The Original New Music Community
Conlon Nancarrow died 10 years ago today in Mexico City. Pliable has a nice writeup, and quotes György Ligeti praising Nancarrow as the most important composer of the second half of the twentieth century. I like Nancarrow but that strikes me as generous and raises the question–important to whom? To other composers? Maybe. To the small percentage of human beings who like contemporary classical music? No way.
UPDATE: Here’s the Kyle Gann link I was looking for.
Check out Frank J. Oteri’s great interview with Indie rockers Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, aka The Fiery Furnaces, over at New Music Box. Thanks for the shout-out, dude.
My copy of the Miller Theater Fall and Spring schedule landed on the window sill via carrier pigeon yesterday. As always, Columbia University’s indispensible new music venue has some humdingers on tap. The Composer Portrait series this season includes Esa-Pekka Salonen, Wolfgang Rihm, David Sanford, Gerald Barry (in the first large-scale New York exposure for the Irish composer), French spectralist Phillipe Hurel, George Crumb and Peter Lieberson. Except for Salonen and Rihm, the composers are set for pre-concert discussions, live and in color, so to speak. Also on the schedule for December 7, 8, 9 and 11 is the New York stage premiere of Elliott Carter’s only opera, What’s Next?
Anything exciting happening in your town this fall? Give us a good reason to get out of bed tomorrow.
I wasn’t able to make the premiere screening on July 4 but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about a new documentary film called The End of New Music, which follows Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Missy Mazzoli, the founders of Free Speech Zone, as they tour the East Coast with the groups Newspeak and NOW Ensemble, playing concerts in unlikely venues like clubs and bars and bringing new music to audiences that might not otherwise be exposed to it. The film, directed by Stephen S. Taylor, takes a verite approach to the tour, combined with interviews and various performance footage. You can watch video samples or buy a copy at American Beat Productions. You can also read Steve Smith’s terrific Times review there.
Anybody seen the film? (I know you have, Judd.)
Bernard Holland has a funny piece in today’s Times about setting out to listen to Marc-André Dalvavie’s new CD and getting mugged instead by an roving gang of French musical poseurs. A couple of choice bon mots:
So breathless were the revelations contained in this essay, called “Space, Line, Color,” it seemed for a moment the music could wait. Expounding on hearing, space and your stereo system, it reads: “while right/left movement can be recreated, front/back movement is replaced by a sensation of sound advancing or receding.” So it’s true that sound is softer when it is farther away than when it is in front of you. That will be useful the next time I come across a marching band going down the street.
Here is another verbal space walk: “Hence some of” Mr. Dalbavie’s “works do not limit their musical space to the concert platform, but extend to the entire hall,” he writes. “The defocalisation thus achieved calls into question the spatial hierarchy resulting from any frontal presentation of the music.”
I sure wish Gabrieli had thought about that 450 years ago; imagine the antiphonal music he could have written, with sound flying from every direction at people standing in the middle of his church.
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:
Let’s go a little further east, via a couple netlabels (online labels that offer freely downloadable, full-length MP3 “CD”s, usually with accompanying notes and cover artwork)
Nexsound (Ukraine)
They’ll tell you: Nexsound has been dedicated to the unusual and experimental music, both acoustic and electronic, that could be of any style and trend released on CDs and MP3 files. The term that describes music released by Nexsound best is probably “environmental music”, and it is often like “indocile ambient”. Nexsound music envelops you, listening to it feels like immersing into the very special atmosphere that this music creates, and thus it is intended rather for private listening. We pay the very special attention to the package of CDs released, so they look and feel very nice.
From the year of 2003 we’re also responsible for organizing concerts in Ukraine. From May, 2005 Nexsound hosts international festival for electronic music and visual arts – Detali Zvuku. Founded in 2000 by Andrey Kiritchenko in 2000 in Kharkiv city, Ukraine, Nexsound is currently being operated by Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra) as well.
Besides traditional “for-sale” CDs, there’s a whole section of MP3-only releases; for the modern classical folks I’d especially recommend To Escape, To Breathe, To Keep Silence, by the young composer Alla Zagaykevych.
Musica Excentrica (Moscow) 
Like they say: Musica Excentrica is a netlabel, based in Moscow, Russia, producing selected avantgarde post-music in non-entertainment genres (acoustic as well as electronic). In general, we are making music distribution in the internet as online label.
Mainly electro and improv, this label also carries a compilation of pieces composed as tributes to the memory of Iannis Xenakis, as well as Polina Voronova’s Luxurious, awarded an “Honorary Mention” in the digital music category at the Prix Ars Electronica / International Competition for CyberArts 2007.
Joshua Bell tells the Korea Times that he’s working toward writing his own stuff in a few years. Could work, I suppose. His pal Edgar Myers is a decent composer and fine musician. But, you pretty much have to go back to Rachmaninoff to find someone who was “great” as both a performer and composer. (Or, I’m sure someone will remind me that you don’t have to go back that far.)
Same thing for conductors. Okay, Lenny was great at both but most are not. The most excruciating half hour I ever spent in a concert hall (and this includes Chinese opera) was listening to some endless percussion drivel by Michael Tilson Thomas that he had forced upon the poor kids in the New World Symphony. I really admire Esa Pekka but I just can’t warm to his music.
So, gang, what’s the verdict?
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Performed by the Rubio String Quartet. Photography by James Archambeault
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:
Beth Custer (b. 1958 — US)
Extra, extra!… Fearless woman seizes her day!…
Beth was born in South Bend, Indiana, raised in western New York, but has lived in San Francisco for for the last twenty-five-and-some years.
As if she wasn’t busy enough being a composer, performer, bandleader, clarinet teacher, and running a record label, she’s also a founding member of the notorious silent film soundtrack purveyors the Club Foot Orchestra, 4th-world ambient ensemble Trance Mission, the quintet of esteemed clarinetists Clarinet Thing, the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and the Latin-jazz-rock influenced Doña Luz 30 Besos. She now leads The Beth Custer Ensemble (including long time collaborator Jan Jackson on drums, guitarist David James, iconic pianist Graham Connah, and New Yorker transplant bassist Mark Calderon).
Beth composes for film, television, installations and the concert stage (hall or club are both fair game). Recent commissions include A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005, a live outdoor cinema event by Melinda Stone produced by the Exploratorium; The Ballad of Pancho & Lucy musical for Campo Santo Theatre; and Bernal Heights Suite for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
As the above might indicate, Beth’s music and monster clarinet chops are put in service of everything from the primal to the rarest air. Though seekers of the plain-and-pretty might have a hard time, the rest of us can enjoy a bit of all this at her extremely spiffy website, chockablock-full of MP3s, video, interviews and other info.
It’s Daniel Gilliam’s turn to be S21er in the spotlight this weekend. If you happen to be near Louisville, Kentucky at 4 pm this Sunday, drop by Central Presbyterian Church for the world premiere of Daniel’s Song of the Universal, a cantata for soprano solo, choir and piano, based on the text by Walt Whitman. Lacey Hunter Gilliam, Daniel’s wife, will be the soloist.
Also on the program will be the premiere of O for Such a Dream for choir, soloist and piano, by Daron Aric Hagen, as well as new music by Louisville composer Fred Speck, and anthems by John Leavitt and Paul Halley. The church is located at 318 West Kentucky Street (corner of Fourth and Kentucky), in Louisville. No admission, but there might be a donation plate.