On the Verge Chamber Music by Sebastian Currier Music From Copland House Koch International With last year’s magnificent New World release Quartetset and this equally outstanding recording of four fairly recent chamber pieces (including the Grawemeyer-awarding winning Static), Sebastian Currier has elbowed himself into the honorary “little music” seat at the big table where the Glasses, Adamses, and Reichs go to chew the fat. So he’s a minaturist, but would Vermeer have been Vermeer on a Frank Stella-sized canvas? Currier is something of a music jokester, with performance directions like “almost too fast,” “almost too much,” “almost too little” and “bipolar” but it is his uncanny
Read moreEverybody likes to grouse about the weather, and East Coasters, who’ve moved to California, may expect sun 24/7. And though that’s never the case here in San Francisco, the climate, and especially the cultural climate on both coasts, does have one very definite thing in common — the dearth of welcome homes for new music, plus a congenial band to spread the word. New York has the long-running American Composers Orchestra, the S.E.M. Ensemble, and Bang On A Can, and the Bay Area, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, which has been in operation for three years. Its March 10th
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, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Katharine Norman (b. 1960 — UK, Canada) Katharine is a British-born composer, sound artist and writer, currently living about as far out West as you can get on Pender Island in BC, Canada. Prior to this “slightly alarming” (her words) change of direction she was Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Goldsmiths, University of London. She now supports the composing
Read moreConsider this: Christopher Rouse does not compose every day; he starts every piece in full score, on measure one; he doesn’t use a piano much, because he can hardly play; he finds the entire process of composition miserable from start to finish and perennially aspires to artistic levels he believes he cannot attain; he only hears the bad things when his pieces get performed, and he is waiting for the day when people wake up and realize he’s no good. Rouse is, as in his music, unafraid to air his honest thoughts. He can appear neurotic and contradictory one moment,
Read moreOkay, I started making a list for friends called 13 great movies that you probably never heard of. Here’s what I’ve got so far: 1. Leolo (Canadian) Young French-Canadian kid named Leo believes his mother was impregnated by a Scilian tomato which is why he only answers to Leolo. And he’s the sanest member of his family. The filmmaker Jean-Claude Luzon died at 43 with his girlfriend when the Cessna he was piloting crashed but he lived long enough to tell Norman Jewison to go fuck himself when offered the chance to direct a Gene Hackman thriller and to tell Jamie Lee
Read moreLast night’s Monday Evening Concert was programmed by Kent Nagano: “Bach and the Music of Today”. This is hardly a fresh theme, and last night’s program didn’t reveal any fresh ideas of resonance across the centuries. But it did let us hear works of four composers of today, and that was welcome. I first heard the music of Kurt Rohde when Nagano programmed his Double Trouble (2002) for the 2004 Ojai Festival. Last night Rohde and his friend Ellen Ruth Rose performed the virtuosic parts for two violas, supported by a small ensemble of violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano; I
Read moreWell, okay, so it’s recorded but we now have in-house music for your dining, dancing and surfing pleasure thanks to our friends at the American Music Center and their new Counterstream Radio. Click on the blue thing with the white toilet seat in the right column and up will pop a dandy little player that delivers an amazing variety of “new” music–in the broadest possible sense. If your tastes run from Judith Lang Zaimont to Cecil Taylor to Miguel Frasconi, you’ve come to the right place. Nice going Frank, Molly, Ian and gang. Lots of neat things happening involving some of our favorite
Read moreJust read this on CrooksandLiars.com, one of the best political blogs out there if you’re a leftist radical like me. In any case, the Copyright Royalty Board is essentially moving forward with a plan to increase the royalty fees for playing music over the Web. All you folks out there who are for strict intellectual property protections and copyright, get ready to potentially lose your favorite Web radio programs. They’ll all be gone unless they are willing to pay through the nose in order to provide more money to the record companies (and remember, for all the pro-IP arguments out
Read moreI caught the second of “In Your Ear Redux” concerts at Zankel Hall with The Tensions Mountain Boys Saturday night, and I was happy I did! 1. Chris Thile (mandolin, voice and composer) is clearly a masterful musician. His new group The Tensions Mountain Boys (Chris Eldridge, guitar/vocals; Greg Garrison, Bass; Noam Pikelny, Banjo; Gabe Witcher, violin (nee fiddle)/vocals; and Thile) is a perfect match. They all connect with astounding playing abilities and a certain nonchalance on stage. Thile was downright comedic in his delivery: “You’re all so kind to come here tonight, but why are you in your underwear?
Read moreWhy a String Quartet? What is it that has given it its exalted reputation and mystique? Why have so many composers regarded it as the perfect medium of expression, though it is perhaps the most demanding to write for? And why do distinguished artists often prefer to work as a team in a first class quartet rather than make bigger money as, say, orchestral leaders? Music means different things to different people: but for those to who music is an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion –
Read more