Year: 2010

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Improv, New York

Concoct Sonance

Amos Elkana was one of the composers I found/heard/met almost a decade ago on the original grand experiment in social music-sharing, MP3.com. With an obsidian-like hardness, sheen and edge, his compositions grabbed me then and continue to do so now. Born in the U.S. but raised in Israel, then off to Europe and back to the U.S. to study, Amos pulls together strands of all these places, looking for where the roots tangle and grow together. But the other “root” I didn’t know about then was that Amos’ musical interests had started with jazz and guitar. It was only after coming to study jazz at the Berklee College that his course got redirected into composition.

Coming over to study at the same time was Amos’ long-time friend and musical partner, drummer/pianist Yaaki Levy. Yaaki had a similar career bouncing between Israel and the U.S., and though their paths diverged a bit over the years their friendship never did. Finally last year saw them able to hook up again musically, exploring improvisation as the duo Concoct Sonance. Together their experiences create a music with a real richness, depth and poise; these may be improvisations, but there’s a strong feeling of that composerly sense of a “piece”, not simply an event or string of events.

The duo has been gigging fairly regularly around Europe and Israel, and now they’ve come to NYC for a few concerts these next couple weeks: Friday July 2nd, 7:30pm they’ll be at The Tank (354 W. 45th Street between 8th and 9th); Wednesday July 7th, 9pm they’re playing Puppets Jazz Bar in Brooklyn (481 5th Ave); and Tuesday July 13th, 11:30 pm they’ll be found at Goodbye Blue Monday (1087 Broadway, Brooklyn).

I asked Amos to give a little background in his own words, and I pass them along here:

Yaaki and I both grew up in Jerusalem. We met back in high school through mutual friends and we have been making music together ever since. In 1987 we came together to the US to study at Berklee College in Boston. Yaaki as a drummer and I as a Guitar player. I later went on to study composition at NEC and in 1990 moved to Paris for a couple of years before returning to Israel in 1992. Yaaki left Boston after three years for New York and returned to Israel in 1994. About 10 years ago he moved back to New York and has been living there since.

In the past 20 years, Yaaki has been playing drums with other people while concentrating on  piano playing and composing for himself. Meanwhile, I have been occupied mainly by composing music for other people and playing guitar for myself. Yaaki, being a wonderful drummer, has been touring the world with singers and bands while developing his piano playing and composition skills on his own. I on the other hand kept playing the guitar on my own while composing and traveling around the world for the premieres of my own compositions. We always wanted to find time to play together as we did in the past, when we both used to live in the same place. Then an opportunity to do so presented itself last January when I came to New York. We went into the recording studio without knowing what we are going to play. The only thing we decided is not decide about anything! We don’t compose, arrange, rehearse or even talk about what we are going to play. We don’t even decide what instruments we will play and how. Our motto is Here and Now. This is total free improvisation. In the studio we just hit the record button and started to play with the instruments that we had around us. Some of the things we played on were not even instruments but noise makers of sorts.

What was so fantastic is that we immediately started communicating as if on the same exact wave length… We didn’t even have to listen to the recording because we felt such exhilaration after the sessions. There may be several reasons why this works, among them an intimate knowledge of one another as best friends for almost 30 years, common likes and dislikes in music and life, maybe even telepathic communication. We don’t know. But the fact is that we get amazing responses to our performances from audience members. Some say they feel as if we are one. Many say that they felt it hard to resist joining us in some way. Some say our music touches them in such a deep level that they cried most of the time… (Imagine, improvised contemporary experimental music having such an effect!). At the bottom line, I think we allow ourselves to have fun and have complete freedom. Not restricting ourselves to any genre or form. This approach works anywhere. Wether we play in Tel Aviv, New York or Berlin.

Right now we have about 30 to 40 recorded pieces. It is tempting to choose some of them and put them on a CD but on the other hand documenting freely improvised music that will never repeat itself… I don’t know… Maybe the approach should be just to perform as much as we can and have people attend the concerts instead of buying CD’s… Yet in order to get more gigs we need to put out a demo at least. The three performances we just did in Tel Aviv were recorded and I am going to upload those recordings to our web site very soon. One of the performances was also videotaped. Your comment about really hearing the “composer” in our approach is very interesting. It probably comes with the territory of being composers for such a long time… In 1989 when I applied for the Jazz department in NEC, I decided, instead of sending them a tape of me playing Jazz standards, to record an improvisation with Yaaki and to send that instead. The response I got from them is that they are willing to accept me and to even give me a big scholarship too but only for the composition department and not the Jazz department… This is one of the reasons why I became a composer.

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts

Xenakis on a Raft or Steven and Doug Go Boating

Not a short order in a Greek coffee shop but the first American open-air performance of Iannis Xenakis’ Persephassa (1969), a thunderous work for six percussionists, including founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars Steven Schick and former So Percussion-ist Doug Perkins. The musicians were situated around the Boating Lake in Central Park, with the audience members in the center – in rowboats. Q2, the Internet’s best new classical station, asked its audience to document the event which resulted in a slide show here and a nearly complete video from Liubo Borissov:

persephassa on the lake from liubo on Vimeo.

by Jerry Bowles
San Francisco

Werewolves of San Francisco

Putting a musical program together is always a challenge, but it’s one thing on paper, and another live, in front of people. The San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra’s Silence of the Wolves program, which it performed a couple of weeks ago at San Francisco’s Old First Church was a curious one. Was it about wolf tones, or the devil’s interval–the tritone –which has more or less been the foundation of modern music since Schoenberg and his school began to exploit it? Or was it about the West, and San Francisco’s being on the wild edge of the continent, which its music director and co-founder composer Mark Alburger implied in his opening remarks from the stage? It seemed to be vaguely and particularly about all these things, and its contents varied considerably in tone, content, and impact. But thankfully no one was thrown to the wolves.

Loren Jones’ Wolf Wood, which he described as ” a solo piano piece inspired by the music of Eastern Europe, ” sounded to these ears like one of Satie’s evocative miniatures, especially in its opening, which was followed by lush yet still transparent variations , which Jones, on piano, played movingly. John Beeman’s 2 movement  Fancy Free , with the composer on double bass, was carefully written and expressive; its most striking sound image being a sequence of unison rising fourths near the very end.

But what was one to make of Cindy Collins’ Kinesthesia which she described from the aisle — there were no program notes –as being about physical states of mind she’d felt? There’s nothing wrong with musical autobiography if the piece justifies it, but Collins ‘ didn’t seem to. We’ve all had vague or unfocused moments but these don’t necessarily make for an absorbing experience when made into music. Collins did however produce at least one arresting image — a viola/cello drone, played with great concentration by Nansamba Ssensalo and Areilla Hyman, which slowly changed pitch, and evoked an acute sense of disquiet. Davide Verotta’s  An Enticement of Silence, which began like an off pitch version of Ives’ 1906 The Unanswered Question, progressed into a series of reasonably varied harmonies and textures, but didn’t add up to much more than that. Our sense of our postmodern world as a chaotic place has produced some provocative music –John Zorn’s comes to mind–but Verotta unfortunately failed to make
anything as powerful, or succinct as his.

Lisa Scola Prosek’s Three Songs from her new opera Ten Days, Dieci Giorni, based on Bocaccio’s Decameron  was, as so often with this composer, full of surprises.  Transparently scored, clearly played, and vividly sung in English and Italian by soprano Shauna Fallihee, it said what it had to, then stopped . And the 16 person band — the largest complement of the evening — was obviously moved in several places. Conductor Martha Stoddard’s Cowgirl Rondo (with Stoddard sporting a Western handkerchief around her neck) for string quartet and double bass), was vigorous and fresh, though top honors in that department went to Darius Milhaud’s Chamber Symphonies #1 – # 3 ( 1917-22 ) whose polytonal moments barely disguised their very French folk-like structures.

The playing throughout –under Martha Stoddard and John Kendall Bailey–seemed both accurate and enthusiastic, though the more obviously complex pieces by Collins and Verotta suffered from Old First’s unforgiving acoustics — the walls are concrete, the outside brick. Maybe a an orchestra friendly adjustable partition behind the players would help?

by Michael McDonagh
Contemporary Classical, Houston, Mix Tape

Houston Mixtape #2: Huey Long and The Ink Spots Museum

Photo of The Ink Spots Museum by Chris Becker

Being a recent transplant to Houston, Texas, I am only just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of the city’s cultural scene– especially its music. Each dispatch I bring to you from Houston will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and performances that integrate theatre, the visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, jazz, country, zydeco, and all out noise will creep into future writing, the overall goal being to expand peoples’ perception (including my own) of where one can find innovative forward-thinking music.

There may be a connection between Houston’s (lack of) zoning laws and the way that the past, present, and future inform each other throughout its landscape. Maybe that sounds like a cliche. But, if you’ve ever ridden the Houston’s Metro 80 bus through the Third Ward up Dowling Street, past Emancipation Park, and – just before turning left at Sparkle’s Burger Spot toward the glass cathedrals of downtown – observed an unfenced horse enjoying some grass in someone’s front yard, you know that I’m not talking some tourist board hogwash. There are many “zones” throughout this city dedicated to celebrating its history and nurturing its creative spirit. And they sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere.

The Ink Spots Museum (located in Houston Heights) is dedicated to archiving and celebrating the life and work of Texas born guitarist, singer, and educator Huey Long. The museum’s curator Anita Long (Huey’s daughter) welcomed my wife and I for a visit earlier this month and like many Houstonians I’ve met since our relocation from New York City, she was generous with her knowledge of Houston’s cultural scene. Every musician I know would take great comfort in knowing that a family member like Anita would take care of their legacy after they were gone. The museum and its accompanying website (featuring plenty of photos, audio, and video) serves to remind people that the history of American music includes the collective participation of many, many artists each committed to their respective craft. Which is one way of saying you might know that Huey Long was a member of  The Ink Spots (from 1944 to 1946 with Bill Kenny as their leader), but not know he also played guitar in ensembles that included Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Father Hines, Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and many other luminaries of 20th century jazz and popular music.

Huey Long (who lived to be 105!) was born in 1904 in Sealy, Texas. For the people in Sealy as well as on the farms in surrounding areas, music was a vital part of a day-to-day dominated by hard labor (by the time he was a teenager, Huey was working as a sharecropper). Describing those formative years in Sealy in his pictorial autobiography The Huey Long Story, Huey recalls the names of no less than four different pianists (including his brother Sammy) playing “rags” on the pianos in people’s homes. “Ragtime” was indeed heard in Texas in the early 1900s as was what would become known as “the blues.” Huey’s sister Willie – also a pianist -studied music in Houston, at Wiley College, and brought back to Sealy classical and popular sheet music to play note for note when “grown ups” were in the house and improvise off of when the youngsters were on their own (some parents considered improvisation to be almost sinful behavior).

In addition to classical, popular, and ragtime music for piano, Huey was exposed to the up-tempo groove oriented music (my description) played on guitar at all night “suppers” (which included plenty of dancing, eating, and gambling on the various new betting sites) as well as its more somber and “sorrowful” counterpart known as “slow blues.” Huey began playing both guitar and piano, eventually moving to ukulele – a very popular instrument at the time. After setting out on his own at the age of fifteen and relocating in Houston, he began playing banjo (tuning it like a ukulele but an octave lower) and joined the Frank Davis Louisiana Jazz Band. This was a popular and well-respected band in its time, that played for both whites and blacks in Houston’s segregated communities. He would begin playing guitar after relocating from Houston to Chicago and joining Texas Guinan’s Cuban Band (who traveled to Chicago from New York City to play the 1933 World’s Fair). Later, Huey would join Fletcher Henderson’s Band and Earl “Father” Hines’ All Star Band (I apologize for skipping ahead a bit, and neglecting a lot of formative music making…)

Fast forwarding a bit…

Two sessions Huey did around 1946 with trumpeter Fats Navarro, tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, pianist Al Haig, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Denzil Best were released on two separate records: In The Beginning…Bebop (which is a compilation of sessions by three different bands) and of Fats Navarro’s recording Nostalgia. These recordings feature some truly kick ass guitar playing from Huey who definitely holds his own in the company of two phenomenally creative horn players. The rhythmic interplay between guitar and piano (and bass and drums…) is incredibly funky. This is bebop (probably) inspired by the music heard at Sealy’s all night suppers: Danceable, unpredictable, and filled with sly humor.

Huey Long in 2008 (photo courtesy of Anita Long)

Teaching and composing music – including several chord melody solos based on themes from European Classical repertoire – would be a major part of Huey’s life along with researching his family tree creating an exhibit of his life’s work that would become The Ink Spots Museum. Anita talked to us about the possibility of the museum one day becoming a virtual exhibit – and there is plenty of history and music from Huey’s life as well as from Texas that should be shared with the world. For now, in addition to the website, there is this small museum – a standing structure in the midst of Houston’s un-zoned landscape – that you can make an appointment to visit. 

by Chris Becker
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Piano, Podcasts

Powerhouse Pianists

The final American Modern Ensemble concerts of the season are happening this Thursday and Friday (June 24 and 25, 8pm) at Faust Harrison Pianos.

Stephen Gosling and Blair McMillen will be throwing-down on works for two pianos by John Adams (Hallelujah Junction), John Corigliano (Chiaroscuro), Mary Ellen Childs (Kilter), Amanda Harberg (Subway), Doug Opel (Dilukkenjon), Frederic Rzewski (Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues), and the world premiere of Deep Blue Ocean by AME founder and Artistic Director, Robert Paterson.

There will be limited seating over at Faust Harrison so you might want to save a couple bucks over the price at the door by ordering online (or ordering by phone at 800.838.3006).  They are even throwing in a free CD for every ticket purchased online.

You can also listen to short interviews with Blair McMillen and Robert Paterson about their experiences working with composers here (Blair) and here (Robert).

by James Holt
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York, Radio

Parker from Orpheus to WQXR

For the past eight years, Graham Parker has been the Executive Director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Now, he’s going to work for New York’s classical music radio station.

It was announced today that Parker will be the new Vice President of Classical WQXR 105.9 FM and WQXR online. It appears that he’s been tasked with helping the station to develop its brand identity. For those who aren’t “New Yawkers,” this may require some explanation.

In 2009, New York’s National Public Radio Station WNYC acquired WQXR from the New York Times. WQXR’s frequency, 96.3 FM, was in turn traded to Univision’s WCAA, moving the classical station further up the bandwidth to 105.9. For those of us out in the ‘burbs, this has made it more difficult in many areas to get the station. Coverage routinely goes in and out on my commute down to Princeton as I get further from the city.

While signal weakness has been a concern for many listeners, there have been other growing pains associated with the move as well. Some of the music programming previously on WNYC, which was considered the station for more cutting edge fare, has been moved over to WQXR. Some longtime DJs from WQXR were kept on; others were let go to make room for their counterparts on WNYC. As a public radio station, WQXR also jettisoned commercials and religious programs.

The marriage of mainstream classical and public radio’s eclecticism has been a challenging balance to negotiate. The station’s 2009-’10 programming doubtless left a number of longtime WQXR listeners unhappy at the increased incorporation of new music into its mainstream broadcasts. WNYC listeners who hoped for the eclectic and innovative types of music heard on programs such as Soundcheck and New Sounds to be writ large on the rest of the schedule have probably been bummed out too. They’ve been subjected to far more Vivaldi and Telemann than they consider healthy!

A bright spot has been the station’s online new music programing at Q2. This week, they’re spotlighting the music of Xenakis. While one understands that this probably isn’t their best bet for “drive-time” fare, its too bad that more of Q2 hasn’t infiltrated the airwaves.

One hopes that enlisting Mr. Parker helps the station to find its footing and reassert the importance of classical radio – contemporary music and repertory favorites alike – in New York.

So, Sequenza 21 readers, its your turn. What should Parker focus on to make WQXR a better station?

A) Better signal quality/range/accessibility.

B) A more coherent vision for music programming.

C) Local identity and live events.

D) Limiting the amount of Vivaldi bassoon concerti played during any given four-hour period to no more than three.

E) More Nadia Sirota, all the time.

by Christian Carey
CDs, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York

It Ain’t Necessarily (Just) So

I’m still reveling in the memory of So Percussion’s appearance with the Orchestra of the League of Composers last week. And here’s a new recording of music of another sort altogether!

So’s latest collaboration is with Baltimore electronica duo and frequent Björk collaborators Matmos. On Treasure State, a recording for the Cantaloupe imprint, they create a patchwork quilt of found object percussion, glitchtronica beats, synthetic signatures, and complex rhythmic structures. Despite the multifaceted nature of the proceedings, the underlying groove remains eminently danceable.

Here’s a taste of their work: a YouTube clip from their recent show at Le Poisson Rouge.

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

When a Berio Sequenza is your warm-up piece…

Robert Dick in Recital
Institute and Festival of Contemporary Performance
Mannes College of Music (New School University)
June 17, 2010

Robert Dick was a name we heard in graduate school, spoken by flutists and composers alike in hushed, almost reverent tones. His treatise on contemporary playing techniques, The Other Flute, has long commanded a hefty price at various online bookstores (which is somewhat puzzling, as the tome has remained more or less continuously available). I finally found one for less than a king’s ransom a few weeks ago: just in time to ‘study up’ before finally hearing Dick live in recital.

The opener was Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for flute. It’s a little scary to hear Dick’s rendition of this piece – he makes a fantastic virtuosic workout sound like a walk in the park. That said, his rendition of the Berio was not only technically assured, but thoughtful and musically detailed as well. Before performing Shulamit Ran’s East Wind, Dick mentioned how it had been initially difficult to secure the commission; the composer initially balked at what she viewed as a limited palette. But one heard no hesitation in the end product, a soaring, microtone-inflected essay. The Ran piece was, in its own way, every bit as technically demanding as the Berio, but exuded a passionate linear narrative that was most compelling.

Toru Takemitsu’s Itinerant was equally emotive. This time the solo flute is used as an instrument of elegy; the piece was written while Takemitsu was mourning the then recent death of artist Isamu Noguchi. While there are aspects of the piece that are evocative of the shakuhachi, one never feels like Itinerant is merely a transcription. Rather, it transports the flute into an appealingly hybridized manifestation.

Robert Morris’ Raudra is a musical sketch of the rasa (sentiment) of anger from Indian literature. It indulges the flutist’s ‘inner child’ in tantrum mode, angrily riffing up and down the entire instrument’s compass. Morris’ interest in Indian music has found a fascinating outlet here; Raudra combines an awareness of ethnomusicology with a vibrant depiction of fury!

The second half of the program was comprised entirely of compositions by Dick. According to Dick, Afterlight is the first flute piece he’s aware of where multiphonics are a structural determinant of the composition, rather than merely serving as an embellishment or special effect. Whether or not it is actually the first piece to do so, its certainly one of the best – a beguiling etude filled with one shimmering vertical after another. I very much want to get my mitts on the score and recording of this one!

Dick’s a Metallica fan (Who knew?!?). On Air is the Heaviest Metal, he reinterprets thunderous riffs and chugging rhythms for his own instrument. While its not an experiment I would’ve thought likely to work, it brought out an intriguing facet of the flutist’s playing – an abiding interest in popular music – that proved a palette-cleansing corollary to all of the avant-flute pieces surrounding it.

The last two works on the concert were for alternate members of the flute family. Heat History is written for a flute equipped with glissando head joint. “Its kind of like a whammy bar for the flute,” quipped Dick. But the sounds elicited from the instrument thus equipped weren’t just glissandi ‘on steroids.’ Dick also took advantage of many timbral shifts that can occur as a result of the moving head joint, eliciting haunting multiphonics and chirruping microtones as well as the big bends. The title of the work came from an idea suggested to Dick by his father – that objects that undergo chemical makeup changes when subjected to high temperatures have a ‘heat history.’ This made the work’s many kettle whistles and rasps resonate in both musical and programmatic fashion.

Fumarole was inspired by deep sea, sulphur breathing creatures: another evocative image for a title. It was performed on the contrabass flute, which sounds two octaves below a regular flute. Key clicks almost take on the weight of drum thwacks. Sustained notes are potent and weighty. It is an instrument that has to be seen – and heard – to be believed (we’ve included a YouTube clip from 2009 below). Fumarole was a mind-blowing conclusion to an outstanding evening of extended techniques. Anyone who thinks that ‘special effects’ can’t be used in a purposeful fashion to create well-integrated compositions needs to hear Robert Dick in recital.

IFCP is in session this week and next, with events at Mannes and at Le Poisson Rouge. See the festival’s website for more details.

by Christian Carey