Sequenza21

The festivities continue at the newly reopened Alice Tully Hall tonight, with a concert they’re calling “New York, New Music, New Hall.” The evening gets underway with a preshow at 5:30 in the outer lobby where ETHEL will play a piece called Space by Phil Kline.  The sold-out main event starts at 7:00 and features a smorgasbord of performances by Alarm Will Sound, the Bang On A Can All-Stars (with special guest Glenn Kotche of Wilco), and Steve Reich and Musicians with Synergy Vocals.  AWS is playing music by Derek Bermel, Oscar Bianchi, and Caleb Burhans.  The All-Stars are playing music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Glenn Kotche.  Steve Reich and his posse are doing Music for 18 Musicians.

I asked a couple of the composers to tell me something interesting about their new pieces.

David Lang says:

My piece tonight – SUNRAY – came out of a giant case of writers block. Every summer, Bang on a Can runs a music institute at Mass MoCA in the Berkshires, and we teach there and hang out and write music and work with students from around the globe.  I was supposed to make a new piece for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and I didn’t know what to write, and there was a rush on – it was supposed to be a surprise present for my dad on his 80th birthday, so I had to be on time and do a good job. The pressure was on.  Everyday, I would just stare out of my apartment window, trying to think of something worthy to do but nothing seemed to work. The apartment was next to a dry cleaners – the store was called SUN CLEANERS and their sign had these stark, intertwined rays of the sun shooting out, in bright red and yellow, and I would just stare endlessly at it, trying to think about music. Feeling ever more miserable with my deadline fast approaching I just looked up and thought – write what you know.  And so I did.

David is a modest guy and a great composer, and I have to admire his willingness to admit, on the record, to the banality of the compositional process.  I haven’t heard the piece, but past experience tells me to expect good things.

Caleb Burhans says:

Let’s see. I was commissioned by Lincoln center to write this this past summer for aws. I finished “oh ye of little faith… (do you know where your children are?)” at the end of august. I had the advantage of knowing what else would be on our program so i composed the piece trying to show off the groups strenghths which were not featured in the other works. The title is a reflection on having sung too many weelkes and morely madrigals (more or less) and the subtitle comes from “it’s 10pm…” and also the idea of “children” of god. The piece is for a pretty standard chamber orchestra with the exception of flugelhorn in place of trumpet and the addition of e. guitar & e. bass.

Caleb is playing guitar.  The piece is being premiered tonight, but I was lucky enough to hear a preview (special thanks to the Nabi Gallery, which made it possible) and I can tell you that it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Anybody know a good classical or new music video blogger?   I may have a pretty neat gig for them. Send me a note or leave a note below.   sequenza21@gmail.com

The LA Times had an encouraging piece a few days ago about the Obama family’s interest in the non-pop arts (thanks to Alex Ross for the link).  Apparently the Obamas recently attended an Alvin Ailey performance at the Kennedy Center, and the First Family has a long history of participation in, and patronage of, dance, classical music, museums, etc.  The article, however, is chock full of some appaling elitism.  Let’s take a look.
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Would be in record stores on March 3 if there were such a thing as record stores.  Available here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxKqg0Fwsro[/youtube]

Some enterprising folks have put together an updatable master list of artists, musicians and bands on Twitter. (Yes, now you too can tell Jimmy Eat World what you had for breakfast).  Why don’t one of you geeky types with some time on your hands rush over to Google Docs and create a spread sheet where Composers, Real Musicians (like the ones who read S21) and fellow travelers can add their Twitter addresses.  We’ll do a link

If you tend to enjoy “litterchur” as well as classical music, you also tend to become aware that authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ezra Pound, and Paul Bowles were intermittently serious about composing music.

One I did not know about, but was brought to our attention in an email received today, was Anthony Burgess. Always to be known best for his — by no means favorite — novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess composed more than 175 works, as well as a few opera libretti.

Which brings us to the Harry Ransom Center, an artistic and cultural archive at the University of Texas in Austin, where this Friday evening (the 26th) there’s a concert featuring Burgess’ music, interspersed with readings from his own “litterchur”. Even if you’re not in the Austin area, never fear: it’s also being webcast live. Full information on both the concert and webcast can be had at this page.

Feel free to remind us in the comments, of any other musical authors that slipped our minds.

Our always adventuresome friends at Starkland have outdone themselves this time with an ambitious  65-minute studio composition by Phil Kline commissioned specifically for high-resolution surround sound and DVD.  Around the World in a Daze offers Kline’s trademark boombox choirs, as well as (it says here) “an ethereal Ethel string quartet, a weird madrigal, hyper-dense bells (hundreds of thousands at one point), richly mournful multi-tracked vocals, soaring violinistics from Todd Reynolds, and an immersive environment of 15,000 African gray parrots.”

I’m a big fan of innovative packaging (this is one of my all-time favorite books) and Daze is an amazing example of cool presentation. The custom‑designed double digipak includes an Extras disc with a composer-produced music video, a 30-minute interview with Kline and John Schaefer, as well as a 24-page booklet.  Release date is March 24. (Yes, I know I had 4 before.)

Ok, let’s have a contest.  The first person who can correctly guess the two-part 20th century piano sonata that I would like someone like Blair or Jenny or Sarah to play at my memorial service (not currently on the calendar, as far as I know) gets a copy of Around the World in a Daze.  One small catch–you have to write a little review that we’ll publish here on the frontpage so the rest of us will know what you thought.