Music Events

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York

All Around the Town

Lots of neat stuff happening this week and beyond. 

Pulse, the composers federation that includes our amigo Darcy James Argue will close out its 2006-2007 “season” with a new music project called Sihr Halal, Music of Praise and Celebration.  The concert is Saturday, May 5th 2007 at 8:30 PM at Roulette located at 20 Greene Street in SoHo (tickets are $15 at the door, $10 students/seniors). The project is funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections program.

Sihr Halal features the premiere of six compositions by the composers of Pulse—Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, and Yumiko Sunami.  You can get a taste of what’s in store by going over to the Pulse blog where you’ll find audio excerpts from all of the pieces available online (recorded during rehearsal) along with commentary from the composers.

Another friend of the family, Jenny Lin, is doing an all Valentin Silvestrov program, including Der Bote, Epitaph, Post Scriptum & Drama Sunday, May 6, 2007, 5:00 PM 31 Little West 12th Street New York, New York 10014  Info here or call 212.463.8630.   

Young-Ah Tak, the amazing pianist who blew the joint away with her performance of Judith Lang Zaimont’s Wizards (2003) at last year’s Sequenza21 concert is playing the piece again (along with works by people named Haydn, Debussy, and Schumann) at the Yamaha Piano Salon, 639 Fifth Ave., 34th Street (entrance on 54th Street between Madison and Fifth).  The concert starts at 7:30 and admission is free.  If you want to catch a real comer while she’s still making her bones, this is a great chance.

by Jerry Bowles
ACO, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Music Events, New York

Minimalist Friday

It’s minimalist week in the Center of the Universe, highlighted on Friday night by the John Adams 60th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall.  Adams will be conducting the American Composers Orchestra in performances of My Father Knew Charles Ives, The Wound-Dresser (with bass-baritone Eric Owens) and the Violin Concerto, with Leila Josefowicz doing the honors. 

Meanwhile, also on Friday, in a nearby universe, Michael Riesman, Music Director of the Philip Glass Ensemble and concert pianist, will be performing the world premiere of his marvelous new transcription for solo piano of Glass’ score to the 1931 classic horror film, Dracula.  The gothic walls of the Orensanz Foundation for the Arts provide a perfect backdrop to Reisman performance, which will done live to film.  Tickets are $20 ($25 at the door).

On a more somber note, there will be a public memorial service for composer and pianist Andrew Hill, who died last Friday, at Trinity Church (89 Broadway at Wall Street) this Friday, April 27, at 2:00 pm.

by Jerry Bowles
Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

A Scream Grows in Brooklyn

It seems somehow fitting after a week of inexplicable madness that Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream will get its New York premiere tomorrow night when the Kronos Quartet joins the Brooklyn Philharmonic for a concert called Kronos+Cosmos. 

Wolfe describes My Beautiful Scream as a kind of  non-concerto for string quartet. The work is a gradual unfolding and unraveling of a slow motion scream: the quartet aspect of the music is quiet and fine while the orchestra aspect is violent and menacing. Co-commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmoniue de Radio France, the Basel Sinfonietta, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, My Beautiful Scream was originally premiered in February 2004 at Festival Presence in Paris.

Wolfe began writing My Beautiful Scream shortly after 9/11. As she describes the time in which the piece was written: “I lived in downtown Manhattan not far from where the towers stood. At night I would have this strange sensation that I was going to die. In general my life was very beautiful, so it was this strange existence of living in beauty and having the sensation of a long drawn out internal scream.”

The concert will also include a performance of the visionary symphonic work, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Each of the seven movements of The Planets will be accompanied by exclusive film footage provided by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Here’s a bit of good news for a change.   Our regular Rob Deemer has accepted an offer from SUNY-Fredonia for its tenure-track composition chair position starting in the Fall of 2007. 

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York

Montani semper liberi (with a Capital M)

Next to the Mountaineers winning the NIT (okay, so it’s the tournament of losers…we won), the most exciting news in the world today is that our lil’ buddy Ian Moss is having his second annual Capital M world premiere extravaganza at Tonic next Wednesday.  The concert will feature new works by Ian Dicke, Mike Gamble, Caroline Mallonée, Ian Moss, Edward RosenBerg III,  Jonathan Russell, and Kyle Sanna. Noted provocateurs and ne’er-do-wells Anti-Social Music will follow with their particular brand of “punk classical” madness.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Music Events

Into the Counterstream

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The nice folks at the American Music Center had a launch party for their latest cool initiative–Counterstream Radio–last night.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, click on the toilet seat icon in the right column and some incredibly fine and varied music will follow you around the internets all day.  Some members of the Counterstream team above, foreground:  AMC president Joanne Hubbard Cossa, with Trevor Hunter, Lyn Liston, Lisa Taliano and Molly Sheridan.  Sorry for the crummy picture, guys, and apologies to Frank J. Oteri and Randy Norchow whose picture didn’t work out at all.  

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

Women’s Work 2007 – Three Wednesdays in March

Beth Anderson is hosting Women’s Work 2007, a series of three Wednesday concerts in March at  Greenwich House Arts.  The dates are March 14, 21 and 28 and the venue is the Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York City (between Seventh Avenue South and Bedford St.).  Beth has pulled together a terrific package of recent chamber instrumental and vocal music by prominent contemporary women composers from Asia, the U.S. and Europe, and how their work has been influenced by folk music, poetry and even new technology.  To do our part, the crack Sequenza21 team has put together an event blog with programs, notes and pictures.  The gals have also built themselves a multimedia site at MySpace with some lovely musical samples.  Hie thee thither. 

by Jerry Bowles
Concerts, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York

When in the Bowery…

Because I find myself suddenly and inexplicably old I will not be attending the great two-band, no waiting show at the Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday night, featuring Industrial Jazz Group and Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society.  Well, the first episode of the new season of Rome on HBO is this Sunday so I probably wouldn’t be able to make it anyway.  But, if I were not suddenly and inexplicably old and if the new season of Rome were not beginning on Sunday night, I would definitely be there. 

The festivities commence at 8 pm with Industrial Jazz Group, followed at 9:30 by Secret Society.  Two bands, one price — $12.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Music Events

Oh, It Doesn’t Look at All Like Christmas

You wouldn’t know it from the freakish weather (60 degrees today) here in the Center of the Universe but it’s Christmas time and that means it’s time for Phil Kline to lead a massive chorus of boomboxes through the streets of Greenwich Village in the 15th annual holiday presentation of his legendary UNSILENT NIGHT.   

The fun starts this Saturday, December 16 at 7:00 pm, at the arch in Washington Square Park.  You know the drill:  Kline puts the different parts of his composition on cassettes, and distributes them to those who show up at Washington Square.  At the given signal, everyone simultaneously pressses  PLAY.  When the cassettes start rolling, “they blossom into a marvelously crafted symphony” (Time Out New York) and the crowd begins to snake eastward, following a pre-determined route until the piece ends in Tompkins Square Park less than an hour and a mile later. 

Since its debut in 1992, UNSILENT NIGHT has become a cult holiday tradition in NY and around the world, drawing crowds of up to 1,500 participants.  This year will see (actually some of them have already happened) repeat presentations in San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego, Vancouver BC, Middlesbrough (England), and Sydney, Australia, as well as the first ever performances in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Baltimore, Charleston, Rochester, Asheville, Milledgeville (Georgia), Banff (Alberta, Canada), and the Yukon Territory.  This past February, a new version of UNSILENT NIGHT was presented at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, as part of a sound art festival in the Alps.

You’re strongly encouraged to bring your own boomboxes, for which Kline will provide tapes.  Which raises an interesting question:  where do you find boomboxes these days.  Haven’t they gone the way of the 8-track?

Yeah, so get with it Phil.  Let’s have the silent UNSILENT NIGHT with a bunch of people wandering around the Village with their ears stuffed with iPod ear thingies.  Positively Fourth Street Cageian.

Our friend Brian Sacawa led the first-ever Baltimore version of UNSILENT NIGHT on Friday night and has video to prove it. 

 

by Jerry Bowles
Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Music Events

The Bang On A Can All Stars at Zankel Hall

December 5, 2006 — One of the great things about the internet is that several of the pieces on this concert were available for preview on the Bang On A Can website, and in fact you can still hear those previews to get a flavor of what I’m talking about.  New music concerts are so hit-or-miss, it’s a shame more organizations don’t offer this service to help potential audience members pre-screen their events.  If you’re listening to that preview, you will already have figured out that this concert was one of the good ones. (more…)

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

The Case of Martin Bresnick

Martin Bresnick turned 60 last month and he’s celebrating the event with two events at Zankel Hall this week.  One piece will be on the Bang on the Can All-Stars program on Tuesday night and, on Saturday, the Yale School of Music will devote an entire evening to Bresnick’s music, including choral songs, a concerto for two marimbas, and a multimedia piece for solo pianist.

Steve Smith has a splendid profile of Bresnick in the Sunday New York Times which acknowledges the perhaps unfortunate fact that Bresnick is best-known for being the teacher of other composers who are more famous than he is.  On the other hand, it’s hard to feel too bad for a guy who is the coordinator of the composition department at Yale, where he has taught since 1976.

I can’t recall ever hearing any of Bresnick music (an oversight I hope to correct on Tuesday night) but I suspect many of you have and perhaps some of you have even been his students.  What do you think about him as a composer and as a teacher?

by Jerry Bowles