Chamber Music

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Oteri & Bowles–The Reunion Tour

Marvin Rosen has a terrific Classical Discoveries program coming up next Wednesday.  His guests from 8:30 am until 11 will be the legendary Frank J. Oteri and…umm, me.  That assumes, of course, neither of us oversleeps and misses the train to Princeton.  (Neither Frank nor I can operate an automobile, which is a hallmark of the true New Yorker.)   

As many you know, I’m sure, Wednesday is the birthday of an unlikely pair of composers–John Cage and Amy Beach.  What only Frank would know is that it is also the birthday of 1952 Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Kubik and 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Spratlan.

Marvin has asked us to bring along recordings of some favorite pieces (fairly short, I’m guessing).  Who has some recommendations? 

Classical Discoveries is broadcast on WPRB 103.3 FM in Princeton, NJ, and online at www.wprb.com each Wednesday from 6 to 11 am. For more information you can email Marvin at clasdis@cs.com.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

I Know I Am

As those of you who come round here regularly know, I’m not a composer or musician but I am an experienced listener with limited patience for things that take too long to get to the point.  As a practical matter, that means that music I’ve never heard before has about 30 seconds to grab my attention.  I’ll listen to the whole thing but if doesn’t have that “Holy shit” thing happening in the first few bars, chances are the earth is never going to move for me.  Call it the Jerry Principle:  musical masterpieces announce their masterpiece-ness in 16 bars or less.  Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Most years you’re lucky to hear for the first time one or two compositions that grab you by the throat and won’t let go but in the last couple of weeks, I have encountered three such pieces.

First, there is a new large-scale cantata called Athanor by the 35-year-old French composer Guillaume Connesson, about whom I know little, except that he is obviously not a spectralist.  Based on an allegorical theme that somehow involves alchemy (the French are tedious with their obligatory intellectual pretentions) Athanor is relentlessly tonal and dramatic, recalling the heyday of the big bold orchestrators like Vaughn Williams and Prokofiev.  It is uncool to mention Carl Orff these days but Connesson has that kind of dramatic flair and wastes no time in making it apparent.  Supernova for orchestra, the second piece on the CD, confirms his gift for orchestral drama. 

The second piece is not that new but I just heard it for the first time–Kaja Saariho’s Graal théâtre, for violin & orchestra.  IMHO, as the kids say online, this the first absolute violin concerto masterwork to come along since Berg, or maybe Barber.  Gideon Kremer reaches deep into his considerable bag of tricks for every possible sound (and some that are clearly impossible). The rest of the CD is also marvelous–Dawn Upshaw sings the 5-song set Chateau de L’ame beautifully and Amers, for cello & electro-acoustic ensemble is a suitably gnarly antidote to L’ame’s sweetness.  But, Graal théâtre is one for the ages.

And while we are waving red flags, is there a single note of Osvaldo Golijov that is not destined for immortality?  His latest bid for the magic ring is Oceana, an impossibly beautiful setting of a poem by Pablo Neruda for guitars, percussions, chorus, and solo vocalists–in this case, the wonderful sambanista Luciana Souza.  Easy listening World Music, you say?  Phooey, I say.  Most composers would kill to have written Oceana or the other pieces on the CD–Tenebrae, a two-movement meditation on sadness written for the Kronos Quartet or the Three Songs written for Dawn Upshaw. 

Gramophone’s reviewer quotes an unnamed New York critic (was it you, Alex?) as saying that Golijov’s fans are just waiting for him to write a Very Important Work that will put him in the league with John Adams.  Speaking as someone who has hung on every note since my first spirtually-awakening discovery of The Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind, that wait was over a long time ago.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

Hello, Nonino

Seems like only yesterday we reported that Matthew Cmiel, one of our favorite boy wonders, had put together a new band called Formerly Known as Classical.  (Actually, it March 15, 2006, but let’s not quibble.) Looks like the group has done okay since last we checked in; on Sunday, August 5, they’re appearing in a concert at the Cabrillo Music Festival with Marin Alsop, the conductor and music director of the Baltimore Symphony and recent MacArthur Prize winner. 

Matthew–now a sobering 18-years-old–will conduct the group in Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, an exciting piece of music which gets its title from a story about boxing by Julio Cortazar and is an homage to Astor Piazzolla the late master of neuvo tango.  

Then, recent Juilliard graduate, cellist Drew Ford and San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra pianist Preben Antonsen will play Matthew’s piece Macho, Cool and Dangerous, which was inspired by the music of Golijov and Piazzolla.

The concert is Sunday, August 5 at 8:00 PM in the Sant Cruz Civic Auditorium, 307 Church Street, Santa Cruz.  If you’re in the neighborhood, write us a review.

Hey, the Steve Layton Songbook is coming along nicely.  Check out Prufrock (T.S. Eliot) 2007.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Click Picks, Contemporary Classical

Notes from the Other Underground…

A quick addendum to my recent “click pick” visit to the Eastern Front:

My good and long-time i-friend Rudy Carrera pointed me in the direction of the young Russian composer Dmitry Subochev (b.1981), who’s posted a couple frenetically fun (and challenging) Moscow performances on video at YouTube. Cheglakov and His Shadow was made in collaboration with Subochev’s fellow composer and cellist Dmitry Cheglakov:

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As well, Subochev teams up with Tatiana Mikheeva to terrorize the inside of a piano in Pandora’s Box:

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Whether as something integral or as optional accompaniment, my very really grand prediction is that video will become ever-more essential to both performers and composers, and not just in the “big” places. Bone up now or chew the dust at the back of the pack…

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

A Report From Prague

Greetings S21ers:

The OgreOgress gang has been having a swell time in Old Bohemia for the past month.  Last night I had the honor of recording John Cage’s Three with the multi-talented and very humorous German-born (and Amsterdam-based) recordist Susanna Borsch at the facilities of the Prague State Opera.

If you’re interested in the recorder I would encourage you to check out Borsch’s activities and be in contact. Of particular note to those in the US of A (apologies to Borat), Susanna’s eclectic new music “girl band” Electra will be in the Massachusetts area to perform Louis Andriessen in July and I am certain further bookings in the USA would be much appreciated.

But, wait, there’s more.  A few days prior I had the distinct honor of protesting George W. Bush and even got on the CBS Evening News (that is me next to Axelrod at the end of the report)…

… and a few weeks before that, I recorded Cage’s Twenty-
Eight with the Prague Winds.

In short, having a wonderful time.  Wish you all were here.

by Glenn Freeman
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

First Jeff Harrington, then David Salvage, and now our very own Lawrence Dillon is feeling some end-of-the-season love on the concert circuit.  This very evening (Thursday), at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina,  violinist Piotr Szewczyk will perform Lawrence’s Mister Blister and a movement from Fifteen Minutes as part of his Music in Time – Violin Futura program.  Szewczyk will also perform works by Mason Bates, Moritz Eggert, Daniel Kellogg, Jennifer Wang, and others as part of this program of new, short, innovative solo violin pieces.

And, on June 15 at the International Double Reed Society Conference in Ithaca, New York, bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker will perform Dillon’s Furies and Muses, joined by violinist Susan Waterbury and Jennifer Reuning Meyers, violist Melissa Stucky and cellist Heidi Hoffman. This is part of a special series of bassoon performances featuring Contraband, Lorelei Dowling, Terry Ewell and Arlen Fast. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the IDRS or call (607) 274-3717.  

Anybody doing anything interesting this summer.  Festivals? 

Want to try your hand at being the front page blogger of S21 for a week? 

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, New York, North/South

Viva Max!

For the past 27 years, the Mexican-born pianist and composer Max Lifchitz has been a tireless and resourceful promoter of new music (including his own) through live performances and recordings with the North/South Consonance Ensemble, the chamber group of the non-profit North/South Consonance organization. Many young composers, particularly those of the Neoclassic or New Romantic temperment (Larry Bell comes immediately to mind), have gotten a career boost from Lifchitz’s annual programs and recordings, which now number nearly 50. 

I mention all this because North/South Consonance’s  final concert of the current season is coming up on Sunday afternoon June 17 at 3 PM and will take place at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church (120 West 69th St, NYC) on Manhattan’s West Side. Admission is free (no tickets necessary).

The program will feature two compositions involving narration: Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat and Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange.  I personally detest works that involve people talking while I’m trying to listen to music, but apparently some people like it and many famous composers have written works for ensemble and spoken word. 

Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale was written at the end of World War I and is one of those Faustian/Devil Goes Down to Georgia things about trading in your soul for a fiddle.  Lifchitz says the work is being performed to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the composer and, in fact, it is being performed on June 17, the exact day Stravinsky was born in 1882 in a town near St Petersburg.

Lifchitz’s The Blood Orange is a setting of a text by New York City writer Kathleen Masterson, written especially for the actress Norma Fire, who will perform it.  The narrative with music relates the story of Fire’s parents who emigrated to this country before the Holocaust, and of their relatives who did not. Fire will be supported by violinist Claudia Schaer and Lifchitz on piano. 

Today’s musical question is:  Name the best pieces ever written for music and narration (and let’s get Copland and Honegger out of the way quickly).

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

David Does Harvard

dsheadsht.pngAttention Boston (and NY) shoppers!  The world-premiere run of David Salvage’s String Quartet No. 2 is at hand.  The Arcturus Chamber Ensemble will do the honors, starting this Friday, June 1, at 8pm, at Adams House JCR, Harvard University.  They’ll do it again on Saturday night at 7:30 at the First Religious Society, Carlisle and, just to be on the safe side, one more time on Monday, June 11 at 7:30pm, at the Harvard Club, here in the Center of the Universe. 

There will be other works on all the programs, probably by dead white guys.  The concerts are free and open to the public although the Harvard Club requires you to “look spiffy,” according to Master Salvage.  I used to go there years ago with my old buddy Whit Stillman (whatever happened to him anyway) and it was pretty tight-assed then.  Probably hasn’t changed much.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Down, Cujo. Down.

Okay, sports fans, here’s something you’ll like.  Today, beginning at 6 pm PST and running through midnight (That would be 9 pm to 3 am {thanks, Andrea for straightening me out} here in the Center of the Universe), KFJC radio in Los Altos Hills, CA is doing a 6-hour special focusing on Berio’s Sequenzas.

Cujo, a dj on KFJC and Sequenza21 peruser, has lined up some stellar color commentary for this one.  In addition to a live performance on flute, you’ll hear from from David Osmond-Smith, author of the only existing English Berio book (with more to come), Janet Halfyard, editor of the forthcoming Berio Sequenzas, and Brian Brandt, chief of Mode Records. (I believe I was invited to participate in some way but forgot about it–one of the hazards of being 64.) 

Cujo provides several good reasons why we should all listen.  We will:

o learn why you should be disgusted when the trombone sequenza is played in a clown costume

o learn about the beef between Rostropovich and Berio

o understand exactly how Berio learned to write so virtuosically for such uncommon instruments.  (Seriously, accordion?).

If you continue to listen beyond midnight, you will be treated to KFJC’s annual Night and Day of the Sun, a 24-hour tribute to Sun Ra on his birthday.

Chances are you don’t get KFJC on your radio, but thanks to the miracle of the Internets you can listen online here.  As it says on the station’s Netcast page, “Ain’t technology wonderful.”

by Jerry Bowles