There’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.
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 native, and only just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of Houston’s cultural scene– especially its music. Although I’m also enjoying the city’s classical music (Houston Grand Opera, Mercury Baroque) each dispatch I bring to you from Houston will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and works that integrate theatre, the visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, country, zydeco, and all out noise (Red Krayola, anyone?) will creep into future writing, the overall goal being to expand peoples’ perception (including my own) of where one can find innovative forward-thinking music.]
2009-2010 marks the sixth year that Houston’s contemporary ensemble and presenting organization Musiqa has presented its “loft” concert series at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston. Each concert program is produced in conjunction with and inspired by a different exhibition. In May, CAMH debuted the show Hand + Made featuring works that blur the lines between craft (crochet, pottery, glass blowing) and performance. As a composer who has collaborated with clay and crochet artists (often in combination with dancers and improvising musicians), I dug the curatorial concept immediately and looked forward to hearing what pieces the composer founded and led Musiqa would choose for Hand + Made’s corresponding May 20th concert.
The concert took place at CAMH with the musicians surrounded by the artwork on display – including several elaborately designed and decorated “sound suits” by artist Nick Cave (a former dancer with Alvin Ailey’s troupe, not the singer with the Bad Seeds). I was happy to see people of all ages and filled CAMH’s space for this concert, using up all of the available benches and much of the floor space.
The program – performed by three percussionists (Craig Hauschildt, Alec Warren, and Blake Wilkins) included Clapping Music by Steve Reich, Panneaux en acier by Marcus Maroney (a beautiful and relatively new work for percussion soloist on various metals), Vinko Globokar’s primal piece of solo performance art Corporal (bravely and convincingly realized by a half naked Craig Hauschildt who was required to – among other actions – slap and strike parts of his body), and Ohko for three djembes by Iannis Xenakis. The performances were incredible, blurring the lines between what was composed, what was improvised, and where “music” as one might define it begins and ends. Musiqua’s program illuminated the creative interzone that is “in-between categories” where many of Hand + Made’s artists (and many Houstonians) reside.
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Artist and performer Yet Torres is responsible for the handmade design and packaging of the new double CD Screwed Anthologies: improvised music under the influence of DJ Screw featuring David Dove (trombone) and Lucas Gorham (guitar, lap steel). David and Lucas celebrated this CD release Sunday May 30th at Resonant Interval – a concert series (“Sideways Shows For A Straight Laced City”) that features Houston’s experimental, electronic and improvising artists. David is the director of Nameless Sound, a presenting organization that, in addition to bringing experimental musicians from around the world to Houston, offers music instruction to young people in the public schools, community centers, and homeless shelters. Screwed Anthologies is a “disjointed exhibition” initially conceived at Labotanica (an experimental laboratory for art and performance located in the historic Third Ward) featuring music and mixed media performances inspired by the “screwed and chopped” music of the formidable DJ Screw. The venue for the Resonant Interval performance was an empty storefront located a few doors away from a cool wine and beer bar with its own show on its walls of lovely and haunting photographs of New Orleans. Once again, the space was filled with people ready to take in the music.
Throughout David and Lucas’ set, excerpts of DJ Screw’s music were cued and superimposed over the sometimes (but not always) heavily processed sound of David’s trombone and Lucas’ lap steel and guitar. “Under the influence…” is the tag to this project, but legacy or homage did not seem to drive the actual improvising in performance (although both David and Lucas created sounds that harkened to the slow tempos, shifted pitches and soulful timbres of DJ Screw’s mixes). The disparate qualities of each sound (including the stray transmissions of DJ Screw) hung in the air like parts of a mobile (or a collection of Duchamp ready-mades) creating an experience where one seemed to hear each component to the music as an individual entity sitting in its own time and space, even as the music unfolded in the context of a duo (trio?) improvisation. The influence of Houston-born Pauline Oliveros was apparent, along with the sounds of Houston’s birds, traffic, and weather. I am excited to hear (via bootlegging or perhaps another CD-R or two…) how this music develops on the road. David and Lucas are currently touring Screwed Anthologies throughout the South and East Coast. You can get the tour dates here.
[Polly writes about great events happening in the Bay Area, here. And, I’ll have a few cool things happening in Seattle soon. In the meantime here are some interesting performances coming up in NYC ]
It looks like the first couple weeks of June are going to be full of tough choices. Like, on Saturday, June 5th will I check-out, a) The JACK Quartet on the opening night of the Tribeca New Music Festival, b) Wet Ink meets Yarn/Wire at Roulette, or c) Feldman performed by Flux Quartet and Evan Ziporyn?
Here’s what’s coming up, choose wisely:
June 2: Da Capo Chamber Players will be “Illuminating Darkness” at Merkin Hall (8pm). Daniel Felsenfeld (Insomnia Redux), Carl Schimmel (Four Nocturnes), George Crumb (The Sleeper), Donald Martino (Notturno), and more.
June 4-6: Flux Quartet will be performing five works by Morton Feldman over 3 days over at Bargemusic. Friday at 8pm: String Quartet #1; Saturday at 8pm: Structures and Three Pieces for string quartet, also Clarinet and String Quartet (featuring Evan Ziporyn); Sunday at 3pm: Piano and String Quartet (again, featuring Evan Ziporyn)(and, no, that is not a mistake!)
June 5: Four of the people behind Wet Ink (Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels) meet Yarn/Wire at Roulette (8pm).
June 5, 7-9: The 2010 Tribeca Music Festival begins at Merkin Hall (all concerts at 8pm). Concert #1, 6/5: JACK Quartet performs more string quartet goodness. Lisa Bielawa (The Trojan Women), David Crowell (The Open Road), Jeff Myers (Dopamine), and more. Concert #2, 6/7: “NextGen” featuring Andy Akiho, Timo Andres, A (yet to be named) “Ted Hearne Band,” and others. Concert #3, 6/8: “Monsters!” Mary Rowell, Geoff Burleson, and Kathleen Supove perform Eve Beglarian, Victoria Bond, Philip Glass, and more. Concert #4, 6/9: Bora Yoon and Pamela Z with video artist Luke DuBois and the acapella group New York Polyphony.
June 8: MAYA Commissions Concert at Judson Memorial Church (8pm). Works by Gabriel Erkoreka, Yotam Haber, John Hadfield, Robert Paterson.
And as an added bonus…Over the past year (or so) I have recorded audio interviews with many of the people on these concerts. Click on their name below to hear about their experience working with composers:
Blair McMillen (Da Capo Chamber Players)
Tom Chiu (Flux Quartet) (the background noise is really bad on this one, sorry!)
Evan Ziporyn
Laura Barger (Yarn/Wire)
John Richards (JACK Quartet)
Mary Rowell (performing on Tribeca New Music Festival)
Sato Moughalian (MAYA)
I don’t normally quote press releases wholesale, but I don’t know what I could better in my own account (though be sure to read the last paragraph for some extra sweet deals). So…
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On Thursday, May 20th, Metropolis Ensemble will present Home Stretch, in two performances featuring the compositions of composer/pianist Timothy Andres presented alongside two composers who have inspired his unique style: Wolfgang Mozart, and the father of ambient music, Brian Eno. Also featured will be the New York Premiere of Anna Clyne’s elegiac work for string orchestra, Within Her Arms. In keeping with Metropolis Ensemble’s mission to re-imagine the concert experience, each audience member will be handed a chair as they enter the Angel Orensanz Center and will be allowed to seat themselves where they like, giving them the opportunity to control their concert experience and to create a more social and interactive environment.
Andres‘ piano concerto, Home Stretch, was written as a companion piece to Mozart’s K. 465. He explains that, “My last attempt at a piano concerto was when I was 15, and since then, I’ve mostly lost interest in the typical “virtuosity for its own sake” soloist versus orchestra dynamic of the genre. Luckily, the Mozart-sized forces led me to approach Home Stretch as chamber music, allowing for more subtle gestures and interplay between musicians.”
For the concert Andrew Cyr, Metropolis Ensemble’s Artistic Director/Conductor, asked Andres to write music to pair with Home Stretch, which led to Brian Eno: Paraphrase on themes of Brian Eno. Andres remarks that, “I immediately thought of the spacious, static opening section of Home Stretch and the huge debt it owes to Eno’s harmonies and timbres. The result is a 19th-century style “orchestral paraphrase” on the subject of Eno’s music, focusing on the albums Before and After Science and Another Green World, with some Apollo by means of an introduction.
Much of the solo part of, Piano Concerto No. 26 “Coronation”, one of Mozart’s most popular concertos, was left unfinished by the composer. Inspired by the conception of music as a living art form, Metropolis Ensemble has commissioned Andres to compose new music for the left hand part as well as an entirely new solo cadenza to be performed on the evening concert by Andres.
Anna Clyne‘s Within Her Arms was a 2009 commission from Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series. Metropolis Ensemble presents the New York Premiere of this work for string orchestra. Within Her Arms, dedicated to Clyne’s mother, brings to mind the English Renaissance masterpieces of Thomas Tallis and John Dowland.
Also, only on the afternoon concert’s bill, Andrew Norman‘s work for eight virtuoso violins, Gran Turismo. Norman writes: “Rewind my life a bit and you might find a particular week in 2003. I was researching the art of italian Futurist Giacomo Balla for a term paper, watching my roommates play a car racing video game called Gran Turismo, and thinking about the legacy of Baroque string virtuosity as a point of departure for my next project. It didn’t take long before I felt the resonances between these different activities, and it was out of their unexpected convergence that this piece was born.”
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Remember now, we’re talking two concerts, both on Thursday, May 20: at 1pm, Trinity Wall Street (79 Broadway), and again at 8pm at the Angel Orensanz Center (172 Norfolk Street). The afternoon gig is FREE, but click here for an RSVP or tickets to the evening gig. And that’s not all, folks: “This project has been in the works for two years and coincides with the Nonesuch release of Andres’ new CD Shy & Mighty. We will be running a promotion at Timo’s CD launch event at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday, May 17. Anyone who buys a ticket for the Thursday night concert at the event on Monday will receive a free copy of Shy and Mighty. We would also like to extend a special offer to readers of Sequenza21: we would like to offer 2 for 1 general seating tickets with the code sequenza21“.
Canada, Chamber Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Music Events, Performers, Post Modern
A few of the of the unusual and interesting events coming up soon, soon soon:
Victoria, B.C. : Wednesday May 12th, 8pm at Knox Presbyterian Church (2964 Richmond Road, Victoria / $10), LaSaM (Luminosity and Sounds by adventurous Musicians) is presenting a program titled “And Beethoven Heard Nothing“. As they tell it, the show will be “exploring Beethoven’s inherent belief systems, his deafness and the sonorities of his later work. Sonic phenomena; tinnitus and deafness; acoustic space, climax and stasis; memory and silence… The ensemble has pulled experiences of Beethoven’s thought and music through the filters of contemporary soundscape and performance practice into an evocative environment of dancing shadows, image and light.” Directed by musicologist Dylan Robinson and composer Tina Pearson, with technical direction by George Tzanetakis and live video projections by Tim Gosley. Besides Pearson (flute, voice, glass) and Tzanetakis (clarinet, saxophone) collaborating musicians include Chris Reiche (piano), Cathy Lewis (voice, percussion), and Alex Olson (bass). Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Society will be on hand with information; the performance will be followed by a discussion about the project, and about how we use our ears in contemporary urban life.
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Baltimore, MD : Friday May 14th is the kick off for the 2010 edition of the Megapolis Audio Festival, running all the way through Sunday the 16th. Right from the horse’s mouth, there’ll be “circuit bending /noisemaker constructions, sonic slumber parties, free-form audio editing sessions, kickass musics, interactive demonstrations, urban sonic explorations, experimental musical practice and theory, film with funfun sounds, musical performances, subversive audio tours, (un-boring) lectures, and moremoremoremore.”
The line up is mind-boggling in its scope, filled not only with listening but workshops, installations, player participation and likely wild parties hither and yon. A special shout-out to my composer friend Erik Spangler, who in his alter-ego known as DJ Dubble8 will be working with Baltimore’s intrepid Mobtown Modern ensemble.
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Toronto, ON : Saturday, May 15th is the day to catch Contact Contemporary Music: Six Team League at the Music Gallery (197 John St., Toronto / 416-204-1080 / $20).
In celebration of Canada hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics with a nod to the National Hockey League’s “Original Six,” Contact Contemporary Music is pitching in with an ambitious attempt to connect the country through music. Six ensembles across the country will simultaneously present and perform a concert of six new works by six composers from six regions of the country in a musical sweep from sea to sea to sea.
The participating ensembles are the Motion Ensemble (Fredericton, NB) who have commissioned composer Joel Miller; Bradyworks (Montreal, QC) who have commissioned composer Michel Frigon; St. Crispin’s Chamber Ensemble (Edmonton, AB) who have commissioned Dave Wall; Redshift Music (Vancouver, BC) who have commissioned Jordan Nobles; and Contact Contemporary Music who have commissioned Juliet Palmer..
Six composers. Six ensembles. Six cities. Six concerts. Six Team League.
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Saint-Gilles, Belgium : Also on Saturday, May 15th, 8pm but half a world away (Maison du Peuple de Saint-Gilles, Parvis de Saint-Gilles, 37-39), the brilliant pianist Stephane Ginsburgh will be joining many other wonderful musicians, in a free concert titled “Constellations-Figure“. A clumsy translation:
What is a constellation? A design, a network. Links forged between the points seen from afar, but apparently close. They are a familiar and enigmatic. A graph that tells us about relationships, geometric and experienced. Paths traced between places and individuals symbolic or real. What form a constellation? The proximity of the points or the path of truth? Twenty artists are encouraged to draw their constellation, while participating in the figure which will rise by the force of things. Do you like the Milky Way?
Did I mention many other wonderful musicians? It’s a “Night of Soloists”: Jean-Michel Agius (voice), Primitiv (beatbox), Laurence Cornez (piano), Tom De Cock (percussion), Fabian Fiorini (piano), Stephane Ginsburgh (piano), Philippe Liénaert (piano), Céline Lory (piano), Barbara Mavro Thalassitis (voice/dance), Laurence Mekhitarian (piano), Gerrit Nulens (percussion), Isabelle Roeland (voice), Jessica Ryckewaert (percussion), Jan Rzewski (saxophone), Johanne Saunier (voice/dance), Laurence Vielle (voice), Gilles Wiernik (voice). It’s a cryptic but promising event, in a beautiful and historic location.
Birthdays, Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Portland, Seattle
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Washington Composers Forum. Like any of these ventures, they’ve had some busy and some moribund periods. But more than most and especially through the last decade, the WCF has been a pretty consistent force, beacon and shelter for composers of all stripes (as I can personally attest to from my own long sojourn in the Seattle area). They’ve been great about getting the word on opportunities out to their members, sponsoring commissions, readings and concerts, and their Composer Spotlight series (a different composer holds court each month, sharing whatever they think is important in their world) has been a fabulously smart and successful local draw for years now.
The WCF is having their celebratory concert this Thursday evening, May 6th, 8pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center (4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, 4th Floor, Seattle / Tickets at door. $5-15 sliding scale), as part of their Jack Straw-supported Transport Series. The concert of world and regional premieres will feature the Icicle Creek Piano Trio, Pacific Rims percussion quartet, violist Melia Watras, and the Seattle Phonographers Union. Highlighted on the program is the premiere of a new work by composer Wayne Horvitz, an inaugural commission by Washington Composers Forum, launching the organization’s new commissioning program. Other composers on the bill include Christopher Bailey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Diane Thome, Huck Hodge and John Cage — and if you’ve never yet seen the Seattle Phonographers Union in action, you’re in for a spookily wonderful treat.
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Meanwhile, the next day just down the road in Portland, Oregon, Third Angle New Music Ensemble is finishing their season with a concert titled “Views from Cascadia” (7:30 PM, The Old Church, 1422 Southwest 11th Avenue, Portland / Tickets: $30 general/$25 65+ & students). The chamber music program features pieces by Tomas Svoboda and David Schiff from Portland, John McKinnon from La Grande, and Charles Nichols from Missoula, Montana. This is Third Angle’s big bon voyage before it performs at the Beijing Modern Music Festival in late May, taking a few of these Northwest sounds to introduce to an international audience.
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, Percussion, Premieres, Washington D.C.
On Friday, April 30, 2010, my ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, will present the last concert of our 2009-10 concert season. The program, presented at Ward Hall, on the campus of the Catholic University of America at 7:30 p.m. (Visit www.greatnoiseensemble.com for tickets if you’re in the Washington region this Friday), is a unique program featuring a new work for mixed ensemble and sculpted percussion by composer D.J. Sparr in collaboration with artist Terry Berlier of Stanford University. The 41st Rudiment, named after the 40 “rudiments” that percussionists study as they develop their craft, represents one more rudiment indicative of the experimental nature of Berlier’s instruments. It was written for percussionist Christopher Froh, of the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Great Noise Ensemble.
D.J. Sparr initially pitched the piece that would become The 41st Rudiment to Great Noise Ensemble’s board some five years ago. “The idea came through wanting to work with Chris Froh,” he says, “whom I had seen out on an amazing concert in Ann Arbor years back. I was in the Bay Area, so we went out for drinks, and over the course of the conversation we talked about finding instruments at a hardware store… and somehow, collectively we came up with the idea that we should ‘build something.’ From there, we started talking about what that would be, who might be interested collaborating with us, etc.” After searching for an appropriate collaborator it was Froh who suggested that they work with Terry Belier. “Terry and I worked on another project together a few years ago with the Empyrean Ensemble and Italian composer, Luciano Chessa. I played one of her sculptures then (an earlier “panlid gamelan”) and fell in love with her aesthetic. When D.J. and I first started talking about this project some five years ago, I suggested asking Terry to be involved.”
“A few years ago,” writes Terry Berlier, “ I was working on a piece called ‘Two pan tops can meet’ (2003) which was based on the homophobic Jamaican saying ‘Two pan tops can’t meet.’ (I had worked in Jamaica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1995-97.) That first piece used thrift store pan lids as speaker housings that played a sound piece. But while I was sifting through the pan lids, I started setting aside the pan lids that resonated strongly. These eventually became Pan Lid Gamelan I in 2003 and gallery viewers were invited to play it.
In 2008, Composer Luciano Chessa wanted to compose this sculpture/instrument into one of our collaborations (Inkless Imagination IV) and I was excited to have a professional percussionist, Chris Froh, play them. A few years later, Chris asked if I would like to work with him again on making sculptures specifically for him to play and work with D.J. Sparr.”
D.J. Sparr has been building a reputation for many years now as a composer of rhythmically charged and energetic music (the Alburquerque Tribune once referred to his piece for eighth blackbird, The Glam Seduction as “Paganini on coke”) that merges classical conventions with rock idioms. The 41st Rudiment is no different, although the rock influence this time is far subtler than in the works that gained Sparr his early reputation. “I am always influenced by the drama of a rock-and-roll concert, and in this work, the drummer is the superstar… he engages the other players in ways to entice them to join in with him in gestures and call-and-response melodies…much the same as would happen in a rock-band scenario where guitarists, drummers, and bass players trade solos. This work,” however, “is heavily influenced by the baroque concerto grosso form as the large scale form is comprised of many short movements. There are elements of Bach and Vivaldi, but there are also elements of other things: Satie Gymnopédies; Spanish barcaroles; improvisatory structures such as Zorn’s Cobra; and many cadenzas and improvisation.”
Back last December the New York Times highlighted the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra. The first link goes to the NYT video of the ensemble, but here’s a nicely quiet work from the actual concert:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBo4JH-CPPM[/youtube]
But that’s not quite the earliest reference to this new ‘instrument’ and kind of ensemble. Michigan actually brought their own Mobile Phone Ensemble to last November’s SEAMUS proceedings, and there’s a video of (admittedly much less musical) a group of London tech geeks taking on the theme from Dr. Who much earlier in the year, at the Yahoo Open Hack Day.
Not that you need the halls of academia to get this creative; here’s the Hong Kong band RedNoon taking right to the subway:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blWtj2kvxBg[/youtube]
Just a few weeks after the NYT feature with Stanford, CNN got into the act, also in Hong Kong, interviewing my composer-pal Samson Young about his own iPhone Orchestra. Samson, a Princeton grad student, put together his own performance at the January Hong Kong/Shenzhen Biennale. This one’s my personal favorite:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rD5I3-pQqM[/youtube]
It may seem very queer, but it’s here — get used to it!
Columbia’s own Southern Exposure New Music Series and xMUSE (University of South Carolina’s Experimental Music Studio, directed by Reginald Bain) combine forces once again to present an evening of genre-bending music and technology. The Saturday, February 27th, 7:30 p.m concert features Odd Appetite, the New York based duo of performers/composers Ha-Yang Kim (cello) and Nathan Davis (percussion) in works for musically interactive computer software, spatial speaker configurations, amplified triangles, microtonal bells, drums, tuned aluminum pipes, and a de-tuned and amplified cello with stomp boxes and electronic effects, all played with dazzling virtuosity and passion. In addition to music by Davis and Kim, Odd Appetite will also perform Radiohead‘s “Like Spinning Plates” in an arrangement that uses electronic loopers, wine glasses, and whirly tubes.
The concert also features Lois V. Vierk‘s Go Guitars for five electric guitars, influenced by traditional Japanese court music, and Reginald Bain‘s Jovian Images, inspired by NASA photographs of planets and performed by renowned saxophone virtuoso Susan Fancher. Admission is free (USC School of Music Recital Hall, 813 Assembly St.), but early seating recommended.
Met lots of really nice people at my little social media presentation for the Chamber Music America folks at St. Peter’s yesterday. As promised, here’s the slide deck I used. If there is anything you’d like more information about, send me an email and I’ll try to answer. My thanks to the extraordinarily well-organized CMA program director Susan Dadian for inviting me and for being the kind of gal who will quietly tell you that your fly is unzipped before you begin your talk.