Elliott Carter turns 101 today. By all accounts, he’s hale, hearty, and busily composing!
Read moreThe S.E.M. Ensemble will open its 40th anniversary season with its annual Christmas concert at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City on Tuesday, December 15. SEM has performed a holiday concert at the gallery for the last 25 years, and this year’s program will feature two N.Y. premieres by new-music icon Christian Wolff (above left), the first public performance of Petr Kotik‘s (above right) new percussion work performed by TimeTable Percussion, and Lejaren Hiller‘s rarely heard String Quartet no. 5, along with a work by J.S. Bach. Christian Wolff is also marking his 75th birthday this year, and has
Read moreThis month kicks off the New York Philharmonic’s Contact! series. Concerts in December and April feature seven composers and seven premieres, played first at Symphony Space and then a day or two later at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Phil tells us that “performances will include personal introductions to the music from the composers themselves, in a less formal and more intimate setting.” The list is a really great mix of styles and careers from a few different continents: The December 17 and 19 concerts feature music by Marc-André Dalbavie, Arthur Kampela, Lei Liang and Arlene Sierra, conducted by
Read moreLast night’s Green Umbrella concert was programmed as part of “West Coast, Left Coast”, and it certainly sounded as if almost all of the 1500-or-so of us had as much fun as I did. The program ended on a high with five selections from Frank Zappa‘s The Yellow Shark album (1992), conducted by John Adams, our festival curator (and conductor, and occasional composer, and friendly guide). You can read Adams’ comments made during rehearsals here (just read the second half of yesterday’s entry and then scroll down to the November 25 entry). The concert ended with a riotous (orgasmic?) performance
Read moreIt’s hard enough delivering an orchestra commission when you’re hale and hearty; but despite losing most of his vision during the course of its lengthy gestation (2001-06) York Höller managed to complete his work Sphären. His efforts amidst considerable adversity have garnered him the 2010 Grawemeyer Award. Although now almost completely blind, Höller continues to compose. Abetted by assistants, samplers, and a new software called Jaws, he is soldiering on. One hopes that the Grawemeyer’s $200,000 prize will assist in this endeavor. So, composers, next time you’re planning to tell your commissioner why the piece isn’t done, you’ll need a pretty
Read moreViolinist Jennifer Koh has, since even before this past Spring showed its face, been pretty much living out of a suitcase or two. Crisscrossing this country and a couple other continents, She’s been playing everything from Antonio Vivaldi to John Zorn. Just last week she was beautifully acquitting herself at Miller Theatre, in a performance of Kaija Saariaho’s Graal Theatre. December is about all the break she’s getting, too, before it starts all over again. In the middle of all this came her newest CD on Cedille, Rhapsodic Musings, a collection of solo violin music almost all composed within the
Read moreThe Los Angeles Master Chorale gave the Phil’s West Coast, Left Coast Festival the opening it deserved: a joyous statement, a vibrant concert, and a rousing end that left us wanting more and looking forward to our next event. Regrettably, last night’s concert wasn’t the opening, but the second event. The opening occurred Saturday night in a hodge-podge concert that just drained away. But more on that, later. It’s much more fun to talk about the good things. Grant Gershon and the LAMC put together a program of four works by four composers (all alive, present, and introduced at the
Read moreExperimental music impresario Matt Davignon is known all over the San Francisco Bay Area for organizing unusual music performances. In addition to being responsible for such events as the San Francisco Found Objects Festival, he’s a member of the Outsound Presents Board of Directors and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival Steering Committee. This Thursday evening, November 19, at 8:00 PM, Matt will present one of his DroneShift concerts at the Luggage Store Gallery, where he curates regularly. The gallery is located at 1007 Market Street near 6th Street in San Francisco, near Powell Street and Civic Center BART. Admission
Read moreThis coming Saturday is the official opening concert of the L.A. Phil’s exciting new festival, West Coast, Left Coast, but performances introducing the concept have now begun. REDCAT showed a “re-interpretation” of a noted performance piece with music by Morton Subotnick and choreography by Anna Halprin, and Jacaranda Music had another full audience for its concert last night as a prelude to the festival itself. Parades & Changes, the Halprin-Subotnick performance collaboration from 1965 is coming to New York, and it provides a fascinating hour. The use of electronics in music has advanced so much in the past forty years,
Read moreSunday, November 15th, the Esprit Orchestra and conductor Alex Pauk are giving what I think will be a really wonderful concert. It happens in Toronto, at 8PM in Koerner Hall at The Royal Conservatory (273 Bloor Street West, Toronto), with a 7:15Pm pre-concert chat with a composer and guest artists. That composer would be Alexina Louie, and my guess is the guest artists are Inuit throat singers Evie Mark and Akinisie Sivuarapik. First up on the bill is Louie’s work Take the Dog Sled, for two throat singers and ensemble. Throat singing is an ancient traditional musical form/contest where two women
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