The big news out of Los Angeles this morning is that Gustavo Dudamel, the 26-year-old Venezuelan wunderkind, will replace Esa-Pekka Salonen when he leaves the LA Phil at the end of his term in 2009. Salonen plans to spend more of his time composing.
For those of you who may not be familiar with it, there is a seminal document called The Cluetrain Manifesto that defines a new style of communication in an age in which everyone and everything is electronically connected. Its premise, to which I subscribe, is that the internet is fundamentally different from mass media like television because it allows lots of people to have “human to human” conversations (with all the complexity and difficulty that implies) rather than being force fed a one-sided party line or mass marketing message.
There can be negative aspects to this ubiquetous connectedness. Some people hide behind the mask of anonymity on the internet to say and do cruel and destructive things. But, in the best case scenario, the web allows us to talk to each other and–under the right conditions of respect, transparency, and honesty–to learn and even grow into a community where people can disagree without being disagreeable. I believe Sequenza21 is one of those rare communities and that makes me proud.
The first of the Manifesto’s 95 theses is this: “Markets are conversations.” In other words, if people are talking seriously about your product, or your Whitney concert, that is a positive thing from both a human and commercial point of view.
Just an old hippie (and professional marketer’s) point of view.
p.s. We need a new conversation started over on the Composer Forum page. If you don’t have a user name or password to post something let me know and I’ll fix you up.
Lots of terrific new reviews over on the CD Review page.
I listen to the fantastic Counterstream radio (see toilet seat icon) while I work and yesterday heard a terrific piece by Ezra Sims and it occurred to me that somebody ought to voluteer to write a regular column here every week or every other week called something like “Underrated,” which would focus on composers we don’t hear much about.
Contrary to speculation that the mystery man in Friday’s photo is a Guantanamo detainee or a middle school crossing guard, the fashion-forward gentleman in question is, in fact, the Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, aka JacobTV, whose work (it says here in the press release) “…has had a huge impact on the European music scene in the past decade, but he is far less known in the U.S.” It could happen.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, that well-known new music venue, is concluding its Spring 2007 Whitney Live series with Grab It!, a three-day festival dedicated to JacobTV, Wednesday to Friday, May 2-4, 2007 at the Whitney at Altria in mid-town Manhattan. The festival is the first large-scale examination of his work on this side of the pond, featuring some of his signature pieces as well as recent compositions and premieres, video, instrumental work, and a new evening-length dance piece set to his boombox music. He will also unveil a major CD/DVD anthology of his work on the Dutch label Basta, which includes orchestral music, boombox works, chamber music and video.
That would explain the “three pounds” of CDs I got from the Whitney which, by the way, are still up for grabs although, frankly, judging from the catty comments, you folks are not taking this opportunity nearly seriously enough.
Among the participants and performers in the festival are PRISM Quartet, Miro Dance Theatre, New Century Quartet, Frank J. Oteri, Kevin Gallagher, Electric Kompany, Margaret Lancaster, Dorothy Lawson, Meehan/Perkins Duo, and Kathleen Supové
The back story is that Limor Tomer, who curates the “Whitney Live” events, heard JacobTV’s music when the Prism sax quartet did a whole evening of his work at Symphony Space last year (Prism performs on the May 2 concert, then again twice in Philadelphia a few days later). She went wild over the music and decided to take the risk of programming three nights of his work, although no one here is really familiar with it. She hired the terrific new music publicist and all-round hottie Aleba Gartner to promote the show and, of course, we all know about my character flaws in the area of pretty gals.
Speaking of which, Aleba is also promoting the June in Buffalo Festival June 4-10 this year. This is one of the top festivals in America and it gets surprisingly little coverage although we always try to do our part. Anybody live in the Buffalo area who would like to “audit” the festival, do a little deep immersion, and keep a daily Sequenza 21 diary of the event? Something can be arranged.
Other stuff: I was having a Rome withdrawal attack last night and tuned into Showtime’s new Tudors mini-series. Pretty good, actually, but my favorite part is when a scruffy young man turns up at the cathedral with a letter from the Bishop of Canterbury introducing him as Thomas Tallis, a bright prospect who plays the organ, flute, sings and “composes a bit.”
And, finally, if I haven’t said so already, I think Steve Layton does a fantastic job week after week with his Click Picks. Thanks much, Steve. You’re a big part of our little success.
In 1973 my mother bought me my first toy piano at Harvey’s Department Store in Nashville. This is not quite the heartwarming tale of a little tyke that it might at first seem to be, since I was at the time a student at New England Conservatory, and she was getting it for me so I could play the Cage Suite for Toy Piano in a concert in Jordan Hall. It turned out that, completely inadvertently (only operating according to her generosity), she had got me the Steinway of toy pianos, a Schoenhut. I’ve continued to play the Cage over the years, and last summer my toy piano more or less just fell apart.
As I thought about buying a new one, it occurred to me that I should do an inaugural concert on it. I began to ask people to write pieces for me, and mostly they agreed to do.
The concert is on Sunday, April 8 at 8:00pm in the Marshall Room in the Music Building at Boston University (855 Commonwealth Avenue).
The concert includes–in addition to the Cage–pre-existing pieces by Kyle Gann, Eve Beglarian, Richard Whalley, and Dai Fujikura (for toy piano and violin pizzicato–the violinist will be Peter Zazofsky). There are new pieces, which will be having their first performances, by Lyle Davidson, Pozzi Escot, Stephen Feigenbaum, Michael Finnissy, Philip Grange, John Heiss, Derek Hurst (with electronic sounds–i.e. on my boombox), Matthew McConnell, Matthew Mendez, Nico Muhly, Ketty Nez (for toy piano and piano–Ketty will be the pianist), Dave Smith, Jeremy Woodruff, William Zuckerman, and me (for clavichord and toy piano–the clavichord player will be Peter Sykes). (I’m pretty sure that’s everybody.) The pieces are all really good and all really different from each other.
I hope you can come to this (what can only be described as an) unusual concert.
Well, okay, so it’s recorded but we now have in-house music for your dining, dancing and surfing pleasure thanks to our friends at the American Music Center and their new Counterstream Radio. Click on the blue thing with the white toilet seat in the right column and up will pop a dandy little player that delivers an amazing variety of “new” music–in the broadest possible sense. If your tastes run from Judith Lang Zaimont to Cecil Taylor to Miguel Frasconi, you’ve come to the right place. Nice going Frank, Molly, Ian and gang.
Lots of neat things happening involving some of our favorite people this week at the MATA Young Composers – Now festival in Brooklyn. Brian Sacawa and Jenny Lin are playing in tonight’s performance. Alex Ross will lead a panel discussion before Saturday night’s concert.
Grant Gershon’s L.A. Master Chorale is premiering an extremely ambitious work by Christopher Rouse at Disney Hall on March 25th– a 90 minute Requiem for double chorus, children’s chorus, baritone soloist (Sanford Sylvan) and large orchestra. A couple of weeks ago Grant gave an informal talk on the piece at the piano for the chorale’s board of directors. An enterprising staff member videotaped it, edited it and posted it on Youtube. Good stuff. Have a look and listen.
[youtube]1SDSBrGsw8Y[/youtube]
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?
Sebastian 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.
Any musical work which has a long. complex, and– dare I say it? –troubled history — can’t help but raise a red flag. Is the artist wrestling with something alive and kicking, or is he or she merely tinkering? Lou Harrsion’s “gay opera” Young Caesar, which began as a 1969 commission from the group Encounters, was first staged as a puppet opera for vocalists and 5 instrumentalists. A subsequent version, for 11 instrumentalists, onstage singers, and full chorus, followed, and this one, performed by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in 1988, was roundly criticized, though the performers, some of whom were “coming out” for the first time in it, embraced the work wholeheartedly. A further revised version for the Lincoln Center Festival, to be directed by Mark Morris, and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, fell through Yet Harrison ( 1917- 2003 ) persisted — “I’m going to get that work right before I die ” — and French Canadian conductor Nicole Paiement, who premiered “the final cut”, or Urtext, if you will, in San Francisco in mid-February was an avid midwife in the process. But what are we to make of the final product? Was it worth the wait, or is it too little and too late? A little bit of both, but more of the latter.
What went wrong? Well, judged from what saw or didn’t see — timidity on all sides, as well as narration, recitatives, and spoken texts ad infinitum, which made it sound like a largely 2 hour 41 minute lecture instead of a live theatrical event, which is incredible given the fact that Young Caesar purports to show how the man who’d one day rule the world, started to become that person. But Robert Gordon’s book fails to deliver the goods, and if the spine of a piece isn’t strong how can it stand up and move, and if the subject, forget style, doesn’t catch fire, all the revisions in the world amount to nothing but window dressing. That’s sad because Harrison has been the important, influential — on Paul Dresher and many others — and sometimes great composer of pieces like Mass to St. Anthony (1939), Varied Trio (1987), Piano Concerto with Selected Orchestra (1985), and the groundbreaking, with Cage, Double Music (1941).
But Harrison’s instrumental writing here for a 17 member pit band, including 5 percussionists, failed to drive the piece forward. Sure, you could argue that this composer isn’t interested in verismo melodramatics, and that he’s all for an Asian-inflected timelessness, and you’de be right, but the music as music, and the drama as drama, failed to hold the attention.
And so we’re stuck with a talky “drama” which covers the coming of age ceremony at 16 of Caesar (tenor Eleazar Rodriguez), the political machinations of his Aunt Julia (mezzo Wendy Hillhouse), his departure for Bithynia — a kingdom bordering the Black Sea in what’s now Turkey — to get ships for General Themus (baritone William O’Neill ), where he meets King Nicomedes IV, Philopater (baritone Eugene Brancoveanu ), has his first and possibly only gay affair — historians, though not Gordon are divided on this — and departs for Rome at age 19, a changed man, poised to conquer the world. But we didn’t see, much less feel that here in director Brian Staufenbiel’s version. Instead we saw a Caesar in an unbecoming white tunic — the ugly, baldly amateurish costumes were by Richard Battle — a Nicomedes who looked like Virginia Mayo’s Helena in Victor Saville’s pic The Silver Chalice ( 1954 ), and a drag queen, outfitted in a rosy mesh top; a black-robed chorus, who held white masks like lorgnettes — was this supposed to be camp ? — and a Julia with a Bette Midler corona of shocking red republican curls.
The whole production played like an uneasy mix of the amateur and the thoroughly professional. The only real winners here were Branconveanu, who despite the cards being stacked against him, managed to negotiate his part’s high tessitura with skill and point, and project a stage presence which overpowered Rodriguez’s adequately sung though barely stage present one — perhaps his character’s supposed to be ” a work in progress” ? — Hillhouse’s amusing Julia, Ensemble Parallele’s 19-member male chorus, and Paiement’s expert orchestra, especially in the second act overture. Strong solo turns were delivered by Yvonne Fong Lai on tack piano and celesta, Jennifer Cass on harp, Katie Rife on marimba, Graeme Jennings, violin, and Katrina Weeks, viola. But the erotic charge this piece should have had was largely missng — Caesar and Nicomedes’ bedding looked accidental and no fun despite a glaring scarlet sheet — though a white thong dance between Lawrence Pech and Peter Brandenhoff — and a still as marble pose by Peter Brandenhoff who seemed the very embodient of Apollo struck paydirt. I’m sure the 1st century BCE was more interesting than what we got here.
Even Mankiewicz’s much maligned, Cleopatra (1963), despite its second half longueurs, is a lot more fun, and in every way more probing, even profound — the phenomenal score’s by Alex North. Would that Young Caesar’s book, conception, and yes, music, ascended, even briefly, to its genuine heights.
Ensemble Parallle will perform Young Caesar again, on April 3rd, 2007 at The UCSC Recital Hall, University of California, Santa Cruz. ph. 831.459.2159. http://events.ucsc.edu.tickets/.
Let’s go to the old mailbag and see what’s happening in the exciting world of new music. Ah, here’s something. Our friends at the American Music Center are launching Counterstream Radio, a showcase for new music by U.S. composers, on March 16 at 3 p.m. EST. To mark the official station launch, Counterstream Radio will broadcast an exclusive conversation between Meredith Monk and Björk. No word on who gets to wear the chicken suit.
Actually, the station is streaming right now so you don’t have to wait until the 16th to try it out. Any chance of getting a popup player over here so people can listen while they’re reading S21? Tech people?
Oh, wow. On Bach’s 322nd birthday, March 21, 2007, C.F. Peters is celebrating the publication of a new set of variations, 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg, based on the Goldberg Variations theme, with a mini-concert and reception at Steinway Hall. Blair McMillan will perform six of the twelve variations. The composers are C. Curtis-Smith, Jennifer Higdon, Mischa Sarche Zupko, Stanley Walden, Bright Sheng, Derek Bermel, David Del Tredici, Fred Lerdahl, William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, Ralf Gothoni, and Fred Hersch.
And then there’s this. The NY Times web site is running a group blog in March called “The Score” that will include writings by Glenn Branca, Alvin Curran, Michael Gordon and Annie Gosfield. They will also run audio excerpts from an exclusive interview with Steve Reich conducted in February.
In a March 5 piece, Michael Gordon attempts to answer the eternal question faced by all contemporary composers: What Kind of Music is That Anyway? (My favorite answer–“Post-Ugly”–is attributed to his co-conspirator David Lang.)
Alas, the feature is on TimesSelect, which is a pay service that costs about $8 a month but they have a free two-week trial offer if you want to check it out. Or, Michael sent me an e-mail copy…nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
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.