Sequenza21

Housekeeping

RSS Feeds and Such

I’m told that some of you are having problems with the comments drifting across the page in Internet Explorer. I use IE 7, the latest version, and they scroll perfectly for me. If you’re using an earlier version of IE, you might want to download and install IE 7 to see if that helps. If not, let me know.

Also, some of you are getting mixed signals from the RSS feeds–some of which come from the old Blogger setup and some from the WordPress pages. Here’s a directory of all the feeds from the site:

WordPress Blogs

Front Page https://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/feed/
Composers Forum https://www.sequenza21.com/forum/?feed=rss2
CD Reviews https://www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/?feed=rss2
Calendar https://www.sequenza21.com/calendar/?feed=rss2
Charles Griffin https://www.sequenza21.com/latvia/?feed=rss2

Blogger Blogs

October 8, 2006October 8, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation

Do the Just Thing

Dear Jerry-

Thanks for your kind words earlier this year about the Ben Johnston String Quartet release on New World Records. I am the producer of that disc, and also the 2nd violinist in the Kepler Quartet (so, not an unbiased perspective…)

I am writing you and your readership with a plea, an invitation (however you wish to frame it) to become a part of bringing this great composer’s legacy into broad daylight. We recently received a Copland grant towards finishing the recorded cycle of Ben’s 10 string quartets, but still need to raise significant dollars to make it happen.

Mr. Johnston just turned 80, is in reasonable health, and has just moved to Wisconsin for family reasons-which means that his expertise is now wonderfully available to us. We have have a talented, committed ensemble, schooled in the challenges of Just Intonation, and a stable, supportive label behind the project.

All the pieces are in place to finish this project except for getting past the aforementioned monetary hump.

Wouldn’t it be a healthy scenario if we could get a grassroots, Howard Dean-like campaign going, and include as many individuals as possible from the new music online community, at modest contributions, in support of this truly great, and largely-overlooked composer late in his career?

Could be worth a small investment for the Karma alone, not to mention the accessibility of this ground-breaking music…

We’re going to attempt it, because we know it’s the right thing to do, not the commercial thing to do—anyone out there with us?

For details, please see

http://www.keplerquartet.com/fundraising/

May we all have each other’s support when we need it!

Eric Segnitz
Kepler Quartet

ericsegnitz@yahoo.com

October 8, 2006October 8, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Photographs

Who’s Got the Last Laugh Now?

October 7, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Composers, Contemporary Classical

It’s a Blog!

We have a terrific new blog to unveil this morning. It’s called From the Faraway Nearby: An American Composer in Latvia and is written by Charles Griffin, a native New Yorker who is now living in Liepaja, a small industrial city in the western region of Latvia, on the Baltic Sea. Fascinating insights into a musical world that is far different from the one most of us know.

Elsewhere, the classical pretentiousness thread goes on forever on the Composers Forum page. Leonard Slatkin weighs in with some new fodder over at Drew McManus’ Adaptistration, which is where the conversation began.

Did I mentioned that Steve Reich is Composer of the Month in the S21 shop?

October 6, 2006October 6, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #1

Jerry was nice enough to ask if I’d maybe post here once a week, each time sharing a few links to sites where I’ve encountered composers and performers offering excellent work to listen to online. Forgive the length, but once the pleasantries are out of the way in this post, the rest will be to-the-point.

Why me? Besides being a composer lo these past 30-something years, and having a life-long receptivity to music from across the temporal and cultural spectrum, since I first got online in the mid-90s I’ve actively pursued new work that composers and performers have been kind (and forward-thinking) enough to put up on the web for all to hear. Some will be “names” most people know from their CD store or radio, but many aren’t. Here I am out in the wilds of Seattle, but the beauty of the web is that we don’t have to let geography, your CD store and the gods of the mysterious Land of Marketing boss us around so much anymore.

Waiting for the “imprint” of some label or publisher before you deign to listen, especially dealing with the living, is such a waste of your own all-too-precious initiative. A multitude of excellent musicians are hard at work around the world, right now; tricks of place, time or circumstance keep many of them off your radar, but I can help rectify that a little if you give these links a chance. You only have to bring open ears attached to an open mind.

One request: don’t ask me to mention or “review” your music, site or link. By the time I give a recommendation here, my reviewing is done; if I’m telling you about it, that means I’ve listened to what’s there and truly enjoyed what I heard. Not that you have to agree with my opinion, by any means! But if you never take the time to listen, you’ve passed up the chance to decide anyway.

Rozalie Hirs (Netherlands)

(From the main page, choose “New Composition” and then “MP3” and “Multimusic”.) Though Rozalie has cracked her 40s (b.1965) and seems busy enough on her side of the Atlantic, she doesn’t get much exposure on our side. It’s a shame; pick any of these to hear and you’ll find beautifully poised work, full of play and color.

Erel Paz (Israel)

(The main page has a direct link to MP3s and scores.) Erel’s a little younger (b. 1974) than Rozalie, but keeps up a bit more dialog with the Romantic and Classic. But not strictly “formula”; there’s an idiosyncrasy that I find pretty appealing.

Matt Ingalls (US, CA)

Follow the “sound” link on the main page, and you’ll find a veritable cornucopia of listening! Matt (b.1970) is one of those Bay-Area powerhouses that seems to pop up all over the new-music scene. A phenomenal clarinetist as well as composer and improvisor, you’ll find plenty to hear from him in all of these roles.

OK, that oughtta hold ya for a week or so… Enjoy.

October 6, 2006October 13, 2006 by Steve Layton

Concerts, Music Events, Signings

Lay Around the Shack ’til the Mail Train Comes Back

Chris Thile, the best bluegrass mandolin player alive except for maybe Mike Marshall and Sam Bush is having a joint CD release party with some girl fiddle player named Hillary Hahn next Tuesday night starting at 7 pm at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, NYC 10012 (212-334-3324).

What makes this an unusual CD release event is that tickets are being sold to the public for $15 with the proceeds going to charity, specifically Housing Works which does a lot of good things.

The kids have a lot in common; both were child prodigies. They will performing both classical and bluegrass music which seems about right since that’s what they do. I’m hoping they’ll play a couple of things together. Love to hear Hillary cut loose on “Billy in the Low Ground” or “Black Mountain Rag.”

Master Salvage and I are planning to go and I expect that other great bluegrass fiddle player, Frank J. Oteri, will probably be in attendance, too.

And, who wants to go to the American Modern Ensemble Midtown Sound concert at Tenri on October 14 and review it for S21? I can get you a pair of free tickets.

October 5, 2006October 5, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

What Makes Your Bigmouth So Large?

The Elastic Arts Room (formerly Project One), whose artistic and managing director is S21 home Christopher Zimmermann, is teaming up with the super cool composer/performer collective counter)induction and the Chris Lightcap Quintet (Tony Malaby, Mark Turner, Craig Taborn, Chris Lightcap, and Gerald Cleaver), to present Bigmouths on Monday, October 16th at 9 pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York.

Bigmouths explores the nature of improvisation and aleatoric music-making. Counter)induction will give world premiere performances of new works by Douglas Boyce and Chris Lightcap and will perform works by Earle Brown and Vinko Globokar. Chris Lightcap’s quintet will then use Lightcap’s compositions as departure points for their improvisations.

Elastic Arts Room is a new organization that fosters conversations and collaborations between artists in different genres or disciplines.

“Through a discussion with the performers and audience and an innovative blog-based pre-concert discussion forum, this unique collaboration will explore the cultural and philosophical ramifications of these approaches to music-making and will explore the concept of the ‘work’ within pluralism,” Chris says.

Other business:

Classicaldomain.org has an interview with composer David Schiff about his song cycle All About Love, which will be a highlight of the Metropolis Ensemble concert on Thursday, October 19, at 8 pm at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts.

Here’s one of those Ligeti Meets Rocky stories that will knock you out.

And, of course, the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra.

October 3, 2006October 3, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Minimalism

Happy Birthday, Steve

Steve Reich turns 70 today. There will be the usual superlatives–greatest living composer, most important musical thinker, and other fun, but largely unreliable, speculations. We won’t burden Reich with any of them. The path of music history is already littered with the ghosts of greatest livings whose work has since fallen into neglect and obscurity. Others fade for awhile only to have their reputations re-claimed by forceful new advocates. One of the great things about leaving behind a body of work as essential to its time as Reich’s is that it is a legacy each age can evaluate on its own terms and through the prism of its own judgements and tastes.

Suffice it to say that Steve Reich is one of the few composers to have captured fame, fortune and widespread admiration in his own lifetime and one of the even fewer who have a real shot at musical immortality. That’s an achievement worth celebrating.

And he still has time on the meter.

Events in the Steve Reich@70 festival:

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Choreography by Akram Khan and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, with the London Sinfonietta, Tuesday and Thursday through Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100

CARNEGIE HALL

A concert by young artists participating in a weeklong professional training program, on Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall; a concert of works performed by the artists they were written for, including Pat Metheny and the Kronos Quartet, Oct. 21 at 8 p.m., Isaac Stern Auditorium; and a “discovery day” of lectures, talks and films, and an all-Reich program including “Drumming” and “Daniel Variations,” Oct. 22 starting at noon in Weill Hall, with the concert at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall. (212) 247-7800

LINCOLN CENTER

A concert with the Los Angeles Master Chorale including “Tehillim” and the New York premiere of “You Are (Variations),” Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. at Alice Tully Hall; and “The Cave,” Nov. 2 to 4 at 8 p.m., Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, 899 10th Avenue, at 58th Street. (212) 721-6500

WHITNEY MUSEUM

An installation of “Three Tales” from Wednesday through Oct. 15, with a free four-hour concert by some important young ensembles (including Alarm Will Sound on Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. webcast live on whitney.org. 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street(800) 944-8639.

Composer of the Month

October 2, 2006October 3, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Los Angeles, Opera

Last Night in L.A.: “What to Wear”

“What to Wear” ended its all-too-short run yesterday. When you find out its schedule for performance in New York, get your tickets right away. Better yet, get tickets for two dates (or more), because you’ll want more than one evening. As reported and commented on last week, this is the opera with music by Michael Gordon and libretto, design, direction, and occasional voice-overs by Richard Foreman. Gordon’s music is a pleasure to hear and feel. (I wouldn’t have minded a few fewer decibels.) David Rosenboom, one of whose sidelights is being dean of the CalArts School of Music, was music director and he led a pulsing, vibrant performance. An ensemble of seven musicians (two keyboards, two violins, bass, electric guitar, percussion), all superior talents.

The opera reaches an emotional and philosophical climax in the scene that contemplates and presents the inevitable results when a duck enters a fine restaurant. Following this catharsis, the heroine’s wondering whether or not she is still beautiful and her realization that golf can still be part of her life gave closure to those of us in the audience. Foreman’s text and direction allows for some individual interpretations by the audience. For example, one reviewer believes that the four heroines (two sopranos, alto, and tenor) are sisters, while I feel they are merely different aspects of the same physical person. The four soloists and the six women of the singing chorus gave excellent performances, as did the eleven gender-free members of the movement ensemble. Thank you, CalArts and REDCAT.

Watch for news, and go see this. See it twice. It’s great fun.

October 2, 2006October 2, 2006 by JerryZ

Uncategorized

Sequenza21 – Shining Outwardly Now!

Six weeks to the concert and I’m told we now have $850 towards our goal of $1000. Amazing! (And of course if we go over, our musician friends will get a little extra than the pittance we’re planning on giving them).

I was going to try and say something funny and encourage you guys to send us a few bucks, but instead, I’ll be reflective. Mainly because I’m a little hung over. And my ears hurt from working on an organ piece. And what with the rehearsals, the people I hear are coming and the success so far with the fund-raising I can get away with it. So, please excuse me while I shine something philosophical…

One of the things about online communities is that we’re all creating something new together. We’re creating a vibe, a place, a way of communicating and also we’re making friends. Fine, we all know that. And the strangest thing about online communities has always been that until very recently – they all were basically a dream. They didn’t resonate into the real. One glitch and whoops, the community would vaporize. Lose that email address and it was almost like Joe from Kalamazoo didn’t even exist anymore. But something has changed recently. Call it critical mass, or just the mirror breaking from the sheer scale.

In David Gerlertner’s book, Mirror Worlds, he talked about how the next step for the computer revolution was the mirroring of the world into the network. Think Google Maps. The real world transformed into a virtual place that would let us reflect on its characteristics from afar. Sequenza21 was that, until very recently, a set of virtual characters, symbolizing people, that simulated conversations with posted texts. Frankly, I’d rather sit in a Paris cafe with another composer or two and do that with a glass of absinthe, but those days are sadly gone.

It was then further hypothesized that this network would eventually reflect outward causing a new world to be created. A world which combined the benefits and wonders and freedoms of this real->virtual mapping with the real. The way we share our thoughts here, away from the physical, the freedom which let us say things we might not say to a colleague, all of these possibilities and transformations we’d created here in the virtual, would somehow establish itself non-virtually as something new.

Sequenza21 is now attempting to do just this. Create a brief real musical world, a new music reality derived from a virtual community. We are now reflecting outward and creating projects. People are rehearsing, making travel arrangements; the virtual community of Sequenza21 is going to shine back out into the real. And with your support we’ll be able to do this in a professional and thankful way to our performer friends who we all depend on to realize our crazy musical visions.

Click on the PayPal button below the picture of our own Ian Moss to add your $.02. Any amount is appreciated and frankly, we’d just as soon get 20 gifts of $10 as a $200 gift from one person. And since we’re all so nice here, and this thing is absolutely rocking, we’ve decided that instead of a $100 donation for an incentive, if you give over $50, we’ll throw something cool in. Help make this community something not just cool and virtual and liberating but something really really real.

October 2, 2006 by Jeff Harrington