From composer Paul Laino.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSasEp1-j1Q[/youtube]
And don’t forget: the S21 concert submission postmark deadline is one week from today. Fire me an e-mail; Pierrot or subsets thereof.
BSO MUSIC DIRECTOR JAMES LEVINE LEAVES TANGLEWOOD TO UNDERGO SURGERY
BSO Music Director James Levine regrets that he will have to withdraw from the balance of the 2008 Tanglewood season. Because of a cyst causing pressure and discomfort, Levine will undergo surgery this week to have a kidney removed. The procedure has been described by Levine’s doctors as curative, with no other treatment necessary and with every expectation for a complete recovery. The anticipated recuperation period is six weeks -leaving ample time to prepare and conduct the season openings of the BSO and the Metropolitan Opera in September.
“It is extremely frustrating that I need to have this surgery now,” said Levine. “My projects at Tanglewood have been planned so carefully and coordinated in such detail by the Festival administration. I especially regret not being here with Elliott Carter for his 100th birthday celebration, which I was looking forward to more than I can say. And I’m very disappointed at having to miss concerts with my colleagues in the BSO, as well as my work with the young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center.”
Mark Volpe, BSO Managing Director, expressed the sentiments of everyone at the Festival: “All of us at Tanglewood are very disappointed that James Levine will not be with us for his remaining concerts this summer,” said BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe. “However, we are primarily concerned for Jim’s health and well-being, and that everything be done to ensure a complete recovery so that he returns as soon as possible to his musical life with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera.”
The 2008 Tanglewood concert schedule, which offers 67 ticketed performances and runs through Labor Day weekend, will not be disrupted, with all concerts to take place as originally scheduled. An announcement about guest conductors scheduled to take over Maestro Levine’s remaining Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Music Center concerts will be forthcoming. Maestro Levine led the BSO, a cast of international soloists, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the opening weekend of the Tanglewood season, leading a performance of Berlioz’ monumental Les Troyens, July 5 and 6. Also last week, Maestro Levine led the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a performance of Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony.
Tanglewood, located in Lenox, MA, is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For complete details about the 2008 Tanglewood season, visit www.tanglewood.org.
I come to praise Michael Nyman. No, really. Since the nice people at Naxos began distributing Nyman’s MN Records a couple of months ago, several of his musical adventures have come into my possession and I have to admit that I find them as light as the floating feather in Forrest Gump and as addictive as an open box of Entemann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts. I play them again and again, knowing I should move on to something meatier–like, say, the amazing new Da Capo recording of Per Norgard chamber works or Lee Hyla’s extraordinary Lives of the Saints.
But it couldn’t hurt to put on Nyman’s Mozart 252 while I’m deciding. Mozart 252 (Nyman was a couple of years late in finishing his tribute to Wolfgang’s 250th birthday) brings together two main bodies of Nyman work inspired by Mozart (whose music, by the way, I loathe). The first is the soundtrack for Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers, and the second draws from Nyman’s score for Letters, Riddles and Writs (1991), a BBC2 homage to Mozart. Like my favorite doughnuts, there’s lots of empty calories but it tastes so sweet going down.
Or maybe, I’ll go with Acts of Beauty/Exit no Exit, a couple of extended vocal works that show Nyman’s approach to word-setting, song structure, and choice of subject matter. Oooo..this is interesting. Says here that Acts of Beauty is a song cycle based on miscellaneous texts on beauty from a 1556 text of Vincenzo Cartari, which “looks at the measurements of beauty by comparing buttocks to beauty in the urban environment as viewed by Kurt Scwitters and Dzuga Vertov to Martial’s Epigrams on the weighing of a penis.” Kind of gives a new definition to the word “heavy.”
Exit no Exit began life as Beckham Crosses, Nyman Scores, a ‘homage’ to the England football team as part of a documentary on BBC Radio 3 to celebrate the end of the World Cup finals in Japan/Korea in 2002. Nyman took extracts from announcer John Motson’s commentary to the England v Argentina match and sampled, looped and ‘instrumentalized’ them…in the manner of Steve Reich’s Different Trains: translating the loops repeating rhythmic and melodic patterns played without variation.” Good cover copy that: “In the Manner of Steve Reich’s Different Trains…” Nice. In this version, Motson’s voice has been replaced with a bass clarinet.
There’s nobody here right now except me and the cat so maybe I could even go with the “Composers Cut” version of the score from Nyman’s most famous piece, The Piano. Poor Holly Hunter losing her pinky like that. That’s exactly why I prefer cats to children. Let’s see…Nyman says: “The purpose of the Composer’s Cut series is to present music from my soundtracks in a state of continuous evolution. As I transferred particular cues from film to concert hall both musical structures changed and performance styles developed, enabling the music, perhaps, to realise its true potential. So these recordings represent the Michael Nyman Band’s state-of-performance as of spring 2005.” State-of-Performance…In the Manner of Steve Reich’s Different Trains. Now, we’re getting somewhere.
Nyman’s score for Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano is one of the most successful film soundtracks of all time, won lots of movie music awards, and made Nyman one of the few composers who can afford to own their record labels and hire any musicians they want to play their music. The concert suite for The Piano as performed by The Michael Nyman Band is a staple of the band’s concert repertoire and has been performed all over the world with the composer acting as pianist and conductor. According to the notes: “It is this expanded form of the soundtrack that Nyman chose to record as his own definitive edition in Abbey Road studios in April 2005.”
So, let’s see what we have when we put it together: “Live from Abbey Road…a State-of-Performance performance..In the Manner of Steve Reich’s Different Trains…the definitive edition of the Composer’s Cut of…”
And, by the way, did I mention that he’s the man who gave “minimalism” its name?
So the guy’s a pompous asshole. I dare you to buy a copy of one of his CDs and not play it at least 10 times.
For the past couple of years the Kepler Quartet has been on a mission from God to record all ten of Ben Johnston’s string quartets with their intended tunings. The first recording in this series–String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9–was our (or, at least, my) favorite album of the year. Eric Kepler remembered and offered us (with Ben’s blessing) a Fourth of July treat we couldn’t refuse.
Enjoy Ben Johnston’s microtonal version of the National Anthem. It was written for the N.Y. Miniaturist Ensemble a couple of years ago, and Eric made this studio quality recording with Ben as a demo for them. Ben himself is singing. It’s a very short piece, 100 notes, scored for two voices, male and female, violin, clarinet and snare drum
Performers are from Present Music in Milwaukee. Voices Ben Johnston, Laura Monagle, snare Terry Smirl, bass clarinet Bill Helmers, violin Eric Segnitz, engineer, John Tanner copyist, David Bohn
Steve Smith, writing this morning in the Center of the Universe Times:
During a panel presented recently at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, the American Music Center and the American Composers Forum reported preliminary findings from “Taking Note,” a survey of American composers. The study was undertaken to help those organizations better serve their constituencies. According to its findings, the average American composer is a highly educated 45-year-old white male.
Update: Judith Zaimont has more from the study on her MusicMaker blog.
A little while back on S21, I mentioned the good news that the indomitable / indubitable / inscrutable / incontinent Kalvos & Damian were bringing back an online-only version of their (ASCAP Deems Taylor) award-winning broadcasts. Though the name has changed from New Music Bazaar to In The House, The show retains all of its trademark off-the-wall storytelling, banter, and enthusiasm for sharing the music and thought of all kind of interesting NON-POP musicians at work today. Our duo may be out in the wilds of rural Vermont, but there isn’t anything backwoods about their awareness of the new-music scene. Each show is provided in both a high- and low-bandwidth version, so there’s just no excuse to not be listening, hear?
[Note: Happy as I am about this return, I’d be remiss not to also acknowledge the New Music Bazaar’s different yet fine replacement, Noizepunk and Das Krooner. Since 2005 Gene Pritsker and Charles Coleman have been running their own mostly-monthly show, with lots of the same type of K&D-worthy guests. All of their shows are archived for listening at the K&D site right along with the New Music Bazzar’s vast archive.]
Though Kalvos (Dennis Bathory-Kitsz) and Damian (David Gunn) last appeared in 2005, they more or less pick up just where they left off, with an fun interview of the muy importante left-coaster Art Jarvinen. Art has been a big factor in helping shape what’s come out of CalArts (and Cal, period) lately, and Art’s own music and interview heard in this show perfectly show off much of what California/West-Coast/Southwest music has been concerned with these last 30+ years (hint: it ain’t set-theory or the New Complexity… oh, they probably know it, but “thanks, no thanks”; life’s just too short and sweet…).
Shame on you if you’ve never bookmarked the K&D site; but all is forgiven if you do it now, and be sure to check back regularly for all the fun to come. …Oh, and send ’em a check every so often too, OK? Pure love and enthusiasm can’t pay those production costs and server bills, and Paypal couldn’t be simpler to use. They’re doing this for you, so do a little back.
Peabody faculty member David Smooke sent this along for your delectation:
Summer’s just beginning and Hybrid Groove Project, the genre-bending new music duo from Baltimore, is already heating things up with their number one summer jam, “HGP Anthem.” In the grand tradition of the great hip-hop conflicts like Tupac v. Biggie Smalls, Dr. Dre v. Eazy-E, and 50 Cent v. Kanye West, “HGP Anthem” brings some much needed antagonism to a new music genre more accustomed to passive aggressive behind-the-back battiness than brive-bys and street corner stompings.
“By droppin’ this track we’re showing all these new music fakers who the real playaz are,” say Sacawa and Spangler. “It’s like we’re telling everyone, ‘Yo, we’re hot, and you’re not,’ you feel us? Like, y’all need to get out of the game. Plus, we need to show love for Bmore, you know what we’re sayin’?”
Indeed, new music will soon regret its unofficial partnership with indie rock with the release of Hybrid Groove Project’s latest hit, the number one summer jam of 2008. But don’t call it a comeback, Hybrid Groove Project’s been making heads nod since 2004. Just hope it’s not too late to return those skinny jeans.
Benjaim Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, has become a hot ticket on the corporate leadership circuit. Here’s why:
David V. Foster, whose management firm Opus 3 Artists represents many top performers, conductors and Osvaldo Golijov, has come up with an idea for an annual festival at Carnegie Hall that will recognize leading orchestras for the the “creativity and distinctiveness” of the programs they propose to perform. Called Spring for Music, the festival is scheduled to begin in May 2011, at Carnegie Hall. According to the Center of the Universe Times:
The Festival of North American Orchestras, as the organizing entity is called, will rent the hall and handle production and marketing, and the orchestras will bear their own costs for travel and soloists but share the proceeds, with a guarantee of at least $50,000 per appearance. Tickets — $25 each except for 100 or so seats in the top balcony at $15 — will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis two months before the event.
The principals– Foster, Thomas W. Morris, a former executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the artistic director of the Ojai Festival; and Mary Lou Falcone, a public-relations consultant describe the festival as an “idealized musical laboratory designed to see what kind of programming an orchestra can concoct when mundane considerations like marketing are taken out of the equation.”
Sounds a little Jerry Jeff to me, but we can hope for the best.