Last night’s Monday Evening Concert was programmed by Kent Nagano: “Bach and the Music of Today”. This is hardly a fresh theme, and last night’s program didn’t reveal any fresh ideas of resonance across the centuries. But it did let us hear works of four composers of today, and that was welcome. I first heard the music of Kurt Rohde when Nagano programmed his Double Trouble (2002) for the 2004 Ojai Festival. Last night Rohde and his friend Ellen Ruth Rose performed the virtuosic parts for two violas, supported by a small ensemble of violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano; I
Read moreWell, okay, so it’s recorded but we now have in-house music for your dining, dancing and surfing pleasure thanks to our friends at the American Music Center and their new Counterstream Radio. Click on the blue thing with the white toilet seat in the right column and up will pop a dandy little player that delivers an amazing variety of “new” music–in the broadest possible sense. If your tastes run from Judith Lang Zaimont to Cecil Taylor to Miguel Frasconi, you’ve come to the right place. Nice going Frank, Molly, Ian and gang. Lots of neat things happening involving some of our favorite
Read moreJust read this on CrooksandLiars.com, one of the best political blogs out there if you’re a leftist radical like me. In any case, the Copyright Royalty Board is essentially moving forward with a plan to increase the royalty fees for playing music over the Web. All you folks out there who are for strict intellectual property protections and copyright, get ready to potentially lose your favorite Web radio programs. They’ll all be gone unless they are willing to pay through the nose in order to provide more money to the record companies (and remember, for all the pro-IP arguments out
Read moreI caught the second of “In Your Ear Redux” concerts at Zankel Hall with The Tensions Mountain Boys Saturday night, and I was happy I did! 1. Chris Thile (mandolin, voice and composer) is clearly a masterful musician. His new group The Tensions Mountain Boys (Chris Eldridge, guitar/vocals; Greg Garrison, Bass; Noam Pikelny, Banjo; Gabe Witcher, violin (nee fiddle)/vocals; and Thile) is a perfect match. They all connect with astounding playing abilities and a certain nonchalance on stage. Thile was downright comedic in his delivery: “You’re all so kind to come here tonight, but why are you in your underwear?
Read moreWhy a String Quartet? What is it that has given it its exalted reputation and mystique? Why have so many composers regarded it as the perfect medium of expression, though it is perhaps the most demanding to write for? And why do distinguished artists often prefer to work as a team in a first class quartet rather than make bigger money as, say, orchestral leaders? Music means different things to different people: but for those to who music is an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion –
Read moreVanessa Vanessa Lann emails – Today is the world premiere of my string quartet, Landscape of a Soul’s Remembering. In this work there are six separate locations on the stage where the musicians will stand or sit throughout the performance, changing to new positions between each of the four movements. At each spot there is specific music to be played, consisting of recognizable, repeated patterns that the players will interpret in turn – on their respective instruments – during each movement. As these patterns emerge again and again in new contexts, played on different instruments by different performers, they will
Read moreSettle in for a little history… Juan Hidalgo (b.1927 –Spain), Walter Marchetti (b.1931 — Italy), and Zaj Most musicians who’ve fallen for John Cage and David Tudor, also know that offspring of the 1960s and 70s, FLUXUS. Far fewer know about the Spanish version, running parallel yet independently. It’s one thing to have gone experimental in, say, England at the time; quite another to have pursued this stuff in the fascist dictatorship of Franco’s Spain. In one you ran the risk of apathy; in the other actual persecution. In the mid-50s, Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti were both young student composers.
Read moreOne of the hottest things in Philadelphia has to be the Relâche chamber ensemble. They’ve performed and recorded work by a wide variety of composers in the Downtown tradition including Kyle Gann, Michael Nyman, Robert Ashley, Lois V. Vierk, James Tenney, and they’re about to hit the road with Elliott Sharp’s new work “Evolute.” The piece is, to quote the Relâche press release, “a new chamber- and electronic musical work. . . [in which] Relâche’s octet instrumentation will be processed by Sharp through live electronics, resulting in a swirling mass of acoustic and electronic sound – a live classical remix.
Read moreA good time is to be had this Saturday night at Zankel Hall. Chris Thile and The Tensions Mountain Boys will premiere his bluegrass/classical suite “The Blind Leading the Blind.” As long as your sensibilities are broader than “Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas,” you should have no problem. Still: let’s keep ’em honest. If you will promise us a well-edited and not too long-winded review, Jerry and I will in turn throw our estimate clout around and get you in for free. You know how to reach us. Speaking of bluegrass, how about a round of random and rapturous applause
Read moreNew York City – On Friday afternoon, March 9, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, music critic Tim Page of The Washington Post hosted a panel discussion between five Grawemeyer-winning composers: John Corigliano (1991), Sebastian Currier (2007), Karel Husa (1993), Aaron Jay Kernis (2002), and Joan Tower (1990). Grawemeyer Symposium: (left to right) Tim Page, Aaron Kernis, Sebastian Currier, Karel Husa John Corigliano, and Joan Tower. Tim Page began with a quote from Virgil Thomson stating that to be an American composer, one must simply be in America and compose. All five composer/panelists contributed their thoughts
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