Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Music From Other Minds

Our cyber-buddy Richard Friedman is now making each week's Music From Other Minds radio program available for streaming from his website for one week after broadcast. "We haven't been able to even approach the copyright/royalty issues that would arise by making all the year's programs (46 to date) available for on-demand streaming, so I've taken a safer route by making just the last week's program available," Richard writes. "Maybe sometime soon we can stream them all."

Tonight's program featured a recent Mode recording of Xenakis' string music, and it is available all thru the week at http://rchrd.com/mfom/mfom.m3u which should invoke iTunes or other mp3 players. Next week the program will sample some of the Cage Harmonies.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/19/2005

Philadelphia Sounds: Radiance and Reflection

The title of Orchestra 2001's November 12 concert at Trinity Center--Radiance and Reflection--refers to the two main pieces on the program, Nymphea Reflection (2001) by Kaija Saariaho in its Philadelphia premiere, and Lament and Prayer (1995) by Aaron Jay Kernis, both complex works. But what I found most radiant were the two short pieces by Jennifer Higdon.

The opening piece was Higdon's 2003 Celebration Fanfare for string orchestra. It begins heavy on the bass with a fugue melody echoed, and further development. The bass remains throughout, while the melody line jumps around cheerfully in Copland style, with a lot of texture. The world premiere of To the Point (2003) is based on a movement from Higdon's string quartet Impressions, created in response to the pizzicato movements in quartets by Debussy and Ravel. The title of this piece also refers to pointillism in art. Each string section has its own theme, but there is also a primary theme and development, and Higdon uses varying textures in note length for a piece intriguing enough to make me want to hear the whole quartet.

Nymphea Reflection is in seven movements reflecting differing expressions. Quiet and eerie in the beginning, strings use technique to vary tones and textures to simulate the electronic sounds use in the original string quartet. The final section features a whispered poem, not really heard, but mysterious and haunting.

Lament and Prayer was written by Kernis to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, with solo violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams. Kernis draws on his Jewish background and the sound of cantorial singing, particularly in the violin. After discord, there is a lovely melodic section followed by a violin cadenza that finishes with harp chords, chimes and oboe that is surprising and magical in its poignancy and shimmer.

(Reposted from Penn Sounds 11/18/05)

posted by Deborah Kravetz 11/19/2005

Friday, November 18, 2005

Babies and All That Jazz

So you want to learn to play jazz? Check out a first lesson with Jack Reilly and see if you've got what it takes? New dad Everett Minchew is reading Steven Stuckey's Lutoslowski and His Music when he isn't falling asleep at midday...Can music departments learn anything from the way other arts departments are organized. New dad Lawrence Dillon (it's contagious) has some fresh insights.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/18/2005

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Copland and Eisler

In 1953 Aaron Copland came under close scrutiny by Senator Joseph McCarthy because of his links with exiled German composer Hanns Eisler (right). Copland was one of the few to come out on top of a tussle with McCarthy, but Eisler had already been forced to leave the U.S. for East Germany, despite a vigorous defence by leading intellectuals including Leonard Bernstein, Roger Sessions, Thomas Mann and Copland himself.

Read the story of Copland's support for Eisler at his McCarthy hearing, and access a fascinating complete transcript of the closed session, On An Overgrown Path at 'Tis the gift to be free.

Photo credit - Gesine-Heinrich
Report broken links, missing images, and other errors to - overgrownpath at overgrownpath dot co dot uk

posted by Pliable 11/17/2005

Like Wow

I was listening to some old Andre Previn jazz recordings last night and was struck again--as I always am--by what an extraordinary musician this guy is. Most human beings would be thrilled with any one of his many world-class musical talents. And to top it off, he's a proven babe magnet and Woody Allen's father-in-law. Has there ever been a more complete musician?

In the blogs, Mark Berry notes the new 3-CD Naxos recording of Villa Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras by the Nashville Symphony...and Blackdogred has fallen in love with Kate Bush, again.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/17/2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

How Strange is the Change from Major to Minor

Jack Reilly's name kept popping up so much around here that I decided to build him a blog. Check out his debut post right here...Tom Myron thinks the notion of a muse is a myth...New reviewer Carol Minor writes about Joan Tower's new collection of smaller pieces on Naxos.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/16/2005

David Hockney's 'Private Passions'

David Hockney's creative genius embraces the performing, as well as the visual, arts. His work for the stage includes designs for Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Los Angeles Music Centre.

Given such a brilliant involvement with the performing arts it is not surprising that David Hockney's selection of musical 'Private Passions,' for the BBC Radio 3 programme of the same name is an enchanting list of magical moments from the theatre, including Ravel's L'enfant et les sortil�ges, and Stravinsky's 'Song of the Nightingale'.

Click An Overgrown Path for the the unexpurgated version of David Hockney's 'Private Passions', and much more. A Hockney exhibition is opening tomorrow (17th November) at the Gilbert Collection, Somerset House, London. There are no less than thirty-six new paintings in the exhibition, and you can view one of the new watercolours right now On An Overgrown Path.

For more on paintings and musicians see My friends pictured within.
Programme broadcast on 30th September 1995.
Listen to the latest BBC Radio 3 Private Passions programme with this link.
Information reproduced from Private Passions by Michael Berkeley, published by Faber ISBN 0-571-22884- 4
Image credit - Cegur.com
Please report broken links, missing images, and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

posted by Pliable 11/16/2005

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

"The Little Prince" at City Opera

In stark contrast to �The Mines of Sulphur,� City Opera is presenting this fall a new opera to which you can bring the kids. So it was that, surrounded by squirmy kiddie-poos, I checked out last night�s performance of Rachel Portman�s �The Little Prince.�

The famous tale by Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry charts the interplanetary travels of a little prince who�s trying to save a rose he loves. Eventually finding his way to Earth, he encounters a pilot who has crashed in the desert, a wise and friendly fox, and a snake of dubious intentions. While the opera is pretty sloppy, enough of Saint-Exup�ry�s magical story does shine through that the evening doesn�t pass altogether unpleasantly.

Portman, known for her many film scores, has two big problems: harmony and rhythm. Her harmonic pallet is extremely limited. All she can muster are major and minor triads that float through the sort of aimless modal realm far too warmed over by soundtracks. Now, �The Little Prince� hardly calls for a composer of great expressive breadth; but, as undifferentiated as the harmony is, some sort of rhythmic variety should be deployed to relieve the musical homogeneity. No such variety comes, however, and the melodies remain entirely tethered to measure-marking arpeggios and oom-pah oom-pah dance patterns.

Nothing wrong with relentless rhythmic regularity, of course: only, if you�re writing opera, your librettist better be Alexander Pope � and Nicholas Wright is no Alexander Pope. The result? Portman rushes passages of text in an awkward attempt to match Wright�s end-rhymes to her cadences; unimportant words receive undo stress; odd dead spots crop up between lines of singing � especially in dialogue; and the few attempts at vocal polyphony are a mess.

However inept the moment-to-moment music may be, the opera never totally stalls: pretty music, when combined with a great story, does go a long way. Portman thins and thickens her orchestration gracefully, though the conductor�s effusions do drown the singers out at times. Boy soprano Jeffrey Allison does a heroic job as the Prince (though Portman gives him little to sing but flip-flopping perfect fifths), and Keith Phares keeps a steady keel as the Pilot, who also narrates the story. The set, which frames the action in a giant circle from which characters pop like in �Laugh-In,� is clunky, though the lighting design (by Rick Fisher) is absolutely ravishing. In the end, I�d just rent the DVD.

posted by David Salvage 11/15/2005

Pointers

Dave Thomas channels a conversation between Mahler and Bob the Demon...Blackdogred picks up the Fiery Furnaces thread (with a somewhat contrarian view) and points to an online performance at the BBC...Alan Theisen has a hilarious error message for composers.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/15/2005

ACO at Zankel

Steven Sloane led the American Composers Orchestra in four modern works at a sold-out performance at Zankel Hall in Midtown last Friday night. Three of the four works were world premieres. The musicianship was first-rate, as one would expect from this ensemble so there isn't much to add on that front.

The first piece was the non-premiere: Study No. 7 by Conlon Nancarrow, a chamber orchestra version of a Nancarrow player-piano piece from the early 1950�s, orchestrated by Yvar Mikhashoff. Being familiar with only a few of Nancarrow�s works, I was surprised at how easy-to-follow and (mostly) tonal the work was. The cohesion was certainly helped by the orchestration; melodic lines at different tempos spin out in a similar register, and hearing a unique instrumental timbre for each line helped the ear separate them in a way that would not have been possible in a piano version. The ensemble navigated the obvious rhythmic complexities of the work without any strain.

The second work was marked in the program as Jose Serebrier�s Symphony No. 3 but it quickly became clear that something was amiss. The orchestra started playing in what was clearly a Minimalist-influenced style, while a soprano sang deconstructed lines from proverbs. Eventually I realized that we were, in fact, hearing Four Proverbs by Michael Torke. At no point was this program change announced, leaving the audience to (hopefully)figure it out for themselves. I wonder how many concert-goers left cursing �that damn Minimalist Serebrier.�

The Torke work was a little too staid for my taste. With its slightly crunchy modal harmonies, syncopated rhythmic patterns mixing twos and threes, a texture where some instrumentalists hold chords for a few bars at a time while others harmonize with the voice in rhythmic unison, and its biblical text, it immediately struck me as a second-rate version of Steve Reich�s Tehillim. (However, a quick Google search revealed that Reich himself calls Four Proverbs �a beautiful, melodic piece.� This comment might say more about Reich than about Torke.)

The second half of the concert began with the now long-awaited Serebrier. Symphony No. 3 was scored just for string orchestra and was masterfully orchestrated. It had by far the most textural and timbral variety of any of the evening�s works, while boasting the most limited resources (no winds, brass, or percussion). The material itself, however, was often uninspired post-romantic clich�, with allusions to Bartok and Berg. The performance of second movement in particular suffered from its own sense of romanticism; an extended cello solo was marred by excessive vibrato, as if the speed of the left hand movement was linked directly to the soul. The last movement featured an off-stage soprano whose voice burst through the hall�s sound system at an inappropriately high level. If she were meant to sonically cover the string texture, I would have liked her to appear on stage; there was something jarring about an invisible presence overwhelming the visible musicians� sound.

The final piece, Lucid Dreams by Edward Bilous, incorporated dance and video projection with questionable results. Two dancers on stage mirrored the two �video dancers� projected above the stage (with varied levels of nudeness and clothedness). Though the music achieved some notable textures and colors and considerable rhythmic variety, it was often upstaged by the awkward contortions and feats of strength by the dancers, and I found it difficult to focus on both at once. Perhaps an orchestra-only version would have been more successful.

posted by D. Edward Davis 11/15/2005

Ab-So-Bloomin-Lutely Free

Corey Dargel is co-producing a concert series called "MTC at the MERC" (Meet The Composer at the Mercantile Library) and tomorrow night (November 16) the program will feature a performance by three members of the Jazz Passengers - Roy Nathanson (sax and vocals), Bill Ware (vibes and vocals), and Tim Kiah (double bass and vocals). They'll be performing a mix of Nathanson's original text and music works that draw on an assortment of quirky narratives, memories, aphorisms, and stream of consciousness monologues.

There will be some critics in attendance and Corey and the gang are hoping to get an extra-supportive audience. If you're interested in attending, contact Corey ASAP and he'll put your name on the comp list for free tickets.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/15/2005

New music at Cornell

Look out for the Cornell Symphony's December 11th concert at Ford Hall, Ithaca College, which includes a performance of Chris Gendall's 'So It Goes'. This exciting young composer is currently studying at Cornell, and his jazz and funk influenced compositions have been widely performed in his native New Zealand.

And follow An Overgrown Path for more about Cornell Symphony's recent performance of Terry Riley's minimalist classic 'In C' at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Picture credit - Cornell Symphony (sorry the poster is Brahms, but the programme includes Stravinsky's 'Firebird' and the Chris Gendall work, so the 20th century credentials are pretty good).
Also check out the Cornell Orchestra Life blog
Report broken links, missing images, and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

posted by Pliable 11/15/2005

Jack's Back

A pleasant hour-and-a-half bus ride on Saturday deposited me in East Stroudsburg, PA for their 2005 Jazz Jubilee. The event was a tribute to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims to benefit the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection at East Stroudsburg University. The cause was certainly a worthy one, but any diligent Sequenza21 reader will perk up when I say that the particular attraction for me was a performance by Jack Reilly. Reilly, who was profiled on the site a few weeks, has made a career both straddling and traversing the line between classical and jazz. Wonderfully, Saturday afternoon proved to be no exception.

Due to the tribute format, Reilly�s set was a short one, but the four pieces gave him and his quartet plenty of time to make their mark. From the first notes of the opener, "November," the distinctiveness of Reilly's playing was evident. The bill featured plenty of skilled pianists, but Reilly generated a unique tone with a light, very classical touch. His playing throughout the set employed other hints of his classical leanings in his approach to ornamentation and dissonance, though the phrasing never left the jazz realm. Reilly's compositions, with clever arrangements that step beyond jazz traditions, facilitate and complement his piano style. A prime example came in the quartet's last piece, another of Reilly's own; the piano accompanied the sax melody with an intriguing texture, disjointed from the sax melody, that quickly reminded me of Ives.

However, the middle two numbers, composed by Cohn and Sims, belonged to saxophonist David Liebmann. Throughout the set, Liebmann provided confident and crafted solos, and with the more straight-ahead setting, he grabbed the spotlight. His solos echoed Coltrane and sat comfortably on top of the relaxed, unobtrusive rhythm section groove.

I should also mention Sherrie Maricle and Five Play, who concluded the concert. The artfulness of Reilly's set combined with its brevity left me wanting more and expecting to disappointed by the next group and the inevitable return to more thoroughly explored musical territory. Though Five Play couldn't match Reilly's intricacy and subtlety, their virtuosity, energy, and joy in playing won me and the entire crowd over.

posted by Lanier Sammons 11/15/2005

Monday, November 14, 2005

Last Night in L.A. - One From Column A...

Yesterday�s Phil concert was a throwback to the bad old days of concert programming: choose three pieces which have absolutely nothing whatsovever to do with each other. The individual performances were good, very good in fact, but the whole was certainly less than the individual parts deserved. Let me name the pieces and you can try to think what might have led to grouping them together in a program: Shostakovich Symphony No. 15; Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major; Tchaikovsky Overture-Fantasy, Romeo and Juliet. This week�s guest conductor was another young Russian, Andrey Boreyko, and he was someone we would really like to hear again. He is fairly tall, and when he lifts his arms above his head and conducts with sweeping gestures, even in the audience it�s easy to see what he wants from the musicians. He can also use small gestures to lovingly shape the music. He�s nice to have on stage; he doesn�t bounce around nor look as if he�s doing a choreographed accompaniment to the music. At the conclusion, the orchestra members stomped their feet to show they liked his work, as well.

The major work opened the program, the Shostakovich 15th (1971). This is the symphony with the quotation from Rossini�s William Tell Overture in the first movement, making you wonder what he was saying. In the fourth movement, the quotation of one of Wagner�s death themes, intoned by the brass, makes it very easy to know what he�s saying, even if you don�t recognize the source. The conductor gave shape to the work, and structure, too. This was a powerful performance; it was good to have the intermission to recover.

As for the rest of the concert, an excellent young cellist, Alban Gerhardt, was captivating in the Haydn. The Tchaikovsky was well-performed and suitably melodramatic.

posted by Jerry Zinser 11/14/2005

Berlin Philharmonic Stockhausen blog exclusive

Director Thomas Grube's highly acclaimed new film 'Rhythm Is It!' is winning much needed new audiences for classical music with its highly seductive mix of the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle, German underground rock, and a cast of two hundred and fifty Berlin teenagers. Now On An Overgrown Path is giving readers an exclusive inside track on Grube's follow-up film which again stars Rattle and the Berlin band. The preview is via a really great blog, which includes ambient audio files recorded by 'sound designer' Simon Stockhausen - yes, the son of Karlheinz no less (photo above).

Follow An Overgrown Path to Berlin Philharmonic Stockhausen blog exclusive for the fully skinny.

Photo credit - Simon Stockhausen
Report broken links, missing images, and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

posted by Pliable 11/14/2005

When in Rome

Whatever happened to art for art's sake, wonders Elodie Lauten? To get a grant nowadays, you have to say you want to save humanity or something...Lawrence Dillon had a busy weekend listening to new music...Blackdogred writes about Sun Kil Moon's reconstruction of Modest Mouse. Tons of new stuff here on page one.

By the way, did you see Pullo dicing and slicing through that motley gaggle of rent-a-gladiators? I mean, okay, so the guy is a murderer but his heart is in the right place. And weren't you thrilled when Vorenus finally came to his senses and skewered that last ugly mother from WWF central casting? My new motto: More blood, guts and power-mad politicians on tv drama; less in real life.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11/14/2005

National Insecurity

I've just started reading Elizabeth Crist's (so far anyway--no reason to think it'll get any different) excellent book on Copland in the Depression and the War--World War II, that is, which is concerned very much with his politics and where that got him. I was reading yesterday about the Composers' Collective (about which Crist says many intelligent things). It was a good thing to be thinking about before going to the Boston installment of the Free Speech Zone 2005 Tour, which is the serious politico-musical expression of Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Missy Mazzoli, aligned in this case with a similar project of Boston-based Curtis K. Hughes, National Insecurity. This all appeared yesterday at Killian Hall at MIT in Cambridge. It was really more like a mini-festival consisting of three fairly short concerts compressed into one rather mammoth occasion, which went on for three hours and was still going strong, although in its final lap, when I had to leave to go to a rehearsal, thereby missing a performance of Coming Together by Rzewski. The first set was by Non Zero a saxophone and percussion duo consisting of the very very excellent Brian Scawa (sometimes of these parts) and Timothy Feeney. They played Two-Faced by Hughes, Still Life with Karl: An American Psalm by Sophocles Papavasilopoulos, Patriot Act (for saxophone along) by Dennis DeSantis, Red Scare Sketchbook by David T. Little, and Corporeal by Vinko Globokar, in which Feeney was both the performer and the instrument; it was probably more theater than music, but the performance was..., well, harrowing, in its intensity.

The second show was by Newspeak (Daisy Press, soprano, Eileen Mack, clarinets, Jordan Shapiro, electric guitar, Rebecca Cherry, violin, Mike Block, 'cello, James Johnson, piano, Yuri Yamashita, percussion, and Eric Poland, drumset--David T. Little, director). It consisted of Electric Proletariat by David T. Little, In Spite of All This by Missy Mazzoli, and a song by (from?) Black Sabbath.

The third part was by the NOW Ensemble (Patrick Burke, Mark Dancigers, Judd Greenstein, Michael Mizrahi, Sara Phillips, Peter Rosenfeld, Alexandra Sopp, and guest Bo Cheng). They did Apology to Younger Americans by John Halle and Free Speech Zone by Judd Greenstein. The final segment, which I missed, was the Rzewski, performed by Newspeak and the NOW ensemble in, as it were, concert.

Of all that music, what I remember most strongly are the Hughes, the Red Scare Sketchbook, the DeSantis, and the Mazzoli, but all of it was serious, full of substance, and powerfully realized as composition. The quibbles I would have are with Electric Proletariat, which although full of wonderful bits of music, seemed a little on the shapeless side as a piece, and the Greenstein, which was undetermined rather than enhanced by the video by by Alice Lovejoy and Jeff Reichert which was added to the already existing music. The video was full of words (a story about a man who was arrested for trying to go to a Bush appearance carrying a critical sign, and a Bush speech) and I found that the concentration needed to read them really caused me to reduce the music not to just accompaniment, but to ambient stuff going on simultaneously with my reading. After a while I made a conscious effort to try not to watch, so I could listen. When I was focused on the music every one of the bits I heard was terrific, but I have no impression of it as a whole piece.

I think it was a good sign about all the music that when I had to leave--and I would have been quite happy to stay--I didn't feel tired or oppressed under the weight of all the listening involved. Good music usually energizes, I guess. As to the performances, to say that they were completely masterly (and, in some cases masterful) technically and wonderfully powerful and expressive would be to slander them by using faint praise. It was the kind of playing which was so concentrated and focused that it could melt through steel.

posted by Rodney Lister 11/14/2005

The Year is '72

In 1972 the big rock and jazz albums were the Rolling Stone�s Exile on Main Street (right), and the Pink Floyd �concept album� Dark Side of the Moon. In the jazz world Weather Report produced their fusion classic I Sing the Body Electric, while Chick Corea moved in the other direction with his sparse Light as a Feather.

In London Pierre Boulez was in his second year as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and new music ruled. UK premieres that year included works from Maderna, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Crumb, Sessions, Xenakis, Maxwell Davies, and Boulez himself.

Take An Overgrown Path to find out a lot more about contemporary music, current affairs and the arts in 1972, and to access more links than you can shake a stick at. Also read about Edmund Rubbra's Ninth Symphony, the Sinfonia Sacra which was completed in this tumultuous year. This remarkable work bucked the avant garde trend, and anticipated the emergence of composers such as Arvo P�rt, John Tavener and James MacMillan. The full story of Rubbra's Ninth Symphony, including three audio files from the premiere recording, is in The Year is '72.

Photo, Rolling Stones - Rocks Off
Report broken links, missing images, and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

posted by Pliable 11/14/2005

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Philadelphia Sounds: Fresh Ink with Wu Man

Wu Man returned to open the Fresh Ink season with pipa music old and new. A concert by Wu Man is always a lesson in technique, styles, and this time, in history of how the instrument is used. Notes come in continuously-strummed clusters or sharp single plucks, stopped or reverberating, straight and bent, slow and lyrical or fast and martial.

Traditional tunes for the pipa, written in the 16th and 19th centuries, did not sound much different than the newly composed pieces on this program; the distinction was in the use of accompanying percussion effects. The world premiere of Eric Moe's 2004 The Sun Beats the Mountain Like a Drum features electroacoustic percussion along with a livelier string sound;notes are sharper and less melodic, and the instrument is played more like an electric guitar. The pre-recorded track also includes chant, and there is more textural variation in the pipa sound, and tricky passages where the pipa is played in a different rhythm than the accompaniment.

Ancient Dances (2005) by Chen Yi and Wu Man is based on poems by Li Bai from the 8th century, with a wide range of live percussion performed by Robert Schulz and very interesting videography by Catherine Owens. The percussion is never done just for show and provides the proper accompanying atmosphere, and the smoothly changing watercolor graphics blend well with the sounds in the second movement. This piece shows great energy and liveliness, and together with the visual and audio effects, presents a complete and impressive experience.

(Reposted from Penn Sounds 11/11/05)

posted by Deborah Kravetz 11/13/2005