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
Read moreLots 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
Read moreIt’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
Read moreA million wet puppy kisses to Alex Ross for the Sequenza21 shout out in this week’s New Yorker. We love you, too.
Read moreFor 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
Read moreKevin Gallagher, guitarist and founder of Electric Kompany, writes: I noticed in your Jacob TV piece that there was hardly any mention of the fact that Electric Kompany is doing a world premiere of White Flag (for rock quartet and tape) based on sounds from the Iraq war starring the voices of Bill O’Reilly and George W Bush at the Whitney Museum at Altria on Friday, May 4 at 8pm. Needless to say, I was pretty upset that they aren’t stressing this piece to the press. It’s rare enough to have a world premiere for rock quartet at the Whitney,
Read moreContrary to speculation that the mystery man in Friday’s photo is a Guantanamo detainee or a middle school crossing guard, the fashion-forward gentleman in question is, in fact, the Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, aka JacobTV, whose work (it says here in the press release) “…has had a huge impact on the European music scene in the past decade, but he is far less known in the U.S.” It could happen. The Whitney Museum of American Art, that well-known new music venue, is concluding its Spring 2007 Whitney Live series with Grab It!, a three-day festival dedicated to JacobTV, Wednesday to Friday,
Read moreNext to the Mountaineers winning the NIT (okay, so it’s the tournament of losers…we won), the most exciting news in the world today is that our lil’ buddy Ian Moss is having his second annual Capital M world premiere extravaganza at Tonic next Wednesday. The concert will feature new works by Ian Dicke, Mike Gamble, Caroline Mallonée, Ian Moss, Edward RosenBerg III, Jonathan Russell, and Kyle Sanna. Noted provocateurs and ne’er-do-wells Anti-Social Music will follow with their particular brand of “punk classical” madness.
Read moreLet’s go to the old mailbag and see what’s happening in the exciting world of new music. Ah, here’s something. Our friends at the American Music Center are launching Counterstream Radio, a showcase for new music by U.S. composers, on March 16 at 3 p.m. EST. To mark the official station launch, Counterstream Radio will broadcast an exclusive conversation between Meredith Monk and Björk. No word on who gets to wear the chicken suit. Actually, the station is streaming right now so you don’t have to wait until the 16th to try it out. Any chance of getting a popup player
Read moreGérard Mortier, who is famous for painting lipstick on corpses and taking them to the ball, will become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera after he retires from the Paris Opera at the end of the 2008-2009 season. Mortier ran the Salzburg Festival in the 1990s where he mounted such customer-unfriendly provocations as Hans Neuenfels staging of Die Fledermaus, in which Orlofsky was a drug dealer who sold cocaine, Nazi thugs appeared on stage and Eisenstein had incestuous children who commit suicide. Can’t wait to see what he does with Lulu. Reminds of one of my favorite lines,
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