The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and David Lang won the music prize for “The Little Match Girl Passion.” I haven’t heard the piece, but David is a reliably excellent composer–one of my favorite performances of the past year was ICE’s performance of his piece “Men” at the end of the Bang On a Can Marathon. Runners up were “Meanwhile” by Stephen Hartke and “Concerto for Viola” by Roberto Sierra.

Unfortunately, the winner in the Feature Writing category was Gene Weingarten’s piece “Pearls Before Breakfast.” You’ll recall that this was the experiment with Joshua Bell playing in the DC Metro. I shamelessly and self-servinlgy refer you back to my own analysis “Why the Joshua Bell Experiment Tells Us Nothing.”

I went to two excellent concerts recently which served as great illustrations of what happens when a composer really understands what the instruments he or she is writing for are capable of. The first was a concert by cello/percussion duo Odd Appetite at Symphony Space in New York on March 12. Percussionist Nathan Davis and cellist Ha-Yang Kim are both composers, and they usually play some of their own music on the Odd Appetite concerts. Both embody the composer-performer aesthetic, although to a certain extent I am imposing that terminology on them–last summer when I asked Ha-Yang how she would describe herself she replied simply “I’m a musician” saying that she doesn’t see her composing and performing as distinct activities. In both cases, because they know their instruments so well they can write music which covers the full range of the instruments capabilites–“extended technique” begins to lose its meaning. In fact, for many composers I find that extended technique can feel forced, as if it is being used for the sake of having used it, but in this case the “extended” technique is treated as merely part of the standard repertoire of available sound. Because they work so colaboratively, they understand eachothers’ instruments almost as well as their own. The result is a music which often seems to be not so much about some abstract conception of music but about the instruments themselves. The whole concert was excellent, but the final piece was Ha-Yang’s “Samtak” which is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous.

Then this past week I attended a concert by the International Contemporary Ensembe (ICE) on April 2nd at The Tank in downtown Manhattan. This concert was all music by Nathan Davis, and again revealed Nathan’s deep understanding of the capabilites of the instruments. He made a point of telling the audience that he hadn’t simply written music for the instruments but had worked closely with the players who would be performing the pieces in order to learn about both the instruments and the capabilities of the musicians playing them. This strategy especially paid off in the haunting final piece “The Bright and Hollow Sky” for flute, clarinet, trumpet, guitar, and percussion. The title is taken from a line in Iggy Pop’s song “The Passenger,” and Nathan told me that he felt that the line captured the feel of the piece, which seemed to him related to the Iggy Pop song, and that he simply loved the combination of those three words. I’m not sure I see the connection that he was talking about, but the ensemble of treble instruments mixing the “bright” of the trumpet and the guitar with the “hollow” of the clarinet and the flute worked for me anyway.

With both of these musicians, I am reminded of composer-performer Evan Ziporyn (they’ve all played together) whose extended-technique-laden clarinet album was entitled “This is Not a Clarinet.” In the same way, in Nathan’s and Ha-Yang’s hands the percussion battery and the cello are not merely percussion and cello.

At 66, baritone Thomas Buckner says he’s busier now than he was when in his forties. Last month, when we sat down to chat, he had just come back from a week of master classes and music making at Mills College. Next week, he has a terrific-sounding concert at Greenwich House, and, in June, he’ll play a leading role in a festival featuring Robert Ashley’s operas in Ferrara, Italy. This is all in addition to the Interpretations concert series, which he curates, and running his record label, Mutable Music.

Though growing up he was an enthusiastic participant in family holiday sing-alongs, when he went off to Yale, it was expected he would go into business like the rest of his family. But in his Sophomore year he dropped out and went west. After working in a factory for a year, he re-enrolled in college at UC Santa Clara, majoring in English. While at Santa Clara, Buckner began to exercise his composition chops by writing incidental music for drama club productions. Soon the town came to host a summer Shakespeare festival; he scored their shows, and, gradually–propelled in part by a performance of Webern’s five pieces for string quartet–he found himself gravitating to the experimental music scene.

During the late 60s and into the 70s, Buckner was busy as a composer, singer, and impresario. His music company, 1750 Arch Records (named after its address in Berkeley), produced hundreds of concerts of avant-garde and experimental music, and, soon, LPs as well. But a trip back to New York in 1979 planted in him the idea to join the vibrant scene back east as a singer, a role which, he felt, ultimately suited him better than composition. Though he considered moving to France because of some satisfying work he had done there, Buckner decided to stay in the States and be a part of his native musical culture.

Soon after he moved back East, the recording market began to turn towards CDs, and, instead of trying to transfer 1750’s catalogue to the newer medium, he reformed the label as Mutable Music and began producing CDs featuring the music of composers and performers who, like Webern years before, showed him new things music could do. Buckner enjoys the freedom and collaborative nature of experimental music and is a frequent performer (and teacher) of vocal and group improvisation. His concert at Greenwich House, however, will be more straightforward that his usual projects. He wanted to present an evening of song. On the program are songs about love and songs that tell stories. Texts come from such stand-bys as Percy Shelley, e.e. cummings, and Walt Whitman. The composers, however, are among Buckner’s fresh-voiced comrades: Noah Creshevsky, Roscoe Mitchell, W.A. Mathieu, and others share the spotlight. Attendance is urged.

I caught the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) at the MATA Festival Tuesday night in Brooklyn.

1. Gil Rose and BMOP played a varied concert with conviction and panache Tuesday night. While there were wonderful soloists on the program, the ensemble really held the spotlight the entire night in the best possible sense – always blending well and making the most of lines, accompaniment and ensemble.

2. The show started with Alejandro Rutty’s “The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops,” and was a perfect energetic start. Lots of rhythms were blasted in the Brooklyn Lyceum, filled to standing room only for the concert. Especially fun were the solo lines tossed about in a more calm middle section, really showing off varied styles, sometimes feeling like a tango, Las Vegas club, or a perpetual motion machine. Bubbly and glowing easily describe this MATA commissioned piece.

3. Derek Hurst’s “Clades” was a disappointment. It was clearly academic and dispassionate. I had no idea living composers still wrote stodgy, angular, pseudo-klangfarbenmelodie-esque compositions, but the work painfully drug on in four continuous movements, rarely featuring the glamorous and able Firebird Ensemble. Rays of potential did come through in the slower, slightly more moving second movement in colorful chords. Kudos to cellist David Russell and clarinetist Amy Advocat of the Firebird Ensemble for more noticable solos (the entire group was capable, just not shown in this work sadly.)

4. After intermission, the amazingly creative “On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis” by Ken Ueno was captivating. A natural blend of dissonance and glissandi, along with rough and sudden entrances of instruments, made a perfect parallel to Ueno’s singing. Clear influence of 1960s Polish composers was felt throughout but it was handled in a mature and artistic way. Most impressive was a cadenza-like throat singing passage, including a brilliant range of dynamics and wide intervals. I’ll listen for more Ueno in the future.

5. The program ended with BMOP’s Composer in Residence Lisa Bielawa’s Double Violin Concerto. The three movement work is charming and serious, and you clearly hear the love for and knowledge of the ensemble that Bielawa has with the ensemble, soloists and conductor. The second movement shows off Carla Kihlstedt’s violin playing and voice in a Goethe text, and the final movement allows both Kihlstedt and Colin Jacobsen to jam. My only moment of wonder about the work is, as a soloist in a concertante work, if Jacobsen – such a talent – might have been technically underused, purely in violinistic terms. He certainly played gorgeous lines and crisp articulations, but the piece never seemed to challenge him. Kihlstedt was at least allowed her astounding ability to sing and play, including a violin with four e strings scordatura – a brilliant and haunting effect. All in all, Bielawa’s Double Concerto is original and engaging – something that you want to hear again and again.

The MATA festival continues with installations, lectures and concerts through April 4th, and also does events thoughout the year (called “interval”). Find out more here.

BMOP and Gil Rose perform more concerts in Boston, see their killer schedule here, and keep an eye out for their new cds here! You won’t be disappointed.

John Nasukaluk Clare is a new music enthusiast and broadcast professional currently residing in Harrisburg, PA. He’s interviewed more than 100 composers and when he isn’t smoking a cigar, playing violin or travelling, John likes to laugh and eat a lot.