We’re sad to learn of the passing of composer and virtuoso bassist Stefano Scodanibbio (1955-2012). He died in Mexico, a victim of motor neuron disease.
Scodanibbio premiered works by dozens of composers, pushing the boundaries of what double bassists could be expected to do. He was also a composer of a number of formidable works, often featuring his own instrument but for diverse forces.
Although his compositions frequently displayed hyper-virtuosity and a serious demeanor, below, we see him in a light-hearted musical mood, channeling Hendrix and other classic rock stars in his piece “& Roll.”
On Monday, January 16 at Carnegie Hall,Distinguished Concerts International New York brings together over three hundred musicians to give the world premiere of The Peacemakersby Karl Jenkins. The composer will conduct this work for choir, orchestra, and instrumental soloists. It is the first world premiere of one of his large-scale works to take place in New York.
TICKETS: www.carnegiehall.org or 212-247-7800 or in person at the Carnegie Hall Box Office.
The recording of The Peacemakers just came out this past Tuesday on EMI Classics. It features the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra and three choirs: the City of Birmingham Youth Choir, Rundfunkchor Berlin, and the 1000-strong Really Big Chorus.
EMI is offering a free download of a track from the album here.
The label’s also been kind enough to offer us several copies of the limited edition version of The Peacemakers for a CD giveaway. Interested parties should email me here.
I’ll use a Cageian (random) method to determine the “winners.” The contest is open until Monday, 1/16 at midnight.
Although I only taught at Manhattan School of Music for a year, one of the great joys and privileges of that experience was meeting and working with composer, vocalist, copyist, and teacher Hayes Biggs. This past Fall, Hayes helped us to organize the Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert, going through stacks and stacks of scores as an adjudicator and, as a composer, contributing one of his own: the beautiful last movement of his string quartet O Sapentia/Steal Away.
After twenty years on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music, Hayes is finally getting a solo show there: a composition recital that features the world premiere of his song cycle Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs(2011), performed by soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Christopher Oldfather. Attendees will also get to hear Hayes’s string quartet in its entirety, performed by the Avalon Quartet: the group that not only commissioned and premiered it, but also recorded Steal Away/O Sapentia for the Albany imprint. Event details are below. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll make the trip uptown to hear Hayes’s music: it is very special work.
Event Details
Sunday January 15, 2012 at 7:30 PM
William R. and Irene D. Miller Recital Hall,
Manhattan School of Music,
120 Claremont Avenue (entrance on 122nd and Broadway), New York, NY
One of the best recital discs I heard in 2011 did not feature an instrument typically associated with the genre. Contrechant is a disc comprised of all contemporary works performed by Swiss clarinetist Reto Bieri. All solos: no piano accompaniment or contributions from other instrumentalists. But the proceedings are hardly monophonic or monochromatic. Even Luciano Berio’s Lied (1983), which opens the disc with a phrase or so gently articulated “song-like” melody, does not remain a “single line” piece for long: this texture is complicated by repeated note ostinati and wide-ranging leaps. While Lied isn’t as hypervirtuosic as the clarinet Sequenza, it proves to be an elegant introduction to the rigorous material that will be found on the disc, as well as the formidable technical skill and focused interpretative powers possessed by Bieri. Indeed, Contrechant is a showcase for the clarinet’s versatility and its extensive repertoire of extended techniques.
A case in point is “Lightshadow-trembling,” by Hungarian (now residing in the US) composer, conductor, and clarinetist Gergely Vajda. The piece spends a great deal of its duration requiring the clarinetist to perform pedal tones in conjunction with a compound melody and copious trilling, creating a far denser texture than many listeners would assume possible when presented with the mislabel “single line instrument.” After this sustained, breathless (or, rather, circular breathed) flurry, late in the piece, Vajda allows the clarinetist to attack single sustained notes: the resultant starkness is startling. This was the first piece I’ve heard from Vajda: I look forward to hearing more.
One of Vajda’s teachers, the acclaimed composer and conductor Peter Eötvös, contributes a very different work: Derwischtánz. It is lyrical and questing, with beautiful runs that start in the chalumeau register and cascade up to long, sustained, pianissimo notes in the instrument’s upper register to end each phrase. A few trills at the work’s close seem to serve as foreshadowing for Vajda’s later perambulations.
“Let me die before I wake,” by Salvatore Sciarrino revels in extended techniques, such as multiphonics and whistle tones. But these never seem gimmicky; instead they give the clarinet an otherworldly, “sci-fi” ambiance that is quite haunting. Virtuoso oboist and composer Heinz Holliger knows a thing or two about wind instruments. His Contrechant (2007)cast in five short movements, takes up where Sciarrino leaves off, putting the clarinet through its paces, including extraordinary measures: slap tonguing, extended glissandi, vocalizations, microtones, and altissimo register squalls. It is a bracing, yet dramatically compelling, ultra-modernist composition. More reflective, although still possessing considerable angularity and a wildly shifting demeanor, is Rechant (2008), a through-composed companion piece.
This is Bieri’s second recording of Elliott Carter’sGra (1993), one of the ‘early’ works of the now 103 year-old composer’s ‘late’ period. It is one of a number of relatively brief single movement piecess that Carter penned during the 90s and 00s and, I believe, one of his best. In Gra, for the most part Carter eschews the special effects employed by the aforementioned composers; he instead displays absolute command, both of the instrument’s idiomatic capabilities and of a rigorously compressed harmonic and gestural language. The piece’s exquisite pacing and, for Carter, relatively new found directness of expression, make it one of the great works for solo clarinet. Since his first recording of the piece, Bieri’s interpretation has grown, is ever more sure-footed and specific in all of its details: I’m glad he recorded it a second time. Let’s hope ECM invites him back to make another CD. Pairing him with one of the label’s many talented pianists could make for a deadly duo disc.
Last fall, I was wowed by the The Crossing,a professional chamber choir directed by Donald Nally that is based in Philadelphia. They took part in Miller Theatre’spresentation of James Dillon’sNine Rivers, a three-evening work that is the Scottish composer’s magnum opus (read my Musical Americareview here). Armed only with tuning forks (and, of course, excellent preparation by Nally), they performed this superbly difficult piece in the ‘new complexity’ style with aplomb; on a densely populated stage to boot (I don’t think I’ve seen fifty people onstage at the same time at modest-sized Miller before!).
On Monday January 9, Crossing returns to NYC to perform with Renaissance band Piffaro in Kile Smith’sVespers, a work that blends early and contemporary musical styles. Smith’s setting of Lutheran liturgical texts is crosscut with elements referencing postmodern Man’s complicated relationship with God, ritual, doubt, and organized religion. Throughout the holidays, I’ve cheated a bit and spun some Epiphany tunes early, enjoying the Navona recording of the work. I’m eager to hear it live on Monday evening.
Bang on a Can is celebrating twenty-five years of music making in generous fashion. Between now and Jan. 25th, you can download their new album, Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, via bangonacan25.org.In exchange, they ask for an email address and a memory of a BoaC moment: the former is kept confidential, the latter is published in a scrapbook commemorating the album.
Think this is marketing against one’s own self-interests? Probably not. The iTunes version is for sale from 1/31, and features a bonus track of the ensemble performing Philip Glass’s Closing, with Glass, live. When the physical streets on 2/28, it will be a double disc of premiere recordings that will also feature films of the ensemble. So, instead of a “loss leader,” I tend to think of this release as downtown’s answer to Radiohead’s In Rainbows. In the meantime, Happy New Year, and happy downloading, all!
One of my favorite projects this past Fall was writing the program essay for American Composers Orchestra’sSONiC festival. I had the chance to interview several composers (though only a small sampling of the many fine participants) featured on SONiC, includingHannah Lash, Anthony Cheung, Keniji Bunch (an old friend – one of my classmates at Juilliard), and the National’sBryce Dessner.
All of the interview subjects proved diverting. But I was particularly glad to have a chance in the essay to spotlight Ensemble Klang, a Dutch new music group that performedOscar Bettison’sO Death on SONiC.Their performance was critically acclaimed as one of the highlights of the festival. And if you weren’t fortunate enough to be there, my recommendation would be to get thee hence to the group’s web store for a copy of the O Deathstudio recording (with liner notes by Alex Rose!).
While you’re there, I’d recommend checking out Ensemble Klang’s other studio recordings. Cows, Chords, and Combinationsa portrait disc of minimalist composer/theorist/critic Tom Johnson has proved to be an extraordinarily valuable recording to me. It has reframed my thinking about the process-based components of minimalism: how they can be crafted into quite complicated structures and how they remain a vital component of whichever post (post post?) incarnation of minimalism we’re currently experiencing. The slowly evolving, spectral-inspired structures found on Waves, a disc of music by Peter Adriaansz, is equally engaging: a collection of soundscapes that require, nay demand, immersively intensive listening. (I haven’t yet heard Ensemble Klang’s recording of music by Matthew Wright; an oversight I hope to correct shortly).
Below, I’ve included an excerpt of my interview with Bettison, in which he discusses his creative process and the collaborative genesis of O Death.
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Traditional instruments are one way to go in new music. Another is to find or create new instruments altogether. Such is often the pathway of composer Oscar Bettison. He enjoys incorporating unconventional instruments, such as those made from found objects or junk metal, into his scores.
Bettison says, “This was all a result of moving to Holland to study in the early 2000s. Before that, I had written a lot of music for traditional forces and I wanted to get away from that: to stretch myself as a composer. So, I started to play around with things, even going as far as to build some instruments; percussion mostly, but later on I branched out into radically detuning stringed instruments – there’s some of that in the guitar part of “O Death.” These things I called “Cinderella instruments: the kind of things that shouldn’t be ‘musical’ but I do my best to make them sing. And I suppose as a counterpoint to that, I shunned traditional instruments for a long time.”
Cinderella instruments, as well as references to popular music of many varieties, are signatures found in his work O Death, played on SONIC October 19, 2011 by Ensemble Klang.
Of O Death, Bettison says, “It was written for Ensemble Klang between 2005-7 and is my longest piece to date. It’s about 65 minutes long and I wrote it very much in collaboration with the group. We were lucky enough to have a situation in which I was able to try things out on the group over a long period. This was very important in writing it. The piece is in seven movements and is a kind of instrumental requiem, which references popular music elements (especially blues) and kind of grafts them on to the requiem structure. It’s something that I fell into quite naturally. This I think is tied to my idea of ‘Cinderella instruments:’ eschewing the “classical” tradition somewhat.”
Bettison continues, “The thing that a lot of people don’t know about me is that I come from a very strict classical background. I was a violinist; indeed I went to a specialist music school in London as a violinist from the age of 10. My rebellion to being in a hot-house classical music environment was getting into metal, playing the drums and listening to avant-garde classical music that was seen as outside the ‘canon’ and I think that carried on into my music. So, to psychoanalyze myself for a minute, I think I’ve done both things in a response (quite a delayed response!) to the classical tradition precisely because I feel so at home in that tradition.”
Caprichos Enfaticos
by Martin Bresnick
So Percussion; Lisa Moore, piano
Cantaloupe Music CD
It takes chutzpah to base a musical composition around an iconic piece of visual art. Francisco Goya’sLos Destastres de la Guerra (“The Disasters of War”) is a book of etchings that captures the human toll of combat (as well as its toll on the rest of creation) with a visceral impact that has seldom been equaled. Using it as the basis for a musical piece, even going so far as to use Goya’s own phrases for movement titles? A composer who does so better bring the goods or they will likely be dwarfed by comparison. Fortunately, Martin Bresnick’sCaprichos Enfaticos is eminently capable of complementing its powerful source material. Indeed, it’s one of his most affecting pieces to date, one in which there is a fluid progression from traditionally inspired material to more dissonant and abstract expression.
A particular reference point is a chain dance that originated in Provence, called the farandula, or farandole. Its 6/8 phrases are juxtaposed with bellicose marches played on snare drums and interspersed with ruminative and achingly piteous interludes for piano and pitched percussion.
Cast in eight movements, the piece mirrors the trajectory of Goya’s etchings from a semblance of order and civilization to chthonic brutality. In successive iterations, the gestural language of the farandole and folk-like thematic material is overwhelmed by a noisier environment: populated with a diverse battery of percussion instruments and a correspondingly chaotic phraseology.
In live performances, Caprichos Enfaticos is accompanied by video projections created by Johanna Bresnickand based on the Goya works. So Percussion and pianist Lisa Moore inhabit the music with a persuasive, commanding, and detailed performance on record: one can only imagine its powerful impact coupled with Goya’s artworks in a live setting.
Not only was chutzpah an ingredient of this project, but so was a seamless collaborative spirit. Meet the Composercommissioned this piece for So Percussion and Moore, and it is a truly inspired partnership. One hopes that it is merely the beginning of a long musical relationship.
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