Contemporary Classical

In C(arnegie)

I’ve known Terry Riley‘s seminal Minimalist piece In C for a while, and last fall I even produced a performance of it as part of the M50 concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of Minimalism, but I left Carnegie Hall on Friday Night feeling that I hadn’t really understood the piece until then.  That’s how remarkable the concert was.

David Harrington, of the Kronos Quartet, was asked to curate this performance in celebration of the 45th anniversary of In C, and he assembled an enormous, star-studded cast, playing just about every instrument you can think of and several that you probably can’t.  Riley was there, playing a giant Korg Triton keyboard, So Percussion was positioned on a dais at the back of the stage where they beat out The Pulse on a wide variety of instruments and added considerable rhythmic flair, members of the GVSU New Music Ensemble (which made a name for themselves a couple of years ago with their performance of Music for 18 Musicians) were there, members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, the recorder-playing Quartet New Generation, Philip Glass was tucked away in a corner, Osvaldo Golijov and Morton Subotnick and Wu Man were up there somewhere, conductor Dennis Russell Davies served as “flight pattern coordinator,” periodically emerging and suggesting to the ensemble that it was time to move in some direction or other.  In total there were at least 60 people on stage, and I assume that the people whose names I didn’t recognize were as big in their areas as the ones I did recognize. (more…)

by Galen H. Brown
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, New York, Uncategorized

The 2009 Ditmas Park Concert Series

The Ditmas Park Concert Series is up and running for its second season. Curated by Jody Redhage, there will be five concerts in the series.

Friday, May 1 / 9:00 pm Erica von Kleist Trio, 10:30 pm John Ellis Trio / Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop, 1118 Cortelyou Rd. at Westminster Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou Rd) $10

Sunday, May 10 / 4:00 pm Janus / Temple Beth Emeth, 83 Marlborough Rd. at Church Ave., Brooklyn, NY (B/Q to Church Ave) $10

Saturday, May 23 / 9:00 pm Dan Pratt Organ Quartet / Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop, 1118 Cortelyou Rd. at Westminster Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou) $10

Saturday, May 30 / 3:00 Botanica String Quartet / PS 217 Auditorium, 1100 Newkirk Ave. at Coney Island Ave., Brooklyn, NY (B/Q to Newkirk Ave.) Free Family Concert

Friday, June 12 / 8:00 pm Gabriel Kahane and Friends / PS 139 Auditorium, 330 Rugby Rd. at Cortelyou Rd., Brooklyn, NY (Q to Cortelyou Rd.) $10

Sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council and numerous local businesses, the Ditmas Park Concert Series connects the world class musicians living in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn with the students and residents of the community. Featuring band leaders who live walking distance from the venues, the DPCS strengthens the community through live creative performance.

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Performers

The S.E.M. All-Stars

The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, founded and directed by Petr Kotik, joins forces with the acclaimed FLUX Quartet and the international chamber orchestra Ostravská banda for an evening of adventurous music: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 8:00 PM, Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater. Tickets are a steal, only $15 for a real wealth of music.

Highlights include three new pieces by self-taught composers: the premiere of Christian Wolff’s Trio for Robert Ashley (2009), performed by members of the Flux Quartet; the American premiere of Sicilian-born composer Salvatore Sciarrino’s Vento D’ombra (2005), performed by The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble; and the premiere of Petr Kotik’s String Quartet No. 1, Erinnerungen an Jan (2007–09), performed by the Flux Quartet. The program also features renowned Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle in Elliott Carter’s Dialogues for Piano and Orchestra (2003), and award-winning Czech violinist Hana Kotková in György Ligeti’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1990–92) — both making their debuts at Alice Tully Hall. Petr Kotik conducts The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble as well as Ostravská banda.

Kotik writes: “To me, Ligeti’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra always sounded strange, as if something were out of place. When I was asked by the Prague Spring festival to conduct the piece last May, I worked to solve the puzzle, but to no avail. Then moments before the start of our first rehearsal with Hana Kotková and the Ostravská banda, I suddenly got an idea. I walked up to Hana and said, ‘You’ve got to play the piece like a gypsy would. That’s how it should sound, I think.’ She looked at me and immediately understood what I meant. Hana grew up in a family that made folk music for generations. She has participated in performances since the age of four, often alongside fiddlers and cimbalom virtuosos, who were often Romani. She comes from the Silesian part of Moravia, right next to the Carpathian region from which most of Ligeti’s melodies come. No one can understand this music better than Hana. It was a thrill to conduct Ligeti Concerto with her as the soloist and I am delighted that she was able to accept this appearance at Alice Tully Hall.

Since the premiere of John Cage’s complete Atlas Eclipticalis by then newly formed The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble (86 musicians) at Carnegie Hall in 1992, S.E.M. has made a significant contribution to new music here in the U.S. and in Europe. And with Ostravská banda, founded at Ostrava Days 2005, a group which combines musicians from both sides of the Atlantic was a natural thing (Ostrava Days is a new music institute and festival taking place every other year at Ostrava in the Czech Republic). Ostravská banda consists of young musicians from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Holland and the United States, who are focused on the performance of new music. It is not necessary to introduce the New York-based FLUX Quartet. At Alice Tully, they will be performing the pieces by Wolff and Kotik. In January, when I asked Christian for a piece for this concert, he decided to compose Trio for Robert Ashley as there was my new string quartet on the program. He had recently attended Robert Ashley’s opera Dust and was very moved by the work. The title reflects his admiration for Ashley’s music, its rhythms and structural movements.”

— If you can’t make it, S21’s own Christian Carey will be there and will be filing a report post-concert.

by Steve Layton
Competitions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Pictures 2009 Concert at MaM Sunday

Elsie Driggs’ Queensborough Bridge, 1927.

Pictures 2009 Concert: New Jersey students explore the intersection of music and visual art.

Sunday, April 26, 2pm (Pre-concert Panel at 1:30pm)


Montclair Art Museum/NJAC

3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, NJ

$15 Adults / $10 Students / Online Tickets Available here.

For the fourth annual edition the Pictures Composition Contest, New Jersey students were asked to compose music inspired by visual art exhibited in the Montclair Art Museum. EXIT 9 Percussion Group will perform quartets written by the students.  In addition, they will premiere the 2009 Ionisation Commission, SPAN, by Darren Gage.

by Christian Carey
Composers

Terry Riley Plays the Big Room – Tomorrow

To celebrate the 45th anniversary of In C, the Kronos Quartet is “curating”  a star-studded gathering of musicians who will perform In C in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall for the first time tomorrow (Friday) night.  This once-in-a-lifetime concert has an ensemble that includes Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, and original In C performers Stuart Dempster, Jon Gibson, Katrina Krimsky, and Morton Subotnick.

Not to mention: Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, Sidney Chen, Dennis Russell Davies, Loren Kiyoshi Dempster, Bryce Dessner, Dave Douglas, Trevor Dunn, Jacob Garchik, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Harrison, Michael Hearst, Scott Johnson, Joan La Barbara, Saskia Lane, Alfred Shabda Owens, Elena Moon Park, Lenny Pickett, Gyan Riley, Aaron Shaw, Judith Sherman, Mark Stewart, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Leng Tan, Jeanne Velonis, Wu Man, Yang Yi, Dan Zanes, and Evan Ziporyn.  Also with Koto Vortex, Quartet New Generation, So Percussion, members of the GVSU New Music Ensemble, and members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

Tickets start at $21.  Read more about it at Sidney Chen’s blog or the Kronos Facebook page.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Holliger at 92nd Street Y tonight and tomorrow

 

Swiss oboist/composer/conductor extraordinaire Heinz Holliger will be in New York City for two concerts on April 21st and 22nd, honoring both his 70th birthday and the recent 100th birthday of Elliott Carter .

The concerts are at the 92nd Street Y.

Wednesday’s show features a “preconcert” concert at 6:30 with several recent shorter works by Carter.

To celebrate Holliger’s 70th (which occurs May 21st), ECM will release Romancendres on May 19th. Two important Holliger pieces, both of them inspired by Robert Schumann, are combined with a chamber work by Clara Schumann. They all intersect in the year 1853, when 20-year-old Johannes Brahms first visited the Schumann couple in Düsseldorf.

ECM just recently released Canto di Speranza, an album of three works by the German post-war composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, conducted by Holliger.

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Concerts, Downtown, Experimental Music, Improv, jazz, Music Events, New York, Performers

Interpretations Season #20: Artist Blog #9 — John Lindberg of S3NY

We’ve reached the final concert of Interpretations’ twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City! Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. Our last concert is also an anniversary celebration: The String Trio of New York has been going strong for 31 years. Guitarist James Emery and bassist John Lindberg have invited some of the most innovative jazz violinists to work with them: Billy Bang, Regina Carter, Diane Monroe, and Charles Burnham. Since 2001, violinist Rob Thomas has more than ably filled those shoes. While the trio has had many works written for them, and does perform the “classics” of jazz, this concert will feature the music of Emery and Lindberg. John Lindberg explains in his own words, below. We hope to see you at Roulette this Thursday, 23 April and stay tuned for next season.

This particular concert of the String Trio of New York, now 31 years running, is a unique opportunity to present a retrospective of works that have in some ways defined the development of the group, and highlights its diverse repertoire. My three pieces on the program — The Anticipator (1987), Nature,Time, Patience (2001), Journey Platz (2007) represent different side of my mucical personality as a composer, and extremely varied approaches to the collective utilization of the improvising and interprational talents of the trio members, in effect being a voyage through the time/space continnum of the s3ny, while offering up renditions that lie solidly “in the moment” that they are being performed.

Interpretations has been, in my view, the most vital and compelling series for creative music in New York city for some two decades, due to its great breadth of music it presents, and remaining one of he very few ongoing series that offer composers free reign to present their music as they wish it to be presented.

It is with great pleasure I have another opportunity, with this landmark concert for the trio, to perform as part of the Interpretations series.

The String Trio of New York performs at Roulette on Thursday 23 April at 8pm.

For more information:

The String Trio of New York

Interpretations

Roulette

by John Lindberg
Contemporary Classical

Reich Wins Pulitzer

People have been wondering for years when Steve Reich would finally be given a Pulitzer prize.  He has been a finalist three times (for You Are (Variations) in 2005, for Cello Counterpoint in 2004 , and for Three Tales in 2003) and this year he finally won.  The piece is Double Sextet, and it was premiered March 26, 2008 in Richmond, VA.  The New York premiere was on April 17th.

Here’s a video of Eighth Blackbird in a recording session for the piece:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Rji3yhRs8[/youtube]

The jury for the music Pulitzer this year was John Schaefer (WNYC), Dwight Andrews (Emory University) Justin Davidson (New York Magazine), Anthony Davis (University of California-San Diego), and David Lang, (Bang on a Can).  David was, of course, last year’s winner.

Update: Oops, Jerry beat me too this by 10 minutes.  I’ll leave this up anyway, since it’s got details and video.

by Galen H. Brown
Bang on a Can, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Music Events, New York, Online

Want some free tracks & tix? The hunt is on!

Apropos this Wednesday’s Michael Gordon Trance performance mentioned just a few posts previously:  Besides the pre-concert talk and videotaping, we’ve got a bit more fun for you all…

Along with the good folk at Bang On A Can and Cantaloupe Records, Michael Gordon himself had the idea of offering the tracks to Cantaloupe’s Trance CD, performed by Icebreaker, as free downloads for you all. The only catch: Each of the seven tracks are hosted at a different blog, and it’s up to you to follow the clues to find all seven.

Besides the music itself, there’s a further reward for the quick: the first three people to correctly identify all seven blogs in an e-mail to promotion@firstchairpromo.com will receive a free pair of tickets to the April 22nd concert at Le Poisson Rouge!

We get to lead off the hunt with the simplest clue of all: a link directly to the first track. And to get to the next blog & track you only have to decipher this:

The most famous bridge in New York City carries the name of this borough, where a person who avoids eating any animal product like the plague blogs about all events musical, metal, comedy — or whatever’s happened to grace the fair city this or that week.

Those wishing to experience the full sonic glory of the physical Trance CD can purchase it here. Good luck!

by Steve Layton