Music for Dance 2017-2020, by Alex Wand, is a new album of selected electronic instrumental music created as accompaniment for choreographed dance. Wand’s experience with the local dance community is extensive and includes residencies with the LA Dance Project, Los Angeles Performance Practice, REDCAT, and Metro Art LA. According to the liner notes, Wand has worked with choreographer Jay Carlon “ …as a collaborator on his site-specific dance theater productions and dance films…” This collection consists of eight tracks of electronic music, primarily realized using modular synths. Although Wand’s supple voice is absent from this album, the inventive sounds he
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Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, jazz, Music Events, Performers, Premieres
Two years ago, I was editing a 2020 interview with the composer David Lang about the new multi-day festival that Bang on a Can planned for that spring, Long Play, when I realized the significance of the festival title. The year 2020 would be Bang on a Can’s 33rd anniversary. Long Play = LP = 33 rpm. Very clever! Although the festival was delayed for two years, it retains its name. The inaugural Long Play festival takes place on April 29, April 30 and May 1, 2022 at a half-dozen venues in Brooklyn, including BAM, Roulette, Littlefield, the Center for Fiction, Mark Morris
Read moreBarbara Monk Feldman Verses GBSR Duo with Mira Benjamin Another Timbre CD Given her association with Morton Feldman, both personal and professional – he was both her spouse and her instructor at Buffalo University – it is tempting to look for comparisons between their compositions. Tempting but unrewarding. Yes, Monk Feldman creates slow, quiet pieces, but so do many composers since Morton Feldman who have greatly departed from his legacy. A fundamental distinction one hears on Verses, Another Timbre’s Monk Feldman recital disc, is that the composer has a cogent sense of form; the longest piece is thirty-one
Read moreMorton Feldman Late Works for Piano For Bunita Marcus, Palais de Mari, Triadic Memories Alfonso Gómez Kairos 3xCD Morton Feldman’s late piano works are totemic structures, influential on a generation of composers from the Wandelweiser collective to American experimentalists. Slow-moving, prevailingly soft, and quite long, apart from the Palais de Mari, which still clocks in at nearly a half hour in duration. This Kairos recording presents compelling renditions of Feldman in clear, focused sound that captures the pedaling and decay of notes with admirable detail. Alfonso Gómez’s recent recording of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards, also on Kairos, was an impressive
Read moreCatherine Lamb: String Quartets JACK Quartet Kairos 2xCD Catherine Lamb’s studies with James Tenney at Cal Arts, as well as substantial research of figures such as Erv Wilson, have led her to crafting compositions with subtle tuning systems based on just intonation. On a double-CD from Kairos, JACK Quartet performs an early piece, Two Blooms (2009), and a recent, gargantuan opus, divisio spiralis (2019). Where extended just-intonation composer Ben Johnston created quartets like his Fourth, based on “Amazing Grace,” where the focus is melodic cells, Lamb is interested in the confluence of different intervals, creating beats from difference and
Read moreWind Bells Falls Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci Telegraph Harp “Glitter and Gleam,” the leadoff single for Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci’s collaboration Wind Bells Falls immediately brings you into the altered domain of their engaging approach to sound art. An essay for warped celeste, it provides a sense of musique concrète while also exploring a playful sensibility. Bell-like timbres ricochet throughout the soundfield, supplying exactly what the title suggests. Throughout the nine pieces on the recording, the duo deploys winds, keyboards, and tape machines. Their specialties include using acoustic instruments in unconventional ways and distressing tape to
Read moreWe are saddened to learn of the loss of George Crumb, who passed away on February 6, 2022 at the age of 92. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the composer was one of the most important musical figures of his generation, both as a creator and, for many years, as a professor at University of Pennsylvania. Considered by his students to be a supportive and gifted teacher, he mentored a number of composers who went on to major careers. Crumb composed a large catalog of works, and many of them have become touchstones of the contemporary repertoire. The
Read moreBest New/Experimental Recordings Trio IX and Exercises Christian Wolff Trio Accanto Nicholas Hodges, piano; Marcus Weiss, saxophone; Christian Dierstein, percussion Wergo CD Three String Quartets Christian Wolff Quatuor Bozzini New World CD On Trio IX and Exercises, Trio Accanto performs recent music by Christian Wolff, a composer with whom they have often collaborated. Trio IX (2017) is dedicated to the group, and it is filled with tunes ranging from J.S. Bach to work songs to quotes and “reminiscences” from Wolff’s own music. This is a palimpsest of a quodlibet, and all the better for it, as the strands from
Read moreNumber Pieces John Cage Apartment House Another Timbre 4XCD boxed set John Cage’s Number Pieces, late compositions (from 1987-1992) are given two designations, a number indicating the size of the ensemble and a superscript indicating its order in multiple pieces for the same-sized grouping (Quintet #2 = 52). Fragments of pitches, sometimes single notes, are indicated; dynamics appear sporadically. Rhythm is codified through the use of “time brackets,” indicating how long before a performer can move to another fragment. Most of the pieces are for a particular instrumentation, although a few are unspecified. Thus, while a considerable amount of
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