Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

SoCal meets SoCar meets Wandelweiser

This Monday night (July 27), 7PM the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina hosts a concert devoted to a potent movement active on the fringes of (or maybe quietly threading its way all through?) the current classical scene: the Wandelweiser Group.  Described as “the evaluation and integration of silence(s) rather than an ongoing carpet of never-ending sounds,” Wandelweiser was formed in 1992 by Dutch flautist Antoine Beuger and German violinist Burkhard Schlothauer. Their ranks have slowly grown over the years, and include Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey and pianist Manfred Werder, American guitarist Michael Pisaro and trombonist Craig Shepard, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti, and many more. With such a stellar group, and aided by its own publishing operation (Edition Wandelweiser) and its own record label (Wandelweiser Records), quite a following has grown up worldwide.

But it’s rarely heard anywhere near the confines of the traditional concert hall; Wandelweiser music works with extremely delicate, sometimes obsessive, nearly conceptual sound — gestures and patterns seemingly unmoored in expanses of quiet intensity. Even when rigorously calculated, there’s a sense of improvisation; nowadays, since the movement has also attracted many players from the experimental/improv side of the serious music line, that sense is often a reality.

Wandelweiser ideas found their biggest foothold in the U.S. in Southern California, with CalArts as the focus. But now Columbia SC has folds experimental music and performance workshop: Jason Brogan director and guitar; Kieran Daly, performance; Michael Hanf, percussion; Richard Kamerman, electronics; Nathan Koci, horn/accordion; David Linaburg, guitar; Dave Ruder, clarinet; Sam Sfirri, piano; Ron Wiltrout, percussion.

Monday’s concert is titled “Several Silences”, and brings together pieces not only from the South Carolina contingent, but both Europe and Southern California as well: Antoine Beuger – cantor quartets; Jason Brogan – metronomic irregularity; Michael Pisaro – harmony series nos. 11a-d; Sam Sfirri – I gave thanks for evening that brings out the lights; Mark So – this singular tale of the past; Manfred Werder – 2008 (1).

If you’re in the area do try and make it; for $10 you’ll get a window into a whole new world.

by Steve Layton
Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Improv

I write the songs

img_0132_2

I’ve only been living in New York City for a few years, but I already feel like there are times when I just simply take the city for granted. Or worse, I don’t take advantage of all that it has to offer. But I think what makes living here so exciting is the opportunity to accidentally stumble onto incredible events, or to go places expecting one thing and end up (pleasantly) at something totally and completely different.

This is exactly what happened yesterday afternoon as I wandered in to the World Financial Center Winter Garden during the third hour of “I Write the Songs.” All I knew was that the event was a drawing installation created by Suzanne Bocanegra, in collaboration with the Drawing Center, paired with spontaneous music composition featuring the FLUX Quartet. Even though I really had no idea what this description meant or what it would look like when I got there… it still sounded pretty cool.

I’m still so impressed with this brilliant idea; let me try to explain how it worked.

Walking through the Winter Garden, you went to one of several drawing stations, each equipped with loose sheets of printed music and colored pencils. You picked a page of music and colored or drew or wrote whatever came to mind, in any way you wanted. When done, the music was handed to a person on a ladder, who handed it off to be clipped to a high strung clothesline, which transported the pages to the stage.

Once on stage, the music was distributed to a member of the quartet, each of whom “played”/improvised what they saw on the page. The added bonus was that each musician had a TV monitor facing the audience, displaying the current page of music on their stand. Everyone could see what the performers saw at any moment—many people waiting excitedly to see their page played… Brilliant!

The sound for four performers playing this music all at once was not as cacophonous as one might imagine; and some clever “composers” asked quartet members to sit quietly and take a break, or to observe the player to their right. Once performed, the music was returned to the person on the ladder to be sent away on a different clothesline. At the end of the line, volunteers from the Drawing Center collected and hand-bound the music into books.

Suzanne’s installation created a 5-hour constant loop of new pages of drawings/music, traveling from “composer” to clothesline to performer and back to clothesline. I have no idea what Suzanne will do with the bound collections of music, but I’m sure she has thought of something fascinating.

by James Holt
Interviews, Podcasts, viola

My Ears Are Open, ETHEL. Part II.

ralphAs promised, today is Part II in my series of podcast interviews with the members of ETHEL. I’m happy to announce that violist Ralph Farris gets the My Ears Are Open “prize” for not only providing us with the longest episode to date, but I think it’s fair to say that he also has the most opinionated episode to date. It will be a 30-minutes well spent.

If you would like to subscribe to the series you can do so here and/or here. And, as always, feel free to send comments, suggestions, and recipes to podcast@jamesholt.net

If you missed Part I with violinist Cornelius Dufallo you can listen now by clicking here. Next up is Part III with cellist Dorothy Lawson on July 21 and Part IV with violinist Mary Rowell on July 26.

Is there a person or ensemble you’d like me to interview for the show? Over the next several months I’ll be featuring more musicians from places OTHER than New York so please send along your wish lists and don’t be shy.

by James Holt
Bang on a Can, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York

Having a MoCA at Banglewood

If you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more we could tell you about Bang on a Can events the past couple months, you’re so so wrong!  Starting today and running to the end of the month, The “Banglewood” summer festival at Mass MoCA is underway in North Adams, Massachusetts. (Mass MoCA is the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art there, and the fest’s co-sponser.)  Head on up to find public performances, workshops for participants in everything from Balinese music to improvisation, master classes, music business seminars, and more.

Festival events open to the public this year include daily gallery recitals at 1:30pm and 4:30pm, free with museum admission; the perennially popular Kids Can Too event (July 18, 11:30am); an afternoon conversation with the big guy — Steve Reich — about Sol LeWitt (July 25, 3pm); a performance by Bang on a Can artists of Reich’s seminal work, Music for 18 Musicians (July 25, 8pm); and what BoaC event would be complete without a Marathon – six hours of non-stop new music featuring more than thirty composers and performers (August 1, 4-10pm). There are also two recitals daily in the galleries at 1:30 and 4:30 from July 16-July 31.  The Marathon will include a performance of George Anthiel’s 1924 classic Ballet Mećanique, John Adams’ Shaker Loops – heard here in its version for seven solo strings, David Lang’s Pierced, Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride, Michael Gordon’s Potassium, music by Meredith Monk, Frederick Rzewski, and more. In between these events, come and hear music by Todd Reynolds, Eric Chasalow, Daniel Wohl, Walter Zimmerman, Olivier Messiaen, Art Jarvinen, Aaron Jay Kernis, Steve Mackey, Jeff Stanek, Louis Andriessen, Gregg August, Derek Johnson, Brad Lubman, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Morton Feldman.

This year’s Festival faculty members include Gregg August (bass), David Cossin (percussion), Katie Geissinger (voice), Michael Gordon (composition), David Lang (composition), Brad Lubman (conducting), Nicholas Photinos (cello), Vicki Ray (piano), Todd Reynolds (violin), Derek Johnson (guitar), Ken Thomson (clarinet, saxophone), and Julia Wolfe (composition). The Festival will be attended by 10 composers and 24 performers  from across the US, as well as from Russia, South Korea, New Zealand, Scotland, Spain, The Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Yeah, it’s not totally free (but not bank-breaking, either) and you’d better bring bug spray, but other than that what’s not to love?

by Steve Layton
New York, Radio

A tale of two stations

Received this from reader Richard Mitnick as a comment on another post:

Sorry-

I searched all over S21 for a place to simply ask a question.

I want to know if there will be any response from S21 on WNYC taking over WQXR.

What I think I posted at my own weblog, http://richardmitnick.wordpress.com.

But, I am not a professional. It would seem to me that WNYC, John S., David G., and certainly Nadia S. would be very important for New Music; anything smacking of the mediocrity of WQXR should be anathema.

So, will there be any comment? Sorry to put this here, I found no better place. >>RSM

Well Richard, now there’s this post for all the appropriate angst and hand-wringing. What about it, people, is this great or awful?  On the one hand, the New York Times definitely couldn’t afford to keep it running, and in that sense WNYC saves the day. But the change of WQXR from a commercial to a public radio station might be the start of something less good; if they follow the path of most other previously-all-classical public stations, the tendency has been to eventually lose some of the local or unique classical content for more “NPR”-ish offerings. WNYC might also look to offload some of its own stuff to WQXR as well, who knows? Public donations will need to cover both stations too, and that slice of the discretionary-income pie might not be able to expand to cover everything down the road.  The other big issue is power: the frequency they’re moving to is a weak one, with nothing like their current reach. It would seem to me to be a “cross your fingers and wait” kind of thing. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times“…

by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, San Francisco

Outsound New Music Summit kicks off on Sunday

San Francisco’s Mission District, home of so much that is cool, is a natural neighborhood for the arts.  The San Francisco Community Music Center located at 544 Capp Street is the the Bay Area’s oldest community arts organization and San Francisco’s largest provider of low-cost, high quality music education.  In 2008, 2,300 students of all ages, ethnicities and income levels enrolled in Music Center programs and over 16,000 people enjoyed musical performances at no or low cost.

Starting this Sunday, the SFCMC will host the eighth annual Outsound New Music Summit, a festival which for all its success and longevity has somehow stayed the Bay Area’s best-kept secret.  Sunday night’s “Touch the Gear” expo is free and open to the public, featuring 20 individual artists and ensembles and their homemade, customized, and startling instruments and electronic rigs.  All of them will be set up and ready to show you, the audient, how to make music and noise like they do.

Four concert nights follow on the subsequent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Artist Q & A sessions at 7:15 p.m. each evening set you up for performances starting at 8:00 p.m., starring:

  • Alicia Mangan & Spirit,  ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and Vinny Golia (solo and with locals in a mixed ensemble) in “Free Improvision/Free Composition”
  • Forms of Things Unknown, Peter Kolovos, Conure, Hans Fjellestad, and Thomas Dimuzio in “Industrial Soundscapes”
  • Jess Rowland & The Dreamland Puppet Theater, Kathleen Quillian & Gilbert Guererro, and Bonfire Madigan in “InterMedia”
  • Natto, Ghost In the House featuring Waterphone inventor Richard Waters, and Left Coast Improv Group in “Deep Listening and Introspection”

Full scheduling details and performer bios can be found in the online schedule. Tickets are available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets, or for $10.00 at the door.

by Polly Moller
Broadcast, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Proms

Proms 2009, !

proms_guide09

Yes, it’s Proms season again here in the UK/GB (see link for the differences.) The “worlds greatest music festival” kicks off on Friday and I thought I would put together a vaguely ‘contemporary’ programme for those so inclined.

Included are composers who are still alive regardless of ‘style’, and a few 20th century composers I thought relevant (excuse my subjective and rather fuzzy criteria; Stravinsky and Bartók are included for instance, Debussy, Ravel and Shostakovich are not; feel free to berate me in the comments section.)

All the concerts listed will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and will be archived a week or so later on their website (for seven days only).  Also, the BBC normally broadcasts quite a few live on TV (usually on BBC 2); these will be archived on their ‘iPlayer‘ but unfortunately this is not accessible by those outside the UK (if you are not a native get your British friends to set their VCRs or whatever newfangled device people are using these days).

If you fancy making a personal appearance, most of the concerts will be on at the Royal Albert Hall in London with those from the ‘Proms Chamber Music’ series occurring at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea (listed below with the prefix ‘PCM’, Chelsea is also in London if you didn’t already know.) The festival runs from Friday the 17th of July to Saturday the 12th of September.

If you are visiting from outside the UK this might be a good year given how weak the pound is currently (against the US Dollar and the Euro at least.) To buy tickets and to check availability please visit the Royal Albert Hall’s tickets page.

Rather than list each Prom I thought composers in alphabetical order might be more helpful (taken from this page on the BBC site where you can access the full list, including Debussy, Ravel and Shostakovich et al), please click on the links to each piece to get more information about the specific concert.

A couple I am looking forward to are Prom 63 featuring two Xenakis pieces (Aïs and Nomos Gamma) and Prom 65 featuring Ligeti‘s Atmospheres and Schoenberg‘s Five Orchestral Pieces (in it’s 100th year) conducted by Jonathan Nott. Also it will interesting to see/hear some of the pieces by younger composers I have never heard anything from before such as Anna Meredith, whose piece Left Light is premiered at Prom 32 and Ben Foskett whose From Trumpet has its first outing at Prom 24.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the list… [EDIT: I’ve now added a link to a Google calendar with the dates and details of all the Proms in the list plus a few more I think, thanks very much to Jamie Bullock for putting it together.]

(more…)

by Ed Lawes
Interviews, Podcasts, Violin

My Ears Are Open, ETHEL. Part I.

dufallo_bioI am excited to say that this month on the podcast I am featuring all four members ETHEL. I was able to spend some time with the band before their performance at the Bang on a Can Marathon and would like to thank them for being so generous with their time. It was difficult to decide who should go first, so I’ve decided to go alphabetical by last name (brilliant, right?!), which means that we’ll begin with violinist, Cornelius Dufallo.

If you want to keep up with this series, I’d recommend subscribing in iTunes or through your blog-reader. Or, you can listen to this week’s episode now by clicking here.

Check back on July 16 (for violist, Ralph Farris), July 21 (for cellist, Dorothy Lawson), and July 26 (for violinist, Mary Rowell).

And before I go, I just want to mention that I’ve had a chance to listen to Cornelius’ new CD, Dream Streets, which you can find on iTunes or Amazon, and is well worth spending some time with. If you are into the whole amplified-violin-looping-thing then you’ll love this recording. He has an original voice in this genre and I really love that when I’m done listening I don’t feel like he was just showing off or trying to impress someone.

by James Holt
Contemporary Classical

Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble season begins with Pierre Jalbert world premiere

Kevin Noe conducting the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble
Kevin Noe conducting the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble

Summertime in the Steel City brings forth some pretty damn good concerts from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, one of the best new music ensembles in the country, every year and this year isn’t any different. This summer PNME will be performing over twenty new works, including two commissioned world premieres by Houston’s Pierre Jalbert and Chicago’s Stacy Garrop, over the next four weekends under the direction of their executive artistic director, Kevin Noe.

They had their first concert last night, but you can still catch them this evening at the City Theatre (1300 Bingham St.) for an 8pm concert, and, in a sly bit of audience-building, if you attend a Friday show and want to see it again, they’ll let you in fo’ free with your Friday ticket stub – one could only wish other groups did something like that!

It should also be mentioned that there will be a CD release party tonight after the concert celebrating PNME’s newest release “Against the Emptiness” issued by New Dynamic Records featuring works by Jalbert, Kevin Puts, Russell Pinkston and Ryan Francis.

In case you’re curious about whose works they’re performing this summer – I got that right after the jump: (more…)

by Rob Deemer