Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Orchestral, Orchestras, San Francisco

SF Symphony serves up Mason Bates world premiere

[Ed. note: Polly Moller is not just busy telling you about concerts like the one below — while she’s out there pushing for the other guy, I want to mention the she herself has what looks like a great gig, with Pamela Z and Jane Rigler, May 17th at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa Street (between Harrison & Alabama), SF. tickets are $10, and you can see more here. Go, Polly! …OK, on with the show…]

Mason BatesSequenza21 readers are a quirky and unpredictable bunch.  But I’m willing to bet that any of them who show up on Wednesday, May 20, Friday, May 22, or Saturday, May 23 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco will not spend the first half fidgeting around, waiting for the marvelous Yuja Wang to take the stage, so they can text their friends about what kind of gown she’s wearing.  No, our readers will be on the edges of their seats ready for the world premiere of The B-Sides by Mason Bates!

The internet got a taste of Bates’ new work on April 15th, when the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, led by San Francisco’s own Michael Tilson Thomas, played the final movement, “Warehouse Medicine”, in Carnegie Hall.  Bates explains in the program notes that his five-movement piece is “informed by the grooves of electronica as well as the modern masters of orchestral sonority, and might also be said to inhabit the ‘flipside’ of the symphonic world – a place where drum-n-bass rhythms meet fluorescent orchestral textures.”

The B-Sides is dedicated to MTT, who commissioned it.  The maestro invited the composer backstage during a concert intermission in November 2007, “between Tchaikovsky and Brahms,” Bates recalls.  “He suggested a collection of five pieces focusing on texture and sonority—perhaps like Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. Since my music had largely gone in the other direction—large works that bathed the listener in immersive experiences—the idea intrigued me. I had often imagined a suite of concise, off-kilter symphonic pieces that would incorporate the grooves and theatrics of electronica in a highly focused manner.”

Something else Sequenza21 readers are likely to do, if they attend the Friday, May 22 show, is stick around for Davies After Hours. It’ll be hard to resist, with Bates morphing into his alter-ego, DJ Masonic, and joining SF Symphony Resident Conductor Benjamin Schwartz to host a hybrid concert/reception they call Mercury Lounge: Mercury Soul Comes to Davies. DJs and chamber ensembles will offer their reflections on the night’s concert…which oh, by the way, includes Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Opus 63.

Tickets are available online, and also by phone from the San Francisco Symphony Box Office at (415) 864-6000.

by Polly Moller
CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Other Minds, Recordings

Between the Rocking Cradles

Given the rarity of records and performances of the music of Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) through the 1970s, my first encounters with him were like everyone else: references in the “populist music of the 30s and 40s” section of 20th-century history books, and as arranger of the American version of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera that we all knew from the old (& wonderful) original-cast recording. Works such as his iconic The Cradle will Rock and Airborne Symphony were still talked about, but quite hard to track down and hear. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that revivals and reassesments began, with good biographies coming even later.

Though his trajectory parallels Weill’s or Copland’s in some way, moving from serious, cutting-edge classical to more readily accessible forms derived from popular music and musical theater, Blitzstein stuck with the agitator’s role to the end: works with a strong social message, whether against dictators of fascism or capitalism, and solidarity with the dispossesed and outsider. His reward as a political outsider was to be blacklisted in the red-scare 50s; and as a sexual outsider (though married, Blitzstein was rather openly gay) to be beaten to death in Martinique.

But before all that, there was the 20-something student from a well-to-do Jewish family, studying in Europe with both Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger. This younger self, as John Jannson’s Blitzstein website writes, was “a self-proclaimed and unrepentant artistic snob who firmly believed that true art was only for the intellectual elite. He was vociferous in denouncing composers – in particular Kurt Weill – whom he felt debased their standards to reach a wider public.”

That young, arty-elitist composer is the one that our good friends at Other Minds have set out to document, with a new CD hitting the shelves May 12th. Titled First Life, it contains a number of unpublished and barely-heard works from the late 20s and early 30s, given passionate performances by pianist Sarah Cahill and the Del Sol String Quartet. This is smart and energetic music, filled with then-experimental flourishes, and well worth putting on your shelf or in your playlist.

WNYC’s Sara Fishko recently profiled the CD, as well as the rest of the great Other Minds CD catalog, on her The Fishko Files program; it’s still up for listening here.

by Steve Layton
Chicago, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Percussion, Performers

These Windy City Kids Are Wicked Good

Since 1995 Chicago’s Percussion Scholarship Program has been shaping all kinds of mallet-whackers from grades 3 through 12. The program, under the direction of CSO percussionist Patricia Dash and Douglas Waddell, percussionist with Lyric Opera of Chicago, with amazing direction and arrangements by Cliff Colnot, has been growing something phenomenal. The kids’ musicianship and commitment seems to me every bit as stunning as Dudamel’s Venezuelan El Sistema stuff everybody’s been going gaga over. Don’t believe me? Just take in our young crew’s monster ride through Colnot’s arrangement of Dimitri Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32W2IBkVqUk[/youtube]

Incredible. The group’s big spring concert is coming up again this May 17th, 1:30 pm in Buntrock Hall at the Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Avenue. And it’s free, meaning not much better value can be had for a Sunday’s afternoon.

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

Sunday and Monday: Donald Hall at Works and Process

Works & Process celebrates Donald Hall this weekend. The 14th U.S. Poet Laureate will read and discuss his work.

New musical settings of Hall’s poetry by Drew Baker, George Lewis, David Del Tredici, Joshua Schmidt and Charles Wuorinen are performed for the first time. Performers include a host of New York’s finest: Mary Nessinger, Tom Meglioranza, Lauren Flanigan, Judith Bettina, James Goldsworthy, Moran Katze, Fred Sherry, Peter Kolkay, David Del Tredici, and Lois Martin.

Musical Premieres – settings of Donald Hall (Works & Process Commission)

DREW BAKER: THE SEA (mezzo-soprano & cello)

DAVID DEL TREDICI: THE POEM &THE MASTER (soprano & piano)

GEORGE LEWIS: THE PAINTED BED (tenor & viola)

JOSHUA SCHMIDT: ROUTINE (baritone & bass clarinet)

CHARLES WUORINEN: MOON CLOCK (baritone & bassoon)

Sun and Mon, May 10 and 11, 7:30 pm

The Peter B. Lewis Theater / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street

Subway – 4, 5, 6 train to 86th Street / Bus – M1, M2, M3, or M4 bus on Madison or Fifth Avenue

$30 General / $25 Guggenheim Members / $10 Students (25 and under with valid student ID)

(212) 423-3587, M-F, 1–5 PM or visit www.worksandprocess.org

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

All living composers, all the time

Del Sol String Quartet

Or at least it sure seems that way, when you’re dealing with the Del Sol String Quartet. San Francisco’s longtime champions of new music have a drool-worthy concert on tap for this Friday, May 8th, entitled Mestizaje. Of the four contemporary quartets scheduled for the evening, three are new pieces written for Del Sol, and two are world premieres.  Drool away:

  • Tania León (b. 1943, Cuba): [String Quartet No. 1] (2009, world premiere)
  • Paul Yeon Lee (b. 1970, Korea): “Ari, Ari… ari” (2009, world premiere)
  • Philip Glass (b. 1937): String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
  • Linda Catlin Smith (b. 1957, USA): “Gondola” (String Quartet No. 4) (2007)

Composers Tania León and Paul Yeon Lee will be there in person to answer questions at the post-concert reception. You can also meet the Del Sol members – violinists Kate Stenberg and Rick Shinozaki, cellist Hannah D’Addario-Berry, and violist Charlton Lee (who’s known as “hunky Charlton” behind his back, and no, I won’t reveal my sources).

The concert begins at 8 p. m. in the Presidio of San Francisco’s Main Post Chapel, located on Fisher Loop near the Golden Gate Club. There’s free parking, and if you would rather not drive, you can take the Muni 29 Sunset bus. Tickets are $25.00 for adults, $20.00 for seniors, and $12.00 for students and kids, all sold at the door.

by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras, Performers

Review — S.E.M. Excitment at Tully

Music by Wolff, Sciarrino, Kotik, Carter, and Ligeti / Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Ostravská Banda, FLUX Quartet; Petr Kotik, Conductor /Alice Tully Hall, May 6, 2009

Conductor/composer Petr Kotik has been an impressive advocate for contemporary music in New York for forty years. Residing in the US since 1969, he has been running the S.E.M. ensemble since 1970: performing a wide range of repertoire, commissioning works and cultivating successive generations of young players into seasoned new music performers. S.E.M.’s orchestral unit has been active since ’92; Kotik’s also been running Ostravská Banda, an international chamber orchestra comprised of S.E.M. players and young European counterparts, since ’05. Both of these groups, as well as the FLUX string quartet, another youngish ensemble devoted to new music, were featured on Wednesday night’s Tully Hall performance: a program of brand new chamber music and three contemporary works that seem destined for the core repertory.

Christian Wolff’s Trio for Robert Ashley (commissioned for the concert) employed three of the FLUX members – violinist Tom Chiu, violist Max Mandel, and cellist Felix Fan – in a fragmentary multi-movement piece. Indeed, its juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated musical materials set the tone for an evening devoted to unorthodox formal presentation. Sustained notes were set against skittering, Webernian motifs. Single lines evaporated into pensive rests while vigorous tutti were all too ephemeral; evaporating into the silence from when they came.

In its US premiere, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Vento D’Ombra made quite an impression. Another work which employed silences as well as fragmentary gestures as signatures, it focused on tiny musical cells – mostly dyads and trichords – as well as a cornucopia of special effects. Wind and brass players breathed through mouthpieces without fingering notes, strings played scordatura and microtones. The whole was a meticulously shaded pointillist canvas of brief gestures, undulating slides, and pianissimo staccato dabs.

Kotik’s own String Quartet was cast in a lengthy single movement. Impeccably performed by FLUX, it was centered on an ambling, long-breathed melody played by the quartet in unison (later in octaves). Only gradually did this evolve into two-voice counterpoint, with a violin countermelody that took on greater urgency. Tutti passages ratcheted up the tension quotient still further, evocative of some of the brilliant polyphonic passages from Ligeti’s second quartet. The idée fixe unison passage returned at pivotal junctures, requiring precise coordination and tuning on the part of FLUX: both were readily supplied.

Elliott Carter’s recent ‘second piano concerto,’ Dialogues, is a fascinating companion piece to the monolithic concerto from the 1960s. Written for a much smaller orchestra, it allows the soloist to take on an enlarged role. In a clever inverse of its larger precursor, the pianist often overwhelms the ensemble, cowing it with brilliant virtuosity. Daan Wandewalle was an excellent protagonist, supplying brilliant cadenzas, thunderous verticals, and an overarching sense of shaping and musicality. (more…)

by Christian Carey
Big Band, CDs, Concerts, Downtown, New Amsterdam, New York

Not-So-Secret Society

You can only keep a secret society secret so long, and with our old S21 pal Darcy James Argue‘s new CD release that time has come.  Infernal Machines is out now on New Amsterdam Records, and to celebrate the kick-off DJA’s Secret Society will be performing the music from the CD Friday at Galapagos Arts Space (16 Main St. @ Water St., Brooklyn / Door – 9pm, Show – 10pm, $10).

Troy Collins advance-reviewed it at AllAboutJazz.com:

Drawing inspiration from classic stalwarts like the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra as well as pioneering post-rock bands like Explosions In The Sky and Tortoise, Argue tastefully incorporates electric guitars, Fender Rhodes and electric bass into traditional big band instrumentation, extending the innovations of such visionaries as Don Ellis, Gil Evans and George Russell.
Straddling the pastoral opulence of Maria Schneider’s Orchestra and the visceral brio of Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra and Satoko Fujii’s various big bands, Argue has succeeded at creating a magnificent chimera. His harmonically rich blend of contrapuntal horn voicings, atmospheric electronic textures and post-minimalist rhythms surpass the early fusion experiments of his predecessors, yielding a fully integrated sound world as current as it is timeless.
A masterful tunesmith, his dramatic sense of pacing borders on the cinematic, and his instinct for arranging multiple voices into colorful pitch sets exudes kaleidoscopic detail worthy of Ellington.

Drawing inspiration from classic stalwarts like the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra as well as pioneering post-rock bands like Explosions In The Sky and Tortoise, Argue tastefully incorporates electric guitars, Fender Rhodes and electric bass into traditional big band instrumentation, extending the innovations of such visionaries as Don Ellis, Gil Evans and George Russell [….] Straddling the pastoral opulence of Maria Schneider’s Orchestra and the visceral brio of Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra and Satoko Fujii’s various big bands, Argue has succeeded at creating a magnificent chimera. His harmonically rich blend of contrapuntal horn voicings, atmospheric electronic textures and post-minimalist rhythms surpass the early fusion experiments of his predecessors, yielding a fully integrated sound world as current as it is timeless.

If you want to get primed and pumped beforehand, New Amsterdam is letting you stream the whole CD online. The musical cast is stellar, the pieces are grand, the recording immaculate. Way to go Darcy; here’s to many more words like those above, now and in all the Machines to come.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

ADORNO Ensemble takes on student work

ADORNO EnsembleWhen I was an undergrad at San Francisco State University in the late 1980s, we didn’t have a new music ensemble-in-residence. Like many music majors then and now, we relied on our fellow students to perform our pieces, and didn’t have a professional-level new music group serving as role models on campus.

All that has since changed, and the SFSU School of Music and Dance has the ADORNO Ensemble to take this challenge on. The group has spent the last few years impressing local audiences and getting cordial reviews, including this one from San Jose Mercury News music critic Richard Scheinin: “A crackerjack new music band that plays with conviction and vitality and blows the dust off classical music.” In 2007 they won an ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award, and launched an online composers’ workshop at www.scorexchange.org.

Clarinetist Jeffrey Anderle, violinist Graeme Jennings, cellist Gianna Abondolo, contrabassist Bill Everett, percussionist Loren Mach and Christopher Jones on piano will team up this Friday, May 8th, to realize that most un-dusty kind of classical music – student compositions. Five fortunate young artists will get what every emerging composer needs so badly: a professional performance of their work, plus a decent recording. Here’s the program:

  • Gamaliel Galindo: Among the Multitude for violin, clarinet and piano
  • Ryan Ike: Thermodynamica for percussion and contrabass
  • Natan Rodriguez: Piano Trio for violin, cello and piano
  • Allegra Mitchell: Hush, Hush Sweet Faire: A Set of Miniatures for clarinet, percussion and contrabass
  • Aaron Nudelman: Unforeseen Circumstances for clarinet, violin, cello and piano

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in Knuth Hall in the Creative Arts Building on the San Francisco State University campus at 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco. General audiences get in for $10.00, students and seniors for $5.00.

by Polly Moller
Contemporary Classical, Housekeeping, Online

Many hands (and ears) make light work

Being an all-volunteer gig, Sequenza 21 has always relied on a cast of characters — almost all musicians themselves — that lend a hand as they can, but often end up caught in a whirl of other demands. And because based in NYC, there are times when it gets just a little too easy to report on all the events happening around the city, and get a little sidetracked about keeping tabs on so many wonderful musicians and concerts elsewhere in this country and beyond. So every once in a while the call goes out to some of the many good aquaintances we’ve made, asking if this or that person might like to have a go at sharing what’s up in their neck of the metaphorical woods, both geographically and stylistically. I’d like to take a second to introduce, and thank, some of the new contributors that you’ll spot around here in the coming weeks:

Hanging down here with me in Houston, TX, Elliot Cole.

Harrying the hoipoloi from Birmingham, England, Ed Lawes.

Hustling through the heaving masses of San Francisco and the Bay Area, Polly Moller.

And holding the fort in Kansas City, MO, Scott Unrein.

(And though he’s been around a few weeks already I’d be remiss to not give a quick shout to James Holt.)

They’ll be joining all our established crew you’ve grown accustomed to reading. These are just the first wave of new voices, as part of our constant effort keep you up to speed on living, breathing new music and musicians, no matter what & where. On with the party!

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Thanks for All the Fish

As stated in Oberlin College’s ‘Oberwiki’:

“…to enter you needed to take a sugar pill with a dot on it…and you rolled the dice, cause 1/3 of the dots were LSD…”

Yep, that’s our (currently) eldest composition teacher speaking of Oberlin’s glory days when he was but a wee lad out of grad school. Randy Coleman is many things, best summed up as “a real post-modern feminist old-time patriarch from Virginia.” He is most feared for his red pen marks on freshperson’s melody assignments and for the fabled “piece-per-day” routine with private students. His music contains much variety, with each new piece vastly different than what had come before. Also, as a result, he takes a long time in writing these pieces.

For the past 15-20 years, every course that Randy has taught has been called “Postmodernism.” He has taught at Oberlin since 1965, placing him as the conservatory professor with the second-longest post at Oberlin, second only to David Boe.

After forty-three years of showing impractical, starry-eyed composition students how it’s really done, Randy Coleman is moving on. A fine appreciation is here; On Friday May 8th at 8pm, The Contemporary Music Ensemble there is giving an all-Coleman farewell concert bash, featuring Bellagio (2007-09), a concerto for piano and large ensemble with Ran Duan, piano; Apparitions (2003) for string ensemble and piano, Tom Fosnocht, piano with videodance by Nusha Martynuk and Carter McAdams;  Soundprint III (1973),  in memoriam Ezra Pound for dancer and percussion, Nusha Martynuk, dancer; The Great Lalula (1988) for voice and chamber ensemble, Molly Netter, voice, with dance choreographed by Nusha Martynuk and performed by Cleveland GroundWorks Dance Company. It’s at Hall Auditorium, Room ID_1 @ 67 North Main Street, Oberlin, OH, and absolutely free.  If you’re close come on by; this composer gave in a big way, and it seems only fair to give back.

by Steve Layton