Music Events

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, New York, S21 Concert

It’s Tonight! Hope to see You there!

Sequenza 21 and Manhattan New Music Project present   ACME in Concert   Tuesday October 25, 2011 at 7 PM Joe’s Pub, NYC       American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME)   Yuki Numata, Caroline Shaw, violins Nadia Sirota, viola Clarice Jensen, cello Jonathan Singer, percussion Timothy Andres, piano   Program   Wily Overture …                                                            Christian Carey (premiere) Welcome …                                                                        Nancy Kleaver (MNMP) Requests …                                                                        David Smooke Grand Dragon (excerpt from Speedvisions) …            Rob Deemer Slumber Music …                                                            Jay Batzner Steal Away

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Cello, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, New York, S21 Concert, viola

Guest post: Clarice Jensen and Nadia Sirota

Clarice: So, ahem, Nadia it was pretty remarkable when we switched from reading from the score to parts when we were working on Hayes’ piece (ed.: Steal Away by Hayes Biggs). It’s like the music took on a different meaning. Nadia: I know!! I find that stuff so incredible. Sometimes I forget that a massive portion of our jobs as musicians (especially of the new music persuasion) is essentially translating visual material into sound. We’re kind of like professional map-readers. Do you have any notational pet peeves? Clarice: Page turns of course… But other than that, just spacing in general.

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Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

Field Report #1 from the Aspen Music Festival: Ligeti and Eötvös, among others

“Magical” is a pretty cheesy way to describe anything, particularly one’s time at a music festival. Yet, something – at least – special happened during yesterday’s Aspen Festival Orchestra performance of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 5. Gentle rolls of thunder began to accompany violinist Robert McDuffie’s dramatic journey through the first two movements of the Barber, growing louder as the orchestra approached the thrilling conclusion of the work. It seemed as if the weather was a presage to the ominous clamor of the Mahler, and more amazing was its harmonious transition from thunder clouds to

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Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Experimental Music, Festivals, Improv, Music Events, News, Premieres, San Francisco, Sound Art, Women composers

2011 Outsound New Music Summit lineup announced

Once upon a time in 2000, there was a brand-new underground music collective in the San Francisco Bay Area, presenting a monthly concert series named “Static Illusion/Methodical Madness”.  The SIMM series is still going strong today, and its parent organization, Outsound Presents, now additionally puts on the weekly Luggage Store Gallery concert series and the Outsound New Music Summit. Outsound acquired a Board of Directors and incorporated its bad self in 2009.  Now with a 501(c)(3) IRS determination in hand, it’s a stalwart provider of experimental music, sound art, found sounds, improvisation, noise, musique concrete, minimalism, and any other kind of

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Chamber Music, Commissions, Competitions, Concerts, File Under?, Music Events, New York

Cuckson on the Cutting Edge

I’m looking forward to hearing violinist Miranda Cuckson premiere a new chamber concerto by Jeffrey Mumford tonight at Symphony Space. Cuckson is a tremendous talent. Her recent CDs of music by Ralph Shapey, Donald Martino, and Michael Hersch are required listening for anyone interested in post-tonal chamber music. The concert also includes works by Harold Meltzer, Victoria Bond, and Brian Ferneyhough. Cuckson is joined by the Argento Ensemble; the Da Capo Chamber Players will also perform (details below). Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival Program Monday, April 11, 2011, 7:30 pm; $20/Seniors $15 Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in Peter Norton

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Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Houston, Music Events

Houston’s Musiqa presents: Real and Imagined

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/12767232] (Visual Abstract, First Movement, Music by Pierre Jalbert, Film by Jean Detheux) On January 8th, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. in Zilkha Hall of The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Houston TX new music group Musiqa presents Real and Imagined – a concert collaboration with Aurora Picture Show featuring Theo Loevendie’s Six Turkish Folk Songs as well as music by Eve Beglarian, Paul Frehner, and Evan Chambers. Houston-based composer Pierre Jalbert’s Visual Abstract for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion will be performed live to a film created by Jean Detheux. The concert will be conducted

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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

Three Premieres

Hidden within the typical drive-to-cadence activities that closed the 2010 Fall semester here at the University of Michigan were three special performances showcasing the creativity and boldness of student composers David Biedenbender, Roger Zare and William Zuckerman. The premieres of their works – Three Rilke Poems, Janus, and By the way: Music in Pluralism, respectively – demonstrated the profits of well executed collaborations with all of the following: a third-party ensemble, a soloist, and other forms of media. I am proud to report the largely unqualified success of these endeavors and suspect these works are part of a more general

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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events

ONCE (again)

Although Ann Arbor’s ONCE. MORE. festival, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ONCE Group composers, does not end until tonight, the events with the surviving founders of the groundbreaking concert series – Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma and Donald Scavarda – concluded Thursday evening. That night’s ONCE. NOW. concert featured more recent works by these four composers. Robert Ashley’s Van Cao’s Meditation (1991), for piano, opened the evening. The piece was resonant, repetitive, and reminded me of Satie’s Ogives in spirit. Essentially, Van Cao’s Meditation milled about one confined group of a few notes which covered all registers of

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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

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Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Improv, jazz, Mexico, Music Events

Houston Mixtape #7: Skeleton At The Feast

Skeletons! Witches! Vampires! No, I’m not talking about candidates in Houston’s midterm elections. I’m talking about Halloween and the two days that follow known as Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Like many other places in the Southern U.S., Houston culture is a healthy mix of the supernatural and the spiritual. In the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Meurtos, food, beverages, and sweets are placed on homemade alters as gifts for the spiritual manifestations of those who have passed who will, over the course of the 48 hours that is All Saints Day and All Soul’s

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