Chamber Music

Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Premieres, San Francisco, Saxophone

Let’s Ask Andrew Raffo Dewar

Here’s the first in a series of interviews with composers who are premiering new works at the 10th Annual Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco on Friday, July 22nd.  The Friday night concert, entitled The Art of Composition, starts at 8 pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online from Brown Paper Tickets, and you can also buy them at the door.  Listeners who don’t want to wait that long can get up close and personal with the composers, and learn about their creative process, at a free Monday night panel discussion at

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by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Competitions, Contests, London, Strings

UK’s Villiers Quartet Hosts Competition for Young Composers

Update (July 5, 2011): The Villiers Quartet has revised its guidelines for its new music competition. The most notable change is the age restriction, which has been raised to 35. Good luck! London’s Villiers Quartet is seeking new works by composers under 35. If you’re an emerging composer looking for an international performance opportunity, check out the guidelines to have your work premiered next season by this exciting, young ensemble. I’ll let the ensemble’s first violinist, James Dickenson, explain: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9bzsWGJEQ[/youtube] And here are their guidelines, which can also be found at the Villiers Quartet’s web site. The 2012 Villiers Quartet

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by Armando Bayolo
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, Performers, Premieres

San Diego New Music’s soundON Festival: Evening 1

Full disclosure: I co-founded San Diego New Music in 1994, served as its first Executive Director, and have been a board member since 2000. This isn’t a review or a comprehensive report so much as some of my impressions and observations about what’s going on at The Athenaeum in La Jolla, California, this weekend. If you think I overlooked anything, please feel free to contribute more in the comments section below. After core members of NOISE, the resident ensemble of San Diego New Music, dispersed across the continent (flutist/director Lisa Cella to Baltimore; percussionist Morris Palter to Fairbanks), it became

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by Christian Hertzog
CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Orchestras, Philadelphia, Recordings

Symphony Space Celebrates Andrew Rudin

Andrew Rudin is well known to the Philadelphia new music community, both as a composer and, for many years, as a professor at University of the Arts. One of his former students, Amanda Harberg, introduced me to Rudin some years back at a post-concert reception in New Jersey. I remember being struck by his piercing intellect and wide-ranging knowledge of music. I’ve greatly enjoyed interacting with him via Facebook in recent years. Although direct in his opinions, sometimes in irascible fashion, he’s a font of information about composers (particularly Ralph Shapey), opera, poets, and tasty baked goods. On Tuesday, Rudin’s

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by Christian Carey
CDs, Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, Philadelphia, Strings, Twentieth Century Composer

It’s a Short Six Hours

Tomorrow from 2-8 PM in Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, FLUX Quartet plays Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2. The concert is the last event in American Sublime, a two week long series that has spotlighted Feldman’s late music. FLUX has been performing the piece since 1999, and their rendition runs around six hours. Feldman himself suggested that the piece could run anywhere from 3 1/2 to 5 hours. But one senses that FLUX’s more expansive time frame doesn’t contravene his intentions. String Quartet No. 2, like many of Feldman’s late works, is about breaking past the boundaries of form and instead shaping

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by Christian Carey
Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York

Thursday’s LLList: Locrian, Loadbang, and Lucier

As we gallop towards the end of the concert season proper (and towards the bevy of summer music festivals), it’s shaping up to be a busy time here in New York. Case in point, in the evening on Thursday June 2nd, there are two events that would suit many a new music aficionado’s fancy. Locrian Chamber Players are performing at Riverside Church at 8 PM. The program includes John Adams’ String Quartet (a work that also appears, with different performers, on the new Adams Nonesuch disc), a piece by Manhattan School of Music faculty member Reiko Füting and world premieres

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by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Philadelphia

Feldman Festival in Philly

Anyone who thinks that straightened circumstances of a still sluggish economy have dampened the ambitions of concert presenters need look no further than Philadelphia to see a sublime idea at work. Bowerbird, a Philly-based non-profit, is mounting “American Sublime,” a seven concert festival devoted to the works of New York School composer Morton Feldman (1926-’87). The concerts run from June 4-12, with ticket prices ranging from free to $20. Marilyn’s hands. Photo by Peter Schütte Excerpt from Triadic Memories, performed by Marilyn Nonken on Mode 136 Courtesy Mode Records A M E R I C A N   S U B L I M E   A

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by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Experimental Music, Festivals, Improv, Music Events, News, Premieres, San Francisco, Sound Art, Women composers

2011 Outsound New Music Summit lineup announced

Once upon a time in 2000, there was a brand-new underground music collective in the San Francisco Bay Area, presenting a monthly concert series named “Static Illusion/Methodical Madness”.  The SIMM series is still going strong today, and its parent organization, Outsound Presents, now additionally puts on the weekly Luggage Store Gallery concert series and the Outsound New Music Summit. Outsound acquired a Board of Directors and incorporated its bad self in 2009.  Now with a 501(c)(3) IRS determination in hand, it’s a stalwart provider of experimental music, sound art, found sounds, improvisation, noise, musique concrete, minimalism, and any other kind of

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by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Commissions, Competitions, Concerts, File Under?, Music Events, New York

Cuckson on the Cutting Edge

I’m looking forward to hearing violinist Miranda Cuckson premiere a new chamber concerto by Jeffrey Mumford tonight at Symphony Space. Cuckson is a tremendous talent. Her recent CDs of music by Ralph Shapey, Donald Martino, and Michael Hersch are required listening for anyone interested in post-tonal chamber music. The concert also includes works by Harold Meltzer, Victoria Bond, and Brian Ferneyhough. Cuckson is joined by the Argento Ensemble; the Da Capo Chamber Players will also perform (details below). Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival Program Monday, April 11, 2011, 7:30 pm; $20/Seniors $15 Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in Peter Norton

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by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York, Video, Women composers

Cutting Edge Concerts Kicks Off Tonight

Thus far, 2011 seems to be the year of the festival. From Tune Up to Tully Scope and beyond, a wide variety of adventurous outings have been offered in New York. Starting tonight, Symphony Space joins in the fun with their Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival. If each festival has had its own identity – Tune Up reveling in the Park Avenue Armory’s generous space and acoustics, Tully Scope celebrating the diversity of its offerings and its newly remodeled digs – the emphasis of Cutting Edge seems, like so many events at Symphony Space, to be outreach and interaction. All

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by Christian Carey