Russian composer/theosophist/sensualist Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) spent a lot of his life dreaming of a kind of sensory extravaganza, pieces that would submerge the audience in swirling sound, dance, colored light, heady aromas… Yeah, kind of like the 60s, but a little more Old-World refined. One result of Scriabin’s musical synasthesia was that he held very specific views on which colors were inextricably tied to each key and note. As Wiki tells it: In his autobiographical Recollections, Sergei Rachmaninoff recorded a conversation he had had with Scriabin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov about Scriabin’s association of colour and music. Rachmaninoff was surprised to find
Read more[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N36TWwH98gE[/youtube] This Friday and Saturday October 22 and 23, Andrea Liberovici’s multimedia work Mephisto’s Songs premieres a part of the Apollo Theater’s Salon Series. I’m not familiar with Liberovici, but I am familiar with Mephisto’s featured performer singer Helga Davis. In addition to Ms. Davis’ amazing vocals, the piece includes recorded narration by Robert Wilson and cello improvisations by The Kronos Quartet’s awesome Jeffrey Zeigler. Live musicians for this performance include Clarice Jenson (cello), Fred Cash Jr. (bass), and Abe Fogle (drums). Some of you may be familiar with Helga Davis as a host of WQXR’s Overnight Music. She works
Read moreOrpheus Chamber Orchestra announced the winners of the Project 440 competition tonight. The four winners will create new works for Orpheus to be premiered in 2012. They are (clockwise from top left) Alex Mincek, Clint Needham, Andrew Norman, and Cynthia Wong: It was quite a rigorous vetting process with some very talented competition. Congratulations to all!
Read moreThe first University of Michigan Composers’ Forum concert of the 2010-2011 season took place in the evening on Monday, October 11. Earmarked by the department as a preview for the upcoming Midwest Composers Symposium in Cincinnati, I had been looking forward to this event for over a month as my first opportunity to experience the creativity of my colleagues here in Michigan. Like most music schools, our Composers’ Forum is organized and performed by students and viewed as an arena in which the composers studying here may test concepts and solidify their ideas before moving on to a more professional
Read moreToday is the 20th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death. He would be 92 if he were still alive. His son, Alexander, has written a nice tribute published at dot429 this morning: It seems impossible that twenty years have passed since my father (Leonard Bernstein) died. Or perhaps, I should write, I haven’t seen my father for twenty years! Sometimes I feel as though he is on tour again and will be back at any time now… My father traveled a great deal. When he was home, though, he was really home. As a composer, he didn’t have an office to
Read moreThe music season has definitely kicked into gear all across the country. Sure, I will always love and find inspiration via New York City; I just received a great CD from a new friend in Brooklyn and the other night skyped for the first time with another NYC friend and collaborator who helped lead Burnt Sugar in a recent musical tribute to James Brown at the Apollo Theater (Salon Series at the Apollo is looking really, really cool. Miller Theatre, you have been warned…). But I’m excited by the music new I’m reading from all the coasts (and Midwest). Here’s
Read moreThere are a few more concerts happening in New York this week that you should know about, and then I’ll give the concert updates a rest for a while. Promise. Tonight (Tuesday, October 12), is your last chance to see the New York premiere of Kraft by Magnus Lindberg. 7:30pm, New York Philharmonic, Avery Fisher Hall. If you somehow haven’t heard about this, you can read the s21 posts about it here, here, and here; the New York Times articles and videos here, and here. You can even find some info over at Huffington Post. Check on ticket availability here,
Read moreI first heard about the Long Now Foundation a couple years ago from friend and former bandmate Daniel Magazin. I remember visiting their web site and thinking that San Francisco was the perfect place for such an entity. “The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking,” the web site declares. “We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.” Such a perspective seems custom-made to partner with the minimalist and conceptual streams of contemporary music. UK-based artist, musician, and composer Jem Finer thought so too. He
Read moreRemixers start your … laptops. Some hot-off-the-presses news about a contest beginning at noon TODAY! Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Steve Reich, Nonesuch Records, and Indaba Music have launched a search for collaborators to remix the third movement from Reich’s 2×5. Paired with his Pulitzer prizewinning Double Sextet, the work appears on Reich’s new Nonesuch CD. For four weeks beginning October 12, 2010 at noon, remixers can visit Indaba’s website to create their own version of the movement. From November 9 to 23, fans and a panel of judges including Reich will review the submissions. Winners will be announced on December
Read moreWhen Christopher James Lees (pictured to the right), conductor of the University of Michigan Contemporary Directions Ensemble (CDE), challenged the literal meaning of “contemporary” before the group’s concert last Wednesday, he imbued the performance with special significance. The concert, dubbed “homage to the masters”, aimed to explore certain works’ and composers’ relevance, chronology notwithstanding, and featured Morton Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week at 90 (1970), Toru Takemitsu’s Air (1995), George Perle’s Six Celebratory Inventions (1995), Benjamin Lees’s Piano Trio no. 2 (1998) and Gyorgy Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto (1970) (additionally, Elliott Carter’s Gra (1975) was supposed to be played but
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