I heard Gabriel Kahane at Joe’s Pub Wednesday night. If Billy Joel and Paul McCartney can write “classical music”, why can’t composers write “pop music”? 1. Gabe Kahane is a good singer, great pianist and out of this world showman. His wry and wonderful wit comes through his music and lyrics. Wednesday night Kahane shared his sounds with humor, humility and always in an entertaining way. 2. Ensemble with the four man band, including: piano, banjo, violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, drums, guitar, electric bass, toy piano and a melodic, was generally tight and toe tapping. Less stellar was the drummer
Read moreTim Risher is a composer that I bumped into a long time ago on this here web thingy. His illustrious career has taken him from making new music in Florida, to a long stint producing radio in Germany, to currently doing — well, something or other — in deepest, darkest Durham, North Carolina. One of Tim’s latest personal ventures involves the wildly-popular virtual world of Second Life. There, people seem to carry on just like they do out here in the real world, except they get to make it — and even themselves — into anything they can dream up. Like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic,
Read moreOkay, listen up. This is important. The American Music Center (AMC) and American Composers Forum (ACF) have teamed up with Columbia University’s Research Center for Arts and Culture to conduct the first major study of living composers. Since many Sequenza21 readers are, in fact, living and do write music, that means you. The study, they say, aims to gather important data to guide their efforts in better serving and advocating for composers of all styles and backgrounds. If you are a composer, you can be a part of this important research by filling out the online survey at the link
Read moreThe Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and David Lang won the music prize for “The Little Match Girl Passion.” I haven’t heard the piece, but David is a reliably excellent composer–one of my favorite performances of the past year was ICE’s performance of his piece “Men” at the end of the Bang On a Can Marathon. Runners up were “Meanwhile” by Stephen Hartke and “Concerto for Viola” by Roberto Sierra. Unfortunately, the winner in the Feature Writing category was Gene Weingarten’s piece “Pearls Before Breakfast.” You’ll recall that this was the experiment with Joshua Bell playing in the DC Metro.
Read moreI went to two excellent concerts recently which served as great illustrations of what happens when a composer really understands what the instruments he or she is writing for are capable of. The first was a concert by cello/percussion duo Odd Appetite at Symphony Space in New York on March 12. Percussionist Nathan Davis and cellist Ha-Yang Kim are both composers, and they usually play some of their own music on the Odd Appetite concerts. Both embody the composer-performer aesthetic, although to a certain extent I am imposing that terminology on them–last summer when I asked Ha-Yang how she would
Read moreLast week, the CBC announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years, would give its final concert in November. This is a sign that: 1) Classical music has failed to engage the attention of younger listeners and has become irrelevant to the lives of most people. This is mainly the fault of dreary programming and unimaginative presentation by unenlightened gatekeepers; 2) Yet another depressing sign that Canada is becoming more like the United States–a pop culturized, winner-take-all society in which competition for attention is fueled solely by ratings and money. 3) Something else?
Read moreWhen you’re in a town with a good university or two, spring always brings a sudden flood of concerts and recitals, almost all of them free. It’s kind of like having a mini-festival, chock-a-block full of tasty morsels. Down here in Houston, Rice University is my main music fix (the University of Houston is no slouch, either, but I’m being picky), and April has a number of excellent-sounding concerts with newer music (and yes, that’s just what the weather looks like down here right about now): April 10th, 8pm, Stude Concert Hall – the Shepherd School of Music’s Percussion Ensemble takes on Steve Reich’s Music for
Read moreAt 66, baritone Thomas Buckner says he’s busier now than he was when in his forties. Last month, when we sat down to chat, he had just come back from a week of master classes and music making at Mills College. Next week, he has a terrific-sounding concert at Greenwich House, and, in June, he’ll play a leading role in a festival featuring Robert Ashley’s operas in Ferrara, Italy. This is all in addition to the Interpretations concert series, which he curates, and running his record label, Mutable Music. Though growing up he was an enthusiastic participant in family holiday
Read moreI caught the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) at the MATA Festival Tuesday night in Brooklyn. 1. Gil Rose and BMOP played a varied concert with conviction and panache Tuesday night. While there were wonderful soloists on the program, the ensemble really held the spotlight the entire night in the best possible sense – always blending well and making the most of lines, accompaniment and ensemble. 2. The show started with Alejandro Rutty’s “The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops,” and was a perfect energetic start. Lots of rhythms were blasted in the Brooklyn Lyceum, filled to standing room only for the concert.
Read moreAt the start of 2007, I told you about my composer/sound-artist pal Chris DeLaurenti’s great new CD release, Favorite Intermissions. A collection of recordings made during symphony concerts around the country, of everything but the concert itself; the warm-ups, noodles and doodles from both pre- and mid-concert, framed to draw our attention to the fun, beauty and serendipity these moments hold. Released on GD Records, it included a wonderfully cheeky cover, a parody/homage to the classic Deutsche Grammophon covers (shown here for illustration only!): Response was good, with positive notices in places like the Wire, Signal to Noise and even the New
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