Photo: Ryuhei Shindo A bit of cheering for the “home team,” as ACME played on our last Sequenza 21 concert. Last Friday, December 13, Symphony Space’s In the Salon Series celebrated Lutoslawski’s centenary with American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) – for this concert comprised of Caleb Burhans and Caroline Shaw, violins, violist Nadia Sirota, and cellist Clarice Jensen – and Lutoslawski scholar and composer Steven Stucky. Symphony Space’s Artistic Director Laura Kaminsky was on hand for an onstage conversation about Lutoslawski with Stucky. As I mentioned in my Musical America review of In the Salon’s previous installment, a concert featuring
Read more“One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” – Lou Reed Much of my music passes the above “into jazz” marker. That said, Lou Reed taught me a great deal about productivity, creativity, and the maxim that “sometimes, less is more.” Sad tonight for Laurie Anderson, and for us, who are deprived of more “more with less.”
Read moreA new video (posted yesterday) of New York Polyphony live in midtown Manhattan at St. Mary’s. We have been playing the quartet’s latest BIS recording, Times go by Turns, in heavy rotation. The disc includes Renaissance masses by Tallis, Byrd, and Plummer as well as contemporary pieces by Gabriel Jackson, Andrew Smith, and one of the last works written by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. “A Colloquy with God”, gifted by Bennett to NYP, is, simply put, a knockout. The website eClassical is sharing a bonus track from the album, Tallis’s beloved motet “If Ye Love Me,” for download here.
Read moreMonday at the DiMenna Center, New York New Music Ensemble presents a program of works by Lukas Foss (1922-2009). Lukas (with whom I studied in the 90s when I was at BU) was a man of many musical talents with a near-omnivorous interest in a host of musical styles. Rather than try to present a comprehensive portrait of them all (a tall order in a single evening!), NYNME will focus on pieces from the mid-sixties through the mid-eighties, the period during which he was in his most experimental phase. In Echoi (1963), Foss made use of vast swaths of serial-inspired
Read moreFull disclosure: Caroline Shaw has played my music, so I make no claim to objectivity here. _____ The day after Paul Moravec won the Pulitzer prize, John Adams started shooting from the hip about the Pulitzer going to “academic composers.” I was annoyed. But I figured, “Okay, he’s being a jerk, but Paul is an established composer writing quality material: He doesn’t need Adams’s permission to be successful.” Recently, however, Adams has been sniping at younger composers. Yesterday in the NY Times, he took a thinly veiled swipe at Caroline. I know that she doesn’t really need JCA’s permission to
Read moreTanglewood capped this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music with the U.S. premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin. After an initial brief hiccough (Mr Benjamin forgot his baton when he first came on stage), the orchestra negotiated the technically complex score with no apparent difficulty and, though very large, never overwhelmed the vocalists. This was aided by the light and inventive orchestration; with the exception of a few well-placed monstrous tuttis, most of the time there were only a handful of instruments sounding. The Medieval setting also allowed for occasional light Early Music references: senza vibrato, perfect intervals, and the
Read moreThe 60th birthday of John Zorn! Who would believe it? I guess 60 is the new 30. On Saturday, the Lincoln Center Festival celebrated with a concert devoted exclusively to all of Zorn’s string quartet music, a total of six works from 1988 to 2011. Zorn is such an enigmatic, eclectic musical persona and many-hat-wearer—Avant-garde enfant terrible, jazz-punk provocateur, saxophonist, improviser, unorthodox arranger, japanophile, experimental music impresario, klezmervangelist, record producer, and book series editor. He is also at least as enigmatic as a composer. Recently, some supporters announced a new ICO to fund a documentary exploring the evolution of Zorn’s
Read moreThank you to Miranda Cuckson for this remembrance of composer Henri Dutilleux. My visit to Henri Dutilleux was part of one of the most beautiful summers I’ve had. I stayed for several weeks in Paris just before beginning my doctoral degree. I was determined to pass out of the language-course requirement, so I rented a little apartment on the Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine and immersed myself in French, reading twenty pages a day, chatting with storepeople and watching French talk shows on TV. Besides exploring the city and making day trips to Chartres and Auvers-sur-Oise, I visited many museums, including the
Read moreSome news about a hot ticket tonight from one of our regular contributors, composer Lawrence Dillon. After performing his Violin Futura program a gazillion times all over the map in the last six years, Piotr Szewczyk is bringing it to NYC (Carnegie Hall. May 6th. 8 pm). What is Violin Futura? In the words of Santa Fe New Music, it is an “enthralling program [that] shows off the diversity and range of the contemporary violin.” As Piotr says, “I created the Violin Futura project because I wanted to expand the contemporary violin repertoire with pieces that are exciting to play
Read moreWednesday: Low and ACME at Society for Ethical Culture This week, slow core rockers Low celebrate two decades as a band with their tenth studio release, The Invisible Way (Sub Pop). The Sparhawks (Mimi and Alan) continue to weave dulcet duets and the band’s metronome seems to only go up to about 100 beats per minute (with most of its songs still residing below a tranquilized polar bear’s heart rate), but there’s nothing that seems tired or retreaded on The Invisible Way. On the contrary, songs like the campfire ballad “Plastic Cup” and the exhortatory “Holy Ghost” are worthy additions
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