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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, Interviews, Performers, Philadelphia, Piano

Marilyn Nonken talks about Feldman Festival

Pianist Marilyn Nonken is performing Triadic Memories on June 4 in Philadelphia as part of “American Sublime,” a festival devoted to the works of Morton Feldman. Marilyn was kind enough to tell us a bit about working on Feldman’s music, as well as some of her other upcoming projects.   -What were your early encounters with Feldman’s music like?   I can’t remember my first live Feldman experience as a listener. One of the first works I remember hearing was FOR SAMUEL BECKETT. My first experience playing Feldman was with Ensemble 21, when we performed VIOLIN VIOLA CELLO PIANO, which was

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Interviews

Talea plays Neuwirth Tonight!

As I mentioned yesterday, Talea Ensemble will be giving a concert of works by Olga Neuwirth in New York City on Tuesday at 8 PM (Details/tickets here). The group’s percussionist, Alex Lipowski, was kind enough to talk with me about Talea’s activities of late and tomorrow’s show. – This has been a busy season for Talea Ensemble. Do you feel that the group’s reach and activities are expanding of late? The 2010-‘11 season has been an amazing collection of projects for Talea and we are so grateful for each of them.  One of our goals is to reach as wide

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by Christian Carey
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Hiphopera? MATA Festival Closer Tonight at LPR

The MATA Festival’s final performance is 7:30 PM tonight (5/12) at Le Poisson Rouge. It features the Metropolis Ensemble, premiering several new works commissioned by MATA, including Ryan Carter’s Skeumorphic Tendencies and The Rake, a hip-hoperatic retelling of Stravinky’s Rake’s Progress by Brad Balliett and Sequenza 21’s own Elliot Cole. Ticket information can be found on LPR’s site or via Metropolis here. A Burst of Blinding Clarity from Metropolis Ensemble on Vimeo.

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by Christian Carey
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Spring for Music spotlights Albany tonight!

Sequenza 21 readers will doubtless already know that the Albany Symphony is, in orchestral terms, the “mouse that roared.” They’ve long had an extraordinary commitment to contemporary music and their standard of playing is the envy of many regional orchestras. And on the right night and with the right repertoire, they’re in the same “weight class” as some of the top big-budget orchestras. Tonight, Albany SO gets a chance to show their mettle on one of the most prestigious stages on earth. They make their Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Spring for Music festival. The first half of

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, New Amsterdam, New York

Synthetist Summit at LPR tonight

There’s going to be an album release party tonight at Le Poisson Rouge. Two groups on the New Amsterdam Records roster, NOW Ensemble and the Chiara String Quartet, are celebrating their respective releases. —– Chiara are presenting string quartets by Jefferson Friedman, along with remixes thereof by special guest electronica artists Matmos. Meanwhile, NOW Ensemble presents a mixed program of new synthetists pieces by the likes of Judd Greenstein, Sean Friar, and Missy Mazzoli. Check out Joshua Frankel’s new video Plan of the City below; it will accompany the performance of Greenstein’s Change at the gig.   PLAN OF THE

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by Christian Carey
Books, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Read This

Book Review Listen to This By Alex Ross New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 384 pp. Published in 2007, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross’ first book, was an engrossing and thoughtful survey of Twentieth Century music, equally useful as an introduction to neophytes and a refresher to specialists (he’s since tweaked the paperback edition to be even more comprehensive, including updated info and a “go-to” listening list). By “classical music” standards, the book was wildly successful, and Ross subsequently garnered a number of honors, including a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship. Its follow-up,

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by Christian Carey
CDs, Cello, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?

Peter Lieberson: The Six Realms

Peter Lieberson’s record label, Bridge Records, has been kind enough to share some of his music with us: an excerpt from The Six Realms, for Cello and Orchestra (2000), one of his later and larger works and a piece that has an explicitly Buddhist programmatic element. Here is movement 5, performed by cellist Michaela Fukacova, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Justin Brown. The recording is from Bridge 9178, The Music of Peter Lieberson. The Six Realms:  V. The Human Realm Program Note: In addition to silk and other precious goods, the Silk Road helped disseminate Buddhism, one of

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by Christian Carey
Awards, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?, Songs

RIP Peter Lieberson (1946-2011)

We’re saddened to learn from David Starobin of the passing of composer Peter Lieberson in Israel, due to complications from Lymphoma. He had been battling the disease since 2006 and for a time it had been in remission. But in late 2010, Lieberson travelled to Israel to seek treatment for a recurrence of the cancer. Alex Ross has posted a touching remembrance on The Rest is Noise. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJoqGx_F_1o[/youtube] Lieberson’s music was an extraordinary mixture of disparate strands of influences. It encompassed  an intuitive post-tonal vocabulary, rooted in dodecaphonic training but also capable of lush verticals and, particularly in his vocal music,

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by Christian Carey
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Stay tuned

Yes, we’re still planning to have a Sequenza 21/MNMP concert in 2011 and it’s going to be excellent. We’re still finalizing the details, but should have an announcement soon. Thanks for your continued patience (which is code for “entrants: stop calling and emailing us”). Speaking of synthetists, how’s about Craig Wedren and ACME performing a song from On in Love (video below)? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SWCPDI4tKQ[/youtube]

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Phat Beats from Princeton

Some of you might know Elliot Cole as a composer of concert music, Contributing Editor here at Sequenza 21, or as a doctoral student at Princeton. But do you know Cole as a … rapper? De Rerum, Elliot’s debut EP as a fast-talking MC, under the project moniker Oracle Hysterical, tackles lofty subject matter. According to Cole, “It’s a verse history of the world as I understand it (to c.2000BCE, after which, I discovered, history is mostly redundant), and also a general synthesis of, well, most every (nonfiction) book I’ve read in the last decade.” The EP is available for

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by Christian Carey