File Under?

Blogs, Books, File Under?, Interviews

Conversations about the inner life of creativity

Innerviews: Music Without Borders
(Extraordinary Conversations with Extraordinary Musicians)
by Anil Prasad
Abstract Logix Books; 315 pages, Published 2010


Anil Prasad has covered music on the internet longer than practically anyone. He started the website Innerviews in 1994, well before blogging, social media, and a host of other technological changes. The web has changed remarkably over the past sixteen years, but Innerviews has remained a consistent and engaging part of the internet’s musical life.

Prasad regularly publishes interviews with musicians from a plethora of genres: jazz, fusion, funk, prog, world music, electronica, etc. Innerviews the book collects some of his most noteworthy conversations with a diverse yet distinguished assortment of musicians.

Each chapter is devoted to a different artist (24 in all). Interviewees include Victor Wooten (who also writes the book’s foreword), John McLaughlin, David Torn, Björk, McCoy Tyner, and David Sylvian.

(True, the emphasis is on jazz, world, and popular music, but even the most classically oriented of Sequenza 21’s readers will likely find plenty here that speaks to the lives of concert music artists as well).

Prasad sets up the interviews with lengthy introductions, detailing the artists’ biographies and respective career trajectories. The interviews themselves feature discussions of creative process, musical inspirations, and approaches to performing and recording. Happily, Prasad avoids the sensational (PR-induced) talking points that are so often found in many recent “press interviews.” He instead favors affording the artists a more open-ended conversation, and the chance to  share in depth observations about the music itself.

There’s another key component of every Innerviews interview that’s worth mentioning. Prasad doesn’t shy away from the interior life of creative artists, asking each musician to describe their spiritual journey and how it relates to their musical experiences. It’s refreshing that this open-ended line of inquiry elicits such a variety of responses. It appears that, much like the panoply of musical styles referenced in Innerviews, the question of spirituality inspires in artists an abundance of creativity.

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

ONCE (during)

From left to right, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley. Photo courtesy of Subaram Raman.

Last night, Rackham Auditorium on Washington Street in Ann Arbor, MI became a sort of communal time machine. Complete with a vintage magnetic tape reel, electronic synthesizer and “public disturbance”, performed by students from the University of Michigan School of Music’s Composition Department, the hall carried its occupants back to the revolutionary decade of the 1960s when a group of young, local composers called the ONCE Group started a groundbreaking and historic contemporary music festival. These composers were Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Donald Scavarda (pictured to the right) and the late George Cacioppo, and the music they created for the ONCE festivals was on display last night to reenact the sounds of the original events.

The concert kicked off ONCE. MORE., an interdisciplinary celebration of ONCE and its related cultural period in American history, by presenting over three hours of music by the founding composers. After remarks by the co-directors of the concert series, University of Michigan School of Music Professor of Composition Michael Daugherty and Professor of Performing Arts and Technology Mary Simoni, the music began with Roger Reynolds’ Mosaic (1962) for flute and piano. Notably vibrant in its use of instrumental colors, many of which were produced via extended techniques, Mosaic seemed too introverted to be a concert opener. Nevertheless, University of Michigan Professor of Flute Amy Porter and Professor of Piano Performance John Ellis succeeded to draw me in to a complex musical world wherein the limits of acoustic instrumental sound were well traversed. I was left with the impression that the flute and piano behaved as one sound producing body, yielding an aural landscape that both yearned for and hinted at electronic music.

Next on the program was Robert Ashley’s in memoriam…Crazy Horse (symphony) (1963), which hands an ensemble of 32 players a series of graphic scores and lets them interpret the symbols as they wish. Crazy Horse and its companion piece on the second part of the concert, in memoriam…Esteban Gomez (quartet) (1963) epitomize the experimental and avant-garde sentiments that spawned the original ONCE concerts. As you would expect, these two improvised pieces were very different, but I felt like Crazy Horse was delivered more successfully.  Mark Kirschenmann’s Creative Arts Orchestra presented in memoriam…Crazy Horse cohesively, developing specific sound ideas (i.e. verbal/oral noise, sustained tones/harmonies, dense polyphony, etc.) and passing them among the different instrumental forces on stage. In contrast, the University of Michigan’s Digital Music Ensemble’s performance of in memoriam…Esteban Gomez was unfortunately static and I was chagrined by their heavy use of modern sound manipulation technologies. However, it speaks to the flexibility of graphic notation that a piece like in memoriam…Esteban Gomez can be realized so differently at separate points in history and still fulfill the composer’s intention.

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by Garrett Schumann
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Music Events

ONCE (before)

Tomorrow and Thursday are two special nights for contemporary music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This week, the University Musical Society is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the ONCE composers, a group of University of Michigan student composers whose 1960s new music festivals gained worldwide acclaim. The surviving members of the group, which was founded by Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma, and the late George Cacioppo, have come back to Ann Arbor to revisit the revolutionary spirit that inspired them and recognize what they’ve achieved in the years since they left Michigan.

The local media here in southeast Michigan have previewed this week’s event with great success, so head the to following links if you’d like to read what annarbor.com, the metrotimes and the Detroit Free Press have to say about the history of the ONCE group. I will be Sequenza 21’s eyes and ears observing the rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes activities that will make these concerts happen. Additionally, I will review both performances and talk to each of the composers at Wednesday’s “Conversation with the ONCE Composers”.

For now, I have the pleasure of watching the ONCE composers in rehearsal, which is a beautiful experience. First of all, they are clearly thrilled to be in Ann Arbor; this is clear in their smiles, the enthusiasm with which they interact with their performers and, most poignantly, in the playful anecdotes the ONCE members have shared with each other between rehearsal times. Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma have been warm and enthusiastic to their performers, the former even joked with Dr. John Ellis – chair of piano performance at Michigan – earlier today, quipping, “that last phrase is one I never got right,” in reference to his solo piano piece Large Size Mograph.

Roger Reynolds’ professionalism is admirable: he understands how to get exactly what he wants from his players without being curt or overbearing. Thursday night’s concert, which features recently written works by the ONCE composers, includes Reynolds’ Ariadne’s Thread for string quartet and electronics. He has handled the quartet masterfully so far, explaining to them the vision he had beyond his complex musical language and guiding them with generalities towards the affect he desires.

If you are in the Ann Arbor area tomorrow or Thursday at 8 PM, head to Rackham Auditorium on the University of Michigan’s Central Campus to share in the past and present of this important movement in American music (tickets are also $2!). If not, stay tuned to Sequenza 21 for updates on this event all week long. The programs for the concerts and a description of the rest of the ONCE MORE festival is available here.

by Garrett Schumann
Competitions, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestras, Radio

Project 440 Winners Announced

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra announced the winners of the Project 440 competition tonight. The four winners will create new works for Orpheus to be premiered in 2012. 

They are (clockwise from top left) Alex Mincek, Clint Needham, Andrew Norman, and Cynthia Wong:

 It was quite  a rigorous vetting process with some very talented competition. Congratulations to all!
by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Live From Ann Arbor: Chapter 1

The first University of Michigan Composers’ Forum concert of the 2010-2011 season took place in the evening on Monday, October 11. Earmarked by the department as a preview for the upcoming Midwest Composers Symposium in Cincinnati, I had been looking forward to this event for over a month as my first opportunity to experience the creativity of my colleagues here in Michigan. Like most music schools, our Composers’ Forum is organized and performed by students and viewed as an arena in which the composers studying here may test concepts and solidify their ideas before moving on to a more professional setting.

Anyone who has pursued a degree in music composition has most likely experienced a similar concert; they can be long and inconsistent in terms of the overall quality. While the composers here at Michigan proffered thirteen works spanning nearly two and a half hours, there were no stinkers on the program. Every piece displayed the strength of its creator in a different way and each composition brought something unique to the table, producing an aural narrative full of twists and turns and leaving a delightfully heterogeneous resonance in my mind’s ear.

The first piece on the program was Will Pertz’ philosophy, rhetoric, anarchy, nostalgia, klang!! for solo violin. Mr. Pertz’s product on Monday was dazzlingly brief insofar as it contained a single pizzicato note. It took more time to read the title of this work than hear it, which disarmed me because Emily Graber, the soloist, returned backstage before I could look up from the program. Initially, I found the piece off-putting, and reasoned it was a poor attempt at hyper-intellectual slop, but I was wrong. As pointed out to me by Professor Erik Santos, Mr. Pertz’ title is an anagram for “prank”, which gives philosophy, rhetoric, anarchy, nostalgia, klang!! a completely different character. Like Erik Satie’s Furniture Music, Mr. Pertz’s composition is playful mockery of music’s high academia and I salute Mr. Pertz’s cleverness even though I am embarrassed I didn’t pick up on it by myself.

Next down the line was Donia Jarrar’s composition for two pianos, Cairo, Bahibik (Cairo, I love you). The first of several programmatic works that evening, Cairo Bahibik opened with a contemplative piano sound along the lines of Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada and quickly departed to a upbeat world of hocketed ostinati, mixed meter and free-flowing, folk-like melodies flying from one pianist’s hands to the other’s. After filling the hall with high energy, Ms. Jarrar led her listeners back to the reflective opening mood, which was transformed both literally in her score and figuratively as a result of the preceding activity. Cairo, Bahibik succeeded at both creating a portrait of Ms. Jarrar’s programmatic subject and refracting this image through the prism of her musical intuition. In other words, she discarded potentially trite surface details to focus on base impressions, aromas, echoes and shadows of her experience in Egypt, producing in my mind the flickering sensation that I had been to Cairo, as well.

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by Garrett Schumann
Contemporary Classical, Contests, File Under?, Minimalism

Steve Reich 2×5 Remix Contest

Remixers start your … laptops. Some hot-off-the-presses news about a contest beginning at noon TODAY!

 

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Steve Reich, Nonesuch Records, and Indaba Music have launched a search for collaborators to remix the third movement from Reich’s 2×5. Paired with his Pulitzer prizewinning Double Sextet, the work appears on Reich’s new Nonesuch CD.

 

For four weeks beginning October 12, 2010 at noon, remixers can visit Indaba’s website to create their own version of the movement.

From November 9 to 23, fans and a panel of judges including Reich will review the submissions. Winners will be announced on December 7th. In addition to a grand prize and 2 runners-up selected by the jury, 10 honorable mentions will be selected by the public.

All jury selections will receive prizes, as follows:

Grand Prize (1)

$500

Signed copy of Double Sextet/2×5 CD

Signed copy of Double Sextet score

One-year free Platinum membership to Indabamusic.com

Runners-Up (2)

Signed copy of Double Sextet/2×5 CD

Signed copy of Double Sextet score

3-month Platinum membership to Indabamusic.com

Honorable Mentions (10)

Signed copy of Double Sextet/2×5 CD

Signed copy of Double Sextet score

3-month Pro memberships to Indabamusic.com

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Written for the Bang on a Can All Stars, 2×5 is Reich’s most overt foray into rock instrumentation to date. In my preview of the album, I noted that Reich’s collaboration with BoaC was “An intergenerational summit – minimalist elder statesman meets post-minimal/totalist ace performers – that, in terms of importance, is more or less the Downtown version of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.”

Now, another layer of creators will season the mix – I’m excited to hear the results!

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York, Orchestras

Magnus Lindberg on Kraft + Einstürzende Neubauten

My tweet right after the concert on Thursday: “Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft: some very beautiful passages + intriguing spatial effects amidst a joyously chaotic maelstrom of sound.”

It’s a fascinating piece and a gutsy one for the New York Philharmonic to present. I do question the wisdom of programming it alongside Joshua Bell playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. It threw some of the more conservative ticket-holders a curveball, as they had no idea (unless they’re checked out the promo videos on YouTube) what the Lindberg had in store for them.

There were far more than the “handful” of walkouts Anthony Tommasini noted in his otherwise superlative review in the New York Times. From where we were sitting in the Third Tier of Fisher Hall, we had a birds-eye view of a steady exodus of disgruntled patrons: perhaps 10-15%.

On Friday, I talked about the walkout phenomena with my analytical studies class. One issue we discussed was the notion that many orchestras seem to have of “one audience” vs. the possible lifesaving way forward of cultivating “many audiences.” The former notion seems pretty entrenched at the Phil. I’m glad to see that Alan Gilbert and some of the folks in the press office are exploring ways to curate and cultivate multiple kinds of music-making at the NYPO and leverage social media to find new audience sources. Last year, Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre was a terrific example of that.

But Thursday’s concert seemed to me to be a holdover of the former way of thinking. Get people to come to hear Joshua Bell, and then have the conductor give a lecture explaining why they should like a loud piece with oxygen tanks and multiple gongs in the midst of the audience. I don’t entirely blame the folks who stormed out for being upset, although I do wish they’d taken the hint and left after the concerto if they weren’t up for an adventure.

Still, for those who stayed, it was quite an adventure. Here’s Lindberg discussing the piece.


How often does a promo video (and indeed, program booklet) from the NY Philharmonic namecheck experimental industrial postpunk collective Einstürzende Neubauten? This is perhaps the first time! But one can really see the connections between the group’s aesthetic and Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft in the videos below: check out their percussion setup!




There’s one more performance of Kraft on Tuesday. If you’re in New York, I heartily recommend checking it out!

by Christian Carey
Composers, File Under?, Songs, Twentieth Century Composer

Cyberbullying and Britten

When I planned to teach a course at Westminster Choir College about Benjamin Britten’s vocal music in the Fall, I knew that gender/sexuality studies would play a role in our evaluation of his works. But I certainly wasn’t planning to discuss something as topical and unsettling as the recent tragedy at Rutgers. Our campus is a half hour away from RU (my alma mater), and a number of students were understandably shaken by hearing about Tyler Clementi’s suicide.

The technological tools for communication may have gotten more sophisticated; but the people using them, if they act selfishly, can be in danger of disconnecting from their better impulses. Sadly, in this instance, the consequences were heartbreaking.

With Britten’s Michelangelo Sonnets and his opera Peter Grimes staring up at us, we began to discuss their texts. We then pondered the connection between the poems and some biographical background: Britten and Pears’ early collaboration, their trip to America, and eventual partnership. In my initial lesson notes, I’d pointed out that theirs was a relationship that was frowned upon in many corners, and would still be illegal for more than two decades after they returned to Great Britain. I asked: what resonances to Britten’s life can be found in the poetry of Michelangelo?

My plan was to then turn to a discussion of how Britten depicts these texts and alludes to personal biography in the musical details of these songs.

But in light of cyberbullying and prejudice, the continued homophobia in American society seemed an unavoidable topic: one I didn’t want to foist on the class but certainly wasn’t going to avoid if they decided to broach it. Delicately, one of the students brought up Tyler Clementi’s suicide. I was touched by how sensitively and maturely the other students in the class responded. They thoughtfully discussed the issues surrounding this terrible event, reflecting on how it affects their future work as teachers and musicians. They also reflected on how it should serve as a wake up call for their current lives, challenging them to speak out against teen suicide and try to be compassionate friends to their peers.

They pointed out that whether it is homophobia, racism, social, financial, or academic pressures that are troubling them, many young people are under duress and in need of compassion: both community support and sometimes professional help. As we saw this week, it’s far too easy for someone to be treated with prejudice and cruelty, even today. As some of the students pointed out, among young people we sadly must say, “Especially today.”

I’ll remember many of the comments made by the students on Friday. Although, to respect their privacy, I won’t share their more personal observations, there was one comment that brought us back to the music in eloquent fashion. It was the suggestion that Britten, indeed through the works we were studying that very day in class, could teach us a great deal about prejudice.

“What Britten sought, throughout his life, to portray in his music, was that if you treat someone like an outsider, we all suffer as a society: none of us can grow.”

Although we didn’t have time to find all of the musical intricacies in the songs, I’m very grateful for that lesson.

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Orchestras

NY Phil adds More Social Media

Despite there already being many musical highlights since Alan Gilbert joined the orchestra as music director, of late the NY Philharmonic has also had its share of successes offstage. Their PR office has steadily been increasing the orchestra’s presence on a variety of social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube among them. This no doubt in part helped to get out the word about their performances of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. For social media, many people check out Hubspot Integrated Lead Gen tools which have proven to be helpful.

Their latest addition is a Tumblr account. Tumblr is a handy platform for sharing media heavy blog posts. In addition to my blog here, I maintain a Tumblr page for File Under ?, putting up videos and audio excerpts that often dovetail with what’s going on here at Sequenza 21.

One imagines a number of ways that the Philharmonic can employ Tumblr, providing one-stop shopping for various videos, audio excerpts, program notes, and press releases: materials that inform both audience members and press folks alike.

To give people an extra incentive to visit their Tumblr blog, the orchestra is entering all of the folks who “follow” the site by Nov. 1 in a ticket drawing. A lucky social media maven will win a pair of tickets to hear them at Avery Fisher Hall!

by Christian Carey
Birthdays, CDs, Choral Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Los Angeles, Minimalism

Happy 75th Birthday Arvo Pärt

 Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 4

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa Pekka Salonen conductor
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tõnu Kaljuste conductor

Symphony No. 4 “Los Angeles” (2008)
Fragments from Kanon Pokajanen (1997)

ECM New Series 2160

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt turned 75 yesterday. His record label ECM Records is celebrating his three-quarters of a century with two new recordings.

Pärt’s 4th Symphony is a long-anticipated follow-up to his 3rd – which was written back in 1971! In the interim, the composer has moved from a modernist style to an idiosyncratic version of minimalism; one the composer calls the “tintinnabuli” style of composition. From bell-like resonances and slowly moving chant melodies, Pärt has crafted a personal compositional language of considerable appeal. And while this has included a number of stirring instrumental works, such as Tabula Rasa and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, more recently Pärt has been known for his choral music. His return to symphonic form is thus an opportunity to explore his mature language in a different milieu.

Perhaps in part as an acknowledgement of the home of the orchestra commissioning the Fourth Symphony – the “City of Angels” – Pärt decided to use a text as a formative – if subliminal – device in his preparations of the piece: the Canon of the Guardian Angel. Thus, while this is certainly not merely a transcription of a vocal piece – it sounds idiomatic and well orchestrated – there is a certain chant-like quality which demonstrates the symphony’s affinity with the vocal music and chant texts that are Pärt’s constant companions.

The live recording is of the work’s premiere in Disney Hall in LA. Salonen and the LA Phil give a muscular rendition of the piece, emphasizing its emphatic gestures while still allowing for the symphony’s many reflective, meditative oases to have considerably lustrous resonance. And while one can certainly hear a palpable connection to Pärt’s chant-inspired tintinnabuli pieces, the symphony also allows for dissonant verticals and melodic sweep that recalls both Pärt’s own Third Symphony and the works of other 20th century symphonists, from Gorecki to Shostakovich.

Perhaps in order to clearly attest to the connection between text and symphony, the disc is balanced out with a fifteen-minute serving of fragments from one of his important choral works from the 1990s: Kanon Pokajanen. The composer has pointed out the relationship between the canon that was his reference point for the symphony and the texts upon which the latter choral work was based.

He says, “To my mind, the two works form a stylistic unity and belong together. I wanted to give the words an opportunity to choose their own sound. The result, which even caught me by surprise, was a piece wholly pervaded by this special Slavonic diction found only in church texts. It was the canon that clearly showed me how strongly choice of language preordains a work’s character.”

Kaljuste and the Estonian Chamber Choir are seasoned handlers of Pärt’s works, having made a number of recordings of his music. They do not disappoint here, providing a performance that juxtaposes the ethereal eternity found in the texts with an earthy and corporeally passionate rendering of the music.

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In order to further fete Pärt, ECM also plans a lush reissue of their landmark 1984 recording, Tabula Rasa, complete with a generous accompanying book with newly commissioned essays about the composer.

by Christian Carey