Bang on a Can, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, New York

Live, in person and new: Contemporary music festivals in the Northeast in Summer 2021

LOUD Weekend, TIME:SPANS, Tanglewood and Bard are all back on stage this summer with in-person audiences Fans starved for live music over the past year and half can rejoice and indulge – many summer festivals are back in the game. In this roundup, we’re mainly covering indoor concerts. As charming as it is to experience a performance under the stars, helicopters overhead, unpredictable weather, distracted audiences and competing bands nearby detract from the artistic experience. When it comes to contemporary music programming, LOUD Weekend put on by Bang on a Can at MASS MoCA is the densest. There are more

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by Gail Wein
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Magnus Lindberg on Ondine (CD Review)

  Magnus Lindberg Aura – Marea – Related Rocks Emil Holmström, Joonas Ahonen, piano and keyboards;  Jani Niinimaki, Jerry Plippomem, percussion  Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hannu Lintu Ondine   This recording includes three live recordings of compositions from the 1990s by Magnus Lindberg. Hannu Lintu leads the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in energetic and focused renditions of two of these challenging works, bringing out considerable detail from Lindberg’s vivid orchestrations. A quartet of pianists and percussionists perform the chamber piece, Related Rocks, an interesting corollary to the larger compositions.    By 1990, when Lindberg had completed Marea, he was already

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Scott Wollschleger – Dark Days (CD Review)

Scott Wollschleger Dark Days New Focus Recordings Karl Larson, piano   Scott Wollschleger’s music has great emotional range. Dark Days explores an atmospheric and lyrical side to his composing for piano. Wollschleger has collaborated with pianist Karl Larson for some time, and this collection of pieces created over a number of years attests to the felicitous nature of their work together.    The tile piece is both the briefest and most dissonant piece. It was composed on the day of Trump’s inauguration and channels Schoenberg’s atonal phase, but in a subdued manner. Much of the music here emulates impressionism instead

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?

Mogwai: “As the Love Continues” (CD Review)

Mogwai As the Love Continues Rock Action/Temporary Residence Ltd.   On February 26th, twenty-five years into their recording career, Mogwai hit #1 on the UK charts. The band’s two previous full length releases were in the Top 10 in the UK, but the success of As the Love Continues, their tenth album, is remarkable.   Known for a live act that is one of the loudest in history, Mogwai retains a musicality that often hews close to the shaping of post-rock, with varied textures supplied both by synthesizers and electric guitars replete with pedals. The looping melody of “Dry Fantasy”

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Attacca Quartet – Real Life (CD Review)

Attacca Quartet Real Life Sony Music CD/DL   Kronos Quartet excepted, there have been a lot of really bad arrangements of pop music for string quartet. Part of the problem is that the arrangers of these covers attempt to translate a medium that involves amplification, electronics, and a flexible sense of rhythm into straight notation for acoustic ensemble. Attacca Quartet’s Real Life, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for collaboration in electronic music covers.    Their recordings are subjected to production from some of the top electronic musicians in the industry: Tokimonsta, Squarepusher, and Daedelus among them. The songs

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Martin Suckling on NMC (CD Review)

Martin Suckling This Departing Landscape NMC Recordings CD/DL Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Katherine Bryan (flute), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Ilan Volkov   Two concertos and two substantial orchestral works by Scottish composer Martin Suckling are programmed on This Departing Landscape, his debut portrait CD. The White Road (after Edmund de Waal) is inspired by De Waal’s ceramic artworks. It features flutist Katherine Bryan, a friend of Suckling’s since childhood – they played in youth orchestra together, and she managed to extract a promise of this commission some twenty years ago. Her virtuosic and energetic performance is remarkable. The violin

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths

Remembering Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen has died. He was a highly idiosyncratic composer of music that, like the man himself, inspires great love. Encountering his music as a young composer changed my life. Encountering him as a conductor and producer was one of the greatest joys of my life.  Louis was an incredibly gregarious, gentle, funny, wickedly funny, intelligent, well-read man. He treated everyone as a peer, regardless of age or career stage. Always curious and encouraging, he would ask young composers after their work, talk about his favorite American television shows (the “highly ironical” Desperate Housewives and South Park were among his

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by Armando Bayolo
Ambient, CD Review, File Under?

Matt Evans – touchless (CD Review)

Matt Evans Touchless Whatever’s Clever Records   “touchless questions the phenomenology of touch, reaching to transcend the boundaries of the physical to embody touch while remaining touchless.” – Matt Evans   In 2019, Matt Evans lost his partner, the sculptor and eco-feminist artist Devra Freelander. He commemorates both grief and the light that came into his life as a result of their relationship on the recording touchless. Synthesizers, field recordings, piano, and additional acoustic instruments provided by guest musicians come together to create beguiling textures.    Two piano pieces bookend the recording, Arcto 2 and Arcto 1. Artco 2, which

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Percussion

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion (CD Review)

Caroline Shaw Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish The Narrow Sea Nonesuch CD/DL   Caroline Shaw and So Percussion Let the Soil Play its Simple Part Nonesuch CD/DL     The last live performance I saw before the pandemic hit New York was Caroline Shaw with Sō Percussion at Miller Theatre, which I wrote about for Musical America. It was Shaw’s debut as a solo vocalist (she has performed as an ensemble member in Roomful for Teeth for several years). Hearing these pieces again reminds me of the joy of concert life before the pandemic. I am glad to

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical

John Luther Adams – Arctic Dreams

Cold Blue Music has released a new CD by John Luther Adams titled Arctic Dreams. Scored for four vocalists and four strings, the seven movements on this album also incorporate layers of digital delay that add a richness to the texture. The result is a warm ethereal ambiance throughout the album. Adams writes in the liner notes that “The sung text is a series of ‘Arctic Litanies,’ composed of the names of Arctic places, plants, birds, weather, and seasons, in the languages of the Iñupiat and Gwich’in peoples of Alaska.” The album is dedicated to the late Barry Lopez, a

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by Paul Muller