Hard to believe that the venerable Bang on a Can Marathon began as a one day concert on Mother’s Day 1987 in a SoHo art gallery. That’s 30 years ago for those of you keeping score at home. Since then it has grown into a multi-faceted performing arts organization with a broad range of year-round international activities that have had a profound influence on New Music around the world. As the NYTimes puts it: “The current universe of do-it-yourself concert series, genre-flouting festivals, composer-owned record labels and amplified, electric-guitar-driven compositional idioms would probably not exist without their pioneering example. The Bang on
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CDs, File Under?, jazz, Piano
Matthew Shipp Piano Song Matthew Shipp, piano; Michael Bisio, bass; Newman Taylor-Baker, drums Thirsty Ear Records Pianist Matthew Shipp has been a prolific recording artist: he has released dozens of albums as a leader and appeared on dozens more as a collaborator. However, Piano Song, his 2017 recording for Thirsty Ear, will be his last for the imprint and, likely, his last for a US label (Shipp concedes that there may be a few more CDs released out of Europe). Shipp will continue to curate the releases on Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series (a jazz series that welcomes cross-genre efforts) and
Read moreMiranda Cuckson – Pop Up Concert at Miller Theatre March 7, 2017 Published in Sequenza 21 By Christian Carey NEW YORK – Violinist Miranda Cuckson is one of the stars of new music in New York: a fearless, visionary, and tremendously talented artist. On March 7th, she presented a solo program of 20th and 21st century works in a “Pop Up Concert” at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. In her introduction to the event, Miller Theatre’s Executive Director Melissa Smey pointed out that their “Pop Up Series” has hosted dozens of world and New York premieres. Cuckson’s program was no
Read moreMisato Mochizuki Composer Portrait Thursday March 2, 2017 Miller Theatre By Christian Carey NEW YORK – On Thursday, March 2nd, Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki was featured on Miller Theatre’s Composer Portraits series. In a concert featuring four U.S. premieres and concluding with a work commissioned and premiered at the 2015 Lincoln Center Festival, the audience was introduced to a range of her work. Throughout, Mochizuki demonstrated a clear aesthetic embodied by an interest in exploring a panorama of instrumental timbres and effects and a flair for dramatic, often quasi-ceremonial, designs. The earliest work on the program, Au Bleu
Read moreHere’ a cheerful Monday treat, ECS Publishing has made available for the 150th year of Frank Lloyd Wright a four-minute introduction to Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon’s Frank Lloyd Wright opera Shining Brow. The opera concerns events that occured between 1903 and 1914 during the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s life. Wright’s determination to leave his wife and children, his relationship with Mamah Cheney, and the subsequent murders and conflagration at Taliesin, are all part of the historical record. The opera takes Wright to the point at which he vows to rebuild Taliesin in Mamah’s memory. The opera
Read moreOn Friday, March 3, 2017 wasteLAnd presented the music of Klaus Lang at Art Share LA, in the heart of the arts district in downtown Los Angeles. The occasion was the US premiere of missa beati pauperes spiritu and Austrian composer Klaus Lang had planned to be in attendance, but with the recent immigration crackdown his visa was denied by the US. Inside the theater, clusters of players and singers were stationed around the performance space and the crowd arranged itself along the outside edges of the seating area for the best view. missa beati pauperes spiritu translates from the
Read moreSamuel Barber, one of America’s most celebrated composers, was born on this day (April 9) in 1910. The young filmmaker H. Paul Moon has made a full-length documentary about Barber that will be released later this month. “I went out on a limb with this project, self-distributing, keeping it independent, making sure I got things right without compromise,” Moon says. The 3-minute trailer below lines up some famous people with their insights on Barber, in this order: William Schuman, Thomas Hampson, biographer Barbara Heyman, Leonard Slatkin and Leonard Bernstein. OFFICIAL SITE: www.samuelbarberfilm.com FACEBOOK PAGE: www.facebook.com/samuelbarberfilm PAUL MOON ON TWITTER: @hpmoon
Read moreThe Stone, the landmark non-profit performance space founded in 2005 by John Zorn and dedicated to the experimental and avant-garde, will move to The Glass Box Theater at Arnhold Hall on 55 West 13th Street, in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. Arnhold Hall is the performing arts hub for The New School, housing the three performing arts schools of The College of Performing Arts: Mannes School of Music, The New School for Drama, and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Beginning in March 2018, The Stone at The New School will operate five nights a week,
Read moreIn 2010, a 16-year-old African-American child named Kalief Browder was accused of stealing a backpack. a crime he insisted he hadn’t committed. Because his family couldn’t afford bail, he endured three years on New York’s notorious Rikers Island and his case was postponed 31 times before it was dismissed. While being held, Browder spent months in solitary confinement, missed the last two years of high school, and become so despondent that he tied his bedsheets into a noose. In June 2015, Browder committed suicide by hanging himself. Last year, the New York Legislature passed a bill known as “Kalief’s Law” to ensure
Read moreOn February 21, 2017, Tuesdays@MonkSpace was host to Nicholas Chase and Robin Lorentz, in Los Angeles to perform Bhajan, their latest CD from the Cold Blue recording label. Ms. Lorentz played the electric violin and Chase was at the controls of the computer and various audio interfaces. This occasion marked the premiere performance of Bhajan. Both were barefoot and clad completely in white, a refreshing departure from the solid black so often seen at new music concerts. Bhajan consists of four roughly equal sections totaling some 47 minutes and is based on Hindu devotional music. For this performance all four
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