Too Many Concerts and Cloning is Still Illegal! October in New York is becoming an embarrassment of riches in the new music world. So many wonderful concerts to hear in town! But the plethora of notable events can be a source of frustration too: sometimes you wish you could be in two places at once. (I have a sneaking suspicion that Steve Smith has figured out a way to do this!) So, while we won’t get to review everything, there’s nothing saying we can’t preview as many events as possible! What follows are some, but rest assured not all, of
Read more[Ed. note: Please welcome one of our newest S21 shipmates, violinist/ composer Cornelius Dufallo. The New York Times‘ Steve Smith writes “As a violinist and a composer in the string quartet Ethel and the collective ensemble Ne(x)tworks, Cornelius Dufallo has made substantial contributions to New York’s burgeoning new-music scene.” I couldn’t agree more, and look forward to his contributions to come. So take it away, Neil!] Life in ETHEL is frantic these days. In the midst of meetings, emails, conference calls, and intense rehearsals, I sometimes (sadly) lose touch with the sense of wonder that originally drew me to a
Read moreThe newly revived Roulette (on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn) is the site for a premiere this coming Friday (details here). Guitarist-composer Joel Harrison’s Still Point – Turning World (a veiled reference to a line in “Burnt Norton,” one T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets) is a polyglot work for diverse forces. In addition to Harrison’s jazz quartet, it also features the Talujon Percussion Quartet, and Anupam Shobhakar, who plays the sarode, an Indian stringed instrument. Still Point… requires its performers to be in a flexible collaboration, reveling in polystylism. “Crossover” is a term that’s overused and sometimes misused these days. All too often the results
Read moreFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: Christina Jensen PR 646.536.7864 | christina@christinajensenpr.com ACME: American Contemporary Music Ensemble The Sequenza21 Concert presented by S21 & Manhattan New Music Project Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7pm Joe’s Pub | 425 Lafayette Street | NYC Tickets: FREE. Reserve tickets & tables at 212.539.8778 or www.joespub.com. ACME: www.acmemusic.org Sequenza21: www.Sequenza21.com MNMP: www.mnmp.org New York, NY – ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) will perform a free concert at Joe’s Pub (425 Lafayette St., NYC) on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7pm presented by online contemporary classical community Sequenza21.com and theManhattan New Music Project. The works to be performed were selected through an open call for
Read moreI’m excited to share a piece of music that is very close to my heart: Marc Chan’s My Wounded Head cycle, the third installment of which will be performed this Sunday at The Stone. The title comes from a set of five chorales from Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion, “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”). These chorales have become an obsession for Marc, and each station of his cycle forges a new “road trip” through the notes, patiently spinning them out into strange and beautiful patterns. Number 3, for solo piano, pushes this patience into sublime
Read moreHouston’s Musiqa opens its season with the Houston premiere of composer John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man for amplified soprano and chamber ensemble and texts by one of the most influential lyricists of all time, Bob Dylan. Karol Bennett is the soprano, and Robert Franz conducts. The concert also includes a performance of John Harbison’s Songs America Loves To Sing and a reading by Justin Cronin, the award-winning author of The Passage. Musiqa’s five member Artistic Board will also premiere a series of Musiqa Minatures in celebration of its 10th anniversary season. The lyrics Corigliano chose for this song cycle, including
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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York
Some festivals have a curatorial vision that takes pages and pages of press releases and program notes to explain. Other curators, like Glenn Cornett, revel in the whimsy of amusing composers’ names. Why organize a one-night Nono, Muchmore, and Warp(ed) mini-marathon? The names sounded fun together and the players are the bee’s knees. The evening will feature music by Italian modernist master Luigi Nono, New York cellist/composer and Anti Social Music member Pat Muchmore, and San Francisco based composer/sound designer Richard Warp. With a 7 PM start time, the show is three and a half hours long, and is full
Read moreThe Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert is fast approaching. This free event will be at Joe’s Pub on Oct. 25 at 7 PM (reserve a seat here). The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) will perform a program that features composers selected from our call for scores. In the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing from a number of the composers and performers appearing on the concert. First up is Jay Batzner, who teaches at Central Michigan University and contributes regularly to Sequenza 21. He tells us about his piece on the program: Slumber Music. I remember a lot about composing Slumber Music, which
Read moreLast year, saxophonist Trygve Seim and pianist Andreas Utnem collaborated on Purcor, a recording for the ECM imprint (Seim’s sixth as leader). Drawing on material from a wide range of sources, including settings of the Mass, folk music, and Seim’s own compositions, it was among the recordings in frequent rotation when I got home from the hospital this past November. Needing a calm environment in which to regenerate and reflect, I found Purcor to be the perfect listening to accompany a healing respite. Meditative yet soulful, earnest yet elegant, gently articulated yet substantively thoughtful, Seim and Utnem craft a series
Read moreThe US premiere of James Dillon’s Nine Rivers, a three evening long contemporary classical epic, will open Miller Theatre’s 2011-’12 season (details below). I’ll be writing about the first evening of the piece for Musical America. That said, I’ve been assured by those in the know that you probably shouldn’t take this Gesamtkunstwerk as if it’s three separate evenings of music: it’s kind of like having your Siegfried without your Götterdämmerung. Is Nine Rivers a postmodern retort to the Ring? Perhaps not in terms of narrative, but in terms of its ambitious scope and extended genesis, its not an inapt
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