Month: September 2017

Contemporary Classical

New Kid in Town: Orchestra Moderne NYC Makes Carnegie Debut October 7

Orchestra Moderne, a new ensemble founded by conductor Amy Andersson in March, will debut at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, October 7, 2017 at 8pm with a program celebrating the legacy of immigration to America titled The Journey to America: From Repression to Freedom (Part 1).

The inaugural program features Peter Boyer’s Grammy-nominated work Ellis Island: The Dream of America, a haunting tribute to historic American immigration features seven actors reading stories chosen from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, accompanied by an emotional orchestral score and projected photos from the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Also on the program is Overture to Light by Emmy-winning composer Lolita Ritmanis, the world premiere of Steven Lebetkin’s compelling Violin Concerto with soloist Momo Wong, and the beloved Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland.

Andersson is perhaps best known for bringing video game music and film scores to the classical concert hall through the music of Konji Kondo, the Japanese music composer, pianist, and sound director who works for Nintendo. She has led performances of Kondo’s The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses around the world. She is also a professor at the Berlin University of Arts, the music director at the CPE Bach Gymnaisum orchestra, and has led numerous opera productions in Germany.

Orchestra Moderne NYC aims to will engage audiences by performing music from film scores, video games such as 먹튀사이트, and concert music that is relevant and connected to the important cultural issues in our society. Its stated mission is “to create musical experiences that celebrate humanity and are connected to key social issues, resonating with diverse audiences of music lovers, and providing inclusive opportunities for all composers and performers including women and minorities.”

Tickets are available for purchase here and range from $17.50 to $50.

by Jerry Bowles
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

Sequenza – Sequenza! At Monk Space

Tuesday, September 19, 2017 saw the first concert of the season at Monk Space, and for this occasion Luciano Berio’s challenging Sequenza series of virtuoso pieces were performed by the top musicians in Los Angeles. The event was also a fund-raiser to support new music at Monk Space with the musicians generously donating their time and talents for this extraordinary concert. A full crowd wedged itself into the cozy spaces of the Koreatown venue to hear, as the poet Edoardo Sanguineti wrote “…the sequence of sequences, which is the music of musics according to Luciano.”

Each Sequenza is written for a different instrument and performed solo by a different musician, so to allow for set changes and the length of the program, the concert was held simultaneously in two spaces – the normal Monk Space warehouse and a smaller annex. It was impossible to hear all of the pieces, but everything was timed to allow those in the audience to move between the spaces and hear several different the pieces, even if they were not in the same place. The audience was politely careful to avoid entering or exiting during a performance and so this arrangement worked fairly well. I chose to stay in the warehouse for the first half of the concert and move to the annex after the intermission.

Before each Sequenza a few short lines from a Sanguineti poem were recited by Kirsten Ashley Weist. The first piece heard in the warehouse was Sequenza IV – Piano (1965), performed by Mari Kawamura and this began with a number of short, sharp chords followed by a series of complex phrases. There was no regular beat to follow but rather a chain of intricate and technically demanding passages, sometimes mixed with longer, sustained chords. There is a generally unsettled feeling to this music that often combined with the mysterious and uncertain. The intensity seemed to increase as the piece progressed, but the anxiety was occasionally relieved as the rapid phrases were allowed to ring out and decay into brief silences. Ms. Kawamura was duly focused and her technique proved equal to the difficulties of the score. Sequenza IV, with all its convolutions and complexities is anxious and disquieting music, but this was masterfully realized by Ms. Kawamura’s precisely passionate playing.

Sequenza XIVa (2002) for cello followed, while another version for bass was performed by Tom Peters as part of the program running in the annex. After the introductory lines of poetry, cellist Ashley Walters began Sequenza XIVa with soft drumming on the cello body and some lively pizzicato notes on the open strings. This made for an intriguing combination and it seemed as if there were two players on the stage. Strong arco passages soon followed, producing a somewhat somber feel but rapid strumming on the strings plus a series of rising and falling trills restored the complex character of this piece. Incredible sounds poured from the stage in a series of extended techniques that were variously angry and active, quiet and timid or occasionally warm and smooth. The texture constantly swirled and shifted, never settling for long. Ms. Walters was, however, in complete command of her instrument, extracting all of the colors – and then some – from the cello palette.

(more…)

by Paul Muller
CDs, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, early music, File Under?, Minimalism, New York

Bruce Brubaker at LPR

Bruce Brubaker.
Photo: Yang Bao

Bruce Brubaker

Le Poisson Rouge

September 17, 2017

Sequenza 21

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – Pianist Bruce Brubaker has long been known as one of the best interpreters of Downtown contemporary music around. His is a versatile catalogue of recordings, including excellent CDs of works by John Adams, John Cage, Alvin Curran, William Duckworth,  and Meredith Monk. However, despite an increasingly crowded field of pianists exploring the works around the composer’s eightieth birthday, Brubaker’s renditions of Philip Glass have few parallels; the 2015 InFiné recording Glass Piano is required listening.

 

Brubaker’s latest project, a recording titled Codex, also on InFiné, is slated for November release. It explores two interests new to his recorded catalogue: one the comparatively recent piano repertoire of Terry Riley, and the other culled from one of the oldest manuscripts of keyboard compositions extant: The Faenza Codex. This early Fifteenth century document provides a tantalizing glimpse into the instrumental music of that era.

 

The juxtaposition of the highly ornamented and rhythmically diverse selections of material from the Codex with Riley’s equally subtle Keyboard Study #2 (1964-’65), presented in two parts (which, Brubaker explained, was separate passes through the piece’s circular complex of pitch notations – the rhythms are free –  to render two different results). Although ostinatos are the hallmark of Riley’s style,  Brubaker managed to supply two different sets of repeating gestures, significantly varying the two iterations of Study #2.

 

The Codex examples were even more interesting in deployment. As it isn’t precisely clear where the two staves line up all the time, one performance’s dissonance on a weak beat can be another’s consonance on a strong one. After playing the first half of the concert, the pianist remarked,”That last Codex piece was from 1420; it might be the oldest piece yet to have been played at Le Poisson Rouge!”

 

Brubaker’s interpretation of the Codex pieces evolved too. At first he played with a delicate approach that imitated early keyboard instruments. However, by the last Codex offering, Brubaker found a more pianistic approach to be appropriate, allowing J’ay Grant Espoir significantly more melodic heft than previous pieces.

The new album’s fare, and its juxtaposition, is fascinating. Two pieces of Glass’s music were on offer as well, superlatively played and thoughtfully interpreted. Like Glass himself, Brubaker doesn’t lend these pieces the motoric character that more rigid performers impart to them. Instead, there is a supple character, significant shadings of dynamics, and small tempo alterations that allow the works to breathe Romanticism in midst of their minimal processes. The standout was Mad Rush, an extended essay in which a reiterated minor third is the jumping off point for a host of variations in a plethora of harmonic directions. Wichita Vortex Sutra served as an equally compelling encore.

 

During shows at LPR, one often hears the clinking of glasses and whispered conversations — that’s the nature of a club atmosphere and customers and wait staff alike are usually reasonably discreet. For Brubaker’s set, you could have heard a pin drop, especially during Mad Rush. Kudos to attentive listening.

 

Set list

 

Codex Faenza: Constantia

 

Terry Riley: Keyboard Study 2

 

Codex Faenza: Indescort

 

Codex Faenza: Che pena questa (Landini)

 

Philip Glass: Mad Rush

 

Codex Faenza: Elas mon cuer

 

Terry Riley: Keyboard Study 2 (continuation)

 

Codex Faenza: J’ay grant espoir

 

Philip Glass: Wichita Vortex Sutra

 

——-

 

Encore – Philip Glass: Metamorphosis 3

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Piano

Michael Vincent Waller -Trajectories in Santa Monica

On Thursday, September 7, 2017 the Soundwave Concert Series in Santa Monica presented music from Trajectories, the new CD from Michael Vincent Waller released this month on the Recital label. Pianist R. Andrew Lee, in town from Denver, and cellist Seth Parker Woods from Chicago were on hand to perform, having recorded the album in Kansas City last year. A good-sized crowd assembled in the Martin Luther King Auditorium to hear this latest release from the New York-based Waller.

by itself (2016), for solo piano, was first up on the program and the album notes by “Blue” Gene Tyranny  state that this piece “…describes a quiescent state of solitude but leaves the specific image to the mind of the listener.” The opening notes fall quietly from a simple chord and have that gentle, inward-looking feel so characteristic of Waller’s music. No heavy-handed chords or bold declarative statements disturbed the smoothly tranquil texture. Subtle and almost nostalgic in prospect, the economy of musical materials and the Lydian mode scale combined to agreeably invoke a state of quiet contemplation. The acoustics in the hall complimented the playing by R. Andrew Lee, who perfectly realized the understated essence of the score. Not quite six minutes long, by itself carries the listener on an inward journey so intriguing that time seems to be in suspension.

Visages (2015) followed, a piano solo in eight short sections and on this occasion five were selected for performance. Each of the sections offered a different musical visage and these were variously flowing, animated and purposeful, dance-like, questioning or quietly introspective. As with by itself, Visages is typically quiet and reserved, but there are the familiar elements of strong melody, repeating chords and counterpoint that serve to set the tone and color of each of the sections. The sections are typically brief – just a few minutes in length – but always long enough to establish a particular point of view about the subject. The sensitive playing of R. Andrew Lee was always in complete control of the delicate contours and balance of each section.

Cellist Seth Parker Woods joined R. Andrew Lee for Lines (2016), a duo that also included a video by Richard Garet projected on the screen at the rear of the stage. This opens with a rich cello line and simple piano accompaniment; the video was filled with scenes of various East Coast watery places. The music is restful and nostalgic – like pleasant memories floating by – and perfectly complimented the images on the screen. The cello line dominated for most of the piece and this was confidently played, yet sensitive and expressive. A short pizzicato section changed the mood slightly, but the return to arco phrasing served only to increase the sense of underlying longing. In the final minutes the mood turned remorseful, enhanced by some lovely playing by Woods in the lower registers of the cello.  The piece finished on a beautifully shaped low cello note followed by a softly echoing piano arpeggio. Lines is wonderfully interior music, made from thoughts and memories as much as by notes and sound.

Breathing Trajectories (2016) followed, a piece in three parts for solo piano. Part I begins with a series of simple phrases consisting of single notes – typically starting with an open fifth or octave – and completed with a dissonant tone. All of this is softly subdued, focusing the listener’s attention on the interaction of the sounds in each phrase. The effect of the third tone on the sustained ringing sound of the first two adds an element of uncertainty and as this pattern is repeated, a kind of question and answer conversation ensues. There is no other form or structure, yet these sequences of solitary notes are quietly thought provoking.

Part II extends this concept, this time with chord arpeggios that are allowed to ring out so that their component colors refract into the listener’s imagination. The interactions of the tones again drive the perceived feelings, and these are generally warm and reassuring, but also distant or uncertain. A series of slow trills and rapid melodic lines brighten the mood before slowing again to a peaceful finish. Part III opens with stronger and more substantial chords, firmly grounded in the lower registers. Rapid arpeggios follow and this adds a bit of dynamism and grandeur. The texture is not as spare here, flowing more easily, with the melody and harmony interweaving into familiar patterns that feel like the logical outcome of the preceding parts.

The final piece on the program was Laziness (2015), a cello and piano duo in three parts. According to the CD liner notes the ‘laziness’ refers to “…the dispirited state of confusion brought on by mixed emotions..” This is manifested in Part I by a series of quiet chords in the opening that sometimes vary from major to minor modes within a given phrase. Combined with the expansive cello line, a sense of disquiet is established. Part I ends with three ominous notes in the deep piano register – not unlike a knock of fate. Part II begins with a much more optimistic feeling, a moving piano line filled with bright sunshine and a warm cello accompaniment that carries a sense of renewed purpose. However this soon turns gloomy and a bit portentous as the tempo slows and the cello line descends downward. Minor key phrases appear at times and a feeling of uncertainty and agitation persist to the end.

Part III begins with repeating piano phrases, uptempo and full of movement and determination. The sustained cello line floats below, content to let the piano dominate. About midway through, the piano and cello engage in a kind of conversation that is full of briskly intertwining notes and repeating figures. Slower phrases enter and exit, adding a certain ambiguity to the initial sense of ambition and heightening the sense of mixed emotions. Laziness pivots nicely back and forth between confidence and doubt, leaving the listener to decide which path to take.

Overall, Trajectories is music for the interior imagination. Sometimes, music comes to us in a great symphonic fury, sometimes in bold declarative statements or in bright, vivid colors. The music of Trajectories comes to us quietly—almost as if we are hearing our private thoughts—and is all the more engaging as a result. While listening, I came across an article analyzing the mejores casas de apuestas en Chile, discussing how digital platforms are shaping the future of entertainment. It was an interesting parallel—how both music and gaming have evolved to offer deeply personal and immersive experiences, whether through soundscapes that transport the listener or technology that enhances user engagement.

The CD has been carefully mastered and edited so that all the nuance and detail of the music has been precisely preserved. Credit for this is due to Sean McCann of Recital, Denis Blackham of Skye Mastering and Ryan Streber of Oktaven Studios. The CD cover booklet features photography by Phill Niblock.

Trajectories is available directly from Recital and also at Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and other digital outlets.

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical

The Proms–main attractions and bold tendencies–Tarrodi, Larcher, Barry, Whitley, Adams, Kendall, Walker

There are certain concerts where there is a new piece which is clearly not the main item on the program. Sometimes a visiting orchestra will include a work by a composer from its country; sometimes it seems to be more or less an afterthought; sometimes a more integral part of the program, but still not the most important or central part. The earlier Prom on August 30, presented by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, began with the first UK performance of Liguria by Andrea Tarrodi, which clearly fell into the first category. Liguria commemorates a visit its composer made to the “Cinque Terre,” five villages on the Ligurian coast of Italy. She describes the work as a ‘walking tour’ of them. The work is very attractive; far from the least of its impressive and appealing aspects being the expert and highly polished orchestration; its notes are not at all bad, either. Despite the composer’s description, the work had very little local color. It could just as well, from the sound of it, have been about a place in Sweden. The titles of its six sections, which follow on each other without a break, are generic (Waves, Horizon, Blue Path, Colors, Mountains, Stars), rather than geographically specific. Neither the shaping of the sections nor the articulation of their ends is very clear. The first two or three have the same material, so it’s not easy to follow the progress of the whole work. The character of the music changes at one point, but it’s not completely clear which movement it might be. In the end, Virgil Thomson’s pronouncement on the Egmont Overture could apply to Tarrodi’s Liguria: It was “the classic hors d’oeuvre. Nobody’s digestion was ever spoiled by it and no latecomer has ever lost much by missing it.” In the case of this concert, the main event was Renée Fleming who sang Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber as well and as movingly as the great recordings by Eleanor Steber and Eileen Farrell. The concert also included the Transformation Scene from Daphne by Stauss, also with Flemming, and the Nielsen Symphony No. 2.

The main event of the Prom presented by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Robin Ticciati was either the magisterial and beautiful performance of the Berg Violin Concerto by Christian Tetzlaff or the Schumann Third Symphony, but it also included the first UK performance of Nocturne–Insomnia by Thomas Larcher. Larcher is a very accomplished, to say the least, composer whose music is polished, meticulously composed, and beautifully heard–every thing about it is completely beyond reproach. This piece does absolutely everything that one would imagine that a piece called Insomnia would do, and does it with great style and expression, but nothing that one might not have thought of. Larcher’s program notes make statements about ‘tonal music,’ ‘the newer tonal music,’ and ‘tonal threads’ as though absolutely everybody knows exactly what he means. The piece itself makes Larcher’s meanings of some of these statements manifest.

Beethoven (Leonora Overture No. 3 and Symphony No. 5) seemed to be the big draw for the completely packed Prom on August 21, which was presented by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, but it also included the Stravinsky Violin Concerto, played with elegance and vigor by Leila Josefowicz, who also played, as an encore, Lachen verlernt by Esa-Pekka Salonen, which is a very snappy and appealing piece, as well as the first performance of Canada! by Gerald Barry, which was a BBC commission, with vocal soloist (both speaking and singing) Allan Clayton.

Clearing security at the Toronto airport on his way back to Dublin where he lives, the text of The Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio by Beethoven, came into Barry’s mind (…What joy in the open air! Breathing freely again! Only here is life! Only here!). Those words, in English, French, and German, proceeded by the name Canada! are the bulk of the text of his work, which is, in the orchestra, a sort of frenetic and wacky set of folk dances from some imaginary country (probably not the Canada of real life, but possibly of his imaginary Canada). For a long stretch of the work the word Canada is deconstructed into its component syllables by the soloist and then repeated many times until it has no meaning at all. Finally the members of the orchestra, shouting and then, at the prompting of the soloist, repeating quieter and quieter, join in proclaiming Canada!, finally admonished by the soloist, “Speak softly! We are watched with eyes and ears.” The work is some combination deadpan humor and dead serious earnestness which is compellingly engaging and lingers strongly in the memory. Both Clayton and the orchestra performed the piece meticulously and brilliantly.

On August 26, one of the Proms away from the Albert Hall, was presented at the Bold Tendencies Multi-Storey Car Park, a disused Sainsbury car park (multi-storied) in Peckham which has been transformed into a community arts center, and the home base of The Multi-Story Orchestra. After the opening piece, Granville Bantock’s orchestration of Bach’s chorale prelude on “Wachet auf” BWV645, the orchestra, joined by the Multi-Story Youth Choir, comprised of local young people aged 8-12, in its inaugural performance, presented the first performance of I am I say by Kate Whitley, who with Christopher Stark, the orchestra’s conductor, is one of the founders of the orchestra. I am I say concerns itself with the valuing and protection of the world around us, setting a text by Sabrina Mahfouz with an additional stanza written by the choir. The choir sang clearly and beautifully, with perfect diction, which was not quite equaled by that of the two adult soloists, Ruby Hughes soprano and Michael Sumuel bass-baritone, although they were given music to sing which made clarity of diction a great deal harder to accomplish. Whitley’s music is in a sunny and handsome post-modernish style, and the work was convincing and enjoyable. It was followed by one of founding post-modern, maximal post-minimalist works, Harmonielehre by John Adams. The orchestra’s performance of this very intricate and difficult piece was committed and compelling and benefitted from and added to the sense of occasion and the beautiful sunny day. All the way through the concert there was a noise that also enhanced somehow, rather than distracted from, the performance. After a while I realized that it was the sound of passing trains on the very near tracks.

The late night Prom on August 30 also featured another admirable local orchestra Chineke!, which was founded to provide career opportunities for young Black and Minority Ethnic musicians. The concert opened with the first performance of The Spark Catchers by Hannah Kendall, which was a BBC Commission. The work takes the title of a poem by Lemn Sissay which commemorates an 1888 strike by women who worked in the factory of the Bryant and May Match Company. (The London Olympic Park is on the site of the factory). It follows an arc from a very lively opening, brimming with irregular nervous energy, through a suspended urgent lyric section, which gradually accumulates faster music, and after a return of a good deal of the earlier material combined, has a slightly inconclusive ending. The Spark Catchers is masterly and effective and Chineke! and their conductor, Kevin John Edusel, gave it a polished and convincing performance. The concert also included Lyric for Strings by George Walker, which is a short and very beautiful work. Following programming tradition of earlier days on the Proms, the program included three short pieces featuring the wonderful soprano Jeanine De Bique and two featuring the astounding young ‘cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason; it ended with a performance of Capriccio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov. All the playing by the orchestra was first-rate and the concert was, all the way through, wonderful.

All of these performances are available for listening at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097/episodes/player.

by Rodney Lister