I wasn’t able to make the premiere screening on July 4 but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about a new documentary film called The End of New Music, which follows Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Missy Mazzoli, the founders of Free Speech Zone, as they tour the East Coast with the groups Newspeak and NOW Ensemble, playing concerts in unlikely venues like clubs and bars and bringing new music to audiences that might not otherwise be exposed to it.  The film, directed by Stephen S. Taylor, takes a verite approach to the tour, combined with interviews and various performance footage.  You can watch video samples or buy a copy at American Beat Productions.  You can also read Steve Smith’s terrific Times review there. 

Anybody seen the film?  (I know you have, Judd.)

Bernard Holland has a funny piece in today’s Times about setting out to listen to Marc-André Dalvavie’s new CD and getting mugged instead by an roving gang of French musical poseurs.  A couple of choice bon mots: 

So breathless were the revelations contained in this essay, called “Space, Line, Color,” it seemed for a moment the music could wait. Expounding on hearing, space and your stereo system, it reads: “while right/left movement can be recreated, front/back movement is replaced by a sensation of sound advancing or receding.” So it’s true that sound is softer when it is farther away than when it is in front of you. That will be useful the next time I come across a marching band going down the street.

Here is another verbal space walk: “Hence some of” Mr. Dalbavie’s “works do not limit their musical space to the concert platform, but extend to the entire hall,” he writes. “The defocalisation thus achieved calls into question the spatial hierarchy resulting from any frontal presentation of the music.”

I sure wish Gabrieli had thought about that 450 years ago; imagine the antiphonal music he could have written, with sound flying from every direction at people standing in the middle of his church.

Joshua Bell tells the Korea Times that he’s working toward writing his own stuff in a few years.  Could work, I suppose.  His pal Edgar Myers is a decent composer and fine musician.  But, you pretty much have to go back to Rachmaninoff to find someone who was “great” as both a performer and composer.  (Or, I’m sure someone will remind me that you don’t have to go back that far.)

Same thing for conductors.  Okay, Lenny was great at both but most are not.  The most excruciating half hour I ever spent in a concert hall (and this includes Chinese opera) was listening to some endless percussion drivel by Michael Tilson Thomas that he had forced upon the poor kids in the New World Symphony.  I really admire Esa Pekka but I just can’t warm to his music.

So, gang, what’s the verdict? 

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Performed by the Rubio String Quartet.  Photography by James Archambeault