Contemporary Classical

Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Premieres, San Francisco, Saxophone

Let’s Ask Andrew Raffo Dewar

Here’s the first in a series of interviews with composers who are premiering new works at the 10th Annual Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco on Friday, July 22nd.  The Friday night concert, entitled The Art of Composition, starts at 8 pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online from Brown Paper Tickets, and you can also buy them at the door.  Listeners who don’t want to wait that long can get up close and personal with the composers, and learn about their creative process, at a free Monday night panel discussion at

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by Polly Moller
Contemporary Classical

The Mind Garage, The Electric Liturgy and My (Tiny) Part in the Birth of Christian Rock

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klmhgRRRnHM[/youtube] A nanosecond or two ago–at the dawning of the age of aquarius, when my generation’s future was still a bright crazy quilt of dreams and possibilities–my wife Suzanne and I were graduate students at West Virginia University in Morgantown.  I had just successfully avoided  Viet Nam by signing up for two years of active duty in the Navy Reserve  and accidentally getting myself assigned to duty on an icebreaker.   I spent most of my contribution to the war effort at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, staving off death by boredom by feeding beer to penguins who, as my shipmates and I

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by Jerry Bowles
Bang on a Can, Cello, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Video

Avant Cellist’s Ideas Worth Spreading

Maya Beiser, everyone’s favorite ex-Can Banging All Star downtown cellist, was an invited presenter at the March 2011 TED conference. The TED site recently released a high quality video of her lecture recital, and it’s already garnered over 80,000 views! TED’s slogan: “Ideas worth spreading.” We’re glad that Maya’s getting the chance to spread the word about Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint and David Lang’s World to Come far and wide!

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by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Invisible Dog Extravaganza!

Like the New Music Bake Sale, there’s another great Brooklyn tradition beginning to happen.  On Friday, July 8, 7:00 pm to midnight at the Invisible Dog Art Center, Dither will be hosting their second annual “Extravaganza.” This year they will be featuring an array of experimental sounds, presented by composers and performers notorious for carving out unique musical niches. In addition to Dither, the lineup includes renowned guitarist Marc Ribot, powerhouse quartet So Percussion, Ches Smith and These Arches (an all-star line-up including Mary Halvorson, Andrea Parkins, and Tim Berne), Ted Hearne and Philip White’s raucous noise group R We

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by James Holt
Contemporary Classical

The Woodstock Summer 2011 Mostly Girl Front Porch Chill Mix

Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets.  Or, making playlists.   Or something.   Some friends who just got themselves a screened-in porch for their  house up in Willow asked me to come up with an iPod playlist for sitting around at dusk smoking cigars and sipping brandy.  Mostly pop-stuff  but offbeat.   I decided to go  all-female..well, okay, there is one boy-girl duet…because I like girl singers.  But, I digress, I had so much fun putting the list together that I thought we ought to have a little playlist contest here.  Any genre is

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by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Lectures

12 Slides of Milton

On Thursday, I’m giving a talk about Milton Babbitt’s life and work to high school composers at Westminster Choir College’s Composition Camp. It seems only fitting to introduce them to Babbitt as part of the week’s activities. He lived near WCC’s campus, attended a number of events at the college, and until it closed some years back, could often be found at the Annex at lunchtime. Many of our students knew Milton best because they’d waited on him there! Another reason that I want to share my interest in Milton’s music with them: he was the first composer that I

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by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

For Philip Guston @ The Wulf, June 26

If you’re in the LA area this Sunday, and can spare 4 hours and then some (4 hours for the concert, then some for the commute and parking), 3 young musicians attending the Music Department at University of California, San Diego will perform Morton Feldman’s For Philip Guston. While Feldman performances at UCSD are common enough, the sheer scale of For Philip Guston makes any production a rare event: 4 hours of late Feldman. Rachel Beetz will play flute (can you imagine playing a wind instrument for 4 hours with no breaks outside of the rests the composer gave you?),

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by Christian Hertzog
Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Review

SWARMIUS in The Cell

Barriers between various musical genres continue to be gleefully destroyed by insightful musicians and collectives.  One such divide that has been crumbling over the last few years has been any distinction between “bands” and “chamber groups.”  Beyond the ensembles made up of visually traditional combinations (“string quartets” such as Kronos and Ethel) are more unusual outfits like Clogs, a bassoon-viola-guitar-percussion quartet. The final, June 10th concert of the 2011 Tribeca New Music Festival featured SWARMIUS, a band from San Diego with an intriguing quartet configuration of violin, saxophone, percussion and laptop/electronics.  Led by composer Joseph Waters (whose nom de band

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by Geoffrey Burleson
Bang on a Can, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Liveblogging the BOAC Marathon

So I happened to be in the city over the weekend and didn’t have any interviews or other meetings today, so I figured “Hey, I’ve got a laptop…why not liveblog the Bang on a Can Marathon over at the World Financial Center? One press pass and sweet front row seat later, and here I am. I’m not sure if I’l be insane enough to make it to midnight, but I’ll try to give y’all a sense of as much of the festivities as I can. Started in 1987 by David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon, the Marathon has turned

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by Rob Deemer
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Orchestras

League of Composers at Miller Tonight

League of Composers/ISCM has their season finale tonight at Miller Theatre. Louis Karchin conducts a program of five recently composed works. True to form, the evening is chock-full of premieres, including the US debut of Elliott Carter’s Concertino for Bass Clarinet. How many concerts can boast a new orchestra piece written by a centenarian? The concertino features longtime Carter associate Virgil Blackwell as soloist. David Rakowski is also represented by a new concerto. His Talking Points, written at the behest of the League of Composers, features the estimable soloist Fred Sherry as its protagonist. Shulamit Ran’s Silent Voices, written for

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by Christian Carey