The Original New Music Community
The Harvard Crimson reports on the return of a notable alumnus who has done pretty well in this composing business and had this to say about his old teacher Leon Kirchner:
[Kirchner] himself felt that no matter what he did he’d never be as good as Shubert and passed that onto the students. It became a form of self-flagellation, kills the creative spirit, and was incipient in his teaching.
Sound familiar to anyone?
For reasons I no longer remember, I had always thought of Carl Nielsen as a stodgy composer whose works were a little severe and chilly–the musical equivalent of one of Bergman’s more depressing films. Winter Light in grainy, black and white sound. I started to rethink (or I should say, to relisten to) Nielsen a couple of years ago when Alex Ross mentioned in one of our discussions here that he considered Uncle Carl to be one of the most “underrated” modern composers.
Last year’s DaCapo release of the opera Maskarade convinced me that I had gotten Nielsen all wrong. He’s really an enormously fun guy with a wicked sense of humor, a refined touch of romance, and a level of formal neoclassic chops that are matched only by Stravinsky. Maybe. Nielsen just might be better.
To bolster that argument, let me point to two new Nielsen releases from DaCapo that have appeared so far this year. The first is a collection of his shorter opera and theater pieces called Orchestral Music played with unbridled enthusiasm and skill by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Thomas Dausgaard. Playful, refined, beautifully performed and recorded, it’s no surprise that both Gramophone and Classics Today picked the disk as their “CD of the Month.” It will certainly be near the top of our list of best recordings of the year.
As will String Quartets Vol. 1, which features two of Nielsen’s string quartets (in G minor and G major) and the only string quintet (in G major) he ever composed. Lovingly played by the Young Danish String Quartet, with Tim Fredericksen on viola, this is moving, passionate, deeply romantic music that can, if you’re paying close attention, move you to tears by its sheer perfection.
I’m prepared to say that these are the two best Nielsen recordings ever made, although I obviously haven’t heard them all. I simply can’t imagine recordings that could be any better.
No? Well you should, and can, this Friday night, May 4, 8PM at the Robert Miller Gallery, 524 W. 26th Street, New York, NY on the second night of a three-day music/art festival called Look&Listen.
Finally had a chance to meet up with Brian Sacawa after all these years for lunch at Ralph’s, a New York institution since 1952. Got to regale him with tales of having seen Dexter and Stan and Jimmy and Zoot and Gerry doing that thing they did so well while they were still doing it. I’ve reached the age where “I was there” has become a conversation capper–one of the few perks of being old.
Brian is good people and one of the most dedicated players and champions of new music around. 
Catch the show Friday and check out his new album called american voices on innova which features works by Michael Gordon, Lee Hyla, Erik Spangler, Chris Theofanidis, Derek Hurst, Keeril Makan and Philip Glass. Street date is July 24 but you can get it from the web site now. You can also get a free copy from me if you volunteer to write a review.
FJO flags Terry Teachout’s WSJ piece called Jazz Wins a Pulitzer – But did Ornette Coleman deserve his prize?
Thoughts?
Lots of neat stuff happening this week and beyond.
Pulse, the composers federation that includes our amigo Darcy James Argue will close out its 2006-2007 “season” with a new music project called Sihr Halal, Music of Praise and Celebration. The concert is Saturday, May 5th 2007 at 8:30 PM at Roulette located at 20 Greene Street in SoHo (tickets are $15 at the door, $10 students/seniors). The project is funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections program.
Sihr Halal features the premiere of six compositions by the composers of Pulse—Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, and Yumiko Sunami. You can get a taste of what’s in store by going over to the Pulse blog where you’ll find audio excerpts from all of the pieces available online (recorded during rehearsal) along with commentary from the composers.
Another friend of the family, Jenny Lin, is doing an all Valentin Silvestrov program, including Der Bote, Epitaph, Post Scriptum & Drama Sunday, May 6, 2007, 5:00 PM 31 Little West 12th Street New York, New York 10014 Info here or call 212.463.8630.
Young-Ah Tak, the amazing pianist who blew the joint away with her performance of Judith Lang Zaimont’s Wizards (2003) at last year’s Sequenza21 concert is playing the piece again (along with works by people named Haydn, Debussy, and Schumann) at the Yamaha Piano Salon, 639 Fifth Ave., 34th Street (entrance on 54th Street between Madison and Fifth). The concert starts at 7:30 and admission is free. If you want to catch a real comer while she’s still making her bones, this is a great chance.
…Will just have to wait… Since, in just a little over a week, this nearly-lifelong Northwesterner will have left Seattle and be stumbling around our new home:
Yep, Houston, Texas! My wife has an incredibly sweet job waiting at the Houston Chronicle, and I’m happy to play Mister tag-along. As to music, I’ve done the “virtual” scope-out of the big and small institutions, ensembles, and universities. You all know me, though; I’ll be poking around in the cracks, looking for the really interesting folk.
As to its out-of-the-way “podunkiness”, I might have to remind a few of you that while you were distracted elsewhere, Houston somehow sneaked up to become the country’s fourth-largest city. And it’s not finished growing by a long shot… Whether that means more nights at the opera, I seriously doubt — after all, already over 40% of those millions are Latino, over 20% African-American, and it’s home to one of the largest Vietnamese concentrations in the country. Whatever your stereotype of the city, the Bush-buddies and their poof-haired wives are the real minority now, and shrinking every day. Whatever form the musical scene takes, there’s a feeling that some very dynamic, 21st-century stuff can grow along with the city.
The wonder-that-is-the-web means I’ll still be hanging around through the whole move, and when I’m settled the click-picks will undoubtably pick up where they clicked off. Bien viaje to me! I’ve got to go run all my old coats to the Goodwill and buy a bunch of new light shirts…
It seems somehow fitting after a week of inexplicable madness that Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream will get its New York premiere tomorrow night when the Kronos Quartet joins the Brooklyn Philharmonic for a concert called Kronos+Cosmos.
Wolfe describes My Beautiful Scream as a kind of non-concerto for string quartet. The work is a gradual unfolding and unraveling of a slow motion scream: the quartet aspect of the music is quiet and fine while the orchestra aspect is violent and menacing. Co-commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmoniue de Radio France, the Basel Sinfonietta, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, My Beautiful Scream was originally premiered in February 2004 at Festival Presence in Paris.
Wolfe began writing My Beautiful Scream shortly after 9/11. As she describes the time in which the piece was written: “I lived in downtown Manhattan not far from where the towers stood. At night I would have this strange sensation that I was going to die. In general my life was very beautiful, so it was this strange existence of living in beauty and having the sensation of a long drawn out internal scream.”
The concert will also include a performance of the visionary symphonic work, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Each of the seven movements of The Planets will be accompanied by exclusive film footage provided by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Here’s a bit of good news for a change. Our regular Rob Deemer has accepted an offer from SUNY-Fredonia for its tenure-track composition chair position starting in the Fall of 2007.
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:
Gilbert Artman and Urban Sax (France)
Urban Sax is a long-running ensemble / musical extravaganza founded by the French musician Gilbert Artman. It was was formed in 1973, when Artman organized a concert by a group of eight saxophonists at a classical music festival in the south of France. In subsequent years, the number of players grew to 12, 20, 30, and by now consists of 52 musicians (with saxophones ranging from the soprano to bass registers). Artman frequently integrates local musicians and dancers into his performances, and thus the ensemble can encompass as many as 200 performers.
Urban Sax has performed throughout Europe and Asia. The group’s performances are art happenings; players wear metallic space suit-like costumes together with masks, and each performance is a unique event that is planned for the particular architectural or natural space where it takes place. The music is strongly minimal and ritualistic, as much about space and spectacle as anything else. Later, larger incarnations have the look of some mad cross between Sun Ra, Blue Man Group, and Cirque du Soleil. Another way of thinking about it is as a kind of sax analog to what Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham were doing with guitars around the same time. It also seems to me to be a strong progenitor to all things “Bang-On-A-Can”.
The link at the top of this post will take you to the official Urban Sax website. It’s mostly in French, but for non-speakers there’s still plenty of photos, a discography, four short Quicktime movies of performances (in Lebanon, Tokyo, Versailles, and Dubai), and even a score to peruse.
BUT: What I really want you to do is take a listen to an MP3 file kindly parked on the web by NY/NJ’s greatest radio asset, WFMU. It’s the complete side one of Urban Sax 2, released in Europe in 1978. (Urban Sax 1 came out in 1977, with sides one and two called “part 1” and “part 2” respectively; Urban Sax 2‘s two sides were labeled “part 3” and “part 4”.)
The ensemble used in this recording: 27 saxophones (11 altos, 13 tenors, 2 baritones and 1 bass sax), a chorus of eight voices, and one tam-tam (played by Artman himself).
In 1979 I was a poor Air Force newbie, stationed in Wichita Falls, Texas. Bereft of my collection of records, scores and books, with no musical instrument at hand, my only connection to art-music was a few cassettes and a small, single-speaker player. But fate smiled in the form of the manager of a local mall record store, who beyond any hope or expectation happened to be a fellow progressive-music geek. He dubbed cassettes for me, of all kinds of obscure and wonderful things — and one of them was this very piece. Those tapes were musical life-savers for me, and will always remain full of charged memory. Eternal thanks, Larry (who I’m happy to report reconnected with me via the web! More than twenty years on now, he’s currently driving a bus in Austin.)
Nice piece by Anne Midgette in today’s Times about Ingram Marshall whose work I happen to like a lot. Put him down for your new “Underrated” column, Trevor.
Galen’s Take a Friend to Orchestra (TAFTO) piece is up today on Drew McManus’ Adaptistration blog. Good reading for a nasty, rainy day.
Frank J. Oteri will be interviewing Olga Neuwirth at the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage tomorrow in a special one-on-one composer discussion produced by the Philadelphia Music Project. Details here. If you’re in Philadelphia and want to go and write about it, let me know and I’ll get you in.
Catch Corey Dargel on this week’s episode of Steve Paul’s Puppet Music Hall. The whole episode is ici and free.
Some good morning music for your dining and dancing pleasure. A nice piece called “Baile” by Argentinian composer Francisco Colasanto, played by Marco Antonio Mazzini, who thinks it may be the first and only work for contrabass clarinet and electronics written in South America.
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