Contemporary Classical

Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Online, Post Modern, Video

Autotune the silence

Ah, this the Golden Age, my friends, when the mellifuous sound of Autotune is everywhere, bringing dulcet harmony and order to everything from the latest pop and hip-hop singles worldwide to even the news. And now, thanks to the inspiration of  Toronto composer Matthew Reid, even to the veritable sounds of “silence” as well!…  Of course we all know that John Cage‘s iconic piece 4’33” is not really three movements of silence; the point is that those movements frame and draw attention to all of the other sounds present in the space where the piece is being played. What Reid has done is to create a performance of 4’33”, and then turn Autotune loose on that “silent” background. It turns the ambiance of the space into the sound of ghostly choirs and tiny chordal outbursts. While the Cageian purist might say this undermines the whole point of the piece (listening to the sounds that be as themselves), to me there’s a bit of innovation and subversion that recalls the twinkle in Cage’s own eye:

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEtcHc8rJQQ[/youtube]

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

In Memoriam Steven Bodner

Conductor Steven Dennis Bodner, who was a passionate, fiery, radical force for new music, died tragically on Monday night after a brief illness. Steve was a fanatically devoted new music performer and advocate, who helped develop a new appreciative audience for this music during his tenure as conductor of the Williams College Wind Ensemble and the Opus Zero Band, the college contemporary music group which he founded. He was a man of incredible depth, joy and energy whose early death is not only a great personal loss to those who knew him but is an immesurable loss to the contemporary music field, where Steve would have had a wider influence if fate had not intervened.

by Armando Bayolo
Chamber Music, Choral Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Interviews, New York

Jeff Gavett talks about Ekmeles

Ekmeles rehearses Iddon

On Tuesday 1/11, newish New York vocal ensemble Ekmeles presents a program of music by Martin Iddon, Alvin Lucier, and David Lang at The Tank. I caught up with Ekmeles’ director, baritone Jeff Gavett to learn more about the event.

Carey: Why did you form the group Ekmeles?

Gavett: “While New York is home to many exceptional instrumental groups dedicated to contemporary music, there is a relative paucity of new vocal music. Ekmeles was created to fill the gap, and bring adventurous new music for solo voices to audiences that otherwise have little or no chance to hear it.”

“Our first season so far has included a US premiere by Mauricio Kagel, New York premieres by Aaron Cassidy and Kenneth Gaburo, and new commissions by Troy Herion and Jude Traxler. We also performed as the vocal complement in a sold out performance of Knee Plays from Einstein on the Beach as part of the Darmstadt Essential Repertoire series at Issue Project Room.”

Carey: Tell us about the works on the concert?

Gavett: “First on the program is our commission, Martin Iddon’s Ἁμαδρυάδες (hamadryads). It’s a transformation of Josquin’s Nymphes des Bois which involves retuning the intervals of the original in chains of Pythagorean intervals. These pitches, notated to the hundredth of a cent, are traversed mostly through extremely slow glissandi, requiring the singers to use sine wave reference tracks to achieve the tuning. We’ll also be playing tuned wine glasses, which blend eerily with the vocal textures.”

“Next is Alvin Lucier’s Theme, a setting of a poem by John Ashbery which shares some kinship with his most famous work. Lucier fragments the poem and distributes it between four speakers, who read the text into what he calls “resonant vessels.” These are vases, milk jugs, any empty container into which is placed a miniature microphone, which picks up the sound of the voice as filtered by the vessel, much like the room filters the sound of Lucier’s voice in I am sitting in a room.”

“David Lang’s the little match girl passion rounds out the program. As the title suggests, Lang has taken Hans Christian Andersen’s moralistic children’s story and infused it with the Passion. The suffering and death of a poor little girl is thus directly and explicitly equated to that of Christ, amplifying the story’s emotional impact. The singers all play percussion instruments, and the glockenspiel is featured especially prominently, its crisp attack evoking the freezing night. The clear and sparse textures throughout the match girl text are contrasted beautifully with richer quasi-choral textures in the Passion-derived elements.”

Carey: What’s next for Ekmeles?

Gavett: “Upcoming performances include John Cage’s Song Books at the Avant Music Festival on February 12th, and Chris Cerrone’s Invisible Cities with Red Light New Music in May.”

Concert Details

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011, 7 PM – Ekmeles – Resonances
$10 admission
The Tank
345 W 45th St, Manhattan, NY 212-563-6269

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

Two Feldman Lectures in NYC and via the Internet around the world.

[Noted composer/performer Bunita Marcus asked to share some information on her upcoming lectures on Morton Feldman.]

Hello Friends and Colleagues,

I am doing two lectures on Morton Feldman’s Notation and Compositional Process here in NYC this coming January 16th and 23rd at 1:00 to 3:00 pm. These lectures will also be available via Ustream.tv for people outside of NYC.

These lectures are unique audio/visual powerpoint presentations. The first lecture is on the influence of Rugs and the Visual Arts on his Composition and Orchestration. The second lecture is a closer look at his Rubato Notation and his Compositional Process, examining the vellums and manuscripts. I will also discuss the ramifications of this type of notation for the future of contemporary music. I have been lecturing on this subject for 24 years, but unfortunately very few people understand how Feldman went about putting a composition together. I have not published this information anywhere in this much detail. If you are at all interested in Feldman’s compositional process and how he notated his music, this will be an essential introduction. As most of you know, Morton and I composed together for over seven years–a crucial seven years–where he solidified his notation and compositional process in the late works.

I would like to invite anyone interested to attend. I have set it up so that anyone with access to a computer can watch it live. We are trying to make the internet participants able to ask questions via chat.   I will be addressing the issues surrounding the vellum scores that Morty created and the problems that have arisen when Universal engraves a score and loses this information. This will be of particular interest to anyone doing research into Feldman’s work.   Morty created some of the most interesting and ingenious notation in his late period and we will look at that in detail and it’s implications for the future of contemporary and common-practice music. The lectures are really sequential and I urge you to see both for the best comprehension.

The space in NYC is somewhat limited, so I do encourage you to get your tickets soon and reserve a seat. From the way things look now it will sell-out.  There is also great interest in the live internet feed and there is no limit to how many people can use this. But for my sake, please don’t wait until the last moment, try to order the tickets at least 4 days ahead of time. If for some reason you are interested but cannot make either form of the lectures, please do send me an email (b@bunitamarcus.com) and I will put you on a list to keep you updated on future lectures, and a DVD I have in the works.

Feel free to pass on this news.   It’s about time we started to clear the air concerning Feldman’s contributions to music.   The more people understand what he was doing, the more interesting it becomes.  Even though we worked together for many years, my music is nothing like his–except in one way:   I adopted and adapted his notational ideas.   And in all my years of teaching composition, I have learned that his notational ideas work with any type of music.  This I find amazing.   It gives me hope for a contemporary music that is accessible to traditionally-trained classical musicians.    It is no longer necessary to be a specialist in contemporary music in order to play it. Feldman’s notation shows us the way.  It is a composer’s solution, as it should be.

Remember, anyone, anywhere with a computer can log-on and participate, this is not just for the US, it is world-wide.  You just need to order tickets to get the correct URL for the lectures.

I will be demystifying Feldman to the degree that one can do so.
I hope to see you there!

Bunita Marcus
Ph.D. Music Composition
www.bunitamarcus.com

Faculty:

If you have composition students please let them know about these lectures.
There is plenty to learn here, especially about composition and notation.

You can buy the tickets (discounts for students, seniors and limited income) here:

http://www.bunitamarcus.com/shop.html

Location:

1-3 pm, Jan. 16th and 23rd, 2011 in Tribeca, NYC

Piano Magic, 78 Reade Street #5E (corner of Church), 10007
(This is a four flight walk-up on Sundays)
1, 2, 3, A, C at Chambers St.; 4, 5, 6, R at City Hall

Piano Magic: 212-732-8828
Bunita 347-715-6518

Also on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172144969472807

by Bunita Marcus
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Magazines, Online, Recordings, Websites

The Open Space reopens

…Though it never really closed… Started around 1998 in upstate New York by a small group of musicians including Benjamin Boretz, Mary Lee Roberts and Arthur Margolin, The Open Space was conceived as print and online magazine venture and CD publisher dealing with contemporary music as “…output from a community for people who need to explore or expand the limits of their expressive worlds, to extend or dissolve the boundaries among their expressive-language practices, to experiment with the forms or subjects of thinking or making or performing in the context of creative phenomena. We want to create a hospitable space for texts which, in one way or another, might feel somewhat marginal — or too ‘under construction’ — for other, kindred publications.”

Given that they may have jumped into the pool just a tad early web-wise, and given the loose nature of of the project along with the busy and evolving schedules of the editors, The Open Space has tended to offer up things in spurts; the print magazine’s last issue was from late 2009, and the website languished for quite a while. Still, as befits an “open space” there has always been a very interesting accumulation of various article, scores, recordings and sound files available on their site, well worth a contemporary musician’s time to sift through. You can order CD recordings and back copies of the print magazine right from the site, as well.

Just last year, composer Dean Rosenthal signed on to get the purely digital webmagazine up and running again, and Dean’s happy to announce the first “issue” is online and available. The current form is a collection of contributions from various composers, of streaming recordings/video of selected works, some coupled with notes and scores of the piece. First offerings include such outside-the-mainstream luminaries as Michael Pisaro, Henry Gwiazda, Richard Coldman and Howard Skempton and others. And of course Dean is always happy to recieve submissions from you composers/performers out there, so why not give it a shot and help populate that open space with even more art and exploration!

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Houston, Music Events

Houston’s Musiqa presents: Real and Imagined

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/12767232]

(Visual Abstract, First Movement, Music by Pierre Jalbert, Film by Jean Detheux)

On January 8th, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. in Zilkha Hall of The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Houston TX new music group Musiqa presents Real and Imagined – a concert collaboration with Aurora Picture Show featuring Theo Loevendie’s Six Turkish Folk Songs as well as music by Eve Beglarian, Paul Frehner, and Evan Chambers. Houston-based composer Pierre Jalbert’s Visual Abstract for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion will be performed live to a film created by Jean Detheux. The concert will be conducted by Houston Symphony Assistant Conductor Brett Mitchell.

Led by five composers (including founding member Pierre Jalbert) Musiqa is receiving a great deal of notice for its innovative multi-disciplinary concert events (dance, visual art, and theater are always integrated into Musiqa performances) as well as its educational programming that annually reaches thousands of Houston area students. Next season, Musiqa will celebrate its ten-year anniversary.

Pierre Jalbert graciously responded to a few questions about Visual Abstract:

Chris Becker: Did Jean Detheux create his film before, after, or during the composition of Visual Abstract?

Pierre Jalbert: He created the film after the piece was written. The music was commissioned and premiered by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble a few years back. Jean and I worked on a project last year in which he created a film first and I wrote the music to the film. That work was entitled L’œil écoute (The Eye Listens), and was also premiered by PNME. This time around, we decided that we would reverse the process, and he would do his film to the already existing music.

Chris Becker: In performance with the film, is the conductor watching the film for the timing of some of your musical events? I’m thinking of the third movement where rhythmic hits coincide with abrupt changes in the film.

Pierre Jalbert: Yes, the conductor is looking at the film for cues from time to time, and we rehearse many times through to get the timing down. As you can imagine, it’s very difficult as each performance is slightly different. But Jean made the film to not have too many abrupt changes. But still, there are a a few that make it challenging.

Chris Becker: The layers of images in Detheux’s film are very rich and tactile. They remind me of natural phenomena, weather, or even what we “see” when we close our eyes and listen to the sounds around us. Speaking as a composer, what do you think makes an “abstract” work of visual art successful?

Pierre Jalbert: I think when one looks at the film and hears the music as a single entity, and one does not dominate over the other, but each enhances the other, then we have something interesting.

Chris Becker: Next season, Musiqa will celebrate its ten-year anniversary. As one of the people who founded the organization, how does it feel to look back on all Musiqa has accomplished?

Pierre Jalbert: It’s amazing to look back and see how the organization has grown. I remember a few of us meeting at Tony Brandt’s house 10 years ago and brain-storming about what the organization could be. We wanted to get new music out into the community and into downtown and offer up repertoire that wasn’t being heard in Houston. All of the composers on the Artistic Board work really well together (Anthony Brandt, Karim Al-Zand, Rob Smith, Marcus Maroney, and myself), and that has been crucial in keeping things going through the years.

Tickets for Real and Imagined – including discounted tickets for seniors and students – are available for purchase on the Musiqa website.

by Chris Becker
Broadcast, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Events, Radio

Mountains and Rivers Without End

Getting ready to enjoy all those new, happy/shiny Xmas presents, I’m sure… Well, here’s another that won’t cost you a dime:

S21’s WPRB-favorite-son, announcer Marvin Rosen, is getting a jump on the upcoming Alan Hovhaness centennial with a 24-hour marathon broadcast of Hovhaness’s music (that’s Marvin above, in 1992, with Hovhaness at the composer’s home). “Mountains and Rivers Without End” begins Sunday, Dec. 26th at 7pm, and will feature more Hovhaness than you can shake a stick at (I know more than a few composers who might well be furiously shaking that stick, but I myself am pretty partial to this American original). Two guests during the marathon will be clarinetist and conductor Lawrence Sobol (December 26, evening), and pianist Sahan Arzruni (December 27, early afternoon) both of whom have recorded the composer’s music. In the New York/New Jersey area you can tune to WPRB at 103.3 FM, while the rest of can stream it all live online.

Marvin is about as well-positioned as anyone to lead you through Hovhaness’s vast output; his doctoral dissertation was on Hovhaness’s music; he was a friend of the composer for many years and spent two weeks in Seattle working with him on his piano music in preparation for the first of two recordings on the Koch International Classics label. Marvin also wrote the liner notes for other Hovhaness recordings on the Koch International Classics label as well. And Marvin has one of the most extensive rare collections of Hovhaness’s music both on CD and LP, so there are bound to be many treats heard. So turn out to tune in, and give Marvin some virtual caffeine support through the long night and day!

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

2010 and the end of musical history

It’s not uncommon to see articles both decrying the sad state of affairs in classical music as a whole as well as celebrating the new opportunities that are available for both composers and performers with the right amount of musical and entrepreneurial skill, luck and perseverance. A prime example of one that covers both issues was recently published as a transcript of a speech given by the Guardian’s Tom Service with the intentionally controversial title “So long, and thanks for all the noise: 2010 and the end of musical history”. Well-spoken and thoughtful (and without the acidity of many critics from across the pond), Service writes:

My sense is that many young composers now realise that the game is up, that the conventional paths to fame and, er, fortune in contemporary classical culture just aren’t worth the candle. Instead, they’re better off on their own, not least because their music doesn’t fit the line-ups of an orchestra, or even the 1 to a part ensembles of the Sinfonietta, or the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, or Liverpool’s Ensemble 10:10, or Manchester’s Psappha – a line-up and repertoire whose time has probably also come, has also become a living history more than something genuinely contemporary. Composers still need to make choices, of course; being open to the rest of the world does not guarantee the creation of great, or even good art in an of itself, and they will have to find their own limitations, draw their own lines in the shifting sands of musical culture. But composing without the fear of traducing the absurd unwritten laws of modernist composition will only be a good thing. Like Reich and Glass before them, today’s composers have the chance to build their own communities of listeners and audiences – whether in the flesh or on-line – and make the music that matters to them for people who care about it – and actually enjoy it.

Service brings up many good points and pulls no punches, laying responsibility on the future of new/concert/art/whatever music (rightly so) at the feet of the composers both young & old as well as the performing and academic institutions that help to foster contemporary musical art. In my own opinion, the idea that it’s perfectly legitimate to use whatever medium/style/technique that allows a composer to bring his/her voice into being has been growing and gaining momentum for years now, and more articles like this are surely in store. What has not yet been discussed nearly enough – and this may take quite some time – is the ramifications of our ever-increasingly “big-tent” art form on both those who create and those who analyze and interpret those creations. I can see where Service is coming from with his suggestion of the “end of musical history” as it has been characterized up till now, though I’d prefer the “beginning of a new musical history” myself.

Read the rest here.

by Rob Deemer
Contemporary Classical

Totally Off-Topic Alert: My 9 Favorite American Movies of 2010

1.  The Social Network – The story of a socially-retarded Harvard teen-aged geek who screws over his best friend and a pair of very large, wealthy, well-connected  blue-blooded twin brothers to create Facebook and become the world’s youngest billionaire is an epic tale that derives much of its power from the fact that it is basically true.  Brilliant acting and pacing, with a script that is remarkably fair and leaves you with the impression that Mark Zuckerberg may be a poster boy for Asperger’s Syndrome but he is also the only guy in the room who could have pulled it off.  The Citizen Kane of the “friend me” generation.
2.  Never Let Me Go – I must confess that until a couple of weeks ago I had not heard of this brilliantly understated adaptation of Kanzuo Ishiguro’s (Remains of the Day) dystopian novel about three friends—two girls and boy–who grow up together and become romantically involved in what seems to be an idyllic English boarding school.  What we, and they, gradually learn is that they are DNA-created clones whose destiny is to become vital organ donors for the citizens of a country that has convinced itself that they are not human but mere spare parts.  I found it both chilling and emotionally wrenching.
3.  Greenberg – Ben Stiller as a 40-something slacker who begins to realize that he is no longer young and that most of his troubles just might stem from his own immaturity and self-absorption.  Like many Gen Xers wedged between the all-consuming narcissism of their boomer parents and the scary self-confidence of Gen Yers (think Mark Zuckerberg), his character is still avoiding responsibility and waiting for the big break that will never come.  With the aid of a dose of healthy confrontation from his only remaining friend, an inexplicable—even to him—attraction to a ditzy but good-hearted 25-year-old blonde (played wonderfully by an actress named Greta Gerwig), and a sick dog, he begins making baby steps toward maturity.  The dialogue and performances are precisely on target.  Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who did The Squid and the Whale.
4. Life During Wartime – Todd Solendz’ follow-up to Happiness (1998), his dark and unforgettable masterpiece of family dysfunction on an epic scale.  Many of the same characters are back although some are played by different actors but if they have spent any time in therapy it hasn’t helped.  Solendz’s movies make you uncomfortable not simply because they deal with such happy subjects as pedophilia and sexual humiliation but also because you never sure whether what you’re seeing is meant to be very black humor or some sort of warped Greek tragedy.  Paul Reubens, Pee Wee Herman to his fans, makes a very un-Pee Wee-like appearance as an unhappy ghost and Ally Sheedy scorches the screen with a brief turn as the prickly sister who is miserable because she “gave up her poetry” to write screenplays and now lives in a beach house in Malibu with her boy friend “Keanu.”
5.  Please Give – A very New York-film about liberal guilt and waiting for the old lady next door to die so you can buy her place and knock down the wall and expand your condo.  The incredible actress Elizabeth Keener plays an unhappy for no particular reason antiques dealer who with her husband buys stuff from the heirs of people who have just died (who seldom know how much its worth and just want to get rid of it quickly anyway) and resells it for a profit.  Subtle and beautifully done.
6.  City Island – A second-string NY Times reviewer who had apparently never heard of Moliere doomed this one with a snippy review (inspiring about 400 nasty comments on the Times web site) but I thought Andy Garcia was hysterical as a corrections officer who lives with his wife and two kids in the curiously dislocated New England fishing village at the top of the Bronx called City Island.  One week he brings home a studly young prisoner on furlough ostensibly to help him build a shed in the backyard.  The awfully well-behaved con is his son by a premarital relationship and although he tells the kid he doesn’t quite get around to telling his perfect wife, played by Julianna Marguiles.  She is already suspicious of him sneaking out to “poker games” a couple of nights a week when, in fact, he’s taking acting lessons.  Things really go farcical when she spots Andy with a pretty girl who is scene partner from acting class and decides to get even by putting some moves on the sweaty young dude in the backyard who knows what she doesn’t.  Everything works out in the end, of course, and you don’t even need to know about the daughter who has dropped out of college and earning money as a pole dancer or the teenage son who likes to watch fat women eat doughnuts on the Internet.   I never liked Andy Garcia in anything before this but his “audition” for Martin Scorsese is fall-down funny and  I would pay money to watch Julianna Marguiles lick stamps for an hour.
7.  Rabbit Hole – Familiar premise of couple torn apart by the death of a child but superb writing by David Lindsay-Abaire (who wrote the play on which it is based) and excellent performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckart, Miles Teller and especially Dianne Wiest, as the Nicole character’s mother make this a memorable effort.   Especially touching and well-handled is Nicole’s need to seek out and befriend the suffering teenager who couldn’t stop fast enough when her son chased his dog into the street.
8.  The Kids Are All Right – Annette Benning will probably get an Oscar for her portrayal of the butch half of a lesbian couple (the other half played by Julianne Moore) who each have a child from the same sperm donor.  The fun begins when the kids, now grown, and each an exact copy of their different mothers decide to track down the sperm donor, played by Mark Ruffalo, and he begins to form “fatherly” attachments to the kids.  Not to mention a sexual attraction to one of the lesbian mothers.  Not really a comedy although it’s listed in that category but it is educational:  I don’t think I knew before that lesbians like male porn movies.  I love the little Australian girl with the Polish name who plays the daughter.  Somebody might want to tell Julianne Moore that maybe it’s time to start not taking her clothes off in movies.
9. Winter’s Bone – This year’s Indie darling is set among the new generation of mountain folk of the Ozarks who apparently have all traded in their elders’ moonshine stills for meth labs and are happily cooking up cheap drugs for middle Americans who enjoy being stupid and having their teeth fall out.    Ree Dolly (yep, that’s the character’s name—played with enormous conviction by a young actress named Jennifer Lawrence), is a teenager with a heap of troubles.  See, Pa’s gone missing and mommy ain’t regular and so the responsibility for taking care of her siblings—a girl about nine and a boy about 12—has fallen upon poor Ree.  If she can’t find Pa and get him to make the back payments, or prove he’s dead and collect the insurance money, the county’s going to seize the family farm and they’ll be homeless.   Her only ally is her drug-addled and not very reliable uncle, played by John Hawke, (the guy who played the shopkeeper who was sweet on Trixie the Whore in Deadwood).   Turns out, Pa had been seen talking to the law and the other dealers know exactly where his remains are but are understandably not anxious for them to be found.  Finally, though, the hardy women folk take pity on poor Ree and solve her problem.   My problem with the film is that this is a culture I know a lot about (everybody in it looks like one of my uncles or first cousins) so the little wrong details annoyed me.  For example, when she’s showing her brother how to skin a squirrel she does it all wrong and, anyway, a 12-year-boy in that culture would have skinned dozens of squirrels by that age.  And the mountain mommas I know wouldn’t have taken Ree out on a nighttime boat ride so she could fish daddy up from under the big log and saw off his hands with a chainsaw to prove that he was dead.  They would have sawed them off themselves and left them in a nice plastic bag on her porch.  Mountain people are very neighborly that way.
by Jerry Bowles