If, like me, you’re a composer and you routinely ask yourself “What am I doing six months from now? Can I get something on the calendar?”, Other Minds has a suggestion – especially if you have a piece on the shelf for flute, Bb clarinet or bass clarinet, violin, cello or some combo thereof. Or if you’re eager to write a new one, knowing that the players involved could be the Other Minds or Navitas Ensembles. And if, like me, you’d rather be on stage than squirming out in the audience the whole time, you have the option to perform
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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Awards, Bang on a Can, CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, Minimalism, New York, Video
Steve Reich’s latest Nonesuch CD recently arrived, sans artwork in a little cardboard case. The disc features Double Sextet and 2×5, his collaborations with Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can. The former piece won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The latter is his most explicit use of rock instrumentation to date. According to the Nonesuch site, it’s still in the “pre-order” phase of activities, so we’ll be good and hold off on a proper review ’til it’s closer to the actual release date (9/14). Suffice it to say, if you’re a regular visitor to Sequenza 21, you’re likely
Read moreThis Thursday evening, the Locrian Chamber Players are presenting a concert at Riverside Church in New York City. The program features music by Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Shatin, John Luther Adams, and Frank J. Oteri. Frank is a fixture on the NY scene. He’s the composer advocate for the American Music Center and is Founding Editor of their web magazine New Music Box. Frank is indeed a persuasive advocate on behalf of other composers, but he’s not asked about his own music nearly often enough. In the interview that follows, we focus primarily on Brinson’s Race, the piece that appears on Thursday’s concert. But along the way, we are
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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 moreIt’s summer, it’s hot, and the music scene here in the Center of the Universe is fairly slow so I thought it might be a good time to get some feedback on an unfinished “piece” I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. It’s a website that looks like this: Actually, you don’t have to look at the picture; it’s already up on the web at Chamber Music Now so I guess you might consider this a “beta” launch. I built it because I love to play with new software and the nice Thracians who make the software I
Read moreThe International Contemporary Ensemble will be featured at 7 PM tonight on Q2. Hosted by John Schaefer, this live broadcast from Yamaha Piano Salon in NYC is a sneak preview of Lincoln Center Festival’s Varèse: (R)evolution. (R)evolution will present the composer’s entire oeuvre over two concerts on July 19 &20. Performers include the New York Philharmonic, conductor Alan Gilbert, percussionist Steven Schick, and ICE. Program: Density 21.5 (1936) with Claire Chase, flute Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906) with Samantha Malk, soprano Ameriques (NEW YORK PREMIERE of 8-hand piano version) (1929) with Jacob Greenberg, Amy Williams, Amy Briggs and Thomas
Read moreJeremy Podgursky — one of the composers we liked so much that he ended being selected for our last S21 concert presentation — is throwing a joint shindig with fellow composer Daniel Wohl, this Thursday July 8th, 7:00pm at the littlefield performance/art space (622 Degraw Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenue, Brooklyn), $8.00. Performers include Sara Budde, clarinet; Emily Popham Gillins, violin; John Popham, cello; Kevin Sims, percussion; Bethany Pietroniro and Timo Andres, piano; and more TBA. Podgursky and Wohl will be splitting the bill alternating their way through nine works in all, featuring recent small ensemble, electronic/electro-acoustic and solo pieces. Two excellent composers,
Read moreThere’s yet another new music series here in San Diego: Connections Chamber Music. I reported earlier this year on their concert featuring Reich, John Adams, Daugherty, and Matthew Tommasini (the series director). For their last concert, they programmed the Quartet for the End of Time. Before I went to the concert, I marvelled at how I’ve heard the Quartet more frequently than plenty of 19th century chamber works just as great such as Beethoven’s op. 132. And–well, read my thoughts and review of the concert here.
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CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Houston, Improv, Mix Tape
[Ed. — After many years in NYC but fresh to my own stomping ground of Houston, Chris Becker has offered to write some semi-regular musings on the new-music scene down thisaway. His own introduction: In its March 2010 Global Ear column, The Wire magazine described Houston as “the weirdest and wildest of (Texas) cities” with a “rich tradition of unofficial and DIY art.” Speaking as a recent transplant from New York City (where I lived for twelve years), I can confirm that our British friends were on point with their analysis of H-Town. I am in my third month as a
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