Chamber Music

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

A Report From Prague

Greetings S21ers:

The OgreOgress gang has been having a swell time in Old Bohemia for the past month.  Last night I had the honor of recording John Cage’s Three with the multi-talented and very humorous German-born (and Amsterdam-based) recordist Susanna Borsch at the facilities of the Prague State Opera.

If you’re interested in the recorder I would encourage you to check out Borsch’s activities and be in contact. Of particular note to those in the US of A (apologies to Borat), Susanna’s eclectic new music “girl band” Electra will be in the Massachusetts area to perform Louis Andriessen in July and I am certain further bookings in the USA would be much appreciated.

But, wait, there’s more.  A few days prior I had the distinct honor of protesting George W. Bush and even got on the CBS Evening News (that is me next to Axelrod at the end of the report)…

… and a few weeks before that, I recorded Cage’s Twenty-
Eight with the Prague Winds.

In short, having a wonderful time.  Wish you all were here.

by Glenn Freeman
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

First Jeff Harrington, then David Salvage, and now our very own Lawrence Dillon is feeling some end-of-the-season love on the concert circuit.  This very evening (Thursday), at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina,  violinist Piotr Szewczyk will perform Lawrence’s Mister Blister and a movement from Fifteen Minutes as part of his Music in Time – Violin Futura program.  Szewczyk will also perform works by Mason Bates, Moritz Eggert, Daniel Kellogg, Jennifer Wang, and others as part of this program of new, short, innovative solo violin pieces.

And, on June 15 at the International Double Reed Society Conference in Ithaca, New York, bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker will perform Dillon’s Furies and Muses, joined by violinist Susan Waterbury and Jennifer Reuning Meyers, violist Melissa Stucky and cellist Heidi Hoffman. This is part of a special series of bassoon performances featuring Contraband, Lorelei Dowling, Terry Ewell and Arlen Fast. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the IDRS or call (607) 274-3717.  

Anybody doing anything interesting this summer.  Festivals? 

Want to try your hand at being the front page blogger of S21 for a week? 

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, New York, North/South

Viva Max!

For the past 27 years, the Mexican-born pianist and composer Max Lifchitz has been a tireless and resourceful promoter of new music (including his own) through live performances and recordings with the North/South Consonance Ensemble, the chamber group of the non-profit North/South Consonance organization. Many young composers, particularly those of the Neoclassic or New Romantic temperment (Larry Bell comes immediately to mind), have gotten a career boost from Lifchitz’s annual programs and recordings, which now number nearly 50. 

I mention all this because North/South Consonance’s  final concert of the current season is coming up on Sunday afternoon June 17 at 3 PM and will take place at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St, NYC) on Manhattan’s West Side. Admission is free (no tickets necessary).

The program will feature two compositions involving narration: Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat and Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange.  I personally detest works that involve people talking while I’m trying to listen to music, but apparently some people like it and many famous composers have written works for ensemble and spoken word. 

Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale was written at the end of World War I and is one of those Faustian/Devil Goes Down to Georgia things about trading in your soul for a fiddle.  Lifchitz says the work is being performed to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the composer and, in fact, it is being performed on June 17, the exact day Stravinsky was born in 1882 in a town near St Petersburg.

Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange is a setting of a text by New York City writer Kathleen Masterson, written especially for the actress Norma Fire, who will perform it.  The narrative with music relates the story of Fire’s parents who emigrated to this country before the Holocaust, and of their relatives who did not. Fire will be supported by violinist Claudia Schaer and Lifchitz on piano. 

Today’s musical question is:  Name the best pieces ever written for music and narration (and let’s get Copland and Honegger out of the way quickly).

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

David Does Harvard

dsheadsht.pngAttention Boston (and NY) shoppers!  The world-premiere run of David Salvage’s String Quartet No. 2 is at hand.  The Arcturus Chamber Ensemble will do the honors, starting this Friday, June 1, at 8pm, at Adams House JCR, Harvard University.  They’ll do it again on Saturday night at 7:30 at the First Religious Society, Carlisle and, just to be on the safe side, one more time on Monday, June 11 at 7:30pm, at the Harvard Club, here in the Center of the Universe. 

There will be other works on all the programs, probably by dead white guys.  The concerts are free and open to the public although the Harvard Club requires you to “look spiffy,” according to Master Salvage.  I used to go there years ago with my old buddy Whit Stillman (whatever happened to him anyway) and it was pretty tight-assed then.  Probably hasn’t changed much.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Down, Cujo. Down.

Okay, sports fans, here’s something you’ll like.  Today, beginning at 6 pm PST and running through midnight (That would be 9 pm to 3 am {thanks, Andrea for straightening me out} here in the Center of the Universe), KFJC radio in Los Altos Hills, CA is doing a 6-hour special focusing on Berio’s Sequenzas.

Cujo, a dj on KFJC and Sequenza21 peruser, has lined up some stellar color commentary for this one.  In addition to a live performance on flute, you’ll hear from from David Osmond-Smith, author of the only existing English Berio book (with more to come), Janet Halfyard, editor of the forthcoming Berio Sequenzas, and Brian Brandt, chief of Mode Records. (I believe I was invited to participate in some way but forgot about it–one of the hazards of being 64.) 

Cujo provides several good reasons why we should all listen.  We will:

o learn why you should be disgusted when the trombone sequenza is played in a clown costume

o learn about the beef between Rostropovich and Berio

o understand exactly how Berio learned to write so virtuosically for such uncommon instruments.  (Seriously, accordion?).

If you continue to listen beyond midnight, you will be treated to KFJC’s annual Night and Day of the Sun, a 24-hour tribute to Sun Ra on his birthday.

Chances are you don’t get KFJC on your radio, but thanks to the miracle of the Internets you can listen online here.  As it says on the station’s Netcast page, “Ain’t technology wonderful.”

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, New York

It’s Very Fancy on Old Delancey

Here’s something to put in your calendar.  Our friends at the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Artistic Director Andrew Cyr, have a fabulous program called “There and Back Again” lined up for May 24 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, highlighted by the U.S. Premiere of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto.  Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital (for whom the work was written) and the Metropolis Ensemble Strings will do the honors.  

“The concerto’s main conflicts are between sound and silence and between motion and stasis,’ Dorman says. “One of the things that inspired me to deal with these opposites is the Mandolin’s most basic technique – the tremolo, which is the rapid repetition of notes. The tremolo embodies both motion and stasis. The rapid movement provides momentum, while the pitches stay the same.”

Dorman says the piece draws from the mandolin’s vast repertoire, including Baroque, Russian folk music, Bluegrass, Indian music, Brazilian jazz and Avant-Garde.  

“When Avi approached me to write a concerto for him, my acquaintance with the mandolin was fairly limited,” he says.  “I had used it in chamber pieces only twice before, and did not know most of the repertoire for the instrument. As I got to know the instrument better, I discovered its diverse sonic and expressive possibilities.”

Also featured will be Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for string quartet and clarinets, with clarinet soloist Tibi Cziger in collaboration with the Metropolis Ensemble Chamber Players, Arnaud Sussmann and Lily Francis, violins, Eric Nowlin, viola, Michal Korman, cello. The program will round out with Shostakovich’s masterpiece Chamber Symphony op. 110a and Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances.

That’s Thursday, May 24, 2007 (7:30pm) at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, (172 Norfolk St, between Houston and Delancey).

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Click Picks, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

NEW Mexico comes to NYC

In my Click Pick #16 I introduced you to the young Mexican contemporary scene. I just recived a note from one of the musicians profiled, flutist/composer Wilfrido Terrazas, that I’ll pass along:

Friday, May 4, 2007 at 7PM
Wilfrido Terrazas, flutist
New Mexican Works for Flute

Free Admission

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY

This concert, organized in collaboration with ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), is part of a project during which the flutist has collaborated with some of Mexico’s most daring and original composers in pieces that explore novel ways of writing for his instrument. The concert will feature new works by Mauricio Rodríguez, Víctor Adán, Ignacio Baca Lobera, Hiram Navarrete and Juan José Bárcenas, and is made possible by a grant from Mexico’s FONCA.
Founded in 2001, the International Contemporary Ensemble is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble comprised of thirty young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. This concert is part of ICE’s Young Composers Mini-Festival, which that will take place at different venues throughout New York from April 30th to May 4th.

See? It all comes together… You’re practically old friends now, so turn out and give Willy a warm welcome.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

The most satisfying medium of all

Why a String Quartet? What is it that has given it its exalted reputation and mystique? Why have so many composers regarded it as the perfect medium of expression, though it is perhaps the most demanding to write for? And why do distinguished artists often prefer to work as a team in a first class quartet rather than make bigger money as, say, orchestral leaders? Music means different things to different people: but for those to who music is an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion – the string quartet is perhaps the most satisfying medium of all.

These are the words of Elizabeth Maconchy (above) who was born one hundred years ago on March 19th 1907. She wrote a remarkable cycle of thirteen string quartets that were influenced by Berg, Bartok, Janacek and her teacher in Prague, Karel Jirak. But despite its obvious merit Elizabeth Maconchy’s music remains scandalously neglected. Which prompts On An Overgrown Path to ask, how important is a composer’s music?    

by Pliable
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

New positions for a string quartet

Vanessa Vanessa Lann emails – Today is the world premiere of my string quartet, Landscape of a Soul’s Remembering. In this work there are six separate locations on the stage where the musicians will stand or sit throughout the performance, changing to new positions between each of the four movements. At each spot there is specific music to be played, consisting of recognizable, repeated patterns that the players will interpret in turn – on their respective instruments – during each movement. As these patterns emerge again and again in new contexts, played on different instruments by different performers, they will each be heard in a new light.

Rather than this being a string quartet where the discussion exists in real time between the players, this is a study of the discussion, or realization, that takes place in one human soul – between the present, the future and one’s understanding of Memory.

The premiere of Landscape of a Soul’s Remembering is being given by the Doelen String Quartet (photo above), in the Eduard Flipsezaal, Concertgebouw De Doelen, Rotterdam on Sunday, March 18, 2007, 8:30 pm. The concert also includes the first performance of a work by Giel Vleggaar, and John Adams’ John’s Book of Alleged Dances.

by Pliable
Awards, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Competitions, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Start Spreading the News

sebastian1.jpgSebastian Currier has won the 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for “Static,” a six-movement piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

Currier, who teaches at Columbia University, studied at the Manhattan and Julliard schools of music. His winning work was commissioned by Copland House of Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., for its resident ensemble, Music from Copland House, with funds from Meet the Composer, a national organization supporting new works by composers.

The ensemble premiered the piece at Columbia’s Miller Theatre in February 2005 and recorded it for Koch International Classics.  Frank has details over at NewMusicBox.

And speaking of Mr. Oteri, he’s mad as hell about the second-class citizenship of post-classical composers and he’s not going to take it anymore…in the Composers Forum.

by Jerry Bowles