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Latest Posts
Steve Drury: Zorn, Ligeti, Lachenmann, May 4 at NEC's Jordan Hall
Non-Zero, Tenri Cultural Institute, April 23
D�Arcy Reynolds, South Africa, April 19, 23, 24
Steven R. Gerber, Knoxville, April 17
Beth Anderson, Lawrence Dillon, Haskell Small and Judith Lang Zaimont, Kiev, April 19 and 21
TimeTable Percussion, Bowery Poetry Club, April 20
Musical Portrait of HC Andersen, Scandinavia House,April 17
Barbad Chamber Orchestra, Christ and St. Stephen�s Church, April 22
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich�s Millennium Fantasy, April 8-9
2005 World Piano Teachers Associates Conference, April 9-10
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4/22/2005
Just what is Velcro tap-dancing? Everyone burning to know should check out the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble�s May 1 FREE concert at 7 p.m. in NEC�s Jordan Hall. On an evening of world and local premieres, the musicians will present the first Boston performance of Paul Elwood�s avant-garde music theatre work, Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert for percussion ensemble and Velcro tap-dancer.
Under the direction of Frank Epstein, a Boston Symphony percussionist and NEC chair of brass and percussion, the ensemble will also unveil two newly commissioned scores: Joan Huang�s The Pilgrimage to the West and David T. Little�s shapeshifter. Concluding the program is Mike Udow�s Afrikan Welcome Piece, which features a chorus of 200 Boston school children. That work will subsequently be recorded.
Epstein says he has wanted to program Paul Elwood�s Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert for 20 years. The three-movement score takes its name from a chapter in Henry Miller�s book, The Air Conditioned Nightmare. Unusual sonic effects include bowed piano, bowed Styrofoam, and birdcalls. Perhaps the weirdest percussion instrument in the piece is the Velcro tap dancer or �negative tap dancer� who affixes Velcro strips to the soles of shoes and performs dance steps on a board covered with carpet. Sound is produced by raising the feet rather than striking the floor. The technique was pioneered by Kelly Werts, a partner with Elwood in the bluegrass trio known as The Sons of Rayon. On the NEC concert, percussionist Lacie Guyon will be the Velcro tap dancer.
Born in 1978, David T. Little, the composer of shapeshifter, has already received many honors and commissions. A two-time BMI Student Composer Award Winner, his composition Screamer: A Three-Ring Blur for Orchestra was selected by conductor David Zinman as winner of the 2004 Jacob Druckman Award for Orchestral Composition at the Aspen Music Festival. Little was also a 2003 Charles Ives Scholarship winner from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2001 ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood. A trained percussionist, Little�s performances as a rock drummer have been praised as �on fire, both crazed and surgically accurate.� His Sunday Morning Trepanation drew raves from Alex Ross of The New Yorker: �I was completely gripped� by this work �which equates contemporary religion with the drilling of holes in the skull. This ultra-dissonant composer, who doubles as a heavy-metal drummer, is coming to Princeton in the fall, and every bad-ass new-music ensemble in the city will want to play him.�
Little says shapeshifter is about �changing the perception of an object without actually changing the object itself. That is, taking a melodic or rhythmic idea and, without putting it through any sort of traditional variation�varying the material�The result is a compositional world of concurrently stark homophony and drastic heterophony, full of pulses, grooves and riffs that feel �right� in a way that is, in fact, very wrong.�
Born in Shanghai, China, Joan Huang received her bachelor�s and master�s degrees from the Shanghai Conservatory only after being �reeducated� through heavy manual labor on a farm during the Cultural Revolution. She came to the United States in 1986 and studied at UCLA where she received her Ph.D. Her music, like that of Tan Dun, offers a fusion of Chinese traditional idioms and western techniques. Huang�s works have been played by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Boston Musica Viva, Boston Artists Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Ying Quartet and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Her new piece, The Pilgrimage to the West, was commissioned by Epstein and the NEC Percussion Ensemble.
Finally, the ensemble will reprise Mike Udow�s Afrikan Welcome Piece, which it performed at the March convention of the Organization of American Kodaly Educators in Springfield. The performance will include a select chorus of Boston school children numbering 200 singers.
The concert is free and open to the public.
For more information, call the NEC Concert Line at (617) 585-1122 or visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/concerts
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes�thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC�s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of �From the Top,� a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.
posted by Ellen C. Pfeifer
4/22/2005 10:57:00 AM
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