Month: July 2011

Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Premieres, San Francisco, Saxophone

Let’s Ask Andrew Raffo Dewar

Here’s the first in a series of interviews with composers who are premiering new works at the 10th Annual Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco on Friday, July 22nd.  The Friday night concert, entitled The Art of Composition, starts at 8 pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online from Brown Paper Tickets, and you can also buy them at the door.  Listeners who don’t want to wait that long can get up close and personal with the composers, and learn about their creative process, at a free Monday night panel discussion at

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by Polly Moller
Criticism, Critics, Opinion, The Business

New Noises Hardly Explained

In a recent piece for Slate , musicologist Jan Swafford took readers on a little tour of contemporary music that has yielded a fair share of controversy. Mind you, that Slate is publishing a piece on contemporary concert music (or, as Swafford puts it, “contemporary ‘classical’ music, or whatever you want to call it”) for a general readership is a very good thing. But I wonder if we couldn’t do better than Mr. Swafford’s myopic, narrow-minded and patronizing article. For the record—and right off the bat—let me state that I agree with Mr. Swafford’s ultimate message that “(t)he archetypal avant-garde

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by Armando Bayolo
Contemporary Classical

The Mind Garage, The Electric Liturgy and My (Tiny) Part in the Birth of Christian Rock

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klmhgRRRnHM[/youtube] A nanosecond or two ago–at the dawning of the age of aquarius, when my generation’s future was still a bright crazy quilt of dreams and possibilities–my wife Suzanne and I were graduate students at West Virginia University in Morgantown.  I had just successfully avoided  Viet Nam by signing up for two years of active duty in the Navy Reserve  and accidentally getting myself assigned to duty on an icebreaker.   I spent most of my contribution to the war effort at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, staving off death by boredom by feeding beer to penguins who, as my shipmates and I

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by Jerry Bowles
Bang on a Can, Cello, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Video

Avant Cellist’s Ideas Worth Spreading

Maya Beiser, everyone’s favorite ex-Can Banging All Star downtown cellist, was an invited presenter at the March 2011 TED conference. The TED site recently released a high quality video of her lecture recital, and it’s already garnered over 80,000 views! TED’s slogan: “Ideas worth spreading.” We’re glad that Maya’s getting the chance to spread the word about Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint and David Lang’s World to Come far and wide!

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by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Invisible Dog Extravaganza!

Like the New Music Bake Sale, there’s another great Brooklyn tradition beginning to happen.  On Friday, July 8, 7:00 pm to midnight at the Invisible Dog Art Center, Dither will be hosting their second annual “Extravaganza.” This year they will be featuring an array of experimental sounds, presented by composers and performers notorious for carving out unique musical niches. In addition to Dither, the lineup includes renowned guitarist Marc Ribot, powerhouse quartet So Percussion, Ches Smith and These Arches (an all-star line-up including Mary Halvorson, Andrea Parkins, and Tim Berne), Ted Hearne and Philip White’s raucous noise group R We

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by James Holt
Contemporary Classical

The Woodstock Summer 2011 Mostly Girl Front Porch Chill Mix

Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets.  Or, making playlists.   Or something.   Some friends who just got themselves a screened-in porch for their  house up in Willow asked me to come up with an iPod playlist for sitting around at dusk smoking cigars and sipping brandy.  Mostly pop-stuff  but offbeat.   I decided to go  all-female..well, okay, there is one boy-girl duet…because I like girl singers.  But, I digress, I had so much fun putting the list together that I thought we ought to have a little playlist contest here.  Any genre is

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by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer, Video

Happy Independence Day from Charles and Greta

My parents-in-law have a long tradition of enthusiastic photography. Greta the golden retriever is less than a year old, but she’s already an accomplished model. To those readers in the United States, I’d like to wish you a safe and happy Independence Day. While there’s a lot of music played on this holiday that is arranged to be “broadly appealing,” Charles Ives was never one to compromise. “Fourth of July” (1904), from the Holidays Symphony, complexly layers a number of patriotic tunes, which move a different speeds and simultaneously appear in different keys. No one will mistake this piece for

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by Christian Carey