The consistently thought-provoking Kyle Gann has a complaint: “I think young composers might want to think about diversifying the composers they base their styles on beyond John Coolidge Adams.” He gets a lot more promotional CDs than I do from record labels and young composers hoping to lure him out of music-critic retirement to provide that coveted Kyle Gann pull-quote for their bios. (Can I do the heist-movie thing and say they want to get him out of retirement for “one last score”? Too late, I already did.) As I said, I don’t get the same recordings that Kyle gets,
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Birthdays, CDs, Choral Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Los Angeles, Minimalism
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.
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Awards, Bang on a Can, CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, Minimalism, New York, Video
Steve Reich’s latest Nonesuch CD recently arrived, sans artwork in a little cardboard case. The disc features Double Sextet and 2×5, his collaborations with Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can. The former piece won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The latter is his most explicit use of rock instrumentation to date. According to the Nonesuch site, it’s still in the “pre-order” phase of activities, so we’ll be good and hold off on a proper review ’til it’s closer to the actual release date (9/14). Suffice it to say, if you’re a regular visitor to Sequenza 21, you’re likely
Read moreMy graduate history seminar on minimalism starts next week at Westminster Choir College. I’ll be teaching the course in a three-week intensive session – three hours a day/four days a week. In that time – just 12 meetings in all – we need to cover a lot of ground. There are three assigned texts: Minimalism: Origins by Edward Strickland, Repeating Ourselves by Robert Fink, and Music Downtown by Kyle Gann, as well as a number of supplemental readings (lots of Tom Johnson) and listening assignments. Each student will be required to make a class presentation and write a substantial research
Read moreThis was inspired by Alvin Lucier’s classic and still awesome work I am sitting in a room.
Read moreBack last December the New York Times highlighted the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra. The first link goes to the NYT video of the ensemble, but here’s a nicely quiet work from the actual concert: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBo4JH-CPPM[/youtube] But that’s not quite the earliest reference to this new ‘instrument’ and kind of ensemble. Michigan actually brought their own Mobile Phone Ensemble to last November’s SEAMUS proceedings, and there’s a video of (admittedly much less musical) a group of London tech geeks taking on the theme from Dr. Who much earlier in the year, at the Yahoo Open Hack Day. Not that you need
Read moreI really enjoyed Q2’s broadcast tonight of New Sounds Live, a concert at Merkin Hall by the Bang on a Can All Stars that featured works by Nik Bartsch, Oscar Bettison, Christine Southworth, Michael Nyman, and David Longstreth. The first in a hopefully ongoing series of collaborations between Q2 and Merkin Hall, it was also a featured event in this week’s Composers Now festival. I particularly enjoyed the Bettison work, The Afflicted Girl, in part because it’s quite affecting; but it also helps that I was able to study in advance and follow along with a perusal score sent over by
Read morePwyll ap Siôn is a composer and Senior Lecturer in music at Bangor University in Wales (UK). His strong interest in Minimalism (he’s written a book on Michael Nyman) led to his co-hosting of the first International Conference on Minimalist Music in 2007. He also made his way across the ocean for the second iteration of the conference, held last September in Kansas City, MO. Pwyll asked if S21 might like to print a few of his reactions and thoughts from the conference, and we said sure thing: At the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music last September, hosted by
Read morePhilip Glass always does the unexpected. Or, as he said to me when we were talking on the phone about his subsequently Oscar-nominated score for Errol Morris’ 2003 The Fog of War, “I’m a bad person to interview because I never stay on the subject.” Well, yes and no. Yes, because Glass’s focus on the work in front of him is unflinching, and no, because his instincts always lead him to surprising solutions. His two-act 155 minute intermission-less new opera Kepler is yet another example of Glass’s wandering, yet disciplined, mind. Premiered at the Linz Opera by American conductor Dennis
Read moreLast Friday I finally made it down to the new DUMBO location of Galapagos Art Space to see the release party/performance of Mikel Rouse’s haunting new album Gravity Radio. But let’s back up for a moment before we get to Rouse. DUMBO, for you non-New Yorkers, is one of the myriad New York City neighborhood abbreviations, like SoHo (South of Houston) or Tribeca (triangle below Canal), and it stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass,” which is to say it’s in Brooklyn in the area just south of the Manhattan Bridge. It was one of the first places in
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