It’s hard to believe that it has been five years since Hurricane Katrina. The CD release of Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads on New Amsterdam Records is a grim reminder that New Orleans still remains a devastated city, one that has yet to recover from the storm, doubtless at least in part due to all manner of official incompetence and governmental neglect. Source recordings that chronicle the previous administration’s bungled handling of the disaster serve as a jumping off point for Hearne’s scathingly satirical, yet often affecting, song cycle. The record’s out on 8/31, but there’s a release party at Le
Read moreThe slice of the Proms which I’m getting this summer seems less of full of twentieth and twenty-first century music than usual. Works of Gunther Schuller, Simon Holt, Harrison Birtwistle, Stockhausen, Colin Matthews, Luke Bedford, Brett Dean, Oliver Knussen, (late) Stravinsky, George Benjamin, Stephen Montague, Takamitsu, and Julian Anderson were done before I got here and music by Judith Weir, Bayan Northcott, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, James MacMillan, Tansy Davies, and Jonathan Dove will be on after I leave. But there’s still plenty happening while I’m around. On Friday night, August 13, the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda, on a
Read moreFanfare, please. From the creators of Sequenza21 comes a new web community–Chamber Musician Today. Something like that anyway. Go over and register and you’ll find there are lots of neat things you can do there. You can blog directly on the site whenever you feel like it, you can post concerts and announcements to the Calendar page, you can review a CD, comment, add a profile, even add your existing blog feed to the Autopost and the software will automatically pull in your last 10 posts and all new ones. The ones that are on target (i.e., have something to
Read moreThree Concerts in One Day! Twelve pieces, including two one-act operas: 6 1/2 hours of music. Here’s what we heard: 10 AM Fantasia for String Trio …Irving Fine Ten Miniatures for Solo Piano … Helen Grime Circles … Luciano Berio Piece pour piano et quatuor de cordes … Oliver Messiaen Since Brass, nor Stone … Alexander Goehr Design School … Michael Gandolfi _____________________________________ 2:30 PM (BSO in the Shed) An American in Paris … George Gershwin Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee … Gunther Schuller Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs … Leonard Bernstein Piano Concerto in F … George Gershwin
Read moreKnussen conducts Maderna. Photo credit: Hilary Scott The 2010 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood has moved away from its recent model of having a solo curator conceive the festival. Instead, the curatorial duties are shared by three of its longtime faculty members: Gunther Schuller, Oliver Knussen, and John Harbison. The focus this year is on Tanglewood’s past and present faculty composers. Far from feeling like ‘old home week,’ the programming has demonstrated a wide range of stylistic diversity among those who’ve taught at Tanglewood. In addition, one can observe how each successive generation of Tanglewood students has benefited from their instruction here and,
Read moreHilary Hahn, the only combination stellar violinist/S21 roving reporter on the block, checks in with an up-close sit-down with composer Mark Adamo, on what being a composer means to him, latest projects, etc: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLnHTz-henc[/youtube] Follow the rest here, just scroll down the list on the right. Hilary will be back in September chatting up Nico Muhly, so stay tuned!
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Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Post Modern, Review, Twentieth Century Composer
Older readers may recall with fondness Edgar Bergen, a very popular American entertainer who poured his comic routines through ventriloquist dummies named Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Edgar so loved the performing arts, that he created an annual celebration to showcase classical music, dance, opera, and theater, which continues and thrives to this very day: the Bergen Festival. Okay, that’s not really what the Bergen Festival is, but after hearing a modern composer with a strong Chinese musical identity—Bright Sheng—prop up Scandinavian folk tunes on his knee, and manipulate them to entertain the public, the spirit of Charlie McCarthy—a bourgeois
Read moreI’m looking forward to the West Coast premiere of Christopher Rouse’s String Quartet no. 3 by the amazing Calder Quartet. The enthusiastic gentlemen in the Calder Quartet have worked closely with Rouse, having recorded his first 2 quartets and his chamber ensemble work, Compline on this terrific CD. I know there’s been Rouse-bashing by some visitors here in the past, but I admire some of his music, especially when he’s writing in his Sturm und Drang mode (as he did in the 1st Quartet and the middle movement of the 2nd). The 3rd Quartet promises to be his ultimate ultraviolent
Read moreAn overly self-conscious trip to a store with a flyswatter in hand inspires Christopher Penrose to create this gentle and humorous parody of Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting In a Room.
Read moreVictoire, a Brooklyn based quintet of female alt-classical performers, is currently doing a mini tour in the Midwest to support the impending September release of their album Cathedral City on New Amsterdam. Matt Marks and Mellissa Hughes are taking their show on the road, performing selections from Matt’s opera Little Death Vol. 1. Missy Mazzoli and company have been kind enough to allow us to share the title track from the LP on File Under ?’s Tumblr here. The track combines vocalizing courtesy of Missy with skittering glitchy percussion and a somewhat jazzy harmonic background. Kind of like Julee Cruise meets BoaC
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