Thursday night kicked off the Resonant Bodies Festival, a new 3-day parade of contemporary vocal music at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn.
Each night features three young singers performing programs of their favorite music. This curatorial freedom gave last night’s show a happy zealousness, where the singers’ enthusiasm for their repertoire was contagious.
Festival curator Lucy Dhegrae marked out a broad territory in her set. Beginning with Jason Eckardt’s mantic Dithyramb, she swiftly established her virtuosity in an elastic, preverbal but hyper-articulate world. In Old Virginny, by Shawn Jaeger, juxtaposed a forthright Appalachian lament with a snarling, snaky bassline, played athletically by Doug Balliett, to surprisingly tender effect. Balliett then took the mic for the premiere of his newest Ovid rap cantata, #11, Clytie and the Sun. While not the most arresting of his cycle (see Echo and Narcissus), it delivered a highly entertaining mix of humor and pathos, and Dhegrae’s theatrical arias, as the smitten Sun, were the perfect foil to his informal Narrator. (more…)
Le Train Bleu, conducted by Ransom Wilson, will present Toy Stories, a concert on Wednesday, February 6 – 7:00 PM at DROM, 85 Avenue A (between 5th and 6th) in New York, N.Y.
The evening will feature the World Premiere of Lawrence Dillon’s Seven Stories for soprano and eight instruments. The piece was composed to an original text. The composer writes, “A stuffed animal falls from an apartment window. As it falls, it peers into each passing window, trying to create stories from what it sees.” Read his recent blog post about it at https://www.sequenza21.com/dillon/?p=1962. The new work will be sung by soprano Mary Mackenzie. Visit Lawrence Dillon at http://www.lawrencedillon.com/.
Toy Stories explores mankind’s endless variety of play and playthings. The concert will also include Thomas Ades’ Living Toys, a journey through the fantasies of a child, for 14 instruments, accompanied by a new video by Adam Kendall, Matt Marks’ Sex Objects, a set of three songs about unique characters and their intimate relationships with inanimate objects, with vocal performances by Mary Mackenzie, Matt Marks, and Jeff Gavett, and the World Premiere of Eric Nathan’s Toying, a virtuoso exploration of the full range of possible sounds and techniques produced by the trumpet, played by Le Train Bleu’s Hugo Moreno.
Le Train Bleu is a musical collective formed by conductor and flutist Ransom Wilson. The musicians are among the most exciting young players in New York, and are chosen for their brilliance as well as their expressive qualities. Recently named a resident ensemble of the Galapagos Art Space, the ensemble continues plans to present performances of new and interesting music. The New York Times said of their debut performance: “Under Mr. Wilson’s baton, the Train Bleu ensemble was both incisive and joyous in execution.” In the 2011-12 season, the ensemble presented a 4-concert series at the Galapagos Art Space, as well as collaborating with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in a 2-week season at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. They also participated in a 15-month creative residency at the Park Avenue Armory, along with soprano Lauren Flanigan. Visit them at http://letrainbleu.org/.
Last Thursday evening, just before the lights dimmed at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, the audience purred in anticipation of the evening’s forthcoming concert. Tonight was to be a momentous occasion – the official inaugural concert with Yannick Nézet-Séguin being installed as Music Director.
I expected a concert full of classical music royalty highlighting the event as one of the most important in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s history. What was delivered was an all-around humble performance delivered by, as Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia introduced them, the “greatest orchestra in the world” – the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Acclaimed and award-winning ‘new music specialist’ Sarah Plum (right) is giving a recital of new works for violin this Friday (Sept. 28th) at 8 PM at the Firehouse Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Sarah has dedicated her career to performing the works of living composers and establishing meaningful, collaborative relationships with them – a fact highlighted by her recital’s program which includes pieces by Christopher Adler, Christopher Burns, Matthew Burtner, Laurie Schwartz, Mari Takano and Sarah’s longtime collaborator, Sydney Corbett.
I talked to Sarah about Friday’s concert, her career, working in Europe and other topics related to contemporary music on my web-based music show/podcast, We Are Not Beethoven on Washington Public Radio. You can stream/download our conversation here.
Once again, violinist Sarah Plum is giving a recital at the Firehouse Space in Brooklyn this coming Friday at 8 PM. Tickets are $10, and the Firehouse Space is located at 246 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. More information about the event can be found here.
Cellist Mariel Roberts is a rising star in the NYC new music scene. Tomorrow, Sept. 25th, her debut solo album, Nonextraneous Sounds, will be released on the Innova label. The disc features works by five young, super-talented composers, (in program order): Andy Akiho, Sean Friar, Daniel Wohl, Alex Mincek and Tristan Perich. Each of their pieces are very distinct and show off both the cello’s versatility and Mariel’s virtuosity.
I talked to Mariel a couple weeks ago and have just published our conversation as the latest episode of my audio web-series/podcast, “We Are Not Beethoven” on Washington Public Radio. As you’ll hear, Mariel is as charming and articulate an advocate for contemporary music and composers and there is, and there are several fascinating conceptual topics related to the creation and design of Nonextraneous Sounds that are definitely worth your time to explore.
Sometimes, classical music gets a bad rap. To be perfectly honest, there is a chunk of the population that finds it to be synonymous with any number of derogatory terms: boring, annoying, or pompous. Some classical music lovers and advocates will counter this popular belief with arguments that only go to further the opinion of the other side: “Some people want to listen to mindless music”, “Some people simply don’t have patience”, etc. These ridiculous arguments only go to further the stereotype that classical music lovers are all pompous windbags who believe themselves to be uniquely educated and informed.
How, then, do we get people to forget their misconception, and believe that EVERYONE can enjoy or even love classical music, regardless of education, socioeconomic standing, or profession?
It all comes down to how classical music is presented; and now, for a limited time, you could join one organization that does it right.
Music: Cognition, Technology, Society set a formidable intellectual task before participants of the selfsame conference at semester’s end on the quieting campus of Cornell University. Under the attentive care of organizers Caroline Waight, Evan Cortens, Taylan Cihan, and Eric Nathan, what might have been an overwhelming conceptual storm proved smooth sailing through a series of back-to-back panels. The lack of overlap meant that everyone in attendance could take in the full thematic breadth and draw connections that might otherwise have been missed in the three-ring circus of a larger conference, thereby allowing interaction, a building of new relationships while strengthening the old, and dialogue conducive to the intellectual goals at hand.
The Panels I had the privilege and the honor of presenting first in the opening Friday morning panel, entitled Patterns, Schemata and Systems, for which I was joined by Bryn Hughes (Ithaca College) and Joshua Mailman (Columbia). I did my best to set a tone in my discussion of Modell 5, a museum installation piece by Vienna-based duo Granular Synthesis, whose eponymous approach to motion capture and digital manipulation of synchronous sound and image activated, I hope, our shared interest in the intersection of technology and sonic arts. Hughes was interested in more mainstream sonic outlets. In problematizing expectation in rock music through harmonic progression as both a function of context and of socialization, he asked: Does harmony behave in a universal way? Why do some chord progressions sound “wrong” and how do we gain knowledge of these rules?
Hughes plotted a matrix of influences on such choices, discovering through controlled testing that expectations are genre-specific (diatonic successions, for instance, are preferred by classical over blues listeners) and that the impact of voice leading, lyrical (a)synchronicity, and other variables must also be taken into account. Mailman took a more phenomenological approach to music as a site lacking in expectation, advocating a cybernetic model of listening and feedback practices. In positing retrospection as an active shaping force of musical experience, Mailman privileged context over convention in musical structure. By looking at otherwise undeterminable aspects of musical form and development—what Boulez might group under the term “listening angles”—as a means of analysis, Mailman made a provocative case for cybernetic phenomenology as a viable site for sonic inquiry.
Qualities emerge through change and exist by virtue of being measured as such. Hence the assertions of David Borgo (UC San Diego), who in the second session on Improvisation challenged the dominant paradigm of musical spontaneity as an individual act, seeking rather to enlarge the notion of agency to its extra-corporeal aspects. Because action of response happens more quickly than consciousness can grasp, our interpretations of the very same can only come a posteriori, subject to the same misinterpretations as any and all memory. Consciousness, argued Borgo, is autopoetic and under constant perturbation. Improvisers must therefore negotiate contingencies in all directions. To locate them at the center of webs as amorphous as their melodic constitutions is as difficult as it is to locate the true center of a universe that is forever expanding.
Neither are improvisational gestures simply plucked from the ether, as Jeremy Grall (University of Alabama at Birmingham) showed in his exploration of the hierarchies at work in seemingly indeterminate music-making. Grall’s interest was the divide (or lack thereof) between composition and improvisation and whether or not the two can be subject to the same analytical vocabularies. For him, improvisation is an already problematic term, one that may be absorbed into composition insofar as improvisation abides by underlying schemata. In order to negotiate the ambiguities of perception and the phases of concrescence therein, he looked to 16th-century improvisational models and their inherent blend of immediacy and indeterminacy.
A fascinating Demonstration Session kicked off the conference’s first evening. William Brent (American University) gave us a visual and aural tour through his Gesturally Extended Piano and Open Shaper, while Mailman returned with Columbia colleague Sofia Paraskeva for a demonstration of their “comprovisational” interface. Both of these technologies take advantage of the primacy of the body in communicating information at once inter- and intra-musical. (more…)
“How can music ‘speak’ and how do we have knowledge of it? What is its potential to express, represent, and communicate? How has changing expertise concerning sonic and musical knowledge shaped these questions across time and space?”
These are the questions that inspired the interdisciplinary conference entitled “Music: Cognition, Technology, Society” that will take place at Cornell University this weekend, May 11 – 13.
Pictured: Tod Machover
The conference will spotlight Tod Machover (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in a dual-role as guest composer and keynote speaker. Other keynote speakers include Eric Clarke(University of Oxford), Ichiro Fujinaga (McGill University) and Robert Gjerdingen (Northwestern University). The Argento Chamber Ensemble serves as the conference’s guest ensemble-in-residence and will perform electroacoustic and acoustic works selected through an international call-for-scores.
Drawing on a wide range of scholarship across multiple disciplines, and featuring both musical performances and paper presentations, the MCTS Conference will present four keynote lectures, three performances, and seven paper sessions, covering a diverse works and broad range of aesthetics. Highlights include:
Friday, May 11 at 1:00 pm: The Cornell Avant-Garde Ensemble (CAGE) performs free improvisations using acoustic and electronic instruments.
Friday, May 11 at 2:30 pm: Robert Gjerdingen’s keynote lecture, “Schema Theory Today: Challenges and Opportunities.”
Friday, May 11 at 7:15 pm: Tod Machover’s keynote lecture, “Extending Performance: Onstage, Inside, Interconnected.”
Friday, May 11 at 8:30 pm: The Argento Ensemble performs Machover’s Another Life for mixed chamber ensemble, and other chamber works by Christopher Chandler (the resonance after…), Bryan Christian (Walk), Sean Friar (Scale 9), Amit Gilutz (Miscellaneous Romance No. 1), Juraj Kojs (Re-route), and Eric Lindsay (Town’s Gonna Talk).
Saturday, May 12 at 1:30 pm: Eric Clarke’s keynote lecture, “Explorations in Virtual Space: Music Perception and Recorded Music.”
Pictured: Argento Chamber Ensemble
Saturday, May 12 at 8pm: Concert featuring electroacoustic and fixed electronic media works by Taylan Cihan/Eliot Bates (Zey-glitch), Nicholas Cline (Homage to La Monte Young), Nathan Davis (Ecology No. 8), Peter Van Zandt Lane (Hydromancer), Stelios Manousakis (Megas Diakosmos), Nicola Monopoli (The Rite of Judgment), Christopher Stark (Two-Handed Storytelling).
Sunday, May 13 at 11:45 am: Ichiro Fujinaga’s keynote lecture, “The Research Program at the Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Laboratory.”
Paper presentation session topics cover a variety of topics, such as “Patterns, schemata and systems,” “Improvisation,” “Text, technology and the voice,” “Psychology and the sonic object,” “Instruments and soundscapes,” and “Music Informational Retrieval.”
For a full schedule we invite you to visit our website.
Performing a program entitled Dialogue between the Traditional and the Modern, including folk and Chinese Opera works as well as contemporary works by both Chinese and Western composers such as Xie Wenhui and Victoria Bond, the Chinese Hua Xia Chamber Ensemble (pronounced HWA SHA) makes their Lincoln Center debut at Alice Tully Hall on Monday, May 7 at 7:30pm.
Founded in 1995, and currently touring the United States with performances in New York and Boston, the Chinese Hua Xia Chamber Ensemble of the China Conservatory has become one of the most dynamic and technically impressive chamber ensembles of China. Under the strong leadership of Professor Zhang Weiliang and Maestro Tsung Yeh, the ensemble has achieved international acclaim. Its musicians, who are mainly young conservatory teachers, have won numerous instrumental competition awards in China and abroad. Their repertoire ranges from traditional Chinese folk music and Chinese opera music to contemporary Chinese and international classical music. The ensemble has recorded several CDs and has performed in the United States, France, Portugal, Australia, and in Asia and Africa. For this performance, the program will feature six world premieres commissioned by the ensemble for this US tour.
The Program includes:
Lang Tao Sha (Traditional) Feng Qiu Huang, by Liu Qing (World Premiere) Five Impressions, by Gao Ping (World Premiere) Wild Geese in the Sandbank (Traditional) Graceful, by Wang Dan Hong (World Premiere) Nodes, by John Mallia (World Premiere) Deep Night (Traditional Chinese Opera) Less, but More, by Xie Wen Hui (World Premiere) Bridges, by Victoria Bond (World Premiere arrangement for this ensemble)
Victoria Bond talks about her piece Bridges and its newly expanded arrangement:
“Bridges is something I wrote for John Yeh, clarinetist for the Chicago Symphony. He is of Chinese ancestry, born in this country, and he and I have known each other ever since we were in school together. He also had an ensemble that was composed of both Western and Chinese instruments, so I wrote it orignially for him, for quartet–clarinet, bass clarinet, erhu, and pipa. Then, when I got a request from the China conservatory, I made an expanded arrangement so that now it encompasses several other Chinese instruments such as ediza (another flute) and a number of western instruments–violin, cello, piano and percussion, which consists of both Western and Chinese percussion instruments. Even though the title is really a philosophical one, bridging East and West, I decided to base it on several real bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Stone Bridge in China, and a railroad trestle bridge, and the story behind that is that 2 of the Chinese instruments, the erhu and the pipa, sound to me like banjo and fiddle, and it reminded me of a connection to American bluegrass and country music. It uses both American folk and Chinese folk music which are both largely related through the pentatonic scale, so making a merger between those two musics was not that far-fetched, both because of the timbre and of the nature of the music itself.”
Performers include: Huang Mei (guqin); Wang Yidong (Chinese percussion); Mark Baekbum Yee (cello); Chai Shuai (erxian & erhu); Qiu Ji (zheng); Ge Yong (pipa); Chen Yue (flute); Wu Huanghuang (yangqin); Huang Mei (ruan); Chen Yue (flute); Tomoya Aomori, Justin Doute (western percussion); Zhang Weiliang (xiao); Han Shi (violin), Eric Umble (clarinet), Sun Pei (piano). Tsung Yeh, conductor, Zhang Weiliang Artistic Director. Zhao Talimu, President of China Conservatory, serves as leader of this delegation.
New York-based new music collective West 4th (aka W4) are garnering a wonderful reputation in being very active and decisively creative in concepts for their concert series. This coming June 8th, they will put on an all-cello program titled “Cellophilia” where they will feature music not just for solo cello, but for multiple cellos of 2-8 at a time. There are eight cellists scheduled to appear, among them are Mariel Roberts, who is also a co-producer of the concert, and Bang On a Can All-Stars’ Ashley Bathgate.
The concert is being funded via Kickstarter. Please click here or on the link at the bottom to donate.
Composer and W4 co-founder Molly Herron (pictured second from left; although her music is not featured in this concert, she’s also co-producer for the show) and cellist Mariel Roberts (pictured below) both sat down and spoke to me via Skype about the upcoming concert. “It was basically an idea”, stated Molly. “We like to do themes for our concerts, give something to tie it together with something to sink your teeth into, and so the theme for this concert was just ‘works for cello ensemble’. We’ve got a couple of solos on there, but it’s mostly groups of cellos. We’ve got 2 octets, a septet, a quartet, two duets–We just wanted to get together big hunks of cellos, and create new music together”.
The works that are scheduled to be performed (along with pieces by W4’s charter members Matt Frey and Tim Hansen) are written by composers such as Sarah Kirkland Snider, John Zorn and Michael Gordon.
The repertoire is a mix of new and pre-existing pieces. Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint makes a rare appearance, and was perfect for a concert of this criteria.
Molly explains. “We really wanted to do the Reich piece for eight cellos, which is so rarely done live with everybody there, and Mariel really helped us a lot with what was already established”. (more…)
