Author: Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism

Happy Birthday, Steve

Steve Reich turns 70 today.  There will be the usual superlatives–greatest living composer, most important musical thinker, and other fun, but largely unreliable, speculations. We won’t burden Reich with any of them.  The path of music history is already littered with the ghosts of greatest livings whose work has since fallen into neglect and obscurity.  Others fade for awhile only to have their reputations re-claimed by forceful new advocates.  One of the great things about leaving behind a body of work as essential to its time as Reich’s is that it is a legacy each age can evaluate on its own terms and through the prism of its own judgements and tastes. 

Suffice it to say that Steve Reich is one of the few composers to have captured fame, fortune and widespread admiration in his own lifetime and one of the even fewer who have a real shot at musical immortality. That’s an achievement worth celebrating. 

And he still has time on the meter. 

Events in the Steve Reich@70 festival:

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Choreography by Akram Khan and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, with the London Sinfonietta, Tuesday and Thursday through Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100

CARNEGIE HALL

A concert by young artists participating in a weeklong professional training program, on Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall; a concert of works performed by the artists they were written for, including Pat Metheny and the Kronos Quartet, Oct. 21 at 8 p.m., Isaac Stern Auditorium; and a “discovery day” of lectures, talks and films, and an all-Reich program including “Drumming” and “Daniel Variations,” Oct. 22 starting at noon in Weill Hall, with the concert at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall. (212) 247-7800

LINCOLN CENTER

A concert with the Los Angeles Master Chorale including “Tehillim” and the New York premiere of “You Are (Variations),” Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. at Alice Tully Hall; and “The Cave,” Nov. 2 to 4 at 8 p.m., Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, 899 10th Avenue, at 58th Street. (212) 721-6500

WHITNEY MUSEUM

An installation of “Three Tales” from Wednesday through Oct. 15, with a free four-hour concert by some important young ensembles (including Alarm Will Sound on Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. webcast live on whitney.org. 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street(800) 944-8639.

Composer of the Month

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Family Bidness

Elodie Lauten is performing and presenting her piano and chamber music on Tuesday, October 3 – 8 PM at Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street in Manhattan.

Elodie will perform selections from her new Piano Soundtracks CD, including Variations on the Orange Cycle, a work that was included in Chamber Music America’s list of 100 best works of the 20th century. Pianist Francois Nezwazky, violinist Tom Frenkel and cellist Kurt Behnke will give the World Premiere of her new trio, The Elusive Virgin Bachelor.

The concert is free and open to the public, however, a donation of $15 is suggested. For reservations and information, call (212) 388-0202 or (516) 586-3433 or email mailto:jamesarts@worldnet.att.net

So you think all S21 regulars are Euromodernist wannabes?  This should set you straight.  Tom’s Myron’s new Violin Concerto.

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Uncategorized

Free CDs

In my continuing efforts to find volunteer reviewers who will actually write reviews, this is my latest tack.  All of the wonderful CDs you see below are currently in my possession and available to be shipped to your mailbox.  The rules are this:  You can request up to 3; first e-mail request wins (list a couple of alternatives in case somebody else has beaten you to your first choice).  You have one week per CD to write and post a review on the CD page and you must agree to accept one CD of my choice for every one of your choice.  You pick three then I pick three, not necessarily from the batch pictured here which means you might get some dogs.  You have two weeks for each of my choices.  Failure to meet the rules simply means you don’t get to play next time.  Meeting the rules means you’ll never have to buy a CD again. Send your reservations to me here.

Henry Brant
Music for Massed Flutes                              New World

 
Earle Brown Selected Works 1952–1965
Composer(s): Earle Brown                              New World

 

Works for Violin
Composer(s): Henry Cowell, Charles Dodge, David Mahler, Larry Polansky, Ruth Crawford, Stefan Wolpe, George Antheil, Johanna Beyer
Miwako Abe, violin                                      
Michael Kieran Harvey, piano                       New World

George Antheil
Composer(s): George Antheil
Piano Concerto No. 2, Serenade No. 2, and Dreams
Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Spalding, conductor
Guy Livingston, piano                                                     New World

David Tudor & Gordon Mumma
Composer(s): David Tudor, Gordon Mumma New World

 
Christian Wolff
10 Exercises                                                   New World
 

 

Ontophony                                                                  Composer: Michael O’Neill
New Music for Highland Pipes and Percussion
Songlines

 

Serenada Schizophrana
Composer:  Danny Elfman
Sony

 

Artist in Residence
Jason Moran
Blue Note 

 

Eötvös conducts Stockhausen
Gruppen, Punkte
Composer: Karlheinz Stockhausen
WDR Sinfonie Orchester Köln
Budapest Music

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Experimental Music, Music Events

Sonic Beatings in Boston

Should you find yourself in the vicinity of Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory tonight at 8:30, the Callithumpian Consort is playing Alvin Lucier’s Small Waves for string quartet, piano, trombone, and feedback, an hour long investigation/hallucination of microtones, sonic beatings, and water pouring.  (Sounds like your tax dollars at work on a normal day at a CIA detention camp.)

Survivors of the water pouring and sonic beatings will then get to hear John Luther Adams’ Strange Birds Passing for 8 flutes and …And Bells Remembered for 5 percussion

Alvin Lucier will be present to explain himself.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Orchestras

An Orchestra Blooms in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra announced the schedule yesterday for its usual four concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and there’s great news for contemporary music lovers, especially those who have a jones for the didgeridoo.  

The season opens on February 3 with two works by the Australian composer Peter Schulthorpe–Earth Cry and Mangrove–plus Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  Music director Michael Christie, now in his second season, was formerly director of the Queensland Orchestra, which explains the ‘Roo connection. 

The second concert, on March 10, pits Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round and a new orchestration of Dreams & Prayers of Issac the Blind against Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.  My money’s on Mahler by about eight minutes.

The orchestra will be joined by the Kronos Quartet on April 21 for the premiere of Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream, plus Holst’s Planets and Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the wellspring of the spirtualist wing of contemporary music (Part, Taverner, Gorecki, Lauridsen, Whitacre et al), an important and popular modern movement mostly ignored by the fine young cannibals who gather here but greatly admired by those of us who don’t know any better. 

And, speaking of Gorecki, his Symphony Number 3–with a first ever staging by the Ridge Theater–is the centerpiece of the final concert on May 12.  It’s matched with Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler and Mozart’s Exsultate jubilate.

The Philharmonic also does community and school concerts, and will present two genre-blending concerts, including a program with performances by Laurie Anderson,Nellie McKay, Joan Osborne and Suzanne Vega.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Music Events, Opera

Jihadists 1, Mozart 0

Deutsche Oper said it will scrap planned showings of Mozart’s Idomeneo because of warnings by Berlin security officials that a scene in the current production depicting the head of the Prophet Mohammed (along with the heads of Jesus and the Buddha)  present an “incalculable security risk.”  Actually, they said references to “world religions” but we know which one is the problem.

This is the kind of infuriating capitulation that can push otherwise rational people at least temporarily into the nuke ’em back to the Stone Age camp. 

But, we need to remember that Death of Klinghoffer and the American premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Silver Tassie suffered similar fates in this country in the wake of 9/11.  As always, perspective depends upon whose ox is being gored.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Opera, Piano, Rock Opera

What to Wear is Boffo in La La Land

Mark Swed, who is (perhaps wisely) ignoring our attempts to stir up trouble over his incoherent Jefferson Friedman review last week, is wild about the Michael Gordon/Richard Foreman opera What to Wear which is now playing a limited run at REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in beautiful downtown L.A..  A couple of snippets:

“What to Wear” — with dazzling, hard-hitting music by Michael Gordon and words, staging, design and equally hard-hitting and dazzling zaniness by Richard Foreman — is being called a rock opera.

It’s not. If it were, rock opera could, after the premiere of this arresting new hour of music theater at REDCAT on Wednesday night, be acknowledged as having finally come of age. 

And:

What to Wear” is scheduled for nine more performances. Ten times that number would be more like it.

Good piece in the Times this morning about the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero who is said to be almost singlehandedly reviving the lost art of improvisation–at least in a classical framework.  Montero, who has never studied or played jazz, can apparently take any song she knows suggested at random and immediately turn it into a Bach or Mozart or Antonio Carlos Jobim improvisation, including the other night at Joe’s Pub a blistering take on Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem “I Will Survive.”

There are some samples on her web site but I can’t get the registration thing to work.  Looks like a job for our ace webmaster Super Jeff.

And yes, Andrea, I am showing off my newfound restraint and maturity.

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Festivals, Music Events

Loose Ends

Alex Ross has a moving tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in this week’s New Yorker.  “She was the most remarkable singer I ever heard,” he writes, and it’s hard to argue with that. 

Speaking of Alex, he’ll be chatting with Mason Bates, Corey Dargel, Nico Muhly, and Joanna Newsom at BargeMusic at 10 pm on October 7 as part of the New Yorker Festival.  Alas, the event seems to be sold-out.

Alan Rich in L.A. Weekly on why he didn’t hang around for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Hollywood Bowl: 

The night had turned cold; the gin had run low; there are few works I despise more thoroughly, and for a greater number of reasons. Just the thought of this bespectacled, small-minded pedant amusing his Führer by constructing this lurid travesty, assuming the small fragments out of ancient German songbooks and twisting them into beer-hall jabberings as if to reinvent a new musical language, is offensive enough. The ugliness of this vulgar work would offend me even if the text were pure, serene and biblical; it is none of these.

Of Jefferson Friedman’s The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, on the same program, Rich writes:

Young (32) Friedman was on hand; he plans to incorporate his shiny, charming piece into a musical triptych honoring “outsider” artists and their inspirational, shimmering artworks. This one certainly does.

Thanks to Jerry Zinser for passing the Rich item along.  The full review doesn’t seem to be up on the L.A. Weekly web site yet but it should be in a few days.  Meanwhile, read some nice words from Rich about Kyle Gann.

Congrats to Roulette, the experimental music organziation which has moved into shiny new digs at 20 Greene Street in SOHO.   With this new space, Roulette will be expanding activities to include over 100 concerts, sound installations, longer runs of music theater and other large productions such as the “Avant Jazz ­ Still Moving” festival and the annual “Festival of Mixology.” Also, check out the new Roulette Blog for excerpts of its artists’ music, podcasts featuring interviews with the artists and Roulette TV clips, and musical discussion.

Check the Workspace for some news about applying for the Rome Prize.

What I’m Listening to Now

 

by Jerry Bowles