Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Coming Attractions

Avian Music is a contemporary music ensemble whose efforts to build bridges between audiences, performers, and composers has occasioned an ongoing series of thematic
concerts on such unlikely notions as birds and music; sports-inspired music performed in a 19th century gymnasium, and a Valentine’s Day concert of songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy, featuring the burlesque performer Miss Dirty Martini.

Avian Music's next concert, at Tenri Cultural Institute on Friday, September 8, is called Spontaneous Combustion and is built around the vast improvisation skills of uber-pianist Blair McMullen, a modern master of the nearly lost art of musical extemporization. The formal program will include two commissioned world premieres written specifically for this evening: a solo piece by NYC-downtown composer Annie Gosfield and Avian Music founder Peter Flint's perpetual-motion semi-improvised “Microconcerto” for string quartet and piano. Also on the program will be Charles Ives' “3 Improvisations”, CPE Bach's “Eb Major Fantasia” (Wq 58/6), Giacinto Scelsi's tranquil "Un Adieu”, Morton Feldman's graphically-notated, aleatoric “Intersection 3”, two movements from Kyle Gann's jazzy, melancholic “Private Dances”, a New York premiere, and McMillen’s trio arrangement (piano, elec. guitar, double bass) of rock band King Crimson's 1969 ditty “21st-Century Schizoid Man”.

A couple of other great concerts coming up this weekend. Secret Society, an 18-piece band led by composer and S21 regular Darcy James Argue will venture outside its usual downtown haunts for gigs in Queens and Brooklyn.

First, on Saturday, August 26, Darcy and the boysuh, (that's how Lawrence Welk used to say it, for those of you too young to remember) will appear at Flux Factory () in Long Island City, as the house band for the annual party hosted by popular science and culture blog 3 Quarks Daily. Flux Factory is usually located at 38-38 43rd Street, Queens. Doors are at 9:00 PM, and Secret Society goes on at 10:30 PM. Cover is $5.

Then on Sunday, August 27, the band will play Park Slope's newest music venue, Union Hall, a club that has been known for the indoor bocce courts upstairs, patronized by guys with names like Paulie Walnuts, and the indie rock shows downstairs. Union Hall is at 702 Union Street (at 5th Avenue), Brooklyn. Doors are at 7:00 PM, music at 8:00 PM. Cover is $10.

The concerts are notable because they re-unite Darcy with an old NEC classmate and advocate, drummer Richie Barshay, who has spent the last three years touring with Herbie Hancock. Other players new to the Society, but not to Argue's music, include trumpeters Matt Shulman and Jacob Varmus, saxophonists Aaron Irwin and Mark Small, and bassist Ike Sturm.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8/21/2006