Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Percussion, Twentieth Century Composer, Video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL5Kym7hVFI[/youtube]
Laurie San Martin teaches at UC Davis. She’s one of our featured composers on the fast approaching Sequenza 21/MNMP Concert (October 25 at Joe’s Pub). In the guest post below, she talks about her work Linea Negra, which will be performed on the program.
Linea Negra
The faint, dark, vertical line that appears on a very pregnant woman’s belly in the weeks before she bursts is called the linea negra. So it seemed like a fitting title for the solo marimba piece that I was writing during the final weeks of my first pregnancy in the summer of 2004. Real-life deadlines work in my favor as a composer. That is to say, the countdown leading up to a big life change is an intensely productive time for me. Linea Negra is a piece I always associate with that particular time in my life. When most mothers would have been preparing the baby’s room or redecorating the house, I was making deals with my daughter while she was still in the womb. “How about you wait a few more days to come out and I can finish this piece. Really, it’ll be much better that way.” She arrived a few days late, so I was able to finish the piece on time; I have the greatest daughter one could ask for (and the piece isn’t bad, either).
I compose from left to right. That is to say, I start at the beginning and pretty much write the musical events in the order that they happen. It probably comes as no surprise then that my music is very linear. Linea Negra is just under five minutes in length, with an ABA structure. The outer sections are a fast and repetitive moto perpetuo while the middle section is slow and lyrical. The piece is quite virtuosic–the marimba player is asked to play very fast runs, leaps, and chords; audience members often describe the piece as “acrobatic.”
Linea Negra is written for percussionist Chris Froh, who premiered the piece in October, 2004 at the American Academy in Rome. Chris is an exhilarating performer, and I was very lucky to be able to work with him while writing the piece. Hearing the work in progress influenced the direction of the piece and helped me iron out some of the technical difficulties, and clarify the musical gestures. Working with a musician of Chris’s dedication and commitment is such a privilege for a composer, not to mention, inspiring and rewarding.
One of Chicago’s most notable chamber ensembles, Third Coast Percussion, joined forces on Tuesday evening with flutist Tim Munro (of eighth blackbird) to create an intriguing evening exploring music from the 20th and 21st centuries. While flute and percussion might not be an obvious combination, it worked extremely well with the assistance of some subtle amplification that did not detract or distract from the overall performance and actually assisted in giving what would have been an overly dry ambience some life.
The concert was well-programmed with a healthy balance between new works by Australian composer Anthony Pateras and Third Coast member Owen Clayton Condon against older works by George Crumb, John Fonville, and John Cage (the latter of which we’re going to be hearing a lot from over the next 18 months as we approach the centenary of his birth). Crumb’s An Idyll for the Misbegotten took good advantage of the balconies in the venue and allowed Munro to begin his performance behind the audience, wind his way through the tables and waiters before taking center stage and retracing his steps to conclude the piece with exquisite bird-like flutters where he began the work.
I’ve seen other concerts where two multi-movement works are interlaced, but none that worked quite so effectively as the combination of Fonville’s Music for Sarah for solo flute and Cage’s Quartet for percussion quartet; the extremely varied colors Munro was asked to extract from his instrument with polyphonic textures through singing-while-playing as well as playing without the head-joint shakuhachi-style made a resonant contrast against Cage’s simplistic, almost monochromatic instrumentation and non-melodic excursions that were brought to life through Third Coast’s intense performance. I have to point out David Skidmore’s accuracy during this piece, as the head of one of his mallets flew off near the end of the piece and popped yours truly square in the chest – nice shot, David!
One of two world premieres of the evening, Pateras’ work Lost Compass fit well in the Cage/Crumb mold that the first half of the concert had set; the combination of a meandering alto flute against four percussionists skittering across glassware and metals with knitting needles intentionally did not move forward with a purpose, but rather seemed to just exist as entities of themselves (an effect that was heightened with one’s eyes closed which helped to abstract the percussion sounds into one great and complex rattle). Cage’s Aria again strewed the percussionists around and within the audience to make improvisatory comments on what was the most memorable performance of the evening, with Tim Munro laying down his flute to belt, mutter, caterwaul, coo and stutter in five different languages (from memory, natch) all while wandering throughout the audience; it was a tour-de-force performance that would be a shame not to get recorded at some point. The evening concluded on the right note with Fractalia, Condon’s new percussion quartet for two marimba four-hands with each performer switching back and forth from the marimba to several toms; the work is both memorable and enjoyable while being not overly virtuosic – this piece could easily become a staple in the percussion quartet repertoire.
The concert took place in the Mayne Stage theatre on the North Side of Chicago, one of several “alternative venues” that are popping up all over the country and are unafraid to feature a wide array of styles and genres to a diverse audience. While this concert worked out really well in the venue for many reasons, there were a few times where the whispering of wait-staff and clinking of glasses made unwelcome comments through some of the more intimate moments – though I’m sure Mr. Cage would have approved.
Chamber Music, Choral Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Percussion, Performers, Piano, viola
(Houston, TX) On February 25th and 26th at 8pm and February 27th at 2:30 pm (the third date added due to popular demand), the Houston Chamber Choir and Da Camera present Music for Rothko, a concert program of contemporary music in one of Houston’s most unique performance spaces. All three performances are sold out.
Presented in the interior of Rothko Chapel, the Music for Rothko program includes piano works by John Cage and Erik Satie, Tagh for the Funeral of the Lord for viola and percussion by Tigran Mansurian, and choral compositions by John Cage including Four. Feldman’s Rothko Chapel for soprano, alto, choir, celesta, and percussion, is the centerpiece of the program. The performers include the Houston Chamber Choir conducted by Robert Simpson, pianist Sarah Rothenberg, percussionist Brian Del Signore, and violist Kim Kashkashian in her first Houston appearance in more than 20 years.
New Yorker Magazine music critic Alex Ross recently tweeted: “It’s Rothko Chapel week” in reference to several performances taking place this week across the country of Feldman’s elegy for his friend painter Mark Rothko. It is exciting to find out via Twitter that this piece is receiving so much well deserved attention. Last Fall on Sequenza 21, I wrote about the Houston Chamber Choir and this upcoming concert. But I didn’t know at the time that several other performances of the piece would take place within a short span of time. And now I’m interested in contemplating what will set the Houston performance of Rothko Chapel apart from those taking place in other cities?
In his wonderful collection of writings Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Feldman describes Rothko’s paintings as “…an experience in depth…not a surface to be seen on a wall.” Music for Rothko will be complimented by the fourteen paintings Rothko painted for Rothko Chapel; and this setting is one that venues in other cities will not be able to approximate. Rothko’s paintings seem to move beyond the edges of the canvases, their surface appearances changing constantly thanks to the light coming through the chapel’s skylight and Houston’s unpredictable weather patterns. A fusion between the paintings, the architecture of the octagonal room, AND the live music is in store for the chapel’s capacity audiences.
Music for Rothko takes place February 25th and 26th at 8pm and February 27th at 2:30pm at Rothko Chapel. All three Music for Rothko concerts are sold out.
A standby list will be created beginning one hour before the performances, and if there are unoccupied seats, ticket will be sold for $35 at the door beginning about 10 minutes before the concert begins.
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Dance, Film Music, Los Angeles, Odd, Percussion, Post Modern, Sound Art
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY4bL_bO8sA[/youtube]
Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Flute, Houston, Improv, Percussion, Performers, Sound Art, Women composers
Pyramid and Michelle Yom at Labotanica (Houston, TX)
This Friday, October 1st at 7pm, Michelle Yom will present her sound performance installation Back To Imagined Spaces at Houston’s alternative arts and music venue Labotanica located at 2316 Elgin Street. This is a part of Labotanica’s ongoing Hear/Her/Ear series spotlighting women in experimental music.
I got a chance to hear Michelle last month in a solo vocal set at Avant-Garden where she recorded and looped her singing in real time to additively build a series of haunting chorales. Michelle is perhaps best known as a flautist with a strong classical technique and the skills and imagination of a great improviser. Her flute and drums duo Doggebi features Michelle with drummer Spike The Percussionist – a musician I name checked in my Houston Mixtape #3: The Epicenter Of Noise – freely and (almost) breathlessly improvising music that is somehow stark yet filled with a minutiae of details.
Back To Imagined Spaces imagines the human body as a collection of cells that sing and are heard in a “self-imposed timeless space” contained within the pyramid Michelle has constructed inside Labotanica. Regarding the music she will perform, Michelle writes: “The first set is a series of staccato vocalizations with syllables from the mantra, Asato Ma Sad Gamaya, processed through seven delays. The second set will be a live performance of tonal pieces titled Heart, Ears, Kidney, and Stomach, also using vocal sounds. The pieces are intended to capture a version of imaginary but prudent sounds, much like taking a microscope and focusing the lens into singing, living cells.”
Also on Friday’s program are performances by artist, vocalist and electronic composer Melanie Jamison and Labotanica’s tireless curator, visual and sound artist Ayanna Jolivet McCloud.
There is a $5 cover charge for the show. All proceeds go to the musicians. Michelle Yom’s installation will be up October 1st through October 9th, 2010.
Broadcast, CDs, Cello, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, New York, Percussion, Premieres, Radio
Heads-up, listeners! WPRB‘s Classical Discoveries host Marvin Rosen has a couple nice treats through the day this Wednesday:
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 11:00am (EDT) Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde will present the world premiere broadcast of Morton Feldman‘s 21-minute ‘lost work’ Dance Suite [For Merle Marsicano] (1963), recorded by Glenn Freeman, percussion and Debora Petrina, piano-celeste. This is ahead of its September limited-edition release on OgreOgress Records. Originally composed for the dancer and choreographer Merle Marsicano, it was the longest work Feldman had composed to date and provides insight into his upcoming 1964 solo percussion work The King of Denmark. This very unique and haunting sound world, created with various keyboards, mallet instruments and exotic percussion instruments, can later be heard in several of Feldman’s epic length works of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Then from 12:00pm till 2:00pm (EDT), world-renowned Israeli cellist and new-music champion Maya Beiser — whose latest and most excellent CD release Provenance is riding high in the charts — will join Marvin live in the WPRB Studio to chat and perform.
As always, NYC’ers can tune in directly to WPRB at 103.3 FM on the dial; everyone else can head to the WPRB website and click the “Listen Now” link on the left side of the page.
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, Percussion, Premieres, Washington D.C.
On Friday, April 30, 2010, my ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, will present the last concert of our 2009-10 concert season. The program, presented at Ward Hall, on the campus of the Catholic University of America at 7:30 p.m. (Visit www.greatnoiseensemble.com for tickets if you’re in the Washington region this Friday), is a unique program featuring a new work for mixed ensemble and sculpted percussion by composer D.J. Sparr in collaboration with artist Terry Berlier of Stanford University. The 41st Rudiment, named after the 40 “rudiments” that percussionists study as they develop their craft, represents one more rudiment indicative of the experimental nature of Berlier’s instruments. It was written for percussionist Christopher Froh, of the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Great Noise Ensemble.
D.J. Sparr initially pitched the piece that would become The 41st Rudiment to Great Noise Ensemble’s board some five years ago. “The idea came through wanting to work with Chris Froh,” he says, “whom I had seen out on an amazing concert in Ann Arbor years back. I was in the Bay Area, so we went out for drinks, and over the course of the conversation we talked about finding instruments at a hardware store… and somehow, collectively we came up with the idea that we should ‘build something.’ From there, we started talking about what that would be, who might be interested collaborating with us, etc.” After searching for an appropriate collaborator it was Froh who suggested that they work with Terry Belier. “Terry and I worked on another project together a few years ago with the Empyrean Ensemble and Italian composer, Luciano Chessa. I played one of her sculptures then (an earlier “panlid gamelan”) and fell in love with her aesthetic. When D.J. and I first started talking about this project some five years ago, I suggested asking Terry to be involved.”
“A few years ago,” writes Terry Berlier, “ I was working on a piece called ‘Two pan tops can meet’ (2003) which was based on the homophobic Jamaican saying ‘Two pan tops can’t meet.’ (I had worked in Jamaica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1995-97.) That first piece used thrift store pan lids as speaker housings that played a sound piece. But while I was sifting through the pan lids, I started setting aside the pan lids that resonated strongly. These eventually became Pan Lid Gamelan I in 2003 and gallery viewers were invited to play it.
In 2008, Composer Luciano Chessa wanted to compose this sculpture/instrument into one of our collaborations (Inkless Imagination IV) and I was excited to have a professional percussionist, Chris Froh, play them. A few years later, Chris asked if I would like to work with him again on making sculptures specifically for him to play and work with D.J. Sparr.”
D.J. Sparr has been building a reputation for many years now as a composer of rhythmically charged and energetic music (the Alburquerque Tribune once referred to his piece for eighth blackbird, The Glam Seduction as “Paganini on coke”) that merges classical conventions with rock idioms. The 41st Rudiment is no different, although the rock influence this time is far subtler than in the works that gained Sparr his early reputation. “I am always influenced by the drama of a rock-and-roll concert, and in this work, the drummer is the superstar… he engages the other players in ways to entice them to join in with him in gestures and call-and-response melodies…much the same as would happen in a rock-band scenario where guitarists, drummers, and bass players trade solos. This work,” however, “is heavily influenced by the baroque concerto grosso form as the large scale form is comprised of many short movements. There are elements of Bach and Vivaldi, but there are also elements of other things: Satie Gymnopédies; Spanish barcaroles; improvisatory structures such as Zorn’s Cobra; and many cadenzas and improvisation.”
Columbia’s own Southern Exposure New Music Series and xMUSE (University of South Carolina’s Experimental Music Studio, directed by Reginald Bain) combine forces once again to present an evening of genre-bending music and technology. The Saturday, February 27th, 7:30 p.m concert features Odd Appetite, the New York based duo of performers/composers Ha-Yang Kim (cello) and Nathan Davis (percussion) in works for musically interactive computer software, spatial speaker configurations, amplified triangles, microtonal bells, drums, tuned aluminum pipes, and a de-tuned and amplified cello with stomp boxes and electronic effects, all played with dazzling virtuosity and passion. In addition to music by Davis and Kim, Odd Appetite will also perform Radiohead‘s “Like Spinning Plates” in an arrangement that uses electronic loopers, wine glasses, and whirly tubes.
The concert also features Lois V. Vierk‘s Go Guitars for five electric guitars, influenced by traditional Japanese court music, and Reginald Bain‘s Jovian Images, inspired by NASA photographs of planets and performed by renowned saxophone virtuoso Susan Fancher. Admission is free (USC School of Music Recital Hall, 813 Assembly St.), but early seating recommended.
Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Just Intonation, Music Events, Percussion, San Francisco
I’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.