We like to think that concert music is something other than sound we hear with others in a room. Of course it is, but music is a physical fact we encounter first hand and try to wrap our minds around later. The large and attentive audience at Philip Glass’ San Francisco Performance’s program of his solo piano works seemed to know the difference when they gave him a warm welcome even before he’d played a note at his from-memory 8o-minute intermission-less recital at YBCA’s Novellus Theater. Real affection like that for a composer, especially a controversial and popular one like
Read moreThere’s going to be an album release party tonight at Le Poisson Rouge. Two groups on the New Amsterdam Records roster, NOW Ensemble and the Chiara String Quartet, are celebrating their respective releases. —– Chiara are presenting string quartets by Jefferson Friedman, along with remixes thereof by special guest electronica artists Matmos. Meanwhile, NOW Ensemble presents a mixed program of new synthetists pieces by the likes of Judd Greenstein, Sean Friar, and Missy Mazzoli. Check out Joshua Frankel’s new video Plan of the City below; it will accompany the performance of Greenstein’s Change at the gig. PLAN OF THE
Read moreNo doubt if you have participated or read any of the chats below for Spring For Music concerts, you are pretty excited. If you haven’t heard about Spring for Music, it starts tomorrow night with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall! Orpheus has a wonderful resource about their New Brandenburgs project, but I was curious to talk with Paul Moravec about the idea of hearing his Brandenburg Gate with the other commissions. Here is our chat from Sunday night at his apartment: mp3 file Concerts continue through May 14th at Carnegie including the Dallas Symphony in Steven Stucky’s August
Read moreBook Review Listen to This By Alex Ross New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 384 pp. Published in 2007, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross’ first book, was an engrossing and thoughtful survey of Twentieth Century music, equally useful as an introduction to neophytes and a refresher to specialists (he’s since tweaked the paperback edition to be even more comprehensive, including updated info and a “go-to” listening list). By “classical music” standards, the book was wildly successful, and Ross subsequently garnered a number of honors, including a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship. Its follow-up,
Read moreThere is another fantastic all-day new music marathon happening and tomorrow it’s Seattle’s turn for the good-times. Sunday, May 1st, from noon-10pm is the Second Annual May Day! May Day! marathon at Town Hall in Seattle. This 10-hour performer- and composer-driven celebration of contemporary music is produced by artistic director Paul Taub (of Seattle Chamber Players fame) and is curated by eclectic composer and pianist Wayne Horvitz, pianist Cristina Valdes, and Jarrad Powell (composer and artistic director of Gamelan Pacifica). This years marathon features 25 sets by local ensembles and soloists, including: Seattle Modern Orchestra, Michael Lim, Melia Watras, Christopher
Read moreSpring for Music, an annual festival of concerts by North American symphony and chamber orchestras at Carnegie Hall, was created in part to start a conversation about repertoire, about audience expectations, and about orchestral programming in general. To help continue this conversation, the festival is hosting a series of online events allowing participants to interact with members of the team in an open dialogue. The second of these chats is today (Thursday) at noon with composer Steven Stucky, whose evening-long concert drama August 4, 1964 will be performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on May 11 as
Read moreI am currently visiting my brother who teaches English at a University in Fes, Morocco. One of his roommates is Chris Witulski, a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology from the University of Florida currently researching indigenous Moroccan music. A big part of Chris’ work is devoted to transcribing performances of certain types of Moroccan folk music, and Monday he hosted a group of Gnawa musicians at the house to perform a series of songs. As Chris and a few Moroccans told me, Gnawa is rooted in West African music and primarily uses pentatonic scales, although more Arabic-sounding melodies with half-steps and
Read moreSpring for Music, an annual festival of concerts by North American symphony and chamber orchestras at Carnegie Hall, was created in part to start a conversation about repertoire, about audience expectations, and about orchestral programming in general. To help continue this conversation, the festival is hosting a series of online events allowing participants to interact with members of the team in an open dialogue. The first of these chats is today (Monday) at noon with composer Melinda Wagner. This is Melinda’s conversation starter: “Composers do not work in a vacuum. Every kind of music we hear, old or new, ‘serious’, ‘popular’, colloquial
Read morePeter Lieberson’s record label, Bridge Records, has been kind enough to share some of his music with us: an excerpt from The Six Realms, for Cello and Orchestra (2000), one of his later and larger works and a piece that has an explicitly Buddhist programmatic element. Here is movement 5, performed by cellist Michaela Fukacova, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Justin Brown. The recording is from Bridge 9178, The Music of Peter Lieberson. The Six Realms: V. The Human Realm Program Note: In addition to silk and other precious goods, the Silk Road helped disseminate Buddhism, one of
Read moreWe’re saddened to learn from David Starobin of the passing of composer Peter Lieberson in Israel, due to complications from Lymphoma. He had been battling the disease since 2006 and for a time it had been in remission. But in late 2010, Lieberson travelled to Israel to seek treatment for a recurrence of the cancer. Alex Ross has posted a touching remembrance on The Rest is Noise. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJoqGx_F_1o[/youtube] Lieberson’s music was an extraordinary mixture of disparate strands of influences. It encompassed an intuitive post-tonal vocabulary, rooted in dodecaphonic training but also capable of lush verticals and, particularly in his vocal music,
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