Tonight at 7 PM at the Apple Store on Manhattan’sUpper West Side, Mantra Percussion performs Michael Gordon’s Timber, a work for six percussionists playing 2″x4″s. The event celebrates Cantaloupe’s release of a CD of Slagwerk den Haag’s performance of Timber (which I reviewed yesterday on File Under ?).
Don’t you love the one pound wooden box they’ve packaged the CD in? Don’t you love saying Slagwerk den Haag three times fast?
Below is a video with more information about the piece, including interviews with performers and the composer. If you’re in NYC and want to beat the heat, check out an iPad, and hear six percussionists knock wood, amble on over to Apple tonight.
Michael Gordon
Timber
Slagwerk Den Haag
Cantaloupe Music
For his latest recording for the Cantaloupe imprint, Michael Gordon chose an unusual and cohesively elemental instrumental palette. The percussionists of Slagwerk Den Haag use only one kind of instrument: simantras – 2″X4″s – carved to different sizes to correspondingly vary the indefinite pitch and timbre. Given this winnowed orchestration, one might imagine that the results are monochromatic. Timber is anything but.
Instead, listeners are treated to an astonishing array of playing techniques, from a pitter patter of ricocheting attacks resembling rain fall to passages that accelerate and slow down to thunderous unison thwacks. Gordon’s penchant for polyrhythms and rhythmic canons keeps the musical textures varied and buoys a fascinating narrative that remains instense throughout the piece’s fifty-five minute long duration.
Not only is this release musically pleasing, it’s easily one of the coolest packaging designs for a CD we’ve seen in a while. Instead of a jewel case, the CD and liner notes are packed in a wooden box -that weighs about a pound! Seeing performance details carved into the side of a wooden box is much for aesthetically pleasing and, I’d imagine, environmentally friendly, than plastic tray inserts.
Maya Beiser, everyone’s favorite ex-Can Banging All Star downtown cellist, was an invited presenter at the March 2011 TED conference. The TED site recently released a high quality video of her lecture recital, and it’s already garnered over 80,000 views!
TED’s slogan: “Ideas worth spreading.” We’re glad that Maya’s getting the chance to spread the word about Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint and David Lang’sWorld to Come far and wide!
The Bang on a Can2011 Marathon is nearly upon us. To help get listeners and downtown aficionados in the proper spirit, BoaC is sharing a sampler of participating artists via Soundcloud.
Event Details
2011 Bang on a Can Marathon is on Sunday, June 19 from 11am-Midnight at the World Financial Center Winter Garden (220 Vesey Street, NYC).
The Marathon’s 12+ hours of FREE ear-bending music by more than 150 performers and composers working in numerous genres kicks off the River To River Festival and is co-presented by Arts World Financial Center.
Performing this year:
Philip Glass and the Bang on a Can All-Stars
Asphalt Orchestra performing music by Yoko Ono and Frank Zappa
Bucharest born singer Sanda Weigl will be performing at the 92nd Street Y Tribeca tonight. She’s celebrating the release of Gypsy in a Tree, her new album of Romanian folk music inflected with jazz, rock, and out there sounds.
She joined by a diverse group of collaborators: Stomu and Satoshi Takeishi, Shoko Nagai, Doug Wieselman, and Ben Stapp; a rock band, a gypsy band led by Emil Bizga, and appearances by Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg and Ljova Zurbin.
You can check out a stream of Gypsy in a Tree, as well as show details, below.
Friday, April 22 at the 92Y Tribeca,
200 Hudson Street, NYC.
Doors open at 8 p.m. for the 9 p.m. show.
$15 in advance, $18 at the door.
212-601-1000.
The new indie classical kids on the block, Newspeak, have just released their first video. David T. Little’s composition sweet light crude, featuring soprano Mellissa Hughes in fine voice and the ensemble grooving up a storm, is ready for your delectation on YouTube.
The piece has been given the “jump cuts and jitter” treatment by videographers Satan’s Pearl Horses.
sweet light crude, Newspeak’s debut CD, is slated for release by New Amsterdam Records on November 16. Jitter not included: perhaps that’s for the best.
Steve Reich’s latest Nonesuch CD recently arrived, sans artwork in a little cardboard case. The disc features Double Sextet and 2×5, his collaborations with Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can. The former piece won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The latter is his most explicit use of rock instrumentation to date.
According to the Nonesuch site, it’s still in the “pre-order” phase of activities, so we’ll be good and hold off on a proper review ’til it’s closer to the actual release date (9/14).
Suffice it to say, if you’re a regular visitor to Sequenza 21, you’re likely going to want one, possibly three, copies of this recording. An intergenerational summit – minimalist elder statesman meets post-minimal/totalist ace performers – that, in terms of importance, is more or less the Downtown version of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.
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