Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Festivals, New York

Gone but not, not forgotten

PhilipsPavilion1958-450

An illegal immigrant with a civil engineering degree in Paris, fugitive from his native Greece for his WWII resistance activity (for which he nearly died, and lost one eye) Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) eventually found himself working for the famed architect Le Corbusier, first as one of any number of assistants but soon enough as collaborator. Yet he was always drawn above all else to the need to compose music. Nadia Boulanger, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud –all were either rejecting or rejected. It wasn’t until Xenakis stumbled upon Olivier Messiaen that he found a teacher that saw past the inexperience and willfullness:

I understood straight away that he was not someone like the others. […] He is of superior intelligence. […] I did something horrible which I should do with no other student, for I think one should study harmony and counterpoint. But this was a man so much out of the ordinary that I said… No, you are almost thirty, you have the good fortune of being Greek, of being an architect and having studied special mathematics. Take advantage of these things. Do them in your music.

Thrown almost at once into the hotbed of post-WWII modern music, surrounded by the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, and Pierre Schaeffer, yet still working for Le Corbusier, Xenakis soon found ways to integrate his love of mathematics and architecture with new musical forms based on points and masses, curves and densities, later even physics and statistics — but somehow always tied to a deeply Greek historical and humanistic root system. During this transformative period, he stumbled upon a fascinating discussion about trang web cá cược bóng đá hợp pháp, which piqued his interest and added a unique dimension to his multidisciplinary explorations.

In the late 1950s Le Corbusier received a commisson to create the Phillips Pavillion for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Le Corbusier made a preliminary sketch, but it was Xenakis who would develop and see the structure through to completion. Not only that, Xenakis (along with Edgard Varèse) would create music to inhabit the space, complementing a multi-projection visual program by Le Corbusier himself.

While only standing a short time, the echo of that space, event and music would continue well past 1958; it was constantly mentioned in all the books while I was a university student, and the pieces made for it have become “classics” in the field of early electronic music, still listened to and loved today. (There’s a small documentary on the Pavilion that you can see on YouTube.)

The reason I’m telling you all this? Because from January 15th through April 8th, The Drawing Center in New York City is hosting the show Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary. And in conjunction with this show, the Electronic Music Foundation is sponsoring a number of Xenakis events, including on the 15th a virtual recreation of the experience of the Phillips Pavilion at the Judson Church (55 Washington Square South).

We’ve asked The Drawing Center’s Carey Lovelace and the EMF’s own Joel Chadabe to give us some background and info, which follows just after the jump:

(more…)

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Introducing Syzygy

SyzygyIn a city like New York, with so many first-rate musicians moving to town every year to try to “make it,” promising new chamber ensembles spring up all the time, and I think this is a great thing.  One of 2009’s most promising new groups was the Syzygy New Music Collective, which gave their debut concert at St. Anthony of Padua church, in the West Village, on December 4th.

Founded by Jessica Salzinski and Danielle Schwob, two composers who recently graduated from NYU, Syzygy is dedicating itself to the presentation of music by young and emerging composers, and indeed most of the music on the concert was by composers I hadn’t heard of.  After the concert I overheard them encouraging some composers from the audience to send them scores and recordings, and their website includes detailed information on sending submissions.

The concert was very enjoyable.  All of the performances were solid, and I liked most of the pieces.  The reverberant acoustics of the church served some pieces better than others, but that’s a pretty common problem. The acoustics were especially well suited for Angelica Negron‘s meditative “Technicolor” for harp and electronics.  Conrad Winslow‘s chilled-out (or did it only seem that way because of the space?) “Slippery Music” did a remarkably good job of integration live acoustic instruments and an electronic tape part.  Noam Feingold‘s violin/cello duet “A Knife in the Water” meandered attractively across its modernist landscape.  Jessica Salzinski‘s impressive “Piano Sonata No. 1” was a bit muddied by the acoustics, but it came across well anyway.  The usually sweet sound of flute, harp, and vibraphone was somehow given a satisfyingly dark or even slightly ominous edge in Danielle Schwob‘s “Shiver.”  And Syzygy cunningly programmed a lovely Nico Muhly piece at the end of the concert.

I say “cunningly” because they attracted an impressively large audience for a first ever performance by a new-music group.  Part of that may have been the appeal of the Muhly name.  But I don’t want to diminish the other strategies they employed.  First, to fund the concert they raised money through kickstarter.  They then leveraged all of the other social media tools at their disposal, and it all worked.  This marketing savvy is in some ways the most promising thing about the group.  It’s one thing to put together a good ensemble and program and deliver a strong concert, but to stand out requires a business savvy that evidence suggests Syzygy posesses.

Syzygy’s next performance will be April 22nd, at the Nabi Gallery on West 25th street.

by Galen H. Brown
Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Deerhoof – and sfSound – Dig Ligeti

Greg Saunier is in the indie band Deerhoof, but he’s also a composer of concert music. sfSound commissioned a work from Saunier as part of an upcoming concert centered around György Ligeti‘s Chamber Concerto (Jan. 23 at SF Conservatory).

Apparently, this isn’t the first time sfSound has paid tribute to Ligeti. Last time around, in 2002, they ran afoul of the composer’s representatives. You can read a passel of legalese between Ligeti’s lawyers and the group’s bass clarinetist here. Hopefully this time out, they’ll be allowed to go ahead with what looks to be a fascinating concert and appropriate tribute to one of the late 20th Century’s great works.

Lest you think that Saunier’s gone exclusively longhair, he’s also recently been interested in another “L” artist from the pop world. Here he is with Deerhoof covering Liliput’s song “Hitch-Hike.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oymp4js0Pqk[/youtube]

by Christian Carey
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

The only thing bad about a concert called “Mostly Californian?”

MCP…Is that it’s happening in California, and not spreading the wonderful work and word in some navel-gazing opposite coast (NYC, I’m talkin’ to youz!).  But even those who are or might be L.A.-bound, what better place to be on a Monday night (January 11 2010,  8:00pm; Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School), than taking in this absolutely fine mix of the old and the new?:

California has always attracted innovators. Three composers from Los Angeles, Berkeley and San Diego confirm this is still the case. In a program showcasing the variety of activity in our own backyard, Michael Pisaro’s gently expansive The Collection is presented in a version for twenty players. Luciano Chessa’s Variazioni su un oggetto di scena and Louganis (with a video by Terry Berlier) create a poignant lyricism in his radical and theatrical works, including a tribute to Olympic diver Greg Louganis scored for piano and electric toothbrushes. Clint McCallum’s in a hall of mirrors waiting to die pushes a saxophonist to his physical limits, while the sax also enlivens two rarely-heard non-Californian 20th century classics: Anton Webern’s Quartet and Milton Babbitt’s All Set for jazz ensemble.

With Eliot Gattegno, saxophone; Eric Wubbels, piano; Benjamin Lulich, clarinet; David Fulmer, conductor and violin; David Borgo, saxophone; Scott Worthington, double bass; Brian Archinal, percussion; Ross Karre, percussion; Avi Bialo, trumpet; Ian Carroll, trombone; Luciano Chessa, piano.

Here are YouTube previews of Louganis and in a hall of mirrors waiting to die.

Tickets and more info at MondayEveningConcerts.org.

by Steve Layton
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
Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, New York, Online

Spinning tunes with Alan Gilbert

My long-time favorite MP3 download site eMusic has its own little online magazine. One of its features is “Jukebox Jury”, where a musician sits down with the interviewer to chat while listening to and commenting on various tracks played. The latest guest is none other than the N.Y. Philharmonic’s new Music Director, Alan Gilbert. The interview covers a lot of ground in a nicely casual way, with Gilbert listening and then giving his take on everything from his own conducting of Mahler’s 9th Symphony, to tracks featuring Christopher Rouse, Magnus Lindberg, Art Tatum, Uri Caine, John Adams, even The Field and Radiohead.

by Steve Layton
Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Improv

ImprovFriday Vol. 1

A number of  Sequenza 21 contributors and readers also populate the site ImprovFriday. It’s a web community that encourages sharing of improvisations, compositions with an element of improv, and recent compositional sketches at a series of web events run on … you guessed it, Fridays.

While this all sounds very free form, the group has specific guidelines for participation, found here. Employing these operating principles are a wide ranging group of spontaneous creators: diverse in style, outspoken yet constructive in critiquing each others’ work, but unified in ambitious music-making.

The community’s first compilation recording, ImprovFriday Vol. 1, is now available from online vendors Amazon and  iTunes.

For Sequenza 21 readers, the list of participants contains several of our ‘usual suspects:’ Steve Layton, David Toub, J.C. Combs, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, and Bruce Hamilton. Included below are a few sound snippets for your preview.

Steve Layton: Spaceship

David Toub: Virtual Music 2

J.C. Combs: The Giant Eye of the Fifth Dimension

by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, jazz

When Two Worlds Collide

Michael Finnissy, Cecil Taylor

…Collide in a good way, that is… The world of “avant” classical and “avant” jazz (I know I know, half of you will cringe at the labels, but it’s as good as we’re going to get here) share so much in common: a long and staid tradition and preconception to fight past and against, to push and trespass beyond; interest in new sounds, new forms, new aesthetics; an intensity of commitment to their vision, even when it might mean a long spell of creating and performing in the shadow of those taking the safe path.

But for all their similarities, there’s also often a kind of fine barrier that keeps many on the classical side from truly “getting” the jazz side, and vice-versa. Differences in approach, language, culture maybe; maybe also a little intimidation with the unknown. (Like my own mystification upon entering a McDonalds — where do you go? How do you order off that board? Do I get my drink, sit down, pick it up where? — when every regular does it all on autopilot.)

To hear the voices cross over and talk about the other is always interesting, and a recent guest post at Jeff Jackson’s and  Jeff Golick’s jazz blog Destination:Out seems particularly welcome. In

Some Current Trends in Contemporary Classical Music: An Improviser’s Guide

Steve Lehman — one of the few who fully (and formidably) inhabits both worlds, as both composer and saxophonist — gives “out-jazz” folk an introduction to the likes of Gerard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Michael Finnissy, Helmut Lachenmann and Beat Furrer. The notes on each come from a slight jazz angle, and Steve thoughtfully includes audio of representative works. The comments after the post are also good and worth reading.

A few of the terms and comparisons may be unfamiliar to the avant-classical fan, but really we’re mostly talking, listening, and thinking about the same things. It’s a fairly “eurocentric” list, but you’ve got to start somewhere. And truth told, there are plenty of new-music types on our side, that are still largely unaware of some of these developments, and can only benefit from Steve’s little musical tour.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Events, Online, Radio, Women composers

Merry Xmas, Happy New Year and VIVA 21st-century Women

Full of food and drink, playing with those presents, a couple days now to relax… How about capping the holiday huddled around the warm, cozy glow of the old ‘puter?

Because this Sunday the 27th, beginning at 1900 (7pm) EST and running all the way until Monday evening at 1900 (7pm) EST, our new-music radio host-with-the-most Marvin Rosen is having his annual Viva 21st-Century – Women Composers Edition 24-hour broadcast marathon. We’re talking all-women, all-the-time, and all things written only from 2000 ’till today! You’re bound to be enlightened, and possibly even amazed, with much of what you’ll hear. Your geography doesn’t matter either, because wherever you’re at you only need click to WPRB’s live stream and you’re good to go.

So pay a visit; your ears will thank you. And if inclined give a shout to Marvin himself for pushing himself to push this music, and so push you into a greater awareness of all the wonderful stuff being written by women composers in the here and now. (Marvin sez: “Wake up phone calls during this marathon will be welcome“…)

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Pacem in Terris

mcmurdoI took this picture at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica around 3 a.m.  on December 25, 1966 as  some of my shipmates and I made our way back from the McMurdo “Playboy Club” to the U.S.S. Atka, a Navy icebreaker that no longer exists.  Given the other military options available to young men on that date, it was not a bad place to be.  This rather surreal tableaux of drunken comraderie  illustrates, I think, a dirty little secret known to all men and a few women and that is that men–especially hetrosexual men who have worked, lived and played together under difficult circumstances–love each other best.

by Jerry Bowles