Contemporary Classical

Countdown: Jeremy Podgursky

Folks: I respect you all very much. Really. But you don’t know jack about the upcoming Sequenza21 concerts. By way of fixing this (your) problem, we at the site will be offering you penetrating, deep glimpses into the inner lives of the composers and performers involved in This. The Mother Of All Concerts. The Concerts The New York Times Does Not Want You To Know About (else, why haven’t they covered it yet? Huh? Huh?).

First up: Jeremy Podgursky. Composer. (Or just a poser??? You decide.)

Did you learn anything in music school?  Or does the phrase “circle of fifths” mean nothing to you?

I learned not to throw stones in ivory towers.  I also learned that the first seventeen years of my life were lazy, unfocused, and unforgivable.  Music school taught me how to look fun in the eye and say, “bite me!”.  And what’s this “circle of fifths” stuff?  I went to music school in Louisville, KY and the only fifths we knew of were filled with bourbon.

What’s your favorite “bad” piece of music?  And briefly justify your crappy taste.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.  Either that or “November Rain” by GNR.  Bonnie Tyler’s histrionics have earned her the title of Mrs. Meatloaf.  Slash’s guitar solo out in front of the church is all-the-more stunning due to the fact that his guitar isn’t plugged in.

Your five-composition-long playlist for Schoenberg would contain:

1. Anything by Scelsi – “hey Arnold, you digging that tone center?”

2. Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich

3. Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed

4. Coptic Light by Morton Feldman

5. that “Do-Re-Mi” number from The Sound of Music

Congress calls on you to draw up a bailout plan for contemporary music!  What do you do?

First, I guess I would get my suit dry cleaned.  Second, I would burn a CD of Sousa marches in case they wanted examples of contemporary music.  Third, I would institute a draft for all performers graduating from music school to serve a four year tour-of-duty in one of many government subsidized regional orchestras and chamber groups.  These ensembles would perform and record only contemporary music five days a week, five hours a day.  LAST BUT NOT LEAST: I would insist upon the removal of Alaska from the U.S. and replace it with Iceland (sorry, but I couldn’t help myself).

by David Salvage
Contemporary Classical

Lightning at our Feet

On December 9, 11, 12 and 13, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will present Lightning at our feet, The Ridge Theater and Michael Gordon’s multimedia song cycle inspired by Emily Dickinson. Co-commissioned by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston and BAM for the 2008 Next Wave Festival, this work reunites Michael Gordon and The Ridge Theater, the creative team behind the critically-acclaimed Decasia (2001): Bill Morrison (films), Laurie Olinder (projections) and Bob McGrath (stage direction). Lightning at our feet straddles arts genres, giving Dickinson’s poetry mobility in music while encompassing her words in a world of visual imagery. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItD4M5qcpYY[/youtube]

 

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Improv, Music Events, New York, Piano

Interpretations Season #20 Artist Blog #4 — JB Floyd, Raphael Mostel

This Fall marks the twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City brought to you by Interpretations. 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 fourth concert this season, on 20 November, features composer-performers JB Floyd and Raphael Mostel at Roulette.

JB Floyd:
My concert on the Interpretations Series on November 20th will mark the third time that I have presented my compositions on this prestigious series. These concerts have featured my works for flute and piano, vocal pieces for Thomas Buckner and the Yamaha Disklavier™ and keyboard works that combine the unique features of the Yamaha Disklavier™ as a concert piano and as a controller keyboard.

Though my music is mostly notated there are usually opportunities for improvisation within each composition. Having worked on many occasions with Thomas Buckner I am particularly looking forward to our work together on a new piece of mine, In Crossing The Busy Street for baritone voice and Yamaha Disklavier™. The poem is by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore a poet whose works inspire musical representation.

Other compositions are for the Yamaha Disklavier™ and will be performed by my talented protégé, Liana Pailodze who is an Artist Diploma candidate at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. It is an honor to be included on this celebrated series that is celebrating its 20th Anniversary.

Raphael Mostel:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bela
I am haunted by Bela Bartok. He composed certain musical ideas which pursue me, and unbidden keep coming back to mind. My Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bela is an attempt to exorcise this musical “possession” using one particularly searing turn from Bartok’s Piano Sonata. I’ve enlisted help from John Cage, Morton Feldman, Leonard Bernstein, Gyorgy Kurtag and many others. Wallace Stevens’ poem seemed to bless this exorcism. My apologies to triskadecaphobes.

A Letter to Benoit Mandelbrot, or, Authenticity
I’d written to Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, asking if he’d never wondered why — since visual representations of fractals are so beautiful — the supposed musical representations of fractals are not? I offered to explicate mathematically. He wrote back inviting elaboration, which I did. But my explanation, he said, “mystified” him. My Letter to Benoit Mandelbrot is a further meditation on music, self-similarity and cheating.

by JB
Boston, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras, Photographs

Break a Leg?!?

Wendy plays Ken’s viola concerto with BMOP! Hear harmonies analyzed from Wendy’s ankle bone!

Friday, November 14, 2008 / 8:00pm – 10:00pm

Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory

290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

The amazing violist Wendy Richman plays Ken Ueno’s concerto Talus, with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the incomparable Gil Rose.

Here’s the program:

Martin Boykan Concerto for Violin and Orchestra / Curtis Macomber, violin

Robert Erickson Fantasy for cello and orchestra / Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello

Arnold Schoenberg Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra / BMOP Principals

Elliott Schwartz Chamber Concerto VI: Mr. Jefferson / Charles Dimmick, violin 

Ken Ueno Talus, concerto for viola and orchestra / Wendy Richman, viola 

Tickets for this concert are available at the Jordan Hall Box Office. Call (617) 585-1260 or visit the box office at New England Conservatory (30 Gainsborough Street), Monday – Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 12pm-6pm. The box office opens at 6:30pm on the day of the concert. 

For an explanation of x-ray picture and how it relates to the piece: http://www.kenueno.com/performancenotes.html#Talus

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers

NÜÜDISMUUSIKA

He doesn’t sing or play the cello (as far as I know) but one of my favorite composers in the whole wide world is Erkki-Sven Tüür, another of those masterful Estonians we hear a lot about.  I would say that even if I didn’t know that he is a faithful and longtime reader of Sequenza21.  But, I digress.  The Estonian Philharmonic Choir, with the  Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, will be performing two of Erkki-Sven’s choral pieces next Monday night at The Community Church of New York, 40 East 35th Street.  There are also pieces by Tõnu Kõrvits and somebody named Arvo Pärt.

Here’s the best part.  The concert is free, as in you don’t have to pay anything to get in.

by Jerry Bowles
Cello, Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Fire in July Gig on Nov. 12

This just in from singing cellist Jody Redhage:

Hi friends, I’m excited to announce that my new website is up and running!  Please visit www.jodyredhage.com.

Also, Fire in July is playing a really fun show this Wednesday, Nov. 12 at the Players Theatre in the Village. We’re sharing the night with fellow chamber pop band alice. Please see the details below. Hope everyone is well!

All best, Jody


FIRE IN JULY
Wed., Nov. 12, 2008
8:00 pm alice
9:00pm Fire in July
Music on MacDougal Series
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal St. (between W 3rd and Bleeker)
New York, NY  10012
212-475-1449 / Tickets $20; in advance: 212-352-3101
www.myspace.com/fireinjuly

FIRE IN JULY

Jody Redhage, voice/cello/compositions
Ken Thomson, clarinets
Alan Ferber, trombones
Fred Kennedy, drums/percussion
with special guest Tim Collins, vibraphone

by Christian Carey
Bang on a Can, Downtown, Minimalism, New York

Terry Riley, Bang On A Can All-Stars @ Le Poisson Rouge, NYC

The last concert I attended that involved one of the great minimalist composers was a concert over the summer at the Dream House–a three hour long close encounter (small, hot and sweaty room) with La Monte Young and crew. While I enjoyed the music, I felt that I had my fill of hot and sweaty for the rest of the year.

So it was a surprise when I saw La Monte Young talking to Terry Riley at a specially reserved table just some 10 feet away from me (as well as the fact that I was hot and cramped once again). As a young musician, and fan of the two composers, I imagined Riley’s and Young’s close interactions as just another story out of my not-so-favorite music history book and not something of real life, played out so many decades later before my eyes. It was a warm scene and I found myself wondering what they could be talking about, if only I could get a few feet closer.

The show began with a BOAC All-stars solo set. The set included two pieces, Glamour Girls by Lukas Ligeti and a BOAC arrangement of four player piano pieces by Conlon Nancarrow.

Glamour Girls was apparently written just a few years back, but overall felt like it was born out of the 1980s funk scene. The piece was purposely disconcerting with its tendency toward disjunct lines, mismatched rhythms and wild speech. Of course, none of these qualities make it a terrible piece but it certainly is one where it is more enjoyable to be on the performing end than on the listening, if only because it makes you feel just slightly frantic when the musical rapport streaming off stage hits your ears. At times I was reminded of Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra (the group flourished in the eighties), but on an acid trip. Either way, the piece was performed well and it is apparent that BOAC All-stars are called all-stars for their great technical expertise.

The Nancarrow suite was a mixture of jazz and varying tempos going on simultaneously. One of the pieces was so characteristic of the 1950s, with its combination of jazz and Nancarrow’s playfulness with tempo and rhythm, that it would have been the perfect follow-up for Marty Mcfly’s Johnny B Goode. Like the Ligeti piece it followed, there was a strong sense of intentional discontinuity and uneasiness and despite all of the complexities of music written originally for a machine with the ability to outperform the strong performer, the ensemble was tight and clean. Had they not, the nuances that evolve from the tension created by the rhythmic complexity would have been totally lost. So it is good to feel uneasy after all.

There was a short intermission, and I heard a LCD Soundsystem song that I knew I had heard piping out of the speakers the last time I was at Le Poisson Rouge. The club was crowded, or so it appeared crowded as there were several tables along the floor cramping people in the back. It seemed like a good turnout, nonetheless. I surveyed the faces of the crowd, trying to surmise whether it was young or old; while there were people under their thirties and even in their twenties (such as myself), the crowd still maintained a strong forty-plus following. I wondered what the connection was between each individual member of the audience and the headliners. I thought, it could not be possible that they were all classically trained musicians like myself. Some of them were lawyers and CEO’s and New Kids On The Block fans, right?

(more…)

by Veronica Paez
Bang on a Can, Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Just Intonation

Interview with Terry Riley

Thursday morning I talked with composer Terry Riley, who is in New York this week to collaborate with the Bang on a Can All-Stars in the US premiere of his work Autodreamographical Tales at Le Poisson Rouge on 8 November.

Riley is famous for being one of the “Big Four” of American minimalist composers (the others: LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass). But while his early works, such as A Rainbow in Curved Air, Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, and the seminal In C, were musical rallying cries during minimalism’s ascendance in the 1960s, Riley’s been involved with many other important pieces, styles, and activities since then. His palette encompasses North Indian music, jazz, electronics, various intonation systems, and increasingly in recent years, projects incorporating guitar and spoken word.

As an admirer of his music, it’s somewhat frustrating to read review after review in which he’s asked to talk about the importance of In C and his work is then pigeon-holed as minimalist in style. In planning for the interview, I promised myself that both minimalism and In C would be off-limits. When the composer mentions in passing an upcoming performance of In C (April 24, 2009 at Carnegie Hall, but you didn’t hear that from me), I tell him of my secret pact and he enthusiastically agrees! Instead, we focus on recent, current and future projects.

Riley says, “Autodreamographical Tales started out a while ago as a piece for radio in which I narrated and played all the instruments. There were overdubs and samples. The Bang on a Can All Stars wanted me to create a new version of the piece to perform with them. My son Gyan, who’s also a guitarist and composer, helped me to orchestrate the piece. While there are still a few samples, we’ve figured out how to perform live many of the things that were looped or overdubbed.”

“The piece is based on a dream journal that I was keeping at the time. Some of my dreams had evocative images and stories that I felt would work well in the piece for radio and, now, in this new version for Bang on a Can. We got together and rehearsed it this past summer during a week-long residency in Italy. A performance there was the world premiere and this one in New York is Autodreamographical Tales’ second performance.”

Riley also spent time this past summer in New England at Bang on a Can’s Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA. “It was an inspiring setting: a number of talented composers and performers, the galleries, and so many excellent concerts.”

We return to the subject of his son, a talented musician in his own right who encouraged the elder Riley to explore composing for the guitar. “Gyan came home with all of these recordings of the guitar: he was just crazy about it and wanted to share his enthusiasm with me. We listened to all sorts of players, especially classical and Brazilian artists.”

During the past two decades, Riley has created a number of works for the instrument, including the solo collection Book of Abbeyozzud and Cantos Desiertos, a beautiful set of pieces for flute and guitar. When I comment that Riley has managed to combine expected, idiomatic passages with some very fresh-sounding guitar writing, he replies, “It was challenging to write for the guitar as a non-guitarist. I really worked hard to learn about the instrument: there’s a lot to know in order to compose effectively for it.”

New music guitarist David Tanenbaum, Gyan’s principal instructor, has also been the beneficiary of several recent works for the instrument, including a 2008 piece for national steel and synthesizer entitled Moonshine Sonata. Riley says, “The national steel for which I wrote the sonata is a special model, redesigned so that it’s tuned in just intonation. The company that made the instrument for David loaned me one while I was composing the piece; it’s amazing how resonant, how loud it is all by itself – it doesn’t need amplification!”

Tanenbaum and Gyan Riley, along with violinist Krista Bennion Feeney, premiered another 2008 Riley work: the Triple Concerto Soltierraluna. The concerto form is one to which Riley is drawn of late: a project in the pipeline is a violin concerto commissioned by a symphony orchestra in Bari, Italy for soloist Francesco D’Orazio. “I don’t approach the concerto form in the conventional manner, as this heroic thing; I like to find ways to integrate the soloist into the ensemble; to foster interactions between them that you don’t get in the big Classical or Romantic pieces. In a sense, what I’m writing is more akin to the concerto grosso form.”

Since the 1970s, Riley has frequently collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, producing a number of pieces for them. He’s currently at work on another, titled Poppy Nogood and the Transylvanian Horns. The title refers to one of Riley’s best known early works, Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band; but this successor also includes the Kronos group playing some newly adopted instruments. The “Transylvanian horns” in question are called “stro instruments:” string instruments fitted with trumpet or trombone bells. The composer seems to relish the challenge of learning about and composing for these hybrid instruments. Even when called upon to revisit ideas from his past, Terry Riley is ever eager to try something new.

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Hauschka from the Far Village

Volker Bertelmann, otherwise known as “Hauschka,” grew up in Ferndorf, a small village in southern Austria. His latest album is named after the town and features tracks which capture the light, “floating” mood of his childhood rambles through the countryside. Next week, Wordless Music hosts the beginning of Hauschka’s US tour featuring pieces from the album.

Though his childhood was filled with music from attending church and song-filled family celebrations, he left home for Cologne to study medicine. But his piano playing, his desire to compose, and an early film-score commission convinced him to quit his studies and immerse himself in multi-media projects and, eventually, pop music. (Hauschka was at one point a rapper.)

In the 1990s, as he was developing an interest in electronic music, he came upon the idea (more or less himself) of trying to simulate “electronic” sounds by placing objects inside the piano: he did not enjoy performing on a laptop, which he found rigid. What started as an attempt to create a cimbalom-like timbre by placing pins on the hammers of a piano turned into the backbone of his compositional technique. Indeed, he was preparing pianos long before a musicologist friend introduced him to the music of John Cage.

Hauschka describes his music as moving between techno-like patterns and a classical melodic lyricism. Ferndorf is dreamy and reflective, with several pieces incrementally layering melodic gestures over ostinatos. Satie is also a clear influence. After his work with Ferndorf is done, Hauschka wishes to turn to a piano-dance album and maybe even an orchestra piece. He’s also meeting with film directors who have taken an interest in his work.

by David Salvage