New York

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Even the Orchestra Was Beautiful…

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The Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas concert at Rose Hall last night was one of those rare “what’s not to love” events that only occasionally grace New York stages.  Take a program of thinking man’s bon bons (Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemayá, Ginastera’s barnburning Estancia), add a star turn by Latin music legend Paquito D’Rivera, and throw in an energetic and talented young orchestra led by a drop dead gorgeous conductor and you have a surefire receipe for fun.  Many of the audience members came dressed for a post-concert gala which gave the evening a particularly elegant flair and provided a refreshing contrast to the usual New York concert-going experience where you can’t tell if your neighbor is a homeless person from Port Authority or the CEO of Ogilvy.  Of course, I dress that way myself so I can hardly complain.

Alondra de la Parra, a 26-year-old Mexican conductor and pianist started The Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA) in 2004 to increase public awareness of Latin American symphonic music.  The list of blue chip sponsors on the program and the monied audience suggest that her organizational and marketing skills are at least as formidable as her music talents.  (Did I mention that she is drop dead gorgeous?)

But, I digress.  The highlight of the evening was an appearance by the Cuban-born saxophonist, clarinetist, band leader and composer Paquito D’ Rivera who, I was a little surprised to learn, writes “serious” music that sounds quite at home on a concert program.  Fantasia Mesianicas (Blues for Akoka) is a set of variations for clarinet, jazz trio, and symphony with a clarinet part inspired by Henri Akoka, a man with a great sense of humor who was the clarinetist in the premiere of Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, not exactly a humorous piece.  Memories (Danzón), based on the national dance of Cuba, is a romantic vision of moonlit nights filled with dangerous rhythms and elegant cornet lines, channeling the great orchestras that played the grand hotels that once graced the Havana shoreline.  D’Rivera performed a couple of encores, including a show-stopping clarinet/piano duo.  (Terrific pianist, by the way, although I couldn’t find his name in the program. Anybody know?)

The second half began with the world premiere of Ixbalanqué, a moody, often dark, tone poem drawn from Mayan legend, by the 26-year-old Mexican composer Martin Capella.  The piece was the first winner of the POA’s Young Composers Competition, which invited composers aged thirty-five and younger from the American continent to submit an 8-12 minute work for orchestra.  Robert Beaser, Paul Brantley, Mario Lavista, Tania León and Nils Vigeland were the judges.  Ixbalanqué is an accomplished work but it’s a little tough to precede (or follow) Sensemayá, an undisputed masterpiece of the short, Latin genre which is so obviously Ixbalanqué’s granddaddy.

To cap off a perfect evening, de la Parra whipped the orchestra through Ginestera’s exhuberant Estancia, bringing the audience to its collective feet with the wild and crazy Danza final – Malambo.

Beyond being a lot of fun, the concert was a useful reminder of how deeply and irreversibly the Latin musical language is ingrained into–and enriches–North American culture.  There is nothing foreign or alien or threatening about it; this is our music too.   A useful rejoiner to the growing wave of xenophobia that hovers over the land in these troubled times. 

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, New York, North/South

Viva Max!

For the past 27 years, the Mexican-born pianist and composer Max Lifchitz has been a tireless and resourceful promoter of new music (including his own) through live performances and recordings with the North/South Consonance Ensemble, the chamber group of the non-profit North/South Consonance organization. Many young composers, particularly those of the Neoclassic or New Romantic temperment (Larry Bell comes immediately to mind), have gotten a career boost from Lifchitz’s annual programs and recordings, which now number nearly 50. 

I mention all this because North/South Consonance’s  final concert of the current season is coming up on Sunday afternoon June 17 at 3 PM and will take place at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St, NYC) on Manhattan’s West Side. Admission is free (no tickets necessary).

The program will feature two compositions involving narration: Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat and Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange.  I personally detest works that involve people talking while I’m trying to listen to music, but apparently some people like it and many famous composers have written works for ensemble and spoken word. 

Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale was written at the end of World War I and is one of those Faustian/Devil Goes Down to Georgia things about trading in your soul for a fiddle.  Lifchitz says the work is being performed to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the composer and, in fact, it is being performed on June 17, the exact day Stravinsky was born in 1882 in a town near St Petersburg.

Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange is a setting of a text by New York City writer Kathleen Masterson, written especially for the actress Norma Fire, who will perform it.  The narrative with music relates the story of Fire’s parents who emigrated to this country before the Holocaust, and of their relatives who did not. Fire will be supported by violinist Claudia Schaer and Lifchitz on piano. 

Today’s musical question is:  Name the best pieces ever written for music and narration (and let’s get Copland and Honegger out of the way quickly).

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York

Blue Jeff

The Composers Concordance is having a concert tomorrow night at 8PM at the Greenwich House Music School Renee Weiler Concert Hall, 46 Barrow Street which will star our very own Jeff Harrington.  Okay, there are some other composers on the program, too, but none as adventuresome or all-round lovable as our favorite geek-composer.  Paul Hoffmann will perform the New York premiere of Jeff’s brilliant Big Easy mashup, Blue Strider.  You’ll find the full schedule for the program here. 

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York

Multi-Culti

Marco 004.JPG                           Marco Antonio Mazzini is a Peruvian clarinetist with an Italian name who lives in Belgium and plays with a Czech orchestra called the Ostravska Banda which–as fate would have it–is joining the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble for a good-looking program (Brown, Wolpe, Stockhausen, Xenakis) of modern music at Zankel Hall Monday night.  There will be a preview performance Sunday night at the Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn Heights. Marco would be up for organizing a Sequenza21 concert in Ghent sometime if we have some Euro-interest.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, New York

It’s Very Fancy on Old Delancey

Here’s something to put in your calendar.  Our friends at the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Artistic Director Andrew Cyr, have a fabulous program called “There and Back Again” lined up for May 24 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, highlighted by the U.S. Premiere of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto.  Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital (for whom the work was written) and the Metropolis Ensemble Strings will do the honors.  

“The concerto’s main conflicts are between sound and silence and between motion and stasis,’ Dorman says. “One of the things that inspired me to deal with these opposites is the Mandolin’s most basic technique – the tremolo, which is the rapid repetition of notes. The tremolo embodies both motion and stasis. The rapid movement provides momentum, while the pitches stay the same.”

Dorman says the piece draws from the mandolin’s vast repertoire, including Baroque, Russian folk music, Bluegrass, Indian music, Brazilian jazz and Avant-Garde.  

“When Avi approached me to write a concerto for him, my acquaintance with the mandolin was fairly limited,” he says.  “I had used it in chamber pieces only twice before, and did not know most of the repertoire for the instrument. As I got to know the instrument better, I discovered its diverse sonic and expressive possibilities.”

Also featured will be Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for string quartet and clarinets, with clarinet soloist Tibi Cziger in collaboration with the Metropolis Ensemble Chamber Players, Arnaud Sussmann and Lily Francis, violins, Eric Nowlin, viola, Michal Korman, cello. The program will round out with Shostakovich’s masterpiece Chamber Symphony op. 110a and Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances.

That’s Thursday, May 24, 2007 (7:30pm) at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, (172 Norfolk St, between Houston and Delancey).

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York

All Around the Town

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 Sunami.  You can get a taste of what’s in store by going over to the Pulse blog where you’ll find audio excerpts from all of the pieces available online (recorded during rehearsal) along with commentary from the composers.

Another friend of the family, Jenny Lin, is doing an all Valentin Silvestrov program, including Der Bote, Epitaph, Post Scriptum & Drama Sunday, May 6, 2007, 5:00 PM 31 Little West 12th Street New York, New York 10014  Info here or call 212.463.8630.   

Young-Ah Tak, the amazing pianist who blew the joint away with her performance of Judith Lang Zaimont’s Wizards (2003) at last year’s Sequenza21 concert is playing the piece again (along with works by people named Haydn, Debussy, and Schumann) at the Yamaha Piano Salon, 639 Fifth Ave., 34th Street (entrance on 54th Street between Madison and Fifth).  The concert starts at 7:30 and admission is free.  If you want to catch a real comer while she’s still making her bones, this is a great chance.

by Jerry Bowles
ACO, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Music Events, New York

Minimalist Friday

It’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 Foundation for the Arts provide a perfect backdrop to Reisman performance, which will done live to film.  Tickets are $20 ($25 at the door).

On a more somber note, there will be a public memorial service for composer and pianist Andrew Hill, who died last Friday, at Trinity Church (89 Broadway at Wall Street) this Friday, April 27, at 2:00 pm.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Getting a Clue

For those of you who may not be familiar with it, there is a seminal document called The Cluetrain Manifesto that defines a new style of communication in an age in which everyone and everything is electronically connected.  Its premise, to which I subscribe, is that the internet is fundamentally different from mass media like television because it allows lots of people to have “human to human” conversations (with all the complexity and difficulty that implies) rather than being force fed a one-sided party line or mass marketing message. 

There can be negative aspects to this ubiquetous connectedness.  Some people hide behind the mask of anonymity on the internet to say and do cruel and destructive things.  But, in the best case scenario, the web allows us to talk to each other and–under the right conditions of respect, transparency, and honesty–to learn and even grow into a community where people can disagree without being disagreeable.  I believe Sequenza21 is one of those rare communities and that makes me proud.

The first of the Manifesto’s 95 theses is this:  “Markets are conversations.”  In other words, if people are talking seriously about your product, or your Whitney concert, that is a positive thing from both a human and commercial point of view.

Just an old hippie (and professional marketer’s) point of view.

p.s.  We need a new conversation started over on the Composer Forum page.  If you don’t have a user name or password to post something let me know and I’ll fix you up.

Lots of terrific new reviews over on the CD Review page.

I listen to the fantastic Counterstream radio (see toilet seat icon) while I work and yesterday heard a terrific piece by Ezra Sims and it occurred to me that somebody ought to voluteer to write a regular column here every week or every other week called something like “Underrated,” which would focus on composers we don’t hear much about. 

by Jerry Bowles