The Original New Music Community
Our adorable amiga Amanda Ameer, the music publicist extraordinaire, is hosting a discussion for Chamber Music America about the ways composers and other artists are using social media to promote themselves and their work and she’d love to have your experiences be part of it. It starts at 1 pm eastern on Wednesday July 14 (today).
UPDATE: The entire hour-long chat was lively and went well. It’s been archived; for a replay of the whole conversation, Click Here.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC_3a9mHy3w[/youtube]
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.
I’ve been uploading my old reviews on my blog. Today’s upload is a review I did for a new music festival at the University of California, San Diego in 1995: concerts by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. This may seem totally run of the mill to New Yorkers and younger composers, but it was heresy at the hallowed halls of modernism at the UCSD Music Dept. At the time, Paul Dresher was probably the most successful, acclaimed alumnus of the dept.–and this was the first time he had been asked to perform there since his graduation. (he had been invited to do a performance of Slow Fire a few years before this–for the UCSD Theater Dept.!) Following the Bang On A Can All-Stars concert, Roger Reynolds was rumored to have apologized to his composition students for their concert, and swore they would never come back to the Music Dept. (Looks like he kept his promise!) So what caused all the fuss? You can read about it here.
Mention of our composer pal Jeremy Podgursky a couple days ago brought this late word (but better late than never, right?):
Gary Kass wrote to tell us about the inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, which starts tomorrow (Monday), July 12th, at the University of Missouri and runs the whole darn week. Quite a lot happening: five big concerts and lots of open rehearsals; two great guest composers (Martin Bresnick and Derek Bermel); eight resident composers getting world premieres (Francisco Cortés-Álvarez, Christopher Dietz, Paul Dooley, Moon Young Ha, Edie Hill, Amy Beth Kirsten, Jeremy Podgursky, Zhou Juan); stellar ensemble Alarm Will Sound, pianist Lisa Moore, the Missouri Symphony Society Music Ensemble led by Kirk Trevor; resident, guest and faculty (including MU composer and festival organizer Stefan Freund) presentations and meet-ups… the website will give you a full rundown on times, pieces, performers and composers, and their blog provides lots of extra goodies. Here’s hoping for a good run, all success, and that we’ll be talking about a second round come next year!
As you know if you read Christian Carey’s earlier piece, Lincoln Center Festival’s Varèse: (R)evolution will present the composer’s entire oeuvre over two concerts on July 19 & 20. Performers include the New York Philharmonic, conductor Alan Gilbert, percussionist Steven Schick, and ICE. We have two pairs of tickets to give away for one of the performances. Because we have so many smart people who read S21 and the first answer is usually right, I’m going to take the names of all the people with the right answer, put them on a slip of paper, and have my unsuspecting next door neighbor pull one out of a Yankees cap.
Here’s your tossup: Varese’s 1906 Un Grand Sommeil Noir is titled after a poem by Paul Verlaine and suggests (to me, at least) the title of a 1995 film about Rimbaud and Verlaine. What is the title of that film and who played Verlaine?
You can get your name in the cap twice by answering this bonus question. What female composer wrote 21 pieces based on Verlaine poems?
The International Contemporary Ensemble will be featured at 7 PM tonight on Q2. Hosted by John Schaefer, this live broadcast from Yamaha Piano Salon in NYC is a sneak preview of Lincoln Center Festival’s Varèse: (R)evolution.
(R)evolution will present the composer’s entire oeuvre over two concerts on July 19 &20. Performers include the New York Philharmonic, conductor Alan Gilbert, percussionist Steven Schick, and ICE.
Program:
Density 21.5 (1936) with Claire Chase, flute
Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906) with Samantha Malk, soprano
Ameriques (NEW YORK PREMIERE of 8-hand piano version) (1929) with Jacob Greenberg, Amy Williams, Amy Briggs and Thomas Rosenkranz
Q2 and ICE have been kind enough to share a freebie that all the new music kids will be adding to their Droid/iPhone/Blackberrys: a Poème Électronique ringtone!
Jeremy Podgursky — one of the composers we liked so much that he ended being selected for our last S21 concert presentation — is throwing a joint shindig with fellow composer Daniel Wohl, this Thursday July 8th, 7:00pm at the littlefield performance/art space (622 Degraw Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenue, Brooklyn), $8.00.
Performers include Sara Budde, clarinet; Emily Popham Gillins, violin; John Popham, cello; Kevin Sims, percussion; Bethany Pietroniro and Timo Andres, piano; and more TBA. Podgursky and Wohl will be splitting the bill alternating their way through nine works in all, featuring recent small ensemble, electronic/electro-acoustic and solo pieces. Two excellent composers, nine excellent pieces, a whole posse of excellent performers, quite the value for the small tix price.
From today’s NY Times:
Award-winning Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev has been arrested at a Thai beach resort, accused of raping a boy, police said Wednesday.
