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I really enjoyed Q2’s broadcast tonight of New Sounds Live, a concert at Merkin Hall by the Bang on a CanAll Stars that featured works by Nik Bartsch, Oscar Bettison, Christine Southworth, Michael Nyman,and David Longstreth. The first in a hopefully ongoing series of collaborations between Q2 and Merkin Hall, it was also a featured event in this week’s Composers Now festival.

I particularly enjoyed the Bettison work, The Afflicted Girl, in part because it’s quite affecting; but it also helps that I was able to study in advance and follow along with a perusal score sent over by the kind folks at Boosey. Funded by BoaC’s Peoples’ Commissioning Fund, the piece is what Bettison calls an “anti-pastorale.” Its based on a quote from Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography. It describes an afflicted girl frequently found in a busy thoroughfare, seemingly oblivious to the cacophony around her. Or, as in Bettison’s posits in his piece, perhaps she found a kind of music amidst the chaos.

Clangor is Bettison’s daily bread: many of his works employ junk metal percussion. The Afflicted Girl involves copious percussion batteries, prepared piano, a keyboard tuned a quarter tone flat, taped echoes of the ensemble, plenty of electric guitar harmonics, and a Shapey-esque scordatura tuning of the cellos C string – down to G for rumbled slackening. What’s more, all the players double on bicycle bells!

Alternately assaultive and contemplative, rhythmically charged and, briefly, eerily reposeful, its a demanding, challenging, harrowing, and memorable work.

Sad you missed out on the Q2 broadcast? Fear not: the performance will be featured on a March broadcast of New Sounds.

Despite the impending snow this weekend will be a packed one.

I’m attending the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s concert this Saturday at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Angela Hewitt will be appearing with the ensemble, performing as soloist in Bach’s Concerto for Piano and Strings in D minor. Christopher Taylor will be the piano soloist in the premiere of a new work by Peter Maxwell Davies. The latter piece, Sea Orpheus, is a trope on Bach’s chamber concerto style, using Brandenburg #5 as its inspiration. Dvorak’s E major Serenade for Strings and Stravinsky’s Basel Concerto round out the program. I’ll be reviewing the concert for Musical America.

For those of you who didn’t see it, Michael Gordon published a must-read article in the NY Times yesterday. Titled “The Accidental Music Lesson,” it chronicles Gordon’s recent visit to Miami Beach for a performance by the New World Symphony of his Gotham Symphony. While there, he visits his high school to give a talk about being a composer, meeting a former instructor and musing on the gifts and lessons he was given by other teachers. Gordon is a class act here, thanking those who provided him formative experiences, even ‘accidental ones,’ with graceful prose and colorful anecdotes.

Gotham – mvt 1, excerpt from Bill Morrison on Vimeo.

Michael Gordon’s website.

Max Richter

Memoryhouse

Fat Cat CD

Max Richter’s 2002 debut CD Memoryhouse has recently been reissued on Fat Cat records. It’s a timely reminder of how the worlds of ambient pop, field recordings, and contemporary classical music have been converging throughout the past decade, creating a post-classical crossover style that still seems to be in ascent.

There’s a lush beauty to the proceedings here. Gauzy strings mix with nature sounds in a reverberant imaginary soundscape to stirring effect.

MP3: November

Richter’s employment of classical instruments alongside samples has also prepared him well for cinematic work. He’s recently composed the score for the film Waltz with Bashir. While one wishes him much success in this venue, one hopes that the orchestra and theater feature prominently in his future plans as well.

Ben Frost

By the Throat

Bedroom Collective (Digital)

Formerly from Melbourne, Australia, composer Ben Frost now makes his home in Reykjavik, Iceland. Just shy of thirty, Frost has already had a wide ranging career. He’s played in Glenn Branca-inspired guitar ensembles, collaborated with the likes of Nico Muhly and Jeremy Gara (of Arcade Fire), and remixed Björk.

His latest recording, By the Throat, combines confrontational avant sonics with the patient sculpting of more ambient artists. Frost enlists a number of artists in the cause: Gara, Muhly, Icelandic string quartet Amiina, and Swedish metal band Crowpath all make appearances on recording.  As one can imagine, the surface changes widely, sometimes violently. Hushed, breathy vocals are juxtaposed with screams. Animal sounds – lions’ roars and the multifaceted language of killer whales – are pitted against electronic percussion and synthesizer-laden ostinati. Supple strings give way to sepulchral bass sonorities – worthy to test many a subwoofer. The resultant music is fractured, disquieting, and often quite powerful.

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At our house, By the Throat proved to be the perfect soundtrack to chill the bones and over-stimulate the imagination on Halloween.

New Yorkers who’d like to experience the intensity of Frost’s vision live can attend performances of his work Mortal Engine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this December.

Jody Redhage will perform in Songstresses from the Edge

Jody Redhage will be performing two of my songs  in Brooklyn this coming Saturday.

The program is called Songstresses from the Edge. 

Jody’s set for voice, cello, and electronics:

Christian Carey- “Song” and “Otherwise” (words Jane Kenyon)

Lainie Fefferman- “Slash Plus” for voice, cello, & clarinet

Daniel Felsenfeld- “From Sleepless Nights” (words Elizabeth Hardwick)

Missy Mazzoli- “A Thousand Tongues” (words Stephen Crane)

Molly Thompson- “Rhapsody’ (words Cynthia Huntington)

Also on the program is a set of original duo compositions by Daisy Press & Jody (duos for voices, cello & electronics), sets by Molly Thompson and Kamala Sankaram, and a guest appearance by clarinetist Eileen Mack.

SONGSTRESSES FROM THE EDGE

Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

8:00 pm

First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn

124 Henry Street

Brooklyn, NY  11201

www.fpcbrooklyn.org

2/3 to Clark St. is the closest train

$10

With performers Jody Redhage, Daisy Press, Molly Thompson, Kamala Sankaram & Eileen Mack

Music by Redhage, Press, Thompson, Sankaram, Christian Carey, Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld, & Missy Mazzoli.

Time Out New York previewed Songstresses from the Edge  here.

This weekend, the WNYC show Spinning on Air featured singing cellists, including Jody Redhage. Host David Garland played some of Jody’s music, including her band Fire in July and their new album Ancient Star.

Miller Theatre will start their 2009-’10 season with “Wordless Music Meets Miller.” The miniseries brings together indie and contemporary classical artists for four days of shows.

PROGRAMS:

Wednesday, September 9, 8:00PM

The 802 Tour (Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, and Doveman)

Tickets: $15

Thursday, September 10, 8:00PM

Do Make Say Think and Charles Spearin’s “The Happiness Project”

Tickets: $20

Friday, September 11, 8:00PM

Tim Hecker, Grouper, and Julianna Barwick

Tickets: $15

Saturday, September 12, 8:00PM

Destroyer, Loscil, and JACK Quartet

Tickets: $20

 

It seems like a natural evolution for both Ronen Givony’s Wordless Music and Melissa Smey’s Miller: both are nurturers of the hybridized, polystylistic music that seems to have captured the gestalt of 2009. Indie artists are making it cool to use classical instruments to rock out, and contemporary classical artists are moving closer than ever to popular terrain, both in terms of musical signatures and venues.

 

Assuming that this will find a ready and enthusiastic audience at Miller (it will), what pairings might Wordless/Miller consider next? Comment with your dream pairings of indie/new classical artists below.

 

Fire in July’s debut album, Ancient Star, features singing cellist Redhage’s inimitable “indie art songs” in ensemble arrangements.

A trio subunit of the Brooklyn indie crossover collective Fire in July will make the band’s Boston debut tomorrow night. Come and check them out live!