Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Piano

Keys to the Future – Day 2

In the second concert of the Keys to the Future series, Tatjana Rankovich, organizer Joseph Rubenstein, and Lora Tchekoratova performed in a program rich in compelling melodic and textural content.

Music for Piano (1997) Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (b. 1947)

Tatjana Rankovich began the program on a piano with a beaded necklace inside. Middle Eastern vocal melodies caused this necklace to resonate in a pleasant (if ultimately obsessive) almost insectoidal buzzing. Occasional outbursts in the lower ranges contrasted with these exquisite Eastern melodies ultimately climaxing in a storm of bass scales. Ms. Rankovich notably performed with precision and a finely atuned sense of the vocal quality of the melodies in Music for Piano.

Éphémères (4 selections) (2003) Philippe Hersant (b. 1948)

Philippe Hersant is practically unkown in the U.S. and apparently (thanks to not being a Boulezian) not quite as well known as he should be in France. Ms. Rankovich performed 4 pieces from his 24 piece cycle, Éphémères inspired by haiku by Basho. Of particular interest was the tempestuous ‘Ouragan’. Scalar motives in the bass exploded into often brilliant gales of color and rhythmic excitement. Rankovich evocatively drove the hurricane like a savage god. ‘Vallee du sud’ called forth memories of the bell-like sonorities of Debussy but with a personal and extended melodic touch that did not feel to be foreign to the style. Hersant is definitely a composer that should be much more widely known outside of France.

Brin (1990) Luciano Berio (1925-2003)

Brin is a wonderful miniature and utilized Berio’s signature rapid scalar figurations to interrupt a static and jewel-like sound world. Rankovich performed Brin with marvelous microscopic abandon.

Fifth Romance (1984) Joseph Fennimore (b. 1940)

Fennimore’s Fifth Romance attempted to combine jazz, show tune pianisms and Scriabinesque harmonies to mixed effect. The romance was never confusing and often surprising, but I was left feeling that parts of this feast of romantic moods were undigested. Nonetheless it was a remarkably executed composition and its exposed origins evinced an immense technical imagination. Tatjana Rankovich performed with intelligent pizzazz this stylistically exposed composition.

Nocturne No. 5 (1996) (Tchekoratova) Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961)

Bulgarian pianist, Lora Tchekoratova continued the program with Nocturne No. 5, a piece obviously influenced by Chopin and Scriabin although updated to varying degrees harmonically and melodically. It was voiced with marvelous delicacy and precision by Tchekoratova. Some of the harmonic shifts were not always convincing, but the clarity of the upper lines propelled the piece to good effect.

Mambo No. 1 (2006) Phil Kline (b. 1953)

Phil Kline’s piece was an exciting post-minimalist/totalist extravaganza of sections, each one exploding into the next. Often, as the section climaxed, complex rhythmic indulgences seemed to interfere with the emotional crescendi underway. I was left feeling that the piece was a bit self-indulgent although interesting in its compellingly brilliant material.

Rain Tree Sketch II (1992) Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)

Takemitsu’s brilliant extensions of the pianistic language of Debussy and Messiaen is under-recognized. Rain Tree Sketch was performed to scintillating and fluidic effect by Tchekoratova. Chords interrupted by dark octaves formed the primary textural motivations behind this wonderful compositiion.

Für Alina (1976) Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)

Concert organizer Joseph Rubenstein next performed Arvo Pärt’s uniquely fractured plainsongs to marvellously spiritual effect. In a lesser composer’s hands such repetition of texture and register would fall flat. It is only with Pärt’s singular mindset and commitment that the meditation unfolds so convincingly.

Exit Music for a Film (1998) Radiohead/Christopher O’Riley

The second of O’Riley’s Radiohead ‘transciptions’ could more accurately be qualified as a ‘paraphrase’. It was intensely compelling and performed with accurate and decadent flair by Joseph Rubenstein. A real testament to the group’s compositional talents is how, through these arrangements, the philosophical intensities are maintained.

Five Preludes (2003) Bruce Stark (b. 1956)

Bruce Stark’s music was performed to wonderful effect again in tonight’s program. His 5 short pieces further explored how jazz stylings and American folk music influences can be used without merely evoking the achievements of the ’50’s. The explosive 5th prelude was fascinating in how it simultaneously and without feelings of pastiche evoked both Bartok and Gershwin.

Tonight is the third and final night of the series featuring a mini-survey of recent Latin-American piano music, an angelic invocation by Stark, and one of Joseph Rubenstein’s own compositions. It looks to be a doozy!

by Jeff Harrington
Uncategorized

Do, re, mi

Do:  This sounds interesting. Want to know more?

Re:  Our man Daniel Beliavsky’s playing at the NYPL. Get the details.

Mi:  And here’s a message from the Frolicsome Composer from Hell:

THE WEATHER RIOTS

In his late set of works called The Number Pieces, John Cage used a very original device for coordinating parts, called “flexible time brackets”. In these pieces, there is no score, no conductor, and players use stopwatches. Players are given parts which contain some musical material, and a flexible set of time points within which they can place this musical material. That way, there is a clear composed structure for each of these pieces, but the structure allows for considerable freedoms and almost-improvisational type of flexibility
in performance.

I was completely intrigued by this flexible time bracket technique, and in 2002 I organised a concert in Amsterdam devoted to some of the Number Pieces. We presented a few works by Cage, but I decided that his notations and his ideas would probably be relevant not merely to Cage’s own musical style, but that it could be used by other composers as well, as a more general form – just as fugues can appear in many different styles.

So for that concert, 6 new pieces were written that each were using flexible time brackets in very different ways. Among these works was my piece “The Weather Riots” for at least two and at most a few thousand high instruments (flutes, oboes, violins, clarinets, pianos, harps all can play this piece). At the S21 Concert, it will be a trio of violin (Jeffrey Philips), oboe (Matt Sullivan) and piano (yours truly).

One of the central things I’ve been interested in in the past few years was to fill up some musical space in some way with motion. I sometimes call such textures “panoramas”. Often I like to have different versions of the same motivic material superimposed, so that you get a kind of heterophonic mosaic of personalities. If two instruments play the same sort of motivic material at the same time, but each “colours” it as befits the character of their instrument; or, if they each articulate the same material slightly differently, or do it at slightly different speeds, these differences set up a musical space
within which the instruments find their own niche.

Now in most traditional forms of heterophony, there’s a single melody, unfolding linearly over time, that every player is more or less playing, each with their own nuances. In “The Weather Riots” however I do not give players one line. Instead, in each section, I give them a whole family of motives that they’re free to interpret and put together in their own way. The result is always some kind of mosaic of little motives and gestures that happen at the same time and that gradually shifts in character over the course of the piece’s eleven minutes.

The way these motives are distributed, imitations between any two parts is more or less guaranteed. Basically every performer is playing a personal version of the same basic part. So you always get a ‘cloud’ of motives, of a density that depends on how many players you have, with a lot of imitation going on. So there’s activity all over the place, and it’s full of incidental connections. The similarities in the motivic material help make the complex resultant textures transparent for a listener – you can always sense a relation between what two performers are doing, even if they seem to be playing their
material entirely independently.

To me, these relations between parts that play similar melodies but that bring different shades of playing to that one same thing are themselves a musical resource – something like an extra musical voice, an invisible instrument between the other instruments, that is not played as such but that results from the panorama. Also, I feel such effects give more depth to the sense of time. And I hope that from this, a listener can get an experience of space, movement and possibility.

Fa:  Just felt like adding a halfstep.

by David Salvage
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Piano

Keys to the Future – Day 1 – Delicacies and Profundities

The opening concert for the Keys to the Future featured organizer Joseph Rubenstein, BOAC regular keyboardist Lisa Moore and Blair McMillen in a program practically devoid of common modernist influence.

8 short works (1980s) Howard Skempton (b. 1947)

Howard Skempton, a miniaturist of some reknown in Europe, but little recognized here, was featured in 8 short works selected and arranged by Rubenstein. While evoking a mastery of emotional poignancy, each of the pieces demonstrated a poverty of texture that was vaguely puritanical. The performance by Rubenstein was masterful. Notable among the eight pieces was The Keel Row, which began the concert. It was precious, still, and fragmented into a tiny gem of delight. The ‘Toccata in Memory of Morton Feldman’ was wonderfully conceived as a meditation with a returning Feldmanesque bass note.

Solitude (1978) Leo Ornstein (1892-2002)

Lisa Moore performed a neo-romantic masterpiece which we should be hearing more often. An odd synthesis of Russian romanticism, notably Scriabin’s later sonatas and etudes and Debussy. It was performed exquisitely with immaculate pedal and detailing.

Le jeu des contraires (1989) Henri Dutilleux (b. 1916)

Ms. Moore’s performance of ‘Le jeu des contraires’ by the living French composer Dutilleux was a delight. It was a sprawling, unpredictable combination of atonal scales, parallelisms and bell-like moments. It was miraculously controlled with a gusto often missing from peformances of recent French piano music.

Ode to “Ode to Joy” (1997) Bruce Stark (b. 1956)

Bruce Starks’ ‘Ode to “Ode to Joy”‘ was absolutely the audience favorite of the concert. An odd mixture of variation form and hilarious commentary on the tune combining unexpected mashups of jazz-rock stylings with serious and ecstatic cascades of sound. Lisa Moore thrilled with her precision and phenomenal dramatic buildup to an incredible climax. The humor at times, didn’t quite resonate with the emotional baggage of the tune, however. Chalk it up to it being performed on such a critical election day, perhaps.

Let Down (1997) Radiohead/Christopher O’Riley

After the intermission, Rubenstein returned to the keys to perform Christopher O’Riley’s transcriptions of Radiohead, notably ‘Let Down’ from the OK Computer album. The idea of transcribing such delicate rock for solo piano is fascinating, although frought with the dangers of the impossiblity of recreating the textural varieties and the inharmonicities inherent in the instrumentation and most importantly, Thom Yorkes’ voice. The frailties of the simple guitar part were recreated poignantly, but it was notable how very bald the melody became in the climax of the song without the cymbals and multiple guitars. The performance by Joseph Rubenstein was illuminating, full of detail and wonderful pedal effects.

24 Variations on a Bach Chorale (2002) Fred Hersch (b. 1955)

Blair McMillen closed the concert with jazz pianist Fred Hersh’s colossal 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale. A poly-stylistic and ambitious tour de force, it traced 200 years of textural and harmonic stylings while notably skipping the 20th century, except for jazz. The composition was technically and spiritually impressive yet ultimately a disappointment for failing to create a dramatic arch, suggested by the evocations of the music of Beethoven and Schumann. My favorite moments were the chromatic jazz stylings which maintained the propulsive quality felt throughout the piece. McMillen struggled at times to maintain the requisite energy, sweat pouring off his face, nevertheless he managed to bring the piece to a welcome and energetic climax.

Tonight’s concert promises to be equally enthralling with another Radiohead transcription and the music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Takemitsu, Pärt et al.

by Jeff Harrington
Uncategorized

The Marathon as Performance Art

This past Sunday 37,936 people ran 26.22 miles through parts of all five boroughs of New York City from Staten Island to Central Park, through parts of all five boroughs.  The marathon has taken place on the first Sunday of November every year since 1970, and this year Jelena Prokopcuka won the women’s division with a time of 2:25:05, M. Gomes dos Santos won the men’s division clocking in at 2:09:58, and the wheelchair divisions male and female winners were Stephen Kiogora (2:10:06) and Paul Tergat (2:10:10).

I don’t really care about marathons very much, but it’s a major event and I’ve been thinking about it, and it occurred to me a couple of days ago that one might very reasonably look at marathons as performance art.

The Marathon is, of course, nominally a race, a competition, but only a handful of participants are actually running to win.  Winning times over the years vary by only a couple of minutes, and in this year’s New York marathon Lance Armstrong, professional athlete, finished 856th with a time of 2:59:36, nearly 50% longer than the winning time in the men’s division.  With winning out of the question, most people run marathons for the experience of having done it — and a 26.22 mile run must be quite an experience.  With so many people running for the sake of the experience, how many of the spectators are watching for the sake of seeing a competition with a winner and how many for the experience of seeing so many people engaged in so extreme a feat of physical endurance?  I would suggest that most are primarily looking for the latter — thus, it’s primarily an aesthetic rather than a competetive experience for most of the participants and most of the spectators. (more…)

by Galen H. Brown
Composers, Contemporary Classical

Reich, Reich, Reich

Don’t miss Alex Ross’ wonderful portrait of Steve Reich in the new New Yorker.  Yes, the New Yorker.

Robert Gable has a video link to the London Steve Reich Ensemble on YouTube playing Reich’s Eight Lines.

Reich is the current featured composer in the Sequenza21 shop.  Stock up for Christmas or whatever you do at your house.

Anybody see the latest production of The Cave last week at John Jay?  It’s one of the great ones.

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Classical Music, Composers, Uncategorized

Soloist blogs on major new music premiere

Tomorrow (Nov 6) soloist Nicholas Daniel (left) and the Britten Sinfonia give the world premiere of John Tavener’s oboe concert Kaleidoscopes at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The new work is Tavener’s tribute to Mozart, but, as well as an oboe soloist and chamber orchestra, the score calls for the distinctly non-Mozartian forces of a very large gong and four Tibetan temple bowls. Any John Tavener premiere is big news, but this one is even bigger news because Nicholas Daniel is blogging as he prepares for the first performance. For the full story and links take An Overgrown Path. 

by Pliable
CDs, Classical Music, Uncategorized

More to Dowland than the lute

huw warrenYou don’t need to be a rock star to have a different take on the music of John Dowland. Jazz pianist, cellist, accordion player and envelope pusher Huw Warren (left) uses piano, keyboards and samples in his treatment of Dowland’s Lachrymae which is released on CD as Infinite Riches In A Little Room. And Warren’s latest off-the-wall project is a major new work with his Orchestra Helclecs titled This is Now! (Nawr!) featuring the virtuoso guitarist John Parricelli, hip hop MC Nobsta Nutts, singer Lleuwen Steffan and an ensemble originally formed for a concert at Brecon jazz festival in 2004. For more Infinite Riches In A Little Room take An Overgrown Path 

by Pliable
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, Piano

Keys to the Future Festival Coming Up Next Week

Season two of Keys to the Future, a festival of contemporary music for solo piano, takes place next week, November 7-9 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall.  The six participating pianists are Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, Tatjana Rankovich, Lora Tchekoratova, Polly Ferman, and myself. 

On the first night (Tuesday, 11/7), the brilliant pianist Blair McMillen will perform Fred Hersch’s gigantic piece called 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale. Here are some notes by the composer: 

The original chorale melody is by Hans Leo Hassler (1562-1612), but was borrowed several times by J.S. Bach, mostly famously as “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunder” in his St. Matthew’s Passion. But I first became familiar with this melody as a teenager in a secular English version known as “Because All Men Are Brothers” with lyrics by Tom Glazer; it was recorded by both The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary. After the events of September 11th, 2001, the powerful, timeless melody and those words inspired these variations.”  (Fred Hersch)

On the second evening (Wednesday, 11/8), I will perform Christopher O’Riley’s arrangement of Radiohead’s song Exit Music, which was written specifically for the closing credits of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo and Juliet. The song appears on Radiohead’s highly acclaimed third album, OK Computer (1997). In 2003, Christopher O’Riley released True Love Waits (Sony) the first of two CDs of songs by Radiohead arranged for solo piano. Radiohead’s dense, multi-layered music leans heavily on electronic processing for its moody sonic atmospherics; O’Riley evokes those complex textures with abundant but judicious use of the sustain and soft pedals, a deft use of dissonance and a rhythmically anxious left hand. 

On the third evening (Thursday, 11/9), virtuoso Tatjana Rankovich will play Pierre Jalbert’s Toccata. Here are some notes by the composer:

Having grown up as a pianist and being familiar with the toccatas of Schumann, Prokofiev, Rorem, and the like, I had always wanted to write a short, virtuosic work for the piano. I completed Toccata in the spring of 2001, while living in Rome at the American Academy on a Rome Prize fellowship for the year. Set in rondo-like form, the central feature of the piece is a rapid repeated-note figure, which appears in different guises throughout the work. (Pierre Jalbert)

It’s going to be great fun. I hope you come to one or more of the evenings. For further details, go here.

by Joseph Rubenstein
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #5

Our weekly listen and look at composers and performers that you may not know yet, but should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer a good chunk of listening online:

Larry Polansky (b. 1954 — US)

Larry Polansky’s been a one-man compositional exploratorium for at least thirty years now. Audiences may not be too familiar with him or his work, but composers of all stripes are. He’s always moved easily between east-coast rationalism, digital-electro-geekdom, “downtown” experiments, and west-coast looseness, any and all of which can show up in his next piece. A happy champion of others’ work as well, besides performing he’s also known for his efforts to focus serious attention on such neglected 20th-century women composers as Ruth Crawford Seeger and Johanna M. Beyer. Polansky’s humble, no-frills website may look plain, but it hides a wealth of information, articles, scores, and recordings. (Speaking of recordings, just to make your life easier I’ll give you the direct link to the large sound archive. You’ll find not only individual pieces, but entire out-of-print CDs available for downloading, as well as a number of MP3s of works by friends and colleagues.)

Festival de Musica Clasica contemporanea de Lima, Peru

Clicking the link above will actually take you to the second festival, held in 2004, but there are also links to the first and third editions, too. One of the great things about the web is that it doesn’t have to all be about New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam or Darmstadt; people are working hard at every bit as hard creating vital scenes in many more out-the-way places. A great case in point is the yearly festival of Peruvian and other Hispanic new-music happening the last few years in Lima. If you think new-music has it hard in the States, it’s got to be nothing compared to the tough row these folks have to hoe. And yet here they are, not waiting for you to hop a plane down their way, or read a half-paragraph in some journal. They’ve taken the initiative to bring the concerts straight to your living room. The only excuse you have now for not being aware is simply that you’re too lazy to click your finger once on a link; you don’t want to fall into that camp, now do you?… The list of composers from these three concerts is long and mostly completely unfamiliar. But don’t let that stop you; there’s a lot of wonderful muci here. Some favorites of mine from this second festival are Jimmy Lopez’s La caricia del cuchillo, Marco Antonio Mazzini’s Imprevisto, and Cesar Villavicencio’s Mundos. The files are indentified by title only; for the composers’ names look for the JPG image of the concert poster, or a PDF file also on the same page. Google can help you out a bit, too. The best link to start with is the Peruvian new-music collective Circomper. The link takes you to their blog, where you can find information on the festival, composers and works, as well as a number of other articles (Spanish only, though).

Monique Buzzarté (b. 1960 — US)

Fearless wild-woman of all things trombone! ….O.K, that’s my own shameless blurb-bomb; for something a little more considered, Monique herself sums it up perfectly in her own bio: — “Monique Buzzarté is an avid proponent of contemporary music, commissioning and premiering many new works for trombone alone, with electronics, and in chamber ensembles. A former student of Stuart Dempster and Ned Meredith, she holds B.A. and B. Mus. degrees from the University of Washington and a M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music and is certified to teach the meditative improvisation practices of Deep Listening. She has been a guest artist at the International Trombone Festival (2005) and the Eastern Trombone Workshop (2004). Ms. Buzzarté composes and performs electro-acoustic chamber music for Zanana, and is also is a member of the New Circle Five with Pauline Oliveros and Ekko!, a contemporary music quartet of mixed instrumentation. She can be heard on Zanana’s Holding Patterns (Deep Listening 30), John Cage’s Five3 with the Arditti Quartet (Mode 75: John CAGE: Vol. 19 – The Number Pieces 2), and Dreaming Wide Awake with the New Circle Five (Deep Listening 20). Sorrel Hays’ Wake Up and Dream and John Cage’s Thirteen and Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning with Essential Music are forthcoming. Since 1983 her New Music from Women: Trombone project has supported the expansion of the trombone repertoire by commissioning new compositions from women composers in a variety of genres. An author, activist, and educator as well as a performer/composer/improvisor, Ms. Buzzarté has published research on the brass music of women composers and coordinated advocacy campaigns for women in music, including efforts that led to the admission of women members into the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997.” — Whew! What all this means for your ears is generously illustrated by following the “clips” link at the top of her homepage. (Though it says “clips”, a lot of these MP3s are full-length recordings of complete pieces.)

by Steve Layton