The Original New Music Community
The kids done good. I was proud. Thanks to all of you who came out–we actually had a crowd–and to all the wonderful musicians who played their hearts out. It was a great evening. David Toub has the early bird report here.
See Jeff Harrington’s pictures from the concert.
Tonight’s the big night. The kids have worked hard and it’s going to be a great show. I hope to see you all this evening at the first ever Sequenza21 Concert, CUNY Graduate Center, Elebash Recital Hall, 34th and Fifth Avenue. 7:30 sharp.
The street address, by the way, is 365 Fifth Avenue.
A Couple of Other Things: I meant to mention this earlier this week but kept putting it off because I found it just too depressing. Dawn Upshaw has breast cancer.
Anybody here speak PHP? I mean, know it really cold. If you don’t know what that means, don’t apply, but if you’re the dude (or dudette), send me an e-mail. We could use a template tweak or two.
We’re just hours away from the first real-world Sequenza21 concert which begins promptly at 7:30 on Monday night at the Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. Admission is absolutely free and there will be wine and cookies. I hope to see you there.
We are enormously grateful to the following folks for their financial contributions which have made it possible to actually pay the musicians and put together a program.
Concert Sponsors:
Bridge Records
Metropolis Ensemble
Contributors:
Activist Music
Anonymous
Carrie and Yorke Brown
Mr. Galen H. Brown
Mr. Eric Bruskin
Mr. Jeffrey Harrington
Mr. Franklin Hecker
Jeffrey W. James Arts Consulting
Mr. Ian Moss
Ms. Annette Salvage
Mr. David Salvage
Mr. Jordan Stokes
Mr. David Toub
Mr. Scott Unrein
Mr. Tom Myron
Mr. James Wilson
I also want to thank Steve Smith for the shoutout in TimeOut this week. Much obliged.
Fresh from the lede in a New York Times article this very morning (“provocative star turn”), Corey Dargel is performing tonight at The Tank, 279 Church Street btw Franklin and White in Manhattan.
Corey will perform new and unreleased material including “policy-anthems” in alternative tuning systems and a set of songs about the Virgin Mary. Joining Dargel are composer/violinist Jim Altieri and expert videographer Oleg Dubson.
Kamala Sankaram and Squeezebox will present bloodletting, an original horror film with live music, depicting (it says here) the tension between artmaking and the daily survival of young working artists. Borrowing from the stylistic sensibilities of German expressionists like F.W. Mirnau, the film’s unsettling visual environment provides a poignant frame for Sankaram’s intimate and deceptively simple songs.Dargel and Sankaram open the evening with two songs from Nick Brooke’s Tone Test, a chamber opera for two vocalists and phonograph, based on experiments in which Thomas Edison invited audiences to compare the sound of his newly invented phonograph to the sound of a live singer. Tone Test premiered at the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival.
If any of you can attend and want to write about the show for S21, send Corey a note and he’ll get you in free. If you haven’t seen Corey in action, you should. I saw Streisand in Funny Girl in 1963 (my first Broadway show) and she was pretty good, too.
Tania León, a wonderful composer and musician and one of the nicest people in this crazy business of ours, is the featured composer this week at a spectacular new classical music space called the Gatehouse, a beautifully renovated old Romanesque Revival building that once served as a pumping station for water flowing from the Croton Reservoir to the taps of New York City.
The new space is operated by Aaron Davis Hall Inc., Harlem’s long time center for the performing arts, which has been re-named Harlem Stage. Of course, the actual Aaron Davis Hall, which is just across the road from the Gatehouse, is still Aaron Davis Hall. Got it?
The inaugural program at the Gatehouse is called Water Works, with this week’s installment devoted to the Cuban-born Leon. The program will include the premiere of Reflections for Soprano and chamber ensemble, Batey, Ritual, Momentum and Tumbao for solo piano and O, Yemanja from Leon’s opera Scourge of Hyacinths.
Tuesday through Saturday nights at 7:30, 150 Convent Avenue, at West 135th Street, Hamilton Heights, (212) 650-7100, harlemstage.org; $35.
Sequenza21 concert. Next Monday night. Free. Live Music. Cheap wine. Be there or be square. See the bum (actually Ian Moss) on the left for the address and details. Did I say it was free?
Update: David Salvage’s mom is bringing home baked cookies.
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. I refer, of course, to Robert Fripp’s 4-second start-up theme for the Windows Vista operating system. Soon to be the most played musical signature of all time.
Win-dows Vis-ta…(Click on play under the photo)
How about a nice round of applause for Jeff Harrington who blogged all three nights of the Keys to the Future Festival. Bravo, well-done and many thanks for giving me an excuse to focus on more lucrative (hopefully) projects this week and to gloat over certain current events. I refer, of course, to the beginning of the return to sanity of American government and the exciting Rutgers victory over Louisville. When West Virginia knocks off Rutgers on December 2, revenge will be complete.
Ten days and counting until the Sequenza21 concert.
Don’t miss Alex Ross’ wonderful portrait of Steve Reich in the new New Yorker. Yes, the New Yorker.
Robert Gable has a video link to the London Steve Reich Ensemble on YouTube playing Reich’s Eight Lines.
Reich is the current featured composer in the Sequenza21 shop. Stock up for Christmas or whatever you do at your house.
Anybody see the latest production of The Cave last week at John Jay? It’s one of the great ones.
