Sequenza 21 readers will doubtless already know that the Albany Symphony is, in orchestral terms, the “mouse that roared.” They’ve long had an extraordinary commitment to contemporary music and their standard of playing is the envy of many regional orchestras. And on the right night and with the right repertoire, they’re in the same “weight class” as some of the top big-budget orchestras.
Tonight, Albany SO gets a chance to show their mettle on one of the most prestigious stages on earth. They make their Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Spring for Music festival. The first half of the program is a set of contemporary pieces based on spirituals, by a wide-ranging list of composers, including George Tsontakis, John Harbison, and Bun-Ching Lam. The second half of the program is sure to be a crowd-pleaser: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
There’s going to be a strong Albany contingent on hand to cheer on their local band, but native New Yorkers are more than welcome too. With ticket prices reduced to $25 in honor of Spring for Music, it’s an excellent opportunity to hear a compelling program of American music played by an under-heralded ensemble.
The 2011 incarnation of the MATA Festival starts tonight with a salon at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in Chelsea (details here). Free to festival pass holders – and $50 for single tickets (aren’t you glad you signed up for the festival pass?) – the evening will include discussions with composer Aaron Jay Kernis, Brooklyn Philharmonic director Alan Pierson and three of the festival’s commissioned composers. Metropolis Ensemble will be on hand to provide musical excerpts and there’s a wine and cheese reception.
Salons are fun and all, but the meat and potatoes music-making of MATA begins in earnest tomorrow night at LPR (details here), with a concert titled “Multinational Conglomerate: New Music from Around the World.” ACME, L’Arsenale, Hu Jianbing and Bao Jian perform pieces by Christopher Adler (from the exotic environs of San Diego), Alex Freeman (Minnesota?), Gudmundur Gunnarsson, Mauricio Pauly, and others. In case you’re as confused about the geographic profile of this event as I was, the works by Americans are inspired by music from elsewhere. Chris’ piece uses Chinese mouth organ, Alex’s explores his abiding interest in Finnish music, etc.
MATA continues through 5/12, and we’ll have more coverage here. Outside NYC? Don’t feel left out. Q2 is broadcasting the 5/11 concert live (including a real-time webchat) and recording the shows on 5/10 and 5/12 for future presentations.
There’s going to be an album release party tonight at Le Poisson Rouge. Two groups on the New Amsterdam Records roster, NOW Ensemble and the Chiara String Quartet, are celebrating their respective releases.
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Chiara are presenting string quartets by Jefferson Friedman, along with remixes thereof by special guest electronica artists Matmos. Meanwhile, NOW Ensemble presents a mixed program of new synthetists pieces by the likes of Judd Greenstein, Sean Friar, and Missy Mazzoli.
Check out Joshua Frankel’s new video Plan of the City below; it will accompany the performance of Greenstein’s Change at the gig.
Published in 2007, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross’ first book, was an engrossing and thoughtful survey of Twentieth Century music, equally useful as an introduction to neophytes and a refresher to specialists (he’s since tweaked the paperback edition to be even more comprehensive, including updated info and a “go-to” listening list). By “classical music” standards, the book was wildly successful, and Ross subsequently garnered a number of honors, including a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship. Its follow-up, Listen to This, doesn’t limit itself to contemporary concert music. Instead, it’s a wide-ranging survey of musical topics, including portrait essays of musicians as diverse as Radiohead, Marian Anderson, Sonic Youth, and Cecil Taylor, discussions of specific musical genres, and thought pieces on the state of music education, the record industry, and cultural consumption at home and abroad.
Ross has been a music critic on the staff at the New Yorker since 1996. While most of these essays are culled from his writings there, Listen to This never strikes one merely as a “greatest hits” compilation. Rather, the volume is structured to tease out several overarching concerns. One of them is the working musician. In one chapter, he demystifies the grueling touring schedule of chamber musicians, pointing out that even acclaimed groups such as the St. Lawrence String Quartet have to hustle to make a living in today’s economic climate. Far from being another “death of classical music story,” Ross argues for the relevancy of these touring ensembles that, despite these challenges, bring music of a very high level of artistry to locations far and wide, many of them off of the beaten path. Another topic is globalization’s affect on postmillennial music, which is explored in a particularly fascinating travel essay detailing a concert-filled trip to China and in a jaunt to Carnival in Brazil with Björk.
While there’s no mistaking Ross’ erudition, a trait that allows specialists to prefer his writings to those of some of his journalist colleagues with less musical knowledge, Listen to This is an approachable collection. One of the ways in which it speaks to a wide audience is with an eagerness to share in what Leonard Bernstein called “The Joy of Music.” Indeed, Ross is that rare writer on music who can share his enthusiasms for an artist’s work with unabashed honesty. But even when backstage with Radiohead or following Björk through the streets of Salvador, he defuses any notions of fanboy journalism – a trend that, alarmingly, has infiltrated all too many publications of late. Instead, Ross seeks to put a human face on artistic process, detailing the origins of Björk’s eclectic musical tastes and providing a foil for the singer’s exotic costumes and playful demeanor by detailing a studio session in which, while humane, she is exacting in eliciting musical details from collaborators. There’s an emotional openness, even vulnerability, which runs through a number of these essays. His eulogy of the exquisitely talented mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is one of the most affecting yet observant tributes to this recently departed artist (rereading it was made all the more poignant by the passing in April of her husband, the composer Peter Lieberson).
The state of music education is a frequent topic of discussion of late. Ross’ essay “The Crisis of Music Education” should be required reading for policy-makers, educators, and the parents of artistically motivated children alike. As one can tell by the title, it acknowledges the beleaguered state of arts and education funding; but Ross still provides several glimmers of hope for the future. He describes the unlikely and extraordinary flowering of a music program in the inner city at Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, New Jersey. Another urban success story is detailed in Providence, Rhode Island’s Community MusicWorks, a program run by the Providence String Quartet, a group of graduates from major conservatories who prefer giving back to staking a claim for fame and fortune. Ross even gets in on the education act himself: part of his book tour for Listen to This has featured a performance/discussion of bass lines throughout music history ranging from Purcellian grounds to Delta Blues walking lines: it’s also made for a cult YouTube hit, in which Ross is joined by the Bad Plus’ Ethan Iverson and ex-Battles composer Tyondai Braxton.
A staff position at the New Yorker provides a platform from which can wield considerable influence. Some of the essays collected here have already had undeniable impact. Ross has done a considerable amount to raise the stock of Alaskan composer John Luther Adams, and his fascinating chapter on the composer’s works and working environments is another “must-read” excerpt. One wonders whether it’s mere coincidence that Providence String Quartet founder Sebastian Ruth received a 2010 MacArthur Fellowship. If Ross had a hand in this, more power to him: it’s nice to see a music critic on the side of the good guys!
Peter Lieberson’s record label, Bridge Records, has been kind enough to share some of his music with us: an excerpt from The Six Realms, for Cello and Orchestra (2000), one of his later and larger works and a piece that has an explicitly Buddhist programmatic element.
Here is movement 5, performed by cellist Michaela Fukacova, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Justin Brown. The recording is from Bridge 9178, The Music of Peter Lieberson.
In addition to silk and other precious goods, the Silk Road helped disseminate Buddhism, one of its earliest, and most valuable, cultural exports. For almost thirty years, Peter Lieberson has been a devout Buddhist, having studied with the great Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist master he met in 1974. Says Lieberson, “Buddhism’s appeal to me in the early 1970s was that it was not a religion in the conventional Western sense. Buddhism did not posit the existence of any external deity or savior or, for that matter, an individual personal ego…The basic message of the great Buddhist masters was: Be brave enough to experience existence without dogma or beliefs of any kind.” (more…)
We’re saddened to learn from David Starobinof the passing of composer Peter Liebersonin Israel, due to complications from Lymphoma. He had been battling the disease since 2006 and for a time it had been in remission. But in late 2010, Lieberson travelled to Israel to seek treatment for a recurrence of the cancer.
Lieberson’s music was an extraordinary mixture of disparate strands of influences. It encompassed an intuitive post-tonal vocabulary, rooted in dodecaphonic training but also capable of lush verticals and, particularly in his vocal music, supple lyricism and sweeping melodies. In later years, his interest in meditation and Zen Buddhism contributed another layer of resonances and an intriguingly metaphysical counterweight to some of the modernist tendencies of his oeuvre.
Among the many honors he attained was the prestigious Grawemeyer Prize, which he won in 2008 for Neruda Songs. Although he was a finalist for the award on multiple occasions, the Pulitzer Prize eluded him. Back in 2004, I suggested that this injustice made him the “Pulitzer’s Susan Lucci.”
Of course, during this sad time, one can’t help but think of the passing of Lieberson’s late wife, the extraordinary mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, also of cancer. Lieberson wrote a number of memorable pieces for her, including the aforementioned Neruda Songs. If there’s a signature example to use when we advocate for our government to continue to fund medical research, I’d offer this one up: two brilliant creators in the prime of life laid low so cruelly. Both had so much yet to offer. It’s a tragedy that we’re bereft of their artistry and humanity far too soon.
Yes, we’re still planning to have a Sequenza 21/MNMP concert in 2011 and it’s going to be excellent. We’re still finalizing the details, but should have an announcement soon.
Thanks for your continued patience (which is code for “entrants: stop calling and emailing us”).
Speaking of synthetists, how’s about Craig Wedren and ACME performing a song from On in Love (video below)?
De Rerum - Matisyahu eat your heart out
Some of you might know Elliot Cole as a composer of concert music, Contributing Editor here at Sequenza 21, or as a doctoral student at Princeton. But do you know Cole as a … rapper?
De Rerum, Elliot’s debut EP as a fast-talking MC, under the project moniker Oracle Hysterical, tackles lofty subject matter. According to Cole, “It’s a verse history of the world as I understand it (to c.2000BCE, after which, I discovered, history is mostly redundant), and also a general synthesis of, well, most every (nonfiction) book I’ve read in the last decade.”
The EP is available for free download via his website. If you enjoy this taste of Oracle Hysterical, you can check out their performance of a retelling of the Rake’s Progress alongside the Metropolis Ensemble at the MATA festival in NYC on May 12.
I’m looking forward to hearing violinist Miranda Cuckson premiere a new chamber concerto by Jeffrey Mumford tonight at Symphony Space.
Cuckson is a tremendous talent. Her recent CDs of music by Ralph Shapey, Donald Martino, and Michael Hersch are required listening for anyone interested in post-tonal chamber music.
The concert also includes works by Harold Meltzer, Victoria Bond, and Brian Ferneyhough. Cuckson is joined by the Argento Ensemble; the Da Capo Chamber Players will also perform (details below).
Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival Program
Monday, April 11, 2011, 7:30 pm; $20/Seniors $15
Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in Peter Norton Symphony Space
Ticket information here
Jeffrey Mumford: through a stillness brightening (world premiere)
Argento Ensemble
Commissioned by the Argento New Music Project through the generosity of Marianna Bettman (in memory of Judge Gilbert Bettman) and Sonia Rothschild.
Brian Ferneyhough: La Chute D’Icare
Argento Ensemble
Harold Meltzer: Exiles
Da Capo Chamber Players, Mary Nessinger, mezzo soprano
Victoria Bond: Instruments of Revelation (NY premiere)
Da Capo Chamber Players
Steve Reich turns 75 this coming October, and the celebrations have already begun. Later this month is a concert at Carnegie Hall on April 30th. It features the Kronos Quartet in a new piece commemorating a more sombre anniversary: WTC 9/11.
In the lead up to the Carnegie concert, there will likely be countless interviews, features, etc.; but this YouTube video is a terrific five-minute distillation of Reich’s interests, influences, and musical style.
I love the segue early on from bebop ii-V-I changes to Steve Reich’s pulsating ostinati.
Steve Reich turns 75 this coming October, and the celebrations have already begun. Later this month is a concert at Carnegie Hall on April 30th. It features the Kronos Quartet in a new piece commemorating a more sombre anniversary: WTC 9/11.