You 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
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.
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.)
Leach_Xantippe_sRebuke_pg12[1].pdf
From Sequenza21 regular Mary Jane Leach:
Xantippe’s Rebuke, for oboe soloist and eight taped oboes, is an intense study in sound that tickles your ears. It will be performed on the Sequenza 21 Concert by Matt Sullivan. I’ve written about my approach to writing it, which I hope you will find interesting.
My work has primarily been concerned with exploring sound phenomena – combination, difference and interference tones. I work very carefully with the specific sound properties of each instrument that I write for, qualities that change from instrument to instrument.
Initially this was done in rather direct, almost linear, ways, writing pieces for multiples of instruments, or similar instruments, that I could perform myself, taking advantage of 8-track tape machines to make the pieces. At first I wrote only for instruments that I could play myself (clarinet, bass clarinet, voice).
Two developments that helped me to expand my approach were working with vocal ensembles that could perform my multi-track vocal works, and working with music software on the computer. Using vocal groups freed up the music, releasing it from the constraints of click tracks and the rigidity (both of tempo and dynamics) that resulted from making pieces on tape, opening up the sound. By using the computer and midi playback, I was able to start writing for instruments that I didn’t play. Midi playback enabled me to compose studies of the instruments and to hear the resulting sound phenomena of these instruments without having to go through the laborious task of making multi-track study tapes of the instruments (and dealing with the problems of machines with slightly different speeds).
At first I had to tweak the sounds available to get the right overtone distribution, but eventually I started working with the Proteus instrumental sounds, which, if not perfect, at least are pretty accurate in their overtone profiles.
Writing for solo instruments is a challenge. One of the main problems, at least for me, is that I’m just not interested in even listening to a solo piece (with a few notable exceptions, but those pieces are generally for string instruments that can play multiple stops).
A way around that for me is to write a taped part that a performer plays along with in concert. At first I tried a music minus one approach, but quickly realized that that just didn’t work. If the taped parts and the live parts need to match in sound quality, then the live part is never going to match the taped sound, so the live part will either stick out like a sore thumb or will be masked by the taped parts. I tried a music plus one approach, in which the entire piece is on tape and then I augmented it in performance, but that would be too boring for anyone else to perform. I wanted to write pieces for soloists that they would want to perform and that would give them some freedom.
So I finally decided to write a solo piece that would be played with a taped part of multiples of that instrument, a sort of concerto. The taped parts would be equal and interdependent, while the solo part would be a “real” solo, in which the performer has some flexibility.
Xantippe’s Rebuke works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so intense, that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit its sound properties. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote sounded acoustically before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created other sound phenomena. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound properties determined the direction of the piece. Panning affects what happens sonically, and I worked with that. I also used panning to give cues to the performer (in addition to pitch cues), as an aid to orientation.
The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated or played, on the tape (sound phenomena), continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes.works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so intense, that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit its sound properties. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote sounded acoustically before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created other sound phenomena. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound properties determined the direction of the piece. Panning affects what happens sonically, and I worked with that. I also used panning to give cues to the performer (in addition to pitch cues), as an aid to orientation. The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated or played, on the tape (sound phenomena), continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes.
When it came time to name this piece, I was having a difficult time. I went through old notebooks to find an inspiration. Years ago, I had jotted down “Xantippe,” because I liked the name, and I decided that I’d like to use it. One, I thought it would be great to have a piece that began with “X” and two, I thought Xantippe had gotten a bum rap through the centuries. She was the wife of Socrates, and was known for being a scold. But since Socrates didn’t work and hung out all day talking with his followers while she ran the household, I think that characterization is unfair. I might have done more than dump the contents of the chamber pot on his head. This piece is Xantippe’s chance to speak up on her behalf.
The clock is ticking and things are pretty tense here in the old control room. The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance. I refer, of course, not just to next week’s election which is only the most important one we’ve had in the past 250 years but to tonight’s showdown between number 3 West Virginia (yea) and number 5 Louisville (boo). May rightousness (my team) prevail in both encounters.
With that in mind, it seems like a good day to talk about graphic scores. What are they? Who does them? And, most importantly, why? Start here with Roger Bourland’s post about George Crumb, which is accompanied by a score that looks like a seating plan of Giants Statium laid out for a Stones concert.
Jeff Sackmann has an extra ticket to the Gidon Kremer/ Brahms sonatas concert at Carnegie Hall tonight. I can’t go but if you send him an e-mail stat, you probably can. jeffsackmann@gmail.com.
Morton Feldman
An 80th Birthday Celebration
Merkin Concert Hall
Saturday, October 28, 2006
I am perpetually late with birthday greetings. This past Saturday, as my wife and I entered the city for the Morton Feldman concert, I called my grandmother to wish her a happy birthday two days late. I felt a little better about myself when my wife pointed out that Morton Feldman’s 80th birthday celebration was being held a full nine and a half months after his 80th birthday.
I am just glad that the concert came together, though. The number of people who attended is a testament to Feldman’s influence over the years. La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela were unmistakably present – you can’t miss Young in his sleeveless biker jacket. Another composer known for longer than normal tones, Phill Niblock, was also in attendance. And Bunita Marcus, of course, who helped pull the whole thing together.
We arrived very close to show time. The doors were closed behind us, and we were told there would be no leaving the room except during intermission, due to the fact that the performance was being recorded. We took our seats, the lights dimmed, and Aki Takahashi walked on stage to loud applause.
Takahashi bowed, then sat at the piano. The applause quickly fell to silence, and Takahashi sat silent for a moment in preparation. The first piece was “Piano”, written in 1977. I am relatively familiar with the piece from recordings, but a couple of differences in the live performance struck me right away. First, it was apparent that I listen to Feldman’s music way too loud. I guess I knew this on some level, but during the performance it took a while for me to become accustomed to the low dynamics. While “Piano” has more dynamic range than many other Feldman pieces, the extreme quiet of the soft sections made the other noises around me – the coughing and even the breathing of the rest of the audience – much more pronounced. But that is part of the point, isn’t it?
The second thing that struck me in live performance was my anticipation of upcoming notes. In a recording of Feldman’s music, I never really make an attempt to anticipate the notes coming up. This is really great in the longer pieces, because of how Feldman plays with memory – my memory anticipates one thing based on something I heard ten minutes ago, but something else comes up to my surprise, even after I think I know the piece completely. In the live performance, though, I couldn’t help but watch Takahashi’s hands and anticipate the next notes to be played.
I overcame this with the second and last piece of the evening, “For Bunita Marcus,” by closing my eyes. I only thought to do this after I saw Bunita Marcus doing the same thing. I highly recommend this when listening to Feldman compositions live.
According to the program note by Marcus, one of the intentions of including these two particular pieces was to showcase the range of Feldman’s composition for piano. Where “Piano” deals with extremes – in register (or pitch) and in dynamics (or volume) – “For Bunita Marcus” stays in the middle and high registers, and relatively soft. The notes follow each other slowly, and hang in the air. Feldman’s interest in the decay of the sound itself is very apparent in this piece, whereas in “Piano”, there were more sudden stops, quick turns, a feeling of angularity. In “For Bunita Marcus”, the sounds floated about, slowly interacting. I could see why composers such as Young and Niblock, so intensely devoted to long tones and the interactions of sounds themselves, would be moved by this piece.
“For Bunita Marcus” ended to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. It seemed a little odd to have such a delicate, quiet piece end with such loud noise. I wonder what La Monte Young thought of this – at his performances, applause is strictly forbidden. I used to think this was an eccentric quirk, but now I think I get it.
After the applause died down, Bunita Marcus announced the reception on the upper floor. Unfortunately, I was not able to go to the reception after the show. If anyone was able to go, please comment below – I would love to hear what happened.
Both “Piano” and “For Bunita Marcus” were flawlessly performed, as one would expect from Takahashi, who has been playing Feldman’s music for over a quarter century. While I enjoyed the extremes of “Piano”, I loved the performance of “For Bunita Marcus”. In La Monte Young’s words–overheard as he addressed Bunita Marcus after the show, “That was a beautiful piece you inspired.”
Anybody know who’s writing the Intermission: Impossible blog for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center? Clever writer. Check it out today for Fred Sherry’s Top 11 Approaching Newness picks.
Who wants to review this Audio-DVD for Sequenza21? (Must actually write review.)
John Cage: Two3, Inlets, Two4 / Tamami Tono, Glenn Freeman, Christina Fong
Got your attention, right? No, this is not spam.
My piece objects for marimba, piano and electronic organ is going to be premiered at the Sequenza 21 concert on November 20th. The performers will be Hugh Sung (electronic organ), Daniel Beliavsky (piano) and Bill Solomon (marimba). I encountered Hugh through MySpace, and it turns out we both live and work in the Philadelphia area, Hugh being a fantastic pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music and a fellow technologist. We’ve done a podcast together at his studio at Curtis, and I’m delighted he’s participating in this event. Daniel teaches at NYU and is also a composer, while Bill is an expert marimbist in the Hartford, CT area.
At the time that I was writing objects, I was teaching a college course in computer science; the work’s title comes from a programming construct in which blocks of computer code are organized into reusable units called objects. This is similar to how most of the piece is made up of repetitive, reusable groups of notes and rhythms, and is a feature of most of my music since the early 80’s.
I wrote objects pretty much over a weekend in 1999, although it took me two months to finalize everything. I was playing with three rhythmic fragments on my synthesizer, all in 7/16 time but with the three possible beat structures (3+2+2 vs 2+3+2 vs 2+2+3). Initially I had the keyboard play the patterns back at superhuman speeds, which was pretty interesting, but it was even more interesting when the tempo was slowed down. The entire work resulted largely from these three fragments, and only in two measures does the meter change from 7/16, namely 11/16. I wrote objects for my daughter, Arielle, who was almost four at the time.
objects is a piece that I have always thought of as my most “fun” piece. It’s very accessible, and unlike some of my other music that tends to run an hour or even more than two hours in duration (cantorials, textbook, for philip glass), objects lasts only around 11 minutes.
objects will be the finale of the concert in November, so please don’t leave early (if for no other reason than there will be a really nice party after the concert!). If you need some further convincing about sitting through until the end of the concert, click here…
