Today, I am judging Pictures 2013: a composition competition sponsored by the Montclair Art Museum and NJ Arts Collective. I am thrilled to be working with these organizations again, and to be writing a new work for soprano Sara Noble and pianist Carl Patrick Bolleia for the upcoming Pictures 2013 Concert (based on the painting above). The concert of winning works and other selections will be on June 6 at the museum (details below).

Event Details

Pictures 2013 Concert

Listen to the embed below and then head on over to Celer’s Bandcamp for a digital or physical copy. Thanks to Steve Smith for pointing this one out. Fresh back from a trip to Iceland, he already beat me to the good stuff!

Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I’m just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!

- Rumi

Tonight at Westminster Choir College, CUNY Distinguished Professor of Music Joseph N. Straus will give the keynote lecture at our annual Music Scholarship Celebration. Titled “Performing Music, Performing Disability,” Straus’s presentation draws upon research from his recent book Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music (Oxford University Press). There will also be student papers given by Marquese Carter, Ian Good, and Michael Bennett. 

Event Details

The 6th Annual Celebration of Westminster Student Research
April 23rd at 6:30 PM
Williamson Hall

Westminster Choir College
101 Walnut Lane,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Open admission; refreshments afterwards.

We’re very glad that, on April 3rd, the estimable performers from the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University made a visit to New York. We’re even gladder that people from all over can savor the show remotely: stream it on demand from our friends at Q2 (embed below).

Whether it is an isorhythmic motet from the medieval era or a piece of challenging 21st century music, sometimes listeners want to see just how the complexities they are hearing are laid out on the page.  Tonight, our friends in Ekmeles vocal ensemble are happy to oblige, projecting some of the pieces they are performing and unfurling the score to another. The program includes works by Baude Cordier, Evan Johnson, Mark Baden, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, and, one of my personal favorites, Liza Lim. 

Event Details

Ekmeles vocal ensemble

Jane Sheldon, soprano
Sarah Brailey, soprano
Rachel Calloway, mezzo soprano
Patrick Fennig, countertenor
Eric Dudley, tenor
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone
Steven Hrycelak, bass
Date: Monday, April 22nd 2013
Time: 7:30pm
City: New York
Venue: Advent Lutheran Church/Broadway United Church of Christ
Address: 2504 Broadway @ 93rd St.
Admission: Free

Since 1985, composer David Felder has directed University of Buffalo’s composition program and June in Buffalo new music festival. Despite his energetic efforts and advocacy on behalf of other composers, his own compositional endeavors have never been overshadowed. Felder’s works have been widely performed and recorded, and he has received numerous awards. Still, on Tuesday, April 23rd, University of Buffalo will be presenting a concert featuring Felder’s music that is so ambitious that it must count as a career highlight.

The centerpiece of the event is the world premiere of Le Quatre Temps Cardinaux, a piece commissioned by the Koussevitky Foundation and composed for soprano Laura Aikin, bass Ethan Herschenfeld, and a large chamber ensemble/orchestra comprised of the joining of two notable new music ensembles: Signal and UB’s Slee Sinfonietta, conducted by Brad Lubman. It features 12-channel electronics and employs texts by Neruda, Creeley, Gioia, and Daumal. (There are several outreach events and discussions leading up to the concert; we’ve listed these below as well.)

Also on the program: a 2010 work for solo percussion, electronics, and ensemble called Tweener, featuring Thomas Kolor as soloist (using analog instruments as well as a KAT mallet controller). Tweener is featured on Inner Sky, Felder’s latest blu-ray disc from Albany (out 6/1). It is a piece that thrives in the immersive environment of surround sound, with antiphonal passages echoing one another – from intensely hued electronics to stentorian brass verticals and wind polyphony. All the while, Kolor’s cyborg mallets create spatial ricochets and battered pileups: a wondrous clangor.

Event Details

Monday, April 22, 2pm: Open rehearsal of Les Quatre in Slee Hall, open to the public, RSVP requested.

Tuesday, April 23, 1pm: Slee Hall Lobby, a luncheon dialogue with Felder and others: “Inside the Making of Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux.” Open to the public, registration limited to 60, RSVP required. A complimentary light lunch will be provided for all registered participants.

3:30pm: Baird Hall 250, “Textural Signatures,” a panel discussion open to the public, RSVP requested. Faculty and student, joined by a biographer of the poet René Daumal, will explore the relationship between texts and the arts, with attention to the poems featured in Felder’s composition.

5:30pm: Black Box Theater in the Center for the Arts, pre-concert reception with drinks and hors d’oeuvres, with remarks by Felder and E. Bruce Pitman, Dean of UB’s College of Arts and Sciences, a ticketed event limited to 100, RSVP required.

Tuesday, April 23 at 7 p.m
Concert featuring Felder: Le Quatre Temps Cardinaux and Tweener
Lippes Concert Hall, Slee Hall, UB North Campus

Advance tickets available at the UB Center for the Arts box office 716-645-ARTS (716-645-2787). Prices are $12 (general public), $9 (alumni, faculty, staff and seniors), and $5 for students.

Tickets also may be purchased at the Slee Hall box office on the night of the performance and will be $20 (general public), $15 (alumni, faculty, staff and seniors) and $8 (students). The box office number is 716-645-2921.

Mimi Sparhawk of Low.

Low’s The Invisible Way is out now via Sub Pop.

David Grubbs’ The Plain Where the Palace Stood is out this week via Drag City.

Photo: Claire Stefani.

Iva Bittová
March 24, 2013 at Le Poisson Rouge
Words by Christian Carey
Photos by Claire Stefani

NEW YORK – Czech vocalist, violinist, and improviser Iva Bittová recently performed a vibrant and varied set at the downtown performance venue Le Poisson Rouge. She was celebrating the release of a new self-titled ECM album, her first solo outing for the imprint. From the stage Bittová freely admitted that she would follow an improvisatory muse rather than a pre-planned set order. Still, even reordered and interspersed with ample amounts of improvisatory passages, one could identify a number of the pieces from the CD. Titled Fragments I-XII, these are anything but diffuse creations (one of the pieces is a Rodrigo snippet: the rest are originals). Rather, I like to think that the notion of them as fragmentary acknowledges their modular ordering as a “set,” abetted by the disparate stylistic terrain and range of demeanors they cover.

Photo: Claire Stefani.

What holds the music together? Both on the recording and even more so in a live setting, it is Bittová’s striking musicality. Her kalimba (thumb piano) playing served to frame the beginning and ending of the sets in entrancing fashion. She uses the violin primarily as an accompanying instrument, but is capable of fireworks on the instrument too. At LPR, there were several displays of noise-based improvised flurries and folksy fiddle shredding. However, rather than virtuosity for its own sake, Bittová is after creating timbre and delineating form with the various string techniques she employs. One particularly notices the deft selection of pizzicato punctuations, glassy harmonics, minimal riffs, and chordal multi-stops.

Photo: Claire Stefani.

Similarly, Bittová’s voice is adroitly deployed with a number of approaches, referencing a host of traditions. She possesses an extraordinary range, which reaches down to growling sub-tones and tenor register chest notes and upwards well into soprano territory and, in whistle tones, even beyond. What’s more, there is a chameleon quality to its timbre. One moment, Bittová coos faerie like, fluttering imaginary wings. The next she seems to pounce, uttering a full blown fervid howl. In between, there are so many varieties of melisma. These vocal runs draw upon, of course, Eastern folk music, but also folk music from many other locales (Greece, China, Mongolia, Israel – I lost count!). Her approach also includes throat singing and microtonal inflections, with neoclassical passagework, jazz solos, and imitations of her own violin playing thrown in for good measure. Indeed, in trying to summarize such an expertly wrought musical mélange, one can only diminish it through sins of omission. It’s probably better to suggest that you listen to it on the disc, and, sometime if you’re lucky, live.

Sorry for a bit of a delay posting this one. Thanks to Claire Stefani for allowing us to use her beautiful photos with the article. ­­