Tomorrow would have been John Cage’s 95th birthday and to mark the occasion, Avant Media Performance is staging two multimedia realizations of works by Cage at the The Kitchen, 512 West 19th St. beginning at 8. Four6 (for any way of producing sounds) will be performed in an electro-acoustic realization featuring Patrick Davison, video; Randy Gibson, electronics and percussion; Mike Rugnetta, guitar; and Megan Schubert, voice. The second half of the concert promises to be a real hootenanny with Winter Music, Atlas Eclipticalis, and Song Books realized for singers, actors, videos, and lighting being performed simultaneously. Randy Gibson’s “One Wall – for
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: Fuhong SHI (b. 1976 — China / Canada) Official blurb: “A native of Shenyang, Fuhong learned to play the piano at the age of eight, and began to study composition at fourteen. She graduated from the music school affiliated with the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in 1995, where she received the highest entrance exam score on the National Examinations for admission to the Central Conservatory
Read moreMarvin Rosen has a terrific Classical Discoveries program coming up next Wednesday. His guests from 8:30 am until 11 will be the legendary Frank J. Oteri and…umm, me. That assumes, of course, neither of us oversleeps and misses the train to Princeton. (Neither Frank nor I can operate an automobile, which is a hallmark of the true New Yorker.) As many you know, I’m sure, Wednesday is the birthday of an unlikely pair of composers–John Cage and Amy Beach. What only Frank would know is that it is also the birthday of 1952 Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Kubik and 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Spratlan. Marvin has
Read moreOn August 16, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martin Brabbins, presented a late-night concert in honor of Sir John Drummond, former director of the Proms, who died last year. The program consisted of three works which he had commissioned for the Proms: Veni, veni, Emmanuel by James MacMillan, Chantefluers et Chantefables by Witold Lutoslawski, and Panic by Harrison Birtwistle. (I was unfortunately late for the concert and missed the MacMillan.) The Lutoslawski work is a set of nine songs for soprano and a small orchestra, setting poems for children by the French surrealist poet Robert Desnos, whose poems
Read moreIRIS By evidence (stephan moore + scott smallwood) Deep Listening (DL 35-2007) This two-disc collection offers an audio CD with works by evidence, and a DVD that uses this audio in collaboration with videos from “video artists, VJs, vusicians, live video performers, and time-based visualists…” Successful electronic/computer music is multi-dimensional. Chamber &Host (track 4, audio; track 1, DVD) offers a sonic depth and intricacy that allows detail and line to be felt and heard. The companion video by David Lublin & Jack Turner is simple and mesmerizing, hooking me as though it had a plot with a twist. IRIS moves
Read moreIn England the last Monday in August is a Bank Holiday, and is more or less equivalent to Labor Day in the U.S. in being the last holiday of the summer. The Proms for August Bank Holiday Monday usually has a matinee, and the whole day usually has a more populist, is not popular- music, slant (the evening concert this year was devoted to the singer Michael Ball and was a concert of Broadway-type songs). The afternoon concert, billed as a family concert and presumably intended to be especially appealing to children, was the occasion of the first performance of
Read moreI’m sure I wasn’t the only S21 reader pleased when Ennio Morricone received a lifetime achievement Oscar earlier this year. Recently he chatted with CNN. At one point he advises young composers to focus on writing absolute music: if you’re a film composer without a film, you’re not really a composer at all. Which begs the question: any film-less film composers peddling their misconceived craft these days? Play nice, now.
Read moreAs those of you who come round here regularly know, I’m not a composer or musician but I am an experienced listener with limited patience for things that take too long to get to the point. As a practical matter, that means that music I’ve never heard before has about 30 seconds to grab my attention. I’ll listen to the whole thing but if doesn’t have that “Holy shit” thing happening in the first few bars, chances are the earth is never going to move for me. Call it the Jerry Principle: musical masterpieces announce their masterpiece-ness in 16 bars or less. Go ahead, prove
Read moreRodney has been doing such a great job with the Proms that it’s given me time to finish one of my new projects–the Cleantech Collective, a social community for people who believe there is serious money to be made in cleaning up the planet which, of course, is the most persuasive argument for doing so. (See Tragedy of the Commons for details). Also, having this thing with the lower back. When I sit down, it takes me about three minutes to get vertical again. Who wants to be Rodney next week while I consult my physical therapist?
Read moreThe Prom concert on Tuesday night was given by the BBC Symphony and John Adams, with pianist Olli Mustonen. The big event of the evening was the first performance of Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony, a big instrumental piece based on scenes from his opera of the same name. In this project he was consciously following the example of Hindemith with Mathis der Mahler in not merely assembling a sort of suite from the opera, but recomposing the material into a related but nonetheless independent symphonic composition. In a pre-concert talk Adams said that the task had been much more difficult
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