Music Events

Classical Music, Concerts, Experimental Music, Music Events

Sonic Beatings in Boston

Should you find yourself in the vicinity of Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory tonight at 8:30, the Callithumpian Consort is playing Alvin Lucier’s Small Waves for string quartet, piano, trombone, and feedback, an hour long investigation/hallucination of microtones, sonic beatings, and water pouring.  (Sounds like your tax dollars at work on a normal day at a CIA detention camp.)

Survivors of the water pouring and sonic beatings will then get to hear John Luther Adams’ Strange Birds Passing for 8 flutes and …And Bells Remembered for 5 percussion

Alvin Lucier will be present to explain himself.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Orchestras

An Orchestra Blooms in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra announced the schedule yesterday for its usual four concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and there’s great news for contemporary music lovers, especially those who have a jones for the didgeridoo.  

The season opens on February 3 with two works by the Australian composer Peter Schulthorpe–Earth Cry and Mangrove–plus Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  Music director Michael Christie, now in his second season, was formerly director of the Queensland Orchestra, which explains the ‘Roo connection. 

The second concert, on March 10, pits Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round and a new orchestration of Dreams & Prayers of Issac the Blind against Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.  My money’s on Mahler by about eight minutes.

The orchestra will be joined by the Kronos Quartet on April 21 for the premiere of Julia Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream, plus Holst’s Planets and Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the wellspring of the spirtualist wing of contemporary music (Part, Taverner, Gorecki, Lauridsen, Whitacre et al), an important and popular modern movement mostly ignored by the fine young cannibals who gather here but greatly admired by those of us who don’t know any better. 

And, speaking of Gorecki, his Symphony Number 3–with a first ever staging by the Ridge Theater–is the centerpiece of the final concert on May 12.  It’s matched with Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler and Mozart’s Exsultate jubilate.

The Philharmonic also does community and school concerts, and will present two genre-blending concerts, including a program with performances by Laurie Anderson,Nellie McKay, Joan Osborne and Suzanne Vega.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Music Events, Opera

Jihadists 1, Mozart 0

Deutsche Oper said it will scrap planned showings of Mozart’s Idomeneo because of warnings by Berlin security officials that a scene in the current production depicting the head of the Prophet Mohammed (along with the heads of Jesus and the Buddha)  present an “incalculable security risk.”  Actually, they said references to “world religions” but we know which one is the problem.

This is the kind of infuriating capitulation that can push otherwise rational people at least temporarily into the nuke ’em back to the Stone Age camp. 

But, we need to remember that Death of Klinghoffer and the American premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Silver Tassie suffered similar fates in this country in the wake of 9/11.  As always, perspective depends upon whose ox is being gored.

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Festivals, Music Events

Loose Ends

Alex Ross has a moving tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in this week’s New Yorker.  “She was the most remarkable singer I ever heard,” he writes, and it’s hard to argue with that. 

Speaking of Alex, he’ll be chatting with Mason Bates, Corey Dargel, Nico Muhly, and Joanna Newsom at BargeMusic at 10 pm on October 7 as part of the New Yorker Festival.  Alas, the event seems to be sold-out.

Alan Rich in L.A. Weekly on why he didn’t hang around for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Hollywood Bowl: 

The night had turned cold; the gin had run low; there are few works I despise more thoroughly, and for a greater number of reasons. Just the thought of this bespectacled, small-minded pedant amusing his Führer by constructing this lurid travesty, assuming the small fragments out of ancient German songbooks and twisting them into beer-hall jabberings as if to reinvent a new musical language, is offensive enough. The ugliness of this vulgar work would offend me even if the text were pure, serene and biblical; it is none of these.

Of Jefferson Friedman’s The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, on the same program, Rich writes:

Young (32) Friedman was on hand; he plans to incorporate his shiny, charming piece into a musical triptych honoring “outsider” artists and their inspirational, shimmering artworks. This one certainly does.

Thanks to Jerry Zinser for passing the Rich item along.  The full review doesn’t seem to be up on the L.A. Weekly web site yet but it should be in a few days.  Meanwhile, read some nice words from Rich about Kyle Gann.

Congrats to Roulette, the experimental music organziation which has moved into shiny new digs at 20 Greene Street in SOHO.   With this new space, Roulette will be expanding activities to include over 100 concerts, sound installations, longer runs of music theater and other large productions such as the “Avant Jazz ­ Still Moving” festival and the annual “Festival of Mixology.” Also, check out the new Roulette Blog for excerpts of its artists’ music, podcasts featuring interviews with the artists and Roulette TV clips, and musical discussion.

Check the Workspace for some news about applying for the Rome Prize.

What I’m Listening to Now

 

by Jerry Bowles