Since 1995 Chicago’s Percussion Scholarship Program has been shaping all kinds of mallet-whackers from grades 3 through 12. The program, under the direction of CSO percussionist Patricia Dash and Douglas Waddell, percussionist with Lyric Opera of Chicago, with amazing direction and arrangements by Cliff Colnot, has been growing something phenomenal. The kids’ musicianship and commitment seems to me every bit as stunning as Dudamel’s Venezuelan El Sistema stuff everybody’s been going gaga over. Don’t believe me? Just take in our young crew’s monster ride through Colnot’s arrangement of Dimitri Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32W2IBkVqUk[/youtube] Incredible. The group’s big spring concert is
Read moreWorks & Process celebrates Donald Hall this weekend. The 14th U.S. Poet Laureate will read and discuss his work. New musical settings of Hall’s poetry by Drew Baker, George Lewis, David Del Tredici, Joshua Schmidt and Charles Wuorinen are performed for the first time. Performers include a host of New York’s finest: Mary Nessinger, Tom Meglioranza, Lauren Flanigan, Judith Bettina, James Goldsworthy, Moran Katze, Fred Sherry, Peter Kolkay, David Del Tredici, and Lois Martin. Musical Premieres – settings of Donald Hall (Works & Process Commission) DREW BAKER: THE SEA (mezzo-soprano & cello) DAVID DEL TREDICI: THE POEM &THE MASTER (soprano &
Read moreOr at least it sure seems that way, when you’re dealing with the Del Sol String Quartet. San Francisco’s longtime champions of new music have a drool-worthy concert on tap for this Friday, May 8th, entitled Mestizaje. Of the four contemporary quartets scheduled for the evening, three are new pieces written for Del Sol, and two are world premieres. Drool away: Tania León (b. 1943, Cuba): [String Quartet No. 1] (2009, world premiere) Paul Yeon Lee (b. 1970, Korea): “Ari, Ari… ari” (2009, world premiere) Philip Glass (b. 1937): String Quartet No. 5 (1991) Linda Catlin Smith (b. 1957, USA): “Gondola” (String Quartet
Read moreMusic by Wolff, Sciarrino, Kotik, Carter, and Ligeti / Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Ostravská Banda, FLUX Quartet; Petr Kotik, Conductor /Alice Tully Hall, May 6, 2009 Conductor/composer Petr Kotik has been an impressive advocate for contemporary music in New York for forty years. Residing in the US since 1969, he has been running the S.E.M. ensemble since 1970: performing a wide range of repertoire, commissioning works and cultivating successive generations of young players into seasoned new music performers. S.E.M.’s orchestral unit has been active since ’92; Kotik’s also been running Ostravská Banda, an international chamber orchestra comprised of S.E.M.
Read moreWhen I was an undergrad at San Francisco State University in the late 1980s, we didn’t have a new music ensemble-in-residence. Like many music majors then and now, we relied on our fellow students to perform our pieces, and didn’t have a professional-level new music group serving as role models on campus. All that has since changed, and the SFSU School of Music and Dance has the ADORNO Ensemble to take this challenge on. The group has spent the last few years impressing local audiences and getting cordial reviews, including this one from San Jose Mercury News music critic Richard
Read moreBeing an all-volunteer gig, Sequenza 21 has always relied on a cast of characters — almost all musicians themselves — that lend a hand as they can, but often end up caught in a whirl of other demands. And because based in NYC, there are times when it gets just a little too easy to report on all the events happening around the city, and get a little sidetracked about keeping tabs on so many wonderful musicians and concerts elsewhere in this country and beyond. So every once in a while the call goes out to some of the many
Read moreAs stated in Oberlin College’s ‘Oberwiki’: “…to enter you needed to take a sugar pill with a dot on it…and you rolled the dice, cause 1/3 of the dots were LSD…” Yep, that’s our (currently) eldest composition teacher speaking of Oberlin’s glory days when he was but a wee lad out of grad school. Randy Coleman is many things, best summed up as “a real post-modern feminist old-time patriarch from Virginia.” He is most feared for his red pen marks on freshperson’s melody assignments and for the fabled “piece-per-day” routine with private students. His music contains much variety, with each
Read moreTwo weeks ago at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights, 25 different organizations in New York’s new music scene assembled for a the first annual New Music Bake Sale; an event that was a cross between a music festival and a the vendor fair at a conference. I mean that second part in only the best possible sense–in fact the sense of community created by the setup was the best part of the whole event. Each of the ten ensembles that performed, and fifteen other groups, all had tables lining the main room and the entry area, where they
Read moreTHE AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM NEW YORK CONCERTS ENSEMBLE ON_LINE MONDAY MAY 4, 7:30 PM Austrian Cultural Forum NY, 11 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10022 Also touring to Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago, this program is curated by Karlheinz Essl and Reinhard Fuchs, in cooperation with Soundfield and the Slought Foundation. PROGRAM Gene Coleman | Subaugusta (2009) for bassflute, bassclarinet, violin, cello and piano Karlheinz Essl | Sequitur II (2008/09) for bass clarinet and live-electronics Simeon Pironkoff | Spiel(t)räume (2006) for piano solo Gerard Grisey | Talea (1985/86) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano Leah Muir | i frammenti di desiderio,
Read moreAlmost everyone in and around the New Amsterdam Records scene has been written up by us. Many are good and long-time visitors, contributors and pals of S21. But screw that; the real reason we follow this crew is that they’re an awesome bunch of composers and performers, with a fresh, open and energetic approach to this whole art-music thingy-ma-jingy. They’re proving it again this May, with… Aww, just let the poster tell you: Makes a nice prelude to the BOAC “oldsters” Marathon, dontcha think?
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