September concerts in Berkeley, Santa Fe, New York City and Boston
I won’t be able to make it to most of these events, but hopefully you will. Moving from the west coast to the east coast, here is some of what’s happening in September – mark your calendars.
Berkeley, CA.
Saturday, September 26 at 8pm and Sunday, September 27 at 7pm. The American premiere of Evan Ziporyn’s new opera A House in Bali. The Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Salukat, Balinese Dance Artists and Western operatic and Balinese singers come together in this staging of Colin McPhee’s 1947 memoir. Pre-concert talk with composer and director, September 19 at 7pm. Audio and video here. Ticket information here.
Santa Fe, NM.
Thursday, September 17 at 7:30pm. The Del Sol String Quartet. Pawel Szymanski, Five Movements for String Quartet; Chris Jonas, silent film soundtracks “Automatic Moving Company” and “Pumkin Race” (arranged for String Quartet); Paquito D’Rivera, Wapango; Gabriela Ortiz, String Quartet #1; Chris Jonas, Garden (10 minute work-in-progress selection). Lensic Performing Arts Center, ticket information here. (concert repeated in NYC on October 1 at Symphony Space)
New York, NY.
Wednesday, September 9 at 5:00 and 8:00pm at the Museum of Modern Art. Making its New York premiere, Elevated pairs five recent compositions by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Lang with five short films by artists Doug Aitken, Guy Maddin, Bill Morrison, Matt Mullican, and William Wegman. The compositions will be performed live by CONTACT Contemporary Music. More information here.
New York, NY.
September 12-14. Moving Sounds is a 3-day festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue, produced jointly by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Music Information Centre Austria (MICA), and the Argento New Music Project. All concerts, panel discussions, and parties happing at the Austrian Cultural Forum and Le Poisson Rouge. More information here.
Boston, MA.
September 25-27. Boston Modern Orchestra Project hosts the Voices of America Festival at Tufts University. Programing includes a broad range of works for voice and ensemble by Milton Babbitt, Aaron Copland, Jacob Druckman, John McDonald, Virgil Thomson, among others, as well as the complete songs, including several unpublished works, of Samuel Barber. Ticket information here.
And for those of you not near any of these cities…
Check out which composers are receiving orchestral premieres this season, or if your local orchestra has scheduled any. You can search by composer or orchestra for the ’09-10 season here.
Yes, and I’ve found more resources regarding McPhee, Evan, and Bali, on my website, http://rchrd.com/blog, including pointers to where on iTunes you can download the actual 78 rpm recordings McPhee heard in 1928 that so mystified him he had to go to Bali and see and hear for himself.
Great, Richard! You know, I was going to do a big post on this, but the Ziporyn himself has written such a thorough article about it over on NewMusicBox, that I think we’ll just let him speak:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=6115
In preparation for the American premiere of A HOUSE IN BALI, we’re presenting three weekly programs on western composers openly influenced by Balinese and Javanese gamelan, beginning with Colin McPhee and Evan Ziporyn this Friday (9/11). MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS is on KALW in San Francisco, (91.7 11pm Friday night), with streaming in real time from their website http://kalw.org, and the programs will be streamable from our website http://otherminds.org/mfom for a time after broadcast.