Author: Steve Layton

Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #16

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

“New” Mexico via Myspace

NEW Mexico If your idea of contemporary Mexican art music is still Chavez and Revueltas, you’re so far out of date that it’s not even funny! I can’t catch you up on composers from the 50’s through the 90’s; Google will have to help you out there. Some names to explore might be Manuel Enríquez, Mario Lavista, Federico Ibarra-Groth, Marcela Rodríguez, Hilda Paredes, Hebert Vázquez, Germán Romero, Gabriela Ortíz Torres, Juan Felipe Waller, Julio Estrada, Mauricio Beltránand. (Feeling out of the loop already? Then get busy…)

Those are all fine and respected composers, surely, but where I want to take you is to an even newer fringe of younger Mexican composers and performers, experimental and electronic musicians and improvisers, who happened to have set up a loose confederation on Myspace.com. We’re talking the NEW new, musicians whose influence lists always include Ferneyhough, Lachenmann and Murail right along with my generation’s heros like Xenakis, Ligeti and Feldman; where Zorn and Merzbow are placed as equals with any of those previous names; and where electronic and digital means are are taken for granted as stock-in-trade, right along with all the traditional instruments.

Many will have links on their Myspace page to more “official” websites; but the Myspace pages will give you an easy central location with plenty to listen to for starters, lots of information (Spanish helps but isn’t absolutely essential), and a good sense of the interconnection involved. I don’t need to tell you much more; this is Myspace after all, so you don’t need to just listen but can actually meet and talk with each and any of them! So what are you waiting for?.. say hello to our southern neighbors.

Iván Naranjo: Composer, his 2002 string quartet Uno, played by the Arditti, was just released on a new Mode CD.

Wilfrido Terrazas: Flautist and composer, seems to be a large part of the “glue” bringing these groups of musicians together.

Isaac de la Concha: Composer, improviser, teacher, with no less than three (!!) Myspace pages, one devoted to each aspect.

Alexander Bruck Santos: Violist with a fondness for everything from Feldman to free improv.

Adnán Márquez-Borbon: Saxophonist and improviser.

With a number of other musicians (who you’ll find listed in their personnel of the pages), this posse does duty in one or more of the following experimental ensembles:

Generación Espontánea

Ensamble Áspero

ArtoEnsamble

Colectivo Kaoss

Circling the periphery, but still connected and quite worth checking out, are these composers:

Arístides Llaneza

Juan José Bárcenas

Pablo Rubio Vargas

by Steve Layton
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Strange

Still want that Fulbright?

Michael Rose & friendsMichael Rose, composer and pianist who’s normally found teaching at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, has been on a Fulbright-sponsored stay at the Kerala Kalamandalam, a performing-arts school in south India. The nice folks over at the music & audio review site La Folia are hosting Michael’s report on the highs and lows of his adventure. Not least among the lows is his current opinion of the whole Fulbright biz… The link will take you to part one of his — both entertaining and cautionary — adventure, with links there to parts two and three.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #15

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Cecilia Arditto (b. 1966 — Argentina / NL)

Cecilia ArdittoCecilia will tell you:

I have always been struck by the sensuality of sound, I have always loved it. The infinite possibilities of instruments constitute a source of inspiration and research. However, the exploration of sound would just be an empty category, a cosmetic idea, if it were not tied to the idea of musical grammar. Here, then, is an introduction to my research: intense exploration of the world of tone-colour – principally of acoustic instruments and the human voice – subordinated to a profound preoccupation with the idea of form. For me form is conferred only by a few elements, by small points. They could be few in number and minimalist; complexity is not a matter of quantity. […]

Musical works transcend the various performances and their historicity, they transcend the composer’s intentions. Music resonates at a historical moment, but also in the most intimate categories of a human being: it resonates in places you cannot grasp, that can only be suggested, that can only be guessed at through a delicate network of relationships. Music is neither notes nor instruments, nor is it time. It constitutes an object that is impossible to define, that gives rise to a multiplicity of simultaneous perspectives. The essence of a musical work is given by the listener. This essence propulses the music into a more abstract condition. […]

I think music has to do with several things at the same time: feelings, thoughts, perceptions that are always changing. I cannot say, “That’s how it is!”. So I cannot answer your question. It is when I write music that I find what I am looking for.

At her site you’ll find the rest of this 2004 interview, along with many MP3s and scores. There’s also a link to her (Spanish-mostly) blog, “La cocina de Ce”.

by Steve Layton
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Before, Between and After

DeLaurenti CD cover My pal Christopher DeLaurenti — composer, field-recordist, improviser, and writer on Seattle’s classical and new-music scene in the weekly Stranger newspaper — is happy to announce the release of his latest CD, Favorite Intermissions: Music Before and Between Beethoven, Stravinsky and Holst. Chris’ short description:

“Secretly recorded at orchestral concerts across the country, this collection of intermissions teems with unusual soundscapes, startling (and unintended) collective improvisations, and surprising, sometimes gritty sonic detail from the sacred space of the concert hall. [….] Why record intermissions? One duty of the composer is to expose the unexpected, overlooked, and hidden skeins of music woven in the world around us. Culling sounds from the world as a composition subverts long-standing, essentialist notions of music as comprised of notes, melody, traditional instruments (violin, guitar, drums, piano, etc.) and so forth as well as flouts contemporary expectations of abstractly agglomerated, musique concrète-ized sound.”

I see Chris himself on the right of the cover, no doubt deep in the process of bringing us this latest opus. You can get your own copy directly through GD Records.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #14

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Bun-Ching Lam (b. 1954 — China / US)

Bun-Ching Lam — Born in the Macau region of China, Bun-Ching Lam began studying piano at the age of seven and gave her first public solo recital at fifteen. In 1976, she received a B.A. in piano performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She then accepted a scholarship from the University of California at San Diego, where she studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros. Afterwards she was invited to join the music faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where she taught until 1986. She’s been the Jean MacDuff Vaux Composer-in-Residence at Mills College, California, the America Dance Festival, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; and a Visiting Professor in Composition at the School of Music, Yale University, and at Bennington College in Vermont. She now divides her time between Paris and New York.

From an interview with Meet The Composer‘s Ken Gallo:

Bun-Ching Lam: Half of my life I have lived in the United States and I grew up in Macau, which was a Portuguese colony. So, I was well versed in Western culture; but still deeply rooted in my Chinese culture. I have the best of both worlds. Actually, I don’t think of it as two worlds. It’s one world; one with a very cosmopolitan view. I’m comfortable here; I’m comfortable in China, and, actually, I’m comfortable in Europe. I speak all these different languages. There is no conflict in who I am. Sometimes I feel like eating Japanese food; sometimes I feel like eating French. I am a citizen of the world. It’s all the same to me.

Ken Gallo: You didn’t grow up under Communist rule?

BCL: No, I grew up under Portuguese government. My piano teacher was Portuguese and we spoke English most of the time. My background is very different from other Chinese-American composers like Bright Sheng, Zhou Long and Chen Yi, although we are all Chinese.

KG: When you lived in China, did you know these other Chinese composers who are now your American colleagues?

BCL: Actually, we only met in 1986 in Hong Kong during a Chinese composers conference. That was the first time; 10 years after the Cultural Revolution.

KG: Did you find that you had any common stories to share about the Cultural Revolution?

BCL: Not really. For example, Chen Yi is from Canton which is not far from Macau; like from NYC to Albany. Although, we both speak Cantonese, politically Canton was a very different climate than Macau. I did go to a so-called “Communist school,” so I knew all the Revolutionary songs. During the Cultural Revolution, when I was in school, I was playing the accordion and singing songs praising Chairman Mao. We all have that in common. When we met they were very surprised when I knew all those songs.

Sure, Chen Yi’s hit the big awards, Tan Dun’s the flavor-of-the-month; but Bun-Ching Lam’s been working her own brand of fusion every bit as long or longer, just as comfortable writing for zheng, dizi, erhu and sho as for trombone, violin, or piano, and has made plenty of more-than-wonderful music. From her site, follow the link marked “Samples” and you’ll find MP3s of complete movements of a number of her works, a good 50 minutes at least.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #13

Philippe Kocher (b. 1973 — Switzerland)

Philippe Kocher

Philippe Kocher studied piano, electroacoustic music and musicology in Zurich and more recently music theory and composition with Detlev Müller-Siemens at the Musikakademie Basel, where he graduated in June 2004. He spent the academic year 2004-05 in London at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was at the same time a student and a teaching assistant for electroacoustic composition and real-time digital audio programming (Max/MSP). His work encompasses pieces for instruments and voice with or without electronics, and his interest lies both in electronic and instrumental music. As means for sound and score synthesis, the computer has become his most important instrument in both fields. Philippe’s music has been performed both in Switzerland and world-wide (Berlin, Munich, Rome, London, Brussels, Bourges, New York, Boston) as well as being broadcast by Swiss and German radio stations.

I suppose a lot of Kocher’s music qualifies for the new-high-modernist moniker, but it’s much more appealing than that sounds, with lots of brilliant color and quirky asides. Head for the “Audio” link on the navigation, and you’ll find plenty to hear; Figuren Bewegungen (6 microtonally-tuned keyboards) or Il Niege au Soleil (solo violin, ensemble and electronics) are slightly more intimate starting-points, while the larger and longer die moderne Unruhe setzt ein (mixed choir, violin, violoncello, baritone saxophone, percussion, sampler and live electronics) is a much more ambitious place to dive in.

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #12

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Hidayat Inayat-Khan (b.1917 — India / Europe)

Hidayat Inayat-Khan

Taken mostly from the 1981 Cambridge International Biographical Centre entry, I just have to give you a good taste of this very interesting bio:

Hidayat Inayat-Khan’s great-grandfather, Mula Bux, founded the first Academy of Music in India in the 19th century, and also invented the music notation system carrying his name. Born in 1882, Professor Inayat Khan, father of Hidayat Inayat-Khan, was the greatest classical musician in India in his time. He wrote several books, among them ‘Minca-I-Musicar’, the first treatise on Indian music. His first historical Western concert was given on 9 April 1911, in the Hindu Temple of San Francisco. Later, in Russia, he met Scriabin. In 1913 Lucien Guitry organised Professor Inayat Khan’s first concert in Paris, where Claude Debussy was also inspired by the charm of Indian music. It is reported Professor Inayat Khan gave Claude Debussy lessons in Vina playing.

Hidayat Inayat-Khan was born in London on 6th August 1917, and was cradled in an atmosphere of Indian music. His western musical education began in 1932 at the Ecole Normale de Musice de Paris, in the violin class of Bernard Sinsheimer; the composition class of Nadia Boulanger; and the orchestra class of Diran Alexanian. Later, he attended chamber music courses given by the Lener Quartet in Budapest. In 1942 Hidayat Inayat-Khan became Professor of music at the Lycee Musical de Dieulefit, France, and later in Holland joined the orchestra of Haarlem as violinist. In 1952 He conducted the orchestra of Hertogenbosch for the broadcasting of his Poème en Fa for orchestra and piano, in a world-wide program, and, in the same year, founded his first chamber music orchestra ensemble.

Significant occasions in Hidayat Inayat-Khan’s professional life include the playing, on 4th May 1957, of his Zikar Symphony at Salle Pleyel, Paris. On the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s centenary, on 21st November 1969, Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Gandhi Symphony was played in a special concert organized by UNESCO in Holland. This was also played in 1971 during a broadcasting of ‘The Voice of America’, as well as on the United Nations Radio in the USA and was later recorded by the US Armed Forces Radio Stations in a world-wide Carmen Dragon show. In 1988 Hidayat Inayat-Khan assumed the role of Representative-General of the Sufi Movement International and Pir-o-Murshid of its Inner School. He divides his time between Holland and the family home in Suresnes, but travels extensively, giving classes and lectures on Sufism.

I didn’t see a death-date; if not he’s still pushing 90 this year. The Sufi Petama Project hosts an extensive site dedicated to Hidayat Inayat-Khan, including MP3s of a number of his works (and links to places to buy CDs of this rather rare stuff). On the left navigation, head to the Quartet op. 48 first; starting somewhere in Delius/Debussy land, by the third movement rolls around (which mysteriously expands the quartet to full string orchestra) you’ll be strongly reminded of Hovhaness. Then give his Ziukar Symphony or Message Symphony a go. If it all sounds up your alley, my work is done… If not then never fear, I’ll head back into experimental territory next outing!

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Minimalism

Steve’s click picks #11

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Hanne Darboven (b. 1941 — DE)

Hanne Darboven, 2005

What better way to mark a new year than with something that is only and utterly about time, history and the march of events (or their stubborn recurrence)!

Only one piece to listen to, but it’s a full hour-plus. Darboven’s Opus17a for solo double bass was composed in 1996 for her massive artwork “Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983”, shown at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Played here with almost superhuman concentration and doggedness by Robert Black, it’s a piece guaranteed to either absolutely fascinate, repel or bore you to tears, depending on who you are.

The artist Hanne Darboven was born in Munich. Following a brief episode as a pianist, she studied painting in Hamburg. Between 1966 and 1969 she lived intermittently in New York City, then returned to her family home in Hamburg, where she continues to live and work.

Why and how does a visual artist turn to musical composition? The progression makes perfect sense as described in the essay by Lynne Cooke:

…[Darboven’s] work has been informed by Conceptual art practices. Based by the late 1960s on various forms of numerical writing, her systematic work securely occupied the realm of abstraction and universality.

“I only use numbers because it is a way of writing without describing. . . . It has nothing to do with mathematics. Nothing! I choose numbers because they are so constant, confined, and artistic. Numbers are probably the only real discovery of mankind. A number of something (two chairs, or whatever) is something else. It’s not pure number and has other meanings.”

Time has become the focus of Darboven’s art. For her, Annelie Pohlen argues, time constitutes the primary and essential structure of human life — it is “a basically intangible measure for the totality of the indices determining being; it is the content of consciousness; it exists beyond human comprehension.” The calendar, which subsequently formed the foundation of Darboven’s art practice, again offered a universal orientation, embodying a given, prefabricated, ready-made temporal system. Calibrated in her work in many ways over almost three decades, it has provided the basis of an arbitrary artistic system that has the appearance of objectivity. Conjoining a rigorous numerical process with free-associative roots, and tight rational thought with intellectual freedom, Darboven’s capricious sense of time has resulted in diverse monumental works that may span a month, a year, even a century, all recorded day by day.

In the early 1970s Darboven introduced a kind of writing into her work that took the form of an even cursive script. Although executed by hand, this script was standardized and regulated, systematic and abstract. […] In 1973 she began to incorporate texts—transcribed directly because, she has claimed, they could not be bettered— from various writers, initially Heinrich Heine and Jean-Paul Sartre. These texts spoke both to her recognition of the failure of the grand narratives of Enlightenment thought to provide convincing, encompassing interpretations and, equally, to her fundamentally romantic existentialist position. Then, in 1978, she introduced visual documentation alongside her numbers and looping texts, primarily in the form of found and rephotographed images, which allowed her to address specific historical issues for the first time. Shortly thereafter, she invented a system of musical notation, based on her system of numbering dates, which she has used since 1979 to compose scores for organ, double bass, string quartet, and chamber orchestra. Darboven sees her music as she does her “mathematical writing,” a highly abstract language functioning in an entirely self-referential manner; it thus serves as an abstract correlative to the concrete, visual nature of her artwork.

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Critics

Promoting Modern Music by Stealth

Tom Jackson over at Modernclassical writes:

Donald Rosenberg, the classical music critic and correspondent for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, gets the cover of the arts section Sunday with a primer on classical music, an article about the “beloved staples” which form the foundation of classical music. The headline graphic lists the usual suspects — Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach.

The big shock is when you turn the page and see a huge graphic accompanying the article listing Rosenberg’s picks for a representative sampling of the repertoire. Rosenberg lists just three works from the Baroque period and only four from the Classical period. The Romantic period lists 19 works, but for the 20th Century, Rosenberg lists 35 separate composers and works, including Ligeti, Lutoslawski, and Messiaen. It is a really impressive effort on Rosenberg’s part to educate readers about modern music. Subversive, almost.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #10

Our weekly listen and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online (This will be the last click-picks for December; Xmas, New Years, etc., you know how it goes… back with more in January):

Aaron Gervais (b.1980 — CA / US)

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Gervais is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in composition at UC San Diego. Aaron is also a graduate (with honours) from the University of Toronto, where he studied under Professor Chan Ka Nin. He’s also studied jazz and composition at Grant MacEwan College, composition at the University of Alberta, and Cuban percussion in Havana. He’ll tell you:

Over time, my music has gradually taken on more and more aspects of my particular musical background. I grew up playing jazz and rock drums in addition to classical percussion, and this influence has become increasingly clear in my pieces, although not always in terms of direct appropriation. What is more common is an interest in the cultural elements of hearing: why we hear things in certain ways, what it is we listen for in particular genres, and so forth. In addition, my recent pieces have taken a particularly critical slant on these questions. I tend not to trust statements or ideas that people take as axiomatic, so I have focused on writing music that deconstructs these “givens” in order to find out exactly how axiomatic they really are—challenge for the sake of challenge, in other words. […] Over the past few pieces, I have been interested in writing music that is fast-paced, rhythmic, and light in texture. I’ve definitely written a lot of slow dark music, but it seems to me that there is a preponderance of that kind of thing in the new music community and I want to see how far I can push the other direction. Composers like Jacob ter Veldhuis and Richard Ayres have been particular inspirations in that regard, though I am just as likely if not more to look at popular music for this.

Aaron’s clean and clear site will tell you more, and under “Works” you’ll find plenty of quality listening, along with program notes and score excerpts.

Pamelia Kurstin (b. 1976 — US / AT)

For all its low-tech, archaic and arcane qualities, the theremin (that curious electric box that you play by moving your hands/fingers through the space around two antennae) has had a fairly healty resurgence in the last ten years. In fact, I’d venture to guess that the number of people playing (or at least playing with) the theremin is higher right now than at any time since its invention in the 1920s. Of all these, one of the most musical and ambitious has to be Pamelia Kurstin. Hailing from Michigan, time spent in NYC, but now in Vienna, Austria, Pamelia has a real affinity for coaxing beautiful music out of what can be an real beast of an instrument. Besides appearing on many other artist’s recordings, she’s long been rumored to eventually have a solo CD appearing on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. In the meantime, this will take you to her Myspace page, where you can hear four intriguing selections. She does have a “real” website here; no sound and it’s a jumbly mess, but between the two you’ll get a pretty good idea of her restless and cheeky-smart character.

Hakoneko (JP)

Hakoneko’s real name? I’m not sure we’ll ever know. The only biographical line we have is this: “I started making music with PC while cherishing my sweet cat in my room.”…. Released about a year-and-a-half ago on the excellent Portuguese netlabel Mimi, Hakoneko’s Umi no drone (Drones of the Sea) is one of the most ravishing examples of so-called “ambient” or “drone” music I’ve ever heard — and I’ve heard a lot! This kind of music is all about color and volume, something that palpably fills the listening space and makes its own atmosphere (in an almost literal sense). There are many excellent, high-profile artists in this style, but that they can be in every way equalled, even bested, by a kid sitting in their bedroom in Japan is why it pays to always keep the ears open and let the music, not just the official hype, do the talking. …And to marvel at this web, which can cut out all the business-wonk and connect a bedroom half-a-world away directly to my living room.

by Steve Layton