Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Live From Ann Arbor: Chapter 3

The first student composers’ concert of the new year at the University of Michigan took place last Monday, January 31st. Although brief, this evening of premieres and experiments was just as potent, moving and successful as the other student-run new music events I’ve shared with the Sequenza21. Offering a diverse menu of solo, chamber and electronic compositions, Monday’s concert made yet another statement toward the rich and vast musical community operating in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The evening opened in grand style with Wil Pertz’ The Drink of the Wise #25 Origins (Ti), an aleatoric piece for 16 players divided into four choirs: strings, winds, brass and percussion. The music starts with quietly tinkling wood and metal percussion instruments, and then layers of string harmonics, brief woodwind melodies and, dramatically rich brass chords are added above. The music drives strongly toward sonic expansion, and gradually builds intensity culminating with a striking switch from metal and wood percussion instruments to djembe drums. Mr. Pertz even constructed a complementary visual layout for the music: the percussionists wore body paint and, as the music achieved its climax, the string players began to walk around the stage.

Next on the program was Donia Jarrar’s electronic composition The Dictator Balances on His Inside Edge. Though originally composed with a generic extra-musical program, Ms. Jarrar took time before the piece to connect the political implications to the current unrest in Egypt. The Dictator Balances is a “classic” electronic composition, building a complex and enthralling field of sounds from recordings of Ms. Jarrar performing various figure skating techniques. The most memorable aural event was a slowly intensifying swooshing noise, which could easily represent the churning of growing popular protest against any autocrat, not least President Mubarak.

Similarly compelling was David Biedenbender’s electronic piece cold.hard.steel, which appeared a later on the program. Like Ms. Jarrar’s work, cold.hard.steel used recurring sonic motives to create a clear aural narrative in the absence of “pure” musical material. Here, Mr. Biedenbender grabbed my ear with a striking contrast: cold metallic sounds juxtaposed with the sound of human breathing. The resulting affect was engagingly grim, and remained as such even when the clear opening gave way to heavier processing. Though the sound world changed from chillingly raw to rationally synthesized, Mr. Biedenbender found clever ways to preserve the identity of his most memorable sounds, constantly referring back to the work’s frighteningly visceral beginning.

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by Garrett Schumann
Canada, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Interviews, Orchestras, Portland, Twentieth Century Composer

Interview with composer Tom Myron

The job requirements of a working composer are elusive, perhaps especially for composition students enrolled in University degree programs that fail to provide graduates with the interpersonal and business skills necessary for survival outside the walls of academia. One student composer told me recently: “We are all being trained to teach.”Woody Allen famously said: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But those who compose and don’t teach do find ways to sustain themselves and their passion for music through a variety of collaborative and creative means, some perhaps less “traditional” than others. With this in mind, let’s have a chat with my friend composer Tom Myron.

The range of Tom Myron’s work as a composer includes commissions and performances by the Kennedy Center, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, the Topeka Symphony, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Bangor Symphony and the Lamont Symphony at Denver University. He works regularly as an arranger for the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, writing for singers Rosanne Cash, Kelli O’Hara, Maxi Priest and Phil Stacey, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and the Quebec folk ensemble Le Vent du Nord. Le Vent du Nord’s new CD Symphonique featuring Myron’s orchestra arrangements is receiving an incredible amount of positive press throughout Canada and will be available for purchase in the U.S. soon. A video preview of the recording is included in this interview.

His film scores include Wilderness & Spirit; A Mountain Called Katahdin and the upcoming Henry David Thoreau; Surveyor of the Soul, both from Films by Huey. Individual soloists and chamber ensembles that regularly perform Myron’s work include violinists Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, Elisabeth Adkins and Kara Eubanks, violist Tsuna Sakamoto, cellist David Darling, the Portland String Quartet, the DaPonte String Quartet and the Potomac String Quartet.

Myron’s current projects include commissioned work for the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and creating arrangements for Joe Jackson’s music-theater piece Stoker
inspired by the life of Bram Stoker author of 1897 Gothic novel Dracula.

Tom (I’ll call him Tom now) graciously took time out of his schedule to answer a handful of questions including several having to do with the “business” of making music.

Chris Becker: You arrange and orchestrate music for a variety of artists and have a career composing concertos, string quartets, and various settings for voice. Are these two separate careers that you have to juggle? Or do they intersect providing you with even more musical opportunities than if you were focused only one or the other?

Tom Myron: From a purely logistical point of view it’s a juggling act. Both types of work tend to lead to more opportunities within their respective areas, but there isn’t a lot of overlap. That said, they DO intersect for me on a more personal, creative level. I love getting to know all kinds of musical idioms in a very practical, mechanical way. I also love just about everything that goes into handling, preparing and rehearsing music for live performance. My training in composition and the orchestral repertoire has benefited my commercial work by giving me the flexibility to consider (and rapidly execute!) multiple solutions to specific problems. The commercial work in turn informs my composition by instilling a disciplined work ethic and keeping organization and clarity of intention foremost in my mind.

Read the rest of this interview.

by Chris Becker
Composers, Deaths, File Under?

Babbitt Starter Kit?

A few people asked me which works would I would recommend to serve as a starter course for Milton Babbitt’s work. That’s a tricky one: I’d say

String Quartets Nos. 2 & 6
Partitions
Around the Horn
Piano Concerti
Philomel
All Set.

Any other suggested Babbitt samplers out there?

Here’s a wonderful essay in remembrance of Milton by David Rakowski.

Over at my blog File Under ? , I’ve shared some of my own memories of Milton.


by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, New York

Composers Play Composers Marathon to include Babbitt Tribute

Composers Concordance is hosting a Composers Play Composers Marathon tonight featuring 21 participants.

Peter Jarvis has sent word that, in honor of Milton Babbitt’s recent passing, he’ll be performing Milton’s Homily for snare drum on the event.

The organizers have shared more details in a promotional video (below). Tickets are $20, but you get a free beverage along with a dynamic evening of music-making.





Sunday, January 30 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Drom
85 Avenue A (between 5th & 6th Sts.)
New York, NY

Director:
Sound Liberation

Co-director:
Composers Concordance (& CC Records)
International Street Cannibals

by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths

Milton Babbitt, RIP

Composer Paul Lansky writes at his Facebook page: “I’m sorry to report that Milton Babbitt died this morning at age 94. He was a great and important composer, and a dear friend, colleague and teacher.”

Whether as a pillar of strength, or a pillar to push in opposition to, Babbitt was one of the most dominant presences in American classical music these past 50 years. As news and appreciations pop up, we’ll try to give you links. Meantime, there’s this wonderfully human interview from just about 10 years ago, with NewMusicBox’s Frank J. Oteri.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

February in Fredonia, pt.1: Jamie Jordan

While the Weather Channel might only associate our flyover community with snow & cold every year, here in western New York at SUNY Fredonia things are heating up with the onset of the yearly NewSound Festival sponsored by the student-driven Ethos New Music Society. Since I started teaching here in 2007, we’ve continued a 30+ year tradition of spectacular guest composers and performers, and this year looks to be our largest festival to date. Since Fredonia is in driving distance (3 hrs or less) of so many different arts centers, including Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Syracuse & Toronto, it seemed only right to let y’all know what’s going on in our small but mighty new music haven here on the shores of Lake Erie. This year’s festival was curated to showcase the human voice and the wide array of composers and works that explore and expand the realm of vocal music in the 21st century.

First a round-up of the entire festival, which hits the ground running Friday evening in the Rosch Recital Hall (where all the events will be unless otherwise noted):

  • 1/28: Jamie Jordan, soprano w/ Daniel Pesca, piano & Sean Connors, percussion, 8pm, free
  • 2/4: Tony Arnold, soprano w/ Jacob Greenberg, piano, 8pm, free
  • 2/4: Opening of Notations21 Graphic Notation Scores exhibit with author and musicologist Theresa Sauer, 6-8pm in the Rockefeller Art Gallery, free
  • 2/11: NOW Ensemble and composers Missy Mazzoli, Corey Dargel and Judd Greenstein performing works of Mazzoli & Dargel, 8pm, $2 students/$5 public
  • 2/16: Lindsey Goodman, flute & voice, 8pm, free
  • 2/18: Florestan Recital Project with Aaron Engebreth, baritone and Alison d’Amato, piano, 8pm, $2 students/$5 public
  • 2/19: League of the Unsound Sound with composers David Smooke and Ruby Fulton, 8pm, free
  • 2/25: Chamber Music of Dan Welcher, 8pm, $2 students/$5 public
  • 2/26: SUNY Fredonia Wind Ensemble performing works by Welcher, Ives, Stravinsky and a world premiere by tubist/composer Jim Self, 8pm in King Concert Hall, free

The first concert with soprano Jamie Jordan will feature works by Hannah Lash, Zachary Wadsworth, Eric Nathan, Daniel Pesca and Michaela Eremiasova as well as our own Paul Coleman and the first of two performances of George Crumb’s Apparition (Tony Arnold will be performing the same work the following week). If you’re in the area, come join us for some great music-making!

by Rob Deemer
Contemporary Classical

Snow Twofers for Metropolis Tonight at LPR

Hi Jerry,

Hope you are well, Happy New Year!

Because of the snow, we’ve set up a 2 for 1 ticket code and private link for your readers to our concert tonight…please feel free to offer it up if you like:

http://lepoissonrouge.inticketing.com/private/

The code is:  2for1

Tonight’s concert, Hallucinations, is at LPR at 8PM (7PM doors) featuring an electro-acoustic remix by Ricardo Romaneiro of John Corigliano’s Three Hallucinations based on his Academy Award-nominated film score to “Altered States,” paired with new works by Du Yun, Gity Razaz, Enrico Chapela, and Ricardo Romaneiro.

John, Ricardo, and Enrico’s works are in surround sound (6.1!!!) and we’ve been having a blast in rehearsals — should be an awesome show. More details here: http://metropolisensemble.org/concerts/2011/hallucinations/

All best,

Andrew

http://www.metropolisensemble.org

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Finnissy in Boston

Over the last two weeks I’ve been intensely involved in the final stages of preparations for the annual New England Conservatory Preparatory School Contemporary Music Festival, other known as Today’s Youth Perform Today’s Music, which happens this coming Saturday and Sunday. My friend and colleague John Ziarko and I started the festival almost twenty years ago because we figured that the best way to get kids to like new music was to get them to play it, working on it in a serious way with people who understood and believed in it. I have to say that experience seems to have borne out the truth of that assumption. Every year we have a featured composer; over the years these have included Milton Babbitt, Michael Finnissy, Judith Weir, Chen Yi, Alvin Singleton, Yehudi Wyner, Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, Steven Hartke, Sebastian Currier, Donald Martino, Robert Helps, Peter Maxwell Davies, Nico Muhly, and Ralph Farris (an NEC Prep School alum) and Ethel, not in that order. The degree to which kids are excited by the fact that they’re meeting and having dealings with the composer who wrote music that they’ve learned and how much it means to them, is striking, and can’t be exaggerated. Over the years the scope of the festival has expanded to include a composition masterclass and eight concerts over the weekend, and involving several hundred kids.

This year we’re featuring Michael Finnissy again, after about 15 years. Aside from a number of chamber pieces, including an advanced string quartet which I’ve been coaching playing Multiple Forms of Constraint, another advanced piano trio playing In Stiller Nacht, and less advanced groups playing several pieces Michael wrote for the festival, the Advanced Piano Performance Seminar, directed by Angel Rivera, learned all of the Gershwin arrangements, along with My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose, the 3rd of the Verdi Arrangements, and William Billings. Work on all of these started in September, and over the fall the seminar had coaching from Nick Hodges, a champion of Finnissy’s music who was in town to play with the Boston Symphony, and Stephen Olsen. Two of the younger orchestras of the nine in the school, conducted by Adam Grossman and Peter Jarvis, learned East London Heyes and Plain Harmony, respectively. In addition to all the Finnissy, the Intermediate Piano Performance Seminar learned pieces by Larry Bell, Eric Sawyer, Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee, and Joshua Rifkin. There are also pieces by Judith Weir, Tan Dun, Astor Piazzolla, Milton Babbitt, and Mark Summer.

Unfortunately Michael has not been well and he’s not going to be able to come, which presented a problem we’ve never had before–keeping the air from going out of the balloon since the composer wasn’t going to be there. Dealing with this situation led us into realms that were new to us (to me certainly–and I realize that this says more about how behind the curve I/we am/are than how cutting edge it is), which is to say that we had two masterclass coaching sessions with Michael via skype last Saturday (thanks to the invaluable help of parent Francis Fung). Both of those turned out to be very successful and productive, and, apparently, fun for all involved. We won’t be able to do that with the composition masterclass next week, but Martin Amlin, from Boston University, agreed to do it.

One of the other effects of the festival over the years has been a increasing number of kids writing music; and their music is featured strongly. Of the eighty-four pieces on the festival this year, thirty two of them, ranging from piano pieces to string quartets to string orchestra pieces, were written by students in the school, who are either private student of Larry Bell, Alla Cohen, or me, or a member of the Composition Seminar, which I teach, or the Young Composers’ Seminar, taught by Ginny Latts. All of this is very exciting and, if you’re thinking about making it happen, tiring.

Ironically, Michael’s residency at NEC was coordinated with a residency at Boston University–the first time we’ve done anything like this, which involved, as well as his doing a talk and a masterclass, two concerts featuring his music, one on Februrary 8, by the group Time’s Arrow, which I direct, featuring music of Finnissy for unspecified instrumentation, along with two elastic scoring pieces of Percy Grainger and Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for twelve radios by Cage, and another on February 4, featuring Xanthos and the NEC Callathumpian Consort, directed by Stephen Drury. These concerts are going in Michael’s absence as well. So a lot of Finnissy happening in Boston…

by Rodney Lister
Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, Review

Dan Deacon & So Percussion, 1/20/11

Photo: David Andrako/Courtesy of Kaufman Center

Before any of the musical gadgetry could be used on night three of the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin concert hall, the audience rang the evening’s first notes by singing “Happy Birthday” to So Percussion member Jason Treuting, joyfully absent due to the birth of his child earlier in the day. In jeans and t-shirts, the present members (plus Jason’s skillful stand-in) then gathered around a large bass drum stage right and began the evening with a wonderful introduction to their music: chimes mixed with frenetic drumming rhythms I dare not describe.

The young men were then joined onstage by guitarist Grey McMurray and performed pieces from their Where We Live project. Simply put, various friends and family of the band submit short videos in the intimate format of YouTube, to which the group scores an appropriate number. First, a fellow brushing his teeth was projected onto the large screen behind the stage. The quartet wrote a harmonic and buzzing piece, turning the awkward video of a frothy mouth into a pretty drone of varying proportions. Next was the cutesy video of a baby playing with a bright orange balloon. Fittingly, orange balloons sat idle until they were tossed into the audience, adding the sound of our batting the air-stretched plastic to the beautiful sing-song inspired by an infant.

Two more pieces followed, the first a showcase of Grey McMurray’s guitar as it warbled and synthesized from the stomping of various pedals, the rumble accompanied by birdsong sourced from a computer file. Martin Schmidt of Matmos appeared in the night’s final video projection as the interesting denizen of an audiophile’s basement, his egg-shaking antics appropriated by the five players in a medley of electronic-acoustic wanderings a la the Boredoms. But these musicians come from a background of Bach, Ives, and worldly rhythm, surely a sign that prior giants still influence our present and future networked moment.

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by Will Roche
Contemporary Classical

Standing Room Only for ‘Crescendos”

2011 got off to a slow start in terms of new music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Don’t get me wrong; there have been plenty of great individual and chamber recitals so far this semester, but the first concert solely programming 20th and 21st century music was Saturday afternoon’s performance by the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble, dubbed ‘Crescendos’.

With the oldest piece on the program a two-marimba arrangement of György Ligeti’s harpsichord solo, Continuum (1968; score above), I expected to see composers and new music enthusiasts filling the seats of the intimate McIntosh Theater located on the lower level of the University of Michigan’s School of Music. However, I was quickly proven wrong as ranks upon ranks of families and Ann Arbor music-lovers filled the room to the brim, forcing many to stand or sit wherever they could find an empty piece of carpet. Steve Reich’s seminal Music for Six Marimbas and Ligeti’s aforementioned Continuum were the headliners in an exceptionally strong and wonderfully executed line-up of diverse and energetic percussion pieces.

Scott Verduin and Kyle Acuncius opened the concert with Continuum, which was originally conceived as a harpsichord solo to be played as fast as possible or at least at a tempo of 18 pitches per second. Though Saturday’s performance was slightly slower than the composer’s stipulation, the gradual harmonic unfoldings became more dramatic and emerged so strongly in the new tempo, I couldn’t help connecting this work’s sound-mass characteristics with its neighbors in Ligeti’s output: Atmospheres and Lontano. Starkly contrasting was the next piece on the program, the first movement of Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic’s Trio Per Uno (1995). Thrillingly energetic, this work calls for three players to share a set up of bongo drums, cymbals and a communal bass drum, creating a sort of super-percussionist. The music was like highly sophisticated drum line music and opposed cooperative rhythmic grooves with outbursts of individual virtuosity.

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by Garrett Schumann