Tag: microtonal music

Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Microtonalism, Piano, Review

Georg Friedrich Haas’ 11,000 Strings At Park Avenue Armory

At first glance, it seems like a stunt: 50 pianos and pianists, plus 25 other instrumentalists, all arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. They were there to perform 11,000 Strings, a 66 minute composition by Georg Friedrich Haas, commissioned and performed by the Austrian new music ensemble Klangforum Wien. Performances began September 30 and run through October 7, 2025 (I attended on October 2). At the onset, I was ready to condemn this work as B.S., a party trick, but it’s definitely more than that.

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by Gail Wein
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation, Microtonalism, Music Instruments, Seattle, viola

Garth Knox premiere at University of Washington’s Harry Partch Festival

This year’s Harry Partch Festival has kicked off at the University of Washington, where the original Partch instruments have been housed since 2014 under the capable direction of Charles Corey. On hand for the first evening concert on May 12, 2018 was composer-violist and Arditti Quartet alum Garth Knox who premiered his Crystal Paths, a concertino for viola d’amore and six Partch instruments. The work is basically a series of duets between Knox and, in succession, Partch’s Crychord, Bass Marimba, Surrogate Kithara, Chromelodeon and Harmonic Canon. An interesting twist is that once each duet has been underway for a minute or so, the

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by Michael Schell
Brooklyn, CDs, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Microtonalism

In a Nutshell: An Interview with David Smooke

On Sunday, January 22nd at 7pm at National Sawdust in Brooklyn (80 North 6th Street), composer and toy pianist David Smooke will celebrate the release of his New Focus CD Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Joined by album personnel loadbang, Karl Larson and Michael Parker Harley, Smooke will also perform and improvise on the toy piano. I recently caught up with him and discussed the new recording, compositional approaches, and some future plans. What attracts you to composing for and performing on the toy piano? The sound of the toy piano evokes an idealized childhood, the sort that no one I know actually enjoyed and yet many of us

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by Christian Carey