1938 was the beginning of a very rough patch for Europe but–as it turns out–it was a great year for the future of American music. Several of America’s most influential living composers were born in the early dawn of World War II, including John Corigliano, Joan Tower, Frederic Rzewski, Charles Wuorinen, William Bolcom, and John Harbison. The serendipity of that bountiful year has not gone unnoticed as a couple of new recordings and numerous 70th birthday bashes will attest.

The most satisfying of these celebrations of the Class of ’38 to cross our path is pianist Blair McMillen’s revelatory Centaur release multiplicities: ’38: Music by Composers born in 1938. Multiplicities is exactly the right word in this case, because the composers represented here may have been born in the same year but, stylistically, they come from different planets. The cool and polite elegance of Corigliano and the cosmopolitan eclecticism of Bolson are as far removed from the populist Americana of Tower and Rzewski as they are from the gnarly serialism of Wuorinen.

And, of course, there is John Harbison, the pick of the 1938 litter IMHO (as the kids like to say), who has spectacularly succeeded at his own stated aesthetic intent: “…to make each piece different from the others, to find clear, fresh large designs, to reinvent tradition.”

Blair McMillen is one of three or four great young pianists who specialize in new music and if you throw in the caveat “has an uncanny feeling for the composer’s intent,” he may well stand alone. The quality of his playing on multiplicities: ’38 is consistently extraordinary but just as remarkable is the way he perfectly captures the individual “voice” of each of these highly diverse composers. We are accustomed to hearing most of them in larger settings but here, stripped down to a single piano (or in the case Corigliano’s Chiraoscuro two pianos tuned ¼ tone apart), the dazzling range of the Class of ‘38’s compositional talents becomes manifest. For his uncanny ability to contrast and compare music of enormous diversity, we owe McMillen a debt.

And don’t forget Monday night at Merkin Hall when the Da Capo Chamber Players, for whom McMillen is pianist, presents a 70^th birthday portrait of Joan Tower. Tower was an original founder of Da Capo and its pianist for 15 years. 

This is just a friendly reminder about our upcoming concert next Wednesday, September 17th. Sequenza21 and Music On MacDougal are teaming up to present a concert of early Minimalism in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the genre.

M50: Minimalism Turns Fifty
When: September 17th, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Where: The Players Theatre, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan
115 MacDougal Street, New York, NY 10012
Tickets: $20 (Student tickets $15 with Student ID) By Phone: 212-352-3101 or Online.

Program:
Steve Reich — “Piano Phase” (1967) (Version for two Marimbas)
Philip Glass — “Piece in the Shape of a Square” (1967)
Terry Jennings — “Piano Piece” (December 1958) and “Piano Piece” (June 1960)
Intermission
Terry Riley — “In C” (1964)

The concert is made possible in part by the support of Cold Blue Music, and by Bechstein, the official piano sponsor of Music On MacDougal.

See you there! Tell your friends! It’s going to be great, and you won’t want to miss it.

The BBC Proms is ongoing until the end of this week, the traditional Last Night at the Proms being on Saturday night.   For me it all ended about a week and a half ago, but there are a number of things still to report on.

The Proms on August 19, given by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, which was a collaboration between the BBC and IRCAM, featured the music of Jonathan Harvey, a long time associate of IRCAM.  It included the first performance of Speakings, a major work of Harvey’s which had been commissioned by the BBC, IRCAM, and Radio France and which was also the final product of a three-year association between Harvey and the orchestra.  The concert was in three parts, divided by two intermissions, each one of which consisted of a relatively brief piece for tape or electronics, followed by a larger scale instrumental work.   The first contained Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and digital audio tape, followed by Messiaen’s Concert á quatre, the second Harvey’s Mortuos plango, vivos voco for eight channel tape, followed by Speakings for orchestra and live electronics, and the third Varèse’s Poème électronique for magnetic tape and Déserts for fifteen wind instrument, percussion and magnetic tape.
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John Adams – On the Transmigration of Souls 
Michael Gordon – The Sad Park 
Dennis Báthory-Kitsz: The Key of Locust
Phil Kline – Vigil
Elodie Lauten: S.O.S.W.T.C

There’s been a certain amount of breathless reportage about a new study linking personality and musical taste done by Adrian North at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. It’s hard to be sure where things went awry, but by the time the media got a hold of the results they were badly exaggerated.

The BBC, for instance, says the research “suggested classical music fans were shy, while heavy metal aficionados were gentle and at ease with themselves.” North himself, interviewed by the BBC, makes similarly bold claims: “If you know a person’s music preference you can tell what kind of person they are, who to sell to. There are obvious implications for the music industry who are worried about declining CD sales. One of the most surprising things is the similarities between fans of classical music and heavy metal. They’re both creative and at ease but not outgoing.” These statements imply a very strong effect—the sort of effect that should mean that if you know somebody’s musical taste you can make fairly accurate predictions about his or her personality.

If you’re starting to be skeptical, you’re not alone. Jonathan Bellman, at Dial M, has a pretty good rant you might want to read.

Knowing that the media is notoriously bad at accurately reporting scientific findings, I wanted to know what we’re really talking about here, so I e-mailed Professor North with a few questions.

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Sonny Rollins, aka the Saxophone Colossus, turns 78 today. Check out the multimedia celebration at his web site.  This year’s focus is on his fans, his web visitors, his greatest inspiration, Coleman Hawkins, and an extraordinary new recording.

Sonny doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  The year began with his 50th Anniversary Carnegie Hall concert. He’s been around the world, all over the US, Europe, and Asia (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia). Next month, two new releases celebrate his remarkable creativity, Sonny Rollins in Vienne, his first DVD, and a compilation of live performances, Road Shows, Volume 1.

Watching the gritty HBO series called Generation Kill about a platoon of young Marines at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, it struck me again how ambivalent music’s relationship to warfare really is.  Sure, one end of the music-as-weapon spectrum runs through the high-brow pacifism of Britten and Michael Tippet and the I ain’t a’marchin’ anymore populism of Phil Ochs.  All we are saying is give peace a chance.

But on the other end lives the beat of tribal drums and primitive rhythms; the ritualistic mix of noise and fire and spirits that sends warriors off on a blood-letting frenzy.  There’s also martial music, which is a form of canned nationalism meant to build pride and a sense of exceptionalism. In Generation Kill, the young Marines head out in their Humvees singing–in appropriate falsetto–Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You.”  A children’s chorus of young men determined to free the world of the Haj and fags and liberals and to prove to themselves and their platoon mates that they are not afraid of death.

The talented young composer David T. Little must have had something like this ambivalance in mind when he wrote Soldier Songs,  an evening-length multimedia performance piece, that will be staged Saturday at 7 pm and Sunday night at 6 pm at  Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street.   Comprised of 11 songs with an original Libretto by the composer, the work combines elements of theater, opera, concert music, rock and animation to explore the dichotomy between war and modern society through the abstract character, the Soldier.

Soldier Songs was first presented in 2006 as a song cycle by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and had its orchestral premiere as part of New York City Opera’s VOX Festival in 2008.  The current Beth Morrison Projects production is the first fully staged presentation of this dramatic work and features a splendid creative team: singer David Adam Moore, members of the ensemble Newspeak, conductor Todd Reynolds, director Yuval Sharon, set/costume designer Chisato Uno, lighting designer Lucas Krech, and animator/video designer Corey Michael Smithson.