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CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Performers, Scores, Video

Score One for Owen Pallett

score_book

Making the classical aspects of the burgeoning indie classical movement abundantly clear, crossover albums are now crossover marketing musical scores. Via his website, composer Owen Pallett has released a limited edition score for the music on Heartland, his latest Domino recording.

Owen Palletts Heartland

Joined by the Czech Symphony Orchestra and a host of guests (including composer Nico Muhly) Pallette has crafted his most consistently engaging music to date. In some critical circles, indie classical has, rightly or wrongly, been under the microscope for making pop into a ‘longhair’ genre, robbing it of its immediacy in favor of overt sophistication. I’d submit that this vantage point doesn’t give enough credit to indie audiences, who seem to be just fine grappling with orchestral arrangements by Pallett and electronic experiments by Animal Collective alike.

What’s more, recordings like Heartland amply demonstrate that one can, if they’re talented, craft sophisticated music that has just as many catchy hooks as a three-chord, three-minute anthemic single. A case in point is the loop-laden and jaunty “Lewis Takes off his Shirt;” the music, and the video below, suggest that pop can indeed combine sophistication with immediacy, and that its orchestral incarnation can be downright cheeky!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-cqAehehA[/youtube]

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For those of your with a case of ‘artifact avarice,’ the full orchestra score for Heartland is $46 and has been printed in a limited run of 300. In addition to the music it also provides lyrics and a chart of diagrams of patches for the ARP 2600.

Owen Palett’s touring a bunch in support of Heartland. Here are some dates:

04-08 Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
04-10 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
04-11 Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater
04-12 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
04-13 Columbus, OH – Wexner Center
04-14 Pittsburgh, PA – Andy Warhol Museum
04-15 Washington DC – Black Cat
04-18 Indio, CA – Coachella Festival
04-20 Boston, MA – Institute of Contemporary Art
04-22 New York, NY – Webster Hall
04-24 Baltimore, MD – Metro Gallery
04-25 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
04-27 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
04-29 Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
04-30 Austin, TX – The Mohawk
05-05 San Francisco, CA – The Independent
05-08 Seattle, WA – The Crocodile
05-09 Vancouver, British Columbia – The Vogue Theatre
05-10 Victoria, British Columbia – Alix Goolden Hall
05-11 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
05-13 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
05-14 Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge

by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Hilary Hahn, Interviews, Video

Hahn Lang Syne

A new year finds our roving reporter/virtuoso violinist (there’s a movie idea in there someplace) Hilary Hahn back with the next round of her self-made interviews with composers various and not-so-sundry. Definitely in the non-sundry camp, David Lang has been firing on all cylinders the past few years; snagging the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his Little Match Girl Passion (the recording of which is also up for a performance Grammy this year) is likely keeping gas in that tank for a good while to come. Hilary and David have a nice long chat about his life & work in this three-part interview (yes, I know it looks like she caught up with David some where out on Moonbase III, but the conversation’s all there, and perfectly interesting. Just close your eyes if the video quality reminds you too much of a David Lynch scene):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gGtNOdDCXM[/youtube]

And here’s part two and part three.

Thanks again, Hilary! — who we should mention is just releasing her latest CD, an all-Bach excursion through works for violin and voice (with soprano Christine Schäfer and baritone Matthias Goerne). Busy woman!

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical, New York, Piano, Video

Knuckleballs and sliders

It’s high summer, which of course means baseball… which of course means Annie Gosfield… Or at least her 1997 piece Brooklyn, October 5, 1941. You can read about it over at the NewMusicBox archive; seems to me that it’s still the only piano piece out there using two baseballs and a catcher’s mitt (though if you know more I’m happy to hear about it). I just wanted to share this lively performance by Jenny Q Chai, taped live at The Stone.  Afterwards head to Jenny’s YouTube channel; you’ll find a lot of other wonderful performances of things off the beaten track.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp4q-tAULis[/youtube]

by Steve Layton
Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco, Video

New music and intermedia – the life of the party

Oakland Museum of California exterior

Making the pronouncement, “Oakland is to San Francisco as Brooklyn is to Manhattan”, is the quickest way to start an argument on either side of the Bay (or in the Big Apple, probably).  Over-simplified as that statement may be, there are times when I can see why people believe it.  I moved to Oakland for two reasons — one, to join the community of artists there; and two, because for the price of a room in San Francisco, I could have my own one-bedroom apartment in Oakland.

But I digress. We’ve got our own free weekly paper, the East Bay Express, and in honor of their 2009 “Best Of” issue, they’re throwing a party at the Oakland Museum of California on Friday, August 7th.  Centered as it is around the theme of “Subcultures”, they were nice enough to invite a new music and intermedia contingent to represent that segment of the East Bay’s sprawling underground.

The party itself goes from 5:00 p.m. to midnight, but perhaps you are fashionably late everywhere you go? If so, wait until 8:39 pm to show up. This is when the live cinema, experimental music, and intermedia happenings start. Full details of who and what’s involved can be found here, but I would go just to see Citta di Vitti perform new soundtracks to Monica di Vitti films…and David Slusser make his live audio collage…and Damon Smith mistake his contrabass for his BMX bike.

The Oakland Museum of California is located at 1000 Oak Street in Oakland. It’s conveniently located near Lake Merritt BART, but complete travel advice is available here.

by Polly Moller
Broadcast, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York, Performers, Video

Trance Talking

Michael Gordon‘s huge and hugely wonderful, 50+ minute riff- and throb-fest Trance, composed in 1995, is being dusted off for what promises to be a memorable performance by the ensemble Signal, 7:30pm April 22nd at Le Poisson Rouge.

The fun and games begin at 6:30 pre-concert in the bar, however; Gordon himself, along with Ronen Givony (from Wordless Music and Le Poisson), Signal director Brad Lubman, bandmate/composer Ken Thomson (who also does duty in Gutbucket) and others, will talk about producing and performing new works with emphasis on the whys and whats of a piece after their first presentation. Trance was premiered at Bang on a Can in 1997, and hasn’t been played in New York since. Who owns the problem of presenting new works after their premiere?

Not only that, but S21’s own fearless leader Jerry Bowles will be moderating, and the whole roundtable will be videotaped and YouTubed shortly after for your viewing pleasure. Space in the bar isn’t huge, so come early to catch the conversation or join in.

Last but not least, we’re actively soliciting questions and comments for the panel from you, our loyal readers. Something you want to know or share about the perils of performance, premieres, getting that work into a second or third production… Just pass them along to sequenza21@gmail.com, and we’ll try and add you to the dialogue.

by Steve Layton
Cello, Chamber Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Video

Dakujem!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqwsCoO1zxQ[/youtube]

After the split, there’s been plenty of attention paid to Prague and the Czech Republic; far fewer take notice of Slovakia and its capital, Bratislava. Strange, when you consider that the city is less than 40 miles from Vienna. That should tip you off that there just might be some serious music-making happening in Bratislava, and thanks to a young web-savvy musician we can confirm it with our eyes and ears.

Andrej Gál is a cellist in Bratislava, member of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, Zwiebel String Quartet, Veni Ensemble, Melos-Ethos Ensemble, Ostravská banda and newly established Quasars ensemble (whew!). Luckily for us, he’s also a happy YouTube user. Gál has made available a number of performance videos that happen to include him as a member, and the collection features a unusually choice selection of contemporary composers and stellar performances: Bartók, Grisey, Murail, Lachenmann… and this great piece by a Slovak composer I’d never heard before, Vladimír Godár (b. 1956 / The embedded video is part one; you’ll find part two at the link above to the whole collection). Bravo Andrej — not only for your fine playing, but for taking the simple step of using the web to bring us the news half a world away.

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Chamber Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Improv, Video

A Tale of Two Riffs and Two Rituals

What better way to ring in the year than to take in a couple ensembles, from opposite ends of the spectrum, showing in much the same way what the whole point of playing is?

Wojciech Kilar is a Polish composer from the same 60’s group that gave us Penderecki and Gorecki, but is notable for his detour into film music (Like Coppola’s Dracula). This is his utterly simple/hard 1988 piece Orawa (there are a bunch of other video performances of this on YouTube, but this one with Agnieszka Duczmal conducting the Chamber Orchestra “Amadeus” has them all beat for pacing and enthusiasm. Just ignore that couple-second blast of other music at the start):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri-RNT03DL8[/youtube]

 

For all his jazz-lite leanings, David Sanborn (with Hal Willner’s savvy music coordination) has always had my eternal gratitude for hosting one of the most phenomenal major-network music offerings, NBC’s Night Music, which ran between 1988 and 1990. Not least for this wonderful clip of Sun Ra and the Arkestra taking us all to a higher plane:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKDbuCsTkk[/youtube]

Two really different approaches perhaps, but both seem to work some of the same ground and head to the same place in the end. May what we attempt in the coming year get lucky enough to find that place too, at least once or twice…

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Performers, Video

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

I know, almost everyone’s felt stuck in the icebox as of late, and probably getting a little stir-crazy. Well, why not take a cue from the good folk of Nunavut and cheer up with a bit of throat singing? Let Lois Suluk-Locke and Karen Panigoniak from Arviat (pop. 2000 and some spare change) show you how it’s done:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1YkYh43V_Y[/youtube]

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Performers, Video

What’s on the Tube? – #1

We’ve spent a lot of time at S21, spotlighting various composers and their recordings that can be found online. But what about all that video hanging around out there, that you might otherwise never catch? So I thought I’d start a semi-regular post showing off some of the interesting stuff that’s caught my eye and ear.

First up is a reminder that Sarah Palin is not what all Alaska is about… Shawn Savageau is studying percussion at UA Fairbanks (not far from the grubstake of that other diametric-Palin-opposite, the composer John Luther Adams). He was forward-thinking enough to upload videos to YouTube, of his Junior percussion recital in February of this past year, as well as his work with the student ensemble 64.8 (the latitude of Fairbanks, get it?). There’s a tasty smorgasbord of works from the likes of John Cage, Henry Cowell, Toru Takemitsu, Keiko Abe, Steve Reich, Bill Cahn, Morton Feldman… But it doesn’t get more basic than in Temazcal by Mexican-born composer Javier Alvarez:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k4-xDozVkk[/youtube]

As you can see in the link above, Shawn’s own website currently is just FaceBook. If you’re on there, add him, poke him, buy him, or just tell him thanks and wish him the bright future I’m sure he’s going to have.

by Steve Layton