Sequenza21/

We’ve profiled and interviewed composer Michael Hersch before here at S21. Unlike a lot of composers who lineage and influences I get pretty easily, In Hersch’s case there’s something coming from a place that I don’t get. And I tell you now, that’s a good thing. There isn’t a big grab bag of the latest tricks and fashions; the style could almost be called traditionalist. Yet there’s something at work that is so “interior”, an almost hermetic voice that owes nothing to anyone but the composer himself, that makes for a slightly unsettling but endlessly fascinating listen.

And tonight, for the first time since 2001, Michael Hersch himself is coming to NYC to play his own work. His recording of his sprawling, 2-hour piano work from 2005, The Vanishing Pavilions, was pretty highly praised here on its release; tonight Hersch plays his new 1-hour version, at Merkin Hall (8pm, details & tickets here), on a concert with his After Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ for viola and cello, played by the always-marvelous Miranda Cuckson and  Julia Bruskin (this piece was premiered at a memorial concert held inside the Pantheon in Rome, just two months after September 11, 2001).

Here’s a small taste of The Vanishing Pavilions, Hersch playing movement 27 of the large version:

With just one week to go before the Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert, we’re all very excited. Music is being rehearsed, friends and loved ones have been invited, and, for some from out of town, travel plans have been made for a visit to New York. But one composer will be making a particularly long journey to hear the concert. James Stephenson is joining us from the United Kingdom. He tells us more in the following eloquent essay.

When my duo Oracle Night is performed at the Sequenza 21 / MNMP concert on 25 October, it will be my first performance outside Europe.  A work being played overseas – on another continent even – means flights, hotels, jetlag, and – worst of all – funding applications.  This comes as quite a shock to someone who is used to either conducting my own works or, at most, hopping on a train and speeding up or down the (rather small) British Isles for a couple of hours to go and watch a performance.

Writing funding applications might not be the most enjoyable way I can think of to pass a Saturday afternoon, but it does make you reflect on things. After all, as composers it’s not very often that we ask ourselves questions such as “what will you gain from this experience in terms of professional development?” let alone draw up a detailed budget. But in the never-ending quest for the next performance and the next commission, how often do we really think about composing as a career with a plan and a trajectory?

And so, whilst trying not to explicitly mention how much I wanted an autumn holiday in the Big Apple, I filled in my funding applications with reflective paragraphs about exposure and widening my profile, about networks and contacts, about the creative growth and technical development which will surely come from working with such high calibre musicians. However, by the end of it I realised that there was something else I was overlooking, and though the funding agencies might not be too impressed, it is nonetheless a thing of vital importance for the 21^st Century composer.

That thing, of course, is the Internet. I am old enough to remember the days before I had my first email account, before we had dial-up internet access at home. But only just – the World Wide Web has certainly pervaded most of my adult life, and I count myself amongst the first generation of composers where the accessibility of information and communication which the Internet brought about has opened up literally a world of influences for each and every one of us. Oracle Night, as an example, makes use of Scottish and Japanese influences. Now it happens that I have visited both countries, but nonetheless the difference between having to travel somewhere to experience indigenous and traditional music as opposed to firing up your web browser and typing in a Google search is remarkable indeed. Every type of music imaginable is at our fingertips – to hear, to read, to analyse and to internalise and incorporate into our own output. And of course, I would never have seen a call for works for this performance if I couldn’t access the Sequenza 21 website from my desk in Manchester.

But beyond information, there is the communication aspect of the web: the social network. My greatest hope for my trip to New York actually isn’t that I will meet people who could be inspiring, influential or otherwise useful contacts. What I’m actually hoping for is to meet as many as possible of the people I know through facebook, twitter, websites and email discussions. A number of musicians who I greatly respect live on the Eastern seaboard – some old friends and collaborators, but many who I’ve only met through the internet, and the chance to meet them, argue with them, buy them a drink and put the world (of music, at least) to rights, that’s what I’m looking forward to most of all.

As a tool for bringing composers and contemporary performers together, as well, the web has opened up unimaginable avenues in recent years. Beyond the websites, blogs and tweets, there’s the interactivity of forums and facebook groups, some of which create rich opportunities for the web-inclined composer (I am writing for an ensemble in continental Europe at the moment, who I met through facebook earlier in the year after they saw a YouTube video of my oboe quartet). What a remarkable thing it is to meet a few of these people, with whom you have exchanged ideas, challenged and supported each other – with whom only 20 years ago you could never in a lifetime have shared a conversation.

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The Sequenza 21 Concert is free.

October 25 at 7 PM

Joe’s Pub in NYC

Tickets and Tables are still available by phone.

Call 212.539.8778 to make your reservation

Composers, performers, or music-lovers looking for an interesting day job: PostClassical Ensemble needs a manager for their group. Contact Joseph Horowitz at jh AT josephhorowitz DOT com for more information.

Here’s a brief job description:

Managing Director, PostClassical Ensemble. Cutting-edge, 8-year-old DC-based chamber orchestra seeks half-time administrative director. The director will work with Artistic Director (Joseph Horowitz) and Musical Director (Angel Gil-Ordonez). Wide-ranging responsibilities include: budgeting, contracts, web management, marketing, artistic/strategic planning, fund-raising, radio broadcasts (WFMT; Sirius XM), Naxos recordings and DVDs, touring, etc. Our thematic programming incorporates dance, theater, film. Close collaboration with National Gallery of Art, Georgetown University (our Educational Partner), Strathmore Music Center.

[Ed. note: Please welcome one of our newest S21 shipmates, violinist/ composer Cornelius Dufallo. The New York Times' Steve Smith writes "As a violinist and a composer in the string quartet Ethel and the collective ensemble Ne(x)tworks, Cornelius Dufallo has made substantial contributions to New York’s burgeoning new-music scene." I couldn't agree more, and look forward to his contributions to come. So take it away, Neil!]

Life in ETHEL is frantic these days. In the midst of meetings, emails, conference calls, and intense rehearsals, I sometimes (sadly) lose touch with the sense of wonder that originally drew me to a life in contemporary music. Missy Mazzoli is one composer whose music always brings me back to a fundamental excitement about what I do. I have been working with Missy on her solo violin piece, Dissolve, O my Heart, which I will be performing at Bargemusic on October 5th (8PM) as part of my ongoing Journaling series.

Originally written for Jennifer Koh, the piece is essentially Missy’s emotional reaction to J. S. Bach’s D minor Chaconne (one of the great masterworks of the solo violin literature). She starts the piece with the same iconic d minor triad, in which, she explains,  the listener immediately “acknowledges the inevitable failure of the assignment.” Missy is referring to the impossibility of achieving the structural perfection of Bach’s work, and how, from her perspective, the only way to create her  own piece was to embrace it as a “failed Chaconne.” It’s a gorgeous failure, if you ask me. The version that I will be performing in October includes live electronics (three different kinds of digital delay), which Missy and I have been developing together.

One of Missy’s massive new projects is to create three operas, each one about “a fascinating female character from the 20th or 21st century.” Part one of this trilogy, Song From The Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, is sure to be spellbinding. The libretto, co-written by Royce Vavrek and Missy, is based on the journals of Isabelle Eberhardt, and depicts more than a dozen scenes from Eberhardt’s life. The opera begins at the moment of Eberhardt’s death, and continues as a series of flashbacks.

Eberhardt, who was a Swiss writer and explorer of the early 20th century, has been alternately idolized and shunned as a symbol of female liberation. Missy points to Eberhardt’s relentless search for personal freedom and independence, her complicated love life, and her gender ambiguity (as a cross-dressing female artist) as themes that continue to be relevant to women today. Another interesting through-line of the opera is how Eberhardt navigates the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures. Eberhardt moved to North Africa and converted to Islam when she was a young woman. “She fought in street battles in Algiers against the French,” Missy explains, “but she was also working for the French as a journalist, so she was caught between these two worlds.”

The opera, directed by Gia Forakis, has already been workshopped at Galapagos in Brooklyn, New York City Opera’s VOX, and Bard College, and will be premiered at The Kitchen on February 24, 25, and March 1-3. Performers include singer Abigail Fischer and NOW ensemble; with films by Stephen Taylor.

Missy has some other exciting projects coming up, including two new pieces – one for the Albany Symphony, and one for cellist Maya Beiser. Her all-star band Victoire (Olivia De Prato, violin; Eileen Mack, clarinet; Lorna Krier, keayboards; Elenore Oppenheim, bass; and Missy on keyboards), whose CD Cathedral City was one of NPR’s top ten classical albums of 2010, will be performing at the Bell House in Gowanus on October 17. Not to be missed!

This post was also published in Urban Modes

Houston’s Musiqa opens its season with the Houston premiere of composer John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man for amplified soprano and chamber ensemble and texts by one of the most influential lyricists of all time, Bob Dylan. Karol Bennett is the soprano, and Robert Franz conducts. The concert also includes a performance of John Harbison’s Songs America Loves To Sing and a reading by Justin Cronin, the award-winning author of The Passage. Musiqa’s five member Artistic Board will also premiere a series of Musiqa Minatures in celebration of its 10th anniversary season.

The lyrics Corigliano chose for this song cycle, including Mr. Tambourine Man, Blowin’ in the Wind, Masters of War, All Along the Watchtower and Forever Young, are as timely today as they were when Dylan originally wrote them in the 60′s. “I felt the most important thing Bob Dylan did in the 60’s was raise political awareness of the situations around his time,” says Corigliano. “His time is not that dissimilar to our time.”

In an exclusive interview with Musiqa’s Chris Becker, Corigliano discusses the poetry of Bob Dylan, the challenges of composing for the voice, and the current state of music education.

Chris Becker: Have you had listeners come up to you, say people in their 20’s or students, and ask you about Bob Dylan? Do younger audiences know who Bob Dylan is?

John Corigliano: I think everybody knows who Bob Dylan is, 20 year olds too. Last season he was playing on the Grammys and he’s got new stuff coming out all the time. He’s an active artist as well as one who existed in the 60’s.

Chris Becker: Have you heard anything from Dylan himself about the piece?

John Corigliano: No, not a word. I sent him the CD when it came out, the orchestral vocal performance on Naxos. But I didn’t expect to hear anything for several reasons. He’s such a superstar this would probably be insignificant to him. I think he thinks that classical music is elitist music so he might not respond well and certainly he would probably have a response (like): “He’s setting it all wrong! That’s not the way it goes!”

Chris Becker: I wonder about that. I think it would be very intriguing to get a reaction from him at some point. I asked the first question I guess in part because I’d read that when you grew up when Dylan was first making the rounds…you weren’t really listening to his music? You were listening to other kinds of music.

John Corigliano: That’s correct. I wasn’t interested in folk music that basically dealt three or four chords and a melody that stayed the same verse after verse no matter what the words said. I was much more interested in more innovative things like what the Beatles were doing. If was at a coffee house and I heard Bob Dylan, I’d keep talking to my friend in the coffee house and I wouldn’t say: “What’s that?” It wouldn’t have drawn me. I think his words are magnificent, but when I finally did hear the music, I didn’t think it fit the words sometimes because that’s not how folk music goes. It has a single verse even if the mood and the whole tenor of the words change. When I heard the Beatles on the other hand, the orchestrations they do, the harmonies they do, the phrasing – it’s all very unusual stuff. I was much more drawn to that.

Read the entire interview here.

Special thanks to Jeremy Howard Beck for his help with coordinating this interview

Musiqa Presents: Play a Song For Me, September 24, 2011, 7:30 p.m. at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, Zilkha Hall, 800 Bagby, Houston TX 77002. Individual tickets: $40, $30 and $20. 50% off for students and seniors with ID. Individual tickets and subscriptions are available at the Hobby Center website.

The Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert is fast approaching. This free event will be at Joe’s Pub on Oct. 25 at 7 PM (reserve a seat here). The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) will perform a program that features composers selected from our call for scores. In the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing from a number of the composers and performers appearing on the concert. First up is Jay Batzner, who teaches at Central Michigan University and contributes regularly to Sequenza 21. He tells us about his piece on the program: Slumber Music.

I remember a lot about composing Slumber Music, which is a bit odd since most of the time I don’t retain memories about the act of composing. I was asked to write a piece for cello and piano for a multiple sclerosis fundraiser in 2008. My initial plan for the piece was to take a melody and start disrupting it and distorting it, much the same way that MS interferes with messages in the nervous system. I wrote my cello melody but I just couldn’t bring myself to act on my original plan. I liked the line too much to destroy it so I just chose to repeat it. When I started to add the piano into the mix, all I heard was a very thin and very sparse accompaniment.

My inner critic kept screaming, “You can’t have NOTHING going on in the piano! You’ve got to give them something worth playing! It is all too simple! Make it sophisticated and interesting!” My inner critic was about to win when, for one reason or another, I decided to stick to my guns. I’ve followed a lot of bad advice in my compositional past, changed my original ideas when I was told to do so, even though I was right, and I was done with that. The stillness in this music appeals to me. The last thing I wanted to do was throw it away because I was insecure.

The second movement unfolded in a similar manner. I had the piano chords and just started taking them wherever they were going to go. It was now the cellist’s turn to have direct and focused motion, floating around the harmonies that were propelling the action forward. The movement came out in one single chunk, maybe 45 minutes of time.

When I was done, I was in a sort of daze. I went for a walk in order to process the experience. My compositional process was undergoing a radical shift. I had been a planner, plotter, and schemer, someone who had an Idea for a piece and then wrote according to that form. Slumber Music really changed that. My plan for the first movement didn’t work; the piece wanted to be something else. Where no plan existed for the second movement, it came together almost too easily. And here was music I was happy with! Ten years ago, during the height of my scheming days, I hated my own music. I seemed to be turning things around.

There is a distinct before/after within me that hinges on this piece. I don’t write music the same way now as I did before Slumber Music. I am much happier with my product and I know when to listen to my inner critic and when to shut it up. Coupled with Goodnight, Nobody, which I wrote the same year, Slumber Music is really important to my writing because now I see how it put me on my current compositional path.

After a terrific concert – including pieces by Eve Beglarian, David MacDonald, Dan Visconti, Colin Holter, and Julia Wolfe, we had a lovely party to celebrate the Locrian Chamber Players concert this past Thursday.

Those pictured include composers Eve Beglarian, Scott Johnson, Don Hagar, and David MacDonald.

Alan Kozinn seemed to enjoy himself at the concert too.

Fred Ho, Fanfare for the Creeping Meatball: This brief yet buoyant brass fanfare got played at the beginning of every FCM concert. But its jazz noir ambience, jocular rhythms, and even its campy “B-movie scream” (which, on Sunday night, caused unsuspecting Tanglewood fellows assembling onstage to leap out of their seats!) never wore out their welcome. New music gatherings tend to take on a somber demeanor and earnest programming needs to be leavened with a bit of humor. Ho’s piece fit the bill perfectly.

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Milton Babbitt, It Takes Twelve to Tango and No Longer Very Clear: During the Festival of Contemporary Music, Tanglewood celebrated recently deceased composer Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) with several performances in his honor. Alas, we arrived too late in the week to get to hear Fred Sherry’s rendition of the late cello composition More Melismata. But judging by Babbitt memorials earlier in 2011 at which Sherry has shared the work, we would have gladly heard it again.

It Takes Twelve to Tango (1984) was Babbitt’s contribution to Yvar Mikhashof’s tango collection. Pianist Ursula Oppens included it on her FCM solo recital on August 7^th. The piece is more explicitly referential of a regular dance rhythm than is Babbitt’s usual wont; even more so than the veiled references to swing era jazz that sporadically occur throughout his catalog. Still, the piece provides plenty of twists and turns that upend the usual tango form in favor of bustling counterpoint and playful misdirection. And yes, true to the punning title’s promise, Babbitt doesn’t dispense with dodecaphony, allowing his rigorous approach to commingle with a bit of witty humor in this occasional work.

At the morning concert on Sunday, August 7^th, Soprano Adrienne Pardee and a small ensemble led by conductor Stefan Asbury performed Babbitt’s No Longer Very Clear (1994), a setting of a poem by John Ashbery. This piece isn’t heard as much as some of Babbitt’s other vocal pieces: a pity, as it a thoughtful and nuanced treatment of an intriguing poem, with shimmering instrumental textures and a delicately spun vocal line. Pardee, a TCM fellow, demonstrated a lovely tone, impressive control, and rapt attention to the score’s myriad details: wide-ranging dynamics, tricky rhythms, varied articulations, and abundant chromaticism.  Both she and the instrumentalists did so well that Asbury, remarking that it was, after all, a short piece, asked them to repeat it; which they did, making the work’s charms even more abundantly clear.

Those who’ve read File Under ? for a while may know that, two years ago, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Tanglewood. We celebrated our first anniversary at the 2010 FCM (composers take note: if your prospective partner doesn’t mind taking in a contemporary music marathon as part of your honeymoon, he/she is a keeper!) Due to work obligations, Kay and I weren’t able to attend the first three days of the 2011 Festival of Contemporary Music. Those who’d like to read excellent coverage of the beginning of the festival should head on over to New Music Box for Matthew Guerrieri’s review. But we did make it up to Lenox, MA for the final two days of the festival. And our short weekend was action packed; we heard five concerts and saw a play (a rather uneven performance of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare and Company).

Pierre Jalbert, Music of Air and Fire: The Boston Symphony often does a contemporary work on one of its concerts during the week of FCM as a nod to the festival. This year, it was Pierre Jalbert’s Music of Air and Fire (2007), which the orchestra, lead by BSO assistant conductor Sean Newhouse, performed at the Shed on August 6.

Jalbert was a Tanglewood fellow back in the 1990s. A professor at Rice University, he’s now in demand as a composer, both of works for large orchestra and for smaller forces, as this month’s NMB profile attests.

This six minute overture was premiered by the California Symphony; it is Jalbert’s first piece on a BSO program. Music of Fire and Air is a lively and well-paced curtain-raiser, with deft writing for percussion and vivid neo-tonal harmonies from strings and winds. Apart from a small excerpt available for streaming on Jalbert’s website, it is as yet unrecorded. Given the bang-up job the BSO did with the piece, dare we hope they’ll commit it to disc sometime soon?

Louis Karchin, Chamber Symphony: Karchin’s Chamber Symphony (2009) was the closer of FCM’s 10 AM concert on August 7 (one of three given in Ozawa Hall on the festival’s final day). Cast in three movements, its  features limpid, flowing francophilic lines, daubed with tart counterpoint, as well brilliantly colorful verticals and bold Straussian horn calls. Despite leading an ensemble comprised primarily of student performers (albeit very talented student performers), Karchin’s conducting elicited a bright and assured rendition that rivaled its premiere by pros that I heard back in 2010. FCM should invite Karchin to return, both to hear his own works performed and to work with the students on contemporary repertoire.

Tonight at 7 PM at the Apple Store on Manhattan’s Upper 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.