Brad Lubman has been involved in the new music scene for nearly two decades but this looks like his breakthrough season. Conductor/composer Lubman makes his guest conductor debut at the helm of the American Composers Orchestra Friday evening at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, when the ACO kicks off its 30th season with its first Orchestra Underground Composers OutFront! concert. In addition to leading the orchestra in music from Michael Gatonska, Evan Ziporyn, Michael Gandolfi, Susie Ibarra, Charles Ives and our own wunderkind Corey Dargel, Lubman will conduct the world premiere of his own Fuzzy Logic, for woodwinds, brass, percussion, synthesizer,
Read moreThe Callithumpian Consort is at work again at 8:30 pm tomorrow night at NEC’s Jordan Hall in a slightly premature celebration of the 80th anniversary of Earle Brown’s birth (it’s actually December 26). They’ll be playing Brown’s Sign Sounds, a rarely heard masterpiece of open form from that resides somewhere on the frontier between serialism and improvisation. They will perform the piece several times, and have assured us that no two performances will be alike. And they’ll also be continuing their exploration of Alvin Lucier with his Ever Present, for saxophone, flute, piano, and sine waves (which they describe it as “infinitely slow expansion of the music between your
Read moreChris Thile, the best bluegrass mandolin player alive except for maybe Mike Marshall and Sam Bush is having a joint CD release party with some girl fiddle player named Hillary Hahn next Tuesday night starting at 7 pm at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, NYC 10012 (212-334-3324). What makes this an unusual CD release event is that tickets are being sold to the public for $15 with the proceeds going to charity, specifically Housing Works which does a lot of good things. The kids have a lot in common; both were child prodigies. They will performing both classical and bluegrass music which
Read moreThe Elastic Arts Room (formerly Project One), whose artistic and managing director is S21 home Christopher Zimmermann, is teaming up with the super cool composer/performer collective counter)induction and the Chris Lightcap Quintet (Tony Malaby, Mark Turner, Craig Taborn, Chris Lightcap, and Gerald Cleaver), to present Bigmouths on Monday, October 16th at 9 pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. Bigmouths explores the nature of improvisation and aleatoric music-making. Counter)induction will give world premiere performances of new works by Douglas Boyce and Chris Lightcap and will perform works by Earle Brown and Vinko Globokar. Chris Lightcap’s quintet will then use Lightcap’s compositions as departure
Read moreElodie Lauten is performing and presenting her piano and chamber music on Tuesday, October 3 – 8 PM at Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street in Manhattan. Elodie will perform selections from her new Piano Soundtracks CD, including Variations on the Orange Cycle, a work that was included in Chamber Music America’s list of 100 best works of the 20th century. Pianist Francois Nezwazky, violinist Tom Frenkel and cellist Kurt Behnke will give the World Premiere of her new trio, The Elusive Virgin Bachelor. The concert is free and open to the public, however, a donation of $15 is suggested. For reservations
Read moreFrom H.H. Stuckenschmidt, “Arnold Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work,” translated by Humphrey Searle (New York: Schirmer Books, 1977): ” … in 1934 [Schoenberg] answered a query from Dr. Walter E. Koons of the National Broadcasting Corporation [sic] in New York, who wanted a definition for a book which he was planning, of what music meant to Schoenberg. His reply was: ‘Music is a simultaneous and a successiveness of tones and tonal-combinations, which are so organized that its impression on the ear is agreeable, and that its impression on the intelligence is comprehensible, and that these impressions have the power
Read moreShould you find yourself in the vicinity of Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory tonight at 8:30, the Callithumpian Consort is playing Alvin Lucier’s Small Waves for string quartet, piano, trombone, and feedback, an hour long investigation/hallucination of microtones, sonic beatings, and water pouring. (Sounds like your tax dollars at work on a normal day at a CIA detention camp.) Survivors of the water pouring and sonic beatings will then get to hear John Luther Adams’ Strange Birds Passing for 8 flutes and …And Bells Remembered for 5 percussion Alvin Lucier will be present to explain himself.
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