Composers

CDs, Classical Music, Composers, File Under?

Out Today: Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión

For those who think that DG’s days of deluxe packaging are over, one only need check out one of today’s releases, Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión segun San Marcos to realize that, given the right project, the imprint is up for going all out. The box includes the debut 2xCD studio recording of a revised edition of the work alongside a handsomely filmed semi-staged version on DVD. (A trailer for the film is below).


Premiered in 2000 (a live recording was released by Haenssler), La Pasión is an ebulliently eclectic composition. Golijov blends a number of styles: Latin American, Afro-Cuban, and postmodern contemporary classical. Catholic iconography, liturgical dance, and Yoruba rituals all play a role in the work’s visual and aural melange.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvTiWPV2da0[/youtube]

by Christian Carey
Competitions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Opera

Opera Vista: let the battle begin

Spring has definitely sprung down here in Houston; everything that looked dead just a few weeks ago is sprouting all kinds of new growth. And that goes for opera as well, seeing that this year’s iteration of  Opera Vista begins this Saturday, March 20th, and runs through March 27th.

Opera Vista focuses on bringing contemporary opera to Houston and the Vista Competition is an international search for ground-breaking new works by modern composers.

“The Vista Competition is unique in that it gives composers the opportunity to have their works performed by professional singers and instrumentalists,” says Viswa Subbaraman, OV‘s Artistic Director. “They have a wonderful opportunity to interact with many well-known people from the world of opera and classical music, but I think more importantly, they get an insight into how their work is perceived by the audience.”

In October, six semi-finalists (Lembit Beecher, Katarzyna Brochocka, Alberto García Demestres, Joseph Eidson, Jonathan N. Kupper, Catherine Reid) from three countries were selected, ranging from adaptations of a Japanese folk tale to a horror opera.  Excerpts from each work will be performed on March 24th & 26th at the Czech Center Museum Houston (4920 San Jacinto, at Wichita), each night beginning at 7:30pm.  A panel of judges, including world-renowned composer Daron Hagen (There will be an evening of chamber music composed by Hagen at 7:30pm on March 25th at the Czech Center) and Leslie Dunner of the Joffrey Ballet, will critique each excerpt, and the audience will vote to select which operas will advance. In the final round the winning excerpts will be performed again with a longer critique from the judges, but then the audience will get to directly question the composers. The audience then votes to determine the winner of the competition, which will be announced March 27th at the festival’s closing performance. The winner receives $1,500 and a full production of their opera at the next festival.

This year’s festival will also include the world premiere of the winning opera from the 2009 Opera Vista Festival, Anorexia Sacra by Line Tjørnhøj. Line couples the plight of a young woman suffering from anorexia with the writings of the 13th century nun Claire of Assisi. Anorexia Sacra will be performed at 7:30pm on March 20th and 27th at the Live Oak Friends Meetinghouse (1318 West 26th Street).

There’s also a bit of meet-and-greet with all the composers on March 23rd, 6-8pm, at Momentum Audi (2315 Richmond Avenue).

Whew! Tickets and more information can be found at the OV website, which also contains sketches of each of the composers, operas and judges.

by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, New York

Take this detour

I’ve written before about the one and only Alex Temple, late Yalie and NYC denizen, studious University of Michigan grad student, now currently working his thing in Chicago.

Well, Alex is back in New York for a moment, joined by fellow composers Brian Mark, Seth Bedford, Angélica Négron, and Jeremy Howard Beck. DETOUR presents works by all these up-and-comers, made to accompany archival films found in the Prelinger Archives, this Saturday, March 20th, at 9pm, at the Gershwin Hotel (7 East 27th Street, 9pm / Cover $10)

The videos range from airline ads to political propaganda. Some have been edited and others left intact. The music that’s been added to them covers a wide variety of styles and languages, from electronic soundscapes to live chamber music. Alex’s own offering is called A Presentation to the Board, and uses electronic music and a live speaker to turn a 1950’s public service announcement about life in the suburbs into a pitch by a representative of an evil conspiratorial corporation to a despotic government.

Alex has also been muy busy with other projects that involve both voice and smart deconstructions/meldings of pop and high culture. A recent favorite is Imogene, which lucky yous can hear in two different versions at Alex’s works page. Go ahead, try it, you’ll like it!

by Steve Layton
Composers, File Under?, jazz, Music Instruments

Pat Metheny goes steampunk?

The orchestrion is a fairly old instrument, going back to the mid-19th-century.  Pat Metheny and the mad scientists at the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots have teamed up to create a 21st century version of an orchestrion.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VymAn8QJNQ[/youtube]

I’ve spent the past few days listening to Metheny’s new CD, Orchestrion.  If you’ve been following his work for the past few years, it’s no big surprise musically or harmonically: lush diatonic harmonies and sweetly melodic improvisations. What makes this disc so special, though, is his interaction with a robot ensemble, one which is completely controlled or programmed by Metheny.  There is a surprising richness and warmth in these robot-played instruments that one does not find in MIDI accompaniments, and if you like Metheny’s music or you’re interested in seeing/hearing a mechanical instrument out of Jules Verne’s wildest dreams, do pick up the CD or catch Metheny and company on the road with this.

Lots of demos and explanations on Metheny’s web site.

by Christian Hertzog
Birthdays, Composers, File Under?

Happy 100th Birthday Samuel Barber

“I was meant to be a composer and will be I’m sure. Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football – please.” – by Samuel Barber

For some, he’s a guilty pleasure; especially when one reads comments by the big guns (notably Copland) who condemn him with faint praise. But for those of us who want to sing and compose, Sam’s always an inspiration. Here’s his elegant recording of his own “Dover Beach,” for baritone and string quartet.

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

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Annual Ensemble Pi concert for peace and civil rights, Cooper Union

Ensemble Pi is an unusual new-music collective, in that all its concerts have a socially-conscious bent and feature composers whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the world’s current and critical issues. The ensemble’s Dancer on a Tightrope will take place at The Cooper Union’s Great Hall on Saturday, March 13 at 8 p.m.  Cooper Union is located at 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue, NYC. Tickets are $15 ($10 for students and seniors).  For more information, call (212) 362-4745 or visit their website. We asked for a little background on the concert, and recevied some words from the ensemble’s founder and two of the evening’s composers:

Idith MeshulamIdith Meshulam (pianist and founder of Ensemble Pi):

Composer John Harbison expressed Ensemble Pi’s mission for the Peace Project best when he wrote that performing these pieces “is not a protest or a moral lesson. These would require little bravery. Instead it seeks music in a moment when words can fail.” Ensemble Pi offers music in conjunction with other arts and ideas as an alternative to the constant clash of angry and frustrated voices that need to be heard.

For the sixth installment of our Peace Project, we wanted to address the courage and compassion necessary to fight for one’s belief with works celebrating life as risk and art as flight into another existence. As a commemoration for the invasion to Iraq, we open with a short video of the historical society of Iraq, showing the irreversible damage to the historical buildings in Baghdad. The concert will then begin with two works commissioned by Ensemble Pi: Karim Al-Zand’s  Swimmy, the famous children story by Leo Lionni with projection of Dave Channon; and Kristin Norderval’s A Remarkable Failure – a setting of prominent Israeli journalist and author Amira Hass’s acceptance speech for the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation. The evening also features the New York premiere of Frederic Rzewski’s Whangdoodles (1990) as well as Sofia Gubaidulina’s Dancer on a Tightrope (1993), and Behzad Ranjbaran’s Shiraz (2006).

When we started planning the concert, we naively thought we would be out of Iraq by March 2010. We still felt we needed to commemorate the destruction and pain inflicted upon the Iraqi people, so we kept the commemoration of in March we Remember, and expanded it into a human rights concert.  Our disappointment and frustration on the current situation is best expressed in A Remarkable Failure — Kristin Norderval’s homage to Amira Hass, who is one of my heroes.  The piece addresses “the frustrations of not getting the real stories behind the stories” in the press. The second commission is the setting of a children masterpiece, that we hope will inspire and charm people of all ages.

The performers for this concert will include Kristin Norderval, voice; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Idith Meshulam, piano; Monique Buzzarté, trombone; Florent Renard-Payen, cello; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; and Nathan Davis, hammered dulcimer.

Composer Karim Al-Zand:

Karim Al-ZandSwimmy is scored for narrator and ensemble (a quartet of piano, clarinet, violin and cello) and is based on the picture book of the same name by Leo Lionni. As a child I knew Lionni’s book and its poignant story, and now my own children have come to know it as well. It’s the story of a little fish who discovers the beauty of the ocean around him and manages to confront his adversaries through ingenuity and resourcefulness. Like many of Lionni’s books for children, Swimmy can be appreciated on several levels, something which has made it interesting to return to as an adult. My setting tries to complement Lionni’s elegant and colorful artwork with music which supports but doesn’t overwhelm the story’s simple narrative. The clarinet is the most prominent of the instruments and its quick-moving lines represent, in a way, the main character, Swimmy. Lionni’s story is a parable really, a tale which illustrates the power of cooperation and of collective effort.

Composer/performer Kristin Norderval:

Kristin Norderval“A remarkable failure” is the phrase that the Israeli journalist Amira Hass used to describe her work when accepting the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation for her reports from Gaza.  Why?  Because she felt she had failed to get the media and the public to use “correct terms and words which reflect reality”.  Her words could not compete with language adopted by the mass media which she felt was used to “disportray” reality.  Listening to Hass’s speech I was struck by the parallels with Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture in 2005 – “Art, Truth and Politics” – another dissection of the Orwellian speech used by politicians and the mass media to cover up illegal actions and unpleasant truths.  A Remarkable Failure for voice, trombone and laptop uses excerpts from the awards speeches of both Hass and Pinter, and explores the way corrupted and euphemistic language has been embedded in the mass media and seduced us into accepting torture, murder and war crimes as inconvenient necessities that need not be investigated nor prosecuted.

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Minimalism, Sound Art, Video

Where there’s a will (and an iPhone) there’s a way

Back last December the New York Times highlighted the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra. The first link goes to the NYT video of the ensemble, but here’s a nicely quiet work from the actual concert:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBo4JH-CPPM[/youtube]

But that’s not quite the earliest reference to this new ‘instrument’ and kind of ensemble. Michigan actually brought their own Mobile Phone Ensemble to last November’s SEAMUS proceedings,  and there’s a video of (admittedly much less musical) a group of London tech geeks taking on the theme from Dr. Who much earlier in the year, at the Yahoo Open Hack Day.

Not that you need the halls of academia to get this creative; here’s the Hong Kong band RedNoon taking right to the subway:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blWtj2kvxBg[/youtube]

Just a few weeks after the NYT feature with Stanford, CNN got into the act, also in Hong Kong, interviewing my composer-pal Samson Young about his own iPhone Orchestra. Samson, a Princeton grad student, put together his own performance at the January Hong Kong/Shenzhen Biennale. This one’s my personal favorite:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rD5I3-pQqM[/youtube]

It may seem very queer, but it’s here — get used to it!

by Steve Layton
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Performers, Scores, Video

Score One for Owen Pallett

score_book

Making the classical aspects of the burgeoning indie classical movement abundantly clear, crossover albums are now crossover marketing musical scores. Via his website, composer Owen Pallett has released a limited edition score for the music on Heartland, his latest Domino recording.

Owen Palletts Heartland

Joined by the Czech Symphony Orchestra and a host of guests (including composer Nico Muhly) Pallette has crafted his most consistently engaging music to date. In some critical circles, indie classical has, rightly or wrongly, been under the microscope for making pop into a ‘longhair’ genre, robbing it of its immediacy in favor of overt sophistication. I’d submit that this vantage point doesn’t give enough credit to indie audiences, who seem to be just fine grappling with orchestral arrangements by Pallett and electronic experiments by Animal Collective alike.

What’s more, recordings like Heartland amply demonstrate that one can, if they’re talented, craft sophisticated music that has just as many catchy hooks as a three-chord, three-minute anthemic single. A case in point is the loop-laden and jaunty “Lewis Takes off his Shirt;” the music, and the video below, suggest that pop can indeed combine sophistication with immediacy, and that its orchestral incarnation can be downright cheeky!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-cqAehehA[/youtube]

___________________________________

For those of your with a case of ‘artifact avarice,’ the full orchestra score for Heartland is $46 and has been printed in a limited run of 300. In addition to the music it also provides lyrics and a chart of diagrams of patches for the ARP 2600.

Owen Palett’s touring a bunch in support of Heartland. Here are some dates:

04-08 Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
04-10 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
04-11 Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater
04-12 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
04-13 Columbus, OH – Wexner Center
04-14 Pittsburgh, PA – Andy Warhol Museum
04-15 Washington DC – Black Cat
04-18 Indio, CA – Coachella Festival
04-20 Boston, MA – Institute of Contemporary Art
04-22 New York, NY – Webster Hall
04-24 Baltimore, MD – Metro Gallery
04-25 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
04-27 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
04-29 Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
04-30 Austin, TX – The Mohawk
05-05 San Francisco, CA – The Independent
05-08 Seattle, WA – The Crocodile
05-09 Vancouver, British Columbia – The Vogue Theatre
05-10 Victoria, British Columbia – Alix Goolden Hall
05-11 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
05-13 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
05-14 Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge

by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Interviews, Music Events, Other Minds, Premieres, San Francisco

Let’s Ask Gyan Riley

Gyan RileyThe 15th Other Minds Festival kicks off this evening, offering San Francisco a three-day immersion in contemporary music from around the world.  One of the locals headlining this year is Gyan Riley, who’ll premiere his new quartet work commissioned by Other Minds, entitled When Heron Sings Blue.

Equally well known as a classical guitar virtuoso and as a composer, Gyan will take on his own guitar part in the quartet on the third festival night, joined by his Gyan Riley Trio bandmates Timb Harris (violin & viola) and Scott Amendola (percussion).   Electric bassist Michael Manring will complete the quartet.

Concert Three of the Other Minds Festival begins at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 6 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Full details and tickets are available here.

Gyan naturally had a lot going on this week but I was still able to get a few questions in front of him for the readers of Sequenza21.

S21:  How did the quartet instrumentation of When Heron Sings Blue come about? What was it about the piece that wanted an electric bass underpinning, and specifically Michael Manring?

GR:  As a guitarist, my early works consisted of primarily solo guitar writing.  In the last several years, however, my compositional output has shifted in the direction of ensemble writing.  One medium that is particularly enticing to me is that of violin, guitar, and percussion, and I assembled my trio as an ongoing project to satisfy this interest.

There are several reasons why I chose the violin.  To begin with, it was my first instrument (I played violin for five years, beginning at age 6).  As an element in the ensemble, the two main assets of the violin are the potential to slide between the notes, and the ability to crescendo on a given note (things that the guitar cannot accomplish without electronics).  Composing for violin has allowed me to vicariously express these musical desires.  Additionally, I’ve learned that these two qualities are wonderfully complimentary to the guitar, creating a uniquely beautiful composite sound.

The other reason that the microtonal possibilities of the violin are important to me is their close association with Indian music, which has been in my ears literally since birth.  (As a vocalist, my father has studied North Indian raga for nearly 40 years.)   Timb Harris, the violinist in my trio, although classically trained, has long since been fascinated with the music of Eastern Europe, and has traveled extensively in Romania to pursue this interest.  One of the reasons I invited him to join this project was his understanding non-Western idiom, and there is an audible and historical connection between the sentiment of Indian music and that of Romania.

Although Scott Amendola’s main instrument is the drum set, using chopsticks, brushes, mallets, and even his hands, and supplementing that with a variety of hand percussion instruments, he creates a plethora of sound unlike that of any other drummer I’ve heard.  His breadth of experience and understanding of jazz, avant-garde, and experimental improvisatory idioms contributes a vast array of possibilities to this project.

I have worked with bass guitarist Michael Manring on and off for about two years.  He has a unique ability to seamlessly drift in and out of the foreground, occasionally drawing from his vast repertoire of extended techniques, yet always in service of the musical objective.  In working with this ensemble, I grew to greatly enjoy the broad timbral spectrum and solid rhythmic foundation that the bass guitar provided—qualities that I now know would be fruitful additions to the existing trio, greatly benefiting our overall sonority. (more…)

by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Festivals, Interviews, Other Minds, San Francisco, Violin, Women composers

Let’s Ask Lisa Bielawa

Lisa Bielawa2009 Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize winner Lisa Bielawa has returned to her hometown of San Francisco to take part in the 2010 Other Minds festival. Her piece, Kafka Songs, will close the first night of the festival on Thursday, March 4th.  Violinist, vocalist and rock star Carla Kihlstedt, for whom Kafka Songs was written, will perform.  OM 15 takes place at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, and tickets can be purchased online here.

Despite her whirlwind schedule leading up to the festival, Lisa was able to take time out to answer a few of my questions.

S21:  During your student years, did you ever feel pressure to become exclusively a composer, or exclusively a performer?

LB:  Since I received musical training at home as a child (my parents are both musicians as well), in college I decided to major in French literature, not music. I didn’t think of myself as either a performer or a composer really until later, when I was trying to figure out how to make a living.

S21:  What parameters have you set up for yourself for allotting time and energy to composing, versus performing?

LB:  Decisions about which projects to do, whether composing or performing, have to be made very carefully. Above all, I want every musical experience I have, no matter what form my participation takes, to expand my own awareness, make me grow in some way. It is also wonderful if it can provide a focused inquiry for me around some particular musical issue I am fascinated by or grappling with at the moment in my compositional work. I suppose this is the ultimate test for me: if involvement in some project will result in making me better able to accomplish/address the things I want to accomplish/address in my composing (thereby making my work communicate better and clearer), then I will make the time to do this. Many performing experiences have done this for me, so I do not begrudge the time I invest in them, even though in the short term they may “take me away” from composing.

S21:  Having grown up steeped in the San Francisco arts community, did you experience culture shock when you moved to New York in 1990?

LB:  I had 4 years at Yale in between, which were really important ones for me. Although I wasn’t majoring in music, I was involved in vocal music and jazz through various student-run groups, and these experiences were an important transition time for me. Many of the musical friends I made at Yale came to New York as well, so the transition was rather smooth, under the circumstances. Of course there was the shock of being an adult and needing to figure out how to earn money and live a real life.  These things were much more challenging than any cultural differences.

S21:  The Time Out New York review praised your “organic experimentation”.  Can the organic aspect of your work be identified, and how does it manifest?

LB:  I suppose (I hope!) this writer could have been responding to my practice of making work about and on people. I am not so interested in experimentation as an abstract value, as much as I am interested in how one might use “experimental” or creative, unexpected ways to celebrate and heighten awareness of a particular performance experience, involving specific people in a specific place and time. This means that if I am writing for one unique performer who sings and plays the violin at the same time (that’s Carla), I will experiment with ways to celebrate and heighten the awesome strangeness and wonder of this act, whereas if I am writing for a 70-member volunteer orchestra of community music lovers (as I happen to be doing at the moment, for the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra), I will experiment with ways to heighten their experience of music-making in a community with intense musical passion and a broad range of abilities.

(more…)

by Polly Moller