The Paul Dresher Ensemble’s Electro-Acoustic Band will be performing this coming Friday and Saturday (Nov. 12-13) at the ODC Theater in San Francisco. More information and tickets can be found here. The full program is below and features two world premieres, one of which is by Ryan Brown. I was able to talk with Ryan and Paul separately on the phone about this new piece. You can listen to a recording of their phone calls spliced together here. Gangbusters – Ryan Brown (world premiere) For Joe Z – Bruce Pennycook (world premiere) Chromatic Quadrachord – Paul Dresher (concert music premiere)
Read moreAlthough Ann Arbor’s ONCE. MORE. festival, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ONCE Group composers, does not end until tonight, the events with the surviving founders of the groundbreaking concert series – Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma and Donald Scavarda – concluded Thursday evening. That night’s ONCE. NOW. concert featured more recent works by these four composers. Robert Ashley’s Van Cao’s Meditation (1991), for piano, opened the evening. The piece was resonant, repetitive, and reminded me of Satie’s Ogives in spirit. Essentially, Van Cao’s Meditation milled about one confined group of a few notes which covered all registers of
Read moreAs some of you know, I have a few “commercial” (or, at least, I hope they will be someday) websites on pretty conventional topics–i.e., human resources, commercial real estate, commie politics, and so on. Most of the writing that passes through them is “serious” and short on humor. Maybe, that’s why I found this musical gem from a real estate blogger named John Reeder to be unexpectedly hilarious and insightful: Collectively we’re idiots. As individuals we might be smart, but collectively we’re idiots. Don’t believe me? I offer Exhibit A: The career of Jimmy Buffett. His music is terrible. You
Read moreLast night, Rackham Auditorium on Washington Street in Ann Arbor, MI became a sort of communal time machine. Complete with a vintage magnetic tape reel, electronic synthesizer and “public disturbance”, performed by students from the University of Michigan School of Music’s Composition Department, the hall carried its occupants back to the revolutionary decade of the 1960s when a group of young, local composers called the ONCE Group started a groundbreaking and historic contemporary music festival. These composers were Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Donald Scavarda (pictured to the right) and the late George Cacioppo, and the music they created
Read more[As part of my residency at the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera, I had to write an overnight review with a word limitation–something I hadn’t done in 15 years. What follows was my original story; an edited version appeared on our private web site where our reviews were posted. I was very impressed with how the NY Phil turned a performance of a relatively obscure 25-year-old work into a must-attend event. The last time I saw that much excitement about a contemporary orchestral instrumental work was back in the late 1980s in San Diego, when a Soviet
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Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Los Angeles
For the next few months, The City of Angels is going to be the epicenter of all things Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001). That’s because the exhibition “Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary” will be on view at the MOCA Pacific Design Center from November 6, 2010 — February 4, 2011. The exhibition explores Xenakis’ wide range of sketches, scores and drawings, not only musical but architectural and aesthetic as well. Not always simply notes on score paper, many of Xenakis’ sketches and drawings conjure up artistic visions, in ways perhaps only matched by John Cage’s documents of his own explorations. Defintely a
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Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Music Events
Tomorrow and Thursday are two special nights for contemporary music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This week, the University Musical Society is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the ONCE composers, a group of University of Michigan student composers whose 1960s new music festivals gained worldwide acclaim. The surviving members of the group, which was founded by Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma, and the late George Cacioppo, have come back to Ann Arbor to revisit the revolutionary spirit that inspired them and recognize what they’ve achieved in the years since they left Michigan. The local media here in southeast
Read moreSkeletons! Witches! Vampires! No, I’m not talking about candidates in Houston’s midterm elections. I’m talking about Halloween and the two days that follow known as Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Like many other places in the Southern U.S., Houston culture is a healthy mix of the supernatural and the spiritual. In the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Meurtos, food, beverages, and sweets are placed on homemade alters as gifts for the spiritual manifestations of those who have passed who will, over the course of the 48 hours that is All Saints Day and All Soul’s
Read moreA lot of important ensembles have been coming out of places like Oberlin (Eighth Blackbird), Yale (So Percussion, Now Ensemble), and Eastman (Alarm Will Sound, JACK Quartet, Signal) over the past 10+ years. Well, it looks like there is another one trying to break through from Eastman called Eastman BroadBand. BroadBand is preparing for a tour of Mexico that will culminate in a performance at the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico City, but before they leave they will stop in New York City on Monday to pick up their visas at the Mexican consulate and perform at Columbia’s Miller Theatre
Read moreI recently attended the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. For 10 days two dozen or so writers from Alaska to Florida convened at Columbia University to talk about classical music, to write about classical music, and most importantly for me (a musician with no formal journalism education), to talk about writing about classical music. We attended many concerts devoted to or containing contemporary classical music. We saw the Kronos Quartet at Le Poisson Rouge; watched Glassworks and a new David Lang dance work at New York City Ballet; heard AXIOM play Stravinsky, Xenakis, and Lindberg; had a
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