Contemporary Classical

Last Night in L.A.: Feldman, Johnston, Glass

rothkoch

The new Jacaranda season began last night with a concert that almost filled the church and brought out the Los Angeles Times critic, with photographer as well. The program comprised three key works from the 70s: Morton Feldman‘s Rothko Chapel from 1971, Ben Johnston‘s Quartet No. 4 “Amazing Grace” from 1973, and Philip Glass‘ Einstein on the Beach: Five Knee Plays from 1976. God, it was a gorgeous concert.

I didn’t want the performance of Rothko Chapel to end, but it did, and too soon, coming in at less than 25 minutes. The spaces between notes could have been a bit longer, and some of the notes could have hung in the air a bit longer. The three instrumentalists were Alma Lisa Fernandez on viola, Aron Kallay on celesta, and Kenneth McGrath on percussion, and they seemed to breathe the sounds. A group of local singers billed as the Jacaranda Chamber Singers risked all of those exposed pitches, and they handled all the challenges. This was a great experience.

Few works could follow something like the Feldman, but Johnston’s “Amazing Grace” could do so, and fortunately it took a little while to remove the instruments and risers to give some space between the two. The Denali Quartet now plays this work with seeming ease; perhaps they’ll make it their calling card, as the Phil under Salonen made the Rite of Spring. But the Johnston quartet leaves me wanting more; perhaps the Denalis could expand their Johnston offerings. Or perhaps Monday Evening Concerts could give us a Johnston evening.

The Jacaranda series has recovered the “Five Knee Plays” from Einstein on the Beach, with approval of Glass and the publisher. At the time of their first presentation of the set, in 2005, only the middle work was available; three other segments had been issued for children’s chorus but were no longer available, and the opening segment had been withdrawn and had to be reconstituted. Jacaranda has given us the full set, with pipe organ instead of electronic keyboard, with mixed chorus, with children’s chorus (the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, of all riches) for the final set, with violin (the violinist of the Denali Quartet) and with three narrators, including Gail Eichenthal and Sandra Tsing Loh of NPR broadcasts. The music still grabs at you.

Jacaranda’s next Santa Monica concert, November 14, serves as an introduction to the Phil’s exciting new “West Coast Left Coast” series with music by John Adams, Ingram Marshall and Lou Harrison. Better get your tickets.

by JerryZ
Canada, CDs, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, New York

Lips apart, lips together

Two shout-outs for events that, if only they’d have gotten around to inventing teleportation by now, I’d certainly try to make:

celestial mechanicsTuesday evening (27 Oct.) in Princeton’s Taplin Auditorium vocalists Sarah Paden, Anne Hege and Lainie Fefferman — otherwise known as Celestial Mechanics — will be presenting five new pieces by composers M.R. Daniel, Matt Marble, Jascha Narveson, and group members Fefferman and Hege themselves. Not your typical vocal trio, CM describes their performance as somewhere between “a chorus of angels and Robert Ashley, body percussion and Laurie Anderson, yoga practice and Wham.”  Things kick off at 8PM, it’s FREE, and easy to find.

horveycdThe next evening (28 Oct.), up and  across the border to Montreal, Quebec, our tremendously-talented, trumpet-playing web pal Amy Horvey is celebrating the release of her first CD, Interview, 8:30pm at La Sala Rossa (4848 Boulevard Saint-Laurent). Released by Malasartes Musique, it contains impeccably intense performances of works by Cecilia Arditto, Isak Goldshneider, Anna Höstman, Ryan Purchase and Giacinto Scelsi. Amy will be playing, along with new label-mates Cordâme and Nozen. This disc’s been a long time coming, but your ears will tell you it was worth it.

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Participation, Sound Art

If I had a hammer

…Or maybe 100? Then I’d be well on my way to doing what sound artist Douglas Henderson has planned at Peirogi Gallery’s BOILER space in Williamsburg, NY the start of next month (only not nearly so well as I think he’s conceived). But if I can’t be there, maybe YOU would like to pick up a tool and contribute? S21’s roving composer in the street, Chris Becker has both the news and an interview with Henderson:

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On November 7th and 8th, at Peirogi Gallery’s BOILER space in Williamsburg, NY, I will be participating as a head carpenter in a performance of composer Douglas Henderson’s Music for 100 Carpenters.  Doug is looking for volunteers to perform this 30-minute piece.  If you are interested in performing, can hammer a nail, and are available on Saturday, Nov. 7 and/or Sunday Nov. 8 , 6:00pm – 9:00pm for the performance and orientation, please RSVP to:  100carpenters@googlemail.com

Doug’s work straddles a line between the categories of music, sculpture, and dance and theater.  He has presented works at the Whitney Museum at Altria, Dance Theater Workshop, and PS122 in New York and at Inventionen and daadgalerie in Berlin, among many others.  He describes Music for 100 Carpenters as “a theatrical surround-sound music performance, enlisting 100 skilled and unskilled trades people.  Prying at Stockhausen’s convolution of rhythm and timbre, 100 hammers, 100 blocks of wood and some 10,000 nails of varying sizes are brought to bear in a real-time, real-world articulation of complex computer synthesis.  Under the guidance of job supervisors, thousands of hammer blows become waves of tonal murmur, threaded with rustlings of nails and occasional snarls of righteous indignation.  The performers are organized into work crews with lists of tasks and closely timed schedules, and arranged in a circle around the audience.  Toolbelts, sweat and lunchboxes are part of the score.”

I interviewed Doug to discuss Music for 100 Carpenters, his other works, as well as his current life in Berlin, Germany.  The interview is posted on my blog at beckermusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/interview-with-douglas-henderson.html

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A worthy gig for any of you, and honest labor to boot. If you’re near, bring your gear!

by Steve Layton
Bang on a Can, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Film Music, Interviews, Los Angeles

Goldberg on (UNTITLED)

Adam Goldberg
Adam Goldberg

(UNTITLED), an original film satire of New York’s avant-garde art scene, will appear in theaters across the nation this fall. By poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of 21st century Bohemia, (UNTITLED) introduces American audiences to some of the best that contemporary art has to offer, notably a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who merges the artistic expressions of the composer protagonist with his own musical voice.

(UNTITLED) revolves around melancholy composer Adrian (Adam Goldberg) and his whirlwind affair with a Chelsea gallerist (Marley Shelton), who unbeknownst to Adrian sells vacuous commercial works to high-paying corporate clients. The film explores the idea of true art and the question of integrity lost through commercialism – all with tongue in cheek. At the beginning, Adrian’s music comprises cliché contemporary classical music elements, such as crinkling paper and breaking glass. Once his perspective and emotions achieve depth and insight through his blossoming romance, his music becomes more profound.

John Clare had a chance to send questions to both David Lang and Adam Goldberg. In the second part (part 1 is here with David Lang), John Clare finds out more about (UNTITLED) from its star, Adam Goldberg.

1. Often with a joke, there is some seriousness or truth behind it. Is there some truth to this movie even though there is some fun being poked?

Well, actually upon my last viewing of it, the second time I watched it with an audience, albeit at LACMA–the perfect audience–it seemed to have a real weight to it. The film sort of takes a turn once the absurdity is established I think. For me the film really has always been about this righteous indignation, this sort of defensiveness of one’s position–whether as an artist or a audience member or a critic or an art dealer, in this case–that really is front for enormous insecurity. These characters are all wayward and tend to overcompensate with very stringent , often absurd, points of view.

2. There are some outrageous sounds and art. How does your taste run in real life – in both “new concert music” and “art”?

I definitely have always been obsessed with sound and strange sounds and repetition, but usually incorporated into something melodic or hypnotic in some way. I have for a long time been a fan of Steve Reich–whose work began with simple tape loops and phasing of found material, but eventually he applied this process to beautiful symphonic pieces. I have also been a fan of some conceptual art, but usually when it engages the viewer, interacts with him or her in some way or tells a story. I don’t like things that seem to aim merely to shock or to alienate. Basically if it moves me or I can relate to it in some way then, well, I like it.

3. David Lang is a Pulitzer Prize winner and incredibly gifted composer, but unfortunately not a household name – how was he chosen for the movie, and how was collaboration with Untitled?

I believe Jonathan, the director, knew David from music school. He had an interesting job, both to score the film and create the ‘sound’ pieces our little group performs–though in the end it was so bizarrely structured and arranged that we could often only barely perform to playback so much of the “music” we’re making we actually are making. David also served I think as a bit of a consultant to Jonathan when he was writing this, creating my character. I love David’s music and this score is quite beautiful I think.

4. What is the possibility of Untitled 2, or Untitled – the Showtime series?

Ha!

5. There have been quite a few composers in pop culture these days, from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (Jason Segal) to “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” (Natalie Portman’s piano/composer) and the likes of Paul McCartney & Billy Joel writing new classical music. Is composition a new cool as nerds (think Big Bang Theory) are?

Hmmm….I’ve never thought “Big Bang Theory.” Well, I remember years ago Elvis Costello put out a sort of classical record with the Brodsky Quartet that was pretty innovative. Conversely, Philip Glass many many years ago started I think to incorporate a sort of popular music element–singing an so forth–into his music. I think there’s always been some overlap. I saw a great piece that a childhood friend of my girlfriend’s put on. Michael Einziger from Incubus of all things. It was fantastic, sort of Reich meets Bernard Hermann. I think there’s something that feels for lack of a better word “legitimate” about working with classical elements. I know that some of the stuff musically I’ve done musically, with my project LANDy, that I’ve been most proud of incorporates some classical elements–arrangements of strings and that sort of thing. Albeit I’m usually humming the arrangements like a crazy person to the poor violinists.

(UNTITLED) opens tomorrow, October 23rd, in a limited release; and the soundtrack is out already from Cantaloupe!

by John Clare
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism, Piano, Washington D.C.

Airmailing some catalogs via Amsterdam

Many of our regular s21 readers should be familiar with Amsterdam’s own Samuel Vriezen, both as a visitor here on these pages, as well as a composer selected to be on both of our past s21-produced concerts. Samuel’s always been a highly active explorer, whether in his own or others’ music, poetry, concert production, cross-continent discussions with artists of all stripes, you name it. With a strong interest in Language Poetry, it’s not surprising that his explorations have led him to what I might call “Language Music”.

No composer could better typify this kind of piece than ex-pat American (and former Village Voice critic) Tom Johnson. For quite some time, Johnson’s own brand of ‘minimalism’ has produced a whole series of stunning pieces, often from the most basic and transparent idea and means. The beauty of Johnson’s work is that he’ll take some very simple starting concept or question and, without trying to finesse or “art it up”, follow the process all the way through in the most natural and even mundane fashion. What’s fascinating is how such a simple starting point can end up creating it’s own rich and absorbing musical experience.

Case in point: Johnson’s 1986 piece titled simply The Chord Catalog. The work consists of all 8178 chords you can play using the 13 tones of one full octave, from the 78 2-note chords up to the one 13-tone cluster. The progression unfolds on the piano with absolute regularity, both through the notes and through time. While this may sound dry as dust, what happens over time is a strange tension, anticipation, and eventually even a bit of rich disorientation. It’s also incredibly difficult to perform; Johnson himself had such a hard time mastering it that he was pretty sure there’d be no one to follow. But along came Samuel, who became enamoured enough with the piece to put in all the work necessary to not only master it, but to surpass the master in accuracy and speed.

And now there’s a chance for you to hear Samuel bring his performance of The Chord Catalog to our own shores. He’s winging his way across the pond to give two performances here: the first in Washington D.C. this Monday, October 26th at 7:30pm at Ward Recital Hall, Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Ave. NE); the second in New York City on Wednesday, October 28th, 8:30PM at Roulette (20 Green St.).

The Concerts are titled “Chord Catalogues” because also on the bill is Samuel’s own 2006 piece Within Fourths/Within Fifths, a work that forms a kind of natural extension to the Johnson.

Just to complete the hat-trick, Samuel also has the world premiere of his piece Sept Germes Cristallins at a concert Friday, october 30, 8PM, presented by the Ensemble Lunatics At Large at the Mannes College of Music (Mannes College Concert Hall, 150 W. 85th St) in a bill that includes Chen Yi, György Kurtág, Ryan Brown, Luciano Berio, William Funk and John Harbison. About the new work, Samuel tells me it “was written at the request of the Flemish literary review, Deus Ex Machina, as a contribution for their Valéry issue. Given that I am a poet and a composer with some background in mathematics, the idea was that I would somehow respond musically to one of the fragments from Valéry’s Cahiers – the extraordinary and humungous collection of thoughts and notes that he diligently was penning down every single morning for many decades. I chose a brief text that compares a sudden memory to the sudden crystalization that can happen in an over-saturated solution, because it suggested musical textures to me. It’s a piece in which every musician has lots of freedoms, with the soprano in control of the pacing, and every now and then a sudden fractal canon crops up.”

So if you’re in any of those neighborhoods then, drop by for some truly astounding music, and say “hi” personally to one of the nicest minds I know (for an in-your-face Dutch guy, that is 😉 … ).

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Online, Photos

The coffee-table book, web version

On those longer, cooler, grayer days, stuck inside with a little time on our hands, one of the nicer pastimes for the music buff is to wander through the Flickr music photo pools. Two especially for the contemporary musician: the Classical Music pool and the Experimental Music pool. Between them, with some thousands of amateur-to-pro photographers clicking away in all corners of the world, you can get a feel for the people, activities and concerns that make our music live and breathe today. Often, a striking image will mention a name or two that will get me started googling (or is that “binging” now?), and lead me to some wonderful composer, performer or event that I might otherwise have never encountered. But more than anything it’s just that glimpse of all the people in that bigger world, who have our same shared passion and work at it every day, that puts a little smile on my lips while browsing.

by Steve Layton
Canada, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, Music Events

Copyright/Copyleft, Vancouver B.C.

For a lot of you Vancouver, British Columbia is one of those “way out there” places.  But coming from its U.S. “way out there” sister Seattle, I know that the art and music scenes are anything but moribund (though the Canadian government seems well on its way to getting in line with the venerable U.S. tradition of “screw the arts, let them find their own damn money!”).

One of the things keeping it hopping is Vancouver New Music, whose 2009-10 season is underway. As part of said season, VNM is presenting a fairly mind-stretching festival, the 21st through 24th of October, titled “Copyright/Copyleft.”  The four-day festival will rely heavily (but not only!) on electronic musicians, many of whom appropriate and transform existing music, video and audio material into their own work.

The line-up is adventurous: Andrew O’Connor‘s large analog tape-loop soundscapes; Jackson 2Bears‘ remix and re-narrative of American Native cultures; grandaddy of “Plunderphonics” John Oswald, Eric Hedekar‘s; Jake Hardy‘s and Aja Rose Bond‘s extended-DJ techniques; Percussion/improv/thinking-man legend Chris Cutler; People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett‘s) disjunct enviroments; Sonarchy‘s “miserabilism”; Scanner‘s highly influential electronica; David Shea‘s unique mix of electro and acoustic; Mark Hosler‘s (Negativland) film, presentation and critique of mass media and culture; and Uri Caine‘s phenomenal reworking of the music of composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mahler.

The VNM Festival website will give you all the details about dates, locations, times, tickets, as well as info on and preview sounds from each artist.  While you’re over there, do check out the rest of Vancouver New Music’ great season, too.  Maybe you’ll be able to find some time come and visit the excellent stuff that happens “way out there.”

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Events, Experimental Music, San Francisco

The Noises of Art

Many of us can recall a time, back in the day, when we brought cups of strong coffee to class and heard a professor tell us about the distant early days of “new music”.  Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Italy), Luigi Russolo created his hand-cranked noise intoners – the intonarumori – and wrote his treatise, The Art of Noises, which would ultimately inspire a marvelous British new-wave band to contribute their song, Moments in Love, to a zillion compilations of makeout music.  But I digress.

Here in San Francisco we are fortunate enough to have a Russolo scholar and composer, Luciano Chessa, to oversee the creation of 16 authentic intonarumori and curate a concert of original and newly commissioned scores especially for the noise intoners.  His efforts are all coming together this Friday night in a highly anticipated concert presented by Performa and SFMOMA with the Italian Cultural Institute and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Original scores by Luigi Russolo and Paolo Buzzi will share the evening with new compositions by Blixa Bargeld; John Butcher and Gino Robair; Luciano Chessa; James Fei; Ellen Fullman; Carla Kihlstedt and Mattias Bossi; Ulrich Krieger; Pablo Ortiz; Mike Patton; the sfSoundGroup; Elliott Sharp; Text of Light; and Theresa Wong.  Curator Chessa will perform along with many of the composers listed above, plus Ellen Fullman and ensemble players from Magik*Magik Orchestra.

Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners starts at 8:00 p.m. in the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$30 general and $10-$25 for lucky members of SFMOMA and partner institutions, students, and seniors. Tickets are available online through ybca.org/tickets or by phone at 415.978.2787.

by Polly Moller
Bang on a Can, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Interviews

David Lang on (UNTITLED)

(UNTITLED), an original film satire of New York’s avant-garde art scene, will appear in theaters across the nation this fall. By poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of 21st century Bohemia, (UNTITLED) introduces American audiences to some of the best that contemporary art has to offer, notably a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who merges the artistic expressions of the composer protagonist with his own musical voice.

(UNTITLED) revolves around melancholy composer Adrian (Adam Goldberg) and his whirlwind affair with a Chelsea gallerist (Marley Shelton), who unbeknownst to Adrian sells vacuous commercial works to high-paying corporate clients. The film explores the idea of true art and the question of integrity lost through commercialism – all with tongue in cheek. At the beginning, Adrian’s music comprises cliché contemporary classical music elements, such as crinkling paper and breaking glass. Once his perspective and emotions achieve depth and insight through his blossoming romance, his music becomes more profound.

John Clare had a chance to send questions to both David Lang and Adam Goldberg. In the first post, here are Lang’s answers about (UNTITLED):

1. Often with a joke, there is some seriousness or truth behind it. Is there some truth to this movie even though there is some fun being poked?

There is a lot of truth in this movie, mostly about how people in the arts become passionately committed to something they believe in that may look unbelievable from the outside. I think that creative commitment is captured very well, as is the distance between the committed people and the people watching the committed people.

2. How cool is it for the composer to “get the girl” in this movie? Did it influence your music for the film?

Getting the girl didn’t influence my thinking in the movie, although it didn’t hurt. The progression of the character musically is that he begins by making music only for himself, because that is how large his world view is; when he meets the girl his senses and optimism and maybe even his idea of audience expand, and his music changes accordingly. I definitely tried to make that shift happen in the music. (more…)

by John Clare