Chamber Music

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Tom Steenland’s Passion

Props to our amigo Tom Steenland who has been producing great avant-garde recordings on his Starkland label from Boulder for many years now.  It isn’t every day that a CD from a small label makes the New York Times but Phillip Bimstein’s Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica caught the attention of Steve Smith, who has livened up the Times immeasurably since he started writing over there.  Steve reviewed it yesterday, opining that “… the irresistible charm of Mr. Bimstein’s music has less to do with technology than with his uncanny knack for finding the music of everyday life.”  If you prefer, Tom has prepared a spiffy pdf file of the review and left it for you here.  Daniel Gilliam reviewed the CD for us here.

Elsewhere, another friend of the family, Marco Antonio Mazzini has posted a video of Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint (in which he plays the bass clarinet) here and here.  I hope he got permission.

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

Women’s Work 2007 – Three Wednesdays in March

Beth Anderson is hosting Women’s Work 2007, a series of three Wednesday concerts in March at  Greenwich House Arts.  The dates are March 14, 21 and 28 and the venue is the Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York City (between Seventh Avenue South and Bedford St.).  Beth has pulled together a terrific package of recent chamber instrumental and vocal music by prominent contemporary women composers from Asia, the U.S. and Europe, and how their work has been influenced by folk music, poetry and even new technology.  To do our part, the crack Sequenza21 team has put together an event blog with programs, notes and pictures.  The gals have also built themselves a multimedia site at MySpace with some lovely musical samples.  Hie thee thither. 

Chamber Music, Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #19

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Claus Gahrn (b. 1978 — Denmark); Gahrn Ensemble

Gahrn EnsembleClaus is another composer I ran into on Myspace, and we’ve been corresponding for a few months now. Gahrn began his musical studies as a classical guitarist; from 2001 he studied composition and electroacoustic music at the Academy of Music in Esbjerg, Denmark, earning his MA degree with distinction in 2006. That’s Claus on the right in the photo, with his own young ensemble (including his pianist wife Malwina). There are links above that will take you both to Claus’ personal site, as well as that of the ensemble itself. Under “Media” at either, you’ll find excellent MP3 recordings and performances of Gahrn’s often-introspective yet just-as-often-edgy work.

The ensemble (Christina Dahl, voice; Malwina Gahrn, piano; Claus Gahrn, guitar and electronics; Michael Bjærre, percussion; Thomas Bregenborg, cello; Nina Hebib, flute and Julie Christensen, clarinet) formed in 2000, and since has premiered more than 20 new pieces and played concerts around Denmark, Poland and Norway.

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

Man of the Week–Lawrence Dillon

It’s a monster week for our gaucho amigo Lawrence Dillon whose music will be showcased at the Music Now Fest 2007, February 21, 22 and 23 at Eastern Michigan University.  This is EMU’s 15th biennial new music festival and it gets underway on Wednesday at 8 pm with a concert of pieces by EMU composers Whitney Prince and Anthony Iannaccone as well as works by Steve Reich, Alberto Ginastera and others. Faculty artists include David Pierce, Willard Zirk, Garik Pedersen, John Dorsey, Kimberly Cole-Luevano, Kristy Meretta, Julie Stone, Kathryn Goodson and guest Cary Kocher.

On Thursday, there will a composer convocation and welcome at 11 AM at Pease Auditorium where Mister Dillon will speak about “Furies and Muses: Composing in the 21st Century.”  (My money’s on the Furies.) The lecture will be followed by open student ensemble rehearsals with Dillon and the EMU Symphony Orchestra and University Choir.  Open rehearsals with the Wind Symphony and Symphonic Band are scheduled for Friday.

On Thursday night at 8 pm, there will be a faculty recital of the chamber music of Lawrence Dillon, including the aforementioned Furies and Muses, Dunigan Variations, Big Brothers and Facade. Winning composition(s) in the New Chamber Works for Horn competition will be premiered by sponsor Willard Zirk.

On Friday, there is a Meet the composer gig in the afternoon followed by the Festival finale a 8 pm–a concert by EMU’s major performing ensembles who will play Dillon’s Blown Away and Amadeus ex machina. Other works include Ogoun Badagris by Christopher Rouse; Spiel by Ernst Toch, Symphonic Band; and a piece by Anthony Iannaccone.

Presumably, on Saturday, Lawrence will go home and take a nap.

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers

Calling All Clarinetists

Our friend Marco Antonio Mazzini is inviting all clarinetists to participate in the first “Musical Marathon – Prize for Most Creative Interpretation” contest that will take place on the web, from January 10th to August 10th, 2007.  Each contestant must make and submit a recording of “Convalescencia, a solo clarinet piece by Argentinean composer Juan María Solare. This score is available HERE. All the details are here

“The title of this event focuses on the ‘creative’ word:  the piece we selected can be played (technically) by any average clarinet student, but the fun is…what to do with it,”  Marco says.  “Also, it can be performed in any clarinet.

“One of the members of the Clariperu jury is the godfather of the bass clarinet, Harry Sparnaay (my hero). Bass clarinetist don’t have many competitions (if any!).”

Marco also asked that we mention his group’s sponsors, Vandoren, Periferia Music and Radio Fabrik.   But, of course, we don’t do such things.

Enjoy the film.

[youtube]XzSKx6ksCGU[/youtube]

CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Marvin’s Friday Feldmanathon

Our friend Marvin Rosen will be airing the entire 6 hour seven minute version of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2, by the Flux Quartet, beginning at 11 am, EST on Friday, December 29, as part of a special 9 hour Classical Discoveries program devoted to American contemporary music. 

Two members of Flux–Tom Chiu and Dave Eggar–will join Marvin to discuss the work after the performance.

I believe it is safe to say that Marvin is the only broadcaster in America who both can and would undertake such a mission.

Classical Discoveries is broadcast via WPRB 103.3 FM in Princeton, NJ. and over the internet here

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Argento at Symphony Space

Argento

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, the Argento Chamber Ensemble took the audience at Symphony Space on a little transatlantic trip with an evening featuring four contemporary French composers: Fabien Levy, Gérard Pesson, Tristan Murail, and Philippe Hurel.

Of course for many readers, the phrase ‘contemporary French composers’ will evoke one word (especially with Murail being one of the composers in question) – spectralism. For those of you how aren’t familiar with the term, spectralism is an approach to composition that arises from the analysis of the partials of a particular sound or sounds (its spectrum). How this information relates to the music written naturally varies from composer to composer, but the results often have some relationship to the overtone series and often require the performers to navigate microtones and precise dynamic indications. Though spectral music has been around for 20+ years old in France now, it’s still making inroads with audiences in the United States. Indeed, the men and women of the Argento ensemble have helped pave many of these roads by featuring spectral music from both sides of the Atlantic in their concerts over the past six years.

On Friday night, however, the focus was squarely on the composers and their music rather than on the movement. Were it not for a few passing references in the program notes and the evening’s “Shades of Sound” title, listeners would’ve had little clue that the pieces presented belonged to a particular school. Even a listener acquainted with spectralism through its orchestral canon would have had reason to be surprised at what he heard. The only tendencies that the seven pieces on the bill overtly shared were attentiveness to detail and acute awareness of the sonic surface.

Hurel’s …à mesure opened the concert with a splash of tempered noise that periodically dissolved into octaves shared by the ensemble. Eventually the gyrations coalesced into a hocketed loop that then eerily settles into a conclusion.

Next came the U.S. premiere of Murail’s Les Ruines circulaires for clarinet and violin. Murail programmatically describes the piece as a mid-dream confrontation, and the image is apt. The music came to an intense gestural climax with the two instruments relentlessly climbing on top of one another only to tumble back down again and again.

The first half of the program wrapped up with the evening’s only electronic work, Levy’s Soliloque on Fabien, Tristan, Gérard and Philippe. This ‘meta-score’ (to use Levy’s terminology) takes samples of the other pieces with which it’s programmed and enmeshes them into a new purely electronic work (it also sticks the composers’ first names into the title – more info about it all here). It’s a neat idea, and it had some intriguing moments as its samples fluttered back and forth across the border of recognition. There was some nice spatialization too. Ultimately though, it suffered from sounding very Super Collider-y (perhaps an inevitable consequence since it was written entirely within the software).

The second half opened with my favorite work of the night. Tristan Murail is a composer of subtlety, and his C’est un jardin secret… for solo viola is a direct expression of that fact. Stephanie Griffin whispered her instrument into the piece by imperceptibly increasing the bow pressure. From that teasing opening, the piece enters into a sound world of timbre fused with melody. It’s gorgeous.

Pesson’s Rebus had the misfortune of following C’est, but it was the right piece to do so. The work is for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, and it takes Tavener’s In Nomine theme as its inspiration. In Rebus’s brief 2-minute span, the cantus firmus is spun into a series of bright, pleasant harmonies.

Swapping the viola for a trombone, Argento dug into Fabien Levy’s Risâla fî-l-hob wa fî’ilm al-handasa. The title is Arabic for “small treatise on love and geometry,” and the music is inspired by ornamentation in Islamic art. The first movement opened fiercely and then gave way to a second section that felt slow-motion-like in comparison. My favorite moments of the second moments arose from some interesting interplay between the bass clarinet and the trombone.

The night’s finale was Pesson’s Le Gel, par jeu, which the composer labels a danse macabre. The piece hops between some intense textures and scrounges through a few prominent quotes. Pesson cleverly replaces the traditional xylophone with a bass marimba that he uses to good effect. The whole thing loses a bit of steam about halfway through, but remains thoroughly listenable.

All in all, the concert was a testament to the diversity of the French new music scene and to Argento’s ability to show it off. Keep on eye out for the next Argento concert in January at Merkin.

Photo from Argentomusic.org