Saturday afternoon, already. We’re half-way through this year’s Ojai Music Festival, and I need some time-shifter to slow things down. Today’s mid-day concert was superb. Dawn Upshaw, but that’s redundant. It was a lovely program. Each song, seemingly, gave her a different opportunity to tell a story. Anyone there could pick a different set of highlights. My own included a simple, beautiful song by Ruth Crawford Seeger of a lyric by Carl Sandburg, “White Moon”. But then an absolute highlight came with the last set: a French song by Kurt Weill and three cabaret songs by William Bolcom. For each
Read moreI move that the role of Al Gore be essayed by the entire La Scala Opera Chorus! Wait . . . no: Anna Netrebko–who wouldn’t drive a Prius for her? . . . No–I got it now: a dancer on stage who doesn’t sing! (ala Death in Venice) . . . hmm, but maybe that’s how “Global Warming” should be portrayed. Heck, I don’t know. But there better be a horse in this damn thing, ‘else I’m not going!
Read moreI always walk around with a guilty conscience. My inbox gets loaded all the time with press releases and so forth, and I’m a bit stingy about passing on the goods. Let’s give this another try by way of redemption. SoCal’s S21 readers might want to check out RedBox, an experimental music series held the third Thursday of every month at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood. A bunch of groups with achingly hip names are performing this summer. Tickets are only $10. Here’s a composition competition in Finland. Dust off your small orchestra piece and see if you can
Read moreThe Paul Bailey Ensemble is a self-described “alternative / classical garage band” busy these last few years in and around Los Angeles. Though Bailey (The bulky but sharp-looking fella in the center of the photo, surrounded by some of the PBE posse) gets naming rights and creates a large amount of the featured music, the ensemble performs works by a number of other like-minded composers, too — most living, a few dead guys as well. That “like-mind” is post-minimal, with equal parts 1980s minimalism, 1680s Purcell, and heavy doses of the rock-band riff factor (though there’s usually no drumkit in the ensemble,
Read moreThe last concert of the season for the Phil closed with roars of applause and approval for Esa-Pekka Salonen‘s Piano Concerto, given its premiere last year by the New York Philharmonic. Listening to the broadcast of that performance was only a weak preparation for what we heard and felt yesterday. It seemed as if the whole audience was, like me, swept up and carried away by the music. And what a performance it was! The concert was recorded by DG, for which we are grateful, and I’ll download it on release. Yefim Bronfman was the soloist, as he has been
Read moreBang on a Can NYC Marathon May 31 – June 1, 2008 6:00pm World Financial Center Winter Garden, New York, NY This year’s Marathon will take place at the World Financial Center Winter Garden from 6pm on Saturday May 31st through 6am on Sunday June 1st. Here is a schedule of composers and performers: 6:00pm Alarm Will Sound performing Son of Chamber Symphony (3rd Movement) by John Adams Pamela Z performing Chalky Crystal Liquid Cave by Pamela Z Alarm Will Sound performing Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Petpetuum by Harrison Birtwistle Lisa Moore performing Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers^^ by Annie Gosfield
Read moreThink you’re too cool for Facebook? Not any more you’re not. S21 has put the freeze on the Internet’s leading social networking site. Get over there and join the Sequenza21 Facebook Group! Members will get a taste of the awesome powers at hand to those on the inside of S21. Oh yeah! AWEsome powers. C’mon. You know you wanna. (AWESOME!) All right, back to interval cycles and Kurtag. Sigh.
Read moreWe take so much for granted – the sun will go down , the sun will come up – that we never seem to realize that some day it won’t be there or we won’t be here to see it. Same thing is true of friends you could always count on. So when I got an e-mail from my composer-conductor friend Gerhard Samuel’s companion, Achim Nicklis, that Gerhard had passed away a few weeks ago, I was shocked. Sure, I sensed he wasn’t well – repeated e-mails saying he’d changed his address indicated as much. – but the sad fact remains.
Read moreAn Evening of Contemporary Chamber Music with the Locrian Chamber Players Saturday, May 31st at 8 PM Riverside Church Entrance at 91 Claremont Avenue (North of W. 120th Street – One block W. of Broadway) Free Admission www.locrian.org Featured performers: Calvin Wiersma, Conrad Harris, Danielle Farina, Greg Hesselink, Diva Goodfriend-Koven, and Emily Wong Henri Pousseur Minima Sinfonia (world premiere) Yehudi Wyner Madrigal (NY premiere) Louis Andriessen Xenia John Ross Deux Melodies d’Aspel Bill Douglas Celebration IV Christian Carey Butterfly Flourish (world premiere)
Read moreSequenza21 is pleased to scoop the rest of the world wide web and announce the most exciting news of the day in the world of new music. On December 4 and 5, the Lost Dog Ensemble, in residence with the Astoria Music Society, will be playing a concert of . . . works by Sequenza21 composers!! The December 4 concert will be in Astoria at the very hip Waltz-Astoria Café, and the following night we’ll be at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (right by Lincoln Center –– an institution that will certainly be feeling a
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