Misato Mochizuki Composer Portrait Thursday March 2, 2017 Miller Theatre By Christian Carey NEW YORK – On Thursday, March 2nd, Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki was featured on Miller Theatre’s Composer Portraits series. In a concert featuring four U.S. premieres and concluding with a work commissioned and premiered at the 2015 Lincoln Center Festival, the audience was introduced to a range of her work. Throughout, Mochizuki demonstrated a clear aesthetic embodied by an interest in exploring a panorama of instrumental timbres and effects and a flair for dramatic, often quasi-ceremonial, designs. The earliest work on the program, Au Bleu
Read moreHere’ a cheerful Monday treat, ECS Publishing has made available for the 150th year of Frank Lloyd Wright a four-minute introduction to Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon’s Frank Lloyd Wright opera Shining Brow. The opera concerns events that occured between 1903 and 1914 during the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s life. Wright’s determination to leave his wife and children, his relationship with Mamah Cheney, and the subsequent murders and conflagration at Taliesin, are all part of the historical record. The opera takes Wright to the point at which he vows to rebuild Taliesin in Mamah’s memory. The opera
Read moreOn Friday, March 3, 2017 wasteLAnd presented the music of Klaus Lang at Art Share LA, in the heart of the arts district in downtown Los Angeles. The occasion was the US premiere of missa beati pauperes spiritu and Austrian composer Klaus Lang had planned to be in attendance, but with the recent immigration crackdown his visa was denied by the US. Inside the theater, clusters of players and singers were stationed around the performance space and the crowd arranged itself along the outside edges of the seating area for the best view. missa beati pauperes spiritu translates from the
Read moreSamuel Barber, one of America’s most celebrated composers, was born on this day (April 9) in 1910. The young filmmaker H. Paul Moon has made a full-length documentary about Barber that will be released later this month. “I went out on a limb with this project, self-distributing, keeping it independent, making sure I got things right without compromise,” Moon says. The 3-minute trailer below lines up some famous people with their insights on Barber, in this order: William Schuman, Thomas Hampson, biographer Barbara Heyman, Leonard Slatkin and Leonard Bernstein. OFFICIAL SITE: www.samuelbarberfilm.com FACEBOOK PAGE: www.facebook.com/samuelbarberfilm PAUL MOON ON TWITTER: @hpmoon
Read moreThe Stone, the landmark non-profit performance space founded in 2005 by John Zorn and dedicated to the experimental and avant-garde, will move to The Glass Box Theater at Arnhold Hall on 55 West 13th Street, in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. Arnhold Hall is the performing arts hub for The New School, housing the three performing arts schools of The College of Performing Arts: Mannes School of Music, The New School for Drama, and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Beginning in March 2018, The Stone at The New School will operate five nights a week,
Read moreIn 2010, a 16-year-old African-American child named Kalief Browder was accused of stealing a backpack. a crime he insisted he hadn’t committed. Because his family couldn’t afford bail, he endured three years on New York’s notorious Rikers Island and his case was postponed 31 times before it was dismissed. While being held, Browder spent months in solitary confinement, missed the last two years of high school, and become so despondent that he tied his bedsheets into a noose. In June 2015, Browder committed suicide by hanging himself. Last year, the New York Legislature passed a bill known as “Kalief’s Law” to ensure
Read moreOn February 21, 2017, Tuesdays@MonkSpace was host to Nicholas Chase and Robin Lorentz, in Los Angeles to perform Bhajan, their latest CD from the Cold Blue recording label. Ms. Lorentz played the electric violin and Chase was at the controls of the computer and various audio interfaces. This occasion marked the premiere performance of Bhajan. Both were barefoot and clad completely in white, a refreshing departure from the solid black so often seen at new music concerts. Bhajan consists of four roughly equal sections totaling some 47 minutes and is based on Hindu devotional music. For this performance all four
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Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Piano
Francois Couturier and Anja Lechner Greenwich Music House New York February 18, 2017 By Christian Carey Five Things to Like About Francois Couturier and Anja Lechner in duo performance Versatility — These are two musicians who are able to play in a plethora of styles: classical, jazz, world music, et cetera. I first interviewed cellist Anja Lechner for a Signal to Noise feature about the bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi. I was impressed with her versatility then and remain so today. Pianist Francois Couturier is an eminently qualified performing partner for Lechner. Ensemble — Even though most of their set consisted of
Read moreHi All. This fell off the blog for some reason. I am re-hosting it today. New York Philharmonic Premieres H.K. Gruber Photos: Chris Lee Avery Fisher Hall, New York January 7, 2017 By Christian Carey Five Things to Love About the NY Phil’s January 7th Concert Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Little Threepenny Music) for Wind Ensemble: A truly charming work that also demonstrates the composer’s affinity for early jazz orchestration, Little Threepenny Music showed off the wind section of the Philharmonic at their very best, and it was wonderful to hear banjo in the mix. Mack the Knife alone is
Read moreKronos Quartet Carnegie Hall – Zankel Hall Saturday, February 11, 2017 Christian Carey Six Things to Like About Kronos at Carnegie Hall Fifty for the Future Commissioning Project — Kronos used Saturday February 11th’s concert to showcase some of the early entries in their “Fifty for the Future” project. Not only is Kronos recording all of the pieces for young quartets to hear; their website also includes free to download PDFs of scores and parts. Thus, they are creating a new repertory for quartets eager to learn about contemporary music. Garth Knox — Some of the pieces, such as renowned
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