Contemporary Classical

Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles

The Southland Ensemble Performs Jackson Mac Low

southland-2-17On Saturday, January 28, 2017 the Southland Ensemble convened in the China Town district of Los Angeles to present a concert of the works of poet Jackson Mac Low. Every seat was occupied in the cozy Automata venue at Chung King Court, while outside Lunar New Year revelers filled the night air with the sounds of firecrackers and cheery celebration. Five works by Jackson Mac Low were presented, exploring the interface between poetry and music as directed by random chance.

The first work, Tree Movie (1961), was simplicity itself, as the program notes explained: “Select a tree. Set up and focus a movie camera so that the tree fills most of the picture. Turn on the camera and leave it on without moving it for any number of hours…” Accordingly, the image of what looked to be a scrub oak tree was projected on the wall overhead for the duration of the concert, lending an iconic continuity to the proceedings. The room was otherwise immersed in complete darkness and this focused visual attention to the image, promoting a more acute listening experience.

Young Turtle Asymmetries (1967) was the first work performed, and this was a complex amalgam of spoken words and phrases combined with musical tones. Asymmetries are defined by Jackson Mac Low in the program notes as “…nonstanzaic poems of which the printed formats are notations for solo or group performance. They are ‘asymmetrical’ in that they have no regularly repeating stanzaic or other patterns. They are ‘notations’ in that most aspects of their format can be translated into performance. Notably, the lengths of the blank spaces before, between, & after single words or words strings, & between lines, stand for ‘temporal holes’ – durations in which readers keep silent or produce single, prolonged tones.”

Accordingly, Young Turtle Asymmetries started with sporadic spoken words accompanied by sustained tones from the various instruments scattered among the performers. Dice were dropped into small wooden bowls at intervals to provide the element of chance in the direction and reading of the score. The words and phrases comprised a fragmentary account of the hatching of baby sea turtles on the beach, and their return to the sea. Just enough of this was intelligible to gain a sense of the story, which served as a focal point while musical tones and spoken phrases flowed out into the audience. The musical accompaniment was similarly splintered and while this added a welcome coloring to the words, the power of this piece resides in the text. The words enlist the mind to build a mental image – as if piecing together a jigsaw puzzle – of turtles making their mysterious way to unknowable destinations. Young Turtle Asymmetries combines several disparate elements into an engaging experience driven by chance associations.

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Birthdays, CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Minimalism

Happy 80th Birthday Philip Glass

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Photo: Steve Pyke

Philip Glass turned eighty years old today. A celebration was held at Carnegie Hall tonight, a concert by the Bruckner Symphony Linz, led longtime Glass collaborator conductor Dennis Russell Davies in the premiere of the composer’s Eleventh Symphony and Three Yoruba Songs (with vocalist Angélique Kidjo).

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In Nashville tonight, I’m not hearing any live Glass alas, but I am enjoying a brand new recording by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. Philip Glass – Piano Works, his debut for Deutsche Grammophon, features interpretations of the Études and excerpts from Glassworks. The Siggi String Quartet joins the pianist on some of the music, reworked to incorporate strings. Both here and in the solo selections, Ólafsson brings to bear a supple sense of phrasing and wide-ranging gestural palette. His playing stands starkly at odds with the seemingly irrepressible notion that ostinatos serve as motoric cogs in a supposedly limited minimalist vocabulary. He finds 1,000 flavors of repetition. Anyone who wants an point of entry to or refresher course on Glass’s music need listen no further than here to find bold, dramatic interpretations of his work.

Choral Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, early music, File Under?

New York Polyphony at Miller Theatre

New York Polyphony Photo: Chris Owyoung
New York Polyphony
Photo: Chris Owyoung

New York Polyphony sings works by Ivan Moody and Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina

Miller Theatre’s Early Music series at Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Sequenza 21

by Christian Carey

NEW YORK – As part of Miller Theatre’s Early Music series, the male vocal quartet New York Polyphony (Geoffrey Williams, countertenor; Steven Caldicott Wilson, tenor; Christopher Dylan Herbert, baritone; and Craig Phillips, bass-baritone) celebrated their ensemble’s tenth anniversary with a concert at Church of St. Mary the Virgin on Saturday, January 21st. Speaking from the stage, the group acknowledged their long relationship with both Miller Theatre and St.Mary’s; they have appeared on a number of concerts curated by Miller and began their association when they were singers in the choir at the church. The concert began with Sicut cervus, a seamlessly beautiful motet by the evening’s star composer, Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina.

For the occasion, New York Polyphony commissioned a new work that received its world premiere. Ivan Moody’s Vespers Sequence demonstrates his abiding interest in incorporating music and liturgical practices from the Orthodox church into his composition language. In addition to settings in English from Protestant and Catholic liturgies (St. Mary’s is an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church), the piece featured chant and texts from the Russian, Serbian, and Greek traditions. In his program notes, Moody even provided a connection to Jewish liturgical practices in one of the psalms he chose to set. However, and fittingly for the location, special attention was paid to Marian texts: the piece culminates in a lustrous rendition of Rejoice, Virgin Mother of God, the Byzantine rite version of “Ave Maria.” Moody juxtaposes chant with chords featuring stacked seconds and fifths, which provide the proceedings with a shimmering quality. Another distinctive part of his language is the use of canon and other imitative passages to overlay melodic material into polytonal or polymodal pile-ups, again allowing dissonance to season the chant-inspired atmosphere. It is an often haunting and always elegantly written piece.

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Like Sicut cervus, all of the selections on the second half of the concert were by Palestrina; all were also programmed on New York Polyphony’s latest BIS CD, Roma Aeterna. This segment featured the core quartet alongside three additional singers: Timothy Keeler, countertenor; Andrew Fuchs, tenor; and Jonathon Woody, bass-baritone. Clearly there was an affinity among the entire group’s membership; the additional trio’s tone quality and flowing legato fit right in with the New York Polyphony “sound.” Tu es Petrus, a six-part motet, was rendered in exuberant fashion. It was followed by the concert, and the compact disc’s, centerpiece, one of the most famous and beloved pieces of the Sixteenth century: Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina. Roma Aeterna is the first recording of this piece of which I am aware to feature countertenors, rather than trebles or sopranos, on the top lines of the mass. Herein lies a choice that changes the entire sound world of the piece. Williams is a countertenor of the alto, rather than male soprano, variety. And while there is little consensus on absolute pitch in the Renaissance, this leads to a transposition of the mass that is lower than the norm. Thus, where one was previously accustomed to bright sonorities and bustling rhythmic activity, New York Polyphony instead accentuated sonorousness, lyricism, and a supple gentleness. They provide an entirely different, and often appealing, version of this masterwork.

The audience’s applause demanded an encore, and the quartet complied, but with a somewhat out-of-season selection: the Christmas folksong “I Wonder as I Wander,” arranged by Williams. While it was well performed, it ended the evening in somewhat curious fashion. I wouldn’t have minded another Palestrina motet or a reprise of Moody’s “O Gladsome Light” in its place.

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Review

Music of Jürg Frey at Cal Arts

Frey1On January 13, 2017, Cal Arts presented The Path and the Expanse, a concert of music by Jürg Frey, a member of the Wandelweiser collective. A modest crowd braved Friday the 13th traffic to gather at The Wild Beast for an evening of intense concentration and state of the art experimental music. Five different pieces by Jürg Frey were performed by 15 alert musicians, including a world premiere.

Circular Music No. 7 (2015/16) was first and this began with soft, sustained chords in the violin and bowed vibraphone that produced a distant, solemn feeling. A series of hushed beats from the bass drum added to the mystical atmosphere. The violin of Erik Carlson carried the piece forward, accompanied by a bassoon and extensive percussion section that contributed a variety of subdued sounds. The occasional tutti passage raised the volume slightly, and added some nice coloring while a bowed cymbal and a light xylophone passage completed the pattern. A high, thin pitch from the violin marked of each set of phrases as the piece tiptoed forward to a quiet finish. Circular Music No. 7 is both peaceful and reserved, like the dawn of a foggy morning.

The second work, WEN 58 (2007), was a solo trumpet piece played by Ethan Marks. This opened with a long silence followed by two short, muted notes – and then more silence. Longer tones followed, quietly subdued, ending with a questioning feel. This pattern of brief notes and silence continued, the intermediate silences lasting a full 15 seconds or so. The overall effect was to create a sense of space and openness as the piece unfolded. Ambient sounds occasionally crept into the performance space from outside, but this only added to the expansive feel. Mr. Marks displayed admirable poise and good control of his intonation even as the dynamics of the piece never rose much above piano, and the many entrances were, of course, very exposed. WEN 58, as it is a solo trumpet piece, works against the listener’s expectation of a loud, brassy outburst and acts to focus attention on the interactions of silence and the more subtle sounds produced by this unlikely instrument.

In Memoriam Cornelius Cardew (1993) followed and this was a short solo piano remembrance performed by Nicole Ying. Two low notes heard as a chord in the lower register opened the piece, and these were played with great sensitivity and expressiveness. More quiet chords followed, introspective and subdued, and these had a sad, bluesy feeling, although never melancholy. Only a few minutes long, In Memoriam is an economical and ultimately elegant commemoration, played with warm empathy by Ms. Ying.

Although the oldest work on the program, the world premiere of Vielleicht bin ich wirklich veloren (1980, rev. 1993) was next, and the ensemble included flute, clarinet, trumpet, piano, violin and cello along with soprano Stephanie Aston. This began with a short, high-pitched dissonant tutti chord – followed by silence. This had an unsettling feel, especially when a single quiet piano note was heard and a soft violin tone steadied the atmospherics. Another tutti sforzando chord sounded, this time followed by a quietly sustained soprano note that lent an airy, ethereal quality to the aftermath. This pattern of a sharply loud chords, gently sustained tones and silence continued throughout, with the various instruments taking turns holding the longer pitches. The timing of each sforzando chord was needle-sharp, thanks to vigilant playing and the careful direction of conductor Nicholas Deyoe. The dynamic contrast and bright dissonance of the tutti chords acted to heighten their perception by the listener against the background of the quieter stretches – they seemed to explode out of the ensemble and into the audience. Vielleicht bin ich wirklich veloren  comes from an earlier stage of exploration by Frey into the relationship of sound, dynamics and silence, and this piece is instructive to his later works.

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Brooklyn, CDs, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Microtonalism

In a Nutshell: An Interview with David Smooke

Photo: Britt Olsen-Ecker.
Photo: Britt Olsen-Ecker.
On Sunday, January 22nd at 7pm at National Sawdust in Brooklyn
(80 North 6th Street), composer and toy pianist David Smooke will celebrate the release of his New Focus CD Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Joined by album personnel loadbang, Karl Larson and Michael Parker Harley, Smooke will also perform and improvise on the toy piano. I recently caught up with him and discussed the new recording, compositional approaches, and some future plans.
Artwork: Alejandro Acierto.
Artwork: Alejandro Acierto.
  • What attracts you to composing for and performing on the toy piano?

The sound of the toy piano evokes an idealized childhood, the sort that no one I know actually enjoyed and yet many of us possess as a shared mental experience. I love having that association underlying my explorations of disturbing and unusual sounds. In addition, it’s relatively easy to travel with one—certainly compared to a cello—and I like that there’s a basic keyboard interface alongside all sorts of other ways to interact with the instrument. When I first started playing live, it was also a huge selling point to me that there isn’t a standard performance practice with the toy piano, so I could do what felt comfortable to me without feeling like there was going to be someone in the audience shaking their head at the way that I hold my hands or where I place my feet. I keep thinking that I’ll move on to other instruments, and have plans to build some original ones, but then I keep finding other things that I can make this little box do.

  • Did the macabre image of the title provide a jumping off point for the winds piece or was it incorporated latter on?

When I first discovered that the Nutshell Studies existed, before I even saw them in person, I knew that I would have to eventually use them as the title for a major toy piano piece. They are a remarkably close analogy to what I do with the toy piano in that they take something associated with childhood (dollhouses in this case) and treat them in a very adult manner. And even though they portray an extreme fascination with death, they are actual tools that are used to assist people studying forensic science, and so are not sensationalist or exploitative. So the title sets up the exact expectations that I want for the piece.

Photo: Britt Olsen-Ecker.
Photo: Britt Olsen-Ecker.
  • What microtonal tunings do you use in the wind ensemble piece? How did you manage to detune the banjo? What other tunings appear in your music?

Like you, I do enjoy lots of different temperaments! Since every toy piano is tuned differently from each other, and none of them are in anything close to equal temperament, I tried to place the toy piano within an environment where its unique scale wouldn’t sound too wrong. From the very first conceptualizations of the piece, I knew that I needed an instrument to link the toy piano to the ensemble, in this case, the banjo. Two strings of the five-string banjo are one quarter-tone sharp of their regular tuning, and in writing the part I was very specific as to which notes were played on which strings. And so we I created a continuum from the aleatoric tuning of the toy instrument, through the professional instrument with folk associations tuned in order to make it sound somewhat distorted, into the more standard concert instruments. In that piece, concert instruments use quarter tones as well. Some Details of Hell also uses a lot of quarter tones, in that case in order to explore resonance off of a single low pitch. In A Baby Bigger Than Up Was, I compose out the vowel formants from the repeated text, which required a more systematic approach to mictrotones, using naturally-tuned thirds and sevenths in addition to quarter tones.

  • Your text-setting often takes a deconstructionist or fragmentary approach. Tell us a little about how you view writing for the voice and texted scores in general.

I love words and writing! I love them so much that sometimes I can feel hamstrung when I try to set a text. And I think that the human voice remains the absolutely most beautiful and expressive instrument that we have yet created. So, for several years I avoided text entirely while writing for voice. Some Details of Hell is the last piece in which I took a published poem that I love and tried to set it as clearly as possible. In that case, I spent months analyzing the poem, including its line breaks, and figuring out exactly how I could do justice to Brock-Broido’s incredible sensitivity to language. A Baby Bigger Grows Than Up Was is my most recent work for voice, and marks my return to the idea of text setting. But the text for that piece is unique in that it’s a story with all of the hallmarks of a narrative but published in alphabetical order, beginning with 19 iterations of the word “a” and ending with nearly an entire page of punctuation. So, every word is set exactly as it was published, but the text itself is organized in a non-narrative manner. The excerpt on the CD brings us from “a” to “breathing” in five minutes, but the entire piece is nearly an hour long—it all gets pretty intense when we reach the ms and the 72 statements of the word “mom” and 442 of the word “my”!

  • The idea of looping appears in two different guises on the album: down.stream where you use a loop pedal on your toy piano and the overdubbed bassoons on 21 Miles to Coolville (bonus points for that title, by the way). Obviously, your music eschews a conventional approach to minimalism. But irregular sorts of repetitions prove to be a throughline, from your vocal settings to the aforementioned looping structures. How do you deal with repetition in your compositional language?

We never experience true repetition. Each time an event is encountered, we perceive it within a context, and any previous contact with that idea or similar ones colors the new experience. I’m fascinated by that idea and also by nature, where near repetition is quite common, but true repetition is almost unimaginable. I think a great deal about listening to the interaction between various bird calls, or predicting ocean waves, or watching rivers where the water is forever changing and forever the same. In my music, I try to play with these concepts by having ideas or words or motives recur but generally subtly changed. 21 Miles to Coolville (and thanks!) is completely written out, and has been played by four bassoons and also by Michael Parker Harley as a solo with prerecorded Harleys. The only difference in how I created to that piece from any previous compositions is that the quarter note pulse remains constant throughout. And my approach to looping pedal in my solo performances is a bit different from most people in that I generally am using it to create drones and sustained sounds, which are otherwise incredibly difficult to produce on the toy piano, and to allow for the buildup of more orchestral textures. When I was in high school, the music of the minimalist composers was one of my first entries into the classical music world, and I still adore minimalist and post-minimalist music and art. So, I feel the influence of that aesthetic very strongly, and try to be patient in my own music, allowing ideas to remain in place for as long as necessary, and I do sometimes enjoy unadulterated recurrence.

  • Tell us about the gig! How did you come together with National Sawdust to present a portrait concert? Who is playing and what will be on the bill?

With the new CD, I wanted to launch in New York, where so many of the performers live, as well as in my home of Baltimore. I’ve been hearing so many amazing things about National Sawdust, and I was fortunate enough to have them agree to host this concert. We’ll be presenting four of the six tracks from the CD, all performed by the players on the album: loadbang, the pianist Karl Larson, the bassoonist Michael Parker Harley, and myself. In addition, loadbang and I will improvise together to close out the show. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to share the stage with such amazing people and players!

  • What’s next for David Smooke? What projects are in the pipeline?

I’m going to be playing live quite a bit more than usual over the coming months, with shows in Boston on the Opensound Series on February 11 and in San Francisco at the Center for New Music on February 24, among others. And I’m working on a piece for the Baltimore-based Sonar Ensemble right now that uses a recording of a run on a nature trail near my home as the ground layer over which the ensemble will perform.

Contemporary Classical

New Music at Spoleto Festival USA 2017

img_0590We are a little spoiled here in Charleston, the biggest little city in America, so if the new music portion of Spoleto Festival USA 2017 is a little less adventuresome than last season’s 40th anniversary program (which featured a production of The Little Match Girl by Helmut Lachenmann as well as a ravishing new production of Porgy & Bess), it may be that our expectations have reached impossible limits.

Which is not to say there aren’t plenty of goodies still to be had.  Here are some of the programs, I’m looking forward to May 25 to June 12..

Quartett  May 28, 31, June 3
The US premiere of a Royal Opera House production, Quartett blends Italian composer Luca Francesconi’s score for two singers and two orchestras — one live and one pre-recorded — to German dramatist Heiner Müller’s 1982 play. Directed by John Fulljames and conducted by Spoleto USA’s own John Kennedy.

Music in Time / Tempus Fugit  May 28
New musical works from a new generation of composers from around the globe come together in a program featuring members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra led by conductor Jeffrey Means. Included are Tempus Fugit by Argentina’s Jose Manuel Serrano, Abysses by Estonia’s Helena Tulve, and Encore/Da Capo by Italy’s Luca Francesconi.
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Music in Time / Sounding Peace May 31
A celebration of  the centenary of American composer Lou Harrison with some of his wonderful music integrating musical traditions from around the world, as well of the the work of younger composers Ted Hearne and Jonathan Holland.

Music in Time / Lecture on the Weather  June 5
John Cage composed his classic performance piece Lecture on the Weather as a celebration of the USA’s Bicentennial in 1976. Using texts by Henry David Thoreau, recordings of nature, and projections, Cage’s work is a prescient and timeless sonic rumination on environmental and social concerns. An excerpt from the work reads: “More than anything else we need communion with everyone. Struggles for power have nothing to do with communion. Communion extends beyond borders: it is with one’s enemies also. Thoreau said: ‘The best communion men have is in silence.’” Also on the program will be Canadian composer Anne Southam’s Natural Resources.

Music in Time / Dialogues with Pedja Muzijevic
Four Haydn sonatas are interspersed with three modern works by Jonathan Berger, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, to offer listeners a fresh landscape for hearing works anew.

Mahler 4 and Dreaming
John Kennedy leads the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 4, as well as the US-premiere performance of Dreaming by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, which won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2012.

For those or more conventional tastes, there is Tchaikovsky’s grand opera Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin’s classic verse novel. Soprano Natalia Pavlova sings the part of Tatyana, among the greatest of female lead roles in the repertoire. The opera will be directed by Chen Shi-Zhen;  Farnace by Vivaldi, to feature countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo under the direction of festival alumna Garry Hynes, and Mozart’s  Great Mass.

And, of course, there will be plenty of New Music in Geoff Nutall’s Chamber Music series, details to come.

As my old poli-sci professor used to say in class 50 years ago; “Charleston? Put that city under glass.”

CDs, Choral Music, Contemporary Classical, early music, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Choir of Clare College Celebrates Epiphany

Mater ora fillium: Music for Epiphany

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge; Michael Papadopoulos, organ; Graham Ross, director

Harmonia Mundi CD HUM907653

On the Christian calendar, tomorrow (January 6th) is the Feast of the Epiphany. There are several aspects to Epiphany. First, it is the “Twelfth Day” after Christmas, and so ends the celebrations of that merry season. Second, it is the commemoration of Jesus the Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist. Finally, in the spirit of ending a party with a magnificent and mysterious flourish, it is also commemorates the Visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus.

It is this third aspect of Epiphany that has most often drawn composers to create music commemorating the festival. On the Harmonia Mundi CD Mater ora filium: Music for Epiphany, Graham Ross presents a program of primarily sixteenth and twentieth century selections. It is Ross’s seventh such recording for HM that is based around one of the events or seasons on the liturgical calendar. Here the interested believer may find much music that, in addition to being entertaining, informs them about the history of the liturgy. However, Christian and secularist alike can enjoy the high level of musicality and sheer beauty of the voices of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.

The hymn singing alone, accompanied with rousing verve by organist Michael Papadopoulos, is remarkable. It includes favorites like “As With Gladness, Men of Old” and “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” as well as a lovely rendition of “O worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness!” Renaissance era motets are well represented. Omnes de Saba by Orlande de Lassus is a particularly jubilant album opener. Purity of tone from sopranos and sepulchral notes from basses are on display, and carefully balanced, in Jean Mouton’s Nesciens Mater. Clarity of contrapuntal lines feature in Clemens non Papa’s Magi veniunt ab oriente and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Tribus miraculis ornatum. The varied tone colors brought to bear in William Byrd’s Ecce advenit dominator Dominus provide a sense of mysterious grandeur appropriate to the festival. Careful tuning of cross relations, as well as seamless alternation between the rhythms of chant and polyphony, supplies listeners to John Sheppard’s Regis Tharsis with a particularly evocative glimpse into another era’s harmonic and rhythmic sensibilities.

Balancing the early music selections are a number of fine pieces from the twentieth century. A standout is Long, Long Ago by Herbert Howells; an initially tender melody gradually rises to an exciting climax, juxtaposed with a steady buildup of added note chords. Another is Benedicamus Domino by Peter Warlock, in which an intricate swath of modal melodies is set against strongly articulated tutti chords. Despite the considerable challenges it poses, Illuminare, Jerusalem, by Judith Weir, is taken at a spirited gallop. Judith Bingham’s alluring Epiphany pits a colorful organ part against sinuous vocal chromaticism. Lennox Berkeley’s I sing of a maiden is delivered with haunting delicacy. All of this is capped off by the large-scale title work, a tour de force of choral writing by Arnold Bax.

Impressive performances throughout, combined with thoughtful programming, makes Mater ora filium the ideal recording for Twelfth Night!

Contemporary Classical

Self-Taught Composer Nate Felix Invents Classical Music Keggers

The idea for Nate Felix’s at home show, Classical Music Kegger, came to him when he saw an opera performance in a train station when he lived in Los Angeles. Felix decided to compose a show with only pianos. Despite the fact that he had never composed a piano piece, nor did he know how to play piano, when Felix returned to his hometown of Austin, he somehow snagged six free pianos off of Craigslist and got to work.  Felix wants to give his community more than just the music itself. so he donated the pianos to schools.

Contemporary Classical

Elizabeth Bell Memorial on January 17, 2017

Elizabeth Bell Friou, award-winning composer and co-founder of New York Women Composers, Inc., died on Monday, December 19, in Tarrytown at the age of 88. Known professionally as Elizabeth Bell, she served as a member of the Board of Governors of the American Composers Alliance (ACA) and was involved in numerous other music associations.

A direct descendant of the ninth US president, William Henry Harrison, she was born in Cincinnati in 1928 to William Procter Bell and Sophie Buckner Bell. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1950 and from the Juilliard School in 1953.

Ms. Bell served as the music critic of the Ithaca Journal and received commissions from a range of musical associations, including New York State Council on the Arts, the Bradshaw/Buono duo, the Inoue Chamber Ensemble, North/South Consonance, the Putnam Valley Orchestra, and Vienna Modern Masters. Her musical compositions have been performed world-wide in concert halls and cathedrals from New York to Eastern Europe, Russia and Armenia. A lifelong advocate for the role of women in musical composition, she was a leading proponent of the International Alliance for Women in Music, established in 1994 to unite three distinguished organizations, the International Congress on Women in Music, the American Women Composers, and the International League of Women Composers.

She married astronomer Frank Drake in 1953 and they had three sons. Following their divorce, she moved from Ithaca, NY, to Tarrytown, NY. In 1983 she married attorney Robert Friou.

She leaves three sons: Stephen David Drake of Nashville, (married to Kim Carpenter Drake), Richard Procter “Rippy” Drake of Oberlin, OH, (Alice Moore), and Paul Robert Drake of Cape Cod, MA, (Ellen Sullivan); two step-daughters, Elisabeth Friou Mote (Gary Mote) and Jane Friou Clemens (David Clemens); six grandchildren, Becky Barger Gauthier (Ronald Gauthier), David Allen Clemens, Amy Jane Clemens, Grace Cecelia Drake, Elizabeth Harrison “Harris” Drake, and Spencer Logan Drake; and two great-grandchildren, Ava and Wyatt Gauthier.

A memorial service will be held on Monday, January 16, 2017, from 4:00 – 6:00 PM at the Coffey Funeral Home, 91 North Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591, tel. 914-631-0983.

Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Marvin’s Marathon

vivala21stcentury2016

Our pal Marvin Rosen  says: “I am all packed and ready to leave home for WPRB. In a little over an hour, the 2016 VIVA 21ST CENTURY PLUS – “INTERNATIONAL EDITION” – 25-HOUR LIVE WPRB RADIO BROADCAST – goes on the air.
Hope that you can join me for at least for parts of program and please keep me awake at least over night. You can contact me on Facebook, Twitter @MarvinRosen or just call: 609.258.1033
On WPRB 103.3 FM Princeton NJ, or on the Internet at: http://wprb.com/