At 7 PM on Monday, December 7, the Armory will debut a newly commissioned performance series that combines the talents of pianist Igor Levit and artist Marina Abramović. In Goldberg, which runs from December 7-19, Levit and Abramović collaborate to transform J.S. Bach’s legendary Goldberg Variations in a presentation that challenges traditional notions of audience engagement, intimacy, and transcendence. As the Armory’s publicist describes, “Igor Levit will perform all 30 of the variations on a platform as it slowly moves into the center of the audience and rotates throughout the piece’s progression. Employing elements of the Abramović Method, the work
Read moreThis past Saturday night, Kobacker Hall, on the campus of Bowling Green State University, came alive with the sounds of Jennifer Higdon’s compositions for wind ensemble and orchestra. The culminating performance of Bowling Green’s annual New Music festival, Saturday’s concert marked a rare opportunity to hear a program of large ensemble music focused on the works of a single living composer, and both Higdon, and her compositional craft, were aglow in the spotlight. As the featured guest composer of this, the 36th annual new music festival at BGSU, Higdon shared herself, and her music, with students are audiences in numerous
Read moreLast night marked the launch of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams’ weeklong residency at the University of Michigan. Adams’ time in Ann Arbor, which will include performances as well as lectures on environmental advocacy, began with an evening of his chamber music at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The museum’s apse has been site of may memorable concerts over the years, but none may have taken advantage of this setting as well as yesterday’s program of Adams’ resonant and ravishing compositions. In one of the handful of interstitial interviews between Adams and University of Michigan Musicology Professor
Read moreTomorrow evening, composer and pianist Gregg Kallor will continue his stint as SubCulture’s inaugural composer-in-residence with a performance of songs that will also feature acclaimed mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala and renowned baritone Matthew Worth. The concert corresponds with a celebration of National Poetry Month and the 150th anniversary of William Butler Yeats’ birth, whose work Kallor sets in many of the songs included on the evening’s program. Again, the performance is tomorrow, April 28, at SubCulture (45 Bleeker Street, Downstairs), and tickets are $25 in advance, $30 the day-of. Doors open at 6:30 PM and the concert begins at 7:30. More
Read moreA week from today, the American Modern Ensemble will bring a brand new program to SubCulture‘s stage. Entitled, “BLUE”, this upcoming performance celebrates the release of AME’s latest album, Powerhouse Pianists II, which features pianists Stephen Gosling and Blair MacMillan performing works for two pianos by leading living composers including John Adams and John Corigliano. The program AME will perform at SubCulture will feature an array of the group’s talented players performing works by Margaret Brouwer, George Crumb, Robert Paterson, and Frederic Rzewski, among others. The evening’s music is arranged around the theme of “blue”, and spans from nautical evocations
Read moreIn two days, the American Modern Ensemble joins forces with Del Sol, JACK and PUBLIQuartet to tackle a dynamic program of premieres and 21st-century stalwarts involving string quartet. Members of AME will start the evening by premiering Jacob Bancks‘ String Theory, for string quartet, and return to deliver premieres of Sidney Boquiren‘s in a mirror dimly, for string quartet and harp, and Robert Paterson‘s I See You for string orchestra and “tape”. Del Sol will play Chinary Ung‘s Sprial X “In Memoriam”, which violinist Charleton Lee describes as, “a powerful cry for the common people suffering continuing atrocities throughout the
Read moreHey composers! Dan Graser, the soprano saxophonist of the award-winning Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet, asked me to help announce the group’s 2014 Composition Competition. This looks like a very exciting opportunity! Here are the basic facts (taken from the group’s online posting): Eligibility: All student composers enrolled in the United States as of Spring 2014. Piece requirements: An un-premiered work for SATB saxophone quartet, 6-10 minutes in length. Application fee: None! Prize(s): One first-prize winner will receive $500 and have their piece premiered at the quartet’s Carnegie Hall recital in November, 2014. Five composers receiving honorable mention will have their
Read moreLast Tuesday, April 16, I trekked to Snyder Hall on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI to see a performance by the Musique 21 ensemble, an immersive ‘Theatre of Music’ Production entitled Drunken Moon. The piece was conceived and created by conductor Kevin Noe and composer Kieren MacMillan, and features the merger of MacMillan’s eponymous monodrama for two voices with an English version of Arnold Schoenberg’s legendary Pierrot Lunaire. Drunken Moon is more than a concert performance, it is a theatrical unfolding where the music and storyline are deeply intertwined and overlap on many occasions. I
Read moreComposers! It is my pleasure to announce the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet’s first ever Composition Competition! The Donald Sinta Quartet (Dan Graser, Zach Stern, Joe Girard, Danny Hawthorne-Foss) is based in Ann Arbor and was handpicked from Donald Sinta’s Classical Saxophone studio at the University of Michigan, the same studio that produced the world-famous PRISM Quartet. This competition coincides with the DSQ’s Paris debut in April, and the winning pieces will be performed at the Paris Conservatory, the Selmer Show Room in Paris and at other domestic performances. The competition’s deadline is February 15th, there is no application fee and
Read moreBy now, I imagine most everyone in Sequenza21’s audience has learned that Elliott Carter passed away yesterday at the age of 103. Basically every news outlet covering music has already run a retrospective on Carter (except for Sequenza21, ironically). I don’t exactly intend to add to the din of the New York Times‘, Alex Ross‘, or NPR‘s or whomever-your-music-writer-of-choice’s reflections on Carter, but, as a community of composers and thoughtful listeners, whose tastes either align with Carter’s work or the music that was influenced by or reacted against him, we can honor his fresh memory by sharing our experiences with
Read more