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Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for our Editor's Pick's of the month. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
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4/25/2005
On Sunday May 1, 2005, the University of Southern Mississippi School of Music presents Int�grales 2005 - the first of an annual concert series featuring contemporary music. The festival concert is at 6:00 PM at the Mannoni Performing Arts Center stage on USM's Hattiesburg campus. Admission to the event is free, although donations for School of Music scholarships will be accepted at the door.
This year's exciting Int�grales features five world-premiere performances of compositions penned by USM students, faculty, and alumni. Among these are Alan Theisen's choral work "Sic Mea Fata" and James Everette Minchew's "Hydra", a musical depiction of the infamous mythological beast.
The festival will truly have something for everyone, whether they think they like "new" music or not. From Dr. Maryann Kyle's presentation of Berg's Four Songs to the premiere of a saxophone hommage to Bach by doctoral student Marcus Ballard, all audience members are sure to take something memorable from the evening's program.
The Int�grales Festival was established by students and faculty in the Department of Music Theory. The goal of the series is to to bring attention to younger composers and to revisit overlooked masterpieces from the past century.
USM alumni Kristina Havard and David Parks will also perform two pieces by famed Italian composer Luciano Berio that evening. The event will commemorate the second anniversary of Berio's passing.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/25/2005 03:20:00 PM
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
Boston--Pianist Stephen Drury will mix it up in a FREE faculty recital that juxtaposes music from many periods and styles, Wednesday May 4 at 8 p.m. in New England Conservatory�s Jordan Hall. A musician of wide-ranging tastes, Drury will play Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, Beethoven's Eroica Variations, and works by Ligeti, Lachenmann, Feldman, and Cage. As a kind of summary, he will conclude with John Zorn�s Carny, a phantasmagoria of musical quotations and references that was composed for Drury and two other pianists, Yvar Mikhashoff, and Anthony deMare under a grant from Meet the Composer.
A long time champion of Zorn, Drury has written about Carny in Perspectives of New Music: ��Carny cannibalizes mouthfuls of previously existing piano music. In turn, the introduction to Carny cannibalizes the rest of the piece� Each fragment -- quote, genre reference, or abstract -- affects the way we hear what follows and what came before. Previously unimaginable connections appear between Mozart and bebop. Stockhausen negates Fats Waller� Brief chunks of music by composers from Mozart to Boulez appear note for note or under various degrees of transformation. (Chopin and Schoenberg, for example are quoted in reverse; Stockhausen is overlaid with Bartok; and a left hand passage from Elliott Carter�s Night Fantasies is paired with an entirely new right hand part.)�Phrases referring more generally to genres appear (a little New Orleans funk, some boogie-woogie, a bit of cocktail piano). And there are entirely original passages which have no outside source.
�Carny accelerates and hesitates in broad yet unpredictable outlines� now coming to points of near stasis, now revving up gradually, now scurrying off; now erupting in a frenzy. And what is the listener to make of the nuclear holocaust that occurs just before the coda�? What light does it cast on the preceding furious pile-up of Liszt, Carter, Nancarrow, cartoon music, Ives, and Art Tatum? Are we now paying dearly for the previous fun and games? Or is this apocalyptic climax just another cartoon mushroom cloud?�
�Ultimately, is there or can there be a justification within the artwork itself for all these references and quotations? I dunno. Art is always ahead of theory.�
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 10:44:00 AM
4/19/2005
Brian Sacawa, saxophones & Timothy Feeney, percussion
Saturday, April 23
8pm - Tenri Cultural Institute
43A West 13th Street (between 5th & 6th Ave.)
New York, NY
PROGRAM:
Hillary Zipper, the time of insects
Keeril Makan, Voice Within Voice (world premiere)
John Cage, Three
David T. Little, Red Scare Sketchbook (world premiere)
Tickets are $10 at the door. For more information contact Tenri Cultural Institute at (212) 645-2800, nonzeroduo@yahoo.com, or visit http://www.tenri.org
Saxophonist Brian Sacawa and percussionist Timothy Feeney formed the duo Non-Zero to explore and expand the sonic possibilities of their instruments, and to perform music that treads the boundary between composition and improvisation. They develop their distinctive repertoire by commissioning and collaborating closely with both established and emerging young composers. Non-Zero works freely in acoustic and electronic sound worlds by using amplification, an array of pitched and unpitched traditional and homemade percussion, and pre-recorded or interactive electronic media. The result is music overflowing with intensity, from icy stillness to explosive energy.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/19/2005 09:24:00 PM
4/15/2005
California-based composer D�Arcy Reynolds is in South Africa as part of a Meet the Composer Global Connections grant for performances of her music by the Sontonga String Quartet and others at the University of Cape Town and other venues. The dates and locations for these performances are:
Tuesday, April 19, 2005 at 8 PM in the Chisolm Recital Room of the South Africa College of Music in Cape Town. This will be an all-Reynolds program, featuring her String Quartet, �Cloven Dreams� for flute and string trio, Corazon de Verano, Theme and Variations for clarinet and piano, Preludes for viola and piano and 21 for piano solo. Performers for this concert will include the Sontonga String Quartet, clarinetist Matthew Reid, the composer at the piano and guest artists.
Saturday, April 23, 2005 at 8 PM in the Beethoven Room, Grahamstown. The Sontonga Quartet will present the string quartet version of Ms. Reynolds� �Cloven Dreams� on a program with the Haydn Quartet, Op. 77 no. 1 and Schumann�s Piano Quintet with students from Rhodes University.
Sunday, April 24, 2005 at 4 PM at the University of Port Elizabeth Auditorium in Port Elizabeth. The Sontonga Quartet will once again present Ms. Reynolds� �Cloven Dreams�for quartet on a program with the Haydn Quartet, Op. 77 no. 1, this time with Schumann�s String Quartet, Op. 41, no. 3 and String Quartet No. 3 by the contemporary South African composer Peter Klatzow.
The composer has been keeping and updating an online trip weblog that can be read at http://www.sequenza21.com/reynolds.html or
http://www.darcyreynolds.com/southafrica.html.
Formed in 2002, the South Africa-based Sontonga Quartet has established itself as one of their country�s finest exponents of both classical and contemporary repertoire. In its first 18 months, it gave world premi�res of works by more than a dozen composers from Kevin Volans, Matteo Fargion and Mokale Koapeng to South African premi�res of works by Arvo P�rt, Peter Louis van Dijk and Henryk G�recki. The Quartet also performs in several major South African festivals such as the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, the Franschhoek Chamber Music Festival, the
International Classical Music Festivals and the Chamber Music Festival in Bloemfontein. Visit them online at http://www.sontongaquartet.com/.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:33:00 PM
Steven R. Gerber�s Spirituals for String Orchestra will be given its U.S. Premiere performance on Sunday, April 17 - 4 PM, by the University of Tennessee Chamber Orchestra, James Fellenbaum, conductor, at the school�s Music Hall, 1741 Volunteer Blvd., in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Repertoire for this concert will also include Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and Music for James Agee, composed by Kenton Coe, featuring School of Music Oboist Phylis Secrist.
The University of Tenessee Chamber Orchestra is a new ensemble, debuting in 2004. This ensemble is dedicated to smaller, more intimate works in the orchestral literature, including works by Bach, Holst, Vaughn Williams, Handel and others. Learn more about the school�s orchestra programs.
This concert is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the UT School of Music Concertline at (865) 974-5678 or
visit the School of Music online.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:29:00 PM
Ukrainian conductor Maksim Kuzin will host and conduct concerts of American, European and Ukrainian music in Kiev, Ukraine on Tuesday, April 19 and Thursday, April 21. Both events will be presented as part of the biennial �Youth Art Forum� festival of contemporary music and will be performed at the city�s Concert Hall of the House of Science.
The April 19 concert will feature music by American composers: Beth Anderson�s �New Mexico Swale� for flute, percussion, violin, viola and cello, Lawrence Dillon�s �Devotion� for flute, violin, viola and cello, Haskell Small�s �12 Snippets� for flute, clarinet, cello and piano and �Short Story� for flute, oboe, clarinet, cello and piano and Judith Lang Zaimont�s �Sky Curtains� for flute, clarinet, bassoon, viola and cello. Performers will be the Kiev Youth Soloists Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Maksim Kuzin, who will also host the program and serve as narrator in one of the other selections.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:26:00 PM
Wet Ink Presents:
TimeTable Percussion
With works by Beat Furrer, Wolfgang Rihm,
Hiroya Miura, Jeff Snyder and others
AND a performance by the band Coptic Light
When: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 at 8 p.m.
Where: Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery (between Houston and Bleecker)
Who: TimeTable Percussion (Matthew Gold, Joseph Tomkins, Matt Ward) // Coptic Light
Tickets: $10 at the door
Information: www.wetink.org
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:23:00 PM
Danish soprano and former American-Scandinavian Fellow HANNE LADEFOGED-DOLLASE will perform A MUSICAL PORTRAIT OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, with lyrics written by Andersen and music written by Grieg, Schumann, and others. Known primarily for his fairy tales, Andersen was also a talented and prolific lyricist, writing poems and texts to accompany many 19th-century Romantic classics.
Ms. Ladefoged-Dollase, a favorite with Pacific Northwest audiences, has performed with the Seattle Opera, Tacoma Opera, Orchestra Seattle, Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Northwest Sinfonietta, Seattle Choral Company, and Seattle's Early Music Guild. Most recently Ms. Ladefoged-Dollase has performed with the Ars Musica Chorale of New Jersey and the National Chorale at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.
TICKETS
$15 ($10 American-Scandinavian Foundation members)
Call (212) 847-9740 for reservations
Victor Borge Hall
Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America
58 Park Avenue (between 37th and 38th Streets), New York, NY 10016
For general information call (212) 879-9779 or visit www.scandinaviahouse.org.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:08:00 PM
The Barbad Chamber Orchestra
Ramin Heydarbeygi, Music Director
Friday, April 22, 2005, 8:00 p.m.
Christ and St. Stephen�s Church
120 West 69th Street
(between Broadway and Columbus)
$15 ($10 for seniors and students)
Program:
Mozart Divertimento in F, K. 138
Harutiunian Concerto for Violin (New York premiere)
Pauline Kim, violin soloist
Dvorak Notturno, Op. 40
Shostakovich Chamber Symphony
The Barbad Chamber Orchestra presents a concert commemorating the victims of war and genocide. The Barbad will perform a work by Armenian composer Alexander Harutiunian to honor the victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915; and a work by Shostakovich composed in memory of the victims of World War II. In stark contrast, and to remind us of the beautiful side of humanity, a work by Mozart will be performed, as well as a youthful work by Dvorak to symbolize hope. In line with Barbad�s vision to promote cultural democracy and diversity, this concert is intended to convey an urgent message of peace through music.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/15/2005 09:05:00 PM
4/4/2005
Jeffrey Biegel will give the last in a series of performances of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich�s Millennium Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra with Maestro Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra on Friday, April 8 and Saturday, April 9, 2005 � 8 PM both nights at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
These Millennium Fantasy performances will be the last in a series of more than two dozen performances of the work that Jeffrey Biegel has given with orchestras from Maine to California since its September 2000 Cincinnati Symphony premiere. The composer has described the 20-minute work in this way:
�The musical point of departure of Millennium Fantasy is a folk song my grandmother sang to me when I was a small child. I can still "hear" her voice when I remember this, so I thought it would be a special pleasure to create a musical fantasy based on it.�
�Millennium Fantasy is in two movements in which the folk song occasionally rears its head, but more often serves as a springboard for a larger musical design. While there is significant interaction between the solo piano and the orchestra, the solo piano leads the exploration in virtuosic style.�
Tickets for the April 8 and 9 concerts are $38, with student discounts available. For more information, contact the Fisher Center at Bard College Box Office at (845) 758-7900 or the American Symphony Orchestra at (212) 868-9276.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/04/2005 10:32:00 PM
Yamaha Artist Services, Inc. and The Ibla Foundation of New York will present the 2005 World Piano Teachers Associates Conference on Saturday, April 9 at 6 PM to 10 PM and Sunday, April 10 from 10 AM to 10 PM at the Piano Salon at Yamaha Artist Services, 689 Fifth Avenue at 54th Street in Manhattan.
The conference will present a remarkable series of concerts and seminars that will explore the vast and wonderful universe of piano music, from across the centuries and around the world. A distinguished array of internationally acclaimed performers and speakers will share their enthusiastic views about music and the art of performing in one of the most acoustically advanced and exciting halls in New York, the newly built Piano Salon at Yamaha Artist Services.
All of the April 9 and 10 events are free and open to the public. More about these events at http://www.ibla.org/. For more information, contact The Ibla Foundation at 212-387-0111. or Yamaha Artist Services at 212-339-9995.
posted by Jerry Bowles
4/04/2005 10:21:00 PM
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