ACO, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

The Year of Brad Lubman

Brad Lubman has been involved in the new music scene for nearly two decades but this looks like his breakthrough season.  Conductor/composer Lubman makes his guest conductor debut at the helm of the  American Composers Orchestra Friday evening at  Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, when the ACO kicks off its 30th season with its first Orchestra Underground Composers OutFront! concert.

In addition to leading the orchestra in music from Michael Gatonska,  Evan Ziporyn, Michael Gandolfi, Susie Ibarra,  Charles Ives and our own wunderkind Corey Dargel,  Lubman will conduct the world premiere of his own Fuzzy Logic, for woodwinds, brass, percussion, synthesizer, piano, and amplified cello and video. Lauren Radnofsky is amplified cello soloist and Boom Design Group creates the visual designs.

The program will be repeated at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 15 at 7:30pm.

If you miss those shows, Lubman’s  new music group Electric Fuzz will be gigging Friday, October 20, starting at 7 pm, at Joe’s Pub Electric Fuzz was formed in 2006 by performers and composers who played together as members of the Musica Nova Ensemble at the Eastman School of Music.  The group is currently collaborating with Boom Design Group, a team of virtuoso visual artists and web designers, who draw on their own performance backgrounds to produce improvised and interactive video installations.

The Joe’s Pub event will feature the premiere of a new Lubman work named for Electric Fuzz; plus Jumping to Conclusions, a quartet with electronics; and several pieces for violin, cello and synth that Lubman has co-composed with ensemble member Lauren Radnofsky. Music by David Lang and Pierre Boulez rounds-out the event.

Lubman has enjoyed a busy and multi-faceted career, but is probably best known among new music insiders as a gifted utility infielder who can deliver a superior performance from any world-class orchestra or ensemble on a moment’s notice, a talent honed by having been Assistant Conductor to the mercurial and (in my view) inexplicable Oliver Knussen at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1989-94. 

This is his well-deserved chance to bat cleanup.