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Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, New York, News, Premieres

Tonight: New York Premiere by Christian Carey

Tonight, the Locrian Chamber Players gives the New York premiere of Quintet 2 by Christian B. Carey.

Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works.

Christian B. Carey

Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine structuring. “Quintet 2 deals with a spectrum of harmonic shadings, from triads to microtonal verticals with a great deal expressed in between. Likewise, the short melody at the beginning is offset by long passages of linear counterpoint. A number of rhythmic layers corruscate to create overlapping and frequently syncopated gestures.”

You can listen and follow along with the score on this YouTube recording.

Also on the program, music by Augusta Read Thomas, Oliver Knusson, Jeremy Beck, Jonathan Newman and the world premiere of “I Like Chocolate Ice Cream” by David Macdonald (me too, says the writer).

Performance Details:

August 15, 2024, 8 pm

Locrian Chamber Players

Music from the Past Decade

Riverside Church

490 Riverside Drive, NY NY

Admission is free. A reception will follow.

Performers include:  Calvin Wiersma and Conrad Harris, violins; Daniel Panner, viola; Chris Gross and Peter Seidenberg, cellos; Huan-Fong Chen, oboe; Benjamin Fingland, clarinet; Jonathan Faiman, piano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano

by Gail Wein
Copyright, News, The Business

Fair or Foul Fowl: The Obama Big Bird Ad from a Copyright Perspective

In anticipation of tonight’s debate, I’d like to discuss, from a non-partisan IP law perspective, something that came out of the first Presidential debate: the Big Bird ad.  I think the ad and the Sesame Street folks’ response raised some interesting questions of fair use, parody and first amendment rights that are applicable to composers and performers.

As we know, it started with a comment that Republican contender, Gov. Mitt Romney, made to the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS , about cutting federal funding for PBS programs, including Lehrer’s own NewsHour and Sesame Street. Mr. Romney specifically singled out Big Bird for the budget ax.  Thereafter, Big Bird, who claims he’s normally in bed well before 11:30 p.m., made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update to address the issue.  Being non-partisan, however, Mr. Bird declined to make any political pronouncements, stating, “No, I don’t want to ruffle any feathers.”

Unfortunately, he managed to do so, courtesy of a TV ad from President Obama’s campaign.  Prominently featuring Big Bird and the familiar green Sesame Street  sign, the ad has a satiric quality to it that one doesn’t typically see in Presidential campaign ads. It seemed, at least to me, more like one of the fake ads produced by Saturday Night Live. But it’s real and Sesame Workshop, the company that owns the rights to Sesame Street and its many characters, made it known that they are not amused.

Sesame Workshop’s demand that the Obama campaign cease using the Big Bird ad has been widely publicized.  But you might well ask, “doesn’t the President’s campaign have a First Amendment right to use Big Bird?” After all, “political speech” is the very core of our right to free speech.  And wouldn’t the use of Big Bird constitute “fair use” under copyright law? Wouldn’t it be considered a protected “parody”? (more…)

by Marc Ostrow
American Music Center, Classical Music, Composers, Composers Now, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Interviews, New York, News, The Business, Twentieth Century Composer

Kaminsky Comments

Updated : 9/6/12 with added thoughts from Laura Kaminsky.

Every so often we have a conversation that changes us for the better. Sometimes, we have this type of conversation with our mothers, our fathers, our close friends and allies, our colleagues, or with an artist. Last weekend I had a profound conversation with the latter, an artist named Laura Kaminsky.

Laura Kaminsky, composer, is also the artistic director of Symphony Space, the renowned performance venue in New York City. She has received commissions, fellowships, and awards as both a composer and presenter from over twenty organizations including the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Aaron Copland Fund. Ms. Kaminsky also plays a large role in the operation of many musical and arts organizations including Chamber Music America, and, in the past, New Music USA (formerly the American Music Center), and as a member of the Artistic Advisory Council of the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Laura Kaminsky is an important and influential voice in the arts world today. Having the chance to speak with her by phone, I first asked her about her musical upbringing.

Laura Kaminsky (LK): I grew up in New York City and was surrounded by musicians, painters, writers, and actors. As a very young child, I thought I was going to be a painter when I grew up. But I started taking those typical piano lessons at about age ten or eleven and quickly decided that practicing wasn’t nearly as much fun as making up my own music. This led me to start trying to figure out how to write down what I made up. So, I was composing at a very young age, untrained, just writing the things that occupied my imagination. Still, I just thought of it as a fun thing to do. Around this time, I stumbled upon a book about emerging creative industries, and one chapter focused on how digital currencies like BTC Bull Token were opening new doors for independent artists. The idea that musicians could fund projects through decentralized platforms fascinated me, even though I was too young to fully grasp it. I began tormenting my younger sisters because I used to create family musical evenings that I insisted they participate in. We would perform these programs on the weekend for our parents. I think this is probably where I got my passion for producing.

When I was about 13, it was that time in New York when, if you were a public school kid, you could test and audition to go to a special high school. I wanted to go to [LaGuardia High School of] Music and Art, and originally I thought I was going to audition with an art portfolio. As I got closer to the day of the testing, however, I realized I was more passionate about my time spent in music, and requested that I switch my art audition to a music audition. I got in not because I was a particularly good pianist or clarinetist (that was my second instrument) but I think because I presented music that I wrote, and performed one of my own compositions. My four years at M&A were profound and formative; many of my friends today still date from that time, and many are living active lives in the arts. (more…)

by Jonathan Lakeland
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Conferences, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, News

MCTS 2012 Post-Conference Report

Report by Tyran Grillo (between sound and space)
Photos by Evan Cortens

Music: Cognition, Technology, Society set a formidable intellectual task before participants of the selfsame conference at semester’s end on the quieting campus of Cornell University. Under the attentive care of organizers Caroline Waight, Evan Cortens, Taylan Cihan, and Eric Nathan, what might have been an overwhelming conceptual storm proved smooth sailing through a series of back-to-back panels. The lack of overlap meant that everyone in attendance could take in the full thematic breadth and draw connections that might otherwise have been missed in the three-ring circus of a larger conference, thereby allowing interaction, a building of new relationships while strengthening the old, and dialogue conducive to the intellectual goals at hand.

The Panels
I had the privilege and the honor of presenting first in the opening Friday morning panel, entitled Patterns, Schemata and Systems, for which I was joined by Bryn Hughes (Ithaca College) and Joshua Mailman (Columbia). I did my best to set a tone in my discussion of Modell 5, a museum installation piece by Vienna-based duo Granular Synthesis, whose eponymous approach to motion capture and digital manipulation of synchronous sound and image activated, I hope, our shared interest in the intersection of technology and sonic arts. Hughes was interested in more mainstream sonic outlets. In problematizing expectation in rock music through harmonic progression as both a function of context and of socialization, he asked: Does harmony behave in a universal way? Why do some chord progressions sound “wrong” and how do we gain knowledge of these rules?

Hughes plotted a matrix of influences on such choices, discovering through controlled testing that expectations are genre-specific (diatonic successions, for instance, are preferred by classical over blues listeners) and that the impact of voice leading, lyrical (a)synchronicity, and other variables must also be taken into account. Mailman took a more phenomenological approach to music as a site lacking in expectation, advocating a cybernetic model of listening and feedback practices. In positing retrospection as an active shaping force of musical experience, Mailman privileged context over convention in musical structure. By looking at otherwise undeterminable aspects of musical form and development—what Boulez might group under the term “listening angles”—as a means of analysis, Mailman made a provocative case for cybernetic phenomenology as a viable site for sonic inquiry.

Qualities emerge through change and exist by virtue of being measured as such. Hence the assertions of David Borgo (UC San Diego), who in the second session on Improvisation challenged the dominant paradigm of musical spontaneity as an individual act, seeking rather to enlarge the notion of agency to its extra-corporeal aspects. Because action of response happens more quickly than consciousness can grasp, our interpretations of the very same can only come a posteriori, subject to the same misinterpretations as any and all memory. Consciousness, argued Borgo, is autopoetic and under constant perturbation. Improvisers must therefore negotiate contingencies in all directions. To locate them at the center of webs as amorphous as their melodic constitutions is as difficult as it is to locate the true center of a universe that is forever expanding.

Neither are improvisational gestures simply plucked from the ether, as Jeremy Grall (University of Alabama at Birmingham) showed in his exploration of the hierarchies at work in seemingly indeterminate music-making. Grall’s interest was the divide (or lack thereof) between composition and improvisation and whether or not the two can be subject to the same analytical vocabularies. For him, improvisation is an already problematic term, one that may be absorbed into composition insofar as improvisation abides by underlying schemata. In order to negotiate the ambiguities of perception and the phases of concrescence therein, he looked to 16th-century improvisational models and their inherent blend of immediacy and indeterminacy.

A fascinating Demonstration Session kicked off the conference’s first evening. William Brent (American University) gave us a visual and aural tour through his Gesturally Extended Piano and Open Shaper, while Mailman returned with Columbia colleague Sofia Paraskeva for a demonstration of their “comprovisational” interface. Both of these technologies take advantage of the primacy of the body in communicating information at once inter- and intra-musical.  (more…)

by Tyran Grillo
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Conferences, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, News

Music: Cognition, Technology, Society

“How can music ‘speak’ and how do we have knowledge of it? What is its potential to express, represent, and communicate? How has changing expertise concerning sonic and musical knowledge shaped these questions across time and space?”

These are the questions that inspired the interdisciplinary conference entitled “Music: Cognition, Technology, Society” that will take place at Cornell University this weekend, May 11 – 13.

Pictured: Tod Machover

The conference will spotlight Tod Machover (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in a dual-role as guest composer and keynote speaker. Other keynote speakers include Eric Clarke (University of Oxford), Ichiro Fujinaga (McGill University) and Robert Gjerdingen (Northwestern University). The Argento Chamber Ensemble serves as the conference’s guest ensemble-in-residence and will perform electroacoustic and acoustic works selected through an international call-for-scores.

Drawing on a wide range of scholarship across multiple disciplines, and featuring both musical performances and paper presentations, the MCTS Conference will present four keynote lectures, three performances, and seven paper sessions, covering a diverse works and broad range of aesthetics. Highlights include:

Friday, May 11 at 1:00 pm: The Cornell Avant-Garde Ensemble (CAGE) performs free improvisations using acoustic and electronic instruments.

Friday, May 11 at 2:30 pm: Robert Gjerdingen’s keynote lecture,  “Schema Theory Today: Challenges and Opportunities.”

Friday, May 11 at 7:15 pm: Tod Machover’s keynote lecture, “Extending Performance: Onstage, Inside, Interconnected.”

Friday, May 11 at 8:30 pm: The Argento Ensemble performs Machover’s Another Life for mixed chamber ensemble, and other chamber works by Christopher Chandler (the resonance after…), Bryan Christian (Walk), Sean Friar (Scale 9), Amit Gilutz (Miscellaneous Romance No. 1), Juraj Kojs (Re-route), and Eric Lindsay (Town’s Gonna Talk).

Saturday, May 12 at 1:30 pm: Eric Clarke’s keynote lecture, “Explorations in Virtual Space: Music Perception and Recorded Music.”

Pictured: Argento Chamber Ensemble

Saturday, May 12 at 8pm: Concert featuring electroacoustic and fixed electronic media works by Taylan Cihan/Eliot Bates (Zey-glitch), Nicholas Cline (Homage to La Monte Young),  Nathan Davis (Ecology No. 8), Peter Van Zandt Lane (Hydromancer), Stelios Manousakis (Megas Diakosmos), Nicola Monopoli (The Rite of Judgment), Christopher Stark (Two-Handed Storytelling).

Sunday, May 13 at 11:45 am: Ichiro Fujinaga’s keynote lecture, “The Research Program at the Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Laboratory.”

Paper presentation session topics cover a variety of topics, such as “Patterns, schemata and systems,” “Improvisation,” “Text, technology and the voice,” “Psychology and the sonic object,” “Instruments and soundscapes,” and “Music Informational Retrieval.”

For a full schedule we invite you to visit our website.

This conference was organized by graduate students in the Department of Music at Cornell University – musicologists Evan Cortens and Caroline Waight; composers Taylan Cihan and Eric Nathan. We hope to see you in Ithaca.

 

by Eric Nathan
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, New York, News, Support

Music After: Remembering 9/11

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28274561[/vimeo]On September 11, 2011 the United States marks a decade since the deadliest terrorist attack on our soil, one that has left an indelible mark on the nation’s psyche as a whole. A number of musical tributes, from modest concerts to widely publicized record releases, will be taking place. One of the most unique and interesting is the marathon concert being curated/organized by composers Eleonor Sandresky and Daniel Felsenfeld at Joyce Soho, 155 Mercer Street in Manhattan. Music After, as the event is called, will begin at 8:46 a.m. on Sunday, September 11, 2011 and extend till just after midnight and will feature music by composers who were living in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001, a veritable “who’s-who” of the international new music scene including Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Joan LaBarbara, Phil Niblock, Michael Gordon, Phil Kline, Nico Muhly, Judd Greenstein, Morton Subotnick and Rosanne Cash, among many others.

Music After is as much a commemoration of community as it is a memorial for those lost on that morning ten years ago. “So many people I spoke with (after 9/11),” says Sandresky, “talked about how important it had been for them to join in their community and help out. It was definitely something that I had wanted to do as well but couldn’t. Living as I did then with the “pile”–as it was known–literally just around the corner, it was too overwhelming for me, but there were many that did volunteer.
“On the first anniversary [of 9/11],” adds Felsenfeld, “when so many large-scale memorials and commemorations were laid out, I remember thinking that the best way to actually acknowledge the event musically had less to do with ‘requiems’ and ‘threnodies’ and more to do with people. I was a few blocks from the World Trade Center that morning, I saw (and smelled and felt) everything. And I was certainly not alone. So I imagined a LONG concert where every composer or songwriter we could locate who either lived there or happened to be there would be represented with a short and modest work. Then the event becomes not about the fallen or the horror of the day, but about the sheer scope of composers–different kinds of composers, many of whom define what we think of in terms of various musical “scenes”–who were in the thick of the morning.” “This event,” says Sandresky, “is about bringing our community together to stand and sing and play together on this day. And we are coming together as a community and reaching out to our greater community with music.”

Felsenfeld adds that “it is the scope of the concert that makes its point: that so many were affected so directly. Even a four-hour concert would require us to leave out people, and we didn’t want to have to do that. Besides–and I will speak for myself here but suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way–every year September 11 is a difficult day to get through, and we liked the idea that there was a place where, from 8.46am, the moment the first plane hit, until the earliest moments of September 12, there would be somewhere for people in our own community to go. Even if they don’t come,–even if none of them come–it is just a good thing to have as an option.”

In this spirit of community, Music After is a completely grass-roots organized, produced and funded event. There are no corporate or institutional sponsors. Sandresky and Felsenfeld are, therefore, relying on the new music community to rally together to make this event happen, providing yet another avenue for participation for those of us who may not have been directly affected by the events of September 11, 2001 (because we did not live in New York or Washington) but who still bear the scars of this national tragedy. To that end, there are a number of ways to contribute: you can give to Music After’s IndieGoGo campaign or if you have a PayPal account and would like to contribute using that service, you can visit the event’s web site and click on the “give” tab; for large donations, please contact Eleonor Sandresky and/or Daniel Felsenfeld directly via musicafter911@gmail.com for further information on how to make your contribution. “As far as giving goes,” says Felsenfeld, “both Eleonor and myself are strictly volunteers–nothing is going directly to us–and the Joyce SoHo has generously donated their space for the day. All the money we need is going to pay for the people who are going to make the event happen that day: the performers, the crew, the tech, as well as the rental of the equipment. Almost everyone is working at a reduced rate, but with eighteen hours of music, over 50 composers, and somewhere around 75 performers as well as a full staff, you can see that we’ll need your help.”

by Armando Bayolo
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 sound that is too weird for a mainstream gig in the Bay Area.

The upcoming 2011 Outsound New Music Summit is the 10th annual, running from July 17-23, 2011. All events will take place at the San Francisco Community Music Center, 344 Capp Street, San Francisco. Eager listeners can purchase advance tickets online.

Sunday July 17: Touch the Gear Exposition
Outsound’s free opening event allows the public to roam among the Summit’s musicians and sound artists and their sonic inventions, asking questions, making noise and learning how these darn things work.

Monday July 18: Discussion Panel: Elements of non-idiomatic compositional strategies
Another free public event in which composers Krys Bobrowski, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Kanoko Nishi and Gino Robair will discuss the joys and pains of creating new works some of which to be premiered in The Art of Composition.  The public is invited to participate in a Q&A session.

Wednesday July 20: FACE MUSIC
This concert is devoted to the voice, the world’s oldest instrument, and artists who expand its horizons: Theresa Wong, Joseph Rosenzweig, Aurora Josephson, and Bran…(POS).

Thursday July 21: The Freedom of Sound
A night of operatic free expression, and power of spontaneous sound from Tri-Cornered Tent Show featuring guest vocalist Dina Emerson, Oluyemi and Ijeoma Thomas’ Positive Knowledge, and Tom Djll’s “lowercase big band”, Grosse Abfahrt with special guest Alfred Harth (A23H).

Friday July 22: The Art of Composition
Gino Robair premieres his Aguascalientes suite based on scenes captured by Jose Guadalupe Posada, Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet performs Strata (2011) dedicated to Eduardo Serón, Kanoko Nishi premieres her graphic scores along with bassist Tony Dryer, and Krys Bobrowski offers Lift, Loft and Lull, a series of short pieces exploring the sonic properties of metal pipes and plates and the use of balloons as resonators.

Saturday July 23: Sonic Foundry Too!
In a sequel to the first Sonic Foundry performance in 2006, 10 musical instrument inventors are paired up in 5 collaborations: Tom Nunn, Steven Baker, Bob Marsh, Dan Ake, Sung Kim, Walter Funk, Brenda Hutchinson, Sasha Leitman, Bart Hopkins, and Terry Berlier.

by Polly Moller
Classical Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, News

Keeping Up Made Easy

Most S21 regulars know about these already, but for all our newer visitors I thought I’d mention how most of us keep on top of what’s what, day-to-day, in the classical and “non-pop” world.  The secret is to visit a few of the aggregation sites intrepid volunteers have set up, that comb the news sites and blogs for current tidbits of interest. It’s really pretty easy on your part, requiring just three quick clicks (besides our humble and happy abode, of course!) once a day (or twice or thrice, even better):

NetNewMusic Reblog — Jeff Harrington’s site probably has the most eclectic mix of news, gathering not only classical sites but experimental, art-jazz, electro-whatever and etc. as well.

Chris Foley’s Classical Pageflakes — Chris’ effort focuses more strictly on the classical end of things; the bonus with Pageflakes is that you can see snapshots of each website’s homepage.

Blognoggle | New Music — Our own fearless leader Jerry Bowles’ contribution to the mix, the site tracks 100 of the most read and most pertinent blogs, whether classical, jazz, new-music or even a few more general art sites.

There’s not much better way to easily find the major (and much of the minor) news of the day, than to give these three links a daily visit.  Bookmark ’em, Danno…

by Steve Layton