Next week is the third annual Composers Concordance Festival in New York City. They’ve called it ‘Timbre Tantrum,’ organizing the concerts by instrumental family: PERCUSSION Dec. 1 – 3pm ArtBeat with Glen Velez, Lukas Ligeti, Peter Jarvis. Dimenna Center (W. 37th St. NYC) 3pm Dec. 2 – 7pm ArtBeat (repeat of program) William Patterson University KEYS Dec. 4 – 7pm Three’s Keys with Taka Kigawa, Inna Faliks and Carlton Holmes music by Dan Cooper, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, Sean Hickey, Debra Kaye, Carlton Holmes, Daniel Palkowski and guests Klavierhaus (211 W. 58th St. NYC) ELECTRONIC MUSIC Dec. 6 – 8pm
Read moreBefore JACK Quartet played Georg Friedrich Haas’ “In iij. Noct,” String Quartet No. 3 Tuesday night at the Lincoln Center White Light Festival, the stage crew turned the lights off in the Clark Studio Theater for a test run, so that everyone in the audience could gauge whether they could withstand the extended period of essentially total darknes. The lights were down for one minute, and once the last light went out I counted to myself, “one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.” By the time I hit twenty, the lights were on their way back up. That is the profound power that darkness has,
Read moreHey Jerry. We would love your help getting the word out on the balance of our reading opportunities this year. What’s new is that we are now accepting them by email and also offering the ability to apply for both the Underwood New Music Readings and the New York Philharmonic EarShot Readings that will result in three of the six chosen having their works performed June 5-7 by the Phil either under Alan Gilbert or Matthias Pintscher. I’ll go ahead and say that I think this is pretty cool. Also, if you can post this opportunity on your site somewhere in addition
Read more“…Crazy is good, folks! So come on down to Crazy Marvin’s Modern Music Warehouse! We’re wheeling!! We’re dealing!! We’ll play play PLAY all day day DAY!!!…” OK, OK, maybe not quite that crazy… But once a year our good friend Marvin Rosen goes crazy in the best way over at Princeton’s radio station WPRB, (103.3 FM, or online at: www.wprb.com). For the last six years Marvin has offered up a one-man, 24-hour radio marathon of contemporary music. And by contemporary, I mean things from just the last year or two, and often recordings culled directly from the composers themselves. This year
Read moreOn Thursday November 7, Betalevel, that famously obscure underground venue in Chinatown, hosted a concert of microtonal music entitled The Things That Overpower Us. The program featured the music of Kraig Grady, in Los Angeles for the week and who brought his personal greetings from the metaphorical Island of Anaphoria. A standing-room only crowd of about 50 jammed into the small space to hear performances by Tangerine Music Lab and a string quartet consisting of Melinda Rice, Mona Tian, Andrew McIntosh and Ashley Walters. The concert began with an extended improvisation by Tangerine Music Labs that was loosely based on
Read moreWhen art promises to be revelatory, it may become something to fear. Such is the case of String Paths, the first conspectus of music by Dobrinka Tabakova. Fear, in this sense, is close to awe, for before hearing a single note one knows its details will seep into places to which few others have traveled. Fear, because the trust and intimacy required of such an act is what the composer’s life is all about: she fills staves with glyphs so that anyone with an open heart might encounter their fleeting interpretations and become part of their accretion. Indeed, many factors
Read moreOn Friday night, November 1st the Wulf in downtown Los Angeles presented a program by three outstanding improvisational musicians: Tim Feeney on percussion, Ken Ueno, vocals and Matt Ingalls, clarinet. A little over an hour of improvisational music was offered in the reclaimed second-story industrial loft that is the Wulf, and a small but dedicated group of listeners gathered comfortably in the informal space. On this occasion there were no overhead lights – just a single back light behind the performers – and this added to the unusual atmosphere. The three performers all have long experience playing experimental music using extended
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