The newly revived Roulette (on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn) is the site for a premiere this coming Friday (details here). Guitarist-composer Joel Harrison’s Still Point – Turning World (a veiled reference to a line in “Burnt Norton,” one T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets) is a polyglot work for diverse forces. In addition to Harrison’s jazz quartet, it also features the Talujon Percussion Quartet, and Anupam Shobhakar, who plays the sarode, an Indian stringed instrument. Still Point… requires its performers to be in a flexible collaboration, reveling in polystylism. “Crossover” is a term that’s overused and sometimes misused these days. All too often the results
Read moreFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: Christina Jensen PR 646.536.7864 | christina@christinajensenpr.com ACME: American Contemporary Music Ensemble The Sequenza21 Concert presented by S21 & Manhattan New Music Project Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7pm Joe’s Pub | 425 Lafayette Street | NYC Tickets: FREE. Reserve tickets & tables at 212.539.8778 or www.joespub.com. ACME: www.acmemusic.org Sequenza21: www.Sequenza21.com MNMP: www.mnmp.org New York, NY – ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) will perform a free concert at Joe’s Pub (425 Lafayette St., NYC) on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7pm presented by online contemporary classical community Sequenza21.com and theManhattan New Music Project. The works to be performed were selected through an open call for
Read more
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York
Some festivals have a curatorial vision that takes pages and pages of press releases and program notes to explain. Other curators, like Glenn Cornett, revel in the whimsy of amusing composers’ names. Why organize a one-night Nono, Muchmore, and Warp(ed) mini-marathon? The names sounded fun together and the players are the bee’s knees. The evening will feature music by Italian modernist master Luigi Nono, New York cellist/composer and Anti Social Music member Pat Muchmore, and San Francisco based composer/sound designer Richard Warp. With a 7 PM start time, the show is three and a half hours long, and is full
Read more
CDs, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, File Under?, Interviews, jazz, New York, Performers, Video
Songs for Persephone: Mimi Goese & Ben Neill Take a seductive voiced art-pop singer and a post-jazz/alt-classical trumpeter. Add fragments of nineteenth century classical melodies, electronics elicited by a “mutantrumpet” controller. Then add influences ranging from ancient Greek mythology to the Hudson River Valley. What you have are the intricate yet intimate sounds on an evocatively beautiful new CD: Songs for Persephone. The Persephone legend is one of the oldest in Greek mythology, with many variants that provide twists and turns to the narrative and subtext of the story. In the myth, Persephone, daughter of Zeus and the harvest
Read moreThe Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert is fast approaching. This free event will be at Joe’s Pub on Oct. 25 at 7 PM (reserve a seat here). The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) will perform a program that features composers selected from our call for scores. In the coming weeks, we’ll be hearing from a number of the composers and performers appearing on the concert. First up is Jay Batzner, who teaches at Central Michigan University and contributes regularly to Sequenza 21. He tells us about his piece on the program: Slumber Music. I remember a lot about composing Slumber Music, which
Read moreLast year, saxophonist Trygve Seim and pianist Andreas Utnem collaborated on Purcor, a recording for the ECM imprint (Seim’s sixth as leader). Drawing on material from a wide range of sources, including settings of the Mass, folk music, and Seim’s own compositions, it was among the recordings in frequent rotation when I got home from the hospital this past November. Needing a calm environment in which to regenerate and reflect, I found Purcor to be the perfect listening to accompany a healing respite. Meditative yet soulful, earnest yet elegant, gently articulated yet substantively thoughtful, Seim and Utnem craft a series
Read moreThe US premiere of James Dillon’s Nine Rivers, a three evening long contemporary classical epic, will open Miller Theatre’s 2011-’12 season (details below). I’ll be writing about the first evening of the piece for Musical America. That said, I’ve been assured by those in the know that you probably shouldn’t take this Gesamtkunstwerk as if it’s three separate evenings of music: it’s kind of like having your Siegfried without your Götterdämmerung. Is Nine Rivers a postmodern retort to the Ring? Perhaps not in terms of narrative, but in terms of its ambitious scope and extended genesis, its not an inapt
Read more“New Roulette” INTERVIEW SERIES: Joan La Barbara, Jon Gibson, Phill Niblock from Roulette Intermedium on Vimeo.
Read moreHurricane Irene approaches. We’ve got two extra guests this weekend: my Mom and Humphrey, her labrador retriever. They were evacuated from Long Island and are spending the weekend with us. Waiting out a storm can be angst-producing and, eventually, boredom provoking – particularly without music. So, File Under ? readers (the comments section is open and so are email, Twitter, Facebook, and G+), send us your “hurricane” listening lists – either in old-fashioned typewritten format or via the usual suspects (Spotify, Last.fm, etc.). The guidelines are wide open. It can be a themed list or simply musical “comfort food.” Stay
Read moreWe all know Hilary Hahn as Sequenza 21’s resident video blogger; oh, and she’s a world class violinist and DG recording artist. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_-fpVZ0hdw[/youtube] Wearing both of those hats simultaneously, Hilary had a video chat via Skype with composer Max Richter earlier this week. Richter is one of 27 composers commissioned to write an encore for Hahn; she begins debuting the pieces this coming October. In order to spotlight the featured composers, Hilary’s planning to release a video interview with one each month. It makes us here at Sequenza 21 feel kind of special. After all, how many other websites have their
Read more