New York

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Ken Ueno & Du Yun at the Flea

Big ups to my composer compadre Ken Ueno. He’s had a heck of a busy year. In addition to an active teaching schedule at University of California-Berkeley, where he’s an Assistant Professor of Composition, he’s been busily composing, performing, and supervising recordings of his music. His new disc on the BMOPSound imprint – the only disc I’ve ever received in the mail with a warning label on it (extreme dynamic range) – is an engaging collection. Featuring the Boston Modern Orchestra project, conducted by Gil Rose, its a collection of his concerti for other musicians – violist Wendy Richman, biwa

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Microtonalism, New York, Piano

Pianos East and West, tuned and retuned

We may have missed the first volleys of southern California’s MicroFest — concerts devoted to tunings other than our standard, boring old 12 steps to the octave — but there’s still plenty of time to get your octave-tweak on; events will be running all the way to the end of June. Composers represented include Cage, Harrison, Partch, Crumb, Lachenmann, Tenney, Alves, Corigliano, Gosfield, Haas, Ives, Wadle, Schweinitz, McIntosh, Kriege,  etc. etc… Quite a constellation of stars. For all the details head over to their website. But I wanted to draw your attention to the MicroFest concert happening this weekend, since

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by Steve Layton
Composers, Contemporary Classical, New York, Opera

La Commedia or, my dinner with Louis

Thursday, April 15 marked the New York premiere of Louis Andriessen’s latest opera, La Commedia at Carnegie Hall.  I was lucky enough to make it up to New York for this event. — Full disclosure: part of my trip to New York was to meet with Andriessen to discuss my plans for performing his 1984-88 opera, De Materie in Washington, D.C. this coming October.  I’ll be blogging a lot about that process in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. Frankly, I am as addicted to Andriessen’s music as the composer is to garlic (which I found out over bread and

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by Armando Bayolo
Composers, Concerts, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York

NYPO’s Contact! at Symphony Space

The New York Philharmonic has made significant strides to renew its commitment to contemporary classical music this season. Curated by composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg and conducted by music director Alan Gilbert, April16th’s Contact! series performance was a compelling program stirringly performed. Sean Shepherd‘s These Particular Circumstances proved a vibrant opener. A bassoonist as well as a composer, he’s a fine orchestrator. Its also clear that, while at Cornell for his DMA, he learned a lot about Lutoslawski from Steven Stucky, as his language incorporates insights from both composers. Shepherd’s music has a wonderful way of making the orchestra shimmer. He took advantage of

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by Christian Carey
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, New York

Monday Night with Dr. Phil

No, not that one… This one, with trusty bass in hand… Phil Fried is a composer long known to me as a regular,  astute — and often very funny — participant in musical discussions on the NewMusicBox forums and ‘chatter’ commentary. Phil comes from a musical family; His father, Louis Fried, was an original cast member in several Broadway shows including Brigadoon and Carousel. His cousin was the noted composer Isadore Freed. Second only to music is Phil’s passionate interest in literature. He has written several texts and librettos, including that for his operatic adaptation of Hemingway’s short story, “The

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by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, New York

Take this detour

I’ve written before about the one and only Alex Temple, late Yalie and NYC denizen, studious University of Michigan grad student, now currently working his thing in Chicago. Well, Alex is back in New York for a moment, joined by fellow composers Brian Mark, Seth Bedford, Angélica Négron, and Jeremy Howard Beck. DETOUR presents works by all these up-and-comers, made to accompany archival films found in the Prelinger Archives, this Saturday, March 20th, at 9pm, at the Gershwin Hotel (7 East 27th Street, 9pm / Cover $10) The videos range from airline ads to political propaganda. Some have been edited

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by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Annual Ensemble Pi concert for peace and civil rights, Cooper Union

Ensemble Pi is an unusual new-music collective, in that all its concerts have a socially-conscious bent and feature composers whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the world’s current and critical issues. The ensemble’s Dancer on a Tightrope will take place at The Cooper Union’s Great Hall on Saturday, March 13 at 8 p.m.  Cooper Union is located at 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue, NYC. Tickets are $15 ($10 for students and seniors).  For more information, call (212) 362-4745 or visit their website. We asked for a little background on the

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

Composers Now: An interview with Laura Kaminsky

Composer, arts administrator, educator, and now, festival curator, Laura Kaminsky is exactly the type of advocate contemporary music needs to ensure its survival. Until recently a dean at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College/SUNY (she remains on the faculty), she’s currently Associate Artistic Director at Symphony Space. Since her arrival, Kaminsky has done a great deal to enhance the music programming at the venue. “Symphony Space has long been known for its literary events. But in recent years we’ve been hard at work to create an increased role for music in our programming: both in terms of performances and

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Week long Composers Now Festival starts today!

Sure, the recession has caused for cutbacks in the arts. But composers are a resilient bunch. This week, New York City will be the site for the first Composers Now festival. Coordinated by Symphony Space Associate Artistic Director Laura Kaminsky and composer Tania León, the festival involves a host of area venues and organizations. The activities start Monday morning with a panel discussion and a marathon concert from 12-6. Tonight alone, there are events at Symphony Space, the Schomburg Center, the Morgan Library, the Jazz Gallery, and the Flushing Branch of the Queens Library. Composers Now will run throughout the

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by Christian Carey