Searching for Serotonin, the west coast tour by cellist David Mason and sound projectionist Daniel McNamara, landed at the Ventura College Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, November 15, 2017. Four works of experimental new music were presented including pieces by Kaija Saariaho and György Ligeti. A midweek crowd of the knowledgeable and the curious gathered to hear a combination of acoustic cello and electronics as presented by Mason and McNamara. The concert began with Sonata for Solo Cello, by György Ligeti. This was written between 1948 and 1953 at the height of Stalin’s power in Soviet Russia, and consists of
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Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Just Intonation, Los Angeles, Premieres
On November 11, 2017, the Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) formally presented the world premiere of Changes: Sixty-Four Studies for Six Harps, by James Tenney. Over 150 people filled every available chair in The Box art gallery and demand for tickets was so great that a second, preview performance had to be added. Anticipation ran high in the downtown arts district as the crowd waited to hear this extraordinary work, composed in 1985 but only fully realized this year from materials in the late James Tenney’s archives. Michael Winter, composer and one of
Read moreNEW YORK – On October 6 & 7, 2017, Park Avenue Armory presented Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Matthias Pintscher, in Répons, a major work by the recently deceased French composer Pierre Boulez. It was the first time that the composition has been heard in New York since one of its early incarnations in the 1980s (the Times was hard on him then). Boulez was an inveterate reviser, and the electroacoustic component of this piece continued to evolve with successive technological innovations. It is also the first large-scale work to be mounted
Read moreOn October 11, 2017 downtown Los Angeles was the venue for a new collaborative performance by Rachel Yezbick, Carole Kim and Eric Heep. Coaxial Arts, the new home of the wulf experimental music concert series, welcomed in a mid-week audience that arranged itself on the floor and along the brick walls in quiet expectation of an unconventional program. The performance space was darkened as the program opened with Eric Heep’s Bubble playing through the speakers. The sounds were realized from digitally generated oscillations that were processed by computer using a bubble sort algorithm. The result was a series low buzzing sounds
Read moreOn October 7, 2017 WasteLAnd presented Plainsound Glissando Modulation op 49 (2006-2007) by Wolfgang von Schweinitz for their first concert of the 2017 fall season. Subtitled RAGA in just intonation, this sprawling work introduced von Schweinitz as the wasteLAnd featured composer for the coming year. An overflow crowd turned out for the occasion; Matt Barbier and Nicholas Deyoe could be seen hauling extra chairs from storage to the auditorium at Throop Church Pasadena. Plainsound Glissando Modulation is scored for violin and double bass and consists of two parts with three movements each, designated Region 1, Region 2, etc. Violinist Andrew McIntosh and bassist Scott
Read moreTuesday, September 19, 2017 saw the first concert of the season at Monk Space, and for this occasion Luciano Berio’s challenging Sequenza series of virtuoso pieces were performed by the top musicians in Los Angeles. The event was also a fund-raiser to support new music at Monk Space with the musicians generously donating their time and talents for this extraordinary concert. A full crowd wedged itself into the cozy spaces of the Koreatown venue to hear, as the poet Edoardo Sanguineti wrote “…the sequence of sequences, which is the music of musics according to Luciano.” Each Sequenza is written for
Read moreOn Thursday, September 7, 2017 the Soundwave Concert Series in Santa Monica presented music from Trajectories, the new CD from Michael Vincent Waller released this month on the Recital label. Pianist R. Andrew Lee, in town from Denver, and cellist Seth Parker Woods from Chicago were on hand to perform, having recorded the album in Kansas City last year. A good-sized crowd assembled in the Martin Luther King Auditorium to hear this latest release from the New York-based Waller. by itself (2016), for solo piano, was first up on the program and the album notes by “Blue” Gene Tyranny state
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Boston, Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, File Under?
This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood (in Lenox, Massachusetts) was curated by three youngish stars of the new music community: pianist Jacob Greenberg (ICE), cellist Kathryn Bates (Del Sol Quartet), and violist Nadia Sirota (Q2, ACME). Each planned a chamber music concert, consisting of commissioned new works and contemporary repertory selections. The curators combined forces with the BSO in selecting pieces for the festival’s finale, an orchestra concert conducted by Stefan Asbury and Vinay Parameswaran. Commissioned works included vocal pieces by Nathan Davis and Anthony Cheung, a string quartet (with copious use of water-filled glasses and glass
Read moreOn June 27, 2017 Tuesdays@Monk Space hosted a concert titled The Flood. A full house gathered on a warm Koreatown evening to hear works by five contemporary Southern California composers as performed by the Brightwork newmusic ensemble. First up was Kaleidoscope (2014) by William Kraft, who was in attendance. This opened with a series of bright tutti notes that had a vivid luminescence combined with a sense of the mysterious. Some solid duo playing by the bass clarinet and the piccolo was followed by a softer, slower section that contained a lovely flute solo, all adding to the mystical feel.
Read moreOn Thursday, June 15, 2017 Dog Star Volume 13 landed at the Cal Arts campus for a concert titled The Mean Harpsichord. No fewer than three harpsichords were in place at The Wild Beast, where every chair was filled with someone interested in hearing experimental music at the cutting edge. The 2017 Dog Star Orchestra series, a local new music tradition since 2005, featured a total of eleven concerts this year and has been running at various locations all around Los Angeles since June 3. The first piece on the concert program was Tasten, by Eva-Maria Houben and for this
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