Experimental Music

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Kaminsky Comments

Updated : 9/6/12 with added thoughts from Laura Kaminsky. Every so often we have a conversation that changes us for the better. Sometimes, we have this type of conversation with our mothers, our fathers, our close friends and allies, our colleagues, or with an artist. Last weekend I had a profound conversation with the latter, an artist named Laura Kaminsky. Laura Kaminsky, composer, is also the artistic director of Symphony Space, the renowned performance venue in New York City. She has received commissions, fellowships, and awards as both a composer and presenter from over twenty organizations including the Koussevitzky Music Foundation

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by Jonathan Lakeland
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Improv, Interviews, Premieres, San Francisco

Let’s Ask John Shiurba

John Shiurba is a composer and guitarist based in Oakland, California whose artistry embraces improvisation, art-rock, composition and noise.  In his composer capacity, he’s headlining the second night of the 11th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, an evening entitled The Composer’s Muse.  The concert will take place on Thursday, July 19th at 8:00 p.m. at the San Francisco Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco.  Tickets are available at the door, or online through Brown Paper Tickets. Shiurba’s world premiere work for large ensemble, 9:9, is a suite of nine pieces written to be interpreted by nine players with a conductor.

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by Polly Moller
Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, Ojai, Percussion, Photos, Post Modern, Premieres

The West Coast premiere of Inuksuit at the 2012 Ojai Music Festival

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so consider this photo album a 26,000 word review until I file my story. Inuksuit was one of the most extraordinary pieces of music I’ve heard since–well, John Luther Adams’ orchestra and tape work, Dark Waves. (On Sunday, we’ll hear JLA’s two-piano version of Dark Waves.) Do read Paul Muller’s account of this concert and Thursday evening’s concert. To give you some idea of what the performance was like, here are some crude videos I made on my not-designed-for-filming camera. The mike on the camera did a reasonable job of capturing

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by Christian Hertzog
CDs, Cello, Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York, viola

Tuesday at LPR: Garth Knox Celebrates Saltarello

Saltarello Garth Knox, viola & fiddle with Agnès Vesterman, cello & Sylvain Lemêtre, percussion ECM Records CD 2157 Dance music in multiple forms, from the saltarello, a Venetian dance dating back to the Fourteenth century, to  Breton and Celtic folk music, as well as transcriptions of medieval era compositions, Renaissance era consort music, and contemporary fare, are featured on Saltarello, violist Garth Knox’s latest ECM CD.  Among the early music slections, Particularly impressive is a Vivaldi concerto, performed in a duo arrangement for viola d’amore and cello. Its interpreters, Knox and Agnès Vesterman, take this continuo less opportunity to accentuate a

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by Christian Carey
Big Band, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, Festivals, Improv, jazz, Piano, Premieres, San Francisco, Saxophone, Sound Art, Women composers

2012 Outsound Summit lineup revealed

The San Francisco Bay Area’s underground music scene will come together this coming July in an annual celebration of its tremendous range of styles, its love of improvisation, and its collective obsession with new and unusual timbres and techniques.  It’s the 11th Annual Outsound New Music Summit!  All events will take place at the San Francisco Community Music Center at 544 Capp Street near 20th Street in the Mission District, and tickets can be ordered online from Brown Paper Tickets or purchased at the door. The ever-popular Touch the Gear Expo kicks off the Summit on Sunday July 15, 7-10

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by Polly Moller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Interviews

Experiments in Opera: Roulette Spring Series (A Preview)

Experiments in Opera, the new collective founded by composers Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, and Matthew Welch, presents its Spring Series on May 10 + 11 (Thursday and Friday) at Roulette in Brooklyn. Four new operas will be heard in workshop performances over the two evenings. The May 10 program features a complete semi-staged, multi-media performance of Cady’s Happiness is the Problem, plus a semi-staged, work-in-progess presentation of To Scale by the creative trio known as Cough Button, and a concert excerpt from Siegel’s Brother Brother. May 11 will be devoted to a semi-staged production of Welch’s Borges and The Other,

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by Chris McGovern
Experimental Music, File Under?

Improv Friday Pipes Down

Over at Sequenza 21 Editor Steve Layton’s Bandcamp page, is a free download of a comp he’s curated, titled ppp. Description and embed below. “Between April 26th-28th 2012, twenty-five musicians from around the U.S. and the world gathered at the music-sharing website known as ImprovFriday.com. The suggested theme for our sharing was simply “ppp;” i.e., the music term for “extremely soft and quiet.” How each person interpreted this in their own performance was left to them. This CD documents mash-ups I made during the course of the weekend event, of all the different tracks coming in to the site from these

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by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, Music Events

Behind the 2012 Fast Forward Austin Festival

The 2012 Fast Forward Austin contemporary music festival begins its 8-hour marathon of performances this afternoon at Austin, Texas’ versatile ND-501 studios. This year’s event, the second installment of the Fast Forward Austin (FFA) idea, features performances by local and nationally-acclaimed performers including renowned pianist Vicky Chow and Graham Reynolds, considered, “Austin’s own new music wizard”. Today’s musical menu features established names from the last few decades of new music – David Lang, Louis Andriessen and Iannis Xenakis – alongside brand new works by up-and-coming composers – Shawn Allison, David Biedenbender and Christopher Cerrone – culled from the festival’s 2011-12

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by Garrett Schumann
Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Film Music

Laurie Spiegel’s appearance in The Hunger Games

How awful is the dystopia in The Hunger Games? Well, if you listen to one cue in the movie, you might be led to believe that only pitch-drifting analog synthesizers are available, and multitrack recordings are made with the greatest of difficulties. At least that’s what one might believe encountering Laurie Spiegel’s 1972 composition, Sediment, during the cornucopia scene in the Hollywood blockbuster. (Steve Reich’s music also makes an appearance!) Geeta Dayal has the full story, along with an interview of Laurie Spiegel, here.

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by Christian Hertzog