The 53rd Annual Grammy nominations have been announced (list of nominees in the Classical category here). Lots of contemporary classical represented, even in the more general categories.
Congratulations to Steve Mackey and Michael Daugherty: both are up for Best Classical Album. The ensembles that recorded their works, BMOP and the Nashville SO, respectively, are also up for Best Orchestral Performance.
Kaija Saariaho’sL’Amour de Loin was nominated in the Opera category, while Magnus Lindberg’sGraffiti and Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 were both nominated for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Also glad to see the Sherry Quartet’s recording of Schoenberg and the Parker Quartet’sLigeti disc (both on Naxos) receiving nominations.
There’s much more. And, of course, there will always be omissions that dismay us. Particularly so in 2010: this was a good year for recordings!
The University of Michigan’s final student composers’ concert of 2010 took place this last Monday, November 29, in Stamps Auditorium, part of the University’s Walgreen Drama Center. This collection of performances was unexpected; so many composers submitted material for November 15’s composers’ concert, a brief third concert of the term was necessary.
Whereas the concert earlier this month was unique with its multiple composer-performers, Monday’s event possessed a more subtle distinction: a strong stylistic dichotomy emerged among the works, essentially pitting modernist and traditional forces in opposition to each other. From a qualitative standpoint, I found this duality inconsequential because all of the evening’s acoustic works had something in common: they expressed their structures with the recurrence of clearly identifiable themes. Although the two electronic pieces on the concert used different formal techniques, they also contained clear and satisfying dramatic lines. As a result, I felt the evening’s music was tied together despite the starkly contrasting musical tastes presented on the program.
First on the concert was Bret Bohman’s she comes back as fire (2010), a three-movement work for string quartet. This piece is the complete version of something I heard, and reviewed, in October at Michigan’s and I was happy to reacquaint myself with the first movement’s unforgettable midsection – an aria where the first violin saunters in its highest register above a placid accompaniment. The rest of the piece explores and culminates material from the first movement, varying the music’s atmosphere little even though new content is introduced. Ultimately, Mr. Bohman references the memorable first violin solo in she comes back as fire’s final movement, but the surrounding music is too chaotic for its reappearance to establish a sense of repose. Mr, Bohman used his themes economically, which illuminated much of the work’s structure on the first listen. I am also sure further interaction with she comes back as fire would, more deeply, reveal a tightly wound and efficient network of musical material.
Next on the program was Patrick Behnke’s viola and violin duet, Miranda at the Edge of the Water (2010). Mr. Behnke currently studies viola at the University of Michigan and delivered a fine performance alongside violinist Jordan Broder. Loosely based on certain Indian rhythmic modes, Miranda at the Edge of the Water proceeded in a pseudo-improvisatory manner from an opening drone through a variety of dance-like passages and finally back to the static beginning, which evoked Mr. Behnke’s South Asian influences. I say “pseudo improvisatory” because the piece progressed like a stream-of-conscientiousness, and the violin and viola alternated the responsibility of leading the duo to its next musical destination, often via imitation. Mr. Behnke’s note explained connections not just to Indian music, but to Bela Bartok and Jimi Hendrix as well; yet, I heard another association – Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabulation. One of the few recurring sections featured a modal melody accompanied by its supporting triad. Particularly at the end of Miranda at the Edge of the Water, this technique gave the music a reverent and meditative quality, fitting Mr. Behnke’s description, “the violin ascends to the heavens. All is over.”
The latest vendor to wade into the online sales arena is Sony’s Ariama.The site’s “public beta” version was recently unveiled. That means that the store is up and running, although they’re still tweaking things and making additions.
More than fifty major and indie classical labels have already signed up to sell their catalogs on Ariama. There are several purchasing options available, including MP3, lossless digital (at a higher price), CDs, and SACDs. This past week, I went on to the site to “kick the tires,” making a few purchases and checking on its search engine and offerings. A few observations:
The interface is attractive and updated regularly. Andriessen’s Grawemeyer win is currently featured on the splash page.
Reviews and artist data are provided by one of my favorite database sites: Allmusic.
Searches ran easily and quickly. You can search through a variety of categories: Conductors, Performers, Orchestras, Periods, etc. A label search, like you find on Naxos, might be a nice addition.
There is also a consumer-friendly “Recommendations” section. It includes listings for the BBC Music Magazine Awards, Gramophone’s Basic Library, and even “Classical for Kids.” I was impressed with the way that Ariama incorporated features like this, which will help the classical neophyte to get started building a collection, with lots of other detailed information.
Downloading MP3s went smoothly: the Ariama tool is similar to the downloader one uses on Amazon or eMusic. It’s very straightforward to set up and use.
As an aside, I’m not quite sure why labels insist on charging a higher price for lossless. When the industry is still struggling to convert classical music buffs and audiophiles to the digital domain, it seems like a pennywise pound foolish decision.
There’s a very good selection of contemporary music. On my visit, I got a contemporary recital disc by pianist Mario Formenti, a Marco Stroppa disc, and Yvar Mikhashoff’s Tango album as a download.
Some imprints, like Kairos and Mode, only offer physical recordings (CD, SACD). While I love having physical copies of recordings, it’s best for vendors to be versatile and have both on offer. Hopefully, as Ariama gets more established, it will be able to offer downloads by more of the participating labels.
Pricing is fair. Most searches I ran side by side with Amazon ended up with identical prices. Ariama is currently offering free shipping as an introductory offer, which is a nice perk.
One aspect of the site’s searches that may prove vexsome to Sequenza 21 readers is its categorization of contemporary classical. In addition to the aforementioned search categories, the site divides music into periods, with more recent music being categorized as either Modern (1900-2000) or Contemporary (1975-present) categories. While one can already see a conflict in dating, the pages for each of these eras reveal some quirks. A CD of Chopin Waltzes recorded by Ingrid Fliter has inexplicably made its way onto the featured selections in the “Modern” category.
Over on the “Contemporary” side, the list of “Essential Works” leads off with Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) and Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes (1948). The first of its featured releases is Yo-Yo Ma’sSongs of Joy recording. Released in 2008, this ecumenical holiday album is certainly of recent vintage, but it seems strange to be billing it as “contemporary music.” There is a separate category for crossover albums; seems this one was inadvertently placed in the wrong bin! They might consider getting some curatorial help on the this side of the site.
But how can contemporary classical buffs complain when Ariama is offering Sequenza 21 readers a special coupon good for 10% off your order? Here’s how it works:
To mark the launch of Ariama, Sequenza 21 readers in North America can receive 10% off any purchase by using the code SEQUENZA21-1 (the offer expires on December 31, 2010). To visit the store click this link: Ariama.com
Congratulations to Louis Andriessen for winning the University of Louisville’s 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. He received the award for La Commedia, his fourth opera. This year’s award is $100,000.
We’re saddened to hear the news of Ann Southam’s death this past Thursday after a long battle with cancer. Southam was one of Canada’s foremost composers, an influential teacher at the Royal Conservatory, and longtime arts advocate, active in several groups which fostered contemporary music.
She received numerous honors during her distinguished career. Earlier this year, she was named a member of the Order of Canada.
Southam’s oeuvre encompassed several compositional styles and genres: twelve-tone music, lyrical Neoromanticism, electroacoustic music, and postminimalism. I particularly admire her writing for the piano and have included two videos of contrasting works for piano soloist below.
Thanks to Carlton Wilkinson for sharing this on Facebook! I’ve written about Keith Rowe a couple of times for Signal to Noise, but he hasn’t been in the rotation for a while. I’m glad to see this gutsy and muscular prepared guitar performance.
The New York Philharmonic kicks off its second season of the new music series CONTACT! this Friday and Saturday at Symphony Space and the Met Museum (tickets/details here). The theme of the concert is spectralism. The program pairs Souvenir, a new work written in memory of Gérard Grisey by NYPO composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg, with Grisey’s own Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil. Lindberg studied with Grisey, and he talks about the connections between them in the video interview below.
And more about his new piece:
And there are lots more video goodies and links over at the NY Phil’s Tumblr page.
Strata – a trio consisting of pianist Audrey Andrist, clarinetist Nathan Williams, and violinist/violist James Stern– has just started a new commissioning project. Abetted by a grant from the Rauch Foundation, their Metaclassical Music Projectseeks to bridge the gap between new music and the non-specialist audience through educational outreach and the commissioning of new works that seek to communicate with a range of listeners.
Phase one of Strata’s “demystification” of contemporary fare involves presenting a new piece by Stephen Paulus on a concert this weekend at Merkin Hall (details below). Paulus is certainly a composer who fits their mission statement: an artist who doesn’t water down his language (and can indeed sound quite ‘modern’ in places) but has managed to craft a body of work that speaks to many “mainstream” classical listeners.
Alongside Paulus’ Trio Concertant, Strata will present works by Robert Maggio, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Béla Bartók’s Contrasts. I recently caught up with Stern to discuss the concert, as well as Strata’s future plans for the Metaclassical Music project.
Sequenza 21: Tell me a bit about the background and formation of Strata.
Stern: Strata is an ensemble that grew out of friendships formed at the Juilliard School. Audrey and I began dating while we were both graduate students there, and then Audrey met Nathan in a doctoral seminar they were both taking after I had moved away to take a job at the Cleveland Institute. So far we’ve never all three lived in the same city, but Audrey and I got married a few years later, while Nathan’s career was taking him all over the world with a succession of teaching positions and performing. Despite the geographical obstacles, the three of us got serious about developing a repertoire and performing throughout the North American continent. I also got serious about playing viola so as to augment our repertoire possibilities. We chose the name “Strata” (layers) in recognition of a fondness that we all share for the intricacies of counterpoint (many-layered music), as well as a commitment to uncovering many layers of meaning in what we play.
Sequenza 21: What’s the concept behind your new commissioning project?
Stern: The Metaclassical Music Project began with the idea that a composer might be able to facilitate the educational outreach presentations that we do. What if, for example, a single melody could be cast successively in monophonic, homophonic and then polyphonic textures of gradually increasing complexity? Then we would have an array of examples to explain these ideas to a young audience and this would, in turn, help to illuminate other standard repertoire we play for them. Next, what if such an array of musical demonstrations actually formed part of a large-scale concert piece; that is what if, in addition to their educational function, they created a coherent emotional trajectory that added up to an intense concert experience? This is where the idea started. But it evolved into something more general: what happens to an artist’s self-expression when she or he takes on the commitment to instruct? I actually believe that composers like Shostakovich, and writers like Milan Kundera and Herman Melville have done this: they write in what I like to call the “didactic voice,” and that this is part of the key to the immense power they achieve.
Sequenza 21: How did you decide to commission Stephen Paulus?
Stern: Nathan first encountered Paulus when he participated in a performance of one of Paulus’s operas. He was deeply struck by the color and imagination of the writing. Somewhat later I performed Paulus’s Partita Appassionata,at the Cosmos Club of Washington D.C., with my University of Maryland colleague, pianist Bradford Gowen. Paulus was being inducted into the Cosmos Club, which was described by the late Wallace Stegner as “the closest thing to a social headquarters for Washington’s intellectual elite.” Their website goes on to report: “Among its members, over the years, have been three Presidents, two Vice Presidents, a dozen Supreme Court justices, 32 Nobel Prize winners, 56 Pulitzer Prize winners and 45 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” Strata has also performed there. Two things struck me on this occasion. One was how easy Paulus’s music made it for us, as performers, to connect with an audience. The energy in the room was wonderful. The other was hearing Paulus speak about his music. With regard to a song cycle that was being performed that evening he described, with evident enjoyment, how he had deliberately written one of the songs using the twelve-tone technique, just to prove that it could be done in a way that was attractive and not intimidating. This was the kind of creativity and exuberance we were looking for with the Metaclassical Music Project.
Meet the Composer’s latest venture, MTC Studio, will be unveiled on Monday at an event at the 92nd Street Y (Tribeca). It features members of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the first class of MTC Studio composers – Kati Agócs, Marcos Balter, Yu-Hui Chang, Glenn Kotche (of the band Wilco), Dohee Lee and Ken Ueno – in an evening of conversations and music making.
Yesterday, I caught up with Ken Ueno (University of California-Berkeley) and asked him about MTC Studio and some of his other recent exploits. In addition to his activities with Meet the Composer, Ueno is getting a portrait concert on the Baltimore Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern series. What’s more, he’s spending the year as a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Ken Ueno. Photo Annette Hornischer
Sequenza 21: For those not in ‘loop’, what’s ‘Meet the Composer?’
Ueno: Meet the Composer is one of America’s most important and vital institutions supporting the creation of new musical work. A core tenet of theirs is to foster exciting new ways for composers to interact with audiences and performers.
Sequenza 21: Tell us about their new project, MTC Studio.
Ueno: Meet the Composer sums it up this way: “MTC Studio is a website that documents the creative process of composers through video, blogs, and other web content offering a rare perspective into the raw inner-workings of a composer’s world. Viewers get the unique opportunity to follow a musical work from first note to stage and can take part in individually supporting commissioning projects.”
Sequenza 21: What was the process for creating your page on the website?
Ueno: Kevin Clark of Meet the Composer’s home office and Jeremy Robins (a videographer) came out to Berkeley to interview me over the summer. During that time, we shot some initial footage. They gave me a flip camera and I’ve been since shooting my own footage that Jeremy has been editing. It’s kind of like keeping a video diary balanced with a more general introduction to who I am and what I do as an artist. It’s been a lot of fun. Sequenza 21: Have you had, will you have, interactions with the other MTC composers?
Ueno: Most of them I’ve already known for years! I’m quite honored and humbled to be included amongst some of my favorite composers of my generation! Glenn, I did not know from before. But being a Wilco fan for years, I look forward to meeting him. Sequenza 21: You’re busy on this trip to the US. Tell us your itinerary!
Ueno: I gave a lecture on my music at Columbia this week. Next week, I have the MTC Studio event, a lecture at Stony Brook, and two performances of my new piece for the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players (at Stony Brook and at Merkin Hall).
Sequenza 21: How’s your residency in Berlin been? What’s the academy like and what are you writing there?
Ueno: Being at the American Academy in Berlin’s been great! I have the time and space to concentrate on composing. It’s a gracious gift of time. What’s been especially enthralling and stimulating has been learning from the other fellows. People like the literary critic James Wood, the journalist Anne Hull, the writers John Wray and Han Ong.
Two senior colleagues from UC Berkeley are there too: Martin Jay, a historian (one of the world’s foremost experts on the Frankfurt School), and his wife, Catherine Gallagher, a professor in English (an expert in the field of counterfactual fiction). It’s been great hanging out with these folks and picking their brains about all sorts of things. I’m quite impressed with our youngest fellow fellow, Kirk Johnson, who started the List Project. His organization has helped hundreds of Iraqi allies transition to the US. This man has saved people’s lives! Very inspiring. We are also lucky to have Pamela Rosenberg be our dean of fellows, with all the experience she’s had in the arts. Oh, and as a foodie, I’ve especially enjoyed the creations of the academy’s chef, Reinold Kegel. He’s fantastic!
During my year at the academy, I’ll be working on a number of projects. The first piece I finished was a 20-minute work for 11 instruments for the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, which will be premiered next week. Next, I’ll work on an installation for SCI-Arc, a collaboration with the architect, Patrick Tighe. After that, I’ll work on pieces for Alarm Will Sound and a solo for Evelyn Glennie. If all goes well, I’m hoping to have time to work on my chamber opera, in which I’ll perform, but that’s due much later.
