Composers, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, New York

New York Philharmonic performs Kraft by Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg before the show

[As part of my residency at the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera, I had to write an overnight review with a word limitation–something I hadn’t done in 15 years. What follows was my original story; an edited version appeared on our private web site where our reviews were posted.

I was very impressed with how the NY Phil turned a performance of a relatively obscure 25-year-old work into a must-attend event. The last time I saw that much excitement about a contemporary orchestral instrumental work was back in the late 1980s in San Diego, when a Soviet arts festival brought composers, musicians, and actors to town for a year-long festival. How did the NY Phil get the city so excited about an old work by its composer in residence?  When I get a chance between my current assignments, I hope to post an essay about that.]

Strident steel tintinabulations and dull metallic clanking invaded Avery Fisher Hall Tuesday evening (Oct. 12), where, minutes earlier, the music of Debussy and Sibelius, and the virtuosity of violinist Joshua Bell had delighted audience members.

That clangor wasn’t the 1 Train filtering up through the floor; it was the New York premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft. Fortunately the New York Philharmonic’s front office had prepared listeners for these sounds through videos and feature stories documenting Lindberg’s shopping trip at a local junkyard, turning this chapter of his two-year residency into a cause célèbre.

Alan Gilbert’s humorous but earnest explanations before Kraft also broke the ice for nervous patrons sitting near a 50-gallon storage drum or a large tam-tam suspended from the ceiling, providing them with aural signposts in Lindberg’s wild soundscape.

Lindberg’s style these days, although clearly modern, is also accessible to audiences, a polished language marked by rhythmic propulsion and dissonant but perceptible harmonies. Lindberg was an enfant terrible when he completed Kraft in 1985; its brute primitive force, imaginative orchestration, and exuberant theatricality immediately distinguished him from the droves of European modernists trying to emerge from the shadows of Boulez, Xenakis, or Ferneyhough.

Kraft is a contemporary concerto grosso, where the soloists not only play piano (magnus Lindberg), clarinet (Chen Halevi), cello (Carter Brey), timpani (Markus Rhoten), and percussion (Christopher Lamb and Daniel Druckman), but also hammer and scrape found objects from the New York area, most of them appearing to be old auto parts and iron gas cylinders. These solos are then spatialized on speakers (done skillfully by Juhani Liimatainen).

(more…)

by Christian Hertzog
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Xenakis in L.A.

For the next few months, The City of Angels is going to be the epicenter of all things Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001). That’s because the exhibition “Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary” will be on view at the MOCA Pacific Design Center from November 6, 2010 — February 4, 2011. The exhibition explores Xenakis’ wide range of sketches, scores and drawings, not only musical but architectural and aesthetic as well. Not always simply notes on score paper, many of Xenakis’ sketches and drawings conjure up artistic visions, in ways perhaps only matched by John Cage’s documents of his own explorations. Defintely a must-see.

But there are also a couple must-hears, happening right this week, both absolutely free:

Saturday, 6 November at 6pm, in L.A. State Historic Park (1245 Spring Street) a recreation of Xenakis’ legendary Polytope de Persepolis will be performed. Adapted by German sound artist and Xenakis electronic music expert Daniel Teige, Persepolis L.A. will involve six listening stations with eight speakers each. Persepolis was originally commissioned by the then Shah of Iran and performed as the opening event of the controversial 1971 Shiraz Festival that took place in the middle of the ruins of the ancient Persian capital. This performance will encompass more than 70,000 square feet of performance area within the park’s 32-acres and will feature the recently restored multi-track music composition and computer-generated visual choreography, complete with laser beams, fire, smoke, and searchlights. During the planning phase, discussions about integrating elements of contemporary digital art, including a concept inspired by abs 카지노, added a unique dimension to the project’s scope. The event will open with Xenakis’ first electronic work, Diamorphoses (1957), as a “geological prelude”.

Then on Sunday, November 7 at 4pm, The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts presents an outdoor performance of the final version of Xenakis’s only opera, Oresteia. This West Coast premiere includes performances by baritone Paul Berkolds, an adult chorus, a children’s chorus, and a chamber ensemble. First-come seating is on the lawn for this highly charged, brutally colorful piece.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Music Events

ONCE (before)

Tomorrow and Thursday are two special nights for contemporary music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This week, the University Musical Society is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the ONCE composers, a group of University of Michigan student composers whose 1960s new music festivals gained worldwide acclaim. The surviving members of the group, which was founded by Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, Donald Scavarda, Gordon Mumma, and the late George Cacioppo, have come back to Ann Arbor to revisit the revolutionary spirit that inspired them and recognize what they’ve achieved in the years since they left Michigan.

The local media here in southeast Michigan have previewed this week’s event with great success, so head the to following links if you’d like to read what annarbor.com, the metrotimes and the Detroit Free Press have to say about the history of the ONCE group. I will be Sequenza 21’s eyes and ears observing the rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes activities that will make these concerts happen. Additionally, I will review both performances and talk to each of the composers at Wednesday’s “Conversation with the ONCE Composers”.

For now, I have the pleasure of watching the ONCE composers in rehearsal, which is a beautiful experience. First of all, they are clearly thrilled to be in Ann Arbor; this is clear in their smiles, the enthusiasm with which they interact with their performers and, most poignantly, in the playful anecdotes the ONCE members have shared with each other between rehearsal times. Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma have been warm and enthusiastic to their performers, the former even joked with Dr. John Ellis – chair of piano performance at Michigan – earlier today, quipping, “that last phrase is one I never got right,” in reference to his solo piano piece Large Size Mograph.

Roger Reynolds’ professionalism is admirable: he understands how to get exactly what he wants from his players without being curt or overbearing. Thursday night’s concert, which features recently written works by the ONCE composers, includes Reynolds’ Ariadne’s Thread for string quartet and electronics. He has handled the quartet masterfully so far, explaining to them the vision he had beyond his complex musical language and guiding them with generalities towards the affect he desires.

If you are in the Ann Arbor area tomorrow or Thursday at 8 PM, head to Rackham Auditorium on the University of Michigan’s Central Campus to share in the past and present of this important movement in American music (tickets are also $2!). If not, stay tuned to Sequenza 21 for updates on this event all week long. The programs for the concerts and a description of the rest of the ONCE MORE festival is available here.

by Garrett Schumann
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Improv, jazz, Mexico, Music Events

Houston Mixtape #7: Skeleton At The Feast

Skull courtesy of Casa Ramirez (photo by Chris Becker)

Skeletons! Witches! Vampires! No, I’m not talking about candidates in Houston’s midterm elections. I’m talking about Halloween and the two days that follow known as Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Like many other places in the Southern U.S., Houston culture is a healthy mix of the supernatural and the spiritual. In the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Meurtos, food, beverages, and sweets are placed on homemade alters as gifts for the spiritual manifestations of those who have passed who will, over the course of the 48 hours that is All Saints Day and All Soul’s Day, visit the people they knew before the afterlife. Gift giving and the ephemeral nature of playing music – particularly improvised music – have all been on my mind lately.

In his recent book Tradition and Transgression about composer John Zorn, author John Brackett includes a chapter describing Zorn’s music from the perspective of “the gift and gift giving.” The composer receives a “gift” from an artist – maybe an artist from an earlier time – in the form of creative inspiration and techniques that can be applied to their respective medium and then passes the “gift” along in various forms of musical homage. There are so many examples of this practice in music. Many compositions by Charles Mingus are named for musicians he knew and loved and directly referenced in melody, harmony, and/or rhythm (A few examples are Reincarnation of a Lovebird, So Long Eric and Goodbye Porkpie Hat for Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy and Lester Young respectively). Certainly there are parallels between creating art and celebrating our ancestors. Maybe there’s actually no difference between the two actions?

Who are some of the composers, friends, and/or family members you yourself have paid homage to in musical form?

Alexandra Adshead and Chris Becker at Avant Garden (photo by Jonathan Jindra)

For the month of November, the tireless Dave Dove and his organization Nameless Sound continue their They Who Sound “First Time Duo” series at Houston’s Avant Garden, every Monday from 7pm to 9pm. Each week, two to four improvisers who have never played together share the stage to perform a set of entirely improvised music. This is a great concept, and I wonder if it could expand beyond its current network of free improvisers to include pairings with members of Houston’s classical, jazz, and rock communities. Maybe some students from Houston’s School for the Performing Arts could share the stage with people with a history in Houston’s free improv and/or so-called noise scenes and try to find some common ground?

Also at Avant Garden on the last Wednesday of every month, keyboardist Robert Pearson presents a program of experimental music (Robert was kind enough to invite me and Alex to play last Wednesday, and we had a ball). These Wednesday shows are also an opportunity to hear Robert who doesn’t play like anyone I’ve ever heard before. Imagine Matthew Shipp, former Birdsongs of the Mesozoic Roger Miller, and Erik Satie all at 200 bpm and you sort of get an aural impression of what Robert sounds like on the keys. The resulting music is almost Zen-like in spite (or maybe because of) the tempi. Go hear him for yourself!

On November 2, 2010, 7pm at Talento Bilingue de Houston, Cuban tenor Alejandro Salvia Cobas and belly dancer provocateur Ms. Y.E.T. perform at show of artist and longtime A.I.D.S. activist Lourdes Lopez Moreno’s show of hand built clay skeletons. Moreno’s work will be on display through November 7th. A short, spooky video featuring Cobas’ voice is up on YouTube.

On November 7, 7:30pm at Zilkha Hall, Houston’s composer led contemporary music organization Musiqa celebrates the work of Benjamin Patterson, a groundbreaking artist who was a founding member of the avant-garde group, Fluxus, and whose work explores the experimental and improvisational possibilities in music. The concert Born in a State of Flux(us) is free, and Patterson will be there for what should be a crazy evening.

by Chris Becker
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Mexico, Miller Theater, New York

BroadBand Connection

A lot of important ensembles have been coming out of places like Oberlin (Eighth Blackbird), Yale (So Percussion, Now Ensemble), and Eastman (Alarm Will Sound, JACK Quartet, Signal) over the past 10+ years.  Well, it looks like there is another one trying to break through from Eastman called Eastman BroadBand.

BroadBand is preparing for a tour of Mexico that will culminate in a performance at the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico City, but before they leave they will stop in New York City on Monday to pick up their visas at the Mexican consulate and perform at Columbia’s Miller Theatre (8pm).

The program features music by Silvestre Revueltas, Juan Trigos, and Alejandro Viñao, as well as Eastman faculty and BroadBand artistic directors Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.  Eastman BroadBand has this to say about the program:

“The music on the program explores the composers’ interaction with contemporary culture through a number of seemingly diverse perspectives: the musical folklore of Mexico, Spain, and Pakistan; the literature of Juan Rulfo and Juan Trigos Sr; the kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson, and the ‘music of architecture’ are all examined through the abstract lenses of these imaginative artists.”

The program also features two soloists who I’ve had on the podcast this year.  You can listen to what pianist Cristina Valdes and soprano Tony Arnold have to say about performing contemporary music and working with composers here and here.

Tickets: $25 general admission, $12 students and Eastman alumni. www.millertheatre.com.

by James Holt
Contemporary Classical

Critical Land Mines

I recently attended the NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. For 10 days two dozen or so writers from Alaska to Florida convened at Columbia University to talk about classical music, to write about classical music, and most importantly for me (a musician with no formal journalism education), to talk about writing about classical music.

We attended many concerts devoted to or containing contemporary classical music. We saw the Kronos Quartet at Le Poisson Rouge; watched Glassworks and a new David Lang dance work at New York City Ballet; heard AXIOM play Stravinsky, Xenakis, and Lindberg; had a private lecture and performance by Jeremy Denk on Charles Ives–he’s just recorded the two sonatas, and if the two movements he played are any indication of the rest of the CD, you should rush out and buy it upon release; went to BAM to see Evan Ziporyn’s A House in Bali; and we all had to review the NY Phil performance of Lindberg’s Kraft (everyone liked it except for one critic, and he explained rather eloquently what he disliked about the work).

A colleague’s reviews accurately captured details of the work and performance, and had a wonderful shape to her story–nice lede, good flow, and good conclusion. There were two words in her story, however, that I had to point out to her, because I knew that performers and composers would jump on those two words and use them to discredit what was otherwise a fine review. She wrote that Kraft “was formless.”

Every piece of music has a form, I explained. You can write “Kraft seemed formless” or “the form was near impossible to detect” or something which captured her inability to perceive the form of Kraft (in her defense, Kraft has a very opaque structure, obscured by multiple processes happening simultaneously); but when you make an analytic statement that the work has “was formless,” a statement which can be proven wrong, readers will use that against you to sabotage the rest of your review. It won’t matter to them that you got everything else right in your story; making that one critical mistake (with just two words!) will become justification to tear down all the valid observations you did make in your review. I could picture a composer that hates Magnus Lindberg saying, “What does this critic know? She said Kraft was formless. What an idiot. How can you trust anything else she said about Kraft? “

I came across a similarly self-destructive statement in a Kalamazoo Gazette review published yesterday:

Muzijevic proved to be a superb pianist despite the concert’s lack of the usual heavyweight solo repertoire. He showed a certain genius for making music out of extremely sparse, atonal works such as Feldman’s Intermission 4 and Arnold Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19.

I’m unacquainted with the score to Intermission 4—if it’s one of Feldman’s graphic pieces, then the pianist would certainly have a major role to play in “making music” out of the work. But all a pianist needs to do to “make music” out of Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke is to just play the music which Schoenberg notated so elaborately. Dynamics and articulations are all in the score. The only choice a performer has to make is to decide how many beats per minute are tempo indications such as “Leicht, zart.”

Of course, a performer brings plenty of other decisions to their interpretation of op. 19: tone color; pedaling; how extreme are the differences between p, pp, ppp, and pppp in the 6th work; how should the two “bell” chords in the 6th work be interpreted in the final measure when Schoenberg indicates they should sound “wie ein Hauch?” But these are the same considerations a pianist makes for performing any late 19th-century/early 20th-century work. The “music” already exists in Schoenberg’s notation. It doesn’t take any genius to bring it out, just a sensitivity to Schoenberg’s musical poetry.

One of the fellows at the NEA Institute, Sophia Ahmad, wrote such a great description of the offerings that I am linking to it here to satisfy reader curiosity about this wonderful program.

by Christian Hertzog
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, jazz, Saxophone

Ornette Coleman in Austin, TX

Ornette Coleman photo by Jimmy Katz

Fort Worth-born Ornette Coleman will perform November 18th, 2010 8pm at Austin’s Bass Concert Hall with his son Denardo Coleman on drums, Tony Falanga on acoustic bass, and Al MacDowell on electric bass. I can’t think of a genre of music that hasn’t been influenced by Coleman and his recorded legacy. He had a profound impact on musicians as diverse as Leonard Bernstein, John Zorn, and Jerry Garcia and at the age of 80, Coleman continues to disregard geographical, political and cultural boundaries in a relentless search to build upon his palette of sound.

A recent interview with Ornette Coleman conducted by bassist, singer, producer Jeremiah Hosea can be heard for no cost at Earthdriver.org. It’s an unusually personal and far reaching conversation that you won’t hear anywhere else. Hosea has been instrumental of promoting the work of several exciting rock, jazz, and avant-garde musicians in NYC, and I had been meaning for awhile to direct Sequenza21’s readers to his site.

Thanks to Houston’s Dave Dove for the news tip.

by Chris Becker
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

Last Weekend in Cincinnati

The University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) proudly hosted last weekend’s meeting of the MidWest Composers Symposium, a consortium currently made up of the composition departments from CCM, Indiana University and the Universities of Iowa and Michigan.

The Symposium dates back to the 1960s, and, according to University of Michigan Professor of Composition Evan Chambers, arose dually from the prevailing sentiment that American contemporary music was not respected globally and the fact that, at that time, it was exceptionally challenging for student composers to get their works performed. “Each of the [charter] schools was known for different kinds of composition,” Professor Chambers explained in a phone interview, “there was no other way to find out what was happening between these institutions.”

Because I was unable to attend last weekend’s festival, I checked in with the event’s student co-director Jennifer Jolley, a current doctoral candidate in composition at CCM. Jennifer received her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and then took time off to teach, perform and accompany in Vermont. She began studying at CCM in 2007 and organized this year’s MidWest Composers Symposium with fellow graduate composition student Angelique Poteat.

S21: What were the greatest organization challenges you faced in pulling together this year’s MidWest Composers Symposium?

CCM is unfortunately on the quarter system, which meant that our classes started on September 22; therefore we only had a month to plan everything. Angelique Poteat (my co-director) and I gave our composers two weeks to assemble their pieces and performers, and that left us a mere two weeks to put everything together. We couldn’t figure out the concert order until CCM submitted their contribution, and we wanted to give the new CCM students a chance to submit a piece for the symposium.

S21: At its founding, each member of the MidWest Composers Symposium possessed unique musical tendencies; for example, the University of Iowa was know for preferring experimental compositional techniques. Do similar musical identities still exist from one member institution to another? If so, what were the weekend’s most remarkable examples of this diversity?

I believe they do, although this year UI did not submit as many electronic/experimental pieces as they have in the past! In fact, Angelique Poteat’s “Cyclic Complement” for bass clarinet and fixed format (CCM), Melody Eötvös‘s “Die hohle Höhle” for 5.1 surround playback (IU), Jerod Sommerfeldt‘s video “Linear” used sounds constructed in Pd (CCM), and Zach Zubow‘s “Fugitive Yellow Shirt” for violin and electronics (UI) were highlights from the experimental end; Mr. Zubow’s piece being one of the few electronic submissions from UI.

On this note, I believe CCM likes to take subtle risks in their music (Paul Schuette‘s “Complete Fragments” was installed in the lobby of Werner Recital Hall, for example), UM’s Daugherty influence makes their pieces agressive (David Biedenbender‘s “you’ve been talking in your sleep” and William Zuckerman‘s “Ajax” come to mind), and IU writes conservative but solid, well-constructed pieces (like Timothy Miller‘s “Sketches on Scars.”)

(more…)

by Garrett Schumann
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Resources

All things Berio

S21 blogger (and right nice composer) Tom Myron passes along word that the Centro Studi Luciano Berio has just launched their new website, in what would have been Luciano Berio’s (1925-2003) 85th year. The Centro is busy conserving and spreading the legacy of this 20th-century giant, cataloging/digitizing his personal papers, maunuscripts and sketches, organizing concerts and symposia, sharing news, information and sound right from the site. As it grows this great resource can only get greater, so it’s definitely worth a bookmark from composer, fan and scholar.

by Steve Layton
Chicago, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, viola

A Tribute to Omar Hernández-Hidalgo

I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that tonight in Chicago the International Contemporary Ensemble will be paying tribute to an amazing violist, Omar Hernández-Hidalgo.  They have commissioned three new pieces in his honor which will be premiered at 7:30 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.  Back in early June, Steve made us all aware of what happened and the response from the community was quick and memorable.

On a personal note, I was fortunate to be part of the Indiana University New Music Ensemble while Omar was there and I’ll always remember the day he walked in to the first rehearsal of Berio’s Chemins II for Viola and Ensemble – everyone in that room was completely speechless.  So amazing and so inspiring.  Of course every time he played this was the reaction.

Thanks to ICE for making this concert happen.  If you can get to Chicago tonight go to this concert.  More info here.

by James Holt