The Original New Music Community
Jerry,
Wanted to make sure this didn’t get by you:
Tomorrow (Ed: now tonight) the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern music series will be presenting the complete Rite of Spring arranged for modern big band. The 7:30pm set will be livestreamed online by Radar Redux (http://www.radarredux.com/live/) so all can attend, even those not in Baltimore! More info at http://mobtownmodern.com
Best wishes,
Brian Sacawa
Curator, Mobtown Modern Music Series
Contemporary Museum
A few of the of the unusual and interesting events coming up soon, soon soon:
Victoria, B.C. : Wednesday May 12th, 8pm at Knox Presbyterian Church (2964 Richmond Road, Victoria / $10), LaSaM (Luminosity and Sounds by adventurous Musicians) is presenting a program titled “And Beethoven Heard Nothing“. As they tell it, the show will be “exploring Beethoven’s inherent belief systems, his deafness and the sonorities of his later work. Sonic phenomena; tinnitus and deafness; acoustic space, climax and stasis; memory and silence… The ensemble has pulled experiences of Beethoven’s thought and music through the filters of contemporary soundscape and performance practice into an evocative environment of dancing shadows, image and light.” Directed by musicologist Dylan Robinson and composer Tina Pearson, with technical direction by George Tzanetakis and live video projections by Tim Gosley. Besides Pearson (flute, voice, glass) and Tzanetakis (clarinet, saxophone) collaborating musicians include Chris Reiche (piano), Cathy Lewis (voice, percussion), and Alex Olson (bass). Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Society will be on hand with information; the performance will be followed by a discussion about the project, and about how we use our ears in contemporary urban life.
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Baltimore, MD : Friday May 14th is the kick off for the 2010 edition of the Megapolis Audio Festival, running all the way through Sunday the 16th. Right from the horse’s mouth, there’ll be “circuit bending /noisemaker constructions, sonic slumber parties, free-form audio editing sessions, kickass musics, interactive demonstrations, urban sonic explorations, experimental musical practice and theory, film with funfun sounds, musical performances, subversive audio tours, (un-boring) lectures, and moremoremoremore.”
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Toronto, ON : Saturday, May 15th is the day to catch Contact Contemporary Music: Six Team League at the Music Gallery (197 John St., Toronto / 416-204-1080 / $20).
In celebration of Canada hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics with a nod to the National Hockey League’s “Original Six,” Contact Contemporary Music is pitching in with an ambitious attempt to connect the country through music. Six ensembles across the country will simultaneously present and perform a concert of six new works by six composers from six regions of the country in a musical sweep from sea to sea to sea.
The participating ensembles are the Motion Ensemble (Fredericton, NB) who have commissioned composer Joel Miller; Bradyworks (Montreal, QC) who have commissioned composer Michel Frigon; St. Crispin’s Chamber Ensemble (Edmonton, AB) who have commissioned Dave Wall; Redshift Music (Vancouver, BC) who have commissioned Jordan Nobles; and Contact Contemporary Music who have commissioned Juliet Palmer..
Six composers. Six ensembles. Six cities. Six concerts. Six Team League.
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Saint-Gilles, Belgium : Also on Saturday, May 15th, 8pm but half a world away (Maison du Peuple de Saint-Gilles, Parvis de Saint-Gilles, 37-39), the brilliant pianist Stephane Ginsburgh will be joining many other wonderful musicians, in a free concert titled “Constellations-Figure“. A clumsy translation:
What is a constellation? A design, a network. Links forged between the points seen from afar, but apparently close. They are a familiar and enigmatic. A graph that tells us about relationships, geometric and experienced. Paths traced between places and individuals symbolic or real. What form a constellation? The proximity of the points or the path of truth? Twenty artists are encouraged to draw their constellation, while participating in the figure which will rise by the force of things. Do you like the Milky Way?
Did I mention many other wonderful musicians? It’s a “Night of Soloists”: Jean-Michel Agius (voice), Primitiv (beatbox), Laurence Cornez (piano), Tom De Cock (percussion), Fabian Fiorini (piano), Stephane Ginsburgh (piano), Philippe Liénaert (piano), Céline Lory (piano), Barbara Mavro Thalassitis (voice/dance), Laurence Mekhitarian (piano), Gerrit Nulens (percussion), Isabelle Roeland (voice), Jessica Ryckewaert (percussion), Jan Rzewski (saxophone), Johanne Saunier (voice/dance), Laurence Vielle (voice), Gilles Wiernik (voice). It’s a cryptic but promising event, in a beautiful and historic location.
…take a brief survey and tell them how they’re doing. If you’re a current or lapsed member of the American Music Center or the American Composers Forum, they are hosting a joint online survey to better understand how their programs are serving you and how you view these organizations’ roles in meeting your needs in the continually changing new music field. The survey lasts about 10 minutes and is active through May 28, 2010. Run on over and give them your feedback. The survey is here.
Conductor Alondra de la Parra and her orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, has a concert coming up at Alice Tully on May 11 that includes three US premieres of works by Mexican composers Gustavo Campa, Ricardo Castro, and Candelario Huízar.
Alondra personally researched these pieces over a period of 2 years – in some cases traveling to Mexico to meet the composers or their families and get the scores. All of the pieces on the concert will be included on POA’s 2-CD set that Sony Classical is releasing in August 2010, entitled Mi Alma Mexicana, which features rediscovered works by Mexican composers written during the last 200 years that are seldom heard in the concert hall.
The program includes the US premieres of Gustavo Campa’s Melodía with solo violinist Daniel Andai, Ricardo Castro’s Intermezzo de Atzimba, and Candelario Huízar’s Imágenes; as well as performances of Carlos Chávez’s Caballos del Vapor; Federico Ibarra’s Sinfonía No. 2; and Manuel M. Ponce’s Concierto del Sur with solo guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas.
The concert and CD celebrate Mexico’s Bicentennial, and are part of a larger project Alondra envisions where she will similarly research the music of different countries.
[update: the May 11 show is sold out, but they have added a second concert on Friday, May 21 at Alice Tully at 8pm]
Composer Oscar Bettison sent along this report about student opera performances in Baltimore, Maryland.
Opera Etudes at Peabody
Every other year at Peabody, the month of May means one thing for the composition and opera departments: ‘Opera Etudes.’ This project, which has been running for twenty-five years under the guidance of the Director of Opera Programs Roger Brunyate, is a year-long collaboration between graduate composition students and the opera department. Starting in the fall, composers are paired with librettists and singers to work on the creation of short staged opera scenes. These are then fully staged in Friedberg Hall, the main concert hall at Peabody, as one of the final events of the academic year. Occasionally, time pressures take their toll and some collaborations fall apart before making it to the final stage, but this year all seven projects made it from inception to the stage at Friedberg. As could be expected they were a varied bunch, running the gamut from retelling of fairytales (Jake Runestad) to tense family drama (Emily Koh), from comic opera (Josh Bornstein, Jon Carter, Zhangyi Chen) to darker subjects involving infidelity and murder (Jeff Zeiders, Daniel Gil-Marca).
The purpose of this project is to teach composers how to work with others and to provide them with the tools to create healthy collaborations. So often composers get caught up in the nitty-gritty of pitches and rhythm, failing to see the ramifications of the decisions they make in the real world of performance. The Etudes project is set to address this and to perhaps set in motion new opera collaborations in the future. All of the composers seemed to gain a great deal of experience from the process. In the first place, how often do student composers get to have other musicians spend a year learning and memorizing their work? More fundamentally, in working with all these different elements – librettists, singers and directors – composers start to see how to think in different dimensions as well as how to collaborate; both of which should stand them in good stead for the future.
The commitment from the opera department is crucial. These are always fully committed performances. The singers have, of course memorized the music, but they approach this project in the same way as they would any opera in the repertory and this is fundamentally what is so satisfying about the exercise. Finally, the environment in which the scenes are presented – a packed house in the main concert hall – really makes this feel like an event. I know from personal observation that many music schools round out the year with a big production: but how many do this featuring the music of their own students?
Ultimately all of this bodes well for the future. In years past some of the most successful projects have lead to bigger operas, again put on by the opera department. I wonder how many of this year’s works will lead to new opera productions both at Peabody and elsewhere?
Composer Oscar Bettison teaches at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. His music is published by Boosey and Hawkes.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Washington Composers Forum. Like any of these ventures, they’ve had some busy and some moribund periods. But more than most and especially through the last decade, the WCF has been a pretty consistent force, beacon and shelter for composers of all stripes (as I can personally attest to from my own long sojourn in the Seattle area). They’ve been great about getting the word on opportunities out to their members, sponsoring commissions, readings and concerts, and their Composer Spotlight series (a different composer holds court each month, sharing whatever they think is important in their world) has been a fabulously smart and successful local draw for years now.
The WCF is having their celebratory concert this Thursday evening, May 6th, 8pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center (4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, 4th Floor, Seattle / Tickets at door. $5-15 sliding scale), as part of their Jack Straw-supported Transport Series. The concert of world and regional premieres will feature the Icicle Creek Piano Trio, Pacific Rims percussion quartet, violist Melia Watras, and the Seattle Phonographers Union. Highlighted on the program is the premiere of a new work by composer Wayne Horvitz, an inaugural commission by Washington Composers Forum, launching the organization’s new commissioning program. Other composers on the bill include Christopher Bailey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Diane Thome, Huck Hodge and John Cage — and if you’ve never yet seen the Seattle Phonographers Union in action, you’re in for a spookily wonderful treat.
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Meanwhile, the next day just down the road in Portland, Oregon, Third Angle New Music Ensemble is finishing their season with a concert titled “Views from Cascadia” (7:30 PM, The Old Church, 1422 Southwest 11th Avenue, Portland / Tickets: $30 general/$25 65+ & students). The chamber music program features pieces by Tomas Svoboda and David Schiff from Portland, John McKinnon from La Grande, and Charles Nichols from Missoula, Montana. This is Third Angle’s big bon voyage before it performs at the Beijing Modern Music Festival in late May, taking a few of these Northwest sounds to introduce to an international audience.
I know, short-short notice for the NYC crowd … But there’s a pretty giddy concert to attend this (Wednesday) evening at 8:30 PM, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (131 East 10th Street, Second Ave. and 10th Street / $10). The International Street Cannibals — a happy cabal of composers, chamber players, filmmakers and painters, conceived by in 2005 by composer, cellist, conductor Dan Barrett, and steered by composer/guitarist Gene Pritsker — are presenting “Desperately Seeking Stravinsky”. Now, Stravinsky was always amenable to the dance, and I don’t think there are many of his works that haven’t been choreographed, but I don’t think he or I ever considered what’s on this concert’s bill: a performance of L’Histoire du Soldat with tapdancer, and the piano suite from Petrouchka with breakdancer! And our old composer pal Joseph Pehrson‘s Blacklight for cello and electronics (in the near-just-intonation tuning system of “blackjack”) will also be performed, and danced as well by Linda Past. So get footloose and flashdance your way down there tonight!
Kyle Gann reports that more than twice as many students have signed up for his 12-tone Analysis seminar than for his Beethoven class, and then in the comments he expresses concern that some of those students may think the course is a 12-Step program.
Coincidentally, our crack musicological research team has recently uncovered the following from Serious Composers Anonymous:
A Method Of Ensuring the Supremacy of German Music for the Next Hundred Years Using Twelve Steps Related Only To Each Other
1. We admitted we were powerless over free atonality, and that our compositions had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Method greater than our own intuition could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our music over to the care of The Twelve Tone Method as we understand it.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of the ways in which our music does not live up to the Great German Tradition.
5. Admitted to our professors, to ourselves, and to another Serious Composer the exact nature of our compositional failings.
6. Were entirely ready to have The Method remove all these defects of aesthetic.
7. Humbly asked The Method to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all twelve pitches in the octave, and became willing to treat them all as equals.
9. Made direct amends to dissonant intervals which we had heretofore enslaved with outdated rules of resolution to consonance.
10. Continued to strive to write music that is technically complex and antithetical to popularity, and when we discovered that we had written something pretty promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through practice and analysis to improve our appreciation of and facility with The Method as we understand it, praying only for knowledge of combinatoriality and the power to employ it effectively.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those useless composers who have not yet come to feel the necessity of the dodecaphonic language, and to practice these principles in all our musical affairs whether the audience likes it or not.
Big ups to my composer compadre Ken Ueno. He’s had a heck of a busy year. In addition to an active teaching schedule at University of California-Berkeley, where he’s an Assistant Professor of Composition, he’s been busily composing, performing, and supervising recordings of his music.
His new disc on the BMOPSound imprint – the only disc I’ve ever received in the mail with a warning label on it (extreme dynamic range) – is an engaging collection. Featuring the Boston Modern Orchestra project, conducted by Gil Rose, its a collection of his concerti for other musicians – violist Wendy Richman, biwa player Yukio Tanaka, and shakuhachi performer Kiku Mitsuhashi – as well as works featuring his own overtone/throat singing. Another of his concerti, Like Dusted Sparks, written for percussionist Samuel Z. Solomon, appears on Deviation the new CD by the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble.
This weekend he’s in NYC to perform a new work with Du Yun at the Flea, part of their May mini-marathon. According to Ken, “Our piece is called Gold Ocean. It’s a multimedia post-modern opera, featuring the juxtaposition of contemporary classical with electronica/pop and Asian sonic references.”
Du Yun is having quite a weekend too. In addition to her performance with Ken, her opera Zolle was premiered on Friday at New York City Opera’s 2010 Vox Festival.