Month: September 2013

Contemporary Classical

BUTI emergency

This article points up a very serious and potentially catastrophic, it seems to me, situation which everybody should know about. There is a very possibility that the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, which is clearly one of the preeminent summer music programs for pre-college students (and a very important program for pre-college composers) in the United States, may not exist NEXT YEAR. Tell all your friends….

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_24194855/boston-universitys-tanglewood-institute-music-program-under-review

by Rodney Lister
Ambient, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Houston, Improv, Sound Art

Houston Composer Paul Connolly Premieres New Electro-Acoustic Work

(Houston, TX) If Houston is becoming, as one young Houston-based composer puts it, a “hub for contemporary music,” credit must be given to more than a few local ensembles, organizations, and venues that operate without institutional support and on shoestring budgets. Contemporary music ensembles made up of university professors and their students performing contemporary music in universities for other professors and students are nothing new. But composers who not only write, perform, and creatively program contemporary music and present it outside of academia in venues typically dedicated to performance art, experimental rock and underground noise? That’s a little more interesting, and certainly more conducive to expanding audiences for 21st century composition.

Composer Paul Connolly (Photo by Lynn Lane)
Composer Paul Connolly (Photo by Lynn Lane)

Houston-based composer Paul Connolly understands this. As the curator and producer of Brave New Waves, which was born out of electronic and video artist Jonathan Jindra’s Binarium Sound Series and is currently Houston’s only concert series dedicated solely to electronic music, Connolly has worked hard to bring seemingly disparate artists and audiences together to share and experience new sounds. On October 2,3, and 5, as part of the sixth annual Houston Fringe Festival, Connolly shifts roles from producer to composer to premier The Quiet Persistence Of Memory, an original electro-acoustic composition that, not surprisingly, will be performed by a wildly diverse collection of Houston musicians and improvisers.

The Quiet Persistence Of Memory is scored for bass, tenor, and soprano voices, viola, harp, contrabass, percussion, and analog modular sound tools. The ensemble Connolly has gathered to perform this work includes Aaron Bielish (viola), Kathy Fay (harp), Thomas Helton (double bass), Luke Hubley (percussion), John Pitale (percussion), Ben Lind (narration), Misha Penton (soprano), Matthew Robinson (tenor), and SPIKE the percussionist (percussion, electronics). Each of the three scheduled performances of The Quiet Persistence Of Memory will feature a slightly different configuration of the performers. The score, which Connolly describes as “a time-based grid that allows the performers to both see their part as well as existing parts of others that have been prerecorded,” is augmented by live improvisation and accompanying visuals.

“When I first began conceptualizing the piece,” says Connolly, “it probably had an equal balance between acoustic instruments and electronic material. However, the piece has evolved to where it has become very much a totally acoustic instrument work, with live electronics that are used almost like Foley in film. Very subtle, and simply providing a background that’s not necessarily noticeable.”

The title of the piece, aside from its nod to the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, refers to “the process by which information (i.e. memory) is encoded, stored and retrieved.” Connolly’s compositional process, which included recording studio performances by many of the participating musicians and incorporating those recordings into the piece for the same musicians to “remember” and react to in the live performances, speaks to the subject of how memory is utilized, disrupted, and (de)valued “in a hyper-information rich society.”

No two of the three performances of the piece will be alike, and kudos must go to the folks behind the Houston Fringe Festival for scheduling multiple opportunities for audiences to hear and experience Connolly’s music.

Paul Connolly presents The Quiet Persistence Of Memory October 2, 5, 9:30 PM and October 3, 8:00 PM at Super Happy Fun Land, 3801 Polk Street, Houston, TX. Part of the sixth annual Houston Fringe Festival.

by Chris Becker
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Performers

Krakauer Week!

krakauer_chair-colorClarinettist David Krakauer, a major voice in both contemporary classical music and modern klezmer, will be performing an exciting and eclectic series of concerts this coming week at The Stone (September 24-29), featuring several of his current collaborative projects. This week long residency will offer a chance for audiences to hear all the sides of David’s artistry, and to enjoy the work of some very cool guest artists as well. In the following interview he discusses this coming week, his musical history, and some of his other fascinating projects.

 

CD: David – you are known around the world as a classical clarinetist, and also as a leading innovator in the world of Jewish klezmer music. Tell us a little about this “double life” — what is your history with these parallel paths, and how do you see each as a manifestation of your artistic voice? How, when, and why do you bring them together?

DK: I didn’t grow up playing or hearing klezmer music as a kid. But when I came to it, I was in my early thirties and somehow had both the maturity to understand the emotional impact of the music plus some kind of concept of why I was choosing to embark on that musical journey. Basically at the beginning, I just started to play klezmer as a pure search for cultural identity that was totally separate from my professional musical life. And fortunately my early musical education had fully equipped me to embrace an “off the page” style of music. Already during the time I attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City I was lucky enough to have had a musical education in both classical and jazz. When I was 15 I started studying with Leon Russianoff, one of the greatest clarinet teachers of all time. By the time I started working with him in the early 70s, his former students included many of the top orchestral clarinetists in the country like Stanley Drucker, Franklin Cohen, Michelle Zukovsky etc. But in addition he taught the great jazz clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton (best known for his illustrious tenure in the Duke Ellington band) and a huge array of players from all walks of the music business. So Russianoff had a very open mind and was anything BUT a “stuffy” classical teacher. His mix of incredible rigor with a lovely, easy-going looseness was perfect for me and set the stage for the career I have today. As far as the jazz side of things goes, I had the great fortune to meet the incredible composer/pianist Anthony Coleman when we were students together at Music and Art. He asked me to join his band that was doing a huge spectrum of jazz repertoire ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to Monk to free jazz (in addition to Anthony’s music). Covering so many styles of jazz was actually rather unusual at that time, and it was a tremendous experience.

But when I went to college, I kind of had a crisis of confidence. I ended up abandoning jazz and deciding to focus almost exclusively on classical music. In fact, I think at the time I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to find a personal voice as an improviser. I worked very hard in classical music and excelled; but was always tremendously conflicted about making that choice. It would take many years for me to sort that all out. In any case, right out of school I spent ten years freelancing doing chamber music, contemporary classical, orchestral playing and some recitals here and there. After a while I made some headway with some very prestigious associations like the Marlboro music festival, a woodwind quintet that won the Naumburg Chamber music award, a New York recital debut as a winner of the Concert Artists’ Guild, chamber music with a wonderful group of people in the NY Philomusica and countless concerts with many of the New Yorks’ new music groups such as Continuum and the Da Capo Chamber Players.

It was a very rich and busy life, but I got to a point in my early 30s where somehow I felt like something was missing and I had thrown the baby out with the bath water. I knew at that point I needed to return to the world of improvising and non-written music. So through a series of chance meetings and coincidences (that in retrospect I see I was somehow directing myself towards) I came to klezmer music. At first I was just doing it for fun. And in the same moment I found myself connecting to my Jewish roots for the first time. It was exhilarating. After a few months of doing a bunch of very low key gigs my name came to the attention of the Klezmatics and they asked me to join. It was during that time where I started to develop my own original sound and find my own voice. The conflict I had felt for over 15 years was finally resolved and klezmer became a foundation for me to create a musical home for myself.

I did two recordings and countless tours of Europe with the Klezmatics before I left the band to form my own group in the mid-90s. And that has all launched me on the path that I’m still following today. In addition to touring with my own band, it’s fantastic to have an opportunity to bring it all together by working with composers who have given me room to be myself within their compositions. Recording and performing Osvaldo Golijov’s monumental composition “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” with the Kronos is a notable example. Plus nowadays I have more and more chances to be a soloist with fantastic symphony orchestras playing pieces that straddle both worlds by composers like George Tsontakis, Wlad Marhulets, Ofer Ben-Amots and Mohammed Fairouz. I’ve also enjoyed incredible collaborations with the Montreal based beat architect Socalled, the renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz, John Zorn and the great master of funk Fred Wesley. Musically I feel like I’m in an incredibly exciting place where I can bring all the diverse elements of my universe together with so many incredibly rewarding projects.

CD: Your Stone residency really seems to be something of a self portrait in that you have chosen to showcase a different side of your artistry each night. We’ll hear your klezmer band, we’ll hear you playing John Zorn’s music, some improv, and some chamber music. Can you tell us a little about the concepts behind each night?

DK: The Stone residency coming up next week is an amazing opportunity for me to offer a cross section of many of my major projects. During the first three nights a number of the musicians who have worked with me for many years will be on board. After having played so much together, there are times when we’re virtually mind-reading. Joining me in various configurations will be Sheryl Bailey on electric guitar; Jerome Harris on bass; Michael Sarin on drums; Will Holshouser on accordion; and Keepalive on sampler.

-Tuesday 9/24 will be a show with my Acoustic Klezmer Quartet. We’ll do an “unplugged” mix of traditional klezmer pieces done with my own quirky spin mixed with my compositions that all come from the story about my particular musical/personal journey.

-On Wednesday 9/25 I’ll present my arrangements of a group of pieces from John Zorn’s Book of Angels Volume 3. John selected these pieces specifically for me and this is a great chance to pay tribute to a musical association I’ve had with Zorn for over twenty years.

-Thursday 9/26 will be a performance with “Ancestral Groove” which is my current touring band.

I decided to change my band’s name from “Klezmer Madness”, because for me at this point, klezmer no longer seems to encompass all that I’m doing now. Klezmer will always of course be part of my music, but the title “Ancestral Groove” seems to better reflect the totality of my story.

-Friday 9/27 will mark the debut of a new duo project with the incredible South African pianist, arranger and musical explorer Kathleen Tagg. We’ll be doing our arrangements of a couple of klezmer tunes, brand new electro-acoustic works by exciting New York composers Aleksandra Vrebalov and Jorge Sosa and our new arrangements of great New York performing composers Kinan Azmeh and John Zorn. I’ll also be doing Steve Reich’s iconic “New York Counterpoint” and Messiaen’s “Abyss of the Birds”.

-On Saturday 9/28 I’ll be doing an evening of improvisation with the incredible new music singer Helga Davis, the fantastic former cellist of the Kronos Quartet Jeffery Zeigler and the astonishing violinist/electronics wizard Todd Reynolds.

-The final concert on Sunday 9/29 will feature performances in both sets of the aforementioned “Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind’ by Osvaldo Golijov. I’ve been a champion of this work since 1994 and am delighted to have a chance to play it in New York once again. Jeff Zeigler will join once again in addition to a tremendous super group including the amazing Margaret Dyer on viola and Abigale Reisman on violin. Plus I’m so delighted that you , Cornelius Dufallo, will also be a part of it bringing your tremendous artistry to this ensemble !!!!

All in all I’m super excited about this residency and can’t wait to get underway!

CD: You have a new project called “The Big Picture,” in which you will be re-interpreting some of the great film scores of all time. Please share with us how you came up with this project! I think you describe it as a “new phase” for you – how so?

DK: “The Big Picture” is a multi-media concert with a six piece band interpreting music from iconic films that (as we find out during the course of the performance) all have Jewish content. There’s music from the soundtracks of the obvious films like “The Pianist” and “Sophie’s Choice”…but there’s also music from Woody Allen films like “Midnight In Paris”, “Radio Days” and “Love and Death” that include jazz standards and pieces by Sidney Bechet and Prokofiev. And then there are pieces from Mel Brooks….and from Randy Newman. And more! So the range is pretty incredible. With the six piece band of tremendously poetic musicians we’re able to bring a special playfulness and intimacy to all this music. It was a blast to make the CD. Now we’re in the phase of producing a film that will accompany the music. This whole show will launch in Jan-Feb at the museum of Jewish Heritage down in Battery Park. I just heard the finished master of the CD the other day…and as I listened to this incredible selection of pieces fill the room it felt like I was going through a whole journey of the Jewish experience for the last 120 years. So yes… It’s quite different from anything I’ve ever done before, but at the same time it’s a continuation of my story and the search for identity that I’ve been involved with for the past 25 years. I put this all together with an extremely talented team and am extremely excited to bring this project out into the world to share with the public in the next few months.

CD: Do you have any words of wisdom for young musicians?

DK:  I often say the following to young musicians :

Follow your dreams….no matter how crazy they seem!

Explore as much diversity in music as possible!

Be entrepreneurial!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf69VJcklZk&list=PLE494F293DC054002[/youtube]

 

by Cornelius Dufallo
Contemporary Classical

One less sax concerto to track down …

Full disclosure: Caroline Shaw has played my music, so I make no claim to objectivity here.
_____

The day after Paul Moravec won the Pulitzer prize, John Adams started shooting from the hip about the Pulitzer going to “academic composers.” I was annoyed. But I figured, “Okay, he’s being a jerk, but Paul is an established composer writing quality material: He doesn’t need Adams’s permission to be successful.”

Recently, however, Adams has been sniping at younger composers. Yesterday in the NY Times, he took a thinly veiled swipe at Caroline. I know that she doesn’t really need JCA’s permission to be successful either. However, it really ticks me off that Adams is willing to burn the bridge behind him.

So let’s break the cycle of composers eating their young. Emerging and just-emerged composers: remember to pay it forward and to not get crotchety before your time.

by Christian Carey
Austin, Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Strings

Grandchildren of Minimalism: The Miró Quartet’s Joshua Gindele On Playing Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5

(The Miró Quartet)

(Houston, TX) As a way of acknowledging the impact composers such as Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass made on him in his formative years, composer John Zorn has described himself as a “child of minimalism” and said that the influence of the minimalist school “is somewhere in almost everything I do.”

Cellist Joshua Gindele, a founding member of the Austin-based Miró Quartet, probably wouldn’t describe himself as a child or even a grandchild of minimalism, since Glass’s repertoire, as well as the repertoire of several of the composers we’ve come to associate with the “M” word, has since found a home among the standards that any self-respecting classical chamber ensemble plays. Along with performing traditional string quartet music, including works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert, the Miró Quartet has commissioned and performed several new works by composers, including Brent Michael Davids, Chan Ka Nin, Leonardo Balada, and Gunter Schuller. On Tuesday, September 17, 7:30 PM at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the Quartet performs a program of works by Schubert and Beethoven as well as Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5.

Although Glass is still finding ways to surprise listeners and reboot the very musical language he began articulating back in 1966 with  (more…)

by Chris Becker
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Los Angeles

Nicholas Isherwood Sings Stockhausen in Los Angeles

stock=10On a hot September 7th Saturday night, People Inside Electronics  and LA Sonic Odyssey  presented bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood  in a concert of electronic and vocal music given at the Moryork Gallery in Highland Park. This was the Los Angeles appearance for Isherwood’s world tour that will also take him to New Zealand, Portugal and France. The evening included works by Michael Norris, Jean-Claude Risset, Lissa Meridan, Isaac Schankler and featured an adaptation of Karlheintz Stockhausen’s powerful Capricorn.

The Moryork gallery space was roomy and comfortable for the 40 or so in attendance and even though the interior walls were lined with all sorts of exotic items the acoustics were carefully engineered with several good speakers placed around the perimeter of the audience. A table with a soundboard and several computers completed the electronic setup. With Los Angeles sweltering in triple-digit temperatures the heat inside the gallery was an issue, but it did not affect the performance.

The first piece was Deep Field I by Michael Norris, a composer and software programmer who teaches at the New Zealand School of Music. Deep Field I is the first of a proposed series of works based on the Hubble Telescope Deep Field images. The electronics provided a suitably spare and expansively distant feel while Isherwood’s rich voice added a welcome warmth. The texts were taken from MUL.APIN, an ancient Babylonian star catalog, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus and some 16th century French poetry by Pierre de Croix. The blending of voice and electronics through the speaker system was effective, although the vocals would occasionally overpower. This piece provokes feelings that are an interesting combination of the primal and the futuristic, inviting the listener to speculate about immensity of deep space and our place in it. Deep Field I was commissioned by Nicholas Isherwood and is well matched to his voice. (more…)

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical

Britten and Lutoslawski at the Proms–and Panufnik

Every year’s Proms has several thematic threads, often celebrating anniversaries and birthdays. This year, no exception, had a large number of performances commemorating the centennials of the births of Benjamin Britten and Witold Lutoslawski, and a bunch of them occurred during the slice of the Proms that I was around for. In the concerts in the Albert Hall Britten was represented by Les Illuminations, performed by Ian Bostridge and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding, in their concert on August 20. Les Illuminations sets poems of Rimbaud, a poet whose work was introduced to Britten by W. H. Auden; Britten began it with settings of two poems for Swiss soprano Sophie Wyss, and she sang them at the Queen’s Hall under Henry Wood. Later that year Britten added settings of seven more poems, connected by the refrain “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage” [I alone have the key to this savage parade.] Wyss was the soloist for the first complete performance in 1940 in London, but by 1941 the work had become the property of Peter Pears, who sang the first American performance with the CBS Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Britten. Ian Bostridge has become a major performer of a lot of the music that Britten wrote for Pears. He delivered a performance on this concert with a good deal of confidence, even swagger, which is appropriate for this piece. This listener has never warmed up to Les Illumination, or, for that matter, to Bostridge as a performer of Britten’s music, and this performance didn’t change anything. The concert began with a brief fanfare, derived from his oratorio The Mask of Time, by Michael Tippett, which was followed by his Concerto for Double String Orchestra, his earliest work. Britten and Tippet were contemporaries and friends; when the first recording of the piece was made, during the Second World War, while Tippett was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, Britten was the co-producer. (more…)

by Rodney Lister
Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, Music Events, New York

Resonant Bodies Festival – Sept. 5-7

resonant-bodies-sept-5thtk2

Thursday night kicked off the Resonant Bodies Festival, a new 3-day parade of contemporary vocal music at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn.

Each night features three young singers performing programs of their favorite music. This curatorial freedom gave last night’s show a happy zealousness, where the singers’ enthusiasm for their repertoire was contagious.

Festival curator Lucy Dhegrae marked out a broad territory in her set. Beginning with Jason Eckardt’s mantic Dithyramb, she swiftly established her virtuosity in an elastic, preverbal but hyper-articulate world. In Old Virginny, by Shawn Jaeger, juxtaposed a forthright Appalachian lament with a snarling, snaky bassline, played athletically by Doug Balliett, to surprisingly tender effect. Balliett then took the mic for the premiere of his newest Ovid rap cantata, #11, Clytie and the Sun. While not the most arresting of his cycle (see Echo and Narcissus), it delivered a highly entertaining mix of humor and pathos, and Dhegrae’s theatrical arias, as the smitten Sun, were the perfect foil to his informal Narrator. (more…)

by Elliot Cole
CDs, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, jazz

Kinan Azmeh CityBand at Joe’s Pub

Kinan Azmeh
Kinan Azmeh

On September 3rd Kinan Azmeh CityBand returned to Joe’s Pub for the official release of their new album, Elastic City. The disc, a collection of passionate and virtuosic pieces in the genre of Arab World Jazz, features Azmeh (clarinet), Kyle Sanna (guitar), Josh Myers (bass), and John Hadfield (drums and percussion). Formed in 2006, the ensemble has received critical acclaim in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Judging from the large and wildly enthusiastic audience at Joe’s Pub, they are clearly developing a big following here in New York.

Born and raised in Damascus, Azmeh finished his training at New York’s Juilliard School and has since gained international recognition as a clarinettist, composer, and musical innovator. He’s currently recognized as one of Syria’s leading classical musicians and composers, and also has a well deserved reputation as one of New York’s most engaging composer-performers. In addition to his work with CityBand, Azmeh performs regularly with the Syrian ensemble HEWAR, the Damascus Festival Chamber Music Ensemble (of which he is the artistic director), and also as a solo artist.

CityBand has a captivating stage presence and an interpersonal attunement that comes from years of performing together. They respond intuitively to each other, grooving effortlessly in complex meters, and never getting in each other’s way. Their improvisations are sophisticated and emotionally powerful, each member contributing a distinct individual voice to a seamlessly blended whole. At times Azmeh brings the dynamics of the group down to an almost inaudible level, building it slowly to ecstatic heights.

Azmeh started the evening with a deeply moving solo entitled A Sad Morning, Every Morning, a composition that he wrote in memory of the thousands who have lost their lives in the Syrian conflict. Other memorable moments included Woods, a haunting and transportive work by Kyle Sanna, and Wedding, a raucous piece written by Azmeh that featured the group’s dazzling virtuosity.

Kinan Azmeh: A Sad Morning, Every Morning  (art by Kevork Mourad)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9jbBFKetA[/youtube]

by Cornelius Dufallo
Contemporary Classical

Attn: Record Labels, Music Groups and Other Music Advertising Shoppers

It’s  September, the beginning of a new season, and time for our annual below half-price one-year Sequenza21 sponsorship/advertising sale.  You can change your ad monthly if you like so basically, you get up to 12 ads for the price of 5 at the standard rate.

145×145 – $1,000 for 12 months (Standard Rate – $200 per month)
145×400  -$1,500 for 12 months (Standard Rate – $350 per month)
We use jpg, gif or animated gif.
Send me a note for more information.

 

by Jerry Bowles