Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Dance, Film Music, Los Angeles, Odd, Percussion, Post Modern, Sound Art
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY4bL_bO8sA[/youtube]
Read moreA positive review by Dana Astmann of Richard Wilson’s opera, Aethelred the Unready, over at Parterre Box. It’s scheduled for a Symphony Space performance on Tuesday, Jan. 25.
Read moreI had never heard of David Bruce until I was assigned to review a concert by Art of Elan, a local concert series affiliated with the San Diego Museum of Art which presents lots of 20th-21st century music. Bruce had a world premiere on the concert. From what I can tell in my far-off corner of the United States, David Bruce is racking up an impressive concert track record on the East Coast: Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center commissions, performances by new music princemaker Dawn Upshaw, etc. Bruce’s new piece, The Eye of Night, is simply one of the greatest
Read moreThey’ve been piling up, my reviews at sandiego.com, to be passed on to you here. Lots of good music heard the past three months: San Diego Symphony plays Remembering Gatsby by John Harbison (1/15/11) Harbison has an ear for arresting sonorities, an original way of arranging chords so that one hears harmonies in a completely new way (Stravinsky, Copland, and Britten all had this talent as well). It’s tempting to call him a conservative composer, but his music never sounds like it’s rehashing older styles. He has carved out his own original voice within the classical music tradition, one in
Read more[As part of my residency at the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera, I had to write an overnight review with a word limitation–something I hadn’t done in 15 years. What follows was my original story; an edited version appeared on our private web site where our reviews were posted. I was very impressed with how the NY Phil turned a performance of a relatively obscure 25-year-old work into a must-attend event. The last time I saw that much excitement about a contemporary orchestral instrumental work was back in the late 1980s in San Diego, when a Soviet
Read moreI recently attended the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. For 10 days two dozen or so writers from Alaska to Florida convened at Columbia University to talk about classical music, to write about classical music, and most importantly for me (a musician with no formal journalism education), to talk about writing about classical music. We attended many concerts devoted to or containing contemporary classical music. We saw the Kronos Quartet at Le Poisson Rouge; watched Glassworks and a new David Lang dance work at New York City Ballet; heard AXIOM play Stravinsky, Xenakis, and Lindberg; had a
Read moreTwo more pieces of recommended listening from the BBC Proms concerts: Robin Holloway’s Reliquary transforms Schumann’s, er, problematic Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart into a genuinely beautiful, affecting work. It’s reminiscent of reconstructions and expansions of 19th century music by Berio and Schnittke, and you can listen to it here until Thursday. Jonathan Dove’s A Song of Joys for chorus and orchestra is a brief and buoyant setting of Walt Whitman. How appropos to see Galen’s post on the influence of John Adams, because that’s who I would have guessed composed this work if I heard it without knowing the
Read morePerhaps I missed it if Rodney Lister posted about this, but fun spectral work, Lignes de fuite by Martin Matalon, heard at the Proms last Thursday, Sept. 2. You have approximately 19 hours left to listen to it free online here. I don’t hear anything earth-shattering, but it’s well written with lots of electronic-music-like sonorities and a good sense of forward motion. For anyone online tonight, check out San Diego New Music’s resident ensemble, NOISE, performing in Chihuahua this evening at 8 pm Mountain Standard Time. You can watch it live here. They will perform works by Sidney Marquez Boquiren,
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Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Post Modern, Review, Twentieth Century Composer
Older readers may recall with fondness Edgar Bergen, a very popular American entertainer who poured his comic routines through ventriloquist dummies named Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Edgar so loved the performing arts, that he created an annual celebration to showcase classical music, dance, opera, and theater, which continues and thrives to this very day: the Bergen Festival. Okay, that’s not really what the Bergen Festival is, but after hearing a modern composer with a strong Chinese musical identity—Bright Sheng—prop up Scandinavian folk tunes on his knee, and manipulate them to entertain the public, the spirit of Charlie McCarthy—a bourgeois
Read moreI’m looking forward to the West Coast premiere of Christopher Rouse’s String Quartet no. 3 by the amazing Calder Quartet. The enthusiastic gentlemen in the Calder Quartet have worked closely with Rouse, having recorded his first 2 quartets and his chamber ensemble work, Compline on this terrific CD. I know there’s been Rouse-bashing by some visitors here in the past, but I admire some of his music, especially when he’s writing in his Sturm und Drang mode (as he did in the 1st Quartet and the middle movement of the 2nd). The 3rd Quartet promises to be his ultimate ultraviolent
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