On Friday, June 16th from 7:30 to 10 at the New York jazz venue Smalls, pianist Aaron Parks celebrates the release of Find the Way, his second release on ECM as a leader (and third overall). On 2013’s Arborescence, Parks appeared on the label as a solo artist, crafting improvisations in a live setting that were gently sculpted but nevertheless stirring selections. This time out, Parks plays in a trio; he has a versatile and well-versed rhythm section at his disposal and to his credit, the pianist adopts an attitude of collaboration, encouraging each artist to take a turn in the spotlight. He is joined by
Read moreOn Thursday, June 8, 2017 the Santa Monica Public Library presented the Los Angeles premiere of Breadwoman: Variations and Improvisations in the MLK Jr. Auditorium. Breadwoman has a long and colorful history, reaching back to her first incarnation by Anna Homler in the 1980s. The late Steve Moshier created the synthesized accompaniment and in 2016 the original reel-to-reel tapes were remastered by the RVNG record label in New York. A Breadwoman and Other Tales CD was released last year to wide acclaim in publications such as Pitchfork, The Wire and the Los Angeles Times. A good-sized crowd turned out on
Read moreKronos Quartet, with Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant Folk Songs Nonesuch CD From its earliest recordings, which included transcriptions of jazz, Kronos Quartet has cast their net wide. The group’s repertoire encompasses music from the world over and from numerous composers in a variety of styles. To remind myself of Kronos’ earlier days, I put on their “Landmark Sessions” recordings of Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. And what a reminder it was, pointing up the fluid nature of the quartet’s ability to shift tone and rhythmic feel to accommodate nearly whatever they approach. On
Read moreMariel Roberts Cartography New Focus Recordings CD/DL Mariel Roberts Cartography New Focus Recordings CD/DL Cellist Mariel Roberts’ second solo album, Cartography, provides a stylistically diverse set of pieces that are all played compellingly and with earnest commitment. Eric Wubbels’ ‘gretchen am spinnrade’ has little to do with Schubert apart from taking the spinning wheel as its motivation. Indeed, spinning gestures abound, but they are hyperkinetic in terms of speed and demeanor (Wubbels plays the piano with almost daemonic fury). Roberts is required to retune her cello, employ microtones, and scratch strings with her fingernails. The propulsive sections are on the
Read morePianist R. Andrew Lee has released a new EP on Irritable Hedgehog. It is a recording of composer/improviser Ryan Oldham’s Inner Monologues (Venn Diagram of Six Pitches). The hexachord in question is presented in slow-paced fashion, appearing throughout the keyboard in configurations of varying densities. There certainly are links between Oldham and the Wandelweiser Collective and Morton Feldman in terms of the slow unfolding and deft touch with which material is deployed. One also might infer nods to both Linda Catlin Smith and Tom Johnson, the first in terms of a willingness to allow the proceedings simultaneously to drift and grid to an underlying pulse; the second via the process-based treatment of
Read moreBeauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All Immediata (Digital) On Beauty Will be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All, composer/pianist Anthony Pateras and composer/sound artist Jérôme Noetinger join forces to create an hourlong work for Synergy Percussion and improvised electronics. Its conceit is a clever one: the piece is of similar scope to Iannis Xenakis’ work Pleïades and utilizes a similarly gargantuan battery of percussion instruments, over 100, notably Xenakis’ 17-pitch microtonal metallophones, the Sixxen. These are used to particularly fine effect in the accumulating washes of sound in the piece’s first movement. Pateras’s notated music and Noetinger’s electronics blend well together, with an emphasis on merging
Read moreOn Saturday, June 3, 2017 Music@Boston Court hosted Broken Rivers, a concert of piano trio music presented by the composer collective Synchromy. Pianist Vicki Ray, Cellist Timothy Loo and Alyssa Park on violin performed no less than eight pieces, including three premiers. Also featured were compositions selected from a call for scores that drew over 240 respondents. Narration for several of the pieces was provided by actor Ray Ford. Only a few vacant seats remained in the Branson performance space with the audience looking forward to a full program. The first piece was the premiere of a new version of
Read moreOn Tuesday, May 30, 2017 Tuesdays@Monk Space hosted a concert titled Vicki Ray and Richard Valitutto present New Song. Every seat was filled in the cozy Koreatown performance space with an audience looking forward to an evening of contemporary art songs from some of the finest musicians and composers in Los Angeles. Four Elemental Songs (2014), by Vicki Ray was first and this consisted of four short movements based loosely on the natural elements of air, fire, water and earth. Elissa Johnston was the vocalist, accompanied by the composer at the piano. Luftpause, the first movement, began with a light,
Read moreOn Saturday, May 27, 2017 Betalevel was the venue for a concert of experimental music, spoken text and radio sounds as created and performed by Scott Cazan, Pauline Gloss and Casey Anderson. A nice crowd ventured into the colorful subterranean performance space on a quiet holiday evening in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles. The first piece on the program was Grammar, by Scott Cazan, who presided over a computer table filled with cables leading to mixers and speakers. A section of the floor in front was filled with symbols and letters chalked onto the cement prior to the start
Read moreThe indefatigable Marvin Rosen is marking 20 years of broadcasting his indispensable radio program “Classical Discoveries” on WPRP in Princeton, New Jersey (and on the web) and to celebrate the occasion he is doing two special programs this week; one, tomorrow, May 29 from 5:00 till 11:00am and another broadcast on Wednesday, May 31, from 5:00 till 11:00am. Marvin’s two main interests in music are old music–Baroque and before–and new music–composers who are still breathing or still modestly still warm in their graves. He was probably the first person with a radio show to begin championing the music
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