth, however, where the announce matter of factly describes him as a “young” composer. I guess Elliott Carter has raised the average age of composers. I turn 50 in November, and I just started writing pieces again. Wow, I’m a young composer!

You can listen to Dove’s A Song of Joys here (give it a try, it’s under 5 minutes).

Finally, Kathy Supove’s The Exploding Piano concert at Le Poisson Rouge from August is available in full at WQXR. Just click here to listen to lots of piano and electronics and Kathy making what sounds to me like chipmunk noises (intentionally per composer Michael Gatonska’s request). While the streaming can’t convey Kathy’s brilliant red hair or whatever fantastic outfit she wore that evening, the whole concert is a nice preview of her new CD, The Exploding Piano. A neat feature about this page is that unlike other streaming broadcasts, you can isolate individual works on the program. My favorite was Missy Mazzoli’s Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos. I don’t hear any Adams at all in her trippy work, so there’s at least one young star on the rise owing nothing to Big John.

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Castletown House, Co Kildare - Irish Times

Castletown House, Co Kildare
Irish Times
Xenakis had done that in Metastaseis and Pithoprakta years earlier. But Penderecki's title functions as an opening into the music rather than a likely ...

11th Annual Latin Grammy Nominees Announced

The 11th Annual Latin Grammy Award Nominees have been announced, including five composers in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category: Miguel Del Aguila, Sergio Assad, Lalo Schifrin, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, and Tania Leon.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

Mutter and Orkis Record Brahm's 3 Violin Sonatas, 10/12 - Broadway World

Mutter and Orkis Record Brahm's 3 Violin Sonatas, 10/12
Broadway World
Acclaimed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter returns to recording chamber music after two highly successful albums devoted primarily to concertos (Mendelssohn and ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 14, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2010

A long, strange, stirring marathon - Philadelphia Inquirer

A long, strange, stirring marathon
Philadelphia Inquirer
The day began, smartly, with Steve Reich's basic minimalist manifesto Drumming Part I - a great Square One for all that came later - followed by the ...

and more »

Deep Style

The opera season here in Frankfurt has begun again, and I find myself once again chaperoning an eight-year-old supernumerary to rehearsals and performances of Don Carlo. While waiting around, I've heard a lot of Don Carlo, and heard it now with several changes of cast. Verdi is not the turf that experimental composers usually tread, but I've been honestly impressed, and especially by those elements of the music which are simply not to be found in the score. These, mostly of micro-timing, of tempo, rhythm, and rubato, are constantly in flux at the smallest level, and the practice here is one that comes honestly out of a real aural tradition. It helps, here in Frankfurt, that the orchestra and the conductor have a long relationship of playing Verdi together — more than thirty years — but the key here, I think, is the conductor, Carlo Franci (83 years old, if Wikipedia has it right), who has every note of the score in solid memory and it seems that every nuance of timing and pitch between those notes, each nudge of rubato, or grace of portamento, comes from a strange and wonderful place poised between an absolute identification with the performance tradition and an ability to spring at the possibilities of the moment. To work with such confidence and security as well as continued discovery is a sign of a performing tradition at its best, style that is anything but surface, anything but facile.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

A Long Ride in A Complicated Machine: Who We Imitate, and Why

The consistently thought-provoking Kyle Gann has a complaint: “I think young composers might want to think about diversifying the composers they base their styles on beyond John Coolidge Adams.” He gets a lot more promotional CDs than I do from record labels and young composers hoping to lure him out of music-critic retirement to provide that coveted Kyle Gann pull-quote for their bios. (Can I do the heist-movie thing and say they want to get him out of retirement for “one last score”? Too late, I already did.) As I said, I don’t get the same recordings that Kyle gets, but let’s take him at his word and stipulate that an awful lot of the postminimalist composers out there–especially the more successful ones–are writing warmed-over John Adams. I like John Adams as much as the next guy, and I’ve written my share of ersatz Adams, but too many composers hewing too closely to a single model could be cause for concern. When I followed up with Kyle over e-mail, he did say that “a lot of young composers I know don’t sound like Adams at all, but they’re by far the less successful ones,” so what we’re seeing may be more of a skew in economic outcomes than a skew in total underlying populations, but that skew would also be troubling.

I wonder if part of what we’re seeing here is the wages of the stylistic tunnel-vision of the music higher-education system. My college and grad-school music training was in most respects superb, but I got very little exposure to minimalism, and indeed one of the prevailing narratives in academia is that minimalism is a pretty narrow genre. Several months ago a musicologist at a top-tier university actually asked me “Is really enough history there that one could actually make a career of studying minimalism?” (I resisted the urge to ask if there is really enough history to Beethoven that one could make a career out of studying him.)

In most academic music programs these days Reich, Glass, and Adams are de rigeur, and you can’t escape In C (not that you would want to). Even in “Music Since 1945″ type classes you’re lucky to go much beyond that territory. La Monte Young might make an appearance (I suspect the paucity of in-print recordings and the almost total absence of publicly available scores is part of the problem there). David Lang or Michael Gordon probably show up more now than they did 10 years ago. And Reich, Glass, and Adams rarely get the kind of in-depth treatment that a Stravinsky or and Schoenberg get–mostly you hear Music for 18 Musicians, Einstein on the Beach, and Nixon In China. Maybe also Different Trains, Music in 12 Parts, and Short Ride In A Fast Machine or Shaker Loops. Tenured composition faculty, even when they are receptive to postminimalist students, are unlikely to have much depth in minimalism and postminimalism. That’s not necessarily their fault–today’s composition faculty skews modernist and neo-romantic because they were hired by faculties that skewed even more modernist and neo-romantic. Overt discrimination against minimalism has given way to the subtler bias of disproportion in the aggregate taste of the academy. As a result, today’s postminimalist composers have largely been trained by faculties who were more interested in other things. But why the focus on Adams, given the relative prominence of Glass and Adams in the curriculum? I would argue that because Adams is much closer to the neo-romantic tradition, he gets taken more seriously as a currently relevant composer, and is better liked and better understood by the academic mainstream.

So what’s a young composer to do? It’s tempting to say that composers need to strike out on their own and discover composers they weren’t taught, but that’s easier said that done. For one thing, the distribution infrastructure for minimalist and postminimalist music is very weak compared to that for other styles. That problem is compounded by the fact that the standard narrative in academia implicitly holds that the narrow view of minimalism presented there is actually representative. Reich, Glass, and Adams are held up not as the most famous examples of a broad and varied tradition, but as three of the very few minimalists worthy of mention. In short, young composers don’t end up with the sense that there’s much exploration to be done, at least not during the critical period when they are defining their tastes and personal style.

Having dealt with some of the ways in which academia influences the development of composers, let’s turn our attention to some ways in which selection processes might be effecting outcomes. One possible hypothesis, of course, is that composers model their work after Adams because they see Adams’s commercial success and think that writing in a similar style is a recipe for their own success. I find it a bit hard to believe that many of the kinds of composers who would choose a style on the basis of economic strategizing would end up in classical music to begin with, so let’s look at some other factors.

I suspect that most classical composers major or try to major in music in college, and the way they get treated by the faculty has a powerful influence on the opportunities they receive in college, their likelihood of continuing on to graduate school, and even their likelihood of remaining in classical music or committed to composing at all. The composers who get the most faculty support and encouragement will frequently be the ones who are writing in styles that the faculty appreciates, understands, and respects. If you’re an undergraduate composer you’re best off as a modernist, and at many institutions can do well as a neo-romantic as long as you build in enough dissonance to stay respectable. A postminimalist is better off staying in the respectable territory that John Adams has staked out at the borders of neo-romanticism. The filtering effects at the undergraduate level are nothing to the effects at the graduate level. Undergrads can get by on the appearance of raw talent, but by the time you’re applying to grad schools the competition is much fiercer, and you’re expected to have settled into a respectable contemporary style. Grad schools often get fifty or a hundred applicants for two or three places. They are, understandably, going to select the composers whose music interests them the most and who have the strongest recommendations–in both cases the John Adams imitators are going to fare better than other postminimalists because of who is writing the recommendations and making the admissions decisions.

Now feed that population into the commissioning, awards, and recording systems. Commissioning ensembles have an economic need to play it safe, and that’s especially true for orchestras. Music modeled after John Adams is especially safe, especially in the orchestra ecosystem. An orchestra commission is a particularly valuable calling card for a composer–an important milestone marking commercial “success.” When I followed up with Kyle he clarified that he is not referring only to orchestral music in his complaint, but I suspect that a composer’s ability to succeed in the orchestral world is an advantage in cultivating the profile necessary for attracting other commissions and recording deals. Awards committees are generally made up of the same types of people who I described in the section on the predilections of academics, and those awards are also significant career advantages. By the time record companies are being presented with opportunities for projects, the field of postminimalists has been substantially thinned, and the commercial viability of the remaining population has been strongly skewed toward music that sounds like John Adams. There are probably any number of other factors that I’m overlooking, but even if what I describe here is only partly or weakly true it could still account for the outcomes Kyle describes.

To be perfectly clear, the last thing I mean to be suggesting here is a conspiracy, bad faith, malicious intent, or corruption. This is basically a systemic issue–a constellation of small factors that multiply against each other to create a larger effect. The result reminds me of a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “The Matthew Effect,” after the Biblical passage Matthew 13:12 “For whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whoever has not, from him shall be taken away even that he has.” Structural inequalities give some people advantages, and those advantages set them up for more and more advantages later on.

One final thought: Some of you won’t buy this argument, for a variety of reasons. Maybe you question the premise. I trust Kyle’s judgment here, but maybe you don’t, and that’s fair. Or maybe you question some of the particulars of my analysis, which is also fair. I would love to see some empirical analysis on a number of my claims, and some of them might be wrong. The really important thing here is the structure of the argument. I care much more promoting this way of thinking about outcomes–about the idea that particular effects are the result of complex systemic interactions–than about persuading people about this specific outcome. We will have much better luck changing the things that we don’t like about the industry if we approach it from a systems-oriented perspective instead of looking for single causes with silver-bullet solutions.

Originally posted by Galen H. Brown from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Homophobia Case Against Ives Closed

In response to my writing on the subject, my attention has been drawn to an article, "The Cowell-Ives Relationship: A New Look at Cowell's Prison Years," by Leta Miller and Rob Collins, in an issue of the excellent journal American Music (Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 473-492) - don't know how I missed it, since I receive the journal. The story has always been that, once Cowell was imprisoned in San Quentin from 1936 to 1940 on a homosexual morals charge, Ives was disgusted to learn about Cowell's homosexuality, and cut off all contact with him. But at the 1997 Cowell Centennial conference in New York, a letter was exhibited, from Ives to Cowell in jail (in Ives's own hand, which was exceptional for the time), expressing his warmest wishes and sympathy. Miller and Collins provide strong evidence to support what some of us suspected at the time: that it was Ives's wife Harmony who was unsympathetic, not Ives. Since Ives's health was so poor that Harmony handled all of his correspondence, coming and going, the story always got filtered through her statements to friends. In fact, however, on May 29, 1937, Cowell received a letter from Ives saying,

I've started to write you a few times or more, but didn't because I didn't know what to write or say or what to think or do - and I don't now - so I'll shut up! At least I can do all I can & I will to help New M[usic] Editions keep going as well as possible and as you would want...
I do hope you can keep well & that things will go well in the future.

In addition, Ives, not being able to satisfactorily communicate through Harmony, sent Cowell other supportive messges through mutual friends. Miller and Collins also quote a statement by Lou Harrison, who was openly gay during the years (1936-1950) he did musical work for Ives:

The problem of whether you were gay or not didn't arise among the people that I was with. Ives was repressed but nonetheless he was a married man. [Yet] there was no problem. In fact that was the point I think that Ives made at the one luncheon I attended [with him]. Harmony was there and he, sitting off from the table, told me that when he was growing up, if you had anything to do with musicians it meant you were a sissy. Then he looked thoughtful and a little worried and said, "But all that seems to have changed now."

I'm glad to know that Ives's letter and messages are finally in the scholarly literature (thanks to Joe Barron for alerting me), and I hope we can now consider the story that Ives abandoned Cowell out of homophobia thoroughly debunked.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

ICE opens season in audacious style - Chicago Classical Review

ICE opens season in audacious style
Chicago Classical Review
As Schoenberg was a decisive influence on Pierre Boulez, so too Boulez's music has had an impact on two generations of younger composers. ...

The original noise

The BBC iPlayer — which every summer makes me fall that much further behind in my CD listening — is offering a voluptuously apocalyptic Prom by the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle. The program consists of the Act I Prelude...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Around the horn: Ground Zero Mosque edition

I will be attending and blogging the NEA’s “Creative Placemaking” panel discussion this Tuesday from 3-4:15pm Eastern time. The panel features Richard Florida, Tim Jones, Rick Lowe, and Ann Markusen, and will be moderated by CEOs for Cities’s Carol Coletta. There will also be a webcast. I’m looking forward to finally meeting Florida and Coletta in person, as I’ve been a fan of their blogs for quite some time.

The third annual Barry’s Blog listing of the top 25 most influential arts leaders came out recently, and this time to my surprise I’m actually on it. I’m tied for #21 along with two other “emerging leaders” who I respect very much (Marc Vogl and Edward Clapp), kind of in the peanut gallery towards the back where Barry starts grouping people according to his whim. Barry allowed each of the 60 nominators, of which I was one, to put their own hat in the ring if they wished, but since I didn’t, that means at least one other person out there must have thought of me. It’s strange to be mentioned in the same breath with those names, but I was gratified that to see that two “emerged” leaders who are nevertheless in their early 30s, my boss (Adam Huttler) and Future of Music Coalition’s Jean Cook, both made the list at #8 and #11 respectively. Fun fact: when I was getting ready to leave New York three-plus years ago to go to business school, I reached out to the two smartest people I knew in the arts to get their take on what I should look out for as I began my education. Their names? Adam Huttler and Jean Cook. Must have been doing something right back then.
Barry is also putting together a campaign to have the gubernatorial candidates in California answer questions about their support for the arts. Some very smart people are working on this, and you can read more here.
Another arts advocacy campaign to watch: 1% for Culture in New York City. (Yes, that’s 1% of the entire city budget for arts & culture. The current figure is less than a quarter of that.) Here’s Grantmakers in the Arts’s Janet Brown, who knows as much about arts advocacy as just about anyone, with her thoughts on the subject. And look out, world: Robert Lynch has a blog.
Uh oh: in Britain, two-thirds of the public agrees that cutting public arts funding by 25-30% in that country would be a good idea. In case you haven’t been following this story, the Conservative government led by David Cameron is proposing moving to an American-style system of private support for the arts instead of the current hybrid approach used in the UK. It’s worth noting that even an arts system that relies on public funding still costs a pittance. We’ll have more on this story here soon.
Research compilations galore! First up, here’s a summary of current research data from the theater world, courtesy of Tom Loughlin. Next we have Brigid with a round-up of recent psychology and neurobiology experiments involving philanthropy (along with her caveat about them). With the blog’s new page menu structure under development, I’m thinking about putting something similar together one of these days. Special mention in the research compilation category goes to this excellent-looking article from Theatre Bay Area’s Clay Lord on (lack of) diversity in audiences for the stage, into which I am looking forward to digging further. It’s already begun provoking discussion around the office.
Mapping madness! My colleague and friend Ron Ragin at the Hewlett Foundation, himself an emerging leader to watch, guest blogs at the Center for Effective Philanthropy Blog and name-drops the Bay Area Cultural Asset Map along with several other data-driven Hewlett initiatives. Arena Stage gives a preview of the user functions of the New Play Map, currently under development. The University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute (aka Richard Florida’s shop) comes out with a map of the “creative class” in Canada’s largest city. Judith H. Dobrzynski reports on the Foundation Center’s new interactive map of arts grantmakers by state. And check out this boffo analysis of the top 10 ZIP Codes by startup venture capital per resident (via ReadWriteWeb).
Data delight! Today’s selection of studies, charts and graphs includes an explanation of why misunderstanding statistical variance might have cost the Gates Foundation a whole lot of money; a rundown of how musician salaries at top orchestras have fared during the recession; an examination of how personality type affects taste preferences in entertainment; an evidence-based look at what dance moves most impress the ladies (hint: engage the head, neck, and torso, not just your arms and legs); and what a dating website tells us about stuff white (and black, and Asian, etc.) people like. Here are the top arts- and entertainment-related results for each race/ethnicity & gender: white men, Tom Clancy; white women, Nicholas Sparks (unless you count “mascara”); black men, Menace II Society; black women, The Color Purple; Latino men, merengue; Latino women, also merengue (both the top results overall); (East) Asian men, The Rock; (East) Asian women, “love story”; Indian men, Shantaram; Indian women, Bhangra; Middle Eastern men, The Sopranos; Middle Eastern women, The Kite Runner (unless you count “scarves”); Pacific Islander men, The Rock; Pacific Islander women, Alicia Keys. Love the OKCupid blog!
Crowdsourcing continues to enter mainstream thought, to the point where one begins to wonder when we’re all supposed to have time to do our “real” jobs. The Brooklyn Museum is hosting the first-ever visitor-curated Target First Saturday on October 2; website visitors are both nominating and voting for their top choices. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is commissioning composers and programming concerts based in part on Yelp-style reviews and comments. You know this shit has hit the big time when even humanities scholars are trying it out for their precious peer-reviewed journals! Standing firmly behind the expert-curated model, meanwhile, is Apple, which has published guidelines for its iPhone App Store that sternly warn against the online marketplace becoming “amateur hour.”
One positive trend I’ve been seeing recently is a greater willingness among grantmakers to share their thinking and, increasingly, their actual source materials, with the world. Witness, for example, the publication of the McKnight Foundation’s Grantee Perception Report, conducted by the aforementioned Center for Effective Philanthropy. (The results were remarkably similar to the Hewlett Foundation’s, as disclosed by Ron Ragin in another guest post.) Meanwhile, over in the public sector, there was a minor kerfuffle regarding the new federal Social Innovation Fund’s transparency practices that resulted in the SIF releasing the entire set of scores and comments from the application review process. I’ve never seen that level of disclosure from a private funder not named GiveWell.
Speaking of GiveWell, the founders are temporarily working out of Mumbai, India, and Holden Karnofsky is wondering if he wouldn’t be practicing better philanthropy just by walking into poor neighborhoods and randomly giving out cash.
And Ken Berger of Charity Navigator, GiveWell’s longtime nemesis, has co-authored an article exploring what philanthropy can learn from baseball’s statistical revolution.
RIP Community Arts Network. The website will be archived by the Open Folklore Project at Indiana University. Back when the recession first hit, many people predicted we’d see a ton of closures of nonprofits and, more interestingly, mergers. I think it’s fair to say at this point that those predictions have not come true, but two organizations that have merged are the Cape Cod Conservatory of Music and Arts and the Cape Cod Symphony.
The Nathan Cummings Foundation has hired Maurine Knighton as the new Program Director for Arts & Culture.
Social media is the new NYC. That is, if it doesn’t become totally lame first. Or are those mutually exclusive?
Attention USA: we’re going to need to raise taxes. Get used to it.
Oh. My. God. Vice Magazine is doing classical music reviews. “Like if one day you visited Vivaldi’s apartment and discovered some bassoon-shaped nipple hasps or jelly dongs, would you honestly be that surprised?” Indeed. (h/t Life’s a Pitch)

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Originally posted by Ian David Moss from Createquity., ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Classical Music Agenda - DCist.com

DCist.com

Classical Music Agenda
DCist.com
Extraordinary pianist Jenny Lin will join for an all-Ligeti program to include the rarely performed and unforgettable Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes ...

Exploration of music - Sheffield Telegraph

Exploration of music
Sheffield Telegraph
Featuring artworks by eight contemporary European artists, it looks at songs and music as a social phenomenon which can be manipulative, participatory and ...

Experimental Symphony - Urbanite Baltimore

Experimental Symphony
Urbanite Baltimore
LigetiFest, Mobtown Modern's tribute to Hungarian composer and conceptual music innovator Gyorgy Ligeti, will include a rare performance of Poeme ...

Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 2010/11: The Riccardo Muti Era with Yo-Yo Ma. - ChicagoNow (blog)

ChicagoNow (blog)

Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 2010/11: The Riccardo Muti Era with Yo-Yo Ma.
ChicagoNow (blog)
In this respect, the seasoned director will continue the CSO's important relationships with conductors Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez. ...

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: A Few Good Surprises

By Ruby Fulton
Johannes Kreidler's video Product Placements, "Night of the Unexpected" at Paradiso, and canal dragging for bikes.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: The Final Stretch

By Ruby Fulton
The festival is drawing to a close but the music keeps on coming.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: The Winners Announced

By Ruby Fulton
The winners are announced on the final day of Gaudeamus Music Week 2010.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Show 022

Aired 9/1 on WRIU and 9/5 & 6 on WVVY

Ted Hearne ~ selections from Katrina Ballads
   Dennis Hastert - 8.31.05
   Bridge to Gretna
   Anderson Cooper and Mary Landrieu - 9.1.05
   Brownie, You're Doing a Heck of a Job
   Interlude 2
Ronnie Reshef ~ Nine Sketches After Ammons
Felipe Lara ~ Tran(slate)
Scott Wollschleger ~ Blue Inscription
Maestro Subgum and the Whole ~ Lullaby From A Weird Place
Victoire ~ The Diver
Corey Dargel ~ There Is No Cure
Vittorio Ghielmi ~ The Morning Dew (Sunrise and Dance)
Ingram Marshall ~ Rave ~ perf. by Libby Van Cleve
Germ Rework ~ GéNIA
So Percussion and Matmos ~ Cross
Valgier Sigurdsson ~ Beyond The Moss
Stephanie Rearick ~ Sonnet Entitled How To Run The World
Asphalt Orchestra ~ The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
Univers Zero ~ Apesanteur
Tom Waits ~ We're All Mad Here
Arthur Russell ~ Home Away From Home
Scott Ordway ~ Piano Quintet No. 1
Lee Hyla ~ At Suma Beach

Originally from Music For Internets, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

A Far Cry from Boston

After a quick warm-up sweep through Vermont, Florida and Texas, Boston-based string ensemble A Far Cry is getting ready to kick off their fourth home season this Saturday, with a concert that runs the gamut from Purcell (Suite from “The Old Bachelor”) to Mozart (Serenata Notturna in D), from Bartok (Divertimento for String Orchestra) to a world premiere from composer Richard Cornell (New Fantasias), crowned — in my ear at least — by performances of Iannis Xenakis‘ Analogique A et B. The concert will be given three times: September 18 2010 4pm, at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain; September 19 2010 1:30pm at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; and September 24 2010 8pm at the New England Conservatory, also in Boston.

Other contemporary highlights sprinkled through concerts during the season include works by Brett Dean (“Carlo” for Strings, Sampler, and Tape), Arvo Pärt (Cantus), Aaron Jay Kernis (Musica Celestis), Gabriela Lena Frank (Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout) and Osvaldo Golijov (Tenebrae). And don’t despair if you’re not in the Boston area; they’ll also be popping in to NYC, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas, Colorado and more all through the season. Details for all this and more are right there on their website.

Originally posted by Steve Layton from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Sacrum Profanum Festival Brings New Music to Krakow - Krakow Post

Sacrum Profanum Festival Brings New Music to Krakow
Krakow Post
The Pierre Boulez-founded Ensemble Intercontemporain will kick off Sacrum Profanum with a night of works by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, ...

Tom Poster, RSAMD, Glasgow - Herald Scotland

Tom Poster, RSAMD, Glasgow
Herald Scotland
Tom Poster, winner of the 2007 Scottish International Piano Competition, now an increasingly important and versatile figure on the UK music scene, ...

Eroica Ensemble is free, not amateurish - Memphis Commercial Appeal

Eroica Ensemble is free, not amateurish
Memphis Commercial Appeal
It's hard to imagine that the audience for classical music in this region is big enough -- or hungry enough -- to support another ...

Steve Reich - Double Sextet; 2x5 - musicOMH.com

musicOMH.com

Steve Reich - Double Sextet; 2x5
musicOMH.com
The music of Steve Reich proves difficult to judge on the basis of title alone, with this latest release pairing two more functional sounding ...

Critic's Pick: Classical & Dance - Louisville Courier-Journal

Critic's Pick: Classical & Dance
Louisville Courier-Journal
Adopting the broad theme of its recent institutional biopic, “Music Makes a City,” the Louisville Orchestra is linking ...

Paul Badura-Skoda plays 13 early Piano Sonatas of Schubert on RCA

This is the sequel to an earlier post highlighting a pioneering edition of 'complete' Schubert sonatas. As with Noël Lee's Valois recordings, I have included the so-called early sonatas only. Paul Badura-Skoda's set for RCA, made in the early 70s, is another 'missing-in-action' item from that once-great record company's archives. I've had copies of the four volumes for many years, but any serious attempts at listening to them were compromised by the legendarily horrific 'Dynaflex' pressings. I recently found a much better set, made transfers, applied some rudimentary ClickRepair: the results are quite listenable. Be warned however that the quality of the pressings vary dramatically from side to side. (I may be exaggerating – I've put these unadorned transfers on the stereo during dinner time and nobody has run from the room screaming.)

The transfer consists of Volumes 2 and 3 only (volumes 1 and 4 contain the later sonatas.)
* Volume 2: D157, D279/346, D459, D537, D557, D566/506 and D568.
* Volume 3: D517/604, D575, D613/612, D625/505, D664 and D784.

I was immediately captivated by Mr. Badura-Skoda's playing of these pieces. It is different than any other recordings I know and very different from the somewhat plain classical style of his later recordings for Astrée and Arcana on historic pianofortes. Not only is Badura-Skoda a wonderful pianist, he is an expert on the music – he edited the Henle edition of these sonatas (the excerpt above is from the ravishing slow movement of the C-major sonata D279.) The instrument is a mellow Bösendorfer and the piano is beautifully recorded. I am perhaps overly familiar with these pieces and tend to take them for granted, but I am not hyperbolizing when I say that I have listened to these very elegant interpretations dozens of times now and have always heard something new. It really is too bad that these can't be remastered from scratch. Coming soon: more early Schubert (with a special twist) from another stereo 'complete edition' – Gilbert Schuchter (on German RCA LP and Tudor CD.)

Paul Badura-Skoda Schubert Volume 2 (FLAC and scans) SIDES 1-3 SIDES 4-6

Paul Badura-Skoda Schubert Volume 3 (FLAC and scans) SIDES 1-3 SIDES 4-6

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
Finally came Boulez' homage to his publisher, Doctor Kalmus, and then, the work of the evening, the first seven works from Pierrot Lunaire. ...

Goings on About Town: Dance - New Yorker

Goings on About Town: Dance
New Yorker
The first performance of the season comprises four recent works (three by Magloire), set to piano music by Mendelssohn, Haydn, Salvatore Sciarrino (a ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Spahlinger: 'Extension' for violin and piano

'The contrast between the violin and the piano, both stringed instruments, is fundamentally a gestural one – between stroking and striking. Using a great variety of bow strokes, the violin can be made to produce many different types of attack; it can also prolong its sounds and give them a variety of tone colors and inflections, such as swelling or fading or becoming more, or less, intense. On the other hand, the finger of the pianist strikes a key that catapults a felt-covered hammer up to the string more or less suddenly and forcefully, depending on how the key is struck. Once the hammer has started the string vibrating, the player has no further control over the sound – which immediately begins to die away – except that it can cut short this decay by raising the finger from the key, activating a damper. The piano has 88 notes (usually) and can play very loudly and very softly; the violin covers only about the upper 53 notes of the piano's range and can be overwhelmed by the piano even when playing its loudest.'

– Elliott Carter, on the subject of his 'Duo for Violin and Piano'

Earlier this year I realized I had been listening with great intensity to a lot of classical music for violin and piano ... Mozart's late sonatas, Brahms' G-Major sonata, Schoenberg's 'Phantasy' Op 47 ... Schubert, Bartók, Webern and Janacek ... Carter's 'Duo', Holliger's 'Lieder ohne Wörte', 'Dikhtas' by Xenakis, James Dillon's 'Traumwerk' ... a lot of terrific music for a supposedly 'bad combination' that has always been specified with sneaky ambivalence (Mozart and Beethoven didn't write violin sonatas but sonatas for piano, with violin obligato.)

I might go further and claim that the violin/piano repertoire has a certain philosophical quality. Unlike the famed 'discussion between four equals' of the string quartet, the dialogue of the violin and piano is by nature unequal. As in the dialogues of Plato, Diderot and Pavese, the two talk at, past and around one another. Philosophy comes into being from the mismatch of unlike minds – truths being produced by confrontations – and the music we hear is the result of temporary alliances and accommodations between Elliott Carter's 'opposing members of a pair.'

Mathias Spahlinger's 53-minute 'Extension' (1979/80) for violin and piano seems to want to have the last word on its instrumentation. The piece, in one uninterrupted movement, is both an inventory of and commentary on the classical works for piano and violin. The mode is comic; the mood is reflective and apocalyptic: 'endgame', as in Beckett. Spahlinger, born in 1944, is usually mentioned as a follower of Helmut Lachenmann, although he didn't study with him. Perhaps his early apprenticeship as a typesetter should be looked into further.

'Extension' is an extraordinarily beautiful piece that includes some very ugly noises. I've been wondering why this particular piece, one of many, many artworks 'about' the impossibility (at best) or immorality (at least) of high culture since World War II, has such an emotional impact. Why does its presence seem so physical given its explicit intellectual ambitions? Perhaps it is in the length – or rather the way that episodes or events seem to appear during this length, like buildings and groups of actors before a movie camera. Rather than sections or movements, perhaps Spahlinger works with 'shots' – specifically the medium-length 'sequence shot', as in Dreyer and Mizoguchi. In fact, the experience of Matthias Spahlinger's 'Extension' is so much like the experience of a movie that if I continue to describe what happens in it I may have to use the phrase 'spoiler alert.'

Hildegard Kleeb is the pianist and Dimitris Polisoidis plays violin on this limited-edition Hat Hut CD from 1992. The accompanying text, by Peter Niklas Wilson, struck me as very odd at first. I realized that, unlike many words about recent music, his essay is direct and jargon-free. Like 'Extension' itself, which speaks clearly about difficult matters.

Spahlinger: 'Extension' for violin and piano FLAC and scans.

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

Portland Cello Project - A Thousand Words - Portland Cello Project Joan ... - Audiophile Audition

Short, lucrative career now or unknown but longer-lasting career later?

Portland Cello Project - A Thousand Words - Portland Cello Project Joan ...
Audiophile Audition
Some of the tracks conjure up contemporary avant music such as Steve Reich or Philip Glass, while others are rife with hip-hop and Devo-sounding electronic ...

Eric Nathan

Originally from No Extra Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 13, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2010

Terje Rypdal: 'Rolling stone'

In 1974 I was fourteen years old and already wild about music. I had opted in 1972 to sign up for Music (i.e marching band) rather than French or German, and my childhood enthusiasm for the Beatles and all that followed them was transformed by learning to read music. I experimented with the 'classics' and 'jazz', free from the Temple Terrace Public Library, but my grand passion was for what was called 'progressive rock.'

My weekly allowance from my parents was set at

$2.25, which meant that every other Friday I had five bucks for a new record. Of special interest was the 'import' section at Schoolkids records full of treasures from overseas, some of which I'd read about in the English music magazines Melody Maker and New Musical Express, which my mother bought for me at a periodicals store in downtown Tampa every weekend when she picked up the Sunday New York Times. The imports took up two racks at Schoolkids, separate from the regular stock, just next to the live bootlegs with their xeroxed covers. Unlike regular records, the imports were loosely wrapped, not shrink-wrapped – sometimes they weren't wrapped at all! The covers weren't made of cardboard, but of a more delicate, even flimsy stock. Many of the bands and labels were absolutely unknown to me, even from the music press, although I was always particularly fascinated by the 'import versions' of albums by European groups that were available in the United States in different packages and sometimes with different track listings.

As I developed my taste for imports, I had to forgo my biweekly purchases; the much more desirable foreign discs on Virgin, Brain, ECM (and later Rough Trade and Factory) began at $7.50. I don't remember the first import LP I bought, although I think it might have been Robert Wyatt's 'Ruth is Stranger than Richard' which came out (I think) in 1974. The ECM label (not yet distributed in the States) made for dangerous but irresistible purchases. For every 'Colours of Chloé' by Eberhard Weber there were others that, despite the beautiful jackets, left me in an all-too familiar, absolutely devastating depression – I could have bought 'Angel's Egg' by Gong or Gentle Giant's 'In a Glass House'! Some of these disappointments were prime examples of the kind of tastefully arid product that ECM is unfairly identified with. Others were just too 'advanced' for me – although I would catch up in a year or two: the Music Improvisation Company LP (bought because of the percussionist Jamie Muir, for a short while a member of my then-obsession, King Crimson) – Marion Brown's 'Afternoon of a Georgia Faun' (My first 'free jazz' record? Unless pre-'Ascension' Coltrane counts.)

Terje Rypdal's 1975 album 'Odyssey' was not only an ECM import – it was a double LP. The moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it. After a month of record-buying abstinence I had the necessary ten dollars. It was a bit of a letdown. Despite the side-long tracks, the 'string ensemble' (i.e. synthesiser) and the black and white pictures on gatefold sleeve which I must have stared at for two or three years (the musicians and instruments posed with the touring van in the bleakest weather this side of 'Satantango'). There was, however, one side-long track, that, whatever its intrinsic merits, was crucial for my musical development, above all for the questions it posed and failed to answer.

1) The bass player plays the same medium-tempo bass line with only minor variations for the entire 24-minute track. I had not yet heard Can or dub reggae or electric Miles and I played the bass in the high-school jazz big band. I was appalled at the very idea of playing the same bass line (and the same chord!) for that long.

2) The drummer, on the other hand, seemed incapable of playing a bar in straight time – the closest I'd heard to this before, in a rhythm-based song form, was on King Crimson's 'Lizard' album, which had flummoxed me at first although I came to love it.

3) The guitarist, Mr. Rypdal himself, made impressive sounds using all kinds of effects pedals, but he seemed to be soloing throughout the piece, without any apparent goal. I think what disturbed me the most were the blues-based nature of his 'licks' which left me feeling conflicted about whether he was a 'rock' or a 'progressive' musician.

4) The song was called 'Rolling Stone' – I was still confused at that age about the ubiquity of that term: 'The Rolling Stones' ... 'Rolling Stone' magazine ... 'Papa was a rolling stone' ... 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' ... 'Like a Rolling Stone' – I don't think I was familiar with Muddy Waters at the time.

5) And then there the trombone, which leads the written part of the piece. I was immediately enthusiastic about the tune itself, played by the trombone is its upper register over thick, dissonant synthesizer chords. But it only occurs twice – five minutes into the side and, in a truncated version, four or five minutes before the end. What was the trombone player doing for the rest of the time? He doesn't take a solo. He is only there to play this melody. And at the end of each statement of that lyrical, poignant melody – three times in all – he makes what is, in context, one of the most disturbing and radical musical sounds I had heard at that time: a single fortissimo 'pedal tone' (a very low note on a brass instrument) so out of place that it shocked and chilled me.

I hadn't thought about this album for years (I lost it, and much of my teenage record collection in an apartment fire in 1981 – a disaster I was somewhat relieved by as I was by then both a 'serious' composition student and a punk-rock guitarist and thought of most of my LPs with the usual distaste of the 21-year old for his 15-year old self.) One day something reminded me of 'that song' – I remembered the album title 'Odyssey', but not the song itself. I became obsessed with hearing it again. This was in 2006 or so; I still hadn't gotten around to downloading music, but found a used copy online and ordered it. When it arrived, I listened, and, as always with LPs, films and books from my youth, was amazed both by how viscerally I remembered everything and how different it all sounded now – even though not a note had changed in 30 years. After the first two bleak soundscapes, I started getting restless (it was apparent to me that, this time anyway, my 15-year old self had made the right judgment about the more-or-less vapid nature of most of the record.) I decided to skip ahead to 'that song' – I couldn't remember its name – and became increasingly confused when I didn't find it.

As I would have known if I had bothered to read the reviews online, ECM had left what once was 'side four' – the song called 'Rolling Stone' – off of the CD for space reasons. I tracked down a vinyl copy and was gratified to find that this piece of music still thrills and confuses me for the same reasons it did when I was a kid. It's also got some great atonal fuzz organ work on it. Here it is for anyone else who can't find it on their own copy of the 'Odyssey' CD.

Terje Rypdal – 'Rolling Stone' – FLAC vinyl rip

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Jackie Evancho Redux

This past month, Miss Mussel has been following the progress of 10-year old singer Jackie Evancho on America’s Got Talent for the LA Times.

Jackie has made it to the finals and on Tuesday will be singing for $1 million against Yankee Doodle dandy Prince Poppycock, soul singer Michael Grimm and dance troupe Fighting Gravity.

What’s been most interesting about the Culture Monster posts has been the comments. Jackie divides opinion strongly, which ensures that comments sections are entertaining if not quite a “mutually respectful exchange of ideas”.

It’s not to late to put your two cents in. Here are the starting points:

A ten year old singing opera. Is it opera? Is she killing her voice? Is she lip-synching?
Comments aren’t available on this piece because it was originally in the paper proper. If you have a thought either leave them here, write on your own blog or work them into comments on one of the following blog posts.

There was quite a difference in sound between her audition tape and the first two AGT performances. Is her coach a puppet of the evil genius Simon Cowell trying to make her sound more marketable? Is it amplification? Is it just how her voice is? Compare if you dare.

Before Jackie, there was Julie, Beverley, Charlotte and Andrew. Who’s better?

There’s $1 million on the line. What should she sing to secure the cash?

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

A Mad Poet's Ghost

On our recent trip to Concord, we took a side trip to Salem, where my friends Jim Dalton and Maggi Smith-Dalton, microtonal composers and early-American-music experts, took me to the grave of Jones Very (1813-1880), the temporarily-mad Emerson poet protégé whose ecstatic sonnets I set to music in my Transcendental Sonnets. (Jim's an isolated, Johnstonian just-intonationist in the officially 72-tet Boston crowd.) Very's tomb is in the Old South Cemetery, founded in 1689, and quite visible from a fairly busy street. Just one member in a family grave, like Thoreau and Kierkegaard, but I was thrilled to track down old Jones at last:

I've got more about Very here, including some poems.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Musique Nouvelles/Dessy - Musical Criticism

Musical Criticism

Musique Nouvelles/Dessy
Musical Criticism
Emerging out of these works was a sensitive and exciting composer clearly indebted to earlier models derived from Stockhausen and Pousseur, but clearly in ...

Seeking Fall for Dance Tix? Good Luck - WNYC (blog)

Seeking Fall for Dance Tix? Good Luck
WNYC (blog)
Have I lost my chance to see Merce Cunningham's Xover, Paul Taylor's Company B, or Keigwin + Company's Megalopolis, featuring music by Steve Reich and MIA? ...

Happy 75th Birthday Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt
Symphony No. 4

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa Pekka Salonen conductor
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor

Symphony No. 4 “Los Angeles” (2008)
I Con sublimità
II Affannoso
III Deciso

Fragments from
Kanon Pokajanen (1997)

ECM New Series 2160

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt turned 75 yesterday. His record label ECM Records is celebrating his three-quarters of a century with two new recordings.

Pärt’s 4th Symphony is a long-anticipated follow-up to his 3rd – which was written back in 1971! In the interim, the composer has moved from a modernist style to an idiosyncratic version of minimalism; one the composer calls the “tintinnabuli” style of composition. From bell-like resonances and slowly moving chant melodies, Pärt has crafted a personal compositional language of considerable appeal. And while this has included a number of stirring instrumental works, such as Tabula Rasa and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, more recently Pärt has been known for his choral music. His return to symphonic form is thus an opportunity to explore his mature language in a different milieu.

Perhaps in part as an acknowledgement of the home of the orchestra commissioning the Fourth Symphony – the “City of Angels” – Pärt decided to use a text as a formative – if subliminal – device in his preparations of the piece: the Canon of the Guardian Angel. Thus, while this is certainly not merely a transcription of a vocal piece – it sounds idiomatic and well orchestrated – there is a certain chant-like quality which demonstrates the symphony’s affinity with the vocal music and chant texts that are Pärt’s constant companions.

The live recording is of the work’s premiere in Disney Hall in LA. Salonen and the LA Phil give a muscular rendition of the piece, emphasizing its emphatic gestures while still allowing for the symphony’s many reflective, meditative oases to have considerably lustrous resonance. And while one can certainly hear a palpable connection to Pärt’s chant-inspired tintinnabuli pieces, the symphony also allows for dissonant verticals and melodic sweep that recalls both Pärt’s own Third Symphony and the works of other 20th century symphonists, from Gorecki to Shostakovich.

Perhaps in order to clearly attest to the connection between text and symphony, the disc is balanced out with a fifteen-minute serving of fragments from one of his important choral works from the 1990s: Kanon Pokajanen. The composer has pointed out the relationship between the canon that was his reference point for the symphony and the texts upon which the latter choral work was based.

He says, “To my mind, the two works form a stylistic unity and belong together. I wanted to give the words an opportunity to choose their own sound. The result, which even caught me by surprise, was a piece wholly pervaded by this special Slavonic diction found only in church texts. It was the canon that clearly showed me how strongly choice of language preordains a work’s character.”

Kaljuste and the Estonian Chamber Choir are seasoned handlers of Pärt’s works, having made a number of recordings of his music. They do not disappoint here, providing a performance that juxtaposes the ethereal eternity found in the texts with an earthy and corporeally passionate rendering of the music.

_____________________________________________

In order to further fete Pärt, ECM also plans a lush reissue of their landmark 1984 recording, Tabula Rasa, complete with a generous accompanying book with newly commissioned essays about the composer.

Originally posted by Christian Carey from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Self-defeating Self-censorship

Pete Wyer wrote a ballet and dedicated it to “the people of Tibet, for speaking the truth, protecting their cultural identity despite the dangers they face”. The premiere, scheduled at the Shanghai Expo, was canceled because of the political implications of his dedication.

But the culprits you’d expect to be behind the cancellation, the Chinese government, were oblivious to the dedication. In fact, the Shanghai Expo includes a “Tibet Week” which is itself a celebration of the very ‘cultural identity’ that the composer cites in his dedication.

Ironically, it was the British Council and the English National Ballet who decided to scrap the ballet because it had ‘become a political vehicle’, thereby creating the very controversy they sought to avoid. Wyer’s dedication would have gone unseen by everyone but the conductor, and there’s every indication that the Chinese wouldn’t have been offended by it even if they had seen it. By canceling the performance, the organizations created an issue out of thin air.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

Blandine Verlet plays Bach

Having broken my 'silence before Bach' with the previous post, here is some more of his music, this time by a musician whom I have posted before. Blandine Verlet is responsible for completely breaking my resistance to the sound of the harpsichord, although I have to give credit to the recordings of the late Scott Ross for first chipping away at my ignorance.

A very gracious 'lectuer de Paris' left a comment on the Scarlatti post the other day with the good news that Blandine Verlet is alive and well and the bad news that she is without a recording contract and that most of her recordings are out of print.

He writes:

'Blandine Verlet's recording contract with Astrée/Auvidis/Naïve ended nearly ten years ago; a recording of Bach's 'English Suites' that she had worked on for six months was shelved only a few days before the announced release date . She is now half-forgotten even in France. It's really very sad, as she is playing marvelously well these days. She has only given two concerts this year, at Tours and, just this past week, at the Festival Oude Muziek in Utrecht. I was at both concerts; in Utrecht she played another beautiful harpsichord built by Henry Hemsch, this one in 1752. She has no other concerts on her schedule at present and hasn't played a public concert in Paris for nearly five years.'

The mention of 'another' instrument by Henry Hemsch is a reference to a favorite harpsichord of M. Verlet's; she used a Hemsch on some of her early recordings for Valois and Philips (see his clarifications in the comments section of that Scarlatti post.) On this Philips LP of works by JS Bach, she plays a 1976 instrument by William Dowd based on an original by Nicolas & François Blanchet, 1730. Apparently, Philips has issued only one of Verlet's many Bach recordings on compact disc, the Bach Partitas. The LP at hand includes the b-minor 'Partita' (the 'Overture in the French Style', which is not on the Partitas CD), as well as the 'Italian Concerto'. In addition, and a highlight for me, there are the 'Four Duetti' BWV 802-805. I was completely unfamiliar with these two-part inventions until I heard this LP and am glad to have made their acquaintance.

The 'lecteur de Paris' notes that on the Amazon listing for Blandine Verlet's Paritas set, there is a negative remark about her playing of the Gigue from the first Partita: 'it sounds like a child practicing!' He comments 'Actually, it's just that Blandine Verlet chooses not to play the gigue in question as a virtuoso work but as a humorous piece of music.' Indeed, humour – and grace and puckish intelligence – are always in evidence in her playing. (As well as a fascinatingly personal use of ornamentation and notes inegáles.) I hope you enjoy this recording and I thank my Parisian correspondent for giving me an idea of just how many of Verlet's recordings I still haven't heard (Froberger, Dulphy, her Bach on Astrée ... )

Blandine Verlet plays Bach (Philips LP 9500 588) – FLAC and scans

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

Chicago Modern Orchestra Project Announces Season of Innovative and Unexpected ... - PR.com (press release)

Chicago Modern Orchestra Project Announces Season of Innovative and Unexpected ...
PR.com (press release)
Founder and director Renée Baker has been at the extreme forefront of creative and avant-garde music while developing this unique ensemble since 1991. ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Music Weekly: Underworld - The Guardian (blog)

Music Weekly: Underworld
The Guardian (blog)
She's from quite an experimental background, mixing some fairly avant garde influences with elements of opera and goth rock, and there's a real sense that ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: James Macmillan - The Sacrifice - Three Interludes (London Première)

The Proms is now well into its final straight, & the week began with the London première of James Macmillan's The Sacrifice - Three Interludes • As the title suggests, Macmillan has extracted the music from his 2007 opera, The Sacrifice •

First of the three is "The Parting", which opens, disarmingly, like a John Williams-esque bit of film music, continuing in this vein for several minutes • Eventually it coalesces into something deeper; a curious music, driven by the strings, taking some strange harmonic twists (akin to one of Shostakovich's slow movements), before being abruptly snatched by the brass & percussion • This throws a bit of light & air into the mix, & leads to some brief excitement in the woodwinds, though not for long, finally descending back to the mood from which it sprang • The interlude concludes with the greyest of passages (now Wagner springs to mind), muted, melancholic, ashen •

A "Passacaglia" follows, & if the opening moments suggest Britten or Lutosławski, such notions are quickly dispelled by the boistrous melody that chirps up, setting the tone for where things are going • The music originally accompanied the scene of a marriage feast, & there's a fair amount of merriment in Macmillan's material, although equally, the ominous presence of the ground bass, coupled with the nasal quality of much of the music, makes for an ambivalent mood (Macmillan's programme note bluntly states, "It will end in violence") •

The final interlude is "The Investiture", & its music is immediately grandiose, timpani thundering out a call to attention • Its first few minutes are an absolute torrent of activity; the pace is extremely quick, & while slower melodic strands can be heard within, they're shrouded in frenetic, non-stop motifs & gestures, thrown out from all parts of the orchestra (chiefly brass & percussion) • There are hints of a march—or is it a dance maybe?—either way, celebration (whether solemn or frivolous) is everywhere, in keeping with the opera's preoccupations at this point • There's some delightfully weird 'oom-pah' material towards the end, teasing the audience, & each time beginning an episode that rises & builds, ultimately to a triumphant yet ferocious conclusion •

There's much to admire in these three interludes; they work well as a group, & while there are obvious similarities to the world of film music—which, for me, slightly dampens their appeal—Macmillan executes his ideas with such thrilling orchestrations that it would be churlish to make too much of that •

James Macmillan - The Sacrifice - Three Interludes (London Première) [19:17]
FLAC [85Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 30Mb] | programme note | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Tansy Davies - Wild Card (World Première)

The prepenultimate première at this year's Proms was one i've been very much looking forward to: Tansy Davies' Wild Card, receiving its first performance this evening • i'm fortunate to have had a number of lengthy conversations with Tansy in the last year or so, & her compositional mind is an attractive combination of frivolous spontaneity & thoughtful deliberation • This engaging dichotomy is also brought to bear in her new work; indeed, as she says beforehand, speaking of the tarot cards that inspired it, "they're all about systems & games, patterns..." •

Tansy Davies

It opens with the Devil card, the bass clarinet luxuriating in a kind of rude profundity • Melodies quickly develop, doubled on multiple woodwinds (strings form a backdrop), calling & swooping above the rhythmic patterns laid down by the percussion (the High Priestess & the Magician, perhaps) • Texture is apparently just as important as tunes, though, & as the melodies subside, harp & piano introduce a series of rough, blurting gestures, the percussion tickling from behind • The two are then brought together; over an insistent bongo, the woodwinds bleat a fragmented tune, swiftly restoring the melodic ideas from earlier • In just a few minutes, Davies has made it clear hers is going to be a diverse piece, chopping & changing with serious alacrity • But likewise, what also becomes clear is that the programme note—in which she carefully describes her musical interpretation of each of the 22 tarot cards—could be a tad dangerous, potentially lulling the ear into perceiving Wild Card as a purely episodic piece—a kind of test where one listens out for & mentally ticks off each card as it appears • But Wild Card is more—well—wild than that; Davies has constructed a far more complex work than first impressions suggest, the ideas relating to individual cards by no means confined to neat, tidy episodes but recurring, quixotically, when it seems appropriate (or even inappropriate) •

Although Tansy's approach in earlier pieces has also involved the juxtapositions & permutations of different sonic shapes, it's hugely challenging to give oneself no fewer than 22 distinct kinds of musical material to play with • Frankly, it's courageous; such a plethora of sources could easily degenerate into a meaningless parade of un-unified elements, a mere display of ideas masquerading as a piece • But, while one trusts that the 22 material types are present & correct, the piece clearly isn't about that, Wild Card's not about structure; ultimately, as Davies points out, it's "a musical adventure loosely based on the 'Fool's Journey'" • Journeys—at least, interesting journeys—aren't renowned for their coherence, rigorous structure & predetermined outcomes; quite the reverse, & Davies' inspiration is clearly drawn most to the fun that can be had in (quasi-)random juxtapositions of ideas within a context concerned most with simply moving onward • & this the work does superbly; despite the wild (there's that word again) shifts from one minute to the next, the sense of momentum is undeniable, inexorable even •

Wild Card is one of—if not the most—elastic, impetuous works premièred at this year's Proms; it's fantastical, bewildering, chaotic, utterly assymmetrical—& for all those reasons & many more, i love it • It's by far the most mature & impressive work of Tansy's that i've heard, sure of itself throughout (almost cockily so), executed with real aplomb • Don't expect to grasp it all in one go; its intricacies need many listenings to even start to become clearer •

Tansy Davies - Wild Card (World Première) [24:10]
FLAC [102Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 37Mb] | programme note | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Robin Holloway - RELIQUARY - Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (World Première)

Prize for the longest title bestowed on a piece in this year's Proms must surely go to Robin Holloway's RELIQUARY - Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Robert Schumann's 'Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart', given its world première two days ago • Holloway has taken Schumann's last five songs—deemed, it seems, by scholars to be of relatively poor quality—& both orchestrated them as well as providing them with a larger context, a framework within which they sit; Holloway describes how "[the] work as an entity ... contains the five original songs as within a mediaeval reliquary, surrounding the precious remains within a suitable setting, tactful & unobtrusive for the most part..." (from the programme note) •

To that end, Holloway has put himself in Schumann's compositional shoes, to the extent that the opening Prologue works so convincingly as a preliminary to the first song, that i didn't even notice it at an initial listening • This stylistic reserve continues throughout the song ("Abschied von Frankreich"); while the orchestration does sound, at moments, a touch richer than Schumann might have written, the language is faithful, with little to suggest a much later hand has been involved • Until, that is, the very end of the song, when a muted call from the horns causes the style to shift, allowing in some poignant dissonances, all the more cutting in this context • It leads pretty much seamlessly into the second song ("Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes"), in which Holloway's voice is much more demonstrable—right from the start, in fact: the opening celesta motif almost made me gasp at its stylistic difference • But one gets the impression, quickly, that this song was most in need of assistance; Schumann's treatment of the text (a prayer for her new-born son's safety) is somewhat perfunctory & fragmented • While this isn't helped by Holloway's interpolation of a number of silences, it is significantly enriched with what he calls a 'halo', provided by celesta & strings, continuing throughout; it sits surprisingly comfortably above the song, giving it a delicate, even transcendent dimension •

The first of three brief Entr'actes follows, a Sarabande-Bourée, & Holloway has clearly had fun playing with these two dance forms, blending them together, revelling in the resultant fluctuations between seriousness & joviality • Holloway intends this as an allusion to Mary's happier early life, & the tone of the lighter material serves to make the surrounding songs even more intense • "An de Königin Elisabeth" returns to the boldness of the opening song, filled with emotional ambivalence, in which "the voices of fear & hope resound" • The text is a letter from Mary to her sister Elizabeth, & the first two stanzas—in which Mary declares how much she wants to see Elizabeth—to some extent echo the content of Schumann's music: "a new anguish seizes me, because the letter lacks the power to prove it"—Schumann's music is equally unconvincing, lacking sufficient punch to underline this, & there's obviously a limit to what Robin Holloway can do with it • However, it's mitigated by the evocative final stanza, Mary metaphorically likening herself to a boat "held back by the storm & warring waves", the music finally rising to the occasion, allowing the soprano to launch into a highly lyrical outpouring •

The second Entr'acte extends the concept of its predecessor, initially emphasising the melancholy rather than the fortitude, only to dissipate into what Holloway calls "a miniature scherzino" • Considering the weight & emotional magnitude of the songs, it's a little hard to take, but once again the songs benefit from this snatched glimpse of what once was • & this is especially so with "Abschied von der Welt" which follows, by far the most lyrical & overtly heart-felt of the songs • Holloway's orchestration is sublime, treating the melodic line as though with kid gloves, the orchestra restrained, even distant, in every sense faint at such final, desperate words • "So do not wish for the return of happier days" she implores, & the final Entr'acte takes heed, with no trace of the lightness previously heard; on the contrary, its sombre mood is highly suggestive of where, ultimately, all this is going; in particular, the brief appearances of an utterly dry tenor drum are an almost shocking presence within its otherwise soft, pale pallour •

It gradually descends into the final song, an impassioned prayer to God, committing herself into His care • Holloway gives Schumann's melody discreet reinforcement in the orchestra, the instruments seemingly reluctant to move unless the soprano moves first, guided by her at each moment • The soprano's material is exquisite, still betraying signs of strength despite the weakness & resignation at the heart of her words • Holloway concludes with a substantial Epilogue, bringing together material from throughout; the last remnants of the Sarabande are particularly moving, as is the very ending, the music gracefully grieving into submission, an insistent timpani roll countered by the staunchly major tonality of the final chord •

While i opted not to review David Matthews' recent Proms première Dark Pastoral, due to it being a mere exercise in orchestration & pastiche rather than a genuinely new work, Robin Holloway's achievement is something entirely different • He has both put flesh on the bones & brought back to life past material as well as fashioning an entirely new, entirely fitting context for it • It's the antithesis of pastiche, & a beautifully effective addition to the repertory; Holloway's understanding of & sympathy with Schumann's source material is entire, & his skill in reworking it into a new guise is nothing less than consummate • & one mustn't fail to mention soprano Dorothea Röschmann, whose superlative singing displayed impressive empathy with these bleak texts •

Robin Holloway - RELIQUARY - Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Robert Schumann's 'Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart' (World Première) [27:33]
FLAC [117Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 43Mb] | programme note | text | biography
(Further information about the piece can be found on Robin Holloway's website, here)

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Jonathan Dove - A Song of Joys (World Première)

i think Tom Service put it best, a few years ago, when he described the Last Night of the Proms as a "calcified cadaver" • It is, there's no question; beneath the merriment & the klaxons lies an occasion that died many, many years ago; it's a concert in aspic, filled with a misfitted agglomeration of works that culminate in a trio of singalongs which have at least made the transition from jingoistic anthems to party favourites • It's almost as bad as Choral Evensong, for goodness' sake • Anyway, turning away from such blatant party poopery for a moment, it does at least promise something new each year, & last night the opportunity fell to housewives' favourite, Jonathan Dove, whose A Song of Joys was given its first performance, starting the concert •

Dove has turned to that most ambitious of poets Walt Whitman for his text, lines from the poem whose title Dove has borrowed for his own • & it's a big text; the scope of Whitman's vision is akin to that of Psalm 8, conjuring a vista of creation from the vantage point of song • Such epic scope as this makes it all the more disappointing that Dove's response to the text is so simple & unimaginative • Dove probably wasn't allowed longer than his 5-minute duration, but did he really have to move through the text in such a perfunctory way? • One phrase dutifully follows another, never really bringing alive the words or tapping into their vision, still less presenting one of Dove's own • It's all terribly functional: loud & light, with lots of big tunes—but not a hint of the genuine, deep excitement from which Whitman's words no doubt sprang • In fact, the choral evensong analogy remains apt; what Dove has composed is a secular but unavoidably John Rutter-esque anthem, that would perfectly comfortably sit within an edition of Songs of Praise • So, was it suitable to start the Last Night of the Proms? with Tom Service's description of the occasion foremost in mind: yes, absolutely •

Which brings to a fizzling end the series of premières at this year's Proms • According to the statistics, based on which of these articles you, the readers of 5:4, have been pointing your browsers, the work that by far generated most interest this year was the London première of Cornelius Cardew's Bun No. 1; no doubt due in part due to the rarity of performances of this fascinating, elusive piece • Personally, i wouldn't yet call it a favourite, but it's certainly growing on me • If i had to choose favourites from this year's premières, i'd pick James Dillon's La navette, Tansy Davies' Wild Card & Huw Watkins' Violin Concerto, all pieces that both tantalise on first experience & yield more & more on repeated listenings • But beyond the premières, the contemporary piece that struck me most forcefully this season was without doubt Luke Bedford's Or voit tout en aventure, one of the most exquisite pieces i've heard in a long time •

It seemed such a simple little idea, back in July, to review all the Proms premières on 5:4, but it turned out to be a more ambitious project than i realised • But equally—no, much more so—it's been a rewarding one; i've never enjoyed a Proms season better than this one, so i suspect this won't be the only year 5:4 fixes its attention on the Proms • Many thanks to everyone who's read these articles, downloaded the music, & written comments in reply (or rebuke)—that, too, makes the experience yet more interesting & enjoyable• Keep the comments coming (which was your favourite?), they're very much appreciated •

Jonathan Dove - A Song of Joys (World Première) [6:55]
FLAC [32Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 11Mb] | programme note + text | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

Cornelius Cardew: 'Bun No 1' at the Proms (and at Five against Four)

As I get closer to launching this new and hopefully welcome blog, I thought I'd draw your attention to the recent goings-on over at the Five against Four blogspot --- this year's London Proms, with recordings, program notes and thoughtful reviews of all the premieres. Three unmissable items so far: James Dillon's 'La Navette' (UK Premiere), Morton Feldman's 'Piano and orchestra' (John Tilbury, soloist, London premiere) and, best of all, Cornelius Cardew's challenging and inscrutable 1965 'Bun No 1'. The latter is a fully-notated serial work for conventional orchestra and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been recorded commercially. (Isn't it about time for a disc of Cardew's pre-'Treatise' music?)

AND I do hope to pick up soon where 'The High Pony Tail' left off, at the present address (while doing my best to maintain the Pony Archives as they stand.) Stay tuned for further signs of life ...

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

Startup group aims to record most of the orchestral classics with a 'license-free' pickup group

A startup group aims to record most of the orchestral classics with a 'license-free' pickup group so that anybody can use the symphonies of Beethoven, Sibelius, et al, for free and in any way imaginable. Interesting, but a complete disconnect between performance and personality. And a danger to orchestras?

A group of classical music lovers have successfully appealed for funds to release copyright-free versions of symphonies by four famous composers. The money will pay for an orchestra to record the music on an “all rights basis”.

Online appeal sets classical music free

Originally posted by jeff from new music reblog plus, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

The 'Goldberg' Variations on two cimbaloms

Somehow I managed to post music at The High Pony Tail for more than a year without a single piece of music by JS Bach.

Rameau, yes; Brahms, yes; Haydn, yes. And Balbastre and Forqueray and Scarlatti and even CPE and JC and WF Bach. I won't attempt to excuse myself by claiming that Bach is a composer I don't enjoy very much (I might have argued – with absurd arrogance – that Bach is somehow hors concours. I might have claimed that the sublimity of Bach has always been betrayed by the recorded medium, that the subtlety of Bach can only be appreciated at home, by playing a fugue or two on one's own piano, however poorly played or ill-tuned the piano.) And in fact, having just now stated that I wasn't going to invoke the exception of Bach, I am going to go right ahead (on the public record!) and declare, not Bach's unique status as a kind of ur-composer, but rather the inadequacy of my own ears in the presence of this ideal composer, JS Bach – despite my dubious and undocumented claims to understand the most complicated of so-called modern music and my insistence that there is no genre of so-called musical expression that I am unable to gab about with (or even without) profit – and despite my being now, manifestly, an adult and in fact a middle-aged adult who can probably resign himself to not getting any smarter or more understanding in my remaining years, a middle-aged person who still experiences his encounters with Bach (whether on a phonograph record or in a score) as an occasion for intellectual humiliation, self-doubt, confusion and, ultimately, intellectual and aural paralysis.

Having proactively admitted my inadequacies as a guide to Bach's music, here is a delightful performance of the 'Goldberg' variations on two cimbaloms, played by Ágnes Szakály and Rósza Farkas (pictured above), from an out-of-print Hungaroton CD. I am a great lover of the cimbalom, a delightful instrument that sounds like a gently-muted and well-tempered steel drum band heard from a long distance. The division of the score into parts for two players makes the counterpoint 'spring out' with clarity, even as it makes it problematical to discuss this recording of these famous variations in the accustomed way of the record collector (the comparing and ranking of the 'genius' of a Gould or Leonhardt or Tureck.) While the cimbalom is somewhat ungainly – meaning that ornamentation is kept fairly simple – it has the advantage of being touch-sensitive, allowing the performers the expressiveness of the modern piano, but with a sound as intimate and private as a harpsichord. When I hear a cimbalom (and I hear the instrument fairly often, as I snap up all the recordings I can find, whatever the repertoire, even the 'Goldberg' variations!) I am happily transported to a brick-paved back street or alley in some central-European city – or perhaps to the labyrinth of old Trieste, since I've never been to central Europe.

The 'Goldberg' variations on two cimbalons – FLAC and PDF

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

NSU hosts Jennifer Carsillo and Wesley Baldwin - Leesville Daily Leader

NSU hosts Jennifer Carsillo and Wesley Baldwin
Leesville Daily Leader
He did the first commercial recording of cello music by Alan Shulman which was released by Albany Records last spring. He has also recorded for the Naxos, ...

Norelco 100

Sound Clip: Norelco 100 by Tom Mansell

On occasion, people bring me old reel to reel tapes and ask for a digital transfer. In this case, the client was hoping he’d found a tape of his deceased father. Sadly, this tape only contained a demonstration of the Norelco 100 recorder. I was sorry to see the client disappointed. But, I did enjoy hearing this piece of advertising history.

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Blogwatch

Houston Dunleavy writes of a particularly good week:

[ link → It’s a pity every week isn’t like this one! ]

Apart from this, and as if that weren’t enough . . . .

Cannot go wrong with a simply stupendous choir; here’s wishing Houston many such weeks more!

Stuart Simon, on Deliberateness:

[ link → Habit #6: Impatience ]

Good question. “The math on that is in counting two beats and putting the five notes in as equally as you can. You have to feel this just as you have to anticipate the metronome’s next click.”

All too few musical blog posts, perhaps, include the observation, She looked at me with murder in her eyes. But there’s the math of it, and there’s just acquisition of the experience of it. If music waited on math, there’d be much less music in the world, and much less variety of it.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Dance in Chicago: The world at our feet - Chicago Sun-Times

Dance in Chicago: The world at our feet
Chicago Sun-Times
22), and "North Star," "Dog of Wars," "Nature Boy: Kurt Elling" and "Cavalcade," to music by Steve Reich (Sept. 23). (At the Harris Theater; ...

and more »

Free Millennium Park concert kicks off months of varied programming for Muti - Chicago Sun-Times

Free Millennium Park concert kicks off months of varied programming for Muti
Chicago Sun-Times
When he takes up the post of music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this month, Riccardo Muti will bring many of the varied ...

and more »

Critic's picks - Boston Globe

Critic's picks
Boston Globe
... Xenakis, and a premiere by Richard Cornell. 617-278-5156, www.gardnermuseum.org EMMANUEL MUSIC The organization's new artistic director, Ryan Turner, ...

and more »

Glimmerglass' magic captured on 'Orphee' CD - Albany Times Union

Glimmerglass' magic captured on 'Orphee' CD
Albany Times Union
Orange Mountain Music has just released the first recording of the 1993 opera, and it brings back the magic heard at Glimmerglass. ...

CD review: 'The Great Understanding,' Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by ... - Los Angeles Times

CD review: 'The Great Understanding,' Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by ...
Los Angeles Times
A measure of prominence in classical music has long been the major-label recording. The Master Chorale under ...

and more »

Classical labels rolling out new discs for the holidays - Denver Post

Classical labels rolling out new discs for the holidays
Denver Post
Ravel: Piano Concertos (Oct. 5): Pierre Boulez returns to the Ravel concertos for the third time on disc, here with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the ...

and more »

Critic's picks - Boston Globe

Critic's picks
Boston Globe
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Music director James Levine's anticipated return is the big story here, and as of this writing he is still ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

10 best bets for Chicago dance - Chicago Tribune

10 best bets for Chicago dance
Chicago Tribune
... free dance festival, and revivals of signature pieces dating from the 1970s, set to music by minimalist innovators Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Sept. ...

and more »

Two Tributes For Mahler - New York Times

Two Tributes For Mahler
New York Times
Yet just recently, in the spring of 2009, Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez led the Staatskapelle Berlin in all the symphonies at Carnegie Hall. ...

Classical review: Cappella Romana's program of Tudor works soars - OregonLive.com

Classical review: Cappella Romana's program of Tudor works soars
OregonLive.com
His work in music has been wildly varied -- he has collaborated with such artists as Iannis Xenakis, the film composer Vangelis and The Who -- but ...

BBC Proms 65 and 66 Berlin Philharmonic/Simon Rattle - The Guardian

BBC Proms 65 and 66 Berlin Philharmonic/Simon Rattle
The Guardian
There has been some notable bawl-by-bawl commentary, usually in something palpably unsuitable like hushed Ligeti. I have tried, tested and found severely ...

Schoenberg’s Phantasy

Kyle Gann, Joan Tower, and George Tsontakis all think Schoenberg’s Violin Phantasy is ugly.

Yehudi Menuhin seems to agree with them. Glenn Gould and I would respectfully disagree.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 12, 2010 at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2010

Grant Gershon keeps a steady beat - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Grant Gershon keeps a steady beat
Los Angeles Times
... Louis Andriessen and Steve Reich — to his name and a slew of positive reviews. "Tuesday was a night, on all levels, of glory," Times music critic Mark ...

and more »

Present Music saying farewell to pianist at season opener - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Present Music saying farewell to pianist at season opener
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
He's going out with the musical equivalent of a bang - György Ligeti's "Piano Concerto." Artistic director Kevin Stalheim explained that the concerto is, ...

Thinking about our upcoming concert

8:13pm, Friday, September 10, 2010.

Exactly two weeks from right now we will have just begun our season-opening concert, DRAMA: music and its double. I think in many ways that this will be counter)induction’s most ambitious performance to date. Aperghis, Globokar, Saariaho, Schnittke… all works both intriguing and complex, asking questions that seem too tempting not to reflect upon. I’ve chosen these pieces because they all either explicitly or implicitly suggest a presence outside themselves. To me the idea of a “presence” assumes some content of being, some quality, maybe even an identity or a character. All these works engage with characters, either by their “presence” in the piece or in the tension of their absence.

This engagement is the “drama” of DRAMA: music and its double. It was important to me to create some dialogue between these compositions, to lean into the idea, present in our concerts from the beginning, that by placing one musical work alongside another creates a meaningful relationship that enriches both. We are going to dwell in those in-between spaces through improvisation stemming from these works, creating music that can only exist by the physicality of combining elements from different pieces, different stories, bringing them fleetingly into each other’s gravity. That’s the double.

Braided into this, words- letters, essays, poems- will “un-explain” obvious associations and add another layer of connection and potential meaning. Very nice, but what is the audience supposed to think of all this? I really value this idea from the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky,

“The method whereby the artist obliges the audience to build the separate parts into a whole, and to think on, further than has been stated, is the only one that puts the audience on a par with the artist in their perception of the film. And indeed from the point of view of mutual respect only that kind of reciprocity is worthy of artistic practice.”

I am sure that this holds for music as well, and for performance, and for creating relationships between performances and music. I hope everyone will come to the concert on the 24^th, slightly less than two weeks from now, and help us create this unusual, and special, musical event.

Originally from counter)induction, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

New Music Strategies in Berlin

Saskia and Steve dispensing wisdom at All2gethernow

Four out of the five of us made it to Berlin for All2gethernow this past week. In fact, Andrea was one of the event’s key organisers and she did an amazing job of pulling such a brilliant event together.

It was great to see NMS friends Ruth Daniel from Un-Convention, Jason Sigal from Free Music Archive, Martin Atkins of Tour Smart fame (and some bands you’ve heard of), Zoe Keating, Mike Masnick from Techdirt, Will Page from the PRS, Dave Haynes from Soundcloud, photographer Karola Riegler, Eliot van Buskirk from Wired, Martin Thörnkvist from Songs I Wish I Had Written, David Maher Roberts from The Filter, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, Professor Nancy Baym (off the internet), Micki Krimmel from NeighborGoods and so many more amazing and interesting people.

Talking and listening (mostly in English)

We were each on a number of panels and talked about music as culture, innovative strategies for independent artists, the importance of archives, working with music as a tool for social change, and lots more besides.

We also gave our own New Music Strategies workshops. These are our favourite things to do. Unlike a panel, where we’d talk on a topic, the NMS workshop involves us asking questions of the audience. Specifically – “how can we be helpful?”

People tell us what they’re working on, what they’re stuck with – and we do our best to help get them unstuck. We’ve done a few of these now, and they’re always fun. Some really interesting and diverse musical projects were represented, and it was fascinating to hear the things that people were trying with their music careers.

We love Berlin

Saskia with Martin and Nancy

From what we could tell, Berlin’s a vibrant, innovative and supportive place to be making all sorts of interesting music. And of course, Andrea lives and works there – so it’s one of our headquarters.

We made a few good friends along the way at All2gethernow – some of whom we’d met on the internet, and were meeting in person for the first time – and some that were entirely new to us but have quickly become new friends.

But perhaps best of all was the chance to hang out with each other – something we don’t get to do often enough – eat some nice food, talk about music, and start to finalise plans for some very cool stuff we’ve got coming up, and that we’re going to be able to start telling you about very soon… honest.

Missing in action
The only person missing from the team was Ian, and it was a real shame he couldn’t be there. But he had more pressing concerns: he was busy becoming a father to a baby boy, who was born at 3am this morning.

Congratulations to the family!

Originally posted by Dubber from New Music Strategies, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Grant Gershon's iPod playlist - Los Angeles Times (blog)

Grant Gershon's iPod playlist
Los Angeles Times (blog)
Grant Gershon, the music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, is celebrating 10 years with the renowned vocal ensemble this season. ...

Fall forecast: Classical - Philadelphia Inquirer

Fall forecast: Classical
Philadelphia Inquirer
... I. Henri Dutilleux, 94, increasingly emerges as France's greatest post-World War II composer - profoundly distilled in ways that allow his music to ...

Everybody can Wang Chung in Norwalk Saturday - California Chronicle

Everybody can Wang Chung in Norwalk Saturday
California Chronicle
2 on the Billboard Music Charts and the band toured with the Cars and Tina Turner. "(The record) encapsulates the sense Nick and I have about that phase in ...

Pak Cokro

asion of Pak Cokro's 100th birthday. Pak Cokro (also known as KPH Notoprojo, KRT Wasitodiningrat, KRT Wasitodipuro), was one of the most important musicians of the 20th century, born into the royal house of Pakualam, the minor court in Yogyakarta, Java, Pak Cokro eventually became music director of the Pakualam and of the Yogyanese radio station. He was central to a movement to combine the classical gamelan styles of the two Central Javanese kingdoms, Surakarta and Yogyakarta, and became known in the west first through the Nonesuch recording produced by Robert E. Brown, and then directly, through many years of teaching in California. In California, his many students included the composer Lou Harrison. A performance of the Pakualam's traditional royal entry piece, Puspawarna, under Pak Cokro's leadership was included in the recording which accompanied the Voyager spacecraft, a perfect example of human music-making at its very best.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Deep Night

Around a quarter to four, I lay awake. Thought about popping in the disc of the MIDI ‘realization’ of the Viola Sonata. As I turned that thought over in my mind, remaining prone, I tried to remember (and succeeded in remembering) what music I had listened to last.

Decided against cuing up the Opus 102. For it would not have lulled me to sleep, it would have engaged my mind for the full 26 minutes.

Some more work done (in spite of a long couple of days) on Tempus fungus.

About to send off a disc of Gaze Transfixt to a friend in Brooklyn.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

The winter of our content - Buenos Aires Herald

Buenos Aires Herald

The winter of our content
Buenos Aires Herald
In this respect, Buenos Aires has experienced an almost unprecedented series of Epiphanies and regained for the attentive reader the claim of music centre ...

Jeffrey Lee Puckett's Digital Downloads | Free stream bonanza - Louisville Courier-Journal

Jeffrey Lee Puckett's Digital Downloads | Free stream bonanza
Louisville Courier-Journal
There was the recent announcement of Music Unlimited, a service that will use cloud-based technology to deliver music to a host of Sony devices (TVs, ...

and more »

Percussionist to perform Sunday - Iowa City Press Citizen

Percussionist to perform Sunday
Iowa City Press Citizen
... "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" by influential music theorist James Tenney, "Corporel" by Vinko Globokar and "Psappha" by Iannis Xenakis.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett's Digital Downloads | Free stream bonanza - Louisville Courier-Journal

Jeffrey Lee Puckett's Digital Downloads | Free stream bonanza
Louisville Courier-Journal
Also, Of Montreal, “False Priest”; Robert Plant, “Band of Joy”; Steve Reich, “Double Sextet/2×5”; Mavis Staples, “You Are Not Alone”; Superchunk, ...

235 :: 10 September 2010 :: Quiet Time

Linda Catlin Smith: Ballad Ann Southam: Glass Houses

Linda Catlin Smith: Ballad (2006)
Andrew Smith, Cello; Eve Egoyan, Piano. World Edition 0014 (2010)

Ann Southam: Remembering Schubert (1988)
Eve Egoyan, piano. CBC MVCD 1124 (1999)

Originally posted by rchrd from Music From Other Minds, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

Academie d'Overrated

Ineresting evening, we had tonight. We had a meeting of all the Bard composers, faculty and students. In the course of it a student challenged me, Joan Tower, and George Tsontakis to name the Schoenberg pieces we really like. I don't think Joan and George will begrudge me reporting the meager results. Joan and I basically agreed on the Op. 11 piano pieces, especially the second one. George and I agreed that Moses und Aron is "great" - the two acts that he wrote. I'll never forgive Arnold for not finishing his magnum opus just because he couldn't get a Guggenheim. George suggested Pierrot Lunaire, but neither Joan nor I care for it. I suggested Herzgewächse and the Six Songs, Op. 8, but Joan isn't fond of vocal music. We all agreed that the Op. 25 and Op. 33 piano pieces are a mess, and that the Violin Phantasy is really ugly. We had all once loved the First Chamber Symphony and grown to dislike it. Altogether, we couldn't come up with much 12-tone Schoenberg that any of us ever wanted to hear again. Anything Joan, George, and I agree on from our disparate and non-overlapping perspectives must contain a degree of objective truth. Face it: Arnold Schoenberg is O. V. E. R. R. A. T. E. D. He deserves maybe two, three paragraphs in a comprehensive music history text. There are so many 12-tone composers I prefer to Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg: Rochberg, Sessions, Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, Hauer, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Maderna, even Babbitt. And there are many atonal composers I love who aren't 12-tone: Shapey, Ruggles, Wolpe, Feldman. Positing the "Second Vienna School" as some kind of counterpoise to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven was, in retrospect, a stunning musicological fiction. Write in and name your favorite Schoenberg pieces if it'll make you feel better, but if he can't win fans among composers as deeply, and diversely, invested in modernism as the three of us are are, he just wasn't all that. We can't defend his exalted reputation to our students. And it's high time the composing profession faced up to the non-unanimity of even expert opinion about him.

[RAMBLING ON THE NEXT MORNING:] The interesting thing was that we all knew virtually Schoenberg's complete output. Joan had played most of the music involving piano, including the Webern arrangement of the Chamber Symphony. I wish I knew the outputs of Walton, Milhaud, Martinu, and even Hindemith as well as I do Schoenberg's, I'm sure I'd love a lot more of the music.

UPDATE: George writes in to add some Schoenberg works that he likes that we didn't discuss the other night, many of them ones also listed by commenters: String Trio, Third Quartet, Book of the Hanging Gardens, Survivor from Warsaw, Serenade, Ode to Napoleon, and Five Pieces for Orchestra.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

For fall 2010, Washington's classical music companies are bringing in big names - Washington Post

For fall 2010, Washington's classical music companies are bringing in big names
Washington Post
Strathmore, meanwhile, is showcasing two living lions in November: Steve Reich and Philip Glass, composers whose names are often linked, much to their ...

A Conductor's Herculean Schedule - New York Times

New York Times

A Conductor's Herculean Schedule
New York Times
... juices into a celebration of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, which came in December 2008. Since then the programming, especially of contemporary music, ...

and more »

Betting Easy Money on Dance This Fall - Wall Street Journal

Betting Easy Money on Dance This Fall
Wall Street Journal
Larry Keigwin will present his "Megalopolis," set to a mash-up of music by Steve Reich and MIA The piece was commissioned by the Juilliard School and ...

Edward Gardner: 'success is a two-edged sword' - Financial Times

Financial Times

Edward Gardner: 'success is a two-edged sword'
Financial Times
Success is a two-edged sword, says Edward Gardner, English National Opera's 35-year-old music director. It gives you self-confidence, ...

Album review: Jason Moran's 'Ten' - Washington Post

Album review: Jason Moran's 'Ten'
Washington Post
Two versions of Conlon Nancarrow's "Study No. 6," one jittery and the other meditative, uncover the lyricism of this modern classical piece. ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 11, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2010

From Bach to the Beach: A Saxophone Does All This? - Indo American News

Indo American News

From Bach to the Beach: A Saxophone Does All This?
Indo American News
After the intermission, the group moved into older compositions playing three movements from Six Bagatelles by Gyorgy Ligeti and an Allegro String Quartet ...

News... sort of...

A fallow time for blogging recently... haven't been to any gigs so no reviews... travel plans buggered because of illness and other craziness. But the beat goes on...

So a quick gather - Black Stepdad (yes, I know) who have some material out on our label The Lows and the Highs scored a review by Byron Coley in the current Wire:

I think he liked it...

Whitedog has been playing around with deep drums, free rhythms and reverb - here's a rough edit of a possible new track on his forthcoming album on ditto label:

Freeforming go deep by rawmusics

figure of outward has a new album looming as well, playing off folk musics, sorta... this is 'fantasia on my lagan love' with the late Margaret Barry standing in for the singer who will eventually make it into the studio...

Fantasia on lagan love by rawmusics

Reviews will return - I'm off to a double header in London soon - alldayer at Cecil Sharp House (I kid you not) - 'Ghosts from the Basement' and John Tchicai at the Cafe Oto a couple of days later... hopefully I'll be more mobile by then... otherwise stretcher bearers will be called for...

I'm supposed to be in Ireland - but I'm not, which is annoying. Hope to get there in a few weeks...

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Worst First Date Dinners

“It’s impossible to look graceful or composed when eating an orange. ” tweeted JournoDave. Although JamesRhodes insists the fruit doesn’t interfere with his ability to bring the sexy, Miss Mussel feels safe in posturing that for us mere mortals JournoDave is on to something.

As a teenager, Miss Mussel had a running game going with her friends to determine the ideal first date meal – basically what foods have the absolute minimum likelihood of spraying, getting all over your face, sliding off a fork and into the lap, getting stuck in teeth, burning, producing bad breath or otherwise creating a mortally embarrassing situation.

Ultimate First Date Dinner: Steak dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans. Apple pie for dessert. No salad.

Discarded Items
Spinach salad
Spaghetti

Chicken a la King
Chicken Kiev
Chicken Parmesan
Chicken stuffed with anything
Any food you usually eat with your hands but now feel obligated to consume via fork (i.e. french fries)
Chicken wings

Lobster
Crab
Fully loaded hamburger
Taco/burrito
Caesar salad

What else would you add to the list? Even better if you have a story to match it. The comments await your shame!

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Other Minds seeks Composer Fellows

If, like me, you’re a composer and you routinely ask yourself “What am I doing six months from now? Can I get something on the calendar?”, Other Minds has a suggestion – especially if you have a piece on the shelf for flute, Bb clarinet or bass clarinet, violin, cello or some combo thereof. Or if you’re eager to write a new one, knowing that the players involved could be the Other Minds or Navitas Ensembles.

And if, like me, you’d rather be on stage than squirming out in the audience the whole time, you have the option to perform in your own piece. You can also include electronics. Applicants need to limit the piece duration to 20 minutes or less.

If you can meet these criteria the good folks at Other Minds would like you to apply for the Other Minds Composer Fellowship. The application deadline is October 15, and Fellows will be announced by November 5. That’s when you’ll know if you will be in San Francisco six months from now, participating in a week-long residency in conjunction with the 16^th Other Minds Festival, from Sunday, February 27 through Saturday, March 5, 2011.

One work by each of the Fellows will be performed on March 2, 2011. Leading up to that, the Other Minds and Navitas Ensembles will workshop these compositions in open rehearsals. Fellows will also get to discuss their pieces in a public panel discussion as and take home panel and performance recordings. Their recordings will be uploaded to www.radiOM.org. Other perks include lots of contact with the Festival composers and a full Festival attendance pass.

Check out the full RFP here – and break a leg!

Originally posted by Polly Moller from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Nashville Symphony Celebrates Argentine Tango Master Astor Piazzolla 9/28 - Broadway World

Nashville Symphony Celebrates Argentine Tango Master Astor Piazzolla 9/28
Broadway World
Past releases include Joan Tower's Made in America, which received 3 GRAMMY® Awards in 2008; Michael Daugherty's Metropolis Symphony, released in 2009; ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's Project 440 Names 12 Finalists

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's Project 440 began with 60 composer candidates and will conclude with the selection of four Orpheus commission recipients who will be revealed in early October.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Gamelan By Heart

Ruby Fulton
It makes me wonder if rehearsing and performing are more like the same thing to a gamelan ensemble, as opposed to the Western model, where everything is meant to be performed perfectly in order to be deemed worthy of being put behind the display case in a museum fifty years later.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Flute and Percussion = Perfect Together

There was a time – somewhat long ago – when recitals by string players and pianists were the well-subscribed while others raised eyebrows. In the postmodern era, things have become somewhat more egalitarian, and one is likely to see all sorts of combinations gracing recital stages. Still, a duo of Metropolitan opera musicians – flutist Patricia Zuber and percussionist Greg Zuber – are making the case for a pairing that is still somewhat unusual to become a part of the chamber music mainstream.

The trick for those who are part of an unusual pairing is to find, commission, and, essentially, create a literature for themselves. The Zubers have done all three in preparing their program for a recital this Sunday at Symphony Space. They include a transcription of a Villa-Lobos piece by Greg Zuber, a 1996 work by Gareth Farr, and two commissions: by William Susman and Alejandro Viñao.

The pair gets a little help from two guest percussionists on the program’s finale, George Crumb’s An Idyll for the Misbegotten.

So, a flute and percussion program featuring both old and new, transcriptions, commissions, and special guests. What are some other unconventional groupings you’ve heard in recital that have worked well? What are some pairings you’d like to hear?

You can check out a teaser video of the Susman below.

Originally posted by Christian Carey from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Where are the classics on mufin.com? - The Guardian (blog)

The Guardian (blog)

Where are the classics on mufin.com?
The Guardian (blog)
... mainstream pop and some classical music. But it can't handle Helmut Lachenmann, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Richard Ayres, to take three random examples. ...

Critic's choice - Buenos Aires Herald

Buenos Aires Herald

Critic's choice
Buenos Aires Herald
This means they have enough experience in the field of chamber music and in the quest for their particular idea of sound. They have won many important ...

Jazz notes - The Press, York

Jazz notes
The Press, York
Track two, Aura, has a repetitive string figure which evokes Steve Reich's Different Trains. The polyrhythmic percussion, angular melody and staccato ...

Toronto 2010 | OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW - Indie Wire (blog)

Toronto 2010 | OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW
Indie Wire (blog)
Interestingly, Ligeti's music was a favorite of Stanley Kubrick (who used various Ligeti compositions in his own films) and here, Fiennes' camera has much ...

Yo-Yo, Chacona

Juan Arañés's "Un sarao de la chacona," from Villancicos y Danzas Criollas; Jordi Savall leading Hespèrion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya; Alia Vox 9834, also download. Tickets for the New Yorker Festival go on sale at noon today....

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

Music, community & file-sharing: from Napster to Ping

The launch of Ping, Apple’s new Facebook-meets-iTunes service, has once again underlined the somewhat novel idea that people want to chat and interact to a greater degree about the music they like. If it succeeds, it will be because people don’t just want access to music: they want to belong to a music community.

In making predictions, it’s wise to look to the past. The tendency towards community isn’t surprising to anybody who has watched file-sharing evolve over the past decade.

A (very) brief history of file-sharing

The first wave of file-sharing, Napster, was a lonely affair: users searched and downloaded music through the central hub with as much social interaction as a simple Google search - i.e. none. You downloaded from a computer - whether there was a person in front of it was irrelevant.

Napster, of course, gave way to decentralized file-sharing services like Gnutella, where users traded directly with each other, one at a time, with the option, but not the requirement, of communicating individually with their peers. Some chatted and formed links with those they swapped music with; some didn’t.

As legal obstacles paved the way for bit torrents, where users downloaded from many users simultaneously, the importance of community participation grew drastically. Sites relied on a) the comments of users to protect against “fake” versions of torrents and b) the good will of downloaders to upload their share after download is complete. In a non-participative community the site would be flooded by fake torrents while authentic torrents would be slow to download through lack of uploading.

At each step, the necessity of participating in a community of peers had grown and with this, the links and support within the community for a more file-sharing-friendly copyright system. This brings us to where we are now.

With the growth of upload services inspired by yousendit.com the trend amongst file-sharers was at first to have a discussion forum where specific media are requested and yousendit/etc. links posted by other members. This was the high water mark for community interaction in file-sharing in general.

These forums continue to be used for less mainstream types of music, but increasingly, a simple Google search that uses the form [album title] + [downloading service] can reveal pretty much anything currently popular, allowing the end user to bypass any kind of community. As availability has increased, the necessity for participation in a community has plummeted.

Also based around community is the “Fair Copyright” movement seen here in Canada. Some claimed that the movement was simply driven by “pirates” - or better yet, “radical extremists”, both terms that imply isolated individualism.

While the exact numbers aren’t available, there’s no doubt that some people involved in the movement were also products of a file-sharing community. But that’s the key word: “community”, not isolated individuals. People are, after all, more likely to fight for a community they belong to rather than a service they occasionally use. More so, file-sharers were used to participating in something - being part of a community, even online, is a skill that people need to develop.

Social movements like the “Fair Copyright” movement need a tight community to do the heavy lifting: to figure out tactics, organize events, send invites, etc. If file-sharing had evolved without placing a steadily-increasing emphasis on community, it’s doubtful that people from the file-sharing community would have participated so enthusiastically in the “Fair Copyright” movement.

The future

This is a crucial point for community: just as music buyers can choose to search for music as individuals through iTunes OR turn to Ping’s “community”, file-sharers can now either go through an anonymous search engine or a file-sharing “community”.

If Spotify proves to be the revolution some people claim it will be, and if it fuses both buyers and sharers, what effect will its Facebook functionality have in terms of creating communities? People’s choices, given those options, will tell us a lot about the value of community in their life.

Whether people are paying for their music or not, the conclusion is the same: If people obtain their music by bypassing communities or by simply not creating them, it would weaken the sense of cohesion that has helped in the creation of the “Fair Copyright” movement. This would be a step towards the “taming” of the internet, no doubt to the joy of copyright owners.

Matthew Hiscock is a music lifer, occasional journalist, record label manager and alumni of Concordia University’s School of Community and Public Affairs. You can hear his music here and read his interviews with “bass music” producers here.

Originally posted by Matthew Hiscock from Music Think Tank (primary) RSS, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)

A bloody, bloody interview with Alex Timbers '01 - Yale Daily News

A bloody, bloody interview with Alex Timbers '01
Yale Daily News
It was a very silly, deadpan dance piece that used the minimalist music of Steve Reich … to tell the story of math. It was completely impenetrable. ...

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Music of Southeast Asia: Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese

Sounds of the World - Music of Southeast Asia: Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese set of 3 cassettes released in 1986About Sounds of the WorldPublications in the Sounds of the World series consist of two elements: high-quality stereo cassettes containing narration, interviews, and music examples, and an accompanying illustrated teacher's guide with background information and suggestions for using these

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

An American is a complex of occasions...

Charles Olson reads 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]' (Mar 1966)

(Hat tip: Silliman's Blog)

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 10, 2010 at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)

Everybody can Wang Chung in Norwalk Saturday - Danbury News Times

Everybody can Wang Chung in Norwalk Saturday
Danbury News Times
On the title track, an experimental piece inspired by minimalist composer Steve Reich, Hues layered a reading of a poem by British comedian Rob Gee over a ...

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Album: Steve Reich, Double Sextet/2x5 (Nonesuch) - Independent

Album: Steve Reich, Double Sextet/2x5 (Nonesuch)
Independent
... a jerky vibrato effect, over which lines of guitar motifs are neatly stitched. Impressively performed, but not as heart-lifting as "Music for 18 Musicians".

Rayner: Under the spell of Montreal quintet Karkwa - Toronto Star

Rayner: Under the spell of Montreal quintet Karkwa
Toronto Star
... jazz studies at CEGEP and perhaps a bit too stuffed with ideas borrowed from everyone from Frank Zappa to James Brown to Steve Reich for its own good. ...

September 09, 2010

Tracing the metamorphoses - Bangkok Post

Bangkok Post

Tracing the metamorphoses
Bangkok Post
Here the Cuarteto Casals have created a compellingly programmed release of music that traces the transformations, or metamorphose, experienced by one of the ...

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
Accompanied by the pianist Jonathan Feldman, Mr. Morgenstern will perform music by Eugène Ysaÿe, Elliott Carter, Bright Sheng, Friedrich Kreisler, Gershwin, ...

SF/J, Björk, DJing

My 2004 profile of Björk — a personal favorite among articles I've written for The New Yorker, because Björk is one of the most purely, vitally creative people I've encountered — appears in Listen to This. Sasha Frere-Jones, who covers...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Pre-9/11 miscellany

New Yorkers who would prefer to mark September 11th with something other than gestures of political bombast or acts of cretinous desecration might venture out to Montclair, New Jersey, where the excellent and imaginative Peak Performances series is presenting Here...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

A Year in MP3s

A composer who devoted himself to making one piece of music each day for a year arrives at Day 365.

Originally posted by By R. LUKE DUBOIS from The Score, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Critic's Choice - Chicago Classical Review

Critic's Choice
Chicago Classical Review
Also heard will be Memoriale (…explosante-fixe…originel) by Pierre Boulez with Dai Fujikura's returning and ICE, also Chicago premieres. ...

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Could Foxes Give Pensioners Cancer?

The other day Miss Mussel had occasion to read the Toronto Sun, a redtop tabloid. After thumbing through pages of alarmist headlines, thoughtless opinion pieces and adverts for discount flat screen televisions, she was at a loss to remember even a line or two of thoughtful commentary or contextualized statistics.

The redtops are cousins to the great British tabloids like the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Mirror, who spin the news in a similar panicked vein. This is not to say that the broadsheets don’t have biases of their own but Miss Mussel rarely has the urge to yell ‘Calm the fuck down’ after reading The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star or their British counterparts. [Times, Telegraph, Guardian (most of the time)]

A fun game is to go the newsstand on a day that something of national importance has happened and see how the headlines describe the event. The tabloids go-to tropes are ’causes cancer,’ ‘is ripping you off’ and some variation of moral panic.

Yesterday, new Twitter follower @tomfoxon (join the club!) pointed to this hilarious Daily Mail Top Secret Editorial Formula laid out on a London Tube map.

mbiggen)

For further enjoyment, there’s the Daily Mail Automatic Headline Generator, which was used to generate this post’s headline (COULD THEY?) and The (New) Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project that keeps track of what will and won’t give you cancer. Helpful considering 6 months later the paper will often give opposite advice.

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Vibrant gathering of a star chamber - The Australian

Vibrant gathering of a star chamber
The Australian
His music is fresh, engaging and witty, Vine says, with a French influence that may recall Debussy, Satie, Dutilleux and lesser-known composers from the ...

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Concerto inferno - Time Out Chicago

Concerto inferno
Time Out Chicago
... Goose Island suds and opportunity to talk Radiohead or Boulez with the MusicNOW composers and performers. “[Former CSO music director] Sir Georg Solti ...

The Dying Breath of Summer

Sound Clip: The Dying Breath of Summer by Steven Brown

This collection of sounds represents my response to the Soundscape which surrounds our lives, the everyday sounds that all, in someway, define our perceptual, emotional, spiritual and psychological spaces. Almost all of the sounds contained within these recordings were captured whilst undertaking the ordinary, often tedious, repetitive everyday tasks and chores. The sort which we all carry out on most days. Some were recorded because they distracted me, others as sonic memories or as an effort towards audio ecology. None of these source recordings were rehearsed, set up (technically or artistically), or performed in any way. These pieces of processed sound were produced, on a rainy afternoon, as I tried to discover the hidden depths which lie behind the original source material. Unlike a more traditional musician, who often practices, notates and then performs his, or her, music any number of times in front of an audience, or in a recording studio, none of the work contained here has been documented. The original session files, track listings, processor and parameter settings were deleted immediately after recording. I will never be able, nor do I want to, recreate this work live, or in a studio, ever again. As such, these are recordings are brief flashes of my life which I revisited and momentarily responded to in a (physically and emotionally) different time and space with an almost total disregard to any technical competence which I posses.

More on this artist

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Music amid ruins

I found this curiously painterly photograph in the invaluable Archival Research Catalog of the National Archives. The caption reads: "Squad of American soldiers listening to one of their comrades playing the organ in the half-wrecked old church in Exermont, in...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Getting the Most Out of an Undergrad Education

By Dan Visconti
These comments are specifically aimed at those enrolling in colleges and universities, not because it is the only path available for a compositional education, but rather because the academic environment is often particularly confusing, full of distracting funhouse mirrors that tend to distort the problem of learning how to be a composer instead of illuminating it.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: A Cornucopia of Composition

By Ruby Fulton
Day three of the Gaudeamus Festival was even more music packed than the previous days, with three concerts in three different venues, and performances of eighteen pieces, including seven world premieres. Yowza!

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

History and The Power of Place

By Alexandra Gardner
I think that physical surroundings can play a huge role in one's work; it can create the sense that what you are doing somehow fits into an historical timeline, even if you can't quite see exactly how yet. It provides grounding, or a sense of belonging within the grand scheme of things.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

The End of Exceptionalism

In my pedantically wonkish way, I'm excited to be teaching my sonata-form classes with William E. Caplin's book Classical Form (Oxford, 1998), as I have been for several years now. For those who don't know it, Caplin went through the complete sonata-form works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and catalogued everything that happens in all of them - what theme the development starts with, what relative keys get referred to in the codas, and like that. I don't use the book as a textbook: even though Caplin's writing style is admirably clear, it's too dense and dependent on hundreds of examples, and to tell the truth, I've never yet gotten through the whole thing myself. Read four paragraphs and your eyes glaze over from the amount of detailed information you're trying to take in. (I once talked to someone at Oxford about how useful an undergrad-friendly version of the book would be, and she told me one was being contemplated.) But I've outlined chapters for my students as a kind of flowchart for what's possible in sonata form, and it's made it feasible to teach the subject honestly. I think when I was in school I was given some kind of "typical" sonata form chart (if indeed we ever paid any attention to any music before Webern, which I don't specifically recall doing), from which, of course, every sonata we ever looked at - deviated. But Caplin offers a descriptive plan rather than a prescriptive one. So yesterday in class we went through the outline, and then through movement 1 of Beethoven's Op. 2 No. 3 - and every move Beethoven made was one of the possibilities in the Caplin-based flow chart. One student, who had apparently gotten a whiff of the old prescriptive-style training, asked, "Can we look at a typical sonata first, one that follows all the rules?" And I said, "There's no such thing as a typical sonata. Might as well ask me to go out on the street and bring in a typical person." Instead of having to explain why every piece we listen to is an exception to most of the rules, I can teach the whole conception of sonata form as a range of possibilities and, better yet, meanings, some of which get chosen for identifiable logical or expressive reasons. It's nice to have one theoretical subject I can teach without making excuses for the lameness of the pedagogy. (Sometimes we look at Clementi, Dussek, and Hummel, too, and find some possibilities outside Caplin's range.)

I've told the wonderful story before about my late friend Jonathan Kramer who said to a class, "You've all probably been taught the fiction that there are three kinds of minor scale." Student: "If that's the fiction, what's the reality?" Jonathan: "There is no reality." But in sonata class, there's now a reality.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Machine Project @ Hammer Museum

.chriskallmyer.com>Chris Kallmyer]

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Jiri Belohlavek interview for the Last Night of the Proms - Telegraph.co.uk

Proms 2010: Jiri Belohlavek interview for the Last Night of the Proms
Telegraph.co.uk
Pierre Boulez didn't even try. This year, it's the turn of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor. Jiří Bělohlávek, who hails from the Czech Republic. ...

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Fall Preview of Arts: Classical Music - Explore Howard County

Fall Preview of Arts: Classical Music
Explore Howard County
4 concert spotlights works by Joan Tower, Chen Gang collaborating with He Zhanhao, and Gustav Holst. The celebrated chamber music series Sundays at Three ...

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Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

Renaissance man: Detroit artist Ben Hall uses variety of media for his art - Detroit Free Press

Renaissance man: Detroit artist Ben Hall uses variety of media for his art
Detroit Free Press
He also makes music as an avant-garde jazz drummer, and he sometimes makes sandwiches at the Russell Street Deli, the beloved Eastern Market landmark that ...

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Jiri Belohlavek interview for the Last Night of the Proms - Telegraph.co.uk

Jiri Belohlavek interview for the Last Night of the Proms
Telegraph.co.uk
Pierre Boulez didn't even try. This year, it's the turn of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor. Jiří Bělohlávek, who hails from the Czech Republic. ...

and more »

The Best New Music Website in Town - Sequenza21 (blog)

Sequenza21 (blog)

The Best New Music Website in Town
Sequenza21 (blog)
And that's not to mention some inside dope on composing from Steve Reich and a wonderful meditation on sound by Jeffrey Agrell, University of Iowa prof and ...

Composers going on and on in all different directions - Philadelphia Inquirer

Composers going on and on in all different directions
Philadelphia Inquirer
Though composers can be fiercely partisan, the first marathon brought together arch-minimalist Steve Reich, uber-serialist Milton Babbitt, ...

A wealth of talent: Classical music - Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

A wealth of talent: Classical music
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
IONSOUND PROJECT Bellefield Hall Auditorium, Oakland: "Music of Joan Tower" (Nov. 14). 412-624-4125 or 412-394-3353. MCKEESPORT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Art and Theater: New kids on the block party - Press Herald

Press Herald

Art and Theater: New kids on the block party
Press Herald
Portland Symphony Orchestra percussionists Nancy Smith and Richard Kelly will perform Clapping Music by minimalist composer Steve Reich. Clapping Music uses ...

Schopenhauer as Yoda

For more than a few folks, the following scene from The Empire Strikes Back approaches the sacred. Luke Skywalker’s crashed spaceship is sinking further into a swamp. Yoda asks him to move it to safety using the Force:

Luke: Master, moving stones around is one thing, but this is…totally different.

No different. Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.

Luke: Alright, I’ll give it a try.

Yoda: No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

(Luke fails to lift the X-wing)

Luke: I can’t. It’s too big.

Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not, for my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the force around you. Here. Between you. Me. The tree. The rock. Everywhere. Yes, even between the land and the ship.

That animism could really come from any number of influences. However, Eckart Goebbel points out that it’s eerily similar to a passage from Schopenhauer, who, filtered through Jung and then Joseph Campbell, was a huge influence on Lucas.

Schopenhauer is talking here about the recognition by the reader of the will which animates him. In brief, he’s saying that the will is so primal that it defies simple definition. It is a sheer force of nature:

…continued reflection will lead him to recognize the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even gravitation, which acts so powerfully in all matter, pulling the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun; all these he will recognize as different only in the phenomenon, but the same according to their inner nature…[The will] is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of nature…and the great difference between the two concerns only the degree of the manifestation, not the inner nature of what is manifested.

is could just be a random similarity in language. Both Schopenhauer and Yoda make their points with a poetic litany of objects, but both mention plants and rocks. Both use the word ‘force’ a lot.

However, Eckart really seals the deal by displaying portraits of Schopenhauer and Yoda side by side.

As Yoda would say, “So certain are you” that it’s still just a coincidence? Who knows. Maybe Lucas was reading The World as Will and Representation when he was writing the screenplay.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 04:58 AM | Comments (0)

Wednesday Links

Things are crazy busy around here, so although there is much write about and respond to, the world will have to keep turning without Miss Mussel’s two cents. A pity, she is sure.

OM busyness does not preclude you, dear reader, from stirring things up with your own thoughts.

Here are a few starting points:

6 weeks ago the UK Border Agency changed the immigration rules again. One of the consequences of this foolishness is an immediate uninvite to Miss Mussel’s birthday party. Another is that is it is now more difficult for artists to get visas for concerts on, as the Awl lovingly styles it, Knifecrime Island. Lyn Gardner prefers Fortress Britain.

Globe & Mail critic Robert Everett-Green has a nice piece about high male voices in popular music.

More on the Beyoncé/Turnage/Single Ladies brouhaha at The New Music Box.

French artist Anastasia Elias’ paper tube miniatures are one of those delightful slices of unexpected beauty.

Does music sound different in the dark? In Miss Mussel’s experience darkness is often improving – particularly for contemporary music.

A taste of home - see what soldiers from around the world have in the Afghanistan ration kits.

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Best New Music Website in Town

If you haven’t checked out Chamber Musician Today, the latest, greatest (and only) new addition to the Sequenza21 family, you’re missing some really good stuff. Some very talented people have signed up already and have added their blogs to the daily content flow and it’s starting to look like a web community for musicians and composers with real potential. If you were to run over there right now, for example, you could read a report from the Native American Composers Apprentice Project in Moab, Utah from Ralph Farris, violist of the terrific contemporary string quartet Ethel or a post by Matt Albert of eighth blackbird about how we all know the Italian words but just how loud is loud anyway? You could check out cellist Emily Wright piece about things that can, and do, go wrong during auditions or Chris Foley’s definitive post on how to build and maintain a repertoire list. For the more spiritually minded, there is a a piece by violinist Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi on how the world needs more conductors with bigger souls and less hair and a meditation of the hidden meaning of the low “A” by oboist Alison Lowell. And that’s not to mention some inside dope on composing from Steve Reich and a wonderful meditation on sound by Jeffrey Agrell, University of Iowa prof and horn man extraordinaire.

Come on over, sign up (the green box at the top of the right sidebar), comment, post something, review a CD, add your blog. It’s fairly straightforward but the “Help” section is helpful and if you need extra attention, send me an e-mail.

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

Martin Matalon at the BBC Proms and NOISE in Chihuahua, Mexico

Hay chihuahuas!

Perhaps I missed it if Rodney Lister posted about this, but fun spectral work, Lignes de fuite by Martin Matalon, heard at the Proms last Thursday, Sept. 2. You have approximately 19 hours left to listen to it free online here. I don’t hear anything earth-shattering, but it’s well written with lots of electronic-music-like sonorities and a good sense of forward motion.

For anyone online tonight, check out San Diego New Music’s resident ensemble, NOISE, performing in Chihuahua this evening at 8 pm Mountain Standard Time. You can watch it live here. They will perform works by Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Christopher Burns, Matthew Burtner, Christopher Adler, Ignacio Baca-Lobera and Mark Menzies.

Originally posted by Christian Hertzog from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 9, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2010

Mason Bates Brings Electronica to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Chicagomag.com

Chicagomag.com

Mason Bates Brings Electronica to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicagomag.com
... snippets in ways that suggest Steve Reich. Music from Underground Spaces uses earthquake recordings to transport listeners inside tectonic plates. ...

and more »

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Getting the Grand Tour

By Ruby Fulton
It's cool that there are so many venues involved in the festival, inviting listeners to explore lots of different parts of the city.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

For Want Of A Nail

By Colin Holter
Mark-Anthony Turnage must really have liked "Single Ladies", because he sure as hell put a ring on it with his recent BBC Proms premiere of Hammered Out; anyone who tells you otherwise, including the composer, is being either deliberately deceptive or frighteningly naïve.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Complexity Wars

The Complexity Wars flared up again this summer—that seemingly annual outbreak of the opinion that various types of atonal modernism are just too complicated for proper musical consumption.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

This is not a guillotine.

A list I subscribe to recently had a small item about Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (1957), which is not exactly the kind of thing I write about here. Dialogues may well be the most-performed opera of the second half of the 20th century. It's a lush piece, requires limited stage resources, has forgiving vocal writing and is not overly long. But it's not really a work which pushes any boundaries.

But this item did mention an interesting feature in the work: two players from the percussion section are assigned the responsibility for the sound of the (off-stage) guillotine, "one producing a crescendo-glissando with a metal object on the edge of a tam-tam(laid flat in order to create a dry scraping sound) as a grace-note to a hammer-stroke on a large wooden box produced by the other player."

This happens to be a superb illustration of musical representation: Poulenc, writing in 1957, could well have used a recording of real guillotine, or even positioned a real guillotine offstage and have it slice through something head-like (a ham, or perhaps a melon?) for each decapitation in the score, that is to say, treated it like a film or stage sound effect (in film, this would probably be assigned to a sound effects artist, possibly a foley artist, although, not being produced by visible hands or feet, it is not, technically, a foley effect). But Poulenc decided to treat it as a musical representation, timed to the score, produced by percussionists in the pit, and with not only a technical description of the sound production but a precise musical description of the sounds required and their placement in musical time.

This sound in Dialogues is thus something that the listener will immediate identify within the narrative as a guillotine, but it is also more than that as the noises being tightly integrated into a rhythmic and tonal context. It is even possible to imagine the same striking sound occurring in different works of music, completely divorced from its representative function. This is, of course, typical of the history of the European orchestral franchise as, for example, horns and trumpets and trombones gradually became members of the ensemble, initially representing functional sounds, associated, respectively, with the hunt, battle, and the church tower, yet eventually being integrated into the ensemble for more strictly and abstractly musical functions. Aside from occasional visits by instruments like the saxophone (an instrument carrying its own associations), the last two centuries in the history of orchestration have featured the gradual addition of possible percussion instruments, often introduced first in the opera, typically first through either such literal representations of diegetic sounds or the invocation of the exotic.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Some people work for a living, some people work for fun

After too long a delay, I'm back with more rambling over at NewMusicBox. This is what happens when I get told I can't like what I like one too many times.

Also, some Boston Globe catch-up:

Some CD reviews: part one (scroll down), part two.
Reviewing Garrick Ohlsson.
Reviewing the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The book is nearing an end. But I could use some help on something. I was writing up my bit on Landsberg 6—the sketchbook that contains the first inklings of Beethoven's Fifth. Now, there isn't much, if anything, left to say about Landsberg 6, which musicologists have pretty well picked over since Nottebohm first wrote about it back in 1880. But, my brain being what it is, I ended up spending all of yesterday banging my head against the wall over the paucity of information on the sketchbook's namesake, Ludwig Landsberg. Born in Breslau (in 1804, 1805, or 1807, depending on who you believe), a tenor in the Berlin Opera chorus, also a violinist, he ended up living in Rome for twenty-some years, hosting soirees and promoting German music (most scholarly mentions surround one such salon at which the guest of honor was Fanny Mendelssohn). But he also owned a trove of manuscripts—not only Beethoven, but also Schubert, and Chopin, and scads of early music. My question: where did he get the money to amass that collection? Sure, manuscripts were cheaper back then, but they weren't free, and Landsberg's collecting was on a scale I would not expect on an expat violinist's salary. Was he well-connected? Did he have family money? (Apparently his brother back in Breslau was a banker, according to Thayer, who didn't bother mentioning his brother's first name.) My spidey sense is going crazy thinking that there has to be something more interesting going on with Landsberg that indicated in his Grove blurb, but every lead hits a brick wall.

Originally from Soho the Dog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

Dancin' Feats - Windy City Times

Dancin' Feats
Windy City Times
Also included in this program are Marimba ( 1976 ) , with music from Steve Reich, and the recent work Coltrane's Favorite Things ( 2010 ) . ...

and more »

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Tour Continues October 1 - PR-CANADA.net (press release)

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Tour Continues October 1
PR-CANADA.net (press release)
And in the process of developing all this music and these instruments and discovering what they can do and what they are good at, I learned so much. ...

Metternich's descendant brings open-air music venues to Austria. How ironic - Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

Metternich's descendant brings open-air music venues to Austria. How ironic
Telegraph.co.uk (blog)
But to my ears it connected more specifically with the 1960s avant-garde and the school of writing that figures of that era like Gyorgy Ligeti called ...

Italian jazz pianist to perform in Hanoi - Nhan Dan

Nhan Dan

Italian jazz pianist to perform in Hanoi
Nhan Dan
He has also collaborated with artists such as Giovanni Sollima, Markus Stockhausen, Taketo Gohara, Yukimi Nagano and Andrea Bocelli. ...

and more »

Proms 2010: Prom 71 / Orchestre National de France, review - Telegraph.co.uk

Proms 2010: Prom 71 / Orchestre National de France, review
Telegraph.co.uk
The contrast with a conductor like Boulez, who makes the faune seem always on the move, was striking. In the 3rd movement of La Mer Gatti took the reprise ...

and more »

Fall Preview: New York's classical music scene gets reflective - Capital New York

Capital New York

Fall Preview: New York's classical music scene gets reflective
Capital New York
It is a season that classical music programmers have decided is a time for reflection. Lincoln Center is starting what it says will be an annual fall event, ...

Erring on the Side of the Angels

At the end of his recent blogged series, The Anosognosic’s Dilemma, Errol Morris quotes Noam Chomsky on the limits of human cognition:

“We are after all biological organisms not angels . . . If humans are part of the natural world, not supernatural beings, then human intelligence has its scope and limits, determined by initial design. We can thus anticipate certain questions will not fall within [our] cognitive reach, just as rats are unable to run mazes with numerical properties, lacking the appropriate concepts. Such questions, we might call ‘mysteries-for-humans’ just as some questions pose ‘mysteries-for-rats.’ Among these mysteries may be questions we raise, and others we do not know how to formulate properly or at all.”

It strikes me that musical experiment, the radical music, is always going to tease out such questions, such mysteries, sometimes with success but often courting failure (i.e. music which doesn't "work" or makes no "sense"). In doing so, particularly in accepting the possibility of failure, experimental music distinguishes itself from conventional music-making which more safely plans its effects and affects, using known materials and methods. Yet, more than that, the radical music errs, when it errs, — and err it does — on the side of the optimistic assumption that the extents and limits of our human musical perception and cognition are just a little bit closer to those of the angels.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

Fall Preview: New York's classical music scene gets reflective - Capital New York

Capital New York

Fall Preview: New York's classical music scene gets reflective
Capital New York
Mozart concertos, topped off with the world premiere of a new work by Wolfgang Rihm. If anyone can make such a program make effortless sense, ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

It can be hard for Kennedy Center or Library of Congress to give away awards - Washington Post

Washington Post

It can be hard for Kennedy Center or Library of Congress to give away awards
Washington Post
... music. Among living artists, he would propose Fats Domino, Little Richard, Johnny Mandel, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Gunther Schuller, Elliott Carter, ...

and more »

The first among sequels - Herald Scotland

Le Pays où tout est permis – PDF

The first among sequels
Herald Scotland
... and electric guitarist Chris Day perform music by American minimalist Steve Reich and the new festival's first commission, from composer Peter Nelson. ...

More Proms–Olivero, Schnelzer, Sørensen

Apart from the usual nightly or more Proms concerts that happen in the Albert Hall, there were two subsidiary series which the BBC presented under the auspices of the Proms at Cadogan Hall in Sloane Square, a chamber music series on Monday afternoons and a Saturday Matinee series. The installment of the latter which happened on the 21st of August was presented by I Fagiolini (an early music vocal ensemble whose director is Robert Hollingworth) and the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, with Lawrence Power, violist, and Ian Watson, accordion player, as soloists. The very interesting program paired pieces of early music with modern pieces which were either based on that piece or somehow or other associated with it. After a performance of Flow My Tears by Dowland (which is the version of his Lachrymae tune with words), Power and the Britten Sinfonia played Lacrymae by Britten. Even though the title suggest a connection with the Dowland tune in question, the Britten piece is actually meditative variations on another Dowland song, Can She Excuse (presumably Britten thought Lacrhrymae was a better, more evocative title). After I Fagiolini sang Tristis est anima mea and Moro, lasso, al mio duio by Don Carlo Gesualdo, the Britten Sinfonia played Carlo by Brett Dean. Carlo is a sort of memorial to October 26, 1590, which was the night on which Gesualdo’s unfaithful first wife and her lover were murdered, either, according to legend, by Gesualdo himself, or, at least, certainly at his instigation. It begins with a recording of Moro, lasso, which begins to expand as the orchestra enters, by the addition of bits of other Gesualdo madrigals. Over the course of the intensely dramatic piece, the orchestral music, which is more “modern” and impassioned, completely engulfs the tape of the actual vocal music by Gesualdo.

Betty Olivero began the work which became Neharo’t Neharo’t during the fierce war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon during the summer of 2006. Moved by the television images of victims, corpses, and mourners on both sides, she wrote a piece which was about laments and mourning. Her work uses the work of professional mourners in various Mediterranean countries, both recorded and transcribed for the instruments, along with music derived from Monteverdi’s Madrigals of Love and War and Orfeo’s lament from Orfeo. The earlier part of the piece involves impassioned, florid melismas exchanged between the viola and accordion soloists, accompanied by two string orchestras, building up, both in texture and volume, to the climax of the piece, which is the moment at which the actual recordings of the mourners are introduced. From that point the work unwinds its intensity. Olivero, in her use of the soloist in contrast to the orchestras, represents the relationship between the individual and the group to which he/she belongs. As the music recedes from the climax, occasional soloists from the orchestra detach themselves from the orchestra portraying the more personalized experience of other individuals in the collective. Neharo’t Neharo’t means Rivers Rivers in Hebrew, evoking rivers of blood and tears that are shed by mourning women in disastrous situations; however Olivero also intended to imply hope, since the root of the Hebrew word ‘nahar’(river) resembles the word ‘nehara’, meaning ‘ray of light.’ The rapturous intensity of Neharo’t Neharo’t was matched by that of the performance, particularly from the soloists, Powers and Watson. It was preceded on the concert by Lamento della ninfa and the end of Act Two of Orfeo by Monteverdi.

On August 23, The Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard, gave the first UK performance of their compatriot Albert Schnelzer’s A Freak in Burbank, a tribute to the American director Tim Burton. While composing his work, Schnelzer was reading a biography of Burton; he tried to imagine and evoke Burton’s life in “the pastel-colored suburb” of Burbank,California, where Burton grew up, and to suggest the loneliness and sorrow as well as the manic, moderately destructive playfulness which he felt sure must have characterized Burton’s childhood. The other influence on the work was Haydn, and it in fact has the general outline of the first movement of a Haydn Symphony, beginning with slow music–or at least long notes, initiated by somewhat grotesque flurries of notes and sporadic short twitches, predicting the speed of the fast music that follows. The rollicking fast music is eventually interrupted by plaintive slower music, shimmering with hints of the fast tempo, which morphs into the introduction and is elided with the recapitulation. The climax of the work, almost at its very end, momentarily combines both the musics before ending with a bang. The language of the piece is neo-classical and tonal. Dausgaard and the orchestra performed it with energy and humor, and with obvious enjoyment.

On August 25, Leif Ove Andsnes and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra gave the UK Premiere of La mattina (Piano Concerto No. 2) by Bent Sørensen. There were several sources which suggested elements of the work: After a performance by Andsnes of the Mozart 17th Piano Concert in Vienna, he and Sørensen went to a piano-bar where late at night Andsnes played a Busoni transcription of a Bach Chorale Prelude. Sørensen described the music as being ‘something from the abyss that floats upwards and in the end became a halo over our heads,’ and that experience provided the germ of the idea for the scenario as well as the character of the music of the work. The first of the work’s five movements begin with dark hued, quietly slow moving music low in the piano which is in the manner of the Bach-Busoni Chorale Prelude. It is surrounded, shadowed, if you like, by wisps of music in the orchestra, played at the very edge of inaudibility, which gradually becomes more present, leading without a break into the luminous, high scurrying music of the second movement, which enfolds the piano, playing fragments of music, whose occasional breaks leave shimmering motionless remnants of the orchestra’s music. The increasing intensity of the music leads first to a flurry of guitar-like pizzicatos, and soon after to the sound of claves, played by members of the orchestra. The slow third movement expands the register and enriches the range of timbre of the orchestra, even as musical argument intensifies, followed by a claves-accompanied cadenza. The more tentative fourth movement, where the piano plays in alternation with the orchestra, portraying a sort of sunrise, leads to the vigorous Presto finale, whose music and texture are radiantly Mozartian, which eventually spirals up into oblivion. The most immediately striking aspect of this work, as is the case with all of Bent Sørensen’s music that I have heard, is the delicately and carefully, one might well say ‘exquisitely,’ heard sound of it, which is instantly arresting. The subtle and compelling construction and argument of the work becomes clearer over its progress from beginning to end. Andsnes and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, who had played brilliantly the other works on the concert, by Mozart (Haffner Symphony and C minor Piano Concerto) and Greig (Holberg Suite), without a conductor (and, in the Grieg, by memory), were conducted in the Sørensen by Per Kristian Skalstad. That performance was enthralling.

Originally posted by Rodney Lister from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 8, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

A composer for all seasons - Irish Times

Irish Times

A composer for all seasons
Irish Times
He heard the music that was making waves in the West, by Stockhausen and Boulez, and the Italian composer Luigi Nono. Nono, who was a communist, ...

and more »

Science and the deaf percussionist - Irish Times

Irish Times

Science and the deaf percussionist
Irish Times
She is hoping to work with Steve Reich and tours extensively, performing over 100 concerts a year. Recently she worked with children in Cumbria, ...

September 07, 2010

Sophie Podolski: 'Le pays où tout est permis'

I first heard of Sophie Podolski's book when I was about twenty pages into 'The Savage Detectives', a novel by Roberto Bolaño. A teenage would-be poet recounts his memorable first glimpse of the 'Visceral Realists':

"Then I saw their faces emerge from the smoke. It was Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano."

The first thing we learn about the ringleaders of this early-70s Mexican avant-garde movement are the books they read:

"The books Arturo Belano was carrying were: Le parfait criminel, by Alain Jouffroy, Le Pays où tout est permis, by Sophie Podolski (and) Cent mille milliards de poèmes, by Raymond Queneau."

Several days later the narrator has been accepted into the group:

"We talked about poetry. No one has read any of my poems, and yet they all treat me like one of them! ... I asked where I could buy the books they'd had with them the other night. The answer came as no surprise: they steal them from the Librería Francesa in the Zona Rosa and from the Librería Baudelaire on Calle General Martínez ... I also asked about the authors, and one after another (what one Visceral Realist reads is soon read by the rest of the group) they filled me in on the life and works of the Electrics (and) Raymond Queneau, Sophie Podolski and Alain Jouffroy ... "

In a story translated as 'Vagabond in France and Belgium' (in the collection 'Last Evenings on Earth'), Roberto Bolaño writes about what appears to be his younger self – 'B.' – in the third person, present tense. In Paris in the early 70s he wanders into a secondhand bookshop:

"B. discovers an old copy of the magazine 'Luna Park', number 2, a special issue on writing and graphics, with texts or drawings (the texts are drawings and vice versa) by Roberto Altmann, Fréderic Baal, Roland Barthes, Jacques Calonne, Carlfriedrich Claus, Mirtha Dermisache, Christian Dotrement, Pierre Guyotat, Brion Gysin, Henri Lefebvre and Sophie Podolski."

B. is obviously a connoisseur of experimental writing:

"Sophie Podolski was a poet whom he and his friend L. admired (adored even) back in Mexico, when they were little more than twenty years old."

In fact he recognizes all the contributors but one (oddly enough, the philosopher Henri Lefebvre – but as we soon find out, this is a different Lefebvre, a forgotten Belgian poet who died in 1973, a suicide.)

In Roberto Bolaño's story 'Dance Card' (in the same collection) we read:

"Once upon a time there was a Belgian poet called Sophie Podolski. She was born in 1953 and committed suicide in 1974. She published only one book, called Le Pays où tout est permis (The Country Where Everything is Allowed, Montfaucon Research Center, 1973, 280 facsimile pages)."

And in Bolaño's first novel 'Anvers', written in the mid-70s but only published posthumously (like much of his work) in 2010:

' ... and in the news Sophie Podolski is kaput in Belgium, the girl from the Montfaucon Research Center ... '

and later:

'The hell to come ... Sophie Podolski killed herself years ago ... She would've been twenty-seven now, like me ... a Belgian girl who wrote like a star ... '

A good portion of 'The Savage Detectives' is about poets who die young. Several pages after the first mention of Sophie Podolski, the poetess María Font tells the young hero that her sister Angelíca won the Laura Damián poetry prize at the age of sixteen:

"I asked who Laura Damián had been. Maria said:

'A poet who died young.'

'I already knew that. When she was twenty. But who was she? Why haven't I read anything by her?'

'Have you ever read Lautréamont, García Madero?' said María.

'No.'

'Well, then, it's no surprise that you've never heard of Laura Damían.'

'I'm sorry. I know I'm ignorant.'

'That's not what I said. All I meant was that you're very young. Anyway, Laura's only book, La Fuente de las musas, was privately published. It was a posthumous book subsidized by her parents, who loved her very much and were her first readers.' "

And so it goes in "The Savage Detectives", and in all of Bolaño's works – the writer is a detective, tracking down marginal writers whose vanishing was barely noticed and is never quite cleared up. Henri Lefebvre (a real name given a fictitious biography) – Laura Damían (as far as I can tell, both the name and the career are fictional) – and Sophie Podolski. She is real. She was, indeed, born in 1953 and died (a suicide) in 1974. She published one book. She appeared in Marc Dachy's journal Luna Park and in the somewhat better-known Tel Quel (No. 53, Spring 1973; No. 55, Autumn 1973; No. 74, Winter 1977.)

The Montfaucon Research Center is also real – the frontispiece of Podolski's book lists its accomplishments: two films by Joëlle de la Casinière and Carlos Ferraud and three books, 'Projets 69' by Alberto Tavares, 'The Yellow Book', by Olympia Hruska and 'Le Pays où tout est permis' by Sophie Podolski.

There is a very short Wikipedia entry for Sophie Podolski. If you read French, there is much more information at this web site on Philippe Sollers, the grand mandarin of French experimental letters and onetime editor of Tel Quel (Sollers also wrote the introduction to Podolski's book.)

Shortly after reading Bolaño, I found a copy of Sophie Podolski's book in a secondhand store. While very much of its time, Sophie Podolski's writing is funny, brave and slightly cuckoo. It is unparagraphed and refuses to cohere – she wrote in longhand and the text is forever teetering on the edge of meaning, dissolving into obsessive doodling and semi-visionary pictures. Certainly, drugs were behind much of what she wrote. It would be easy to dismiss the book as a period piece, as demented scribblings in quest of a utopia that we later-living know doesn't exist.

In the 'Dictionnaire littéraire des femmes de langue française', Françoise Collin writes:

" ... this insolent aimlessness that one might want to reduce to the destructive effect of drugs or madness, is more correctly seen as obstinate resistance to destruction ... where 'health' in the Nietzschian sense battles sickness. (Podolski's) writing emerges from the empty page, from the void, as a force, as a triumph over material existence ... incessantly on guard against the muteness of death ... Drugs, often mentioned, are not a force for escape. She isn't on the prowl for new experiences or fascinating hallucinations, like a prudent intellectual testing her limits: drugs are simply her daily bread and for wrong or for right, bring her closer to reality."

People take drugs for various reasons – after 30 years of the 'War on Drugs' and multinational capitalism, the idea of drugs as a visionary and liberating tool may seem quaint. Or even reprehensible. After all, the young woman killed herself. But neither you or I know why. All we have are her words. And while I wish that Sophie Podolski (and any number of my own friends) were still alive, I can't help but feel that in some way they were lucky to have lived in and left this world when it was still possible to disappear, to keep secrets, to drift away.

Like the character Soto in Bolaño's novel 'Distant Star', I tried (unsuccessfully!) to translate 'Le Pays où tout est permis' from the French. However if you can read French (or just want to look at the pictures), I have scanned the book for anyone who is interested. (It is out of print; as far as I know it has never been reprinted.)

Originally from Avant que j'oublie, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Tour Continues October 1 - Marketwire (press release)

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Tour Continues October 1
Marketwire (press release)
And in the process of developing all this music and these instruments and discovering what they can do and what they are good at, I learned so much. ...

and more »

My Beethoven moment - The Guardian

My Beethoven moment
The Guardian
It sounds like Ligeti crossed with Nancarrow." It turned out to be Schumann. Were I to be facing a lifetime of this, I would be in despair. ...

Ligeti's It - Baltimore City Paper

Baltimore City Paper

Ligeti's It
Baltimore City Paper
Certain pieces are so otherworldly that director Stanley Kubrick famously used Ligeti's music to telegraph alien intelligence and yawning dread in his 2001: ...

and more »

Pierre Boulez & Cleveland Orchestra Release Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon - Broadway World

Pierre Boulez & Cleveland Orchestra Release Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon
Broadway World
The work seems to point in the direction of early-Schoenberg, but remains inconclusive as to what music Mahler would have written should he had lived longer ...

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Reporting Live

Composer Ruby Fulton, whose orchestral piece Road Ranger Cowboy has been nominated for the 2010 Gaudeamus Prize, is currently live in Amsterdam and will be filing reports of the ongoing festivities throughout the week.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Outdoor Music, Part 2

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
How can we make compelling visual choices that, when faced with curating live elements, direct the attention of the listener to see, and therefore hear, more musically, deeply and more organically?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Experience vs. Objects

By David Smooke
Each concert that you attend might be that transcendent experience that remains with you for the rest of your life. And scientists confirm that your money will be well spent.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Sounds Heard: One Ring Zero—Planets

Planets, the latest release from Brooklyn lit rockers One Ring Zero, proves itself to be made up of lovely, carefully crafted music that dips into a whole mess of genre styles and timbral possibilities.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Numusic festival hits Stavanger - Resident Advisor

Numusic festival hits Stavanger
Resident Advisor
On the krautrock tip, the music of Neu! will be performed by former band member Michael Rother and a group that includes Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. ...

NPR has 14 streams of new albums - Salt Lake Tribune (blog)

NPR has 14 streams of new albums
Salt Lake Tribune (blog)
Steve Reich: Double Sextet and 2x5 feature the first recordings of the composer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet. Mavis Staples: The gospel legend ...

and more »

MORTON SUBOTNICK: Vol. 2: Electronic Works in Surround (2004) - Audiophile Audition

Artslink.co.za News (press release)

MORTON SUBOTNICK: Vol. 2: Electronic Works in Surround (2004)
Audiophile Audition
They were both important personalities in the San Francisco avant scene, which eventually encompassed such artists as Terry Riley, Steve Reich, ...

and more »

Muti and much more on tap for an exciting Chicago music season - Chicago Classical Review

Muti and much more on tap for an exciting Chicago music season
Chicago Classical Review
1 and works of Boulez and Dai Fujikura. Be sure to grab a seat on the bus for Accessible Contemporary Music's Sept. 18 season opener. ...

and more »

Hear Steve Reich's "Double Sextet / 2x5" in Its Entirety as NPR First Listen - Nonesuch Records (blog)

Hear Steve Reich's "Double Sextet / 2x5" in Its Entirety as NPR First Listen
Nonesuch Records (blog)
Next Tuesday's release date is a full one, as NPR notes, and the Reich album is the only contemporary classical album among those "handpicked" by NPR music ...

A few cool things about the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival - C-Ville Weekly

A few cool things about the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival
C-Ville Weekly
On September 16 a Jefferson Theater concert will feature a performance of Steve Reich's "New York Counterpoint." Reich is also one of the major composers of ...

Glorious Covers, Known and Obscure - Santa Barbara Independent

Glorious Covers, Known and Obscure
Santa Barbara Independent
6,” by the great American composer Conlon Nancarrow. Astonishingly yet logically, Moran has turned the simple, lilting theme into ripe jazz treatment ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

'Occupation freezes musical life too' - Ynetnews

'Occupation freezes musical life too'
Ynetnews
At the Jerusalem festival he plans to perform an Israeli debut of two musical works by composer Pierre Boulez. "The festival is celebrating its bar mitzvah ...

Symphony at 100 ... minus one - San Francisco Examiner

Symphony at 100 ... minus one
San Francisco Examiner
The others are 94-year-old Henri Dutilleux's “Tout un monde lointain,” György Kurtág's “Grabstein für Stephan,” Christopher Rouse's “The Infernal Machine,” ...

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What is counterpoint?

Stéphane Delplace gives a wonderfully clear answer:

This is also a great way to film a piano. Via Roger Evans.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

PSO extends concert with Slatkin - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

PSO extends concert with Slatkin
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
He is an ardent advocate for American music, which complements music director Manfred Honeck's programs. Slatkin will conduct three pieces by Joan Tower ...

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Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Arp - The Soft Wave - musicOMH.com

musicOMH.com

Arp - The Soft Wave
musicOMH.com
Catch Wave is a real sonic indulgence, while the light, trancey melodies of Alfa (Dusted) suggest something of an out take from Steve Reich's Electric ...

Hundreds attend Labor Day Parade in South Plainfield - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

Hundreds attend Labor Day Parade in South Plainfield
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com
Enlarge Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger The crowd in entertained by a trick car during the 53rd annual Labor Day parade held in South Plainfield. ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 7, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2010

Attention, Adventurous Programmers…

Chamber Music America and ASCAP team up each year to present awards for Adventurous Programming to honor U.S.-based professional ensembles, presenters, and festivals that have “…demonstrated a commitment to contemporary chamber music through adventurous, distinctive programming.”

Ensembles (contemporary, mixed repertory, and Jazz) and presenting organizations (contemporary, mixed genre, and jazz) are considered. The awards will be presented during the next CMA National Conference in New York City, January 13-16, 2011. Each recipient will receive a $500 award and a plaque.

This year’s deadline is October 1, 2010. (This is an in-office deadline, not a postmark date). For more information and to download the program guidelines, application and FAQs, visit the CMA website .

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

How Music Sounds to Children

I hadn't listened to Schubert's Fifth Symphony in far too long, and I did today. I have a special relationship with that piece - or rather, it has one with me. It was one of the pieces I heard on recording from my first weeks out of the womb. I knew how it went before I could talk. And whenever I play it, I'm transported into feeling like I'm a child hearing music again, as something magical and captivating that I can't figure out. It links me to a preverbal relationship with music, and reminds me, in a way unlike any other work, of how music must sound to people who can't read it. There are other works that I was familiar with as early, such as Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto and his D Major Piano Sonata K. 576, but those I've analyzed many times with classes, and the spell has been broken. I have intentionally never cracked a score to Schubert's Fifth. I can't quite picture how it's notated - I could figure it out, but don't want to. There are even syncopations in the first movement where I'm not sure where the downbeat is. I hear that flute obligato joining the main theme and I'm instantly in another world, safe and secure, and nothing bad has ever happened. It's an almost entirely right-brain experience (though there are still passages where I can't keep the phrase "flat submediant" from leaping into my left brain). Someday before I die I want to open a score of the Schubert Fifth and break the spell, but I'm in no hurry. I feel like something about still having that experience intact helps keep me honest in my own composing.

I think the pieces my son must have that relationship with are John Adams's Grand Pianola Music and Steve Reich's Octet. (And incidentally, my son's band Liturgy is opening their European tour in Oslo tonight.)

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

A Couple of Complaints

I'm not a critic anymore, and don't want to be one. But I am bothered by a couple of things lately, and hope that a word to the wise won't be resented. (Like anything I say ever goes unresented by a lot of people.) I will, at least, refuse to specify what music I'm talking about.

There is, in general, a problem with postminimalist opera. I keep hearing new operas that, to my ears, all keep making the same mistake. Namely: it sounds like the composer writes the instrumental accompaniment first, and then lays the vocal line over it. The vocal lines, draped on as an afterthought in this way, lack memorability. They tend to be shapeless, often even fragmentary. They seem to follow the harmony, rather than the harmony illuminating the vocal line. I feel that the purpose of an opera, or any piece of music with a text that needs to be understood, is to amplify the words and vastly increase their power, make them vivid. To that end, in every text piece I've written, even theater works like Custer and Sitting Bull and Cinderella's Bad Magic, I've said and sung the words over and over again first, to find a way of delivering each line rhythmically and melodically that seems passionately meant. And then I go back and fashion the accompaniment rhythms around those rhythms, and the harmonic changes to emphasize the right points in the speech. I invariably change the meter to fit the words, I never squeeze the words into a set meter. I try to make the total music a faithful amplification of the words. And I think, and have received some anecdotal evidence, that sentences in my operas are made memorable by their musical setting. I'm saddened, though, that composers whose music I generally love are writing so many operas in which the voices seem more like a distraction than a focus, because the accompaniment was written independently and with its own logic. Postminimalism has turned this into a habit.

Secondly: I think young composers should look around for other composers besides John Coolidge Adams to base their styles on. Not that there's anything wrong with Adams's style, he's as good a place to start as any. But I get CDs from composers in their 20s and 30s, all very talented, very accomplished - most of them sounding like they're trying to be the next John Adams. Then I get asked for recommendations, and I can't make distinctions among them, because one's as good an Adams imitator as the next. Of course, a lot of them are far more successful than I am, and shouldn't take any advice from me. But I will hint that I'm waiting to give my best recommendations to someone who breaks away from the pack and sounds unlike John Adams - even if it's to sound like Feldman or Nancarrow or somebody. No offense intended. Enough said?

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child - Movie Looks at an Artist's Life - CultureMob (blog)

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child - Movie Looks at an Artist's Life
CultureMob (blog)
The energy of his work in contrast to Minimalism had to have been like going from Steve Reich to the Sex Pistols. By the mid 80's Basquiat was showing in ...

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Rattle - Financial Times

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Rattle
Financial Times
And by drawing from the Berliners such richly coloured and animated playing, poles apart from the analytical Boulez style, he made his early 20th-century ...

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For the Birds - Absolutearts.com

For the Birds
Absolutearts.com
The artworks in the exhibition look at songs and music as a social phenomenon – particularly in relation to its manipulative, participatory, and activating ...

How loud is loud?

At Music10 this past June, one of the conversations that seemed to keep going from day to day and among many different groups of people was a discussion about the meaning of dynamics. We may know what the Italian words forte and piano technically mean, but how do performers interpret them on their instruments? How can composers use them to communicate their intentions most clearly? Today a composer friend of mine asked me to recount what I said in a passing conversation at the dinner table in Switzerland, because she was interested in my interpretations of each marking. I’ve somehow come up with a fairly specific list here, based on what I’ve heard from many teachers and conductors throughout my career, and I’m curious how this resonates with other musicians.

It all starts from mf, so bear with the order here.

mf = full sound. No extra effort, let your instrument sing on its own.
f = loud. Do technically what your instrument requires to play loud — requires effort, in other words.
ff = max intensity. not just loud, make sure your line has intensity from note to note.
(fff = special dynamic on string instruments to indicate an extremely rare and powerful moment, sound quality may be sacrificed for effect.)
mp = held back. make a nice sound, but slightly more air, less focus, more personal, like conversation instead of stage speaking.
p = soft. contained, beautiful sound, intimate but warm.
pp = intensely soft, like a scream from a mile away or a locked room. more intensity to the line while keeping the volume low.
(ppp = as close to inaudible as you can produce. use a sound that’s only 75-80% consistent, dropped notes and quality is OK.)

Here’s an even briefer description:

mf = full
f = loud
ff = max
fff = in your face (some sacrifices in tone)
mp = conversational
p = soft, intimate
pp = covered scream
ppp = almost inaudible (some notes dropped)

What do you think? Seem helpful? Too fussy? Not enough coffee? Too much?

Originally posted by Matt Albert from thirteen ways, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Viola Sonata Missive

Dear N—,

I trust you’ve had an enjoyable summer!

I have an idea that I’ve already sent you the first two movements of the Viola Sonata . . . so for completeness’ sake, here I clutter your in-box with the third and final movement.

This movement actually includes the first of the music I ever wrote for the piece. Four years ago, on meeting violist Peter Lekx (who has become a great friend), I began (what I thought a the time would just be a single-movement work) Tango in Boston. I wrote a chunk of it, and then as I saw (a) how generally busy with various musical projects Pete was, (b) that half (and maybe more) of his attentions were at the time focused on early music, and (c) at the time, I still did not know a pianist who would be capable of the piece I was scheming . . . I set it aside.

At the time, though, I had talked about this beginning trunk of the piece with some on-line friends, including Dana Huyge, who was about to enroll at the Eastman School. I think I’ve told you the rest: that after a long interval, Dana pinged me with the suggestion that I finish “the viola sonata” for performance in a recital this fall.

— As I say, at the time I started sketching Tango in B, I wasn’t thinking multi-movement work . . . I think that Dana must have remembered “viola & piano,” and in the back of his mind, the piece became a viola sonata. I am glad that was the case, though, because I was electrified by the idea . . . immediately felt that the completed Tango would serve well as a third movement, and started into the first two movements.

So . . . the 2006 “fossil” of this movement is found in the first 70 measures of the now-completed piece. Though (to work backwards) for mm. 49-70, I had only the basso ostinato in the piano, and knew I wanted to add quite a bit “against” it; mm. 33-48 is largely intact from the old MS., for the most part the only re-composition is that I adjusted the RH; mm. 1-32 is most nearly “intact” . . . the adjustments there were mostly on the order of adding a couple of more overt tango-ish touches.

Well, there it is.

Cheers,
~k.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Mattila, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall - The Arts Desk

Mattila, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall
The Arts Desk
Or possibly that, after a century of modern music being repulsive, we've at last got used to it and taken it to our hearts? None of these, I think. ...

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Berg at Bard

In this week's issue of The New Yorker I have a column — available to subscribers and digital readers only — on the Berg and His World festival at Bard College. Included also are discussions of Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) and Othmar Schoeck's song cycle Notturno, two highlights from the welter of repertory surrounding Berg's oeuvre. I've uploaded two brief excerpts of these pieces. First, the bird-song passage from Scene 9 of Schreker's opera, which anticipates Messiaen by many decades:

hrekerbirds.mp3">

Thomas Harper, tenor, with Michael Hálasz conducting the Hagen Philharmonic; Naxos 8660074-75.

And the beginning of the great C-major chaconne that ends Schoeck's cycle:

Quartet; ECM 2061.

The text of Schoeck's coda comes from the Swiss poet Gottfried Keller, who, just before the end of his life, wrote a poetic fragment beginning with the words: "Heerwagen, mächtig Sternbild der Germanen" ("Army wagon, great constellation of the German tribes"). Ernst Bloch, in The Principle of Hope, described this text as a prayer for "dissolution in the infinite universe," a symbolic joining of the wayward individual spirit with the eternal procession of the stars.

Schoeck's most famous fan was James Joyce, who heard the orchestral song cycle Lebendig begraben — another Keller setting — in Zurich in 1935 and was so impressed that he looked up the composer's address. As Chris Walton recounts, in his meticulous and stylish biography of Schoeck, "A couple of days later, a man dressed as a tramp knocked at the door of Schoeck's home on the Lettenholzstrasse. When the door opened, he asked, in German, 'Does the man live here who composed Lebendig begraben? I'd like to meet him.'" Joyce proceeded to invite Schoeck and his wife out for a typically raucous dinner. As Walton shows, Schoeck was himself a disorderly, bohemian character who stayed up late, drank too much, slept with many women, and generally failed to fulfill stereotypes of the Swiss character. Leon Botstein, the president and chief musical officer of Bard, will revisit Schoeck in October, when he features Lebendig begraben on a Joyce-themed concert with the American Symphony. The cycle is the monologue of a man who has been buried alive. Will there by a tie-in with the Ryan Reynolds film Buried, opening that same week?

Christopher Hailey edited an excellent essay collection to accompany the Bard festival. He writes sagely in his preface: "To regard Viennese musical modernism as a saga of harmonic evolution from late-Romantic chromaticism through atonality to serialism is to dismiss nine-tenths of all that this rich musical culture produced." The volume includes a translation of Hermann Watznauer's memoir of the composer in his youth (a strange document that reads sometimes like a Musil tale); a translation of Berg's newly discovered 1915-17 dramatic sketch Nacht (a Strindbergian dream narrative); Antony Beaumont's essay on Bergian orchestration (noting his tendency to "create small, continually shifting islands of tonal or quasi-tonal harmony"); Douglas Jarman on musical palindromes; Margaret Notley's translation of correspondence between Berg and Erich Kleiber, showing that Berg had his careerist moments (in 1934 he churlishly encouraged Kleiber to propagate the idea "that Strauss is by no means a prototypically German, Aryan composer"); Botstein's intriguing proposal that Berg's Lulu is inspired in part by Alma Mahler; and much else.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

The Benefits of Living Abroad

By Alexandra Gardner
I know that for many people the idea of living in another country seems unrealistic, and perhaps a bit scary, but it is an adventure worth taking, whether for study or simply a change of scenery.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Dan Visconti Wins 2010 Barlow Prize

The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University has awarded Dan Visconti the 2010 Barlow Prize, which carries with it a $12,000 cash award, to compose a major new work for piano trio.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Working in the Shadow of the Master

By Dan Visconti
I've begun a month-long stay at Aaron Copland's former house, and a few glances through old photos reveal that I am indeed using the same butt-cushion that A.C. did. These kinds of silly epiphanies are a welcome counterbalance to the sense of weight that comes from composing at the home of the guy who composed Fanfare for the Common Man.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Thinking of the Music of a Rabid Racist on His Birthday

By Frank J. Oteri,br> Music history is filled with embarrassing anecdotes and even more substantial character flaws present in many important composers of the past—there's a reason it's taboo to play Richard Wagner's music in Israel#8212;but nothing compares to the vitriolic racism of American composer John Powell, born today, whose music has now been almost completely forgotten.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Paul Woolford @ Karnival, 25 Sep - The Skinny

Paul Woolford @ Karnival, 25 Sep
The Skinny
Through his work as DJ, producer, remixer, and label owner he has succeeded in bringing a fresh take on modern dance music. Shying away from the easy option ...

Petra Ronner presents Pianessence - Media Update

Media Update

Petra Ronner presents Pianessence
Media Update
The South African tour begins in Johannesburg, where Ronner will duet with Jill Richards, performing works by John Cage; Steve Reich; Dimitri Voudouris; ...

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Happy Birthday Jack!

Happy Birthday Jack!

From Podcast: Sounds New.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Xir-1 by Raul Garza (6 hours competition entry)

Author: Raul Garza
Title: Xir-1

I composed this piece by using only sounds from the Csound catalog. I rendered each sound and then I made the production in Ableton Live 7 by using only de Sampler instrument. I edited a lot the instruments and added Ableton effects. This is song was created for the 6 hours competition for Csound.

From Podcast: cSounds.com.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Canadian Music in the early 20th Century

Canadian Music in the early 20th Century

From Podcast: Sounds New.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Albert Schnelzer - A Freak in Burbank (UK Première)

A week ago at the Proms—a more innocent time, before seemingly everyone started talking about Mark-Anthony Turnage's new work for all the wrong reasons (Beyoncé) instead of the right ones (it's crap)—came the first UK performance of Swedish composer Albert Schnelzer's wonderfully-titled A Freak in Burbank • Schnelzer is at pains to stress the connection he feels in this work to director Tim Burton, desiring it to exhibit a parallel kind of quirkiness to that found in Burton's movies • The work began with Joseph Haydn as an inspiration, but while the size of the orchestra is of late 18th century dimensions, Haydn as an explicit point of reference is more-or-less lost entirely—Schnelzer's half-apology that Haydn's influence remains in "the use of G.P. & the transparent textures" isn't terribly convincing •

Albert Schnelzer

No, it's clear from the composer that this is nothing less than an hommage to Burton, opening with mystery & portentousness, blurting out semiquavers that coalesce into shivering violin notes • Courage is found, & things begin to move apace, painting minimalistic ideas onto the canvas; despite the cautious opening, there's very much the feeling of a work beginning in medias res, hitting the ground running while we try to catch up on the narrative • To speak of narrative suggests something programmatic at work, & A Freak in Burbank certainly comes across like film music, moving & pausing as unseen scenes unfold in the composer's mind • Throughout the first, brisk section, that could be heard to work against the piece (the ideas are a little thin, with obviously no visuals to fill out the experience), but once it grows into the fiercely passionate middle episode—focussed on a highly rhapsodic solo violin—the unknowable narrative becomes sufficiently tangible that one can simply be guided by its ebb & flow • We're ultimately thrown back into the whirling, relentless figures from earlier, the finale crashing into the buffers at speed •

Forget Haydn (&, to some extent, forget Tim Burton too, unless you feel Beetlejuice is his magnum opus), the figure most strongly brought to mind here is Paul Dukas; Schnelzer has created a L'apprenti sorcier for our times, not by any means as finely crafted as Dukas' masterpiece, but an enjoyable rollocking romp nonetheless •

Albert Schnelzer - A Freak in Burbank (UK Première) [16:35]
FLAC [72Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 26Mb] | programme note | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Graham Fitkin - PK (World Première)

Graham Fitkin found himself in a sea of populism & accessibility for the world première of his new work PK, performed at the Proms on Monday • The title of his work comes from a reference to the Cornish village of Porthcurno—home of the well-known Minack Theatre, & where, coincidentally, i just happened to be a couple of weeks ago • The piece is related to the village's connections to early telegraphic communications (Marconi's ground-breaking first transmission took place only a short distance away, at Poldhu, on the neighbouring Lizard peninsula), & Fitkin has therefore turned to Morse code as inspiration for his material •

Graham Fitkin

The pulse is brisk, the music tribal more than anything, driven along by continuous but uninteresting percussion • The choir occupies itself with a strange little text devised by Fitkin, largely comprising signals suggestive of breakdowns in communication, although with an opening question, "What hath God wrought?", sitting rather incongruously, even weirdly, in this context • Despite Fitkin's attempts at lightness, its 10-minute duration makes for a laboured listen; at no point does the piece make clear where one's attention should be focussed, leaving the listener drifting around in search of anything that might approximate an idea • This isn't helped by the mindless percussion, who persist with their incessant din for pretty much the entire piece (pausing only for some faux-grandiose episodes), bludgeoning the textures & pock-marking every sonic surface • About halfway through, the strings look like their trying something; later, some trumpets suggest something too, but neither amounts to anything; the choir seems determined to project their own melodic ideas, but if they're intended to be important, they were simply obliterated by the orchestra •

The concert was billed as an "evening of English classics and US pizzazz", but Fitkin's PK is neither; it's not witty, it's not thought-provoking, it's not engaging & it's certainly not interesting • Far, far from all these things, the work is a monstrosity & an insult; a lumbering, amateur sprawl of sound offering the audience nothing but a childish, superficial unmusical shouting match • The piece was so awful that i felt compelled to listen a second time, just to give it the benefit of the doubt; don't try it, life really is too short •

Graham Fitkin - PK (World Première) [17:25]
FLAC [86Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 27Mb] | progamme note | text | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Martin Matalon - Lignes de fuite (UK Première)

On Thursday evening, the Proms was treated to the UK Première of Argentinian composer Martin Matalon's Lignes de fuite ("Lines of convergence"), tackled with obvious relish by the splendid BBC National Orchestra of Wales •

The work opens, appropriately, with a single static line, passed between the horns, gradually coloured & fragranced by the percussion & woodwind; it's a captivating introduction, pregnant with potential • Matalon doesn't take any time whipping his material into shape, however; the music is positively marshalled around the orchestra • Special attention is given to the brass, who deal with their passages with brusque efficiency, while the strings (aided by celesta) strike more elegant poses, their lines almost coyly twirling their way upward • The structure is given space & more interesting shape by brief episodes where everything momentarily stops, a chance for everyone to get their bearings before launching off somewhere new •

The central section puts the four horns in the spotlight, their delivery now more broken (Matalon likens it to a dotted line), given a backdrop by a large but distant dense chord in the strings • Despite the foreground activity, it soon becomes apparent this is actually another form of stasis, the music moving in circles, & it takes several minutes before the rest of the orchestra slowly returns, bringing with them a powerful demonstration of forward momentum • This portion of the piece is fabulously exciting; there's clearly a lot going on in the individual parts, but the ear can only just discern their outlines within the overall texture formed by them • Matalon shapes this momentum into a full-on torrent, driven on by timpani & woodblocks, until the entire orchestra is called to a halt by the tamtam • The short final section is, in the composer's words, "just resonance" • The timbres—highly imaginative throughout anyway—now become downright inscrutable (Matalon's strong connection to electronic music can be abundantly detected here), teasing the ears in a coda forever dying away, its final sound barely audible •

Lignes de fuite is an enthralling & highly effective concerto for orchestra, Matalon generous with material to each & every player; & despite its multiplicity of demands, they were handled with real aplomb by the orchestra • A definite Proms 2010 highlight •

Martin Matalon - Lignes de fuite (UK Première) [21:44]
FLAC [101Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 34Mb] | programme note | biography

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Proms 2010: Weir, Musgrave, Northcott, Ferneyhough, Taverner, Harvey & Jackson

The final Proms Saturday Matinee, two days ago, featured the BBC Singers, exploring a variety of contemporary works inspired by early music • The singers were joined for the occasion by the Arditti Quartet & members of Endymion, with David Hill presiding •

The concert opened with Judith Weir's millennial composition All the Ends of the Earth • Weir's innate sensitivity in writing for voices is superbly demonstrated here, the sopranos exploring increasingly complex melismas; they're answered at intervals by the lower voices, who are backed up by soft harp & percussion • The melodic lines soon become concentric, fast & slow simultaneously, an obvious tip-of-the-hat to Weir's inspiration for the piece, Perotin • The lower voices' contributions become more & more static, less & less frequent, as the piece progresses; greatest emphasis is given to the often stratospheric sopranos, whose repeated Alleluia refrain carries real weight, despite the altitude • Towards the conclusion, both the lower voices & the instruments get more caught up in the celebration, the choir ultimately uniting at the very end •

It was followed by the world première of Thea Musgrave's Ithaca, a work that hits the ground running, in weighty, imploring fashion, the material soon finding a rhythm (akin to Weir's previously) where upper & lower registers answer one another • The movement is slow, the textures are thin, & there quickly develops a sense of familiarity in Musgrave's harmonic language; in short, it sounds rather old fashioned, & while there's a clear sense of forward motion, it's nonetheless dogged, even tired • & this seems strange; Thea Musgrave's text (which is annoying difficult to discern throughout) is concerned with the excitement of Odysseus' homeward journey to Ithaca, but her material is entirely lacking in energy • Admittedly, the text commands "Do not hurry the journey at all", but Musgrave seems to have taken this to extremes, enfeebling Odysseus' thrilling sea voyage home into a long distance cruise for retired pensioners •

A greater sense of drama is brought to bear in Bayan Northcott's Hymn to Cybele • Northcott also draws on classical poetry, Catullus' 63rd poem, concerned with the rather unsavoury tale of Attis (read all about it), a priest of Cybele (the ancient Phrygian term for the 'Earth Mother') • Northcott even goes so far as to assign characters to some of the singers, embellished by occasional percussion & strings • The work comes across like a fragment from a chamber opera, except it seems decidedly inward-looking, rather too concerned with its own seriousness • For all the ambitious scope & dramatis personæ, it unfortunately remains aloof & unengaging for much of its duration • One wonders whether the addition of some visuals—perhaps as part of a semi-staged dramatic scena—might help; as pure sound the picture feels incomplete •
(Incidentally, i must point out that the broadcast during this piece was struck down by distortion creeping into the soprano's more enthusiastic moments, inexplicable considering the volume at these points is actually softer than elsewhere; elsewhere the broadcast was affected by some curious momentary pops & splutters, so maybe something was up on this occasion) •

All the performers hitherto are replaced with a string quartet for the London première of Brian Ferneyhough's Dum transisset I–IV • Ferneyhough's inspiration is the 16th century composer Christopher Tye, the title a reference to the first of the Resurrection accounts in the Gospels, the occasion when, early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene & her clutch of companions make their way to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body • 'Reliquary' opens in recognisably Ferneyhough fashion, echoing both the spirit & the stylistic gesturalism (usually the product of numerous refractions of material) heard in his other string works • Beneath the restless surface, however, something more lyrical is lurking, its presence only briefly felt; it's unable to establish a foothold, & the movement ends in the opposite direction, broken up into a myriad pizzicati • Ferneyhough titles the second movement 'Totentanz', which certainly lives up to the name; indeed, it's as macabre a danse as you'll come across, the instruments convulsing with paroxysmic twitches & spasms (somewhat redolent of the insane conclusion of Richard Barrett's ne songe plus à fuir) • Caught deep within it, however, comes the first overtly recognisable glimpse of Tye's music, emerging almost shockingly out of the madness, in moments of rare lucidity • 'Shadows' reveals yet more obvious Tye references, straining to emerge from the heavily muted strings • The hints of lyricism from the opening movement find more convincing (& convinced) expression here, made all the more fragile & earnest due to the drastic dynamic restrictions • The delicacy of this movement is absolutely captivating, enhancing the poignancy of the material rather than diminishing it • & to close, 'Contrafacta' (a title inviting further analytical investigation) instantly jolts the piece alive again, injecting velocity & volume back into the music • It's Ferneyhough at his most accessible (if that isn't the world's worst oxymoron), a bewildering, thrilling finale, one made all the more satisfying by its unexpectedly tantalising conclusion, the material dissipating into thin air. It's a superb work—casting a rather unfavourable light on the brace of works that preceded it in the concert—& the audience's enthusastic response to this most challenging but deeply rewarding music is heart-warming •

Ferneyhough's Dum transisset is followed by two more pieces bearing the same title, the concert returning to choral music • First is by Tye's great contemporary, John Taverner, whose setting is lengthy & substantial • The text, at this stage in the Gospels, is only the most preliminary of episodes leading up to the Resurrection (no mention yet of angels or risen Messiahs), but Taverner's clearly got the end already in sight • In a discreet, early example of possible word painting, he gives the top soprano a line that continually rises, drawn to the top of the stave like a magnet • There's a piquant moment as the choir sings 'aromata' (referring to the spices the ladies brought to the tomb), the harmonies shifting chromatically somewhat; but otherwise Taverner's piece is all joy, encapsulating the Easter celebration with no fewer than three occurences of the Alleluia •

Jonathan Harvey's setting of the same text follows, & while i'm familiar with the majority of Harvey's choral output, this was new to me • It bears a more guarded demeanour than that exhibited by Taverner, if anything suggestive of the incomprehension & uncertainty that would ensue once the women arrived at the tomb • It's often dark music, although happily countered by its own pair of Alleluia passages, throwing light & happiness onto the text's early morning shadows •

Taverner returns with one of his most famous passages of music, the Benedictus from his widely lauded Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas • It's given a robust performance, although sounds a little thin, with the soprano line bearing rather too much vibrato to be enjoyable • Heard here, it's difficult to ascertain what it was exactly that got so many composers so excited about this passage, which must rank among the most influential in all music •

Gabriel Jackson's new work, receiving its world première, continues to betray that influence, titled, in homage, In nomine Domini, • From the outset, Jackson fashions the sopranos into a cluster of songbirds, delivering angular but attractive opening melodies, underpinned by the harp • The following string (quasi-viol) music sails a bit close to the wind of pastiche, & as the singers return, this episode leaves an incongruous aftertaste • The vocal melodies continue to undulate in jagged lines, although these are considerably smoothened by occasional chordal interjections • The strings return, & in so doing, elaborate & make sense of what went before; the language here still feels a touch phony, but Jackson's delicate enrichment of the harmonies is more palatable • The voices now join together (they've been largely independent until now) in a chorale that builds to the work's first climax • The next string episode is more thoughtful, even injected with a hint of melancholy; it's still a bit cloying, though, with more than a hint of incidental music for some generic romantic drama • A clichéd whooshing harp glissando ushers in the most excited choral passage so far, a solo soprano riding high on a battery of lesser mutterings; increasingly insistent chimes accompany the choir's crescendo, & once again we're back with the strings, commenting on—who knows what? • The work's final episode commences with a soft tolling bell, the choir echoing this with a rare display of gentle restraint •

This was a genuinely impressive concert, in no small part due to the outstanding quality of the performers • In some ways it worked rather better on paper than in practice, but having said that, the sheer diversity of styles & manners heard in this concert is arguably a more successful & enjoyable model than one striving for a greater sense of unity • Ferneyhough & Jackson, in particular, came across as poles apart, seeming to exacerbate each other's traits, making each other—depending on your tastes—either more accessible or off-putting •

Judith Weir - All the Ends of the Earth
FLAC [56Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 20Mb]

Thea Musgrave - Ithaca (World Première)
FLAC [51Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 19Mb]

Bayan Northcott - Hymn to Cybele
FLAC [58Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 23Mb]

Brian Ferneyhough - Dum transisset I-IV (London Première)
FLAC [72Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 29Mb]

John Taverner - Dum transisset
FLAC [32Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 13Mb] | PDF score

Jonathan Harvey - Dum transisset sabbatum
FLAC [23Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 9Mb]

Taverner - Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas - In nomine Domini (Benedictus)
FLAC [35Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 13Mb] | PDF score (the Benedictus starts on page 8)

Gabriel Jackson - In nomine Domini (World Première)
FLAC [58Mb] | MP3 [v0 | 21Mb]

Originally from 5 against 4, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Pianessence - new pieces for piano - Artslink.co.za News (press release)

Pianessence - new pieces for piano
Artslink.co.za News (press release)
Her recent concerts include John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, Stockhausen's Kontakte for tape, piano and percussion, ...

First Listen: Steve Reich, 'Double Sextet, 2x5' - NPR

First Listen: Steve Reich, 'Double Sextet, 2x5'
NPR
The new CD of music by composer Steve Reich pairs the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet with the rock-inflected 2x5. The new CD of music ...

and more »

Composer Takeover 04

Originally from No Extra Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 6, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2010

Arts around the world - Financial Times

Financial Times

Arts around the world
Financial Times
The emphasis this year is on the music of Pierre Boulez, with 11 concerts featuring 17 of his works, including Pli selon Pli. A-list appearances include the ...

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee - PR-USA.net (press release)

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee
PR-USA.net (press release)
Music has a way of stirring the soul in ways that words can't...so it's not surprising, yet still so inspiring, to see Daniel's message of love and ...

and more »

Cage at 98

Laura Kuhn has an update on recent Cage doings.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 5, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Well, that was short...

It took eight years to go from the Leif Inge's 9 Beet Stretch to the Justin Bieber stretch-out, and from there, I reckon that it's taken about two weeks to officially become a audio production cliché, which is probably a typical rate of idea consumption and exhaustion in the transition from art to commercial music. In the past week, I've received links to about a half-dozen new stretched pieces, all made, one assumes, in the wake of the Bieber. Now, as an experimentalist, I have nothing against the use of clichés — there still being plenty (to paraphrase Schoenberg) of good music to be made from stretched out bubble gum — but the music can't stand alone on its slow motion. Stretching is now just additional material, and a work of music using it will have to have other compelling qualities to sustain that material.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 5, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Carl Stalling (Not Karl Stalling)

The genius of Carl Stalling, and the wonderful ways in which it dovetailed with the rest of the team at Termite Terrace, was often revealed in subtle throw-aways. Daffy Duck (as Duck Dodgers in the 24½^th Century) reports to the Secretary of the Stratosphere, who announces that “the world’s supply of Illudium Phosdex, the shaving-cream atom, is alarmingly low.” In the score, Stalling quietly answers that line with two notes in the contrabassoon, an alarmingly low woodwind.

The Viola Sonata has been finished for almost a week now.

For the Ensemble: Périphérie call, I was starting to think of an arrangement (and it still strikes me as a good alternate scoring for Counting Sheep). I am more and more inclined to write something new entirely, though.

Thoughts on the Cantata still percolate on a back burner, and I need to get together with Héloise, and get acquainted with her battery of recorders.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 5, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee - Melodika.net (press release)

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee
Melodika.net (press release)
Music has a way of stirring the soul in ways that words can't...so it's not surprising, yet still so inspiring, to see Daniel's message of love and ...

and more »

Album: Debussy / Dutilleux / Ravel, String Quartets (Harmonia Mundi) - Independent

Album: Debussy / Dutilleux / Ravel, String Quartets (Harmonia Mundi)
Independent
Debussy, Fauré and Ravel wrote only one a piece, and though Henri Dutilleux (born 1916) continues to write music, his only quartet, Ainsi la Nuit, ...

I Didn’t Know That

Sound Clip: I Didn’t Know That by Tom Tenney

“I Didn’t Know That” is a sonic exploration of propaganda and state-controlled “truths,” created almost entirely from found clips appropriated from public domain educational and US military-training films. Any use of copyrighted material constitutes a fair use as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 5, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Concerts to span eras of soaring sounds - Columbus Dispatch

Columbus Dispatch

Concerts to span eras of soaring sounds
Columbus Dispatch
6-7, Southern Theatre); "World of Wonder" will include pianist Martina Filjak and composer Joan Tower's Made in America (Jan. 8-9, Southern Theatre); ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 5, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

PRIDE OF POLONIA AWARD – 2010 - Polish News

Polish News

PRIDE OF POLONIA AWARD – 2010
Polish News
... Coordinator & MC, first Norwid Intl. Conference (1983) at UIC; Co-Organizer & MC “Concert of Polish Music” at Chicago Cultural Ctr., funded by Natl. ...

BARTOK: Six String Quartets - Hagen Quartet - Newton Classics - Audiophile Audition

[21727842750], [21728359945], [22251643754]

BARTOK: Six String Quartets - Hagen Quartet - Newton Classics
Audiophile Audition
... by Tchaikovsky and Mahler, in which the sense of idiosyncratic prayer manifests itself in an anxious world, music pointing to Ligeti and Shostakovich. ...

Mattila, Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall - The Arts Desk

Mattila, Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle, Royal Albert Hall
The Arts Desk
Or possibly that, after a century of modern music being repulsive, we've at last got used to it and taken it to our hearts? None of these, I think. ...

September 04, 2010

(Y)our Man in (San Juan)

For the past week I’ve been in residence at the 2010 2010 Interamerican Festival for the Arts This is doubly significant for me: for one thing, and most obviously, it’s an excellent professional opportunity providing a very fine orchestral performance (and a second performance of an orchestral work at that!). For another, I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Although I have been active in the U.S. and have lived most of my life there since the age of 16, Puerto Rico is still my home in a very real way and being performed by my hometown band is a source of great pride.

I don’t want to toot my own horn here, however. PRSO Music Director Maximiano Valdes , beginning his second full season in this post, is determined to turn this festival into a major contemporary music festival for the Caribbean and Latin America, and, thus, the programming this past week has consisted primarily of new music with tonight’s performance by the PRSO consisting entirely of music by living composers, all of whom will be in attendance. Besides my own 2007 work, “Colorfields,” we are hearing premieres of works by Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble founder David Stock and University of Puerto Rico professor and festival co-director Carlos Vazquez, who presents a guitar concerto that pays tribute to the folk music of Panama, for whose principal symphony orchestra the work was written. The most impressive composer by far on this program, however, is the Argentinian/Spanish composer Fabian Panisello . Panisello, who was trained in Argentina and throughout Europe, is the director of the Plural Ensemble in Madrid and has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments in Europe but remains largely unknown in the U.S. (although upcoming residencies at UC Davis and Stanford should hopefully begin to change this). His music, at times spectral, at times straightforwardly tonal, is always impressive, always evocative and often horrifying in its power and transcendent in its beauty. More than having the chance to build a relationship with my hometown band and to hear a large piece of mine again, it has been encountering Panisello’s music that has made the biggest impact on me this week.

So, two things to watch out for: Fabian Panisello and his music and the Interamerican Festival for the Arts, which, if Maestro Valdez is succesful in his endeavors (and his panache, ambition and musicianship suggest to me that he will be) will become the major venue for contemporary music in the Caribbean and Latin America, and a bridge between composers and interpreters throughout the Americas.

Originally posted by Armando Bayolo from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 4, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

The strange case of the quite honorable Justin Bieber's temporal stretching

[september 04, 2010 | #387]

The intrepid SoundBlog Twitter birdie called out for your highly esteemed attention no less than 61 times in August, though in this digest we mainly will discuss the ins and outs of last month's rise to massive popularity of a slowdown of a Justin Bieber song.

i. More Hits!

I guess that, like for me, the slowdown of Justin Bieber for most viewers of the SoundBlog will be of relatively little interest from a purely musical/artistic point of view (and later on I also will indicate why I think that is). It nevertheless is a highly remarkable case and extremely interesting for a number of reasons.

I became vaguely aware of something unusual going on when around August 18th I noticed a sudden surge in the SoundBlog's stats. This was not merely a steep rise in the number of hits: what happened was, that all of a sudden four out of five visitors of the site landed on the 9 Beet Stretch page, an entry published more than five years ago (May 14th, 2005) on the occasion of the launch of Raudio's no-end/no-beginning webcast of Leif Inge's 24 hour stretch of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which has been running ever since. (9 Beet Stretch is one of the 20 fine sound art streams that together make up the RAUDIO IIIII iPhone app, which, by the way, pending its upcoming 2.0 update is currently free! So if you do not run it already, this is the moment to grab it in your app store!)

Occasional more-than-average attention for a specific subject on the site in itself is not that unusual. Such an increase in traffic is mostly due to a write-up on some high profile site or blog which includes a link to some specific SoundBlog article. It then is almost always evident from the site's stats that most of the additional hits come bundled from that one referrer, and over a period of two to four days the number of visits will exponentially swoop back to the usual average. This of course simply mirrors the clickthrough rate, and thus the hit graph, of the referring page.

But this was not the case this time. In fact, almost all of the new visitors landed on the 9 Beet Stretch SB-page via a Google search, after having typed in a search term like 'Beethoven slowed down'. This sudden increase in the worldwide search for 'slowing down Beethoven' proved to be far more persistent than a mono-source referral. Indeed, even at the time of this writing, still on the average one out of two viewers of the SoundBlog is landing on Beethoven, via Google. Apparently something out there arouses a globally spreading interest in time-stretched audio.

ii. But then what is it?

I eventually found out what was going on when a couple of day later in my stats I came upon a number of referrals from a music forum where members were discussing the slowdown of a song of Justin Bieber's that recently had surfaced on the web. Looking through the messages in the forum I found that someone had pointed out that several years ago there had already been a slowdown of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. As evidence he linked to the corresponding article in the SoundBlog.

I then remembered that £PcM already on August 17th, in a message with subject "800%", had emailed me a link to a blog entry entitled "How to Make Justin Bieber Sound Incredible: Slow Him Down 800 Percent". As I had not the slightest idea who Justin Bieber was and over the past couple of years had heard quite enough time-stretched audio, at the time I paid little attention. But now, putting one and one together, it dawned upon me that the sudden sharp increase of interest for Leif's 9 Beet Stretch had to be due to this Bieber slowdown...

"So then, who is Justin Bieber?" I wondered.

I asked my kids, who are both old & young enough to know about these things. They assured me that it would be a waste of my time to check the guy out. "He's horrible," my daughter (age 13) added with a grimace that spoke volumes. Although I have an unconditional trust in my kids' taste in all things pop, I of course had to check him out anyway: duty asserted itself and I made the plunge...

[ ... if u think u should 2, u might, like me, just glance through the Justin Bieber Wikipedia article ... and find out about a (very) young Canadian boy/teen pop 'wonder' that only recently got launched into megastardom. ]

iii. Who then did what to Justin Bieber?

Of course a baby-faced teen pop prodigy like Justin, who makes teen girls all over the world fall into a swoon by the mere wiggle of his little finger, is an easy target for pranks and ridicules. And the web is the place to spread these.

It was a musician from Tampa, USA, named Nick Pittsinger (who under the moniker Shamantis produces ambient music that makes extensive use of time-stretching) and just a bit older than Bieber himself, who opened a copy of Justin Bieber's song U Smile in the audio stretching software Paul Stretch (I tweeted a link to the MacOS version of Paul Stretch) and then stretched the three and something minutes track to last for over half an hour. I doubt that Nick is a Justin Bieber fan, so probably there was something prankish about his act. But I guess that he himself was surprised by the outcome, the better parts of which sound like one might imagine Homeric Sirens singing in the midst of a slow-motion sea-breeze to sound like.

As he liked it a lot, Nick put his Bieb Stretch on Soundcloud. Like several other 'celebrity pranks', it almost instantly became an Internet-meme: the link spread like wildfire over the web. At the moment of this writing, in the 17 days that it was out there, the track has been played a massive 2.037.028 times. That is a huge hit for a slowdown. ( * )

iv. So who profits?

Many profit, either directly or indirectly.
For starters Justin Bieber profits. Before all of this I had not the slightest idea who the guy was. Now I do. I even sat through one or two uTubes of his songs. And even though I personally am unlikely to ever spend a single eurocent on Justin, he and (more likely) his management and/or record company know but too well the inestimable value of massive free and worldwide publicity. They therefore took the one single right action. Which is not the issue of a cease and desist order, but - au contraire - to start promoting the thing themselves. Early on Justin (or staff acting on his behalf, who do a great job, as Justin Bieber's twitter channel does have a pretty authentic feel) tweeted about the Bieb Stretch to his 4.967.519 followers and so no little contributed to the ongoing spread of the meme.
Then obviously Nick Pittsinger profits. On the Soundcloud page he already mentioned the 'amazing music opportunities' that he suddenly is being offered and of course many will now start to listen to (and buy) his other time-stretch based ambient music.
Leif Inge, Raudio and the SoundBlog profit, because (a small, but still) part of all the internet chatter points to 9 Beet Stretch as the very first example of a 'celebrity's music' slow down.
Also, Paul Nasca, the author of the (free) PaulStretch software that Nick Pittsinger used is an obvious winner. He mentioned that on his site hits jumped from about 40 to some 2500 a day, all grabbing a copy of the tool to try their own hand at slowing down (or speeding up) their musical likes or dis-likes.
And so on, and so further.

v. And what does it mean?

It means that eight years after Leif Inge used time-stretching to make his first 24 hour version of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the slowdown technique has become part of the musical mainstream. That, mind you, is not because of the slowdown of U Smile. It is rather the other way round: Nick Pittsinger was able to come up with his Bieb Stretch because over the past couple of years time-stretch has sneaked its way into the consciousness and tool kit of an ever larger group of practicing musicians of very different persuasion.

In On the sudden popularity of glacial sound, the August 20th entry on his disquiet blog, also Mark Weidenbaum reflects upon this, seemingly sudden, rise to "mass consciousness of [...] what, generally speaking, is a matter of sonic composition relegated deep in left field, in the outer margins of music-posting hubs [...]". In this context Mark also points to Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for this summer's blockbuster Inception, which makes great effective thematic & semantic use of the slowdown of Edith Piaf's 'Non, je ne regrette rien'.

But then slowdown has been rising to the surface of mainstream musical productions in much the same way as did other tools and techniques that were originally introduced in the context of fringe and avantgarde experiments. Evident examples are the use of electronics, of field recordings, of cut-ups, glitches, looping, of sampling, mixing and mashing, which currently all are part of the standard tools applied in the production of popular music. Now some may cringe at what they see as a vulgarization, but it is living proof that the original experiments were successful in introducing means that truly expand our musical language & landscape.

Time-stretching is a particularly easy technique to apply. Given the currently available digital tools like PaulStretch, the slowdown of an audio file is almost as trivial as running it backwards. What makes slowdown different is that the result of its application in a majority of cases will lead to a sounding result that is surprisingly pleasing to almost everyone's ears. Like I already wrote in my 2005 entry on 9 Beet Stretch: slowdown is like a magic wand that, with just a little bit of tweaking, instantly transforms almost anything into 'cool, slow ambient music'.

What moreover adds quite a bit to its attraction when applied to well-known existing music is (the idea, really, more than) the fact that one seems to be quite directly manipulating and interfering with the passing of time, which - consciously and subconsciously - remains one of man's major preoccupations.

On the other hand, it is likely that once they sat through a couple of slowdowns, be it of symphonies or of more or less well-known pop songs, for the majority of listeners the initial surprise will rather quickly wane and make place for an 'if you heard one you heard them all' sort of reaction. Which indeed is why in the opening of this entry I supposed that for most SoundBlog viewers the Bieb Stretch will be of relatively little interest, as many of you will have had your dose of slowdowns before. (Its use as a conceptual and compositional tool, like for example in Zimmer's soundtrack for Inception, is of course a different story.)

vi. What's in store?

Whether we need evermore slowdowns of evermore un-slow originals or not, we are definitely are going to get them. Though few of them will ever reach a notoriety like the one Nick Pittsinger managed to achieve with his U Smile Stretch, they're all over the web already. Which in turn will eventually bring up the lurking question of author's and recording rights.

That, though, is a 'problem' for which I have one single definite, simple and elegant technological solution^®, which, as a matter of fact, I already proposed five years ago while thinking and writing about 9 Beet Stretch.

iStretch^®

[ This one's for Steve, so I hope he will listen carefully. And don't you dare to steal it, you Cupertino geeks! There's an email-link somewhere on this page... ]

Here is what you do: you take a time-stretch algorithm like the one used in PaulStretch. You let a couple of your developers improve it in true Apple-style. Then you add it to a next version of iTunes and make it part of the coming generations of the iPod: every single track will get an iStretch^® option, allowing its slowdown-ed play back (tweakable - within certain limits, say - by the user). Thus slowdown of whatever artist's track will no longer be someone's modification of the audio file into a subsequently released derived work, but just one among several different ways that one may pick to listen to the original.

It is that simple, really... (Now you say: am I a genius or ain't I ... ...?)

vii. The Future of Music Consumption...

... then seems pretty clear, really. The ubiquity of digital formats and of powerful digital signal processing algorithms that allow for their real time manipulation and modification will continue to lead to evermore possibilities for reactivity and interactivity on the part of the consumer. Other than merely allowing control over where, when and in what order one listens to a collection of fixed tracks, makers of digital music players in the near future will surely start to open up their products ever further to what at this moment for music makers worldwide, be it professionals or amateurs, already is a clear-cut fact: that all music at heart is mere material that may be manipulated, modified and re-combined into other musics, in a sheer infinite number of ways...

[20214506602], [22243878306] Taking this but one small step further (which, as this entry's epilogue, leads us all the way from Justin Bieber to the interesting Darwintunes project and to Susan Blackmore's theory of temes and the Third Replicator, both also tweeted about by the SB Twitter birdie last month): I am deeply convinced that some future iTunes will come along with a Genius that not just generates playlists of tracks that fit your taste or mood, but will also be able to mix and mash up tracks, slow them down, invert them, cut them up and many things more; and to the results of its actions it will apply intelligent evolutionary algorithms that via your indication of 'likes' and 'dislikes' over time will continue to transform your original collection of files into an evolving, new and fully personalized kind of music that is ... well ... that may be just like you.

Whether this prospect should be considered utterly frightening and suffocating or, on the contrary, invigorating and extensively liberating remains to be seen.

...

Next SB Tweet Digest in October.

! Follow @soundblog _( )_ iokoo@ wolloF !

notes __ ::
(*) To wit: from my ongoing regular sampling of the amount of traffic I can safely estimate that the total number of visitors that listened for a relatively extended continuous period of time (more than 40 minutes) to Raudio's 9 Beet Stretch stream in the almost five-and-a-half years that it is running lies somewhere around the 50.000. It is also true, by the way, that about half of these stayed connected to the stream for more than 10 hours in a stretch and that the majority of those listening do so somewhere along the American Westcoast. (Which, again, is pretty remarkable, and I am convinced that there is some deep sociocultural insight to be gained from this curious demographic fact.) [ ^ ]

tags: twitter, digest, time-stretch, Internet-meme, Justin Bieber

Originally from HarSMedia (Feed and Podcast), ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 4, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Top 10 classical shows this fall: From Verdi to Boulez - Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

Top 10 classical shows this fall: From Verdi to Boulez
Chicago Tribune
It's not every Chicago music producer that has a Riccardo Muti to drive ticket sales this season. But any number of other area organizations besides the ...

Men in Harmonites

Harmonites International Steel Orchestra - Men in Harmonites LP released in 1981There are many steelbands but few like Harmonites Steel International. Harmonites Steel International has catapulted to the summit of Antigua's music. Although the Band has acquired such heights, it is ever-changing; ever-seeking new ways to develop its craft. Versatility is the key to the Orchestra's continued

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 4, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Arts in brief - Iowa City Press Citizen

Arts in brief
Iowa City Press Citizen
Tricia Park, first violinist of the University of Iowa Maia Quartet, will present a free School of Music faculty recital at 3 pm Sunday in the Riverside ...

Just saying

In so many people’s minds there is this ethereal “Live the Dream” . . . and too little QC.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 4, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

An Extravagant Farewell to Summer - New York Times

An Extravagant Farewell to Summer
New York Times
Will Set You Free,” and Gyorgy Ligeti, whose thorny music was adapted by Mr. Lederer in “Hungarian Rock,” his high-energy closing work. ...

and more »

Bam Agonistes - Brooklyn Rail

Brooklyn Rail

Bam Agonistes
Brooklyn Rail
Make Music New York not only seasons the entire city with a huge variety of music, but presents Xenakis, gnarliest of composers, in Central Park, on a boat. ...

Bam Agonistes - Brooklyn Rail

Brooklyn Rail

Bam Agonistes
Brooklyn Rail
Down the street, the Brooklyn Academy of Music complex was a beacon not just as a solid piece of community, but as a cultural leader, drawing audiences from ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 4, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2010

Old Music Box Waltz Melodies

Bornand Music Box Collection - Old Music Box Waltz Melodies released on LPThis record celebrates the 10th anniversary of "OLD MUSIC BOX MELODIES" with 26 familiar, always popular, old and new world waltzes. It is recorded from two large fine Swiss cylinder music boxes and four of the various size disc music boxes, among them the "King of Music Boxes" the 27" disc Regina.It was at the turn of the

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

[The]

There's a new website documenting the new music duo of Ed Harkins and Philip Larson, otherwise known as [The], here. (Hat tip from the composer Steed Cowart.) Based in the Music Department at UC San Diego since the early 1970s, Harkins (a virtuoso trumpeter) & Larson (a fine bass-baritone) are definitely not your typical academics, academic musicians, or just plain musicians (or are they dancers?) [The] grew out of the now-legendary Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble resident at UCSD from 1973 to 1983 and rapidly became a favorite on the new music circuit, with fans including John Cage and George Carlin. New music is not necessarily a sombre affair.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Time Past

The second Chicago song I ever remember hearing, is "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

Ironically, the very first Chicago song I ever remember hearing, is "25 or 6 to 4." (A song whose title betrays a concern with what time it is.)

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

acamar - by Frances-Marie Uitti and Yota Morimoto

beautifully shot video of Uitti and Morimoto's collaborative piece, acamar.

acamar //// Frances-Marie Uitti, Yota Morimoto from Kanamé Onoyama on Vimeo.

acamar by cellist/composer Frances-Marie Uitti and composer Yota Morimoto is a followup to their collaborative DVD 13AL. The piece is the first of a series of works made by the authors for the 192 loudspeakers in Leiden. Acamar is a star at 'the end of the river,' 120 million light years away from the Earth.

Originally posted by jeff from new music reblog plus, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

Audio News for September 3, 2010 - Audiophile Audition

Audio News for September 3, 2010
Audiophile Audition
Voting ends September 15 at www.mahler150.com Other new and catalog releases celebrate the composer's 150th birthday: Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland ...

In a Forest of Instruments, Signs of Evolution - New York Times

In a Forest of Instruments, Signs of Evolution
New York Times
To create the required resonance for a Boulez sonata, for example, the pianist Marc Ponthus connected two grand pianos with a two-by-four, allowing him to ...

and more »

The Classical Music Network - ConcertoNet

The Classical Music Network
ConcertoNet
“Hungarian Rock” was based on Ligeti, but there was little Ligeti to behold. Still, the Hungarian master, who embraced every kind of music, would have been ...

and more »

Another book

The first copies of Listen to This have arrived. Maulina is exuberant. The publication date is September 28th.

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Friday Links

Miss Mussel has been delinquent with link love over the summer. The world has not ended. Maybe those statements are related. Maybe they’re not. Just in case, here’s the first installment of the 2010/11 season.

Mark Anthony Turnage’s date with the Single Ladies. More on the story from 5 Against Four [WASH THE CAR AND WAX IT]

Once again, we are nostalgic for something that never existed. Quel surprise. [This one's about food]

“I had always grown up with some slight sense that you could be interested in a wide range of dance, even though it took years before that really exploded in my head.” NYTimes dance critic Alistair Macauley talks about being a critic.

Does language shape how you think? Yes but no but….

A lovely slice of life by Erin Murphy from Brevity 33.

“I wept so much I sniffled all over my dress.” Lars von Trier’s film Dancer in the Dark is now an opera.

Double backflip in a wheelchair? Done.
Symphony in C++ - Classical Convert FTW.

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Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Conlon Nancarrow in Zeeland - Nieuwsbank (persbericht) (abonnement)

Conlon Nancarrow in Zeeland
Nieuwsbank (persbericht) (abonnement)
Dit concert is het slotaccoord van het project 'Conlon Nancarrow in Zeeland'. "This music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives... something great ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

2010 chamber music series features top classical talent - Charlottesville Daily Progress

2010 chamber music series features top classical talent
Charlottesville Daily Progress
Contemporary works by John Adams, John Cage, George Crumb and Steve Reich also are included. The festival's founders are alumni of the Charlottesville High ...

Passacaglia from FIGURE & GROUND (1994-5)

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Houston Mixtape #4: Blue Skies

What Not With Skyline (photo by Chris Becker)

As a recent transplant to Houston, I am just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of the city’s cultural scene, especially its music. Each article will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and performances that integrate theater, visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, jazz, country, zydeco, and all out noise will creep into future writing. The goal is to expand people’s perceptions (including my own) about how and where one can find innovative music.

Last Month (August) I visited Kaboom Books for the first time and in addition to buying a few great used books including a copy of Ralph Ellison’s Shadow and Act with its wonderful essay about Charlie Christian, I met and spoke at length with one of the owners about Kaboom’s former home New Orleans. For this summer’s White Linen Night, Houston sound artist Doren Bernard turned Kaboom Books into a sound installation with a mysterious piece of entirely comprised of sounds recorded within the store. As I moved through the aisles of Kaboom that night, Doren’s piece seemed to sit at the edges of my peripheral hearing creating an effect similar to seeing a ghost and then – after blinking your eyes – seeing nothing but the space where your spectre had made its presence known.

A friend from New York asked me for a little more detail regarding my comparisons in last month’s Houston Mixtape #3: The Epicenter Of Noise between his city and Houston and each town’s respective “noise” level. He rightly pointed out that Houston, being more spread out with little or no zoning regulations, results in a more horizontal (as opposed to vertical) cityscape thereby diffusing and spreading out the noise of the city.

Horizontal also means you get to see wide-open skies and gigantic cloud formations from an uncluttered 360-degree perspective.

Clouds Over Tommie Vaughn (photo by Chris Becker)

Maybe this is a stretch, but I do wonder if Houston’s big skies and flat lands inspired the artist Mark Rothko directly or indirectly while creating the fourteen paintings contained in the Rothko Chapel. I do know Rothko worked closely with Philip Johnson and Houston architects Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry in designing the sunlit chapel that would contain his fourteen paintings, and there’s no question in my mind that sunlight played a role in the planning and construction of the chapel. On a recent visit to the chapel (which is located in Houston’s Museum District), I was struck at how dramatically Rothko’s paintings transform in appearance as the light from the chapel skylight shifts in relation to cloud cover and Houston’s crazy weather patterns. These changes occur almost minute-to-minute, and the paintings transcend their frames, colors, and textures.

It makes absolute sense then that composer Morton Feldman was asked by John and Dominique de Menil to compose a tribute to Rothko. In his essay regarding the resulting work Rothko Chapel , Feldman writes that his choice of instruments was affected by the space of the chapel as well as by Rothko’s paintings and that he wanted the music to “permeate the whole octagonal-shaped room” just as the paintings seem to continue beyond the borders of their canvases. It’s a ways ahead, but on February 11, 2011, the Houston Chamber Choir and Da Camera of Houston will present Feldman’s Rothko Chapel as well as works by John Cage and Erik Satie in the Rothko Chapel to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

On September 21st, 7:30 pm at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, you can hear a performance of Thomas Tallis‘ 40 part motet Spem in Alium by the Houston Chamber Choir. This is another piece of music that permeates “the whole” of any space it is heard.

Originally posted by Chris Becker from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

When Your Benefactor is a Facist

The catalog for New York City Opera’s 2010-2011 arrived by post yesterday and, as usual, the Met’s poor cousin on perpetual life support has cobbled together a few interesting-looking programs to accompany the usual Donizetti and Strauss crowdpleasers. There is the long-delayed premier of A Quiet Place, Leonard Bernstein’s final stage work, the New York premiere of Seance on a Wet Afternoon, the first opera of Stephen Schwartz who did the Broadway hits Wicked, Godspell and Pippin, and–most intriguing of all–an evening called Monodramas–three one acts by John Zorn, Morton Feldman and Arnold Schoenberg.

But, what caught my eye was the news (to me) that the New York State Theater, the NYCO’s home, is now called the David H. Koch Theater. David Koch is a familiar figure on the New York social and philanthropy scene. He and his brother own Koch Industries, the second-biggest private company in the United States. He is a multi-billionaire who trails only our esteemed mayor as the wealthiest man in New York. He has given millions of dollars to various arts organizations over the years. He has given many, many more millions of dollars to fund radical right-wing causes. He and his brother are the deep pockets behind the “grassroots” Tea Party Movement and virtually every other campaign to destabilize the American government and purge it of “liberal” influences.

When Koch ran for vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket, his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools—in other words, as Frank Rich notes, “..any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.” Further proof that the acorn does not fall far from the tree, the Kochs’ father–Fred–was on the governing board of the John Birch Society. Fomenting civil unrest and paying entertainers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to confuse the rabble about who their true enemies are has been a Koch family enterprise for at least 50 years. In tandem with Rupert Murdoch, they own the mind of every new Timothy McVeigh and abortion clinic bomber this country will produce in the next several decades.

Many artsy-fartsy New York beneficiaries of Koch’s arts benevolence were aware of his conservative leanings and although they widely considered him a jerk on a personal level, they chose not to delve too deeply into his other causes for fear of losing a sugar daddy. I didn’t know is not a legal defense but it makes a convenient excuse sometimes. That changed last week with Jane Mayer’s devastating profile of the Koch brothers in the New Yorker.

Nobody in the arts and music world can now claim they don’t know. What will be most interesting is how they choose to react.

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Welcome to The Foreigner - The Foreigner

Welcome to The Foreigner
The Foreigner
This year's eminent composer-in-residence is American Steve Reich, one of the pioneers of minimalist music. If you are travelling to other parts of ...

Bargemusic presents 'Here and Now' series - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

Bargemusic presents 'Here and Now' series
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com
After Schlefer's pieces opens listeners' ears, the program will continue with Iannis Xenakis' “Mikka S,” a short violin solo based on double-stop glissandi, ...

4'33" playlist (Rabbit Fur Coat Berceuse)

The late Mr. John Cage celebrates this Sunday his ninety-eighth birthday. Last year or the year before, someone on the Internet — was it The Standing Room? — had the excellent idea of marking the occasion by creating a 4'33"...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

Badass Bagpipes

The passing of Bill Millin is a good occasion to reflect on one of the more extraordinary stories of WWII. His service on that day also happens to be an extraordinary demonstration of the unquantifiable power of music. We don’t tend to think of bagpipes when we think of D-Day, but that’s precisely what Bill Millin stormed Sword Beach with. How he came to be part of the actual battle plan is spelled out in The Economist’s obituary, which is well worth reading.

He marched up and down the beach playing traditional songs, and he continued to play as the troops made their way inland:

“Three times therefore he walked up and down at the edge of the sea. He remembered the sand shaking under his feet from mortar fire and the dead bodies rolling in the surf, against his legs. For the rest of the day, whenever required, he played. He piped the advancing troops along the raised road by the Caen canal, seeing the flashes from the rifle of a sniper about 100 yards ahead, noticing only after a minute or so that everyone behind him had hit the deck in the dust. When Lovat had dispatched the sniper, he struck up again. He led the company down the main street of Bénouville playing “Blue Bonnets over the Border”, refusing to run when the commander of 6 Commando urged him to; pipers walked as they played.”

e finally silenced by shrapnel, making “Nut Brown Maid” the last song he played that day. Millin’s unique role in D-Day was portrayed in The Longest Day.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

Fall Arts Preview: Classical - Boston Herald

Fall Arts Preview: Classical
Boston Herald
And Gunther Schuller (for his upcoming 85th birthday, Oct. 12, 14 at NEC) and Pierre Boulez (part of Boston Conservatory's New Music Festival, Nov. ...

and more »

Film, Family, Museum Et Cetera - Montreal Gazette

Film, Family, Museum Et Cetera
Montreal Gazette
Drawing in the works of Iannis Xenakis, and Starting From ... Windows, both until Oct. 17. Call 514-939-7026. Centre d'histoire de Montreal, ...

and more »

Directions

The Direction has been known for some time. There is little new to add to that.

What else can we be working toward if not total and direct freedom of expression- to convey or release whatever compels us, either personal or trans-personal, or both, by any and every means possible. Our territory is depth and the deeper the better.

In order to do this we have to keep our tools in place whether these be methods, systems, and yes processes. They provide little in themselves and yet often they are indispensable. Kandinsky was wise to point out that such paths quickly can make us its slaves. Such failures is all around us, usually in myopic segregated camps.

These tools are mere means that at their core enable a true fruition, a flow of energy from one moment to another. Can we think or express anything that is not somehow directly related to the previous? A work must preserve this by neither omitting too many steps in-between causing its disruption or stagnating it by the unessential. A focus on a ‘well made plan’ or ‘well made process” too often stop a work in its tracks.

We should liberate the concept of the idea as being based solely in the word, otherwise humans would have no necessity of anything beyond it. The ‘explanation’ of works and the forces behind it often eschew the true spirit that moves toward where it seeks. When words are used it only function might be nothing more than another element of that flow. Hence its methods and processes should be no more restrictive than the work itself. Formulas and common practice just will not do.

It is not that we will not have our “constants”, an element Pound always pointed out as being part of any work, and likewise ourselves as one also would be no different. We might accept our resonance to some and not to others, an aspect of our own antennae. The goal is to have as many open as possible.

An Aside.
It is not that History(ies) is capable of being resurrected but it is immortal as an active part of the fabric in the continuum of our present. More often than not when we find ourselves at an old intersection with the same old things on the corner, we have approached it from new directions than before. This is what is easily mislabled as “influence”.

Originally from Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 3, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Q&A Special: Scanner - The Arts Desk

Q&A Special: Scanner
The Arts Desk
Cage and Stockhausen wrote music that was deliberately played live. It had to be to get the accidentals, and the sonority of the space you were sitting in. ...

Edinburgh International Festival review: Ars Nova Copenhagen - Scotsman

Edinburgh International Festival review: Ars Nova Copenhagen
Scotsman
... it was more likely to be theinnocuousness of much of the music rather than an unfounded aversion to suspect modernity. Not that Steve Reich's Know What ...

and more »

Take two swans - Times LIVE

Times LIVE

Take two swans
Times LIVE
In a previous production of Masilo's Swan Lake, the music of Tchaikovsky was supplemented with that of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, William D'Avenant, ...

Album: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, New Directions in Music (él) - Independent

Album: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, New Directions in Music (él)
Independent
These early pieces by Boulez and Stockhausen may have palled slightly with age, but still impart a powerful evocation of the excitement of the postwar ...

Lammermuir Festival: From Mach 1 to a Bach one - Independent

Lammermuir Festival: From Mach 1 to a Bach one
Independent
... on 18th September) will feature 16th-century brass music from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint, ...

September 02, 2010

234 :: 3 September 2010 :: Los Angeles (the symphony)

Richard Friedman returns for another season of new and unusual music, starting with

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt: Symphony #4 “Los Angeles” (2008)…
the world premiere recording of this composer’s first major orchestral work in over 30 years
LA Philharmonic - Essa-Pekka Salonen, cond - ECM 2160 to be released next week

This recording of the 4th Symphony – Pärt’s first symphonic work in more than 30 years - documents also the premiere concert performance at L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Before Pärt started work on the composition, his thoughts had been circling around texts related to guardian angels. Then he received the commission from Los Angeles, a city whose very name means ‘the angels’. His decision to make the Canon of the Guardian Angel the foundation of the new piece was a foregone conclusion.

Ann Southam: In the Measure of Time (1988)… for two pianos
Stephen Clarke and Eve Egoyan, pianos
CBC MVCD 1124 (1999)

Originally posted by rchrd from Music From Other Minds, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

A history of teen idols - Newsweek

A history of teen idols
Newsweek
(Not for nothing was “Queens Get the Money,” the opening track on Nas's last solo record, driven by a hypnotic piano riff right out of Steve Reich's ...

Cool and calmly composed: Nico Muhly, changing the face of classical music - National

Cool and calmly composed: Nico Muhly, changing the face of classical music
National
Influences from the minimalists – Steve Reich and Glass are particular favourites – are overt, but the conceptual elements are counterbalanced by his ...

Stockhausen: Mantra - The Guardian

California Literary Review

Stockhausen: Mantra
The Guardian
... was a watershed in Stockhausen's development. Composed in 1970, it was the work that not only signalled his return to composing fully notated music ...

Ars Nova Copenhagen/Hillier - The Guardian

Ars Nova Copenhagen/Hillier
The Guardian
... New World theme – but it also showcased the vocal ensemble's talent for contemporary music. Works by classic American minimalists Steve Reich, ...

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
... Xenakis and Jeff Lederer. A few of the composers — Mr. Schlefer, Mr. Chiu and Mr. Lederer (with his Sunwatcher Quartet) — will perform their own music. ...

Writing as if Composing

Run-on and runaway sentences; hanging sentence fragments; needling repetition; odd punctuation; obscurities and neologisms; abrupt shifts of register, both up and down; anacoluthons; non-sequitors; too much stuffed away between ellipses, brackets, braces, or parentheses (when not hidden in footnotes below); seemingly arbitrary settings of text in italic or boldface character; metaphors mixed and mashed; knowingly faulty logic; opinions presented as facts; abused rhetoric (all 38 of Schopenhauer's Arts of Being Right on display and then-some)... Guilty as charged! All I can ask is that you, dear reader, bear with me even if these aspects of Renewable Music's house style book grate like so many fingernails on blackboards or even more ants in a bento box on a Saturday picnic turned to thunder, lightning, rain, gentle rain, then too much rain... The idea — and there really is one, here — is that the webblog is still a new media, one which has not yet found its extents and limits as a form of prose (or not-prose), and that it is not yet immune to the methods of an experimental composer, thus the breathless and short-of-breath and stuttered lines, the sudden interjections, jarring accents, and ragged articulations, and all those sounds, those troubled, troubling, consoling, caring, sweet, everyday, exotic, exhalted sounds... What could be better than to aspire to a condition of music? My fault, my failure then, may not be the experimenting but rather the stubborn fact of not having experimented enough.

[Except, of course, for careless errors in spelling, grammar, or typos. The fault, there, belongs to the damn computer.]

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Detroit, Detroit

As Drew McManus rolls out his Venture platform today (or rather the movie for it), this spoof of orchestra consultants couldn’t come at a better time:

No offense intended towards Drew. Venture very may well be the greatest thing since the Model T, but for an orchestra struggling to make it through the season, it’s probably not going to do much good at this point. Many non-profits struggle with the same ‘magic bullet’ desperation strategy, and plenty of for-profit businesses have put all their chips on one last bet to save the company. So, it’s not like this is exactly a unique phenomenon. What is striking about it, though, is how often it happens in the orchestral world.

Reading the Detroit musicians’ site is pretty fascinating. They make the mistake of leading with the argument that reduced pay will move them out of the mythical ‘Top Ten’. That’s a farcical argument predicated on a ranking of wages in the industry, not artistic quality. The fact that the rest of their case is so strong makes their decision to make the Top Ten canard their first talking point even more befuddling.

Their next talking point highlights one of the major strengths of their case: their willingness to accept salary cuts. They have proven that they are willing to be part of a solution. However, they manage to fumble the ball by demanding that salary cuts always be tied to a recovery:

Numerous times in past decades, Detroit and Michigan’s economy was such that severe cutbacks in salary and benefits had to be accepted by the staff and musicians. In every instance that such requests were made to the musicians, they understood the problems and agreed to those concessions. In those instances, they recognized that if such concessions were not lifted at some point the orchestra would be unable to retain and attract the kinds of musicians who make up the heart and soul of the DSO’s greatness. Thus, on each occasion, the concessions were followed by a “recovery” in the final year giving the musicians the light at the end of the tunnel to which they could pin their hopes of retaining their status among the top ten.

re economic crisis of the state and the city, they are once again being asked to take severe cuts upwards of 28% in salary, drastic cuts in their health insurance, elimination of contributions to their retirement benefits, and a detrimental reduction in the number of musicians. And, once again, the musicians have offered to accept millions of dollars of concessions in order to help the DSO to survive this recession.

Nevertheless, management is unwilling to agree to any restoration of wages and benefits, even two or three years from now, that might even come close to enabling the DSO to regain its status. In fact, management’s demands make permanent the DSO’s fall out of the top ten American symphony orchestras. If the musicians are forced to accept such a permanent fall of the orchestra, out of the top ten, many of their players will audition for and win jobs in other top ten orchestras, and those young people seeking a career in a great orchestra will look elsewhere.

I couldn’t find any statement on their site where the Detroit musicians seemed to recognize that a recovery to the top of the wage scale might not be possible. They seem to dismiss out of hand the notion that the orchestra simply cannot afford to pay salaries above $80,000. While on the one hand, they are admirably ready to accept cuts to that level and below in the short term, they insist that pay needs to return there as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, the rest of their sprawling site (turn off the autoplaying music, please!) goes into fairly sickening details of financial mismanagement. That’s where the bulk of their case lies:

1. The DSO hasn’t turned a profit in a decade!
2. They’ve gone from 25,000 donors to 5,000 over the last two decades.
3. Management problems were identified in 2006. A plan to fix them was formalized in 2008. Nothing has happened.
4. This same management raised $60 million for a new hall, put it in the bank, and borrowed the money for construction, gambling that they could beat the interest rates on the loan through clever investing.
5. The loan is now sucking $3 million a year from the endowment, and the DSO is on the brink of foreclosure on a property they could have bought and paid for in cash.

e Executive Director of the DSO is pulling in $378,704 per year (That’s 5 musician’s salaries at the levels he’s proposing, in case you’re wondering).

This list of woes is where the musicians’ case finally gains traction. They have been miserably served by their bosses, and now that everyone is in radical restructuring mode, they should dump the risible Top Ten argument and fight tooth and nail for real reforms.

At the top of their list should be an overhaul of the management. They should make sure that compensation is tied to performance. They’d get fired if they performed poorly. Why shouldn’t the CEO and his team? They should also make sure they are getting more leverage on the board in exchange for their pay cuts.

It’s heartening to see that they have authorized a strike. Hopefully, if it comes to that, they’ll reprioritize their talking points.

Originally posted by jodru from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

American Men: Drum's Not Dead (Just a Bit Queasy) - The Skinny

The Skinny

American Men: Drum's Not Dead (Just a Bit Queasy)
The Skinny
“But I see it more as laser, glassy synth music – futuristic sonically and visually. “We're all into very different things but come together over 90s ...

BBC Beyoncé update

Tim Rutherford-Johnson has a piece in the Guardian on Mark-Anthony Turnage's Beyoncé escapade. It was, of course, intentional: Turnage's son Milo loves dancing to "Single Ladies."

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Nova Copenhagen, Queen's Hall - Herald Scotland

Ars Nova Copenhagen, Queen's Hall
Herald Scotland
... to register as significant on any modern music seismograph. And the whole Mass would have been more effective in a bigger acoustic anyway. Steve Reich's ...

Fall Arts: Classical Music - Artvoice

Fall Arts: Classical Music
Artvoice
2; Beethoven's Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Op. 131, and György Ligeti's Quartet No.1 (“Metamorphoses Nocturnes”). The BCMS also sponsors three “Gift to the ...

Fall guys - Bay Area Reporter

Bay Area Reporter

Fall guys
Bay Area Reporter
He also performs to perfection "To Bob Atel of Paris" by the late great jazz artist Jaki Byard , and works by composers Conlon Nancarrow and Leonard ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Coming attractions: A short list of the campus's enticing fall events - Canada Views

Coming attractions: A short list of the campus's enticing fall events
Canada Views
Renowned for its performances of music from Haydn to Lutoslawski, Ensemble Zellig makes its US debut with Cal Performances. The program includes premieres ...

Melawat Malaysia

Georgia Hesse and Russell Johnson - Melawat Malaysia cassette released in 1985This cassette is narrated by notable travel writer Georgia Hesse and producer and radio and TV host Russell Johnson. Melawat (Malay word for "visit") Malaysia is the second in a series of electronic travel guides produced by Travelmedia. All of the sounds and music were recorded in Malaysia. I am still trying to find

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Live Music Roundup - September 2, 2010 - Tweed Shire Echo Community News

Live Music Roundup - September 2, 2010
Tweed Shire Echo Community News
2.30pm Camerata of St John's and Tatiana Kolesova, piano, performs works by Vivaldi, Mozart, Grieg, Lutoslawski, Sculthorpe, Mendelssohn. ...

African Tribal Music & Dances

various artists compilation - African Tribal Music & Dances *special thanks to KL from NYC for thisCD released in 1993The material on this CD are from LP releases Music of the Malinke/Music of the Baoule on Esoteric Records [CPT-529] (tracks 1-13) and Sonar Senghor and His Troupe - African Tribal Music and Dances on Olympic Records [OL-6121, released in 1976) (tracks 14-22, these tracks are only

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 2, 2010 at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2010

Deutsche Grammophon & Decca Celebrate Mahler's Birthday with The People's Edition - Broadway World

Deutsche Grammophon & Decca Celebrate Mahler's Birthday with The People's Edition
Broadway World
Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra turn their attention to Mahler with a new recording of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Adagio from the Tenth ...

Book Review: The Music Instinct by Philip Ball - California Literary Review

Book Review: The Music Instinct by Philip Ball
California Literary Review
On just one page, in the chapter dealing with rhythm, he weaves relevant examples ranging from Gyorgy Ligeti's composition used in the film 2001: A Space ...

Konzert am 26. September im Perzina-Saal der Stadtbibliothek - Schwerin-News

Konzert am 26. September im Perzina-Saal der Stadtbibliothek
Schwerin-News
So bezeichnete die „Welt“ eine Aufführung des Trios als „unwiderstehlich“, der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm schrieb in einem Brief an das Trio: “So interpretiert ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Classical music should drop its silly conventions

'Young people don't like concert halls... and wouldn't normally go to one except for amplified music. There is a big divide between amplified and non-amplified music... The future must bring things which are considered blasphemous like amplifying classical music in an atmosphere where people can come and go and even talk perhaps.. and certainly leave in the middle of a movement if they feel like it. Nobody should be deprived of classical music, least of all by silly conventions.'

That is Jonathan Harvey talking about the future of classical music in an exclusive interview being broadcast and webcast on Future Radio on Sunday Sept 4. Which is the day after the composer's choral work Dum transisset sabbatum is being performed at a BBC Prom.

Jonathan Harvey is seen above talking to me at his home in Sussex during the recording. In the interview he talks about musicians he has known including Benjamin Britten, Hans Keller, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt and Pierre Boulez. He also discusses his deep interest in mystical religions and the musical topics range from the future of classical music to serialism and spectralism. The interview concludes with Jonathan Harvey giving an invaluable introduction to his new composition for large orchestra and electronics, Speakings, and this is followed by a complete recorded performance of the work.

There is some priceless material in the interview so it is being made available in several formats. The broadcast version is being aired on FM locally in Norwich, England and worldwide via the internet at 3.00pm UK time this Sunday Sept 5, with a repeat for North American listeners at 1.00am the following morning, i.e. the night of Sept 5-6. (Time zone convertor here.) This broadcast will be a 28 minute edited interview ending with Jonathan Harvey introducing a full performance of Speakings which lasts for another 28 minutes.

Because some content has been edited out to achieve the broadcast timing, the on-demand streamed version, which will be available here after the broadcast, will contain the complete interview unedited. This runs for 55 minutes plus the performance of Speakings. The full length interview will also be available on my iTunes podcast site, but less the performance of Speakings as I do not have a music royalty license.

Below is some background to the interview. On An Overgrown Path is now taking a break to allow my laptop to cool down, so there may be a delay in moderating comments and replying to emails. While I am away do support other music blogs here and here.

* The interview with Jonathan Harvey was recorded using the Zoom H2 recorder I am seen holding in the upper photo. Sound quality recording in MP3 format at 320kbp is excellent, but inevitably these recorders do pick up some handling noise. Expert editing was by volunteer editor Tim Wilds in the Future Radio studios using Adobe Audition software. (Good luck at Goldsmiths College Tim!) Silly conventions were ignored in the final edit, so the performance of Speakings starts under Jonathan Harvey's voice and ends under mine. This is because the opening and closing bars are extremely quiet and without the overlap it sounded as though the broadcast had broken down. (Yes, I know.)

** My thanks go to Jonathan Harvey for making time available before a demanding trip to Japan, and to John Cronin who helped set it up. The interview could not have happened without the tireless support of Future Radio; if you appreciate their backing please send them a message saying so. All my work for the station is done on a pro bono basis. The recording of Speakings is on a new Aeon CD of Jonathan Harvey's music recorded by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov.

Also available on Twitter and Facebook. Photos are (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. The Aeon CD Speakings was supplied as a requested review sample. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Let there be Haas

Sylvain Cambreling / Klangforum Wien; Kairos 1233. The fiercely original Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas is at the center of a late-summer festival entitled Moving Sounds 2010, which unfolds over the next few days at the Austrian Cultural Forum, the...

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Interview with Richard Ayres

Richard Ayres

Since 1989, British composer Richard Ayres (born 1965) has lived and worked in the Netherlands. He currently teaches composition at the Royal Conservatoire in Den Haag: an institution where he did his graduate studies with Louis Andriessen. His compositional style reveals a profusion of influences, from Ives and Kagel to Ades and Janacek. Above all one notices his interest in dense counterpoint, frequently deployed in multi-layered structures; as well as a concomitant flair for testing the limits of playability, often with an eye towards cultivating a “melancholically humorous” ambience.

One of his favorite mediums is the “noncerto:” a composition for soloist and orchestra in which the soloist isn’t a heroic individual who overawes both orchestra and audience. Instead, the soloist’s role is quite the opposite: a Beckettian antihero: frequently asked to explore the barely possible or, indeed, the impossible. There are antecedents for the noncerto – notably in works by Carter, Feldman, and Kagel. By turning the concerto paradigm on its head, Ayres creates an affecting exploration of the individual who feels inarticulate: out of step with society. Doing so while creating compelling music (that attracts non-soloists) is no mean feat! But Ayres’ noncertos are becoming increasingly in demand.

This year he’s received a great deal of buzz in Europe. His new CD for the NMC imprint, Noncertos and Others, has received accolades from many corners, including critical praise from venues not ordinarily known to be sanguine about contemporary classical music. Perhaps the disc’s biggest coup to date is landing the coveted “Editor’s Choice” distinction from Gramophone magazine.

Despite the plaudits overseas, Ayres isn’t a household name yet here in the United States. Indeed, during the course of our wide-ranging discussion, he mentioned having not yet been programmed by an orchestra the United States. One hopes that this oversight is quickly remedied!

Christian Carey: How did you come up with the idea of the ‘noncerto?‘ Who first performed one of your noncertos? Have soloists been receptive to the idea of this type of piece?

Richard Ayres: I saw a program on the TV that was about a trombonist with some sort of Alzheimer’s disease. He was holding an electric razor and thought it was a trombone. He became very upset when he couldn’t work out how to play it. This broke my heart, and I wanted to write a little piece out of sympathy or as a tribute to this guy. This piece became the first noncerto for small ensemble and alto trombone. The Schoenberg Ensemble from Amsterdam commissioned it. I became attracted by the idea of outcast against the crowd, and four more noncerti followed.

Soloists need a melancholic sense of humor (humor not comedy), and an amazing technique to play these pieces. In spite of being underdogs, the solo parts are obviously virtuosic. I like to think that anyone that is attracted to the melancholia of Charlie Chaplin, or the excess of Terry Gilliam would like to play my noncerti. This is certainly just vanity.

CC: Each time I listen to No. 37B for Orchestra, I’m struck by what I hear as a kinship with the music of American composer Charles Ives: the overlapping of orchestral lines in a sort of collage, the frequent shifts of focus, and the wondrously pungent dissonances. Of course, I might just be listening through my own set of repertoire filters, but I wondered- is Ives at all influential on the music you’re composing?

RA: Oh yes! I heard Ives’ 4th symphony when I was a student and this gave me permission to write “far too many notes” sections in my pieces, and generally to roam around musical history. Actually these seemingly complex textures are rarely more than five musical lines…any more than 4 musical lines seems to be heard as a texture. I’m glad I listened in that particular counterpoint class!

CC: Who are some other touchstone composers you might point to?

RA: Oh, far too many to mention. I devour all music. Contemporary music loves range from Jerry Hunt right through to Tom Ades. I listen to loads of folk and rock music, just about anything. If I had to pick out some especially important classical composers then, apart from Ives, the music of Janacek, Sibelius, Beethoven, Mozart, Purcell, Rameau, Verdi, Strauss has been a massive influence on my composition.

I am just as, if not more, influenced by film. Fellini, Guy Madden, Terry Gilliam, and the great Charlie Chaplin have all played a part in shaping my creative taste.

CC: Would you tell us a bit about your numbering system for pieces?

RA: Three reasons for the numbers: I don’t have a lot of imagination for titles, and the ones I have made up were pretty awful; I find it easier to remember which piece is which (although this is no longer true. As I get older and the number of pieces increases, I find I can’t remember which is which); I forget now which painter said “a title is as important as a color in a painting”. Was this Jasper Johns? Whoever it was, I agree entirely. A title determines, or colors the listeners perception of a piece of music. I don’t want to pollute a listener’s experience unless it is absolutely necessary. At the moment I am playing with a juxtaposing literary and musical narrative, and am writing extremely long movement titles that are very evocative, and either concur with, or contradict how we experience the music’s emotional world.

CC: Noncertos and Others (NMC) has gotten a terrific reception, both in Europe and the US. Has this been a surprise, albeit a pleasant one?

RA: I wish I could be cool and knowing and say that it was what I had expected. I can’t, and I am extremely surprised. When I opened my copy of Gramophone magazine and saw my CD was editor’s choice I immediately ran to buy a copy to send to my mother. I’m very happy.

CC: For those whose introduction to your work comes via this CD, where would you send them next to learn more about your oeuvre?

RA: That is a bit of a problem as this is the only commercial recording, and so far my music has been played all over Europe but not in the states. I’ve never been there either, but I will get there one day!

__________________

Originally posted by Christian Carey from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

440-30=12?

By now, you’ve surely heard about Project 440 at Orpheus/WQXR, and the next round of cuts will take the composers to just a dozen (to be announced September 9th on WQXR). So I thought it would be interesting to talk to the remaining 30 before the cut about this process.

Q: “You all have probably been involved in a group lesson or masterclass at some point – some sort of public forum – with a teacher, composer or perhaps an ensemble and conductor. Project 440, however, involves not only a selection committee, but comments on the internet. How do you view the critiques and praise, both positive and negative – and how does it differ from a masterclass/learning situation?”
A’s:
David T. Little:
As always, comments on one’s music should be understood for what they are: opinions. While a composer certainly can (and should) learn something by considering other people’s thoughts on their work–especially, say, in the case of a master class–they ultimately, for better or worse, answer only to themselves. When the time comes to sit down to write, I try put all of this aside and just create the best and most honest music possible.

Zibuokle Martinaityte:
Orpheus Project 440 offers young composers three main ingredients, which solidify the recipe of becoming a successful composer in the world and make it complete: exposure, the opinion of a larger audience and the critical judgment of a highly competent selection committee. The integration of these three things distinguishes it from other projects and learning environments such as master classes or public forums for composers. These usually incorporate one or two of the above-mentioned components, but have a non-worldly aspect used for isolated learning where only professionals of the field contribute their qualified opinions or honest advice. This is very useful for analysis and explanations of complex music and perhaps even improving compositional skills, but has little to do with the important relationship of composer to audience.
Due to its presence on the Internet, Project 440 is a unique and useful “reality check” with listeners who are in fact the audience whether one realizes it or not. This framework creates more vulnerability for the composer who becomes completely exposed to others not only through the sounds they create which would be typical for a composer, but also through the verbal interpretations of the listener. People have the freedom to speak candidly about the music and regardless of how we feel, it is posted and available for others to read. Furthermore, it is going to influence other listeners as well. It is my first time participating in a web-based public project and I’ve been very curious and stimulated by reading all the comments. Both positive and negative feedback is equally valuable for me, giving me a glimpse of what the listener is actually experiencing when encountering my music.

Chen Yao:
I am open to different critiques and praise, as these comments are based on the listeners’ different listening experiences on my music. I can tell that the critiques and praise I have received for my Glowing Autumn come from the listeners who are from all kinds of backgrounds. They take my music to various perspectives and levels. I deeply appreciate their individual thoughts and comments. I am very happy that my music can offer the listeners a little sound pleasure as well as an angle by which they can get to see and think what today’s young composers are creating.
It definitely differs from what you can hear and learn from a masterclass. The internet offers a no-personal interaction inviting listeners from a broader level of society, and mostly the comments you receive on line present a wide range of aesthetic levels and unfold what your music means to others. A masterclass provides a situation in which a composer can share his/her music ideas with other professional and experienced colleagues, and often the comments you receive at a masterclass deal with the composers’ understandings of what music composition is, and what might improve your composition.

Clint Needham:
I applaud the idea and effort behind Project 440 and I am honored to be selected to the next round of the competition. However, the major issue is that most comments for each composer come from friends of the composer (myself included). In an open forum where anyone can comment there is really no way of being “fair” and totally objective. That being said, I am fine with the way things are being run and I am happy the final decision comes from the committee. I would also add that I don’t think most of us would get such glowing reviews (or overly harsh ones) in a room where people, who were asked to be objective, spoke to us directly.

Christopher Lee:
I view comments I receive from the Internet not at all like those I would get at a masterclass, or even from a newspaper review, though that’s closer. Comments from online listeners represent feedback one would get from a concert audience, made up of people with very diverse backgrounds and degrees of experience with music. As such, I think this is important feedback to have, and represents “the last stop” our music makes on its journey into the world, but I would expect composers to take the same attitude towards it as they do to reviews: some will care, and others will not. This seems to be an interesting new direction for the reception of concert music however, and puts the music back into the public arena in a way reminiscent of the 1930’s and early 40’s with Copland and other populist composers.

Alex Mincek:
The comments have been fun and interesting to read. However, because many of the people who have commented perhaps feel as though they are in some way directly voting, there has been some amusing hyperbole. This project has been a unique experience and so I don’t really find it has much in common with a masterclass situation. While it is certainly informative to hear feedback, I don’t think the dynamic between myself and an anonymous commenter has much in common with any teacher/student relationship I have encountered. I think the project has more in common with a post-concert situation, where, after hearing my work people sometimes share their reactions and opinions without necessarily intending to be pedagogical in any way.

Devin Farney:
Project 440 offers composers a relatively unique opportunity to receive honest feedback for their work. While certainly not the case for all comments posted, many seem to be uninfluenced by personal opinions of the composer or the composer’s type of music. Such unfiltered opinions are seemingly hard to come by, especially in a world where we are all taught to “play nice” with each other. This being said, I am in a rather unique (and perhaps unfortunate, depending on which way you look at it) position in this competition – being the only composer whose work has received no comments (as was pointed out in the following article: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2010/08/272722/orpheus-crowdsources-composers-political-scholars-approve). So accordingly I have no point of reference for personal reaction.

Daniel Wohl:
I enjoy the anonymous critiques. I’m always amazed at how entertaining and candid comments are on public online forums. In this instance some reviews are written by friends who are being generous and showing support for your work, but others come from people who want to state an opinion about your music, even discuss it’s merit, either because they disliked it or because it resonated with them in some way. It’s interesting to start a discussion where everyone feels safe to genuinely express themselves . In a typical masterclass setting, you often get a very diplomatic response to what you present, and it’s refreshing to get a completely frank opinion whether it’s positive or negative feedback.

Jonathan Russell:
The biggest difference is the anonymity of the comments in Project 440. Whereas in a masterclass or other learning situation, I would know the person giving comments and have some sense of their background, interests, and tastes, in the Project 440 comments I don’t know anything about the people commenting. On the one hand, this can make the comments seem somewhat less salient – negative comments are easier to brush off, but positive comments also don’t seem quite as meaningful, since I don’t know the backgrounds of the commenters. On the other hand, it can be very revealing – and intimidating – to be evaluated by the “masses” rather than a “master.” In a masterclass, the person commenting is an expert coming from a world that you know and are familiar with. With Project 440, on the other hand, you’re explicitly opening yourself up to popular opinion, something composers of concert music don’t often have to do. For a composer like myself, who aspires to speak to a much wider audience than the new music specialists who often hear my music, it feels like a true test of whether I am accomplishing what I hope to in my music, whether I am, in fact, able to reach a wide and diverse audience. In this sense, the reaction my music gets in the Project 440 comments is of far more import than the opinion of a single expert at a masterclass.

Yotam Haber:
Ultimately, I write my music hoping that others will find something individually meaningful while listening. But the word ‘others’ doesn’t necessarily mean a group of cognoscenti-composers, performers, or musicologists. Receiving praise (or criticism) from those who hold doctorates in music can be helpful, but is sometimes tempered by politesse and a collegiate cordiality. What often gives me the most food-for-thought is speaking with non-musicians. Once we get the I-don’t-know-anything-about-music nonsense out of the way, people speak from the gut, recounting their first impressions, how it made them feel, of what it reminded them, where they were thrilled, where they were lost, or where they fell asleep. In other words, I feel lucky to have this opportunity: a public internet-based forum that truly involves listeners, both professionals and amateurs, anonymous or not, could possibly bring a fresh, open, unabashed discourse on new music.

Aaron Grad:
I have really enjoyed following the comments on my Project 440 page. I am not sure how much of a parallel I see to a master class or school environment; it feels closer to the performance experience of sharing and connecting through music. Probably half of my comments are from people I know, and most of the rest are from people they know (I must say I actively encouraged visits to the page), so the comments have helped me check in with whether the music is communicating what I hoped it would, both to musicians and to non-musicians. I feel encouraged when I see adjectives such as “fresh” and “delicate” and “playful.” They confirm that my intentions came through.

Benjamin Ellin:
I think when one opens up to the world of public opinion, which can be both random and of extreme temperament, you have to accept the inevitable. I don’t think it’s wise to take anything personally but you should weigh up any comments that you read objectively and be honest about whether or not they ring true. After that you can choose whether to take them on board or to ignore them – which I always find hard to do. Through all this you have to be honest to yourself and remember who and where you are. With a teacher or a mentor I think you yourself place a great trust in their hands; ie, you want them to be as honest as possible about your work as you are searching for your own path and you are inviting them to be a crucial part of that process. To be honest though, you can learn about yourself and your work in any situation, and sometimes the most unlikely circumstance can lead to a real clearing of thoughts. It all depends on whether you can genuinely receive honest critique and not let positive feedback become too absorbing.

I’ll pose another question to the final twelve before the four winners are announced. What would you want to know?

Originally posted by John Clare from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee - PR Newswire (press release)

Dave Koz Joins Daniel Pearl World Music Days Honorary Committee
PR Newswire (press release)
Music has a way of stirring the soul in ways that words can't...so it's not surprising, yet still so inspiring, to see Daniel's message of love and ...

and more »

Fanphony

Sound Clip: Fanphony by Mike Rooke

Recording of the Magnetic Flux disturbance around a game console.

More on this artist

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Analyzing the A-Ha!

By Colin Holter
If you don't buy the notion that a divine wind is blowing into you (which I don't), I guess it's a question for the cognitive scientists; all that's left for us to figure out is how to achieve these moments as regularly as we can.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Imani Winds: Terra Incognita

Hearing the five members of Imani Winds talk about their history together and what keeps them going is like walking in on a great party. Read the interview...

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Movies go to the Opera

Poul Ruders has composed an opera based on Lars von Trier’s 2000 film Dancer in the Dark. The work will be premiered by the Royal Danish Opera next week (on 9/5). You can check out a teaser video below.

Dancer in the Dark is one of several recent operas based on films; but there are countless films yet to be adapted for the operatic stage. Which films would you like to see re-imagined as an opera?

Originally posted by Christian Carey from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

iDrink @ iTunes

Nico Muhly is set to appear at the Santa Monica Apple Store on the Third Street Promenade Wednesday, September 8th to mark two new releases from Decca. “A Good Understanding” will be released exclusively on iTunes on September 7, with physical copies available on September 21 alongside “I Drink the Air Before Me”.

Composer Nico Muhly

Muhly along with Los Angeles Master Chorale conductor Grant Gershon will take part in a Q&A session – where Muhly will demonstrate how he creates his compositions with GarageBand on his MacBook Pro. The talk will end with a performance by members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale featuring two works from “A Good Understanding” and two related works, “Like as the Hart” and “Wayfaring Stranger”.
John Clare spoke with Muhly about the works and event: mp3 file
Nico Muhly and Los Angeles Master Chorale conductor Grant Gershon appear at the Santa Monica Apple Store on Wednesday, September 8, 7:00 p.m.
Bonus – listen to the rest of the conversation as Muhly interviews Clare: mp3 file

Originally posted by John Clare from Sequenza21/, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Sep 1, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

Notes and queries - The Guardian