On Saturday, August 10, 2019 wasteLAnd presented its first Summer Academy for Composition Concert at Art Share in downtown Los Angeles. The work of eight emerging composers was performed at this event with each having participated in an intensive course of study in contemporary music during the previous week. Their pieces were work-shopped with the musicians of the wasteLAnd ensemble and reviewed by the Academy faculty of Michelle Lou, Michael Pisaro, and Brian Griffeath-Loeb. A fine crowd filled the Art Share performance hall on a warm Los Angeles summer evening in the lively downtown Los Angeles Arts District. The first
Read moreIn these days of swiping right and hooking up, having a long-term commitment is something special. So when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s founded the Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute with plans to carry on for 15 years, that is cause for celebration. RDCI is funded by the estate of the Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Robert DeGaetano, who passed away in 2015. Each year until 2033, four composers at the beginning of their career will be selected for the Institute. They’re given one-on-one guidance and instruction from a mentor composer (Anna Clyne in 2019) for several months, a week-long residency in
Read moreThe 15th annual Dog Star Orchestra series of concerts concluded with Civil Twilight, held at the CalArts Wild Beast and environs, presenting four pieces of experimental music. Three of the pieces were heard outdoors in the mild evening air, on this the second day of summer. Two of the pieces were keyed to local astronomical events – the setting of the sun and the positions of the stars occurring at exactly 8:00 PM on June 22, 2019. The entire concert was devoted to music that was both understated and sophisticated, inviting the audience to listen closely and carefully. The first
Read moreOn June 14, 2019 the Southland Ensemble presented Land Images, an evening of experimental music at Automata Arts in Chinatown. The concert was part of the 15th annual Dog Star Orchestra series, presenting a dozen different new music concerts at various locations around Los Angeles through June 22. A full house packed the cozy spaces of Automata anticipating works by Christian Wolff as well as pieces by three contemporary composers. The first piece on the program was Groundspace or Large Groundspace, by Christian Wolff and was performed outside Automata in Chung King Court. About a dozen performers carrying various instruments
Read moreThe 2019 Ojai Music Festival began on June 6 and packed in a wide variety of styles and vintages of new music over four days and three nights. Everything from Haydn and Stravinsky to Catherine Lamb was on the program, along with films, pre-concert talks, picnics and special events that filled up every day from dawn to midnight. Barbara Hannigan served as the 2019 Music Director and this festival marked the final year for long-time Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris. On Friday, June 7, the early morning concert featured the JACK Quartet performing pieces by Clara Iannottta and Tyshawn Sorey.
Read moreOn Saturday, June 1, 2019 the annual Noon to Midnight new music festival returned to Disney Hall, complete with non-stop concerts, food trucks and a beer garden. Some 28 concerts were scheduled over the twelve hour event, appearing on the main concert hall stage and several other smaller spaces throughout the venue. As John Adams wrote in the program introduction: “There’s hardly a single square foot that is not the site of some musical event, whether it be in the hallways, the anterooms, the rooftop garden or the main hall.” A large, casual crowd gathered in a congenial atmosphere that
Read moreOn May 14, 2019, Tuesdays @ Monk Space presented Incandescent Keyboards, Luminous Percussion, a concert of three important works from the Cold Blue Music record label. The Los Angeles premieres of Celesta by Michael Jon Fink, Four Thousand Holes by John Luther Adams and the world premiere of Pacific Coast Highway by Daniel Lentz were on the program. The cozy confines of Koreatown’s Monk Space filled with the agreeable sounds of music created by some of the best composers that the West Coast has yet produced. First up was Celesta (2018), by Michael Jon Fink. This was performed by the
Read moreBlue Heron Sings Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts By Christian Carey Sequenza21.com March 9, 2019 CAMBRIDGE – Blue Heron’s Ockeghem@600 project has steadily worked its way through much of the composer’s repertoire. On March 9th at First Church, one of the most special evenings of this series was performed: Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum. The mass is constructed almost entirely out of a set of double canons, presenting imitative counterpoint throughout and at every scalar interval (a feat only matched by Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but Bach’s include single, not double, canons). The jaw-dropping intricacies of this work’s construction,
Read moreThe latest installment of the Soundwaves Concert Series was heard in the Martin Luther King, Jr. auditorium at the main branch of the public library in Santa Monica on Wednesday, April 17, 2019. Flutist Nicole Mitchell, a regular winner of the Downbeat Critic’s Poll, and sound artist Alex Lough were on hand for an evening of improvisation featuring several flutes and an impressive array of electronic circuitry. Ms. Mitchell came equipped with two flutes, a piccolo and a microphone with some distortion and looping capabilities. Across the stage, Lough presided over two tables covered with circuit boards, control panels, patch
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Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Seattle
Seattle Symphony’s [untitled] series was inaugurated in 2012 by its then-new Music Director, Ludovic Morlot. Three Fridays a year, small groupings of Symphony and visiting musicians set up in the Grand Lobby outside the orchestra’s main Benaroya Hall venue for a late night of contemporary music. This year’s series has been devoted to the European avant-garde, starting with Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee in October and continuing this past March 22 with two landmarks of Darmstadt serialism: Berio’s Circles and Boulez’s sur Incises. The latter performance, which featured Morlot conducting the work’s regional premiere, offered an opportunity to contemplate the legacies of
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