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Ah… Free Music Archive. So much delightful music to enjoy, like this sample from a John King album, courtesy of DRAM.

Mohammed Fairouz. Photo: Samantha West.

It’s one of those evenings when you wish you could be at two New York concert venues at once!

Mohammed Fairouz’s opera, Sumeida’s Song, will be performed at Zankel Hall on 4/2 at 7:30. The work is based on playwright Tawfiq El Hakim’s Song of Death. Presented by the Mimesis Ensemble (conducted by Scott Dunn), the cast features soprano Jo Ellen Miller, mezzo Rachel Calloway, tenor Robert Mack, and baritone Mischa Bouvier. (Ticket info here).

Victoria Bond

Also on Monday at 7:30 PM, Cutting Edge Concerts Festival kicks off its fifteenth season at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space. Monday nights in April will feature concerts and composers in conversation with the festival’s curator, composer and conductor Victoria Bond (ticket info here).

Jazz pianist Jim McNeely joins the Danjam Orchestra perform two works inspired by Paul Klee paintings. They will also perform the world premiere of a new work by saxophonist Daniel Jamieson. The program also features the premiere of N. Lincoln Hanks’ Monstre Sacre, assayed by pianist Paul Barnes. Finally, tenor Rufus Muller and pianist Jenny Lin perform a work by Bond entitled Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming, based on a portion of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The program on Monday April 9th includes works by Roberto Sierra, Judith Shatin, and Tania Leon. And Sequenza 21 readers should be sure to mark their calendars for the Cutting Edge show on April 16. Washington DC’s Great Noise Ensemble, led by S21′s own Armando Bayolo, visits the Big Apple to present a program that includes violinist and composer Cornelius Dufallo in a new piece for amplified violin and ensemble.

Cornelius Dufallo

Offbeat collaborations have become a hallmark programming preference for Merkin Hall’s Ecstatic Music festival. But the combination of a cappella group Anonymous Four with indie rock songwriter Josh Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Owen Pallett is a standout even in this season’s diverse set of offerings.

Josh Darnielle (photo: Jeremy Langet)

Program

Transcendental Youth (Darnielle)
Lection: Apocalypse 21:1-5
The Lord’s Prayer (John Tavener)
Motet: Salve virgo regio/Ave goriosa mater/[DOMINO]
Motet: Gaude virgo nobilis/Verbum caro factum/ET VERITATE
Benedicamus domino: Belial vocatur
Conductus: Nicholai presulis
Song: Novus Annus Adiit
Trope: Gratulantes celebremus festum
The Scientist (Richard Einhorn)
Religious Ballad: Wayfaring Stranger

At least on paper, one of the more fascinating collaborations of the 2012 installation of American Mavericks brought vocalists Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan La Barbara together with Michael Tilson Thomas and members of the San Francisco Symphony for a performance of John Cage’s Song Books. Complete with lighting, sets, stage business, camera work, and sound design, this was an ambitious undertaking. Unfortunately, it raised as many questions about performing Cage as it answered.

In the performance of the work last night at Carnegie Hall, Jessye Norman sang like Jessye Norman. Meredith Monk did Meredith Monk. MTT made a smoothie and tore up newspapers. But Joan La Barbara: now she performed a John Cage piece. Here she is doing the same work in 2011, with Ne(x)tworks at Greenwich Music House.

Hats off to Monk and Norman for reaching outside their comfort zones. But they were placed in a difficult situation. My wife, a director and playwright, described it thus: “It felt like all the things ripped off from Cage by bad experimental theater were donated back for one night only. And it seemed like the design team were having much more fun than the audience.”

It’s great that San Francisco is giving the American Mavericks another airing. And I’m really looking forward to hearing what is, for me, a dream program at Carnegie Hall tonight: Ruggles, Feldman, and Ives orchestrated by Brant!

But their Cage presentation left me with questions about how those interested in interpreting his music are to proceed. The challenge: creating a performance practice for Cage that doesn’t become its own museum piece of cliches. The scores deserve it. There’s plenty of music in them and, indeed lots of ways to present Cage entertainingly, but without so much shtick.

Casavant Organ at Grace Church Newark

Here’s a Soundcloud demo of my latest choral piece, a motet setting of “Alleluiai, Ascendit Deus” (Psalm 47:5). Instead of those beastly MIDI ooh’s and ah’s, I’ve used a sample of an organ flute stop as the sound palette. Please feel free to download, share, embed, etc.

The piece will be premiered as part of the 175th Anniversary celebration of Grace Church Newark, a service commemorating the Feast of the Ascension (May 19,2012 at noon).

I recently gave an interview about our activities at Sequenza 21 to the blog A Closer Listen. I also curated a mix for them, consisting of selections by composers who participated in our 2011 concert.

You can read the article and hear the mix here.