Our third “Hilary Hahn Interviews…” segment was actually the first recorded for S21; kind of like the first Star Wars was actually the third… or something… I brought Missy Mazzoli to your attention as far back as 2006, when she’d just finished getting her Masters degree. More recently, just a couple months ago we were telling you about the popularity of the alt/classical/something group she’s now part of, Victoire. Those very few years out of school have been kind, with all kinds of projects and praise coming her way. As well they should; Missy’s work overflows with offbeat and surprising
Read moreIf good luck in travel is a harbinger of things to come, then the fact that my flight into Kansas City for the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music actually touched down twenty minutes early is surely a very good sign. And so far today things have worked out that way. The conference got underway with two papers on Intertextuality in the music of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen and British composer (and the first journalist to use the word “minimalist” to describe music) Michael Nyman. Apparently Nyman steals liberally from everybody, including himself. I mean that in only the best
Read moreUp and running for a few weeks now, The Cereal List blog/website attempts to goose the arse of the always-just-a-little-too-sacrosanct classical music world. Run by the shadowy “Milton Blabber”, “Randall Scandall” and “Miss Information”, the blog’s posts have their share of flats mixed with a few good sharps. Though some jabs have veered just this side of awful or even libel, when they get it right, with such gems as “Generate a New York Times Review of your Work“, they’re pretty spot on. My current fave though, has to be “How to Design a Classical Music CD Cover”: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoqcHAdyiN4[/youtube] Whoever
Read moreRonen Givony’s Wordless Music is back at Miller Theater this Sept. 9-12, doing it’s indie-rock/electronic/classical/new-music thing. The 9th brings back the 802 Tour (Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon and Doveman, w/ special guest Nadia Sirota); the 10th welcomes Do Make Say Think and DMST founder Charles Spearin’s “The Happiness Project”; the 11th features Tim Hecker, Grouper, and Julianna Barwick; and the 12th caps it off with Destroyer and Loscil performing a rare collaborative set of original music from each artist’s catalog, then the JACK Quartet. All shows start at 8pm, with tickets setting you back $15-$20. Columbia University’s Miller Theatre is
Read moreThe Prom concert on August 24, by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Valery Gergiev, opened with Nagasaki by Alfred Schnittke, his graduation piece from the Moscow Conservatory. In this piece for chorus, solo mezzo-soprano, and large orchestra (including a theremin), Schnittke set texts reflecting on the devastation of the Japanese city by the atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War by Anatoly Sofronov, described in Calum MacDonald’s program notes as “the official Soviet propaganda poet”, along with poems by two Japanese poets, Eisaku Yoneda and Shimazaki Tōson. Although the piece was accepted by the
Read moreIn just over a week minimalist musicians, scholars, and fans will descend on Kansas City, Missouri for the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, which runs from September 2 to 6. I’ll be there–I’m giving a paper on Saturday–and I’ll be blogging regularly to give you a participant’s view of the proceedings–papers, concerts, lunchtime conversations, drunken rants, or whatever else is happening that seems noteworthy. I’ll also be Twittering (@galenbrown), and the conference has its own Twitter account (@2ndminimalism). We’ll be encouraging other Twitter users to post their own thoughts with the hashtag #minconf. Our pal Kyle Gann is one
Read moreIn celebration of Louis Andriessen’s seventieth birthday, the first UK performance of his The Hague Hacking was scheduled for the Prom concert on August 17. The piece was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and first performed with that orchestra by the pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who were the performers for the Proms, playing this time with the Philharmonia Orchestra. There were several sources, or perhaps references embedded in The Hague Hacking: the piano parts make use at the beginning and subsequently in the piece of the notes of the beginning of the Lizst Hungarian Rhapsody
Read moreThe Barracuda is swimming a little farther afield now, so I think it’s safe for all you liberal arty types to venture up… to Alaska! It’s time once again for the minor miracle that is the CrossSound Festival (28 Aug – 6 Sep). Alaska native, Harvard grad and Asian zither performer extraordinaire Jocelyn Clark is the driving force behind this truly unique yearly series; concerts that not only bring living contemporary music into this far corner, but as well building bridges between Eastern, European and American musics and performers. This is the festival’s 10th year — no mean feat and
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Concerts, Conferences, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Kansas City, Minimalism, Music Events, Post Modern
Here’s your heads-up that the Second International Conference on Minimalism is fast approaching! It runs Sept. 2-6 and Kansas City gets the honors this time out. Papers and presentations abound, as do a string of wonderful concerts. Of course there’s talk on Glass, Reich and Adams; but also Phill Niblock, Julius Eastman, La Monte Young, Tom Johnson, Mikel Rouse, Dennis Johnson and more. Concerts not only include one by prodigal legend Charlemagne Palestine, but a closing that puts none other than our old pal Kyle Gann at the keyboard with Sarah Cahill! (I’m sure Kyle’s practicing and sweating bullets at
Read moreIn Live From Golgotha by Gore Vidal, St. Timothy — who is an old man, and by that time the keeper of the story of the early church — is visited by time travelers from the future who try to persuade him to change his story. When he refuses, they simply travel further back in time and change the events. At one point Timothy is perplexed because he thinks he remembers what happened but he isn’t sure, which isn’t surprising since the actually events and, consequentially, events after those events, have been changed. His past — what he remembers —
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