Composers

Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, New York

13 Ways to Listen to Post-Ugly Music

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.

by Jerry Bowles
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.

by Steve Layton
CDs, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Critics

Contemporary Grande Frappucinos

CDOut my (Seattle) way, local composer and Seattle Weekly columnist Gavin Borchert this week offered up something titled “Small Apologies“. A few excerpts:

Not that I have anything against Tony Bennett or Norah Jones or any of the other recording artists whose work is propped up next to the biscotti, but I was wondering when Starbucks would get around to classical music. At last they have, a CD starring the home team: The Seattle Symphony and Starbucks Entertainment have announced their co-release of Echoes, containing newly commissioned works (!) from six composers [Bright Sheng, John Harbison, David Schiff, David Stock, Samuel Jones, Gerard Schwarz, with an older piece by Aaron Kernis], each one asked to somehow rework an older piece he (and they’re all “he”s) loved. As an opportunity for time-travel collaboration, a meeting of musical minds from different cultures and eras, it’s a great idea; as a concession to conservative classical fans who can’t take their new music straight, it’s dismaying. [….]

The fact that Starbucks and the SSO are giving seven living composers exposure is exemplary. What bothers me is the philosophy that seems to underlie the project, one endemic to the classical music business as a whole these days. Composers and performers alike so often present new work, whether strong or weak, innovative or comfy, timid or bold, with a tentative sort of hat-in-hand stance—emphasizing, above any other virtue the music might have, that it won’t be scary. Constant reassurance, even apology, is the tone, in media coverage, program notes, PR material, casting musicians as supplicants and listeners as 3-year-olds who have to be coaxed to finish their beets. [….]

There is an untapped audience for new classical music, but reaching them, I believe, will require a new approach. They’re the people who aren’t averse to classical music, who are interested in the arts in general, but who need a reason to give their time and money to us rather than everything else competing for their attention in our hypersaturated culture. Suppose the wheedling and cajoling with which we serve up music is turning them off. These people aren’t going to attend classical concerts or buy CDs unless they think they’re going to hear something they can get excited about. I don’t mean merely not offended, I mean actively thrilled. Which means, for heaven’s sake, we ought to start talking about something other than nonscariness, ought to start pushing aesthetic virtues other than accessibility.

The floor’s open…

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Metropolitan Opera, New York, Opera

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?

The Metropolitan Opera announced that its co-production of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha with the English National Opera will debut next season on April 11, 2008.   The ENO is doing nine performances of Satyagraha this April.  Written in 1980, Satyagraha is based on Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, as he developed his philosophy of nonviolent protest as a powerful force for change. It is the second work in the ”portrait” trilogy by Glass, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84).  Satyagraha involves the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch, two of the three artistic directors of the visionary British theater company Improbable.

On the bad news front, the Met has dumped a scheduled revival of Tobias Picker’s honorable An American Tragedy in favor of Tan Dun’s terminally lame The First Emperor, apparently because it has a chance to take the production on the road to China. 

It’s great to see that Peter Gelb is going with artistic merit and not being tempted by the possibility of big crowds and big bucks.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Tom Myron on Performance Today

Here’s a programming note to remember.  Performance Today will broadcast Tom Myron’s Violin Concerto #2 on Tuesday’s program. 

The performance–by the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra–was recorded on 5/14/06 in Alexandria Virginia; Elisabeth Adkins, soloist.

Performance Today is carried on 250 member stations around the
country.  For info on where and when you can hear the show in your area, visit www.performancetoday.org.  The show will also be available for on-demand listening through the website for seven days.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Miller Theater, Opera

Lost in Translation?

Since it’s opera week here at Sequenza 21 and there’s a lot of chatter in the comments about transplanting operas between cultures and Galen has raised the topic of fugues in the invisible YouTube video below, it seems somehow fitting to mention that  Miller Theater and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music are presenting tonight and tomorrow night the U.S. premiere of Lost Highway by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, a multimedia opera based on the weird and wacky David Lynch film of the same name.  Film buffs will recall that Lynch’s film involves sex, murder and a character named Fred Madison who mysteriously becomes Pete Dayton through a mental disturbance known as “psychogenic fugue.”  Can you dig it? 

Timothy Weiss conducts the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and an all-student cast.  Anybody going?  Write us a review.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Opera

Man (or Woman) Overboard! Tobias Picker’s Back in Town

Speaking of great American operas, Tobias Picker has written two of them; Emmeline, which is an unqualified masterpiece, and An American Tragedy, which I think history will regard more dearly than its contemporary reviews might suggest.  Between those two landmarks, Picker wrote a kind of “forgotten” opera called Thérèse Raquin, an epic based on the Zola novel which, like Tragedy, involves an unwanted lover being chucked overboard in favor of a more attractive alternative.  Picker’s psychiatrist, if he has one, could probably make something of that.

Thérèse Raquin premiered at The Dallas Opera in 2001 and is now having its New York premiere run, in a revised chamber version prepared by Picker, from Dicapo Opera Theatre.

The opera has three more performances this coming weekend: Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 25, at 4 p.m. Dicapo Opera Theatre is located at 184 East 76th Street in Manhattan, just off Lexington Avenue and directly underneath St. Jean-Baptiste Church. 

I haven’t seen Thérèse Raquin yet and don’t have any critical guidance to offer but Picker is one of the very best American opera composers and his music is never less than compelling.  Get on down to Dicapo this weekend.

Here’s a message from Rama Gottfried:

//

at last!  here it is. tomorrow night::

::envelopes for orchestra::
5 minutes of mercury wobbling in space for a 57 piece orchestra
+ and a stacked concert of works by my extremely talented friends at
the manhattan school of music

friday, 2.23.07 –  7:30p
borden auditorium, manhattan school of music
122nd/Broadway (take 1 train to 116(downhill walk) or 125(uphill))

it will be good, you should come.

*** don’t forget to sit in the balcony, it sounds best from there.
the stairs are just as you enter the hall on both sides.

\\

high 5s to all,

 


rama

 

 

 

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Opera

Is Grapes of Wrath the Great American Opera?

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I don’t know Ricky Ian Gordon personally but he e-mails me frequently with updates on his projects, never neglecting to sign off with “xxxooo” which I find endearing although I’m sure he does the same for all the guys.  I know and like his music mainly from Audra McDonald and a wonderful recording of his songs called Bright-Eyed Joy but nothing I’ve heard or read prepared me for the universal praise for the Minnesota Opera’s production of Gordon’s (with libretto by Michael Korie) The Grapes of Wrath.  What we have here, apparently, is a real contender for the title of the Great American Opera. 

Listen to the often cranky Mark Swed: “As far as I was concerned — and this is a minority opinion — the nearly four-hour opera was too short. Had Gordon and Korie been allowed to follow their original bliss and create a two-night or more American “Ring” cycle, I would have gladly returned for more.”

Or Variety:  “Gordon and Korie have produced a bit of a conundrum: a very long show about suffering and endurance that leaves the viewer enlivened. The intelligence and compassion of their work, combined with the evident vitality and belief of the cast in this opera’s merit, supply high emotion with depth and compassion. This is not a happy story, but its telling is nothing short of incandescent.”

St. Paul Pioneer Press:   “Ten years and $2 million in the making, the Minnesota Opera’s world premiere of “The Grapes of Wrath” turns out to be well worth the time and expense: It’s a grand, sprawling, politically astute and musically compelling affair that amply and accessibly answers the rhetorical question:  ‘An opera about Okies?'”

Bernard Holland?  Well, Bernie’s been sour grapes (not to mention irrelevant) for some time now.

by Jerry Bowles
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.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Steve’s click picks #17

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:

Caroline M. Breece (b.1977 — UK/US)

Michael G. Breece (b. 1971 — US)

Michael and Caroline BreeceMike over at Avant Music News this week purely by chance beat me to posting about Caroline. I’d planned showing off her and her husband Michael, ever since I bumped into them on Myspace last summer. A number of married composer couples come to mind, but few if any will have the story that’s Caroline’s and Michael’s. A lot of it may only be known to them, but the part we see shows the real possibilities in what might at first seem the improbable.

Caroline, until recently a British native, has the “official” classical education and experience. Playing, studying and composing from a very early age, touring with the Suffolk Youth Orchestra, degrees from the University of East Anglia… all the standard classical upbringing. Yet there’s something in how she relates these and other details (found in her site’s generous writings), and in how her own music works, that is anything but standard.

Michael on the other hand, starts right out of the gate as anything but standard, and there’s every indication that he should have rightfully just kept careening down that highway to oblivion. Hard life in a tough blue-collar non-musical family, serious emotional hurdles, not much if any financial or educational support… Yet part of that mind, against everything that says culture and environment shape us, grew its own seeds of artistic awareness. Schooled by instinct and the resources of the Indianapolis Public Library, he found something incredibly important in the work of composers from Debussy through Varèse and Cage, all the way up to the avant-garde of today. And something told him that he had to not just listen, but *make* this stuff, using whatever means he had.

The meeting of the two? I don’t have a clue. But somehow the English composer with her fresh MMus degree ran into this thundercloud of a self-made musician, and the next thing you know she’s in America. It’s definitely not a fairytale yet; Caroline and Michael both work as janitors to pay the bills, stealing whatever free time they can to create what they have to create. Yet there’s nothing “poor” about either’s music; there’s an incandescence and a real sense of discovery in there. You can hear for yourself when you visit their websites, since they’re both offering entire CDs for free download (though you can do the right thing and send them a few reasonable bucks for a full-spectrum CDR straight from their hands to your ear). And take the time to read through; nothing I write can tell you anything better about them than a few paragraphs in their own words.

by Steve Layton