Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #29

Our regular (well, semi-regular, at least until our dust has settled in Houston) 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, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Amos Elkana (b. 1967 — US / Israel)

Amos Elkana Born in Boston and a product of Berklee, the New England Conservatory and Bard, Amos now makes his home in Tel Aviv. He was one of the brave few “serious” composers that took the online plunge early; I first bumped into him and his music way back in 1999 or 2000 on the old MP3.com. His work has a touch of the modern Romantic, chromatic and sharp, though the lyrical is never too far away.

The website linked above gives a great introduction to Amos and his music. You can read about some of his composing techniques, snag a CD or two, and the works page contains numerous full-length MP3s of all kinds of pieces (some with PDFs of the scores), including his award-winning Arabic Lessons for three sopranos and chamber ensemble (though you shouldn’t forget to catch the piano piece Eight Flowers as well).

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Covent Garden

If I Swallow Anything Evil, Put Your Finger Down My Throat

Not quite sure what to make of this, but the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London has bought Opus Arte,  a leading for-profit maker and producer of performance DVDs.  The economics of high music culture have changed and more and more music groups of all sizes are moving toward control of production and distribution of their artistic “products,” as traditional avenues like record labels go belly up.  Where is our friend Pliable on this one?  

Here’s an update on David Salvage’s piece at the Harvard Club on June 11.  Starting time is 7pm, not 7:30 as we reported here yesterday.  The requirement to dress “spiffy” remains in effect. 

Update:  EMI has joined the other three major record labels in distributing music videos on YouTube.  In addition to making available clips, EMI and YouTube plan to develop a system that provides for consumer-created content that uses EMI music and video. Additionally, thanks to some new Apple software, the clips won’t just be available online but also on Apple TV — the device that lets people watch Internet video on TV screens

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

David Does Harvard

dsheadsht.pngAttention Boston (and NY) shoppers!  The world-premiere run of David Salvage’s String Quartet No. 2 is at hand.  The Arcturus Chamber Ensemble will do the honors, starting this Friday, June 1, at 8pm, at Adams House JCR, Harvard University.  They’ll do it again on Saturday night at 7:30 at the First Religious Society, Carlisle and, just to be on the safe side, one more time on Monday, June 11 at 7:30pm, at the Harvard Club, here in the Center of the Universe. 

There will be other works on all the programs, probably by dead white guys.  The concerts are free and open to the public although the Harvard Club requires you to “look spiffy,” according to Master Salvage.  I used to go there years ago with my old buddy Whit Stillman (whatever happened to him anyway) and it was pretty tight-assed then.  Probably hasn’t changed much.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

The Hybrid: The Two Worlds of Asha Srinivasan

“But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong? Whose life would he share? Whose language would he speak?” These words of Hermann Hesse depict Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) at a pivotal point in his quest to find purpose in the world. He will soon find it, seeing one where he once saw many, finding that the seemingly unrelated are related.

Later in the same book, Siddhartha, is a chapter called “By the River,” which inspired the title of Indian-American composer Asha Srinivasan’s newest work, By the River of Savathi, that will be premiered on June 2nd and 3rd, in New York City, as part of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Notable Women Festival: A Celebration of Women Composers”—result of winning first prize, among seventy-four applicants between the ages of twenty and thirty, in the BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) Foundation’s Women’s Music Commission. (more…)

by Patrick Durek
Contemporary Classical

The iGasm ‘Listener’ – A Potential Avant Garde Music Audience?

With news that Apple is suing the manufacturers of the iGasm it occurred to me last night that this perhaps was a possible new venue for contemporary music. I brought up the subject with a few friends over beers and the debate began, ‘What piece of avant garde music would be the ideal iGasm driver?’

Steve Reich? Philip Glass? Xenakis? Ferneyhough? The winner at the table seemed to be the genre of noize punk. Driving 200 BMP noise. But who knows? Maybe your music could be a hit at this latest of new music venues extended! What piece of music would drive the adventurous iGasm user into sensory overload?

by Jeff Harrington
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Born in the U.S.A.

Composers, painters, writers, the whole motley lot–have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. Timely financial interventions of the Lorenzo de’ Medici here, the Nadezda von Meck there, the Paul Sacher over there have greased the skids for the makers of many of the world’s great masterpieces.  Alas, those sort of patrons aren’t that plentiful nowadays and so a new “community” model of patronage has sprung up in which arts organizations pool their resources to commission new works.  I call it the “Biegel” method after S21 blogger and pianist Jeffrey Biegel.  I suspect he wasn’t the first to do it but he has turned joint financing of commissions into an art and a bustling career.

Joan Tower’s Made in America, which will be released by Naxos next Tuesday, is the latest example of the art of the deal, new music-style, and it adds an intriquing new wrinkle–a corporate sponsor. The project began as an attempt by 65 small orchestras from around the United States to pool their resources to commission a new work by a major American composer. With the help of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Meet The Composer, and Ford Motor Company Fund, (the latter patronage leading to the fortuitous branding, Ford Made in America), the project has brought Tower’s piece to towns nationwide.

Made in America, premiered in Glens Falls, New York in October 2005, and has received over 80 performances—making it perhaps the most-performed piece of new music in recent history—and is still making the rounds on the concert circuit.        

The new Naxos recording marks the first appearance of new Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin on record with the Nashville Symphony.

As for the music itself:  it’s not Ligeti but you knew that.  Made in America is more like a Copland chocolate plucked from a Whitman Americana Sampler.  Gooey and slightly pre-chewed, but you kind of like it.  

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

NEA Funding Boost?

According to the American Symphony Orchestra League, which has been coordinating an advocacy campaign on the subject, the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives  passed yesterday a $35 Million increase in the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.  According to ASOL, “This increase is significantly higher than the modest $4 million increase proposed by the President and represents a much more substantial restoration of NEA funds than has been proposed by the House committee since the NEA sustained a 40% budget cut more than a decade ago.”  I don’t see any confirmation of this on the committe’s website or on the news wires yet, but ASOL presumably has a reliable source.

The proposed increase is still a long way from becoming law.  If my understanding of the process is correct, the Appropriations Committe has to approve the recommendations of the Interior Committe, and then the budget has to be debated on the House floor and voted on, then debated and voted on in the Senate.  Chances are that different versions will be passed in the House and Senate, so it will then have to go to Conference, where the differences will be ironed out.  Then it goes back to both chambers and gets voted on again.  Then it goes to the President.  And at any point in here, the NEA funding increase could be used as a bargaining chip and get traded away for something else.

ASOL has a brief with background and talking points which you can read here.

UPDATE: The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story too.  The proposed budget seems to be $160 Million for the NEA and $160 Million for the NEH.  The $35 Million increase for the NEA would apparently be the largest increase ever.  The Chronicle also confirms that this proposal hasn’t been approved by the full Appropriations Committe, so it could easily go up in smoke.

by Galen H. Brown
Contemporary Classical

The Body of your Dreams: Profiling Jacob ter Veldhuis

Jacob ter Veldhuis at the Whitney at AltriaJacob ter Veldhuis might be the best composer you’ve never heard of. Let me explain.

Start with his 1999 piece “Heartbreakers,” which takes recordings of American daytime television talk shows like Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and Oprah, and sets them within the context of a Jazz ensemble. Ter Veldhuis uses the technique, pioneered by Steve Reich in pieces like “Different Trains,” of playing fragments of speech and doubling the melodic patterns with the instruments. Musically, the result is a sort of post-minimalist jazz jam-fest, complete with improvised solos and speech clips sliced and diced and repeated until the meanings of the words are subsumed by the musical content. The bulk of the source material for the piece is crack addicted prostitutes being confronted by their mothers on Jerry Springer, and ter Veldhuis treats their plight with a fascinating combination of humor and sympathy, and that’s where the comparison with Steve Reich becomes moot. (more…)

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Ranking the Music Blogs

Scott Spiegelberg of Musical Perceptions is a very brave man who obviously doesn’t have enough abuse going on in his life.  (By the way, we should have been number four, not number five.  Scott’s methodology in adding two numbers is whacked–he should have averaged the two numbers for Opera Chic, not added them together.)

And, hey, Teachout doesn’t write that much about music so let’s throw him out of mix, too.  So, let’s see; that makes us number 3. 

Not that we’re competitive or anything.

by Jerry Bowles