Dude!

Next week those SOB’s from Lost Dog get their season off to a hooowwwling start with a program at Tenri they call “Color Wheel.” Lost Dog top dog Garth (“Arf!”) Sunderland explains:

The focus of this program is instrumental color – the astonishing variety of sounds even a single instrument can produce. Each instrument in the concert (Clarinet, ‘Cello, and Piano) will be experienced individually in the first half of the program, in virtuosic solo works which explore their unique color pallete – the ‘sound-identity’ of the instrument. In the second half, all three instruments come together to explore and experience those colors interacting with each other, in a very rare performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s timbral masterpiece, Allegro Sostenuto. 

Those first half pieces are by Ligeti, Xenakis, and Donatoni.  (Ouch-kabibble.)

The real deal takes place next Saturday night (10/25) at Tenri Cultural Institute, a joint which is finally about to live up to its middle name. There’s a preview program the night before at Waltz-Astoria. C-ya!

In 2002, Silas Huff moved to New York City for a girl, got a day job, and, while riding the bus into Manhattan, noticed a lot of folks getting on in Astoria carrying instrument cases. A composer and conductor himself fresh from a year in Germany, Silas started approaching these Astoria musicians, and, next thing he knew, he was holding auditions for the “Astoria Symphony.”

But the symphony was actually his second ensemble.

Back in 1995, as a classical guitar major at Texas State University, he wanted to put on some new music concerts. Now, new music concerts don’t get much attention anywhere. But Silas had an idea: he’d call his ensemble the “Lost Dog” ensemble, and make a poster whereon “Lost Dog” was writ large. Who could pass up such a sign?

Add together the Astoria Symphony and the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, throw in the Random Access Music composers collective, and you get the Astoria Music Society—an organization that, since 2002, has performed over 85 concerts featuring everything from standard orchestral repertoire to jazz.

With AMS in place, Astoria now has a classical voice to join the vibrant pop-world music scene currently filling the neighborhood’s cafes, restaurants, and other venues. While the organization’s primary function is to serve Queens, it performs in Manhattan as well. This weekend, the Astoria Symphony kicks off the season with a program featuring world premieres by Steve Horowitz and Angelica Negron. In December, AMS’s Lost Dog Ensemble plays a program featuring music by (gosh) Sequenza21 folks. Next March, AMS collaborates with the Long Island City Ballet. Go here for more.

Attendance is, shall we say, encouraged.

Gabriel Kahane performs Thursday, 9 October with Rob Moose at the Cornelia St. Café (8:00pm, doors; 8:30 Diane Birch, opening; 9:30 Gabe). This week, Gabriel and I exchanged some e-mail Q&A. The conversation got pretty deep. –David Salvage

DS: Gabriel, I’m enjoying your album [Untitled Debut]. I’m wondering, as I listen, what non-musical sources of inspiration you might have. Like poets, artists, and so on.

GK: I think that’s a great question. There are certainly some fairly explicit literary inspirations for some of the songs on the record. “The Faithful” was written as a kind of response to Claire Messud’s novel “The Emperor’s Children,” which I think very elegantly and devastatingly deals with 9/11. “7 Middagh” was written after reading Sherill Tippins’s glorious book “February House,” which is an account of the artist commune at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights during World War II in which W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Jane and Paul Bowles were charter members. But more generally, I think I’m always looking at art of all mediums to find different approaches to achieve some kind of emotional catharsis. I try to be as emotionally direct as possible in my work without getting sentimental (I hope), and so that tends to be what I seek out in other art. (more…)

Another full house at Zipper Hall, and we enjoyed ourselves with the music of William Kraft and his “Encounters” series of works for percussion. This was the third and final program in the Kraft/Encounters retrospective given by Southwest Chamber Music, honoring Kraft for his 85th birthday. By the end of tomorrow the whole series will have been recorded, and next year a 3 CD set will be available of this important set of compositions by a man who has been such a major participant in contemporary music in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the conversations with Bill Kraft will probably not be in the CD. Listening to Kraft’s comments, not limited to his music, has been one of the treats of the series; he is a witty, charming, thoughtful, knowledgeable gentleman.

Last night’s concert gave us the newest Encounters: the world premiere of Encounters XV for Guitar & Percussion; and Encounters XIV (2006) Concerto a Tre (for piano, violin and percussion). To these were added two earlier works: Encounters IV: Duel for Trombone and Percussion (1973); and Encounters V: In the Morning of the Winter Sea (1976) for cello and percussion. Kraft’s compositions explore the textures of sound; he makes extensive use of a wide variety of tuned percussion and seems to delight in the unique sounds that result from simultaneous notes on two or more instruments, often with special striking or bowing techniques. His works explore the variety of sounds from his selected pairings, not merely from the percussion alone. For example, Encounters IV begins with a duet between tympani and a trombone using a range of mutes. That work also included use of tuned steel mixing bowls; since the original bowls could not be located, tuned cowbells were substituted.

The percussion responsibilities were shared last night. Lynn Vartan performed Encounters XIV and XV. The two principals of Mexico City’s Tambuco Ensemble, Ricardo Gallardo and Alfredo Bringas, performed Encounters V and IV, respectively. Tambuco played a key role in Southwest’s performances and recordings of the complete set of chamber works by Carlos Chavez, and Tambuco brought some of their instruments, such as the tuned cowbells for the performance (and recording). In an interesting symmetry, Kraft conducted the world premiere of Chavez’ Tambuco. Bill Booth was the dueling trombonist, Peter Jacobson the cellist, Shalini Vijayan the violinist, Ming Tsu the pianist, and John Schneider the premiere performer on guitar. Watch for these recordings.

New York’s NPR station WNYC has been doing a bunch of programming on Leonard Bernstein, and the other night when I was moving my car I heard a great story:

Lenny was backstage in a greenroom in Vienna, and a little old lady approached him.  She introduced herself as the widow of Alban Berg, and Bernstein told her how honored he was to meet her.  Now Berg, as you will recall, died without completing his opera Lulu, and there was some question about who would finish it.  Helene Berg, Alban’s widow, initially offered the job to Schoenberg, who accepted but then decided it was too time-consuming, and the opera wasn’t completed until after her death in 1976.

Back in the greenroom, Helene told Lenny “I sink zat maybe you should finish Lulu.  I vill go home and ask Alban.”  Helene would apparently hold seances to speak with her dead husband.  A few nights later, backstage, this Helene Berg approached Leonard Bernstein again, and Bernstein again professed his admiration for her husband and his honor at meeting her.  Helene Berg said to Lenny “I asked Alban about Lulu.  Alban sagte nein.”  That line, “Alban sagte nein,” apparently became a running joke in the Bernstein household.

That’s the story as I remember it from the other night on WNYC.  The recording isn’t available on the website, but maybe somebody out there heard it too.  Opera Today tells the story slightly differently, saying that Bernstein himself sought permisson, but confirming that he was declined after Frau Berg consulted with Alban in a seance.  An article in the New York Times last year also describes Bernstein as approaching Helene Berg, but sets the scene at two breakfasts at the Berg home.

How ever it went down (and I’m inclined to believe that Bernstein approached Helene Berg) it’s a great story.  And I intend to make that my new excuse for turning people down.  You want me to come to your solo contrabasoon recital?  No can do–Alban sagte nein.  Want me to do an arrangement of “My Heart Will Go On” for flute and acoustic guitar?  Ooh, I’d love to, but Alban sagte nein.

Terry Jennings: I was happy to hear two short piano pieces by Jennings at the M50 concert S21 co-produced. Played with great sensitivity by Joseph Kubera, both works were spare, dissonant, and full of luxurious silences. Pianists would do well to combine these with Webern Op.27 and Schoenberg Op.19: you’d have a satisfying, chill 25 minutes of music. Now, what Jennings’s music has to do with minimalism as we know it beats me. But, whatever.

 Martin Matalon: In the mid 90s, Matalon was commissioned to write a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s Malthusian masterpiece, Metropolis. The Manhattan Symfonietta performance on 19 September was my first encounter with the film or the composer. Both were positive. Matalon, an Argentinian now living in Paris, has the burbly IRCAM thing down pat, and, as with Murail, I’m very impressed by the ability of contemporary French-inspired composers to cook up new tone colors. That said, Matalon’s score, which otherwise reinforces the film nicely, goes to sleep shortly after the start of the film’s “Furioso” section and remains horribly somnolent through the drowning of the workers’ city. Thankfully, things perk up again in time for the hunt for the robot Maria.

NYPhil Conductors who also Compose: The Phil played a program of Mahler 10, Maazel’s Music for Flute and Orchestra with Tenor Tuba Obligato Op. 11, Boulez’s Pli selon pli: Improvisation sur Mallarmé II (“Une dentelle s’abolit”), and Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety.” The Maazel has a fun cadenza for flute, castanets, and Indian rain tube; otherwise, it’s forgettable. Bernstein’s symphony (with pianist Joyce Yang) is good; but the whole thing sounds a bit dusty—the music screams “1940s New York!” in a way that somehow highlights how different today feels. Boulez took the prize. Pli selon pli was just beautiful—like Debussy on twelve-tones. The clear, light voice of soprano Kiera Duffy sealed the deal.

Oliver Knussen: Knussen’s third symphony got a playing from the San Francisco Symphony under MTT at Carnegie Hall. First played in 1979, the work takes inspiration from the death of Ophelia. It’s about 15 minutes long, has some luscious woodwind writing, and the climactic chorale is prepared well by long, homogenous stretches of counterpoint. This is the kind of thing that should be played all the time—an approachable symphony that sounds modern. But I like my pieces a little more badly behaved: technical competence only takes you so far.

On the horizon:  Bernard Rands at the Phil, and two geniuses, Dawn Upshaw and Alex Ross, in elevated discourse.