Birthdays, Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Portland, Seattle

WCF in the PNW is A-OK (& so is PDX)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Washington Composers Forum. Like any of these ventures, they’ve had some busy and some moribund periods. But more than most and especially through the last decade, the WCF has been a pretty consistent force, beacon and shelter for composers of all stripes (as I can personally attest to from my own long sojourn in the Seattle area). They’ve been great about getting the word on opportunities out to their members, sponsoring commissions, readings and concerts, and their Composer Spotlight series (a different composer holds court each month, sharing whatever they think is important in their world)  has been a fabulously smart and successful local draw for years now.

The WCF is having their celebratory concert this Thursday evening, May 6th, 8pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center (4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, 4th Floor, Seattle / Tickets at door. $5-15 sliding scale), as part of their Jack Straw-supported Transport Series. The concert of world and regional premieres will feature the Icicle Creek Piano Trio, Pacific Rims percussion quartet, violist Melia Watras, and the Seattle Phonographers Union. Highlighted on the program is the premiere of a new work by composer Wayne Horvitz, an inaugural commission by Washington Composers Forum, launching the organization’s new commissioning program. Other composers on the bill include Christopher Bailey, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Diane Thome, Huck Hodge and John Cage — and if you’ve never yet seen the Seattle Phonographers Union in action, you’re in for a spookily wonderful treat.

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Meanwhile, the next day just down the road in Portland, Oregon, Third Angle New Music Ensemble is finishing their season with a concert titled “Views from Cascadia” (7:30 PM, The Old Church, 1422 Southwest 11th Avenue, Portland / Tickets: $30 general/$25  65+ & students). The chamber music program features pieces by Tomas Svoboda and David Schiff from Portland, John McKinnon from La Grande, and Charles Nichols from Missoula, Montana.  This is Third Angle’s big bon voyage before it performs at the Beijing Modern Music Festival in late May, taking a few of these Northwest sounds to introduce to an international audience.

by Steve Layton
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Dance, New York

Hoof it on down to the Bowery

I know, short-short notice for the NYC crowd … But there’s a pretty giddy concert to attend this (Wednesday) evening at 8:30 PM, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (131 East 10th Street, Second Ave. and 10th Street / $10).  The International Street Cannibals — a happy cabal of composers, chamber players, filmmakers and painters, conceived by in 2005 by composer, cellist, conductor Dan Barrett, and steered by composer/guitarist Gene Pritsker — are presenting “Desperately Seeking Stravinsky”.  Now, Stravinsky was always amenable to the dance, and I don’t think there are many of his works that haven’t been choreographed, but I don’t think he or I ever considered what’s on this concert’s bill: a performance of L’Histoire du Soldat with tapdancer, and the piano suite from Petrouchka with breakdancer!  And our old composer pal Joseph Pehrson‘s Blacklight for cello and electronics (in the near-just-intonation tuning system of “blackjack”) will also be performed, and danced as well by Linda Past. So get footloose and flashdance your way down there tonight!

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

12-Step Program

Kyle Gann reports that more than twice as many students have signed up for his 12-tone Analysis seminar than for his Beethoven class, and then in the comments he expresses concern that some of those students may think the course is a 12-Step program.

Coincidentally, our crack musicological research team has recently uncovered the following from Serious Composers Anonymous:

A Method Of Ensuring the Supremacy of German Music for the Next Hundred Years Using Twelve Steps Related Only To Each Other

1. We admitted we were powerless over free atonality, and that our compositions had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Method greater than our own intuition could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our music over to the care of The Twelve Tone Method as we understand it.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of the ways in which our music does not live up to the Great German Tradition.

5. Admitted to our professors, to ourselves, and to another Serious Composer the exact nature of our compositional failings.

6. Were entirely ready to have The Method remove all these defects of aesthetic.

7. Humbly asked The Method to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all twelve pitches in the octave, and became willing to treat them all as equals.

9. Made direct amends to dissonant intervals which we had heretofore enslaved with outdated rules of resolution to consonance.

10. Continued to strive to write music that is technically complex and antithetical to popularity, and when we discovered that we had written something pretty promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through practice and analysis to improve our appreciation of and facility with The Method as we understand it, praying only for knowledge of combinatoriality and the power to employ it effectively.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those useless composers who have not yet come to feel the necessity of the dodecaphonic language, and to practice these principles in all our musical affairs whether the audience likes it or not.

by Galen H. Brown
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Ken Ueno & Du Yun at the Flea

Big ups to my composer compadre Ken Ueno. He’s had a heck of a busy year. In addition to an active teaching schedule at University of California-Berkeley, where he’s an Assistant Professor of Composition, he’s been busily composing, performing, and supervising recordings of his music.

His new disc on the BMOPSound imprint – the only disc I’ve ever received in the mail with a warning label on it (extreme dynamic range) – is an engaging collection. Featuring the Boston Modern Orchestra project, conducted by Gil Rose, its a collection of his concerti for other musicians – violist Wendy Richman, biwa player Yukio Tanaka, and shakuhachi performer Kiku Mitsuhashi – as well as works featuring his own overtone/throat singing. Another of his concerti, Like Dusted Sparks, written for percussionist Samuel Z. Solomon, appears on Deviation the new CD by the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble.

This weekend he’s in NYC to perform a new work with Du Yun at the Flea, part of their May mini-marathon. According to Ken, “Our piece is called Gold Ocean. It’s a multimedia post-modern opera, featuring the juxtaposition of contemporary classical with electronica/pop and Asian sonic references.”

Du Yun is having quite a weekend too. In addition to her performance with Ken, her opera Zolle was premiered on Friday at New York City Opera’s 2010 Vox Festival.

by Christian Carey
Composers, Contemporary Classical

The other good guys

Congratulations to John Luther Adams for that 2010 Nemmers Prize, and to all the other Adamses, Reichs, Harbisons, Salonens, Lachenmanns, Carters etc. out there. Keep doing what you’re doing! …Meantime though, there are a few folk closer to my own home & circle, that I’d like to draw your attention to:

First up is Christopher DeLaurenti. My good pal and sound artist extraordinaire has ventured out of his beloved Seattle haunts to pay NYC a visit, tonight (Friday), 8pm at The Stone (corner of avenue C and 2nd street, Manhattan, $10/5 students). This is his first New York solo appearance since 2001.

Maker of the notorious Favorite Intermissions album released by NY-based label GD Stereo, Chris presents field recordings that capture unusual confluences of sound, speech, music and “found soundscapes,” accidental field recordings, and inadvertent intersections of audio glitches, improvisation and recording technology.

He’ll also be playing the flap-o-phone — a hand-cranked turntable made of cardboard — improvising with vintage performances by Igor Stravinsky and radio transmissions embedded on 78 rpm records.

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The next day (Saturday) our own S21 Senior Editor Galen Brown has a gig at the Gershwin Hotel, doing extremely curious covers of current pop hits. Christian Carey has all the details over at his part of the site.

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Also on Saturday Garth Sunderland’s Lost Dog Ensemble — who made our last S21 composers concert such a success — will present the final concert of their season, 8:30pm at the Kaufman Center – Ann Goodman Recital Hall (129 West 67th Street, NYC, $20/15 students). On the bill is John Luther Adams‘ (hey, there’s that name again!) Among Red Mountains for piano, David Lang‘s quintet Sweet Air, Jennifer Higdon‘s Rapid Fire, George Crumb‘s mysterious trio Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), and the world premiere of emerging composer Shawn Crouch‘s Quintessence, about the alchemical ‘fifth element’ — life itself.

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Lastly, I’d like to mention a project by our recently-departed-to-teach-in-Virginia, s21 stalwart David Salvage. In David’s own words:

It has been for a while a point of small personal embarrassment that, while you all know I compose music, so few of you have heard any of my compositions. I’ve always vaguely meant to build one of those whiz-bang super-impressive composer websites, featuring stern, artsy photos of myself, some mp3s of my music, and a buffed and polished version of my bio. As perhaps my tone suggests, something also has always held me back. But a few months ago I had an idea for something a bit different. And now I’m happy to say that that something different is now a reality: albumleaves.com ….Taking inspiration from the undisputed Albumblattmeister Robert Schumann, I have begun to compose short solo piano pieces at the rate of three every two weeks. I then record each piece here in my living room (on my wonderful Weimar-era baby-grand piano) and post it on the website. While the site’s main feature will be the albumleaves, other kinds of posts will also appear …. For those of you who have had a lingering curiosity about my music, you now have a place to go where you can listen to what I’m up to—and even leave a comment if you like. I hope you enjoy the music, and I hope this e-mail finds you well.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

John Luther Adams wins 2010 Nemmers Prize

John Luther Adams has been named the 2010 winner of the $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. The announcement was made today at the Northwestern University Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music. The biennial award honors classical music composers of outstanding achievement who had a significant impact on the field of composition. Past winners include John Adams (2004), Oliver Knussen (2006) and Kaija Saariaho (2008).

Frank J. Oteri, his own bad self, has the details.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Now Batting for Jean-Yves Thibaudet–Alex Ross

Jean-Yves Thibaudet has had to cancel his Apple Store appearance tonight because of exhaustion from repeated delays in flying from Europe to the United States due to “le vulcan.”  His arms are apparently too tired to box with Jobs. Ok, ok.

However, the The New Yorker‘s Alex Ross and The Bad Plus’ Ethan Iverson will end their The Rest is Noise tour in New York  replacing Thibaudet at the Upper West Side Apple Store at 6:30pm.  Details about program can be found on The Rest is Noise blog: http://bit.ly/aTQn87.  Alex has promised not to play the piano.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Interviews

Chiara Quartet at (Le) Poisson Rouge

The Chiara Quartet is back on tour and has one more show in NYC this week (they actually played Sunday in Southport, CT and tonight(!) at Symphony Space but your humble/slacker correspondent wasn’t able to get this ready in time for y’all).  Anyway, you’ll still have a chance to catch them on Wednesday at (Le) Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street) performing Different Trains, Webern’s Five Pieces for String Quartet, and Jefferson Friedman’s 2nd Quartet.

Somehow Jonah, Becca, Julie, and Greg were able to find time between rehearsals and performances to answer a few questions for us.  Enjoy….

JH: During this tour you’ll be pairing Beethoven with Jefferson Friedman one night (Sunday in Southport, CT), and Steve Reich with Anton Webern another night (Wednesday at Le Poisson Rouge). How does the quartet come up with, and agree on, these kinds of programs? Is this just an extension of a “shuffle” musical experience that our generation is getting so used to?

Jonah:
Well, the “shuffle” idea is interesting, in that I’m sure there are pairings we would consider that might not have been considered in the pre-ipod era.  Having said that, we think quite a bit about our programs.  Jefferson Friedman writes very well-crafted forms–the quartets are as formally strict as much of Beethoven (especially since Beethoven was basically trying to expand and sometimes explode form).  And yet the vocabulary is completely different.  So that’s an interesting juxtaposition.  Reich (“Different Trains”) uses nearly a half-hour of repeated music and voice to build an unexpected emotional bridge between his own childhood train travel and the experience of Holocaust survivors.  Webern manages to say everything he needs to, sometimes, in only ten measures of music.  Both work brilliantly, so that’s another interesting combination for us.  Programs are often a creative collaboration between us and a presenter.  Some programs are entire evenings that we conceptualize.  Next year, we are commissioning several composers and having them curate the program for their premiere (the project is called Creator/Curator).  So, it really depends on the performance.  But, the way the four of us are, we only play music that we all believe in.

JH: Another thing that seems to be really important to the quartet is playing in lots of different kinds of venues – big concert halls, small recital halls, libraries, bars, etc. Does the venue inspire the programming or does the programming inspire the venue?

Becca:
We feel that string quartet music appeals to all people, all audiences, which is one reason why we choose to perform in varied spaces.  Many spaces work well for listening to chamber music, and there is no “ideal” space (i.e. the formal silence of a concert hall can be stifling, and the clunking of an ice-machine in a bar can be distracting), so we try to create an environment on any stage that is inviting for audiences.  We do tailor programming to certain spaces but we also challenge a space to host partlcular programs.  We usually organize our club programs into two set lists, much like you would hear from a jazz quartet, and we tend to focus more on newer music for these performances.  So in the opening set you could hear a movement from a quartet by Jefferson Friedman, followed by a movement from Haydn, followed by some Webern, followed by more Friedman, maybe some Brahms, etc.  We feel like audiences often want a full piece by the second set, so we’ll perform a complete work in most of these venues, certainly not minding applause between movements (we encourage it if people are so moved!).  We have brought this more varied style of programming to concert halls, and have found that the environment is more relaxed than usual–we don’t usually bow until the end of a set, and we talk from the stage.  In these situations we also talk to individual audiences members during intermission.

The more informal atmosphere of a club and the ability to change our program on the spot is wonderfully liberating and has inspired us to be more inventive in all of our performances–this applies to the spontaneity of playing itself and the actual programming.   Most of our more interesting programs in concert halls have come from the freedom we feel in unconventional spaces and the idea that we are “curating” an evening.


JH: The quartet premiered a new piece by Ivan Moody (Monday at Symphony Space), can you tell us about it?

Julie:
It is a piece written for string quartet and piano entitled Nocturne of Light.  We’ll be premiering it at Symphony Space with pianist Paul Barnes who is a colleague of ours at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (where we’re in residence).  Paul is a devout believer in the Greek Orthodox faith and is continually exploring how spirituality and music connect.  This piece is a beautiful outcome of that exploration and features Byzantine chants, one of which Paul and his son will intone before our performance.

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by James Holt
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, Percussion, Premieres, Washington D.C.

When Music and Art Collide

Detail of Terry Berlier's "Stair Drum," one of three percussive sculptures for "The 41st Rudiment"

On Friday, April 30, 2010, my ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, will present the last concert of our 2009-10 concert season.  The program, presented at Ward Hall, on the campus of the Catholic University of America at 7:30 p.m. (Visit www.greatnoiseensemble.com for tickets if you’re in the Washington region this Friday), is a unique program featuring a new work for mixed ensemble and sculpted percussion by composer D.J. Sparr in collaboration with artist Terry Berlier of Stanford University.  The 41st Rudiment, named after the 40 “rudiments” that percussionists study as they develop their craft, represents one more rudiment indicative of the experimental nature of Berlier’s instruments.  It was written for percussionist Christopher Froh, of the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Great Noise Ensemble.

D.J. Sparr initially pitched the piece that would become The 41st Rudiment to Great Noise Ensemble’s board some five years ago.  “The idea came through wanting to work with Chris Froh,” he says, “whom  I had seen out on an amazing concert in Ann Arbor years back. I was in the Bay Area, so we went out for drinks, and over the course of the conversation we talked about finding instruments at a hardware store… and somehow, collectively we came up with the idea that we should ‘build something.’  From there, we started talking about what that would be, who might be interested collaborating with us, etc.”  After searching for an appropriate collaborator it was Froh who suggested that they work with Terry Belier.  “Terry and I worked on another project together a few years ago with the Empyrean Ensemble and Italian composer, Luciano Chessa.  I played one of her sculptures then (an earlier “panlid gamelan”) and fell in love with her aesthetic.  When D.J. and I first started talking about this project some five years ago, I suggested asking Terry to be involved.”

“A few years ago,” writes Terry Berlier, “ I was working on a piece called ‘Two pan tops can meet’ (2003) which was based on the homophobic Jamaican saying ‘Two pan tops can’t meet.’  (I had worked in Jamaica for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1995-97.) That first piece used thrift store pan lids as speaker housings that played a sound piece. But while I was sifting through the pan lids, I started setting aside the pan lids that resonated strongly.  These eventually became Pan Lid Gamelan I in 2003 and gallery viewers were invited to play it.

In 2008, Composer Luciano Chessa wanted to compose this sculpture/instrument into one of our collaborations (Inkless Imagination IV) and I was excited to have a professional percussionist, Chris Froh, play them. A few years later, Chris asked if I would like to work with him again on making sculptures specifically for him to play and work with D.J. Sparr.”

D.J. Sparr has been building a reputation for many years now as a composer of rhythmically charged and energetic music  (the Alburquerque Tribune once referred to his piece for eighth blackbird, The Glam Seduction as “Paganini on coke”) that merges classical conventions with rock idioms.  The 41st Rudiment is no different, although the rock influence this time is far subtler than in the works that gained Sparr his early reputation.  “I am always influenced by the drama of a rock-and-roll concert, and in this work, the drummer is the superstar… he engages the other players in ways to entice them to join in with him in gestures and call-and-response melodies…much the same as would happen in a rock-band scenario where guitarists, drummers, and bass players trade solos.  This work,” however, “is heavily influenced by the baroque concerto grosso form as the large scale form is comprised of many short movements. There are elements of Bach and Vivaldi, but there are also elements of other things: Satie Gymnopédies; Spanish barcaroles; improvisatory structures such as Zorn’s Cobra; and many cadenzas and improvisation.”

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by Armando Bayolo
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Opera, Participation

Make it so

Dennis Báthory-Kitsz has been a great friend of new music, a great friend of S21, and a great friend of myself personally for about as long as I’ve been online. Justly (semi-) famous as the “Kalvos” half of the long-running institution that was Kalvos & Damian’s new Music Bazaar (now continued as Kalvos & Damian In the House!), Dennis has never let his rather remote Vermont location interfere with spreading the word about living composers and their music, whether through regular radio and online broadcasts, a steady stream of writings, and endless creative projects. At the same time, he’s also never let all these activities slow down his own personal composing schedule. Yet not every composition written has seen the full light of day, the most notable example being Dennis’ opera upon his indirect ancestor Erzsébet Báthory, the legendary Hungarian “Blood Countess”.

Recently Dennis has taken some steps to attempt to remedy that situation. He has a chance to see the work finally come to life, but the opera must be finished for premiere in the 2010-11 season of the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble. Basic funding for the ensemble’s regular season is already available, but support is needed for the singer, additional musicians, staging, costumes, lighting, and time to complete the remaining 40 minutes of the opera. So Dennis has turned to a newer online site, Kickstarter.com, to actively seek the financial support to make the performance a reality. We’re not talking the NEA or Ford Foundation here; we’re talking you and me, the little-guy music-lover with a few spare bucks in their pocket. I asked Dennis a few questions, just to get the whole fascinating (and often frustrating! ) backstory:

Steve Layton: Tell me about the whole long genesis of the idea and travails over the years?

Dennis Báthory-Kitsz: Yes, it is long! I’ll tell you everything. The genesis began shortly after Boston College professor Raymond McNally published “Dracula Was a Woman” in 1983. A state politician was doing an interview tour of Vermont entrepreneurs — I had founded a small computer company back then — and came to my home office. He knew my name, McNally was an old school buddy, he put the two together, and arrived with a copy of the book. I hadn’t paid much attention to the family history, but reading McNally’s book jogged something my grandfather Bathory had said — that the family had an evil female ancestor who killed people and fought with priests.

A few years later my company went under during the tech shakeup, and I started thinking about the Erzsébet Báthory story again as a distraction. Here was a countess rumored to be the world’s worst serial killer with some 600 servant victims — yet with normal kids, great intelligence, superior negotiating skills, and fluent in many languages. She was also supposedly bisexual and ended her life walled into her own torture tower. What a story! What opera!

Those were also the years of some pretty big works of mine, particularly “Mantra Canon” for orchestra, chorus, two pianos, six percussionists and descant soprano. By 1988 it had had two performances, so I was lit up with large-scale possibilities. The Bathory tale would make a fantastic production, maybe a huge opera of some kind.

In 1989, I wrote an overture in the form of a piano csárdás and about the same time heard that NPR poet Andrei Codrescu was writing a biography of Erzsébet. I got in touch and proposed the idea that he write the libretto. He thought it was a great idea — and he had supposedly seen her diaries, diaries that recounted the actual murders! Codrescu and I kept in touch, but things went sour. His book ended up being a novel. I hated it, and we had a falling out. After we patched things up a little, he was more famous and working on a film … meaning now the libretto would cost money I didn’t have.

I started sketching my own plots for three different-sized versions. It was still idle sketching with no real possibilities. But connections are funny. Back in the computer company days, I had become friends with Zoltan Radai, a tech entrepreneur in the “New Hungary” before the fall in 1989. When my family and I moved to Europe in 1991, I contacted him. He not only knew the Bathory story, he also knew how to find the castle and spoke Hungarian and Slovak. I remember that ride very well, in a rented Fiat Uno stuffed with five of us, going on torn-up roads from Budapest to Trencin.

The castle inspired me, a great hilltop ruin in a town nobody had ever heard of. This was before the great vampire craze really hit the marketplace, before European Union funds even put up decent road signs. I took photos and wriggled around the sunken castle arches and even squeezed into the “death tower”.

By the time we returned to Vermont in 1992, Codrescu’s “The Blood Countess” was out and vampires were interesting to legions of teenage girls. But I was broke and couldn’t consider an opera, even though another big orchestral piece called “Softening Cries” was performed that year. It was real cognitive dissonance for my compositional soul!

Then the web hit. I put up an “Erzsébet: The Opera” website in 1996. Microsoft’s old home page featured it and I had millions of hits in one week. Folks submitted articles, artwork and even novels for the site, and I put them all up along with buckets of my own research. Magazines wanted interviews; the first article on my opera work was published in “Requiem” in France in 1998.

But no money. No grants, prizes, investors sponsored by the best investment newsletters, nothing came out of it. The huge bandwidth costs for the website were out-of-pocket. In 2001 a team from The Travel Channel found the website and sent me back to Cactice in Slovakia for a show called “World’s Bloodiest Dungeons”. The Discovery Channel asked to do a segment in 2004, again sending me to Slovakia — but this time I asked if I could write an opera scene specifically for the show. The Australian producer Chris Thorburn was actually enthused, and he and the production team came to David Gunn‘s home here in Vermont where a group of us performed it — singer Lisa Jablow as Erzsébet and a small ensemble including David on percussion and Marco Oppedisano on guitar. A clip showed up on “Deadly Women”, which airs worldwide at least twice a year.

More authors were riding the vampire wave, Hollywood was churning out crappy knockoffs, yet my inability to market just about anything kept me from funding the opera. People wanted to work on it. Prague sculptor Pavel Kraus wanted to do set design. Atlanta graphic artist Bob Hobbs wanted to recreate the castle for a virtual or video version. Singers and musicians across Europe and the States were interested. Many site visitors offered help. Juraj Jakubisko‘s studio in Slovakia even contacted me about his film “Bathory” — though they wanted marketing help, not a composer.

So despite cheerleaders, it looked like it was never going to happen. I thought the project was history and decided to move on.

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by Steve Layton