Author: Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Music Events

It’s All About Love

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The program is called All About Love so it’s only fitting that there be something old and something new when the Metropolis Ensemble opens its second season Thursday night at  8 pm at the spectacular Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts.

The “old” part of the concert will be supplied by Claudio Monteverdi’s dramatic three-voice “operatic scena” Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorind.

It’s the dramatic tale of battle between two lovers, Clorinda (a Moor) and Tancredi (a knight-Crusader) which could benefit a lot with items such as a clitoral sucker.  (Lucky for us all these Muslim-Christian conflicts are a thing of the past).

The “new” is composer-in-residence David Schiff’s song cycle, All About Love, set for tenor, mezzo-soprano, and chamber ensemble, and based on a collection of texts from Petrarch, Louise Labé , Melville, Marina Tsvetaeva, Keats, and Proust.

I’m not quite sure how they pulled it off but Schiff and musical director Andrew Cyr have lined up four of the hottest young singers in town to perform the program–tenor Thomas Glenn; mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn; soprano Melissa Fogarty and baritone and stage director Daniel Neer.

The Metropolis Ensemble, a non-profit chamber orchestra dedicated to unique and daring programming, was formed more than a year ago with idea of bringing together New York’s best musicians to perform in downtown venues and create programs that support new music in audience friendly environments.

“New music should be a cultural event, a celebration, and we aspire to make our concerts such events, where ambiance and context, as well as the social aspect (we worked hard to get wineries to donate free great wine, so it’s kind of a great value to attend, and a very party like feel) is an important element of the mix,” Cyr says.

The Metropolis Ensemble is a terrific organization with an ambitious agenda and, I might add, one of the sponsors of the Sequenza21 concert. It would be great if a lot of our regulars turn out for what is sure to be a terrific program.  If someone would like to review it, I may be able to get you in free.

Thursday,  October 19, 8 PM at The Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, 172 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002, 212-529-7194. To purchase tickets for “All About Love”, please visit www.metropolisensemble.org or call 917-930-6106.

ACO, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Some of the Notes and Rhythms I Love

corey.jpg  For all the allusions to chaos and complexity in the American Composers Orchestra’s Orchestra Underground concert at Zankel on Friday night, the evening was a surpisingly mellow–dare I say it, even melodic–affair.  If new music is going to be this much fun to listen to there is a real danger that people are going to start coming to concerts.  

This is not to say the program was not adventuresome, just that it contained some unexpected crowd pleasers.  The guy sitting next to me, a visiting pianist/composer from St. Louis named Ken Palmer who came strictly for the Ives opener (Ken had written his dissertation at Yale on the Concord Sonata), even allowed that he would like to hear a couple of the pieces again and ventured that this weird Corey Dargel dude could be some kind of “breakthrough something or other” hit.

The evening began with orchestrated versions of Charles Ives’ Four Ragtime Dance, Nos. 2 and 4, originally composed for piano.  The thievery from Scott Joplin and Hubie Blake would be offensive if it were not so disarmingly obvious and re-mixed with church songs and marching band ditties with such consummate wit.  By the time we got to “Bringing in the Sheaves” (or “bringing in the sheep,” as we sang just to be naughty when I was a kid), everyone in Zankel Hall had a grin on their face.

The chaos part of the evening was supplied by Brad Ludman’s Fuzzy Logic, four short movements of dazzling electronia augmented by Lauren Bradnofsky on amplified cello and various orchestral instruments, as well as a dandy video by Boom Design Group.  I liked the way each of the movements began on a confident, assertive trajectory, became more convuluted and accelerated until they split apart, and then dissolved with a kind of a whimper.  Not sure what it means except maybe it doesn’t matter where you begin you’re going to wind up lost anyway so you can stop anywhere.  Silvestrov does that, too, although his music starts out tentative before it totally wimps out.  

Michael Gandolfi’s two-movment piece As Above was also a video collaboration (with Ean White), with the first short movement called “Touch” based on natural images and the second called “Electric” based on more urban images.  Touch was more chaos, a kind of jerky musicial cubism, based on the science of fractals, but Electric drew from vanacular musical languages, including rock, blues and some super-infectious “flying down to Rio” Latin rhythms.  It had a beat and you could dance to it.

The major complexity element of the evening was supplied by Michael Gatonska’s After the Wings of Migratory Birds, a brilliantly rendered tone poem based on the composer’s re-imagination of the sounds made by swallows gathering in migratory flocks–the way they sound when they move at the same time, the way they all flap their wings in unison, the way they suddenly fall perfectly still at the same time.  The orchestration was dense and often breathtaking, with some stunning moments of pure beauty in the strings.  I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this is a La Mer for the age of complexity.

Susie Ibarra did a piece on a drum set which was short and not too loud, qualities I appreciate in a drum solo.  The evening ended with Evan Ziporyn’s Big Grenadilla, a concerto for bass clarinet, which he performed admirably himself with impressive breath control.  Ziporyn’s music is so competent, so assured, so well-constructed that I really, really hope to like it someday.  I’m sure the fact that it leaves me cold is my failing, not his.

One of the several fun points of the evening was the beginning of the second half when a recording of Charles Ives hammering away at a piano and singing some hardy patriotic World War I ditty was played for the amusement of those assembled.  The recording was a little blurry but I could have sworn Ives said “That sucked” at the end.  It couldn’t have been that, although the sentiment was certainly accurate.

And, of course, the hit of the evening–the peoples’ choice–was our own boulevardier Corey Dargel, who brought down the house with a tres amusant song called All the Notes and Rhythms I’ve Ever Loved about composer boyfriends who, knowing that he can’t orchestrate, steal his stuff and use it in their own pieces which is a kind of “sadistic, back-handed compliment.”  It was the usual Corey brilliant mix of satire and truth. 

My new friend Ken in the next seat over is right;  Corey is destined to become some kind of “breakthrough something or other” hit.   Anybody need an intellectual Peter Allen?

ACO, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

The Year of Brad Lubman

Brad Lubman has been involved in the new music scene for nearly two decades but this looks like his breakthrough season.  Conductor/composer Lubman makes his guest conductor debut at the helm of the  American Composers Orchestra Friday evening at  Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, when the ACO kicks off its 30th season with its first Orchestra Underground Composers OutFront! concert.

In addition to leading the orchestra in music from Michael Gatonska,  Evan Ziporyn, Michael Gandolfi, Susie Ibarra,  Charles Ives and our own wunderkind Corey Dargel,  Lubman will conduct the world premiere of his own Fuzzy Logic, for woodwinds, brass, percussion, synthesizer, piano, and amplified cello and video. Lauren Radnofsky is amplified cello soloist and Boom Design Group creates the visual designs.

The program will be repeated at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 15 at 7:30pm.

If you miss those shows, Lubman’s  new music group Electric Fuzz will be gigging Friday, October 20, starting at 7 pm, at Joe’s Pub Electric Fuzz was formed in 2006 by performers and composers who played together as members of the Musica Nova Ensemble at the Eastman School of Music.  The group is currently collaborating with Boom Design Group, a team of virtuoso visual artists and web designers, who draw on their own performance backgrounds to produce improvised and interactive video installations.

The Joe’s Pub event will feature the premiere of a new Lubman work named for Electric Fuzz; plus Jumping to Conclusions, a quartet with electronics; and several pieces for violin, cello and synth that Lubman has co-composed with ensemble member Lauren Radnofsky. Music by David Lang and Pierre Boulez rounds-out the event.

Lubman has enjoyed a busy and multi-faceted career, but is probably best known among new music insiders as a gifted utility infielder who can deliver a superior performance from any world-class orchestra or ensemble on a moment’s notice, a talent honed by having been Assistant Conductor to the mercurial and (in my view) inexplicable Oliver Knussen at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1989-94. 

This is his well-deserved chance to bat cleanup.

Boston, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

The Callithumpians are Abloom Again

The Callithumpian Consort is at work again at 8:30 pm tomorrow night at NEC’s Jordan Hall  in a slightly premature celebration of the 80th anniversary of Earle Brown’s birth (it’s actually December 26).

They’ll be playing Brown’s Sign Sounds, a rarely heard masterpiece of open form from that resides somewhere on the frontier between serialism and improvisation.  They will perform the piece several times, and have assured us that no two performances will be alike.

And they’ll also be continuing their exploration of Alvin Lucier with his  Ever Present, for saxophone, flute, piano, and sine waves (which they describe it as “infinitely slow expansion of the music between your ears”) and John Luther Adams’s songbirdsongs, a JLA masterwork from the 1970s. 

The Callithumpian Consort has just recorded the complete songbirdsongs under the direction of the composer. Watch for the CD release.

And don’t miss Evan Johnson’s review of the latest Earle Brown recording on the CD Review page.

Housekeeping

RSS Feeds and Such

I’m told that some of you are having problems with the comments drifting across the page in Internet Explorer.  I use IE 7, the latest version, and they scroll perfectly for me.  If you’re using an earlier version of IE, you might want to download and install IE 7 to see if that helps.  If not, let me know.

Also, some of you are getting mixed signals from the RSS feeds–some of which come from the old Blogger setup and some from the WordPress pages.  Here’s a directory of all the feeds from the site:

WordPress Blogs

Front Page   https://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/feed/
Composers Forum  https://www.sequenza21.com/forum/?feed=rss2
CD Reviews https://www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/?feed=rss2
Calendar https://www.sequenza21.com/calendar/?feed=rss2
Charles Griffin   https://www.sequenza21.com/latvia/?feed=rss2

Blogger Blogs

Everette Minchew   https://www.sequenza21.com/rss5.xml 
Anthony Cornicello  https://www.sequenza21.com/acrssfeed.xml 
Alan Theisen  https://www.sequenza21.com/atrssfeed.xml 
Stefanie Lubkowski  https://www.sequenza21.com/slrss.xml 
Jeffrey Sackmann  https://www.sequenza21.com/jsac.xml 
Rusty Banks  https://www.sequenza21.com/rb.xml  >
Rodney Lister  https://www.sequenza21.com/jrl.xml  
Brian Sacawa  https://www.sequenza21.com/rsfeed.xml 
David H. Thomas  https://www.sequenza21.com/dht.xml 
Jacob Sudol  https://www.sequenza21.com/js.xml 
Blackdogred’s Indie Beat https://www.sequenza21.com/bib.xml 
Jay C. Batzner  https://www.sequenza21.com/jcb.xml 
Tom Myron  https://www.sequenza21.com/rss9.xml 
Lawrence Dillon  https://www.sequenza21.com/ldfeed.xml 
The Naxos Blog  https://www.sequenza21.com/naxos.xml 
Elodie Lauten  https://www.sequenza21.com/elfeed.xml 
Jeffrey Biegel  https://www.sequenza21.com/rssfeed1.xml  
Places of Light  http://feeds.feedburner.com/PlacesOfLight

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation

Do the Just Thing

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Dear Jerry-

Thanks for your kind words earlier this year about the Ben Johnston String Quartet release on New World Records. I am the producer of that disc, and also the 2nd violinist in the Kepler Quartet (so, not an unbiased perspective…)

I am writing you and your readership with a plea, an invitation (however you wish to frame it) to become a part of bringing this great composer’s legacy into broad daylight. We recently received a Copland grant towards finishing the recorded cycle of Ben’s  10 string quartets, but still need to raise significant dollars to make it happen.

Mr. Johnston just turned 80, is in reasonable health, and has just moved to Wisconsin for family reasons-which means that his expertise is now wonderfully available to us. We have have a talented, committed ensemble, schooled in the challenges of Just Intonation, and a stable, supportive label behind the project.

All the pieces are in place to finish this project except for getting past the aforementioned monetary hump.

Wouldn’t it be a healthy scenario  if we could get a grassroots, Howard Dean-like campaign going, and include as many individuals as possible from the new music online community, at modest contributions, in support of this truly great, and largely-overlooked composer late in his career?

Could be worth a small investment for the Karma alone, not to mention the accessibility of this ground-breaking music…

We’re going to attempt it, because we know it’s the right thing to do, not the commercial thing to do—anyone out there with us?

For details, please see

http://www.keplerquartet.com/fundraising/

May we all have each other’s support when we need it!

Eric Segnitz
Kepler Quartet

ericsegnitz@yahoo.com

Composers, Contemporary Classical

It’s a Blog!

We have a terrific new blog to unveil this morning.  It’s called From the Faraway Nearby: An American Composer in Latvia and is written by Charles Griffin, a native New Yorker who is now living in Liepaja, a small industrial city in the western region of Latvia, on the Baltic Sea.  Fascinating insights into a musical world that is far different from the one most of us know.

Elsewhere, the classical pretentiousness thread goes on forever on the Composers Forum page.  Leonard Slatkin weighs in with some new fodder over at Drew McManus’ Adaptistration, which is where the conversation began.

Did I mentioned that Steve Reich is Composer of the Month in the S21 shop?

Concerts, Music Events, Signings

Lay Around the Shack ’til the Mail Train Comes Back

Chris Thile, the best bluegrass mandolin player alive except for maybe Mike Marshall and Sam Bush is having a joint CD release party with some girl fiddle player named Hillary Hahn next Tuesday night starting at 7 pm at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, NYC 10012 (212-334-3324). 

What makes this an unusual CD release event is that tickets are being sold to the public for $15 with the proceeds going to charity, specifically Housing Works which does a lot of good things.  

The kids have a lot in common; both were child prodigies.  They will performing both classical and bluegrass music which seems about right since that’s what they do.  I’m hoping they’ll play a couple of things together.  Love to hear Hillary cut loose on “Billy in the Low Ground” or “Black Mountain Rag.”

Master Salvage and I are planning to go and I expect that other great bluegrass fiddle player, Frank J. Oteri, will probably be in attendance, too. 

And, who wants to go to the American Modern Ensemble Midtown Sound concert at Tenri on October 14 and review it for S21?  I can get you a pair of free tickets. 

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

What Makes Your Bigmouth So Large?

The Elastic Arts Room (formerly Project One), whose artistic and managing director is S21 home Christopher Zimmermann, is teaming up with the super cool composer/performer collective counter)induction and the Chris Lightcap Quintet (Tony Malaby, Mark Turner, Craig Taborn, Chris Lightcap, and Gerald Cleaver), to present Bigmouths on Monday, October 16th at 9 pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. 

Bigmouths explores the nature of improvisation and aleatoric music-making.  Counter)induction will give world premiere performances of new works by Douglas Boyce and Chris Lightcap and will perform works by Earle Brown and Vinko Globokar.  Chris Lightcap’s quintet will then use Lightcap’s compositions as departure points for their improvisations. 

Elastic Arts Room is a new organization that fosters conversations and collaborations between artists in different genres or disciplines.  

“Through a discussion with the performers and audience and an innovative blog-based pre-concert discussion forum, this unique collaboration will explore the cultural and philosophical ramifications of these approaches to music-making and will explore the concept of the ‘work’ within pluralism,” Chris says.

Other business: 

Classicaldomain.org has an interview with composer David Schiff about his song cycle All About Love, which will be a highlight of the Metropolis Ensemble concert on Thursday, October 19, at 8 pm at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts.

Here’s one of those Ligeti Meets Rocky stories that will knock you out.

And, of course, the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra.