Last night’s Green Umbrella concert of new music was the first concert in Los Angeles solely comprising Australian music, and it was a real success. As the second part of the Phil’s recognition of Dean as composer, he was given freedom to select the program and his own role. So we saw Brett Dean as composer, as performer on viola, as conductor, as commentator, as programmer, and — in all of these — as effective communicator. This was an evening that deserved to be recorded and made available for download so that more than the thousand in Disney Hall last
Read moreSix years ago, Sequenza21 published an interesting interview with Brett Dean. The violist who was once the youngest member of the Berlin Philharmonic was beginning to be recognized as a composer. This was about the time he made his first appearance with members of the LA Philharmonic in a “Green Umbrella” concert of new music, performing his work “Intimate Decisions” for viola. S21, typically prescient, gave a lede to the interview stating that if you hadn’t heard of Dean yet, “You will. You will.” This season Dean is the first contemporary composer to be given a spotlight by the LA Phil,
Read moreFor all the allusions to chaos and complexity in the American Composers Orchestra’s Orchestra Underground concert at Zankel on Friday night, the evening was a surpisingly mellow–dare I say it, even melodic–affair. If new music is going to be this much fun to listen to there is a real danger that people are going to start coming to concerts. This is not to say the program was not adventuresome, just that it contained some unexpected crowd pleasers. The guy sitting next to me, a visiting pianist/composer from St. Louis named Ken Palmer who came strictly for the Ives opener (Ken had written his
Read moreThere seemed to be an universal agreement with Soho the Dog when he posted his famous 8 sentences, but on half of them, he was either being way too literal or just wrong. “Jazz is America’s classical music.” Yeah sure, Johns Adams & Corigliano and their peers are this continent’s contributions to the field of classical music, but this, dear fellow, is what we call a metaphor. In this case, it applies to the fact that jazz is an aesthetic that is entirely unique and has risen to the serious-minded plateau of traditional classical music. Why is that so
Read moreTonight’s joint performance at the Used Book Café by Hilary Hahn and Chris Thile was an essay in the satisfactions of virtuosity. Any concert-goer who can no longer thrill to the sound of lightning-fast fingers should go his or her way and leave the rest of us to our fun. For sure technique is not all. And for sure the steps to acquiring a technique that can thrill are becoming more brutal and inhuman to mount by the year. And, also for sure, much that is essential to extraordinary music making is often lost on the climb. Some may even
Read moreBrad Lubman has been involved in the new music scene for nearly two decades but this looks like his breakthrough season. Conductor/composer Lubman makes his guest conductor debut at the helm of the American Composers Orchestra Friday evening at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, when the ACO kicks off its 30th season with its first Orchestra Underground Composers OutFront! concert. In addition to leading the orchestra in music from Michael Gatonska, Evan Ziporyn, Michael Gandolfi, Susie Ibarra, Charles Ives and our own wunderkind Corey Dargel, Lubman will conduct the world premiere of his own Fuzzy Logic, for woodwinds, brass, percussion, synthesizer,
Read moreThe Callithumpian Consort is at work again at 8:30 pm tomorrow night at NEC’s Jordan Hall in a slightly premature celebration of the 80th anniversary of Earle Brown’s birth (it’s actually December 26). They’ll be playing Brown’s Sign Sounds, a rarely heard masterpiece of open form from that resides somewhere on the frontier between serialism and improvisation. They will perform the piece several times, and have assured us that no two performances will be alike. And they’ll also be continuing their exploration of Alvin Lucier with his Ever Present, for saxophone, flute, piano, and sine waves (which they describe it as “infinitely slow expansion of the music between your
Read moreDear Jerry- Thanks for your kind words earlier this year about the Ben Johnston String Quartet release on New World Records. I am the producer of that disc, and also the 2nd violinist in the Kepler Quartet (so, not an unbiased perspective…) I am writing you and your readership with a plea, an invitation (however you wish to frame it) to become a part of bringing this great composer’s legacy into broad daylight. We recently received a Copland grant towards finishing the recorded cycle of Ben’s 10 string quartets, but still need to raise significant dollars to make it happen.
Read moreSteve Reich turns 70 today. There will be the usual superlatives–greatest living composer, most important musical thinker, and other fun, but largely unreliable, speculations. We won’t burden Reich with any of them. The path of music history is already littered with the ghosts of greatest livings whose work has since fallen into neglect and obscurity. Others fade for awhile only to have their reputations re-claimed by forceful new advocates. One of the great things about leaving behind a body of work as essential to its time as Reich’s is that it is a legacy each age can evaluate on its own terms and through the prism of its own judgements and tastes. Suffice
Read more“What to Wear” ended its all-too-short run yesterday. When you find out its schedule for performance in New York, get your tickets right away. Better yet, get tickets for two dates (or more), because you’ll want more than one evening. As reported and commented on last week, this is the opera with music by Michael Gordon and libretto, design, direction, and occasional voice-overs by Richard Foreman. Gordon’s music is a pleasure to hear and feel. (I wouldn’t have minded a few fewer decibels.) David Rosenboom, one of whose sidelights is being dean of the CalArts School of Music, was music director
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