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
Read moreIt’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
Read moreIt 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
Read moreNext 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.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreBeth 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
Read moreBecause 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
Read moreYou 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
Read moreDecember 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.
Read moreMartin 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
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