Category Archives: contemporary classical

Friday and Saturday: JACK and Bermel at IAS

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Composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel is coming to the end of his term as artist-in-residence at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. This Spring, he’s curating several concerts that assure he’ll be fondly remembered. This Friday and Saturday, he is joined by JACK Quartet for a concert featuring Ligeti’s Second String Quartet,  Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, Bermel’s Ritornello and a new piece by Bermel:  A Short History of the Universe (as related by Nima Arkani-Hamed). I’ve been told that events on the concert series frequently sell out, so if you are planning on attending order in advance!

 

Friday: Miranda at Mannes

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Miranda Cuckson

It is no secret that violinist, violist, and sometime vocalist Miranda Cuckson is one of File Under ?’s favorite contemporary music performers on the New York scene. An excerpt of her recent Nono recording can be heard on our December Mix (see embed below).

Miranda has started a new non-profit music presenting organization called nunc. On Friday at Mannes College of Music, nunc has its maiden voyage. Miranda is joined on an 8 pm concert by mandolinist Joseph Brent, percussionist Alex Lipowski, bassoonist Adrian Morejon, mezzo Mary Nessinger, and pianists Matei Varga and Ning Yu. The program includes music by Michael Hersch, Charles Wuorinen, Iannis Xenakis, Georges Aperghis, Sofia Gubaidulina, and more.

You can read read Miranda’s program notes here. Admission is free.

 

File Under ? December 2012 Mix by Christian Carey on Mixcloud

Q2 Elicits Your Feedback!

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Q2, The online “Living Music, Living Composers” arm of New York’s classical radio station WQXR (105.9 FM) is requesting some feedback from its listeners. Their Listener Survey (available online here), subtitled “Help Us Serve You!”, provides Q2 listeners with an opportunity to let the station know what’s working and what you would like to see changed. Please take a few minutes and let the good folks at Q2 know that you’re out there listening with discerning ears and an appetite for more contemporary classical listening fare.

Monday: Transatlantic Ensemble at Steinway Hall

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It is a bit of a dreary looking day in New York. One way to enliven one’s spirits: a free concert after work! Translatlantic Ensemble, which features clarinetist Mariam Adam (also of Imani Winds) and pianist Evelyn Ulex, will be performing at Steinway Hall tonight at  7 PM (doors open at 6:30).

The program will include music from Transatlantic Ensemble’s new CD, Crossing America (Eroica JDT 3469). including works by Paquito D’Rivera and Jeff Scott.  After the hour long concert concludes, meet the artists at a reception. New music in a lovely setting and a free nosh afterwards? Sounds like a cure for January Monday blahs.

 

Sunday: LPR Celebrates Carter

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Tonight at 7:30 at Le Poisson Rouge, cellist Fred Sherry, soprano Tony Arnold, pianist Ursula Oppens, and several other estimable performers known for their interpretations of Elliott Carter’s music join Ensemble LPR to celebrate and remember the composer. The program includes the song cycle Tempo e Tempi and the Quintet for Piano and Strings.

Tickets/more info here.

Soldier Songs at Prototype

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David T. Little’s opera Dog Days got a lot of buzz for its 2012 production in Montclair, NJ. Little’s 2006 opera Soldier Songs will be presented tonight through 1/18 as part of the Prototype showcase of recent operas.

Brooklyn Vegan has an interview with Little here. Also check out the embedded video trailer below.

 

PROTOTYPE Festival 2013 – David T. Little’s Soldier Songs from PROTOTYPE Festival on Vimeo.

Dear Huff Post …

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Have you seen the leaden snark about new music that recently passed for a column on Huffington Post? Penned by composer Daniel Asia, it was ostensibly about John Cage’s centenary year celebrations, but was really just a rehash of reactionary vitriol against experimental art.

Aren’t we yet tired of attacking those whose aesthetic viewpoints differ from our own? Can’t we composers all just get along? Apparently not. My reply to Huff Post follows below.

____

With all due respect to Daniel Asia, it is very easy to write an essay excoriating a dead man and griping about centenary festivals: both are easy targets. It is not so easy to create a body of work that outlives you and continues to provoke thought. John Cage’s music may not suit Professor Asia, but it certainly engaged audiences throughout the world in 2012.

I wrote about several of the events and came away with a very different impression (from that portrayed in the article above) of Cage’s music and the music of those who admired him. Much of it I found invigorating, stimulating, and yes, often entertaining.

Sincerely,

Christian Carey
Assistant Professor of Music
Westminster Choir College,
Princeton, NJ.

Friday: Nono CD Release Party

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Miranda Cuckson and Christopher Burns originally planned to celebrate the release of their latest CD, a recording of Luigi Nono’s “la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” back in November. After Storm Sandy, the formal release was pushed back to January. In the interim, the NY Times named it one of 2012′s best CDs and we added an excerpt of the recording to our “Favorite Things 2012″ Mix.

Tonight, at long last, Miranda and Chris get to properly celebrate the Nono disc, performing it tonight (Friday) and Saturday at Spectrum. In addition, listeners will get to hear a demonstration of the 5.1 surround version of the recording and another work by Burns. Details below.

Event Details

Date and time: Friday, January 4, 2012, *7 PM
Place: Spectrum
121 Ludlow Street, Second Floor, New York, NY
Tickets: $15 general/$10 students and seniors

–Live performance by Miranda and Chris of Leggii 3 and 4 from “la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura”

–Demo of the recording featuring Richard Warp’s realizations of the electronics in 5.1 channel surround sound

–Miranda performs Chris’ composition “come ricordi come sogni come echi: six
studies on Nono’s ‘la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura’ for solo violin”

–Open forum with the artists

 

Date and time: Saturday, January 5, 2012, *7 PM

Place: Spectrum
121 Ludlow Street, Second Floor, New York, NY
Tickets: $15 general/$10 students and seniors

–Miranda Cuckson and Chris Burns perform Dai Fujikura’s “prism spectra” for viola and live surround electronics, which they are recording for an upcoming CD

–Chris Burns presents his own compositions: “Opalescence”, a glockenspiel solo performed by Trevor Saint, and “Xenoglossia” for live electronics

–Richard Warp demonstrates his new brain-computer spatialization interface

 

Contact! at Symphony Space

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andyakihowithsteeldrums

 

Andy Akiho. Photo: Aestheticize Media.

I had mixed feelings about the Dec. 22nd Contact! concert at Symphony Space. The first concert curated by the New York Philharmonic’s current composer in residence, Christopher Rouse, it featured two commissioned works for sinfonietta and a New York premiere, all by fast rising composers, as well as Counterpoise by Jacob Druckman (1928-’96). Having studied with and sung music by Druckman, I was glad to hear the Philharmonic revisit his music: a superb orchestrator who knew how to control the balance and pacing of an orchestra piece better than most in recent memory.

One was reminded by comparing Counterpoise to some of the newer music on the program just how difficult it can be to cultivate these skills. This is particularly true today,  an era in which, even for very talented composers, opportunities such as Contact! are few and far between. My favorite moments came in Andy Akiho’s Oscillate, a commission for the NY Philharmonic that featured imaginative writing for the sinfonietta’s percussion cohort. Akiho himself is a virtuoso percussionist and he supplied dazzling parts for pitched and un-pitched percussion instruments and also had pianist Eric Huebner perform inside his instrument with fistfuls of credit cards: perhaps a more constructive use for them than holiday overspending! In places, the string writing was less successful, but Oscillate’s attractive harmonic palette and gestural ebullience contained flashes of brilliance.