Music Events

Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Just Intonation, Music Events, Percussion, San Francisco

Performances next week at the Lab celebrate 25 years of oddity

Tom NunnI’ve been working so hard today I’ve forgotten to eat, and it’s in that spirit of lightheadedness and poor impulse control that I share with you the following San Francisco Bay Area new music scene update.

The Lab’s 25th anniversary performance series is well underway, and in just one night, they’ll run the gamut of styles celebrating their audacious artistic vision.  On Thursday, July 2nd, Mills College’s own Chris Brown will curate and perform in a concert featuring Charles Johnson, Chad and Curtis McKinney, Tom Nunn and William Winant.

When Johnson et. al. take the stage, you’ll hear amplified string and percussion instruments tuned in just intonation, combined with analog electronics configured to create difference tones.  Chad and Curtis McKinney are twin brothers whose SuperCollider-based computer network music makes a tightly interwoven, visceral and strongly rhythmic combo. Chris Brown will put on his electroacoustic hat, teaming up with instrument inventor Tom Nunn to tangle with legendary percussionist William Winant.

If you can’ t make it this week, never fear, since the series will continue next week with Miya Masaoka and Tomas Phillips on Thursday, July 9th, and a multimedia event the next night with Nao Bustamante, Margaret Tedesco, and Cliff Hengst.  Performance artist Bustamante will embody 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez, using video and the body as a source of backdrop, narrative, and emotion, taking audiences on a journey all over the body and its bejeweled parts.

The Lab is conveniently located at 2948 16th Street, San Francisco, near the 16th and Mission BART station.  They’ll let you in for $8.00 at the door. For more information, call (415) 864-8855.

by Polly Moller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco

Summer Solstice in the Bay Area means the Garden of Memory

The San Francisco Bay Area  has a unique way of celebrating the first day of summer.  Our most popular new music event, the Garden of Memory, comes around every summer solstice, and reliably attracts more than 1,000 visitors while creating a parking nightmare for miles in every direction.  In 2007 I was forced, like many attendees, to park in the nearby cemetery and accidentally backed over the curb.  I left my car there and hurried away apologizing profusely for actually driving over somebody’s grave.

Every year over 30 composers, improvisers, and sound-artists take over the columbarium at the Chapel of the Chimes, located at 4499 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. The concert takes place on the summer solstice regardless of the day it falls on, and this year it’s Sunday, June 21st, starting at 5:00 p.m. and continuing until 9:00 p.m. or sundown, whichever comes first.

The first time I attended the Garden of Memory concert was also the first year I participated, though I wasn’t on the list of lucky featured performers.  In 2003 my friend Christi Denton was assigned a space in the columbarium, as all participating artists are, for her multi-speaker sound installation.  Recordings of me playing flute multiphonics, and giving a tarot card reading, were among those she looped for the installation, whose speakers hung above a collection of ferns in one of the columbarium spaces, like the fruit of a robot tree, filling the room with the disembodied voices and music of women.

Few new music events in this or any city are as family-friendly, visually stunning and sonically varied.  If you plan to spend your Sunday evening in the Garden of Memory, public transit is recommended.  Admission is $15.00 general, $10.00 for students and seniors, and $5.00 for kids under 12 (kids under 5 are free). Tickets are available at the door, or in advance from www.brownpapertickets.com.

by Polly Moller
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism, Music Events, Odd, Spain

Sonata for Piano and Dirt Bike

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb50kHf7Tw0[/youtube]

Carles Santos has been a force on the Spanish “downtown” scene (taking musicians like Santos, Llorenç Barber and Maria de Alvear in opposition to the “uptown” likes of Cristobal Halffter, Joan Guinjoan and Tomás Marco) since the early 1970s. This “downtown” movement had a huge impact on Spanish musicians in the 80s, and still carries through to today.

Starting as a formidable young pianist who’d breeze through the Second Viennese school, Santos turned his attention to a combination of minimalism and theatrical spectacle (often with himself as protagonist). But aside from his fanfare composed to open the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, very little of his music has ever reached the U.S.  A lot of it has to do with the personal and theatric nature; so much is wedded to the visual and dramatic action (much of it with an over-the-top, campy and/or erotic agenda).

You’re still not going to find much in the CD bins, but Santos has slowly been building a nice website, and stocking it with a lot of clips from his work over the last 30-some years. This particular clip shows the “foreplay and consummation” between Santos’ piano and 6-time world champion rider Adam Raga’s motorcycle from the show “Ebrofalia Copulativa”, live in Ulldecona in 2008.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

Balliett House, San Antonio TX

doug Monday last week I headed over to San Antonio to hear a house concert hosted by composer and San Antonio Symphony bassist Doug Balliett. The program included two new pieces by P. Kellach Waddle, “Louange a l’Eternite de Jesus” from Messiaen‘s Quartet for the End of Time, and selections from Balliett’s arrangements and reinventions of Schumann‘s Dichterliebe for ensemble and tape. Balliett also contributed three new songs and arrangements of two by Mendelssohn, sung by Ken-David Masur.

It was hot. The audience, which ranged from symphony players to kids and families, made do with hand-fans but, now that I think about it, maybe the heat got to our brains in a good way. Balliett’s inquiry into Dichterliebe — sometimes faithful to Schumann, sometimes wild, gorgeous — stood out as an encouraging example of how the politics of old/new fall by the wayside in enthusiastic and creative hands.

I’m always encouraged by informal events like this. It’s refreshing to remember that institutions don’t have a monopoly on the music I love.

Performances (in attendance or on tape) by Stephanie Teply-Westney, Benjamin Westney-Teply, Lauren Magnus, PK Waddle, Alison Fletcher, Mollie Marcuson, Catherine Turner, Tal Perkes, Matt Zerweck, Ilya Sterenberg, Rachel Ferris, Doug Balliett and Ken-David Masur.

by Elliot Cole
Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco

Note to Self: Find that FM Radio

Middle Harbor Shoreline ParkI write that note to myself about four times a year, and I forget every time, and every time I miss out on a key aspect of the Illuminated Corridor – “a collision of public art, music and film” that persistently crops up in different San Francisco Bay Area locations to work its site-specific magic.

On May 30th the Illuminated Corridor will manifest in Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, at 7th Street and Middle Harbor Road in West Oakland. The public is invited to show up between 7:00 and 9:30 p.m. to hear and admire sounds and visuals created by 30 artists inspired by Oakland’s history and habitat.  Organizers recommend early arrival (since park gates close when the parking lot is full) and layers of clothing against the unpredictable Bay breeze.

Oh, and why do I need an FM radio?  Because every Illuminated Corridor features live music especially for the FM airwaves.  On May 30th the name of the station is Port Radio featuring Zachary James Watkins mixing live input from musicians and sound artists Sean Clute, Phog Masheen, Biggi Vinkeloe, and Michael Zelner.

Other featured installations will be The Shallow Tide, by Cheryl E. Leonard and Rebecca Haseltine, in performance with Ann Dentel and Karen Stackpole; and Building 122, by Artists’ Television Access luminaries Gilbert Guerrero and Kathleen Quillian. Alfonso Alvarez, Keith Arnold and Kahlil Karn will team up with Steven Dye, Ian Winters and Evelyn Ficarra to offer Triangulation; and the Killer Banshees have knit together their newest tour-de-force, The Subtidal Goals.

Naturally you have questions!  Get answers to all of them by reading the Illuminated Corridor FAQ, and don’t forget your FM radio.

by Polly Moller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New Amsterdam, New York

All Your Fridays Are Belong To Us!

Almost everyone in and around the New Amsterdam Records scene has been written up by us. Many are good and long-time visitors, contributors and pals of S21. But screw that; the real reason we follow this crew is that they’re an awesome bunch of composers and performers, with a fresh, open and energetic approach to this whole art-music thingy-ma-jingy. They’re proving it again this May, with… Aww, just let the poster tell you:

Makes a nice prelude to the BOAC “oldsters” Marathon, dontcha think?

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, New York

2+2=5: Christopher O’Riley at Miller Theatre

Christopher O’Riley performs his final recital in the 2+2=5 Series tomorrow night at Miller Theatre. Each of the programs has featured a pairing of a classical composer and O’Riley’s transcriptions of songs by a pop musician.  Thus far, the recitals have featured Shostakovich / Radiohead & Debussy / Nick Drake. Tomorrow’s program pairs Schumann and Elliott Smith.

Yesterday, O’Riley released a digital single on iTunes of his interpretation of Kurt Cobain’s Heart Shaped Box. It’s featured on the iTunes’ “Rock” page! On May 5th the digital single will be widely released to other music download sites. A Heart Shaped Box ring tone can be created at iTunes and will be available through major cellular carriers by May 5th.

O’Riley played HSB as the encore for his Debussy/Nick Drake recital at Miller. He really wails the stuffing out of it!

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concerts, Downtown, Experimental Music, Improv, jazz, Music Events, New York, Performers

Interpretations Season #20: Artist Blog #9 — John Lindberg of S3NY

We’ve reached the final concert of Interpretations’ twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City! Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. Our last concert is also an anniversary celebration: The String Trio of New York has been going strong for 31 years. Guitarist James Emery and bassist John Lindberg have invited some of the most innovative jazz violinists to work with them: Billy Bang, Regina Carter, Diane Monroe, and Charles Burnham. Since 2001, violinist Rob Thomas has more than ably filled those shoes. While the trio has had many works written for them, and does perform the “classics” of jazz, this concert will feature the music of Emery and Lindberg. John Lindberg explains in his own words, below. We hope to see you at Roulette this Thursday, 23 April and stay tuned for next season.

This particular concert of the String Trio of New York, now 31 years running, is a unique opportunity to present a retrospective of works that have in some ways defined the development of the group, and highlights its diverse repertoire. My three pieces on the program — The Anticipator (1987), Nature,Time, Patience (2001), Journey Platz (2007) represent different side of my mucical personality as a composer, and extremely varied approaches to the collective utilization of the improvising and interprational talents of the trio members, in effect being a voyage through the time/space continnum of the s3ny, while offering up renditions that lie solidly “in the moment” that they are being performed.

Interpretations has been, in my view, the most vital and compelling series for creative music in New York city for some two decades, due to its great breadth of music it presents, and remaining one of he very few ongoing series that offer composers free reign to present their music as they wish it to be presented.

It is with great pleasure I have another opportunity, with this landmark concert for the trio, to perform as part of the Interpretations series.

The String Trio of New York performs at Roulette on Thursday 23 April at 8pm.

For more information:

The String Trio of New York

Interpretations

Roulette

by John Lindberg
Bang on a Can, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Music Events, New York, Online

Want some free tracks & tix? The hunt is on!

Apropos this Wednesday’s Michael Gordon Trance performance mentioned just a few posts previously:  Besides the pre-concert talk and videotaping, we’ve got a bit more fun for you all…

Along with the good folk at Bang On A Can and Cantaloupe Records, Michael Gordon himself had the idea of offering the tracks to Cantaloupe’s Trance CD, performed by Icebreaker, as free downloads for you all. The only catch: Each of the seven tracks are hosted at a different blog, and it’s up to you to follow the clues to find all seven.

Besides the music itself, there’s a further reward for the quick: the first three people to correctly identify all seven blogs in an e-mail to promotion@firstchairpromo.com will receive a free pair of tickets to the April 22nd concert at Le Poisson Rouge!

We get to lead off the hunt with the simplest clue of all: a link directly to the first track. And to get to the next blog & track you only have to decipher this:

The most famous bridge in New York City carries the name of this borough, where a person who avoids eating any animal product like the plague blogs about all events musical, metal, comedy — or whatever’s happened to grace the fair city this or that week.

Those wishing to experience the full sonic glory of the physical Trance CD can purchase it here. Good luck!

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York, Performers, Video

Trance Talking

Michael Gordon‘s huge and hugely wonderful, 50+ minute riff- and throb-fest Trance, composed in 1995, is being dusted off for what promises to be a memorable performance by the ensemble Signal, 7:30pm April 22nd at Le Poisson Rouge.

The fun and games begin at 6:30 pre-concert in the bar, however; Gordon himself, along with Ronen Givony (from Wordless Music and Le Poisson), Signal director Brad Lubman, bandmate/composer Ken Thomson (who also does duty in Gutbucket) and others, will talk about producing and performing new works with emphasis on the whys and whats of a piece after their first presentation. Trance was premiered at Bang on a Can in 1997, and hasn’t been played in New York since. Who owns the problem of presenting new works after their premiere?

Not only that, but S21’s own fearless leader Jerry Bowles will be moderating, and the whole roundtable will be videotaped and YouTubed shortly after for your viewing pleasure. Space in the bar isn’t huge, so come early to catch the conversation or join in.

Last but not least, we’re actively soliciting questions and comments for the panel from you, our loyal readers. Something you want to know or share about the perils of performance, premieres, getting that work into a second or third production… Just pass them along to sequenza21@gmail.com, and we’ll try and add you to the dialogue.

by Steve Layton