Dark UrrrU/Waterfinder - cassette split (via the sadly now defunct Peasant Magik): A generous helping of drones, post-psych reverberations, spoken word and caterwauling from Portland, Maine supergroup.

Caldera Lakes - “arranged” (via Ecstatic Peace): see Sunday’s review.

Long Distance Poison – The Shores of Titan: free download via their Soundcloud page (thanks to Steve Smith for the tip!)

Sharon Van Etten – Tramp (Out this week via Jagjaguwar). Her last album was indeed Epic; and this one has breakout hit all over it. Check out L Magazine’s article on Sharon: she’s interviewed by Wye Oak’s vocalist Jenn Wasner.

Sharon Van Etten

Tim Berne - Snakeoil (ECM Records): Also out this week, alto saxophonist Tim Berne’s most “chamber music”  flavored foray to date. Ches Smith, Oscar Norieaga, and Matt Mitchell join Berne on his first studio recording in years, creating supple, dynamic, and adventurous renditions of a set of new original compositions.

Johann Johannsson - The Miners’ Hymns (FatCat): From February 8-14 at Film Forum on West Houston Street in NYC, there will be screenings of Bill Morrison’s film The Miners’ Hymns: a portrait of the inexorable winds of change that beset a British mining town, forever changing its residents’ way of life. The score was released last year, but its evocative mixture of organ, brass ensemble, and string textures is well worth revisiting, even sans Morrison’s touching cinematography.

Caldera Lakes

Arranged

Ecstatic Peace e#110c cassette (edition of 100)

Rolling waves of white noise, feedback, and even mic noise wash over the clarion singing and drone-based ambience of Caldera Lakes (Eva Aguila and Brittany Gould) on their “arranged” cassette (out now on Ecstatic Peace). In the midst of this deliberately lo-fi and noise distressed ambience lies a primeval aesthetic that contrasts clangorous stabs, bleary utterances, and muscular cries with delicate arpeggios and strummed guitars.

While getting ahold of these limited run artifacts is great fun – a scavenger hunt for adventurous music listeners (I found mine on a recent visit to one of my favorite haunts Downtown in NYC: Other Music) – it’s a pity that this release hasn’t gained wider currency – as yet! The band, like so many others, is going to SXSW this year. One hopes that they bring a bunch of their tapes, CDRs, and other releases along (may they need runs >100!), and that the resultant buzz yields anything but lo-fi results for their careers.

Today I interviewed saxophonist Tim Berne in Brooklyn for a feature article that will appear in the next issue of Signal to Noise Magazine, the journal for improvised and experimental music. In a beleaguered market for print publications, particular for music magazines, I’m so pleased that StN editor and publisher Pete Gershon is working hard to keep the publication alive. The hope is that there will be two issues this year.

Snake Oil, Tim’s first CD on ECM as a leader (he’s supported David Torn and Michael Formanek on other ECM releases) is out this week (2/7/12). A quartet date, the personnel includes Berne playing alto saxophone, Oscar Noriega playing clarinet and bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell playing piano, and Ches Smith playing drums and a number of other percussion instruments.

An enthusiastic collaborator who has been in many more bands than a blog post can contain, Berne brings a “chamber jazz” aesthetic to this project, with gig-tested charts that have rigorous compositional structures but leave plenty of room for improvisation and on-the-spot inspiration. A gracious interviewee, Tim spoke about this project and several other current endeavors. Pete has given us a generous word count (how often do writers get that these days), and I’m really looking forward to covering Snakeoil and a host of other subjects in the article.

Below, you can see another incarnation of this group, the Los Totopos band, playing live via YouTube.  We’ve also included dates for the tour Berne is undertaking in support of Snakeoil on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tour dates

Feb 16 Boston, MA Regattabar

Feb 17 New York, NY Rubin Museum

Feb 18 Baltimore, MD An die Musik live!

Feb 19 Washington DC Bohemian caverns

Feb 24 Austin, TX

Feb 25 Los Angeles, CA Blue Whale

Feb 27 Santa Cruz, CA Kuumbwa

Feb 28 Oakland, CA Yoshi’s

Feb 29 Eugene, OR The Shedd

Mar 1 Seattle, WA Seattle Asian Art Museum

Mar 2 Portland, OR Alberta Rose Theater

Mar 14 &15 London,Vortex, United Kingdom

Mar 16 Munich, Unterfahrt, Germany

Mar 17 Forlì—Italy

Mar 20 Ljubljana Cankarjev Dom, Slovenia

Mar 22+23 Paris, Triton, France

Mar 24 Bergamo—Italy

Mar 25 Cologne, Stadtgarten,  Germany

Mar 26 Berlin A-Trane, Germany

Mar 27 Rotterdam Lantaren Venster, Netherlands

Mar 28 Amsterdam, Bimhuis, Netherlands

Mar 29 Dublin—Ireland

The Marble Vanity has a new 7″ single (on now on Slow Fizz via Drag City). You can sample a sunny psych-pop track via the embed below from their Bandcamp page below.

Korallreven Live in Concert

3/4 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
3/5 – Washington DC – Black Cat
3/6 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
3/7 – San Francisco, CA – Independent*
3/8 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex*

*Guest appearance by Victoria Bergsman

Cellist Maya Beiser and pianist Pablo Ziegler appear at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday, February 1st at 7:30 (doors open at 6:30). They are performing Canyengue, the Soul of Tango, a program that features the works of Astor Piazzolla.

From 1978-’88, Ziegler was a member of Piazzolla’s band. His arrangements for cello and piano translate Piazzolla’s compositions, such as Libertango and Adíos Nonino, to a more intimate medium, but retain the genre’s vibrant spirit. The duo will also perform several pieces by Ziegler, and Beiser will take a solo turn, performing Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel.

Below, hear a stream from File Under ?’s Tumblr page of the duo playing Fuga Y Misterio, a somewhat lesser known piece by Piazzolla, arranged by Ziegler.

“Fuga Y Misterio”

Le Poisson Rouge is located at 158 Bleecker Street (between Thompson and Sullivan), in the West Village, NYC.  Tickets are $15, available through the club’s website, www.lepoissonrouge.com, or call 212/505-FISH (3474).

Philip Glass is 75 today. The American Composers Orchestra gives the American premiere of his 9th Symphony at Carnegie Hall tonight.

My interview with Dennis Russell Davies, who is conducting the ACO concert, is up on Musical America’s website (subscribers only).

If you’re looking for a terrific way to celebrate PG’s birthday, Brooklyn Rider’s latest CD on Orange Mountain Music includes Glass’s first five string quartets. The earthiness with which they play the music may surprise you at first, but it provides a persuasive foil for some of the more motoric, “high buffed sheen” toned performances of minimalism that are out there.  In a 2011 video below, they give a performance of a more recent work, a suite of music from the film Bent.

Philip Glass. Photo: Raymond Meier.

“Seventy-five used to be a very old age for a composer. Of course, with Elliott Carter around, it makes me feel like a youngster!” – Philip Glass.

The American Composers Orchestra, led by Conductor Laureate Dennis Russell Davies, gives the American premiere of Glass’s Ninth Symphony tomorrow at Carnegie Hall. Also on the program: the NY premiere of Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate for piano and orchestra with Maki Namekawa as soloist.

Tomorrow, Musical America will be running my interview with Davies.

Out on 2/13 in the UK (and everywhere else on 3/6/12), “Jerk Driver” is the lead off single from Gabriel Prokofiev’s Cello Multitracks, a CD that is his latest genre-bending release for the Nonclassical imprint. It features cellist Peter Gregson, a noteworthy genre bender in his own right, playing all nine cello parts, creating a swath of overdubbed strings that is then subjected to remixes by Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), musician/producer MaJiKer, and composer Marcas Lancaster. Check out a sample embedded below.

As Jerry Bowles points out on the homepage, Gregson and Prokofiev will be presenting the piece at Joe’s Pub in New York on 2/10. More US events are listed below: some of them include Prokofiev’s concert music; others, his work as a DJ!

Gabriel Prokofiev + Peter Gregson – Jerk Driver (preview) by Nonclassical

Nonclassical US tour
9th February: Gabriel Prokofiev Bass Drum Concerto (World premiere) w/ Princeton Symphony – Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ
10th February: Peter Gregson & Todd Reynolds (+ Gabriel Prokofiev DJ sets) – Joe’s Pub, NYC
11th February: Peter Gregson w/ Joby Burgess ( + Gabriel Prokofiev DJ sets) – Terrace Club, Princeton, NJ
15th February: Peter Gregson w/ DJ Madhatter, Joby Burgess ( + Gabriel Prokofiev DJ sets) – MOCT, Wilwaukee, WI
16th February: Peter Gregson w/ Joby Burgess ( + Gabriel Prokofiev DJ sets) – Brink Lounge, Madison, WI
18th February: Peter Gregson w/ Joby Burgess ( + Gabriel Prokofiev DJ sets) – Chicago, IL (Venue TBC)
21st February: Gabriel Prokofiev Bass Drum Concerto w/ Chicago Composers Orchestra – Ruth Page Theater, Chicago,IL

The Israeli Chamber Project performs at Weill Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 1. In addition to warhorses of the chamber music repertoire by Brahms and Shostakovich, the group performs two Twentieth Century pieces that are less frequently heard on New York stages as well as one from the cusp of the millenium, Night Time (2000), a duo by Sebastian Currier.

Below is a video of the ensemble performing Matam Porat’s “Night Horses” at a 2008 concert in Tel Aviv: an evocative and unerringly paced work that they play superlatively.

The Israeli Chamber Project Carnegie Hall Debut

February 1, 2012 at 7:30 pm

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

Shostakovich Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C minor, Op. 8

Sebastian Currier Night Time for Harp and Violin

Martinů Chamber Music No. 1

Paul Ben Haim Three Songs Without Words (arranged for clarinet and harp)

Brahms Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano in A minor, Op. 114

Tibi Cziger, clarinet

Michal Korman, cello

Sivan Magen, harp

Sergey Tarashansky, viola

Assaff Weisman, piano

Itamar Zorman, violin

Tickets: $30, $20, $15 carnegiehall.org/CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800/

Box Office at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue