Sequenza21/

Last month at Columbia University’s Italian Academy, I was formidably impressed by an evening of madrigals old and new performed by the vocal ensemble Ekmeles. One of the revelations of the evening began with an idea ofensemble director Jeff Gavett. He thought that the madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo might benefit from Nichola Vicentino’s 31-tone equal tempered scale, most famously employed in the tuning of an instrument of his design, the archicembalo.

While, as Gavett admitted in the concert’s program notes, there is not direct evidence that they were ever performed this way in the presence of Gesualdo, there is some documentary evidence that Vicentino’s writings and an archicembalo were available to the composer. But here, the proof was in the singing. Gesualdo’s music sounds glorious in 31-TET. Indeed some of its idiosyncratic cross-relations and chordal voicings glisten: equally, wonderfully, strange, but somehow refocused.

Ekmeles contains several youngish singers with winsome voices: Gavett, soprano Mary Mackenzie, and countertenor Eric Brenner are notable standouts. Their interpretative maturity and skill in preparing the challenging works on the program bely the freshness of Ekmeles’ sound. The group also brought in a “ringer of ringers” for the second act. New music superstar soprano Lucy Shelton joined Ekmeles for a spirited rendition of Elliott Carter’s late Ashbery setting Mad Regales.

The program also featured several deconstructions of the madrigal aesthetic. Peter Ablinger’s Studien der Natur, in which sounds of nature and commerce alike are recreated using only voices, was a rather charming one-upping of Josquin’s El Grillo. Johannes Schöllhorn and Carl Bettendorf took the madrigal into postmodern, often craggy, territory. Martin Iddon’s hamadryads required the group to play water-filled glasses and employ headsets to grok its very expanded Pythagorean tuning that is notated down to 100ths of a cent! Incredibly challenging to perform. But then, Ekmeles revels to be challenged.

 

__________________________

This Thursday, composer Randy Gibson’s work will be in full force on the Music at First series. The concert features the world premiere of Gibson’s Circular Trance Surrounding the Second Pillar with The Highest Seventh Primal Cirrus, The Utmost Fundamental, and The Ekmeles Ending from Apparitions of The Four Pillars (fit that title on a postcard!), a concert length work in just intonation for sine wave drones and seven voices. Also on the bill is a set from Canadian harpsichordist Katelyn Clark.

Performance details

Date: Friday, November 18th 2011
Time: 7:30pm
City: Brooklyn, NY
Venue: First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn
Address: 124 Henry Street
Admission: $10

Paul Jacobs performs at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City this Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30 PM. Famed as an “evangelist for the organ”, Jacobs will play a 20th/21st century program that highlights not only the instrument’s traditional grandeur and sublimity, but also its range of emotion and insight.
John Clare spoke to Paul about the program, teaching organists new music plus composers about the organ, and some new works by Mason Bates and Michael Daugherty: mp3 file
An extraordinarily expressive performer and an intensely intelligent musician, Grammy Award-winning organist Paul Jacobs is helping the King of Instruments retake its rightful place in classical music. He is known for his marathon performances, which sometimes last up to 18 hours, of the complete works of J.S. Bach, Messiaen, and other composers, as well as his presentations of new works and core repertoire. Jacobs was invited to join the faculty of the Juilliard School in 2003, and was named chairman of the organ department in 2004, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the school’s history. He received Juilliard’s prestigious William Schuman Scholar’s Chair in 2007. Jacobs has played with numerous orchestras around the country, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Jacobs’ most recent album is a recording of Copland’s Organ Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas.
“Sacred Music in a Sacred Space” at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City is committed to presenting the finest sacred choral and organ repertoire spanning over 1,000 years of music history. Known for their artistic excellence, the renowned Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola present exhilarating performances of large-scale choral masterpieces as well as more intimate and reflective settings by lesser-known composers. Internationally-acclaimed organists may also frequently be heard on the Church’s magnificent N.P. Mander Pipe Organ, the largest tracker organ in New York City. General admission is $20, with tickets for students and seniors at $15.

Once again, we find ourselves in the thick of things. The New York concert season is reaching a fever pitch of pre-holiday season intensity, in which presenters and ensembles try to get their programs heard before the inevitable onslaught of Messiahs, Nutcrackers, tree-lighting ceremonies, and caroling elbows its way to the forefront of New York’s calendar of musical events – ready or not. While we can’t be in two places at once (I still think Steve Smith has a magic ring that enables this power!), hopefully between the various new music enthusiasts in the Sequenza 21 community’s NYC cadre, we can support these “hot tickets.”

11/4 at 8 PM at Weill Recital Hall: Opera Shorts 2011

The third annual installment of the Remarkable Theater Brigade’s Opera Shorts program is this Friday. These mini-operas – ten minutes or less – are an emerging composer’s dream: a chance to hear a brief slice of their work on the stage. But Opera Shorts draws some heavy hitters to the mini-opera game as well. The 2011 installment features works by prominent songsters Jake Heggie, William Bolcom, and Tom Cipullo, as well as emerging creators Marie Incontrera, Mike McFerron, Davide Zannoni, Anne Dinsmore Phillips, Patrick Soluri, and Christian McLeer. Given the length of that list, it’s lucky that none of them have Wagnerian ambitions — this time out at least!

11/4 at 8 PM on the water: Bennett Brass at Bargemusic

Sequenza 21 and Manhattan New Music Project present

 

ACME in Concert

 

Tuesday October 25, 2011 at 7 PM

Joe’s Pub, NYC

 

 

 

American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME)

 

Yuki Numata, Caroline Shaw, violins
Nadia Sirota, viola
Clarice Jensen, cello
Jonathan Singer, percussion
Timothy Andres, piano

 

Program

 

Wily Overture …                                                            Christian Carey (premiere)
Welcome …                                                                        Nancy Kleaver (MNMP)

Requests …                                                                        David Smooke

Grand Dragon (excerpt from Speedvisions) …            Rob Deemer
Slumber Music …                                                            Jay Batzner
Steal Away (excerpt from O Sapentia) …                        Hayes Biggs

Intermission –

 

Linea Negra …                                                            Laurie San Martin
Refuge …                                                                        Sam Nichols
Sixteen Lines …                                                            Robert E. Thomas

How it Will Go …                                                            Dale Trumbore
Oracle Night …                                                            James Stephenson
Nostos-Algea …                                                            James Holt

 

This concert was made possible by the generous support of Manhattan New Music Project (www.mnmp.org), and Sequenza 21 (www.sequenza21.com) publisher Jerry Bowles

 

Recording: Glenn Freeman of OgreOgress Productions (www.ogreogress.com)

 

Program committee: Clarice Jensen, Hayes Biggs, and Christian Carey

 

ACME Management: Bernstein Artists, Inc.

 

ACME Publicist: Christina Jensen

 

Thanks: Nancy Kleaver & Max Freedman of MNMP, Jerry Bowles, Steve Layton, Sue Renée Bernstein, Christina Jensen, Canelle Boughton, Glenn Freeman, Justin Monsen; the staff at Joe’s Pub: Shanta Thake, Sara Beesley, Michele Renkovski, & Patricia Bradby.

 

Special thanks: to the musicians for their dedicated work preparing the program; to the featured composers for their beautiful music; and to all the members of the Sequenza 21 and Manhattan New Music Project communities, without whom this event would not be possible.

 

 

 

 

Clarice: So, ahem, Nadia it was pretty remarkable when we switched from reading from the score to parts when we were working on Hayes’ piece (ed.: Steal Away by Hayes Biggs). It’s like the music took on a different meaning.

Nadia: I know!! I find that stuff so incredible. Sometimes I forget that a massive portion of our jobs as musicians (especially of the new music persuasion) is essentially translating visual material into sound. We’re kind of like professional map-readers. Do you have any notational pet peeves?

Clarice: Page turns of course… But other than that, just spacing in general. If notes look all bunched up, then it’s hard not to make them sound that way! What about you?

Nadia: My super-dork pet peeve is spelling; I hate it when chords are spelled out in ways that have little regard for traditional chord structures. It’s sometimes really hard to wrap your brain around a whole bunch of sharps and flats living together all higgledy-piggledy without regard for implied harmony. I know I know: super-dork. That having been said, I kind of love how notation is a kind of personal, no two alike sort of thing. It gives the performer so much insight as to how the composer may be thinking. Oh! And I can get kinda frustrated with things that are notated with very small durations (64th and 128th notes) which are then in a super-slow tempo. I understand a kind of freneticism may be what the composer is going for, but it just seems to add so much time to the rehearsal/parsing process.

Clarice: Totally agree on that one. Pretty amazing how this abstract system of symbols and lines and dots can be subject to so much scrutiny and discussion regarding interpretation. And how dots and lines paired with scrutiny and discussion results in beautiful music! Amazing!

Nadia: Yay! So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the type of music and programming that translates well live vs. that which is great to listen to on the radio or on a recording. There are so many types of gestures which are fascinating to watch people achieve, which cannot be really understood in a recording. Like even a pregnant pause, for example.

Clarice: For sure – the physicality of achieving a musical gesture just can’t be heard in a recording, and sometimes seeing that gesture is what makes the music translate to the audience. However, would you say that there is any music that makes more sense recorded rather than live? What about music in the rock/pop world?

Nadia: Oh decidedly. Stylistically that’s an idea Classical peeps kind of “borrowed” from the pop world to begin with, even going so far back as Musique Concrète territory. Like, think about how many times we’ve heard the exact same performance of a song like “Louie Louie.” That performance IS the work itself. Everything else is a “cover.” This can seem like a weird, alien counterpart to the Classical model (like, do I only do covers???), but yeah, there’s a lot more of that type of thinking these days, from things like John Adams Light Over Water to Nico Muhly’s The Only Tune, a piece I’ve performed a lot. When that piece was conceived it was as a recorded collage. When we play it, we are trying our damnedest to approximate the recording. It’s sort of the opposite type of problem from what we were talking about above, the “why does this music lack the visceral impact it had live on this record” type of problem.

Well, I’m super into the diversity of voices on this program. I get to wear a lot of different hats! (Jagged hat, lyrical hat.)

Clarice: Yes, I think the variety of pieces we ended up with is pretty emblematic of the wide range of excellent writing and composition that’s happening now. And as a performer, it really is rewarding to wear all of these hats! I mean, I’ve always considered lyrical playing to be a personal strength of mine, but over the years I’ve worked so hard on rhythmic accuracy through playing intricate music, and now I consider that to be a strength as well. It’s amazing how all of this diverse writing is in fact shaping the performers who are often playing music in the contemporary world. Do you think your focus on new music has changed you intrinsically as a performer?

Nadia: Oh, totally. Whenever you work on some weird skill, it changes the kind of mental space in which you think about everything else, really. The rhythmic idea you bring up is super apropos; I also kind of came from a lyrical place as a kind of a default, but the more I work on concepts of groove and flow, the more these ideas end up creeping their way into even the most lyrical stuff. Knowing more things as time goes on rules.

Well, lovely to chat with you, C, I can’t wait for the show!!

Clarice: Yep yep, it’s gonna be a good one!

_______________________

Tickets to the Sequenza 21 Concert are free (the venue charges a $12 food/drink minimum).

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

Sam Nichols teaches at UC Davis. His string quartet ‘Refuge’ is on the Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert this coming Tuesday (7PM at Joe’s Pub in NYC. Did we mention it’s free?).

In 2009 the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble asked me to write a string quartet. I was happy, for a number of reasons, but mostly because they bring a tremendous amount of oomph to any project. At the time, though, I was working on another piece, a trio, that was giving me a lot of trouble. Make that: a LOT of trouble. Pounding my head against the wall trouble, breaking pencils in half trouble, putting in an accent and then taking it out again trouble. Working on this trio was taking up a lot of time, and I had blown past the deadline. Meanwhile, the deadline for the new string quartet was approaching. So, I set aside the trio—it was already late, and I seemed to be stuck—and started the quartet. I didn’t have a lot of time, about six weeks (and I usually write pretty slowly; there’s usually a fair amount of moving down blind alleys, and retracing my steps sort of thing), and so there was a certain amount of adrenaline involved: I was already mired in one stalled-out project; I really didn’t want that to snowball into an unmanageable situation, where EVERYTHING I was writing was late. Yikes.

The Left Coast were going to play Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge; they asked me to design my string quartet as a sort of companion piece to the Beethoven. This was slightly terrifying—okay, more than slightly. But I tried to ignore that, and started to work. The first thing I decided was: I really couldn’t see my way clear to writing a fugue. But I thought it might be fun to take some of the basic ideas of fugal writing, twist them around, and use that as a jumping-off point. So, for example, instead of writing a traditional contrapuntal texture, I created a blurred, out-of-focus unison line that’s been twisted and tweaked. The four instruments are sometimes playing the same tune, but are ornamenting it differently, or are playing it at slightly different speeds. This results in a rough sort of do-it-yourself canon—anything but strict—where the lines are sometimes piled up very closely, and at other times are separated from each other quite dramatically.

The title, Refuge, started out as a pun. I often use a temporary working title, and once I figure out what I’m doing, I might throw the first title away, and replace it with something better suited to the piece. So, in quickly slapping a title on my string-quartet-in-progress, I chose “refuge:” not a fugue (or “fuge,” to revert to Beethoven’s language), but a re-imagining of fugue/fuge: re-fugue, or re-fuge. And for a few weeks, I left it at that.

But as I wrote the music, a simpler interpretation of the title started to appear. The piece is very episodic: just as one musical structure is established, it’s replaced with another. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch; an image emerges, but then it’s (sometimes quite violently) shaken up and wiped clean. So, over and over, the piece seems to move toward quieter, restful episodes: little in-between bits of music that, until they’re disrupted, offer moments of calm. This pattern, of moving through active, violent sections (including passages which seem to bristle with hostility) toward calmer havens, became one of the basic ideas of the piece. Maybe the title exerted a sort of pull on the music? Or maybe it was a coincidence. Now, two years later, I can see that writing this piece offered me a kind of refuge. It allowed me to escape from the trio I had been writing (which I eventually returned to and finished). But in a larger sense, it helped me loosen up, and find a more personal way of putting together a piece.

Composer Rob Deemer teaches at SUNY Fredonia. He blogs regularly at NewMusicBox; he’s also a frequent contributor to Sequenza 21. The presenters enjoyed his whole string quartet, but were running short on program time. He was kind enough to consent to our request to present an excerpt as part of next week’s Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert (Oct. 25 at 7 PM at Joe’s Pub).

I’ve heard many composers say that the time directly after they finish their studies is one of the most important periods in their career when they finally feel comfortable to experiment, free from the pressures of being accepted by their peers and instructors. I found myself in that exact position in the two years between finishing my degree at the University of Texas and landing my current position at SUNY Fredonia. During that time, I lived and taught in Oklahoma, and the relative seclusion I had while working there allowed me to dig into some very primal concepts that I hadn’t dreamt of writing about up to that point – death and politics being two of them.

When the MacArthur Quartet at the University of Oklahoma asked me to write a string quartet, I drew upon the paintings of Julie Speed for inspiration. A surrealist painter based in Austin, Texas whose works have been shown throughout the world, Julie’s unique ability to create images that were at once recognizable and pleasantly disturbing had interested me for some time and when the opportunity presented itself to compose a work based on her paintings, I jumped at the chance and created a four-movement work Speedvisions. The individual movements are general interpretations of each painting, and while the other three movements Tea, Military Science, and Diminuendo have been received well in performances, the second movement of the work that ACME will be performing Tuesday evening has always garnered the most attention.

The Grand Dragon Crossing the River Styx on His Way to Hell is glorious in its directness and pulls no punches with its subject matter. With a nod towards Charles Ives, I have interweaved several slave and protest songs (including Hallelujah - I’m A-Travelin’ and I’m on My Way to the Freedom Land) together with a slave owner’s song (Run, N___, Run) and an ostinato pattern fashioned from We Shall Overcome. The movement is one of the most visceral of my works, but with enough tongue in the cheek to not become overbearing.

_______

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

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.

_______

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

Hayes Biggs is an outstanding composer, vocalist, copyist, and longtime instructor at Manhattan School of Music. I was delighted when he agreed to help us judge the call for scores for the Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert (which will be on Oct. 25 at 7 PM at Joe’s Pub in NYC). The concert will close with the final movement from Hayes’s String Quartet, a work he discusses in the following post.

If ever a piece required my patience as it slowly taught me what it needed to do and be, it was my String Quartet: O Sapientia /Steal Away. My first sketches for it date from 1996, but it was not completed until 2004. This eight-year span of course included numerous interruptions of various sorts, including time on the back burner while other more immediately pressing projects got done. Even in rare moments of front-burner status I struggled with it, but I remain as proud of this work as of anything I’ve ever composed. The Avalon String Quartet premiered it in 2006 and subsequently recorded it for the Albany label.

The title refers to the quartet’s two main sources of material: my Advent motet for unaccompanied voices, O Sapientia, composed in 1995, and the African-American spiritual Steal Away. It is the latter that is the focus of the third and final movement, the one that will be heard at Joe’s Pub on October 25.  It is in two parts played without interruption: an Epigraph—simply a straightforward presentation of the melody of the spiritual—followed by an extended free Fantasia on that melody.

The quartet bears an overall dedication to my wife, Susan Orzel-Biggs, but this movement carries a separate one in memory of my friend, teacher and mentor, Tony Lee Garner (1942-1998). He was the choral director at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), as well as an accomplished singer, actor and director, and he taught me as much about the joys and responsibilities of being an artist as anyone I have ever known. As a freshman member of the Southwestern Singers in the spring of 1976 I sang in a program of American music under Tony’s direction that included William Dawson’s beautiful arrangement of Steal Away. The printed key of that arrangement is F major, but Tony liked the way the choir sounded with it transposed up a half step, so in this movement the tune is always heard in the key of G-flat major.

________

The Sequenza 21 Concert is free.

Tickets and Tables are still available by phone.

Call 212.539.8778 to make your reservation