Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

A Scream Grows in Brooklyn

It seems somehow fitting after a week of inexplicable madness that Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream will get its New York premiere tomorrow night when the Kronos Quartet joins the Brooklyn Philharmonic for a concert called Kronos+Cosmos. 

Wolfe describes My Beautiful Scream as a kind of  non-concerto for string quartet. The work is a gradual unfolding and unraveling of a slow motion scream: the quartet aspect of the music is quiet and fine while the orchestra aspect is violent and menacing. Co-commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmoniue de Radio France, the Basel Sinfonietta, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, My Beautiful Scream was originally premiered in February 2004 at Festival Presence in Paris.

Wolfe began writing My Beautiful Scream shortly after 9/11. As she describes the time in which the piece was written: “I lived in downtown Manhattan not far from where the towers stood. At night I would have this strange sensation that I was going to die. In general my life was very beautiful, so it was this strange existence of living in beauty and having the sensation of a long drawn out internal scream.”

The concert will also include a performance of the visionary symphonic work, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Each of the seven movements of The Planets will be accompanied by exclusive film footage provided by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Here’s a bit of good news for a change.   Our regular Rob Deemer has accepted an offer from SUNY-Fredonia for its tenure-track composition chair position starting in the Fall of 2007. 

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Steve’s click picks #26

Our 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, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Gilbert Artman and Urban Sax (France)

Urban SaxUrban Sax is a long-running ensemble / musical extravaganza founded by the French musician Gilbert Artman. It was was formed in 1973, when Artman organized a concert by a group of eight saxophonists at a classical music festival in the south of France. In subsequent years, the number of players grew to 12, 20, 30, and by now consists of 52 musicians (with saxophones ranging from the soprano to bass registers). Artman frequently integrates local musicians and dancers into his performances, and thus the ensemble can encompass as many as 200 performers.

Urban Sax has performed throughout Europe and Asia. The group’s performances are art happenings; players wear metallic space suit-like costumes together with masks, and each performance is a unique event that is planned for the particular architectural or natural space where it takes place. The music is strongly minimal and ritualistic, as much about space and spectacle as anything else. Later, larger incarnations have the look of some mad cross between Sun Ra, Blue Man Group, and Cirque du Soleil. Another way of thinking about it is as a kind of sax analog to what Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham were doing with guitars around the same time. It also seems to me to be a strong progenitor to all things “Bang-On-A-Can”.

The link at the top of this post will take you to the official Urban Sax website. It’s mostly in French, but for non-speakers there’s still plenty of photos, a discography, four short Quicktime movies of performances (in Lebanon, Tokyo, Versailles, and Dubai), and even a score to peruse.

BUT: What I really want you to do is take a listen to an MP3 file kindly parked on the web by NY/NJ’s greatest radio asset, WFMU. It’s the complete side one of Urban Sax 2, released in Europe in 1978. (Urban Sax 1 came out in 1977, with sides one and two called “part 1” and “part 2” respectively; Urban Sax 2‘s two sides were labeled “part 3” and “part 4”.)

The ensemble used in this recording: 27 saxophones (11 altos, 13 tenors, 2 baritones and 1 bass sax), a chorus of eight voices, and one tam-tam (played by Artman himself).

In 1979 I was a poor Air Force newbie, stationed in Wichita Falls, Texas. Bereft of my collection of records, scores and books, with no musical instrument at hand, my only connection to art-music was a few cassettes and a small, single-speaker player. But fate smiled in the form of the manager of a local mall record store, who beyond any hope or expectation happened to be a fellow progressive-music geek. He dubbed cassettes for me, of all kinds of obscure and wonderful things — and one of them was this very piece. Those tapes were musical life-savers for me, and will always remain full of charged memory. Eternal thanks, Larry (who I’m happy to report reconnected with me via the web! More than twenty years on now, he’s currently driving a bus in Austin.)

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

TAFTO Highlights So Far

Our pal Frank Oteri has written a contribution for Take A Friend to the Orchestra, and it’s up today.  Frank describes taking his friend Joe Ornstein to the ACO concert at Zankel Hall a few weeks ago.  Ornstein is smart and funny and pulls no punches–it’s a good read.  “People who go to the three-B concerts are snobs generally speaking. And if they aren’t, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing there.”  I actually met Joe at that concert and we had a lovely chat during intermission.

My own essay on the structural differences between the popular music experience and the classical music experience and how those differences make recruiting new audience members difficult can be found here.

Bill Harris, an expert on organizational systems, wrote a fascinating systems analysis of the potential effectiveness of programs like TAFTO.  You can, and should, get your geek on here.

And back on April 4, Leonard Slatkin spun a couple of yarns that illustrate the importance of putting on truly inspirational concerts if you really care about finding new audiences.

That’s just a sampling–there’s other good stuff too.

by Galen H. Brown
Contemporary Classical

2007 Pulitzer Prize and finalists to be announced at 3:00 pm

Place your bets!

And the winner is:

Awarded to “Sound Grammar” by Ornette Coleman, recording released September 12, 2006.

Other finalists:

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “Grendel” by Elliot Goldenthal, premiered June 8, 2006 by the Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, libretto by Julie Taymor and J.D. McClatchy, and “Astral Canticle” by Augusta Read Thomas, premiered June 1, 2006 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (G. Schirmer, Inc.).

Also:

A posthumous special citation to composer John Coltrane for his masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.

by Evan
Contemporary Classical

They’re Trying to Wash Us Away

Delighted to report that our regular Cary Boyce was among five composers selected from a field of 128 entries representing 35 states to participate in the May 2007 Essentially Choral reading session–an annual program co-sponsored by American Composers Forum and VocalEssence with the support of the Jerome Foundation.  Essentially Choral provides an opportunity for emerging composers from across the country to develop their skills in writing for choral ensemble. The selected composers are:

Cary Boyce (Bloomington, IN): “The Magi”
Kitty Brazelton (New York City): “Love, I Know, Beyond a Doubt”
Gao Hong (Northfield, MN): “Coming of Spring”
Aya Nishina (New York City): “Sleeping in Dew”
Matthew Peterson (Bloomington, IN): “Miserere Mei”

Over the course of two days in May, the participants will hear their works-in-progress read by the 32-voice VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, a professional mixed chorus. Some of the works call for instrumentalists as well. In conjunction with the reading sessions, the composers will attend mentoring sessions with both VocalEssence Artistic Director Philip Brunelle and composer Libby Larsen. Seminars will also be held for the selected composers, led by Philip Brunelle, Libby Larsen and American Composers Forum staff.

One of the selected composers may also receive a $3,500 commission to write a new work to be premiered by VocalEssence during its 2007-2008 concert season.

For details and more information about Essentially Choral, visit http://www.vocalessence.org, or call VocalEssence Director of Community Engagement Kimberly Meisten (612-547-1456, https://www.sequenza21.com/mailto;kmeisten@vocalessence.org. 

A requiem for Tonic in today’s Times.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Last Night in L.A.: Four Pianos for Eastman

Julius Eastman’s Crazy Nigger (1978? 1979?) was given its West Coast premiere last night at REDCAT.  Three members of California EAR Unit gave up their usual instruments (flute, cello, percussion) for the piano to join their pianist Vicki Ray in giving the work its four-piano interpretation.  While the score doesn’t specify a particular instrumental combination, it was recorded by Eastman with four pianos, and this recording was the one that brought the work to the public.  It would be interesting to hear Crazy Nigger in a different configuration, but it would certainly take more than four musicians to give the sonorities so central to the work.

It would have been interesting to have heard this last year in association with the minimalist festival, and the performance of In C in particular.  Eastman worked for something very different from Riley, and he gave the performers both more freedom and more structure.  Structure was provided by specifying notes to be added, in sequence, and by stating specific times for moving from section to section in the work. (Each pianist had a clock by the score.)  The players had freedom, or the ensemble had freedom, to decide how to provide the notes.  The work begins like In C, with a repeated sequence of the pitch; instead of adding melodic cells, however, Crazy Nigger builds sonority.  First, the core tone is supplemented by that note in different octaves.  Then, gradually, another tone is added.  The color changes.  Another tone.  Another.  The sound becomes three-dimensional, not quite solid, but shifting and shimmering.  Finally, for the climax of the work, six additional pianists stepped on stage one by one, going to a keyboard to add six additional pitches to the structure.  Fifty-five minutes have seldom seemed so short.  The EAR Unit deserve a lot of credit for their interpretation.  With the audience seated so that they could see the hands of all four pianists, it was easy to see which person took a little longer to make sure that her hands were correctly placed for the right note, but their interpretation used the skills of each and used them well. 

I think I saw Alex Ross; his blog this morning shows a photo with the wall of Disney Hall and the coral tree in the garden, so I know he was in town.  Perhaps he’ll comment.

 

by JerryZ
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Philadelphia

Thursday is Link Love Day

Galen’s Take a Friend to Orchestra (TAFTO) piece is up today on Drew McManus’ Adaptistration blog.  Good reading for a nasty, rainy day.

Frank J. Oteri will be interviewing Olga Neuwirth at the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage tomorrow in a special one-on-one composer discussion produced by the Philadelphia Music Project.  Details here.  If you’re in Philadelphia and want to go and write about it, let me know and I’ll get you in.

Catch Corey Dargel on this week’s episode of Steve Paul’s Puppet Music Hall.  The whole episode is ici and free.

Some good morning music for your dining and dancing pleasure.  A nice piece called “Baile” by Argentinian composer Francisco Colasanto, played by Marco Antonio Mazzini, who thinks it may be the first and only work for contrabass clarinet and electronics written in South America.

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by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Your 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards

The Guggenheim Foundation recently divulged its latest crop of worthies. Click here for a complete list of the winners by category. Editorial bias compels me to extend a special mention of Tania Leon, Paquito D’Rivera, and Dmitri Tymoczko (orbifolds — remember?  Quiz Monday, y’all.). 

The other music folks are, unfortunately, news to me.  Though something tells me they aren’t to many of you . . .

by David Salvage