Solo piano and vocal music of Joelle Wallach will be heard at locations in Mexico and Alaska on Sunday, March 21:

Pianist Ana Cervantes (http://www.cervantespiano.com/) will present the Mexican Premiere of Ms. Wallach’s Voices of the Iron Harp for solo piano as part of De Tripas Corazon: Creación de mujeres (From Guts, Heart: Women’s Creation) on March 21 – 1 PM at Casa Museo Gene Byron, located at Calle Real de Marfil in Marfil, Guanajato, Mexico.

Voices of the Iron Harp is a love song, almost a farewell to the piano. It uses an open-ended variation form as well as the heroic poetic gestures of 19th and 20th century piano literature to explore and evoke the variety and gradations of mood and sound available through the keyboard from the heart of the iron harp inside. More about it at http://www.joellewallach.com/Voices_Iron_Harp.html.

For more about the concert, call 52-473-733-10-29 or visit http://www.museogenebyron.org/.

Soprano Connie Oba will perform Ms. Wallach’s She Walks in Beauty and Pussycat Love Song as part of A Concert for the Animals, also on March 21 – 6 PM at Pioneer Park Centennial Theater in Fairbanks, Alaska. The concert will benefit the Fairbanks Animal Shelter Fund.

Both songs were inspired by the composer’s cats and are from her Meow Mix song cycle. More about it at http://www.joellewallach.com/meowmix.html.

For more about this event, call 907-456-1144 or visit http://fairbankschoralsociety.org/.

Read The Dream of Now, Joelle Wallach’s newsletter at http://jamesarts.com/releases/dec09/JW_nws_1209.pdf. Much more about her at http://www.joellewallach.com/.

Chamber music of American composer Lawrence Dillon will be heard on the following dates at the following locations:

Saturday, March 20 – 7 PM – Bacchus Chaconne for violin and viola will be presented as part of the Mallarme Chamber Players gala concert in Durham, North Carolina. More about the event at http://www.mallarmemusic.org/.

Bacchus Chaconne can be seen on YouTube, performed by violinist Danielle Belen and violist Juan Miguel Hernandez at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIWzXqG6rIo. It can be downloaded from the new Music of Lawrence Dillon CD (Naxos 8.559644) at http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559644.

Sunday, March 21 – 3 PM – Danielle Belen will present Façade for violin and piano as part of her faculty recital at Thayer Recital Hall of The Colburn School, 200 South Grand Street in Los Angeles, California. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, visit The Colburn School at http://www.colburnschool.edu/.

Ms. Belen has recorded the work as part of the new Music of Lawrence Dillon Naxos CD. She will also perform works by Bach, Sarasate and Brahms. Visit her at http://www.belenviolin.com/.

Lawrence Dillon’s latest digital CD release is on Naxos (8.559644) – http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559644. Albany Music has also issued Appendage and Other Stories – http://www.albanyrecords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AR&Product_Code=TROY1170&Category_Code=CMN&Product_Count=59. Visit his website at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/.

Barbara Harbach’s Pioneer Women: From Skagway to White Mountain for soprano, clarinet and piano will be featured on March 20 – 10 AM at the Ninth Festival of Women Composers, presented by the Music Department of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in the school’s Gorell Recital Hall, 422 South Eleventh Street in Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Pioneer Women: From Skagway to White Mountain is a collection of four portraits of American women who helped to settle the wilds of Alaska, with texts taken from their diaries, letters, monographs and journals. It has been recorded for MSR Classics – MS1256 – http://www.msrcd.com/1256/1256.html. The piece will be performed at the Festival by Christine Buckstead, soprano, Eleanor Elkins, piano, Timothy Bonenfant, clarinet on a program that also includes music by Elizabeth Bell, Deborah Kavasch, and Stella Sung. The program was previously performed by the trio on March 2 at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.

For information about this and other Ninth Festival of Women Composers events, visit http://www.iup.edu/music/fwc/default.aspx.

Visit http://www.umsl.edu/services/creative/assets/pdfs/messenger/harbach_fanfare.pdf to read an article about Harbach’s music in the January-February issue of Fanfare magazine. Her website is at www.barbaraharbach.com/.

  ALPHABET SOUP PRODUCTIONS

presents

HIGH VOLTAGE OPERA

a night of electroacoustic opera at Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn – 4.8.10 @ 8pm

$20 admission

www.alphabetsoupproductions.org

 

High Voltage Opera is a night of fresh, electro-acoustic chamber operas that stretch the boundaries of a classic genre by adding electronics to the mix of powerful singers, old and new music, and classic stories.

Sappho in the Mix

Marie Incontrera, composer

with Monica Harte as Sappho & Jenny Greene as Aphrodite

“With a solid electroacoustic track – structurally conceived, as well as in

mood – but with gritty, industrial-leaning feel… I can feel the presence of

the poet, Sappho, even if she lived several thousand years ago.”

–Mark Greenfest, New Music Connoisseur

 

Opera Electric

Traditonal Opera with an Electric Twist

 

Wonderland

[world premiere]

Camila Cano, composer

with Jenny Greene as Alice, Mary Hubbell as Rebecca, & others

 

 

 

New York City-based pianist Kathleen Supové will be the second featured performer in the inaugural season of Music at First on March 26th, 2010 at 7:30pm. Music at First is a new music series held at First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn through May, 2010. First Presbyterian Church is located in Brooklyn Heights at 124 Henry St. Directions are at www.fpcbrooklyn.org. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door with no advance reservations or ticket sales. Contact musicatfirst@gmail.com for more info.

This series, curated by Wil Smith (composer who also serves as organist at First Presbyterian), occurs monthly, featuring one performer or ensemble per evening. Smith describes Music at First as “a diverse mix of New York City’s best new music ensembles and performers, accessible to a wide audience of both community members and seasoned new music listeners.” Future performances include cellist/vocalist Jody Redhage and Fire in July on April 16 and flute/percussionist duo Conor Nelson and Ayano Kataoka on May 28 (CD release). The series began in February 19th, 2010 with a performance by Threefifty Duo.

Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, known for continually redefining what it means to be a pianist/keyboardist/performance artist in today’s world. After winning top prizes in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music, Ms. Supové has annually presented a series of solo concerts entitled THE EXPLODING PIANO. In this series, she has performed and premiered works by such established composers as Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, and Morton Subotnick, as well as emerging composers from varied backgrounds such as David Lang, Randall Woolf, Carolyn Yarnell, Eve Beglarian, Anna Clyne, Missy Mazzoli, Michael Gatonska, the composer/performance artist Corey Dargel, and Gameboy composer Bubblyfish, just to name a few. In recent seasons, she has developed THE EXPLODING PIANO into a multimedia experience by using electronics, theatrical elements, vocal rants, performance art, staging, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. Visit supove.com and myspace.com/supove.

The Program will feature signature works by composers with whom Supové has had close musical associations: American Alvin Curran; iconoclast East Hartford composer Michael Gatonska; Dutch master Louis Andriessen’s intensely virtuosic seldom-performed work “Trepidus”; and “The Body Of Your Dreams”, an audience favorite by current Dutch sensation Jacob TV, based on an American infomercial for the AB-TRONIC stomach-reducing machine.

THE MEMORY OF ROSES (1992) by Louis Andriessen for Piano, Toy Piano, and Rose

A SHAKING OF THE PUMPKIN (2007) by Michael Gatonska for Piano, Mallet, and Optional Bass Drum

TREPIDUS (1983) by Louis Andriessen for Piano

INNER CITIES by Alvin Curran for Piano

THE BODY OF YOUR DREAMS (2004) by Jacob TV (Ter Veldhuis) for Piano and Soundtrack

ROULETTE presents

http://www.roulette.org/

Mary Halvorson Quintet
Thu Mar 18 – 8:30 PM
Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson premieres a set of new pieces for the Mary Halvorson Quintet as well as material from her upcoming release on Firehouse 12 Records. Halvorson has been active in New York since 2002, following jazz studies at Wesleyan University and the New School. In addition to her own band, The Mary Halvorson Trio, she co-leads a chamber music duo with violist Jessica Pavone and the avant-rock band, People, with drummer Kevin Shea. A veteran of the ensembles of esteemed saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, she has also performed with groups led by Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, Trevor Dunn, Tomas Fujiwara, Curtis Hasselbring, Tony Malaby, Myra Melford, Nicole Mitchell, Jason Moran, Marc Ribot, Matana Roberts, Elliott Sharp, John Tchicai and Matthew Welch among many others.

Tom Swafford: The Real (?) Me
Fri Mar 19 – 8:30 PM
Lately violinist/composer Tom Swafford has felt adrift in a sea of musical genres, each one with its own set of aesthetic criteria and performance practice. Tom has reached the point where he wants to define exactly what his compositional voice is. This concert uses this well-worn cliché (The Real Me) as a unifying theme for the variety of his compositions presented. The centerpiece of the concert, This is the Real Me, a distilled opera written for vocalist/performer Gelsey Bell, addresses the issue of not just musical but personal self-definition through extended vocal techniques, a variety of musical styles, facial expressions and physical gestures. The text of Your (so called) Music (for spoken word artist Lee Todd Lacks and 12 piece string orchestra) is a vitriolic piece of hate mail Tom received after his last composition concert. Hecklepiece, for solo performer and hecklers, deals with some of the issues faced by musicians and composers-for-hire who must tailor their art to the demands of others. In this concert, Swafford is asking: “When given absolute freedom to create the music I want, without being subject to anyone else’s aesthetic criteria, what would that music be?” Also on the program is music for woodwind quintet, solo piano, banjo and string orchestra.

Childrens Concert with David Grollman $5
Sat Mar 20 – 2:00 PM
Sock puppets converse and intermingle with the sounds of drums, trumpet, cello, balloons, toys and voices in this exciting concert for kids! David Grollman, Brad Henkel and Valerie Kuehne are a trio of all-purpose drums, trumpet and cello who perform freely improvised musict, supplemented by happy environmental hazards, noisemaking toys and found objects, including audience members, children, and unknown animals. Anything is game. Anything may be a participant as they fearlessly experiment, all but self-flagellating if the musical conversation calls for it. Artist, instrument, audience, and environment become ambiguous terms, conspiring in a theatrical exploration of chance dynamics and serendipitous exchanges, enabled by the skillful ease with which David, Valerie and Brad play.

Deviant Shakti: LaDonna Smith & Michael Evans
Sat Mar 20 – 8:30 PM
Dedicated music moving in the moment. LaDonna Smith, well known as a “devilish” fiddler and exponential avant-gardist on the viola, a forceful proponent of the American free improvisation movement in the South. She is not only a riveting performer, but also an active producer, presenter, and publisher, with plans to host a regional festival celebrating the 30 year anniversary of “the improvisor” in 2010. Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/

Guitarist and lutenist Michael Kudirka has established a stellar reputation as an exciting artist performing both recent music and much older repertoire, often on the same program. Kudirka joins the Formalist Quartet, with violist Melinda Rice, for this profound program of extraordinary variety. The repertoire features music for guitar and lute and string ensemble to create an intimately touching and sensitively enlivening musical experience. Program includes Dusan Bogdanovich’s Sevdalinka. Saturday, April 10, 2010, 8:00pm

Center For The Arts, 2225 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock
Ticket Pricing: $19 (adult), $12 (youth 17 and under)

Ticket Information: Call (323) 259-3011 or log on to www.scorchestra.org

Richard Brooks’ chamber work Circular Motions for flute, clarinet and piano will be presented on Tuesday, March 16 – 9 PM by members of the No Borders Quintet at Adria, Sala circolo unione in Rome, Italy.

Circular Motions was written in 2005 and consists of three movements – I. Maelstrom, II. In the Eye of the Storm and III. Whirlwind. It has been recorded for the Innova label by flutist Keith Underwood, clarinetist Esther Lamneck and pianist Martha Locker. For a sample of the score and recording, visit http://www.richardbrooksmusic.com/multimedia/maelstrom/maelstrom.html.

Performers for the Brooks work will be flutist Andrea Biagini, clarinetist Guido Arbonelli and pianist Alessandro Roselletti. They will be joined by other ensemble members to also present works by Astor Piazzolla, Dana D. Richardson, Dan Lis, Mauro Porro, Linda Marcel, Dinu Ghezzo, Carlos Delgado, Josh Hummel and Nino Rota.

Read Richard Brooks’ Set Piece newsletter at http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/nov09/RB_nws_1109.pdf. Visit him online at http://www.richardbrooksmusic.com/index.html.

IKTUS Percussion Quartet

Featuring new works by:
Angélica Negrón, Dominic Donato, Lisa R. Coons, Craig Woodward, Paul Pinto and Juraj Kojs

IKTUS originally conceived the concert’s theme, Music for a Recession, in the spring of 2009. After an extended call for scores IKTUS selected six composers. The submissions of those selected, reflected IKTUS’ philosophy—that a period of simplicity follows hypercomplexity both in economic and cultural cycles. Our goal was to commission works that utilize only “found percussion” instruments: those that are not made explicitly for music. Along with Lisa R. Coons’s original percussion sculpture—welded by the composer using scrap metal from her family’s farm–everyday objects such as balloons, playing cards and newspapers will make their debut in featured roles. You’ll have to show up to see what else is in store! In keeping with our lighthearted response to the weighty events of the past year, the character of the pieces ranges from the sober to the sardonic.

Friday, March 19th, 2010 @ 8PM
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York
43A West 13th Street
New York, NY

Saturday, March 20th, 2010 @ 8PM
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street
Brooklyn, NY

Visit our Webpage for more Information:

www.iktuspercussion.com