Classical Music

Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events

A Scream Grows in Brooklyn

It seems somehow fitting after a week of inexplicable madness that Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream will get its New York premiere tomorrow night when the Kronos Quartet joins the Brooklyn Philharmonic for a concert called Kronos+Cosmos. 

Wolfe describes My Beautiful Scream as a kind of  non-concerto for string quartet. The work is a gradual unfolding and unraveling of a slow motion scream: the quartet aspect of the music is quiet and fine while the orchestra aspect is violent and menacing. Co-commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmoniue de Radio France, the Basel Sinfonietta, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, My Beautiful Scream was originally premiered in February 2004 at Festival Presence in Paris.

Wolfe began writing My Beautiful Scream shortly after 9/11. As she describes the time in which the piece was written: “I lived in downtown Manhattan not far from where the towers stood. At night I would have this strange sensation that I was going to die. In general my life was very beautiful, so it was this strange existence of living in beauty and having the sensation of a long drawn out internal scream.”

The concert will also include a performance of the visionary symphonic work, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Each of the seven movements of The Planets will be accompanied by exclusive film footage provided by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Here’s a bit of good news for a change.   Our regular Rob Deemer has accepted an offer from SUNY-Fredonia for its tenure-track composition chair position starting in the Fall of 2007. 

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

Thursday is Link Love Day

Galen’s Take a Friend to Orchestra (TAFTO) piece is up today on Drew McManus’ Adaptistration blog.  Good reading for a nasty, rainy day.

Frank J. Oteri will be interviewing Olga Neuwirth at the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage tomorrow in a special one-on-one composer discussion produced by the Philadelphia Music Project.  Details here.  If you’re in Philadelphia and want to go and write about it, let me know and I’ll get you in.

Catch Corey Dargel on this week’s episode of Steve Paul’s Puppet Music Hall.  The whole episode is ici and free.

Some good morning music for your dining and dancing pleasure.  A nice piece called “Baile” by Argentinian composer Francisco Colasanto, played by Marco Antonio Mazzini, who thinks it may be the first and only work for contrabass clarinet and electronics written in South America.

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by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Getting a Clue

For those of you who may not be familiar with it, there is a seminal document called The Cluetrain Manifesto that defines a new style of communication in an age in which everyone and everything is electronically connected.  Its premise, to which I subscribe, is that the internet is fundamentally different from mass media like television because it allows lots of people to have “human to human” conversations (with all the complexity and difficulty that implies) rather than being force fed a one-sided party line or mass marketing message. 

There can be negative aspects to this ubiquetous connectedness.  Some people hide behind the mask of anonymity on the internet to say and do cruel and destructive things.  But, in the best case scenario, the web allows us to talk to each other and–under the right conditions of respect, transparency, and honesty–to learn and even grow into a community where people can disagree without being disagreeable.  I believe Sequenza21 is one of those rare communities and that makes me proud.

The first of the Manifesto’s 95 theses is this:  “Markets are conversations.”  In other words, if people are talking seriously about your product, or your Whitney concert, that is a positive thing from both a human and commercial point of view.

Just an old hippie (and professional marketer’s) point of view.

p.s.  We need a new conversation started over on the Composer Forum page.  If you don’t have a user name or password to post something let me know and I’ll fix you up.

Lots of terrific new reviews over on the CD Review page.

I listen to the fantastic Counterstream radio (see toilet seat icon) while I work and yesterday heard a terrific piece by Ezra Sims and it occurred to me that somebody ought to voluteer to write a regular column here every week or every other week called something like “Underrated,” which would focus on composers we don’t hear much about. 

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York

I Want My JacobTV

Contrary to speculation that the mystery man in Friday’s photo is a Guantanamo detainee or a middle school crossing guard, the fashion-forward gentleman in question is, in fact, the Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, aka JacobTV, whose work (it says here in the press release) “…has had a huge impact on the European music scene in the past decade, but he is far less known in the U.S.”  It could happen.    

The Whitney Museum of American Art, that well-known new music venue, is concluding its Spring 2007 Whitney Live series with Grab It!, a three-day festival dedicated to JacobTV, Wednesday to Friday, May 2-4, 2007 at the Whitney at Altria in mid-town Manhattan.  The festival is the first large-scale examination of his work on this side of the pond, featuring some of his signature pieces as well as recent compositions and premieres, video, instrumental work, and a new evening-length dance piece set to his boombox music.  He will also unveil a major CD/DVD anthology of his work on the Dutch label Basta, which includes orchestral music, boombox works, chamber music and video. 

That would explain the “three pounds” of CDs I got from the Whitney which, by the way, are still up for grabs although, frankly, judging from the catty comments, you folks are not taking this opportunity nearly seriously enough.

Among the participants and performers in the festival are PRISM Quartet, Miro Dance Theatre,  New Century Quartet,  Frank J. Oteri,  Kevin Gallagher, Electric Kompany, Margaret Lancaster, Dorothy Lawson, Meehan/Perkins Duo, and Kathleen Supové 

The back story is that Limor Tomer, who curates the “Whitney Live” events,  heard JacobTV’s music when the Prism sax quartet did a whole evening of his work at Symphony Space last year (Prism performs on the May 2 concert, then again twice in Philadelphia a few days later).  She went wild over the music and decided to take the risk of programming three nights of his work, although no one here is really familiar with it.  She hired the terrific new music publicist and all-round hottie Aleba Gartner to promote the show and, of course, we all know about my character flaws in the area of pretty gals.

Speaking of which, Aleba is also promoting the June in Buffalo Festival June 4-10 this year.  This is one of the top festivals in America and it gets surprisingly little coverage although we always try to do our part.  Anybody live in the Buffalo area who would like to “audit” the festival, do a little deep immersion, and keep a daily Sequenza 21 diary of the event?  Something can be arranged.

Other stuff:  I was having a Rome withdrawal attack last night and tuned into Showtime’s new Tudors mini-series.  Pretty good, actually, but my favorite part is when a scruffy young man turns up at the cathedral with a letter from the Bishop of Canterbury introducing him as Thomas Tallis, a bright prospect who plays the organ, flute, sings and “composes a bit.”

And, finally, if I haven’t said so already, I think Steve Layton does a fantastic job week after week with his Click Picks.  Thanks much, Steve.  You’re a big part of our little success.

by Jerry Bowles
Boston, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Me and My Toy Piano

In 1973 my mother bought me my first toy piano at Harvey’s Department Store in Nashville.  This is not quite the heartwarming tale of a little tyke that it might at first seem to be, since I was at the time a student at New England Conservatory, and she was getting it for me so I could play the Cage Suite for Toy Piano in a concert in Jordan Hall.  It turned out that, completely inadvertently (only operating according to her generosity), she had got me the Steinway of toy pianos, a Schoenhut.  I’ve continued to play the Cage over the years, and last summer my toy piano more or less just fell apart. 
As I thought about buying a new one, it occurred to me that I should do an inaugural concert on it.  I began to ask people to write pieces for me, and mostly they agreed to do.  

The concert is on Sunday, April 8 at 8:00pm in the Marshall Room in the Music Building at Boston University (855 Commonwealth Avenue). 

The concert includes–in addition to the Cage–pre-existing pieces by Kyle Gann, Eve Beglarian, Richard Whalley, and Dai Fujikura (for toy piano and violin pizzicato–the violinist will be Peter Zazofsky).  There are new pieces, which will be having their first performances, by Lyle Davidson, Pozzi Escot, Stephen Feigenbaum, Michael Finnissy, Philip Grange, John Heiss, Derek Hurst (with electronic sounds–i.e. on my boombox), Matthew McConnell, Matthew Mendez, Nico Muhly, Ketty Nez (for toy piano and piano–Ketty will be the pianist), Dave Smith, Jeremy Woodruff, William Zuckerman, and me (for clavichord and toy piano–the clavichord player will be Peter Sykes).  (I’m pretty sure that’s everybody.) The pieces are all really good and all really different from each other. 

I hope you can come to this (what can only be described as an) unusual concert.

by Rodney Lister
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Live…From New York

Well, okay, so it’s recorded but we now have in-house music for your dining, dancing and surfing pleasure thanks to our friends at the American Music Center and their new Counterstream Radio.  Click on the blue thing with the white toilet seat in the right column and up will pop a dandy little player that delivers an amazing variety of “new” music–in the broadest possible sense.  If your tastes run from Judith Lang Zaimont to Cecil Taylor to Miguel Frasconi, you’ve come to the right place.  Nice going Frank, Molly, Ian and gang.

Lots of neat things happening involving some of our favorite people this week at the MATA Young Composers – Now festival in Brooklyn.  Brian Sacawa and Jenny Lin are playing in tonight’s performance.  Alex Ross will lead a panel discussion before Saturday night’s concert. 

Grant Gershon’s L.A. Master Chorale is premiering an extremely ambitious work by Christopher Rouse at Disney Hall on March 25th– a 90 minute Requiem for double chorus, children’s chorus, baritone soloist (Sanford Sylvan) and large orchestra.  A couple of weeks ago Grant gave an informal talk on the piece at the piano for the chorale’s board of directors. An enterprising staff member videotaped it, edited it and posted it on Youtube.  Good stuff.  Have a look and listen.

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

The most satisfying medium of all

Why a String Quartet? What is it that has given it its exalted reputation and mystique? Why have so many composers regarded it as the perfect medium of expression, though it is perhaps the most demanding to write for? And why do distinguished artists often prefer to work as a team in a first class quartet rather than make bigger money as, say, orchestral leaders? Music means different things to different people: but for those to who music is an intellectual art, a balanced and reasoned statement of ideas, an impassioned argument, an intense but disciplined expression of emotion – the string quartet is perhaps the most satisfying medium of all.

These are the words of Elizabeth Maconchy (above) who was born one hundred years ago on March 19th 1907. She wrote a remarkable cycle of thirteen string quartets that were influenced by Berg, Bartok, Janacek and her teacher in Prague, Karel Jirak. But despite its obvious merit Elizabeth Maconchy’s music remains scandalously neglected. Which prompts On An Overgrown Path to ask, how important is a composer’s music?    

by Pliable
Awards, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Competitions, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Start Spreading the News

sebastian1.jpgSebastian Currier has won the 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for “Static,” a six-movement piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

Currier, who teaches at Columbia University, studied at the Manhattan and Julliard schools of music. His winning work was commissioned by Copland House of Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., for its resident ensemble, Music from Copland House, with funds from Meet the Composer, a national organization supporting new works by composers.

The ensemble premiered the piece at Columbia’s Miller Theatre in February 2005 and recorded it for Koch International Classics.  Frank has details over at NewMusicBox.

And speaking of Mr. Oteri, he’s mad as hell about the second-class citizenship of post-classical composers and he’s not going to take it anymore…in the Composers Forum.

by Jerry Bowles