Christian Carey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music Composition, History, and Theory at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Degrees: Juilliard School (B.Mus. in Voice), Boston University (M.M. in Composition), and Rutgers University (Ph.D. in Composition and Theory); his teachers included Charles Wuorinen and Lukas Foss. He is active as a composer, performer, and music theorist.
Dr. Carey’s research focuses on contemporary American music; his dissertation discussed Elliott Carter’s Fifth String Quartet. He has written about Babbitt, Wuorinen, Rakowski, and Feldman, and is currently at work on an article about the late works of Ralph Shapey for Contemporary Music Review. His articles and reviews have been published in Signal to Noise, Muso, Musicworks, Sequenza 21, Copper Press, All About Jazz, Pop Matters, and several other publications.
His compositions have been performed by the New York New Music Ensemble, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Ionisation, and the Helix New Music Ensemble, at Lincoln Center, the June in Buffalo Festival, the Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Music Festival, Two River Theater Company, the Montclair Art Museum, the Progressions Series in Baltimore, Maryland, and Music ‘99 at the University of Cincinnati. Mourning Madrid, a work for orchestra and live locomotive, was commissioned by the Music Festival of the Hamptons and performed in July, 2004 by the Atlantic Chamber Orchestra and the Long Island Railroad in Bridgehampton, New York.
Making the classical aspects of the burgeoning indie classical movement abundantly clear, crossover albums are now crossover marketing musical scores. Via his website, composer Owen Pallett has released a limited edition score for the music on Heartland, his latest Domino recording.
Owen Pallett's Heartland
Joined by the Czech Symphony Orchestra and a host of guests (including composer Nico Muhly) Pallette has crafted his most consistently engaging music to date. In some critical circles, indie classical has, rightly or wrongly, been under the microscope for making pop into a ‘longhair’ genre, robbing it of its immediacy in favor of overt sophistication. I’d submit that this vantage point doesn’t give enough credit to indie audiences, who seem to be just fine grappling with orchestral arrangements by Pallett and electronic experiments by Animal Collective alike.
What’s more, recordings like Heartland amply demonstrate that one can, if they’re talented, craft sophisticated music that has just as many catchy hooks as a three-chord, three-minute anthemic single. A case in point is the loop-laden and jaunty “Lewis Takes off his Shirt;” the music, and the video below, suggest that pop can indeed combine sophistication with immediacy, and that its orchestral incarnation can be downright cheeky!
For those of your with a case of ‘artifact avarice,’ the full orchestra score for Heartland is $46 and has been printed in a limited run of 300. In addition to the music it also provides lyrics and a chart of diagrams of patches for the ARP 2600.
Owen Palett’s touring a bunch in support of Heartland. Here are some dates:
04-08 Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
04-10 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
04-11 Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater
04-12 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
04-13 Columbus, OH – Wexner Center
04-14 Pittsburgh, PA – Andy Warhol Museum
04-15 Washington DC – Black Cat
04-18 Indio, CA – Coachella Festival
04-20 Boston, MA – Institute of Contemporary Art
04-22 New York, NY – Webster Hall
04-24 Baltimore, MD – Metro Gallery
04-25 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
04-27 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
04-29 Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
04-30 Austin, TX – The Mohawk
05-05 San Francisco, CA – The Independent
05-08 Seattle, WA – The Crocodile
05-09 Vancouver, British Columbia – The Vogue Theatre
05-10 Victoria, British Columbia – Alix Goolden Hall
05-11 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
05-13 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
05-14 Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge
When he was a critic at the Village Voice in the 1970s, Tom Johnson (b. 1939) was one of the first writers to apply the term ‘minimalism’ to music. As time has moved on, many composers originally associated with minimalism have branched out stylistically; while certain gestural signatures may remain, the processes by which they created their earliest works seem to have loosened up considerably.
Johnson has moved on too. After leaving the Voice, he relocated to Paris. While active as a composer throughout his tenure as a journalist, since the 1980s he’s focused on music instead of words as his primary means of expression. Johnson has continued to write pieces in the minimalist tradition, retaining the genre’s early reliance on generative processes. One of his best known works, Rational Melodies, is a case in point. Composed in 1982, the melodies are single line compositions that have been constructed with painstaking care using various patterning models. Contour, rhythmic shape, meter, proportion, intervallic profile, and tessitura are all parameters variously mapped in these 21 pieces — hence the ‘rational’ portion of their title.
There have been two previous recordings of Rational Melodies, both for solo instruments. But the French Ensemble Dedalus has rehearsed them as ensemble pieces for an extended period of time. It’s interesting that, despite the attention paid to details of compositional design, Johnson has been willing to allow Dedalus to revise these works extensively. Some involve matters of a heterophonic sort of orchestration — deciding which instruments will play each given note was apparently an intrinsic part of the rehearsal process — while others actually create significant changes of register. There are even instances when an organum-like planing is added to the proceedings, creating momentary ‘music in fifths.’
Dedalus seems to know this music backwards and forwards. One can well understand why they’ve chosen to make Rational Melodies their debut recording. That said, it still seems a courageous decision on Johnson’s part to abnegate enough control to allow his music to change, grow, and in this case, prosper.
Motion City Soundtrack’s new pop-punk LP, My Dinosaur Life (Columbia), is racing up the charts. One can see why the band is a hot item – particularly live.
Courtesy of MTV, check out six songs by Motion City Soundtrack, live at Irving Plaza.
I’m at work on a new piece, a setting of a poem that prominently features images of nature; in particular, the greenness of Spring and its corollary to young love.
A number of composers speak of experiencing synaesthesia where harmony is concerned: they ’see’ colors when they hear certain keys or chords. Interestingly, the composers in question seem to each have their own ‘color wheel’ for tonalities: there isn’t a magic universality of the harmonic color experience.
While I may yet not have Messiaen’s specificity for ‘color chords,’ today I’m searching for the right ‘green’ chord: preferably, an all-interval 12-tone one!
In a sharp turnaround from Magnetic Fields’ previous LP, the boisterous, thoroughly amplified Distortion, their latest release, Realism, contains a liner note caveat: ‘no synths.’ Realism brings the unplugged aesthetic to Stephin Merritt’s wittily acerbic songs – with stirring results.
“You Must be Out of Your Mind” is a classic example of Merritt’s simultaneously humorous and poignant lyrics – a paean to jilted lovers everywhere, exhorting them to avoid their former partners like the plague. A small sampling, “You think I’ll run, not walk, to you, Why would I want to talk to you? I want you crawling back to me, down on your knees, yeah, Like an appendectomy, sans anesthesia…” Ouch!
Meanwhile, “We are Having a Hootenanny Now” celebrates the bluegrass/alt-folk signatures employed throughout the album with a rousing verse, rollicking chord changes, and a dialing back of Magnetic Fields’ ironic propensities in favor of a moment of musical jocularity.
But don’t expect Merritt to refrain from tongue-in-cheek witticisms for long. “Everything is One Big Tree” allows for irony to reign supreme once again; complete with a second chorus in German!
Realism is required listening – It’s been in heavy rotation since its arrival here at 218 Augusta St.!
Sadly, the band’s not letting any of this material out for preview, but RCRDLBL has been kind enough to share a couple tracks from their preceding releases.
Sometimes one picks music that imitates the landscape outside. If I was going that route during yesterday’s blizzard, John Luther Adams might have been just the ticket. But instead, I found myself yearning for other seasons; other temperatures.
MV & EE, being Vermont natives, probably know all about wishing to banish away wintry cold with dreams of summer’s charms. Perhaps that’s why one of the most evocative songs on their latest CD, Barn Nova, is entitled “Summer Magic.” It winds a circuitous pathway between hazy psych folk and solo-laden indie rock, including deliberately blurred atmospherics, amiably underscored singing, and numerous guitar jams. “Get Right Church” employs extended swamp rock grooving and psych blues soloing in an extended outing with considerable swing.
Barn Nova features several extended cuts like these, but MV & EE are also capable of pithy conciseness where necessary. I particularly like the taut and twangy “Feelin’ Fire,” a mid tempo ballad with rusticated edges and a loping groove that unfold a considerably charming musical landscape in a scant two minutes. The album’s closer, “You Feel,” is similarly compact, but contains a plethora of soulful guitar riffs in counterpoint with keenly melodic bass guitar: a wealth of information in a piece that’s over almost as soon as its begun. Whether tackling larger musical structures or crafting adroit miniatures, MV & EE continue a winning streak as collaborators on Barn Nova.
Although they’ve been around since 1999, a move to Andy Partridge’s Ape label seems to have given Irish band Pugwash new wings. Their latest recording, Giddy, presents songwriter Thomas Walsh’s creations at their sumptuous finest. Soaring choruses and blanket-warm arrangements, replete with stacked vocal harmonies buoy Walsh’s power pop confections. Songs like “Nice to be Nice,” “The Season of Flowers and Leaves,” “Apples,” and “Song for You” find Walsh adorning seemingly effortless memorable hooks with carefully constructed sophisticated harmonic progressions.
One can readily see why Partridge would be enamored with the material here; even giddy with excitement at the prospect of a quick follow-up. Pugwash’s next LP streets in Spring 2010.
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