Sequenza21

At 66, baritone Thomas Buckner says he’s busier now than he was when in his forties. Last month, when we sat down to chat, he had just come back from a week of master classes and music making at Mills College. Next week, he has a terrific-sounding concert at Greenwich House, and, in June, he’ll play a leading role in a festival featuring Robert Ashley’s operas in Ferrara, Italy. This is all in addition to the Interpretations concert series, which he curates, and running his record label, Mutable Music.

Though growing up he was an enthusiastic participant in family holiday sing-alongs, when he went off to Yale, it was expected he would go into business like the rest of his family. But in his Sophomore year he dropped out and went west. After working in a factory for a year, he re-enrolled in college at UC Santa Clara, majoring in English. While at Santa Clara, Buckner began to exercise his composition chops by writing incidental music for drama club productions. Soon the town came to host a summer Shakespeare festival; he scored their shows, and, gradually–propelled in part by a performance of Webern’s five pieces for string quartet–he found himself gravitating to the experimental music scene.

During the late 60s and into the 70s, Buckner was busy as a composer, singer, and impresario. His music company, 1750 Arch Records (named after its address in Berkeley), produced hundreds of concerts of avant-garde and experimental music, and, soon, LPs as well. But a trip back to New York in 1979 planted in him the idea to join the vibrant scene back east as a singer, a role which, he felt, ultimately suited him better than composition. Though he considered moving to France because of some satisfying work he had done there, Buckner decided to stay in the States and be a part of his native musical culture.

Soon after he moved back East, the recording market began to turn towards CDs, and, instead of trying to transfer 1750’s catalogue to the newer medium, he reformed the label as Mutable Music and began producing CDs featuring the music of composers and performers who, like Webern years before, showed him new things music could do. Buckner enjoys the freedom and collaborative nature of experimental music and is a frequent performer (and teacher) of vocal and group improvisation. His concert at Greenwich House, however, will be more straightforward that his usual projects. He wanted to present an evening of song. On the program are songs about love and songs that tell stories. Texts come from such stand-bys as Percy Shelley, e.e. cummings, and Walt Whitman. The composers, however, are among Buckner’s fresh-voiced comrades: Noah Creshevsky, Roscoe Mitchell, W.A. Mathieu, and others share the spotlight. Attendance is urged.

I caught the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) at the MATA Festival Tuesday night in Brooklyn.

1. Gil Rose and BMOP played a varied concert with conviction and panache Tuesday night. While there were wonderful soloists on the program, the ensemble really held the spotlight the entire night in the best possible sense – always blending well and making the most of lines, accompaniment and ensemble.

2. The show started with Alejandro Rutty’s “The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops,” and was a perfect energetic start. Lots of rhythms were blasted in the Brooklyn Lyceum, filled to standing room only for the concert. Especially fun were the solo lines tossed about in a more calm middle section, really showing off varied styles, sometimes feeling like a tango, Las Vegas club, or a perpetual motion machine. Bubbly and glowing easily describe this MATA commissioned piece.

3. Derek Hurst’s “Clades” was a disappointment. It was clearly academic and dispassionate. I had no idea living composers still wrote stodgy, angular, pseudo-klangfarbenmelodie-esque compositions, but the work painfully drug on in four continuous movements, rarely featuring the glamorous and able Firebird Ensemble. Rays of potential did come through in the slower, slightly more moving second movement in colorful chords. Kudos to cellist David Russell and clarinetist Amy Advocat of the Firebird Ensemble for more noticable solos (the entire group was capable, just not shown in this work sadly.)

4. After intermission, the amazingly creative “On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis” by Ken Ueno was captivating. A natural blend of dissonance and glissandi, along with rough and sudden entrances of instruments, made a perfect parallel to Ueno’s singing. Clear influence of 1960s Polish composers was felt throughout but it was handled in a mature and artistic way. Most impressive was a cadenza-like throat singing passage, including a brilliant range of dynamics and wide intervals. I’ll listen for more Ueno in the future.

5. The program ended with BMOP’s Composer in Residence Lisa Bielawa’s Double Violin Concerto. The three movement work is charming and serious, and you clearly hear the love for and knowledge of the ensemble that Bielawa has with the ensemble, soloists and conductor. The second movement shows off Carla Kihlstedt’s violin playing and voice in a Goethe text, and the final movement allows both Kihlstedt and Colin Jacobsen to jam. My only moment of wonder about the work is, as a soloist in a concertante work, if Jacobsen – such a talent – might have been technically underused, purely in violinistic terms. He certainly played gorgeous lines and crisp articulations, but the piece never seemed to challenge him. Kihlstedt was at least allowed her astounding ability to sing and play, including a violin with four e strings scordatura – a brilliant and haunting effect. All in all, Bielawa’s Double Concerto is original and engaging – something that you want to hear again and again.

The MATA festival continues with installations, lectures and concerts through April 4th, and also does events thoughout the year (called “interval”). Find out more here.

BMOP and Gil Rose perform more concerts in Boston, see their killer schedule here, and keep an eye out for their new cds here! You won’t be disappointed.

John Nasukaluk Clare is a new music enthusiast and broadcast professional currently residing in Harrisburg, PA. He’s interviewed more than 100 composers and when he isn’t smoking a cigar, playing violin or travelling, John likes to laugh and eat a lot.

I must confess that I had never heard of pianist Bruce Levingston until he called me a couple of weeks ago. That is clearly an oversight on my part since a couple of minutes of googling reveals him to be a man of considerable resources, owner of a celebrity-stuffed Rolodex and impeccable taste–a kind of latter day combination of Paul Sacher and Peter Duchin.  Which would explain, of course, why he’s been under my radar for so long.

Levingston is the force behind the Premiere Commission, Inc., a non-profit organization that, as the name implies, supports the commissioning and first performances of new works. The organization was founded in 2001 with the support of composers William Bolcom and George Perle,  Morey Ritt, and arts patrons Richard Goldman, Michael Kempner, George Plimpton and David Rockefeller.

So far, the group has commissioned works by more than 30 composers, including Milton Babbitt, Angelo Badalamenti, Gordon Beeferman, Lisa Bielawa, William Bolcom, Regina Carter, Justine Chen, John Corigliano, Sebastian Currier, Curtis Curtis-Smith, David Del Tredici, Paul Festa, Philip Glass, Daron Hagen, Wendell Harrington, Zhou Long, Paul Moravec, John Patitucci, Lenny Pickett, Peter Quanz, Wolfgang Rihm, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Paul Schoenfield, Jonathan Sheffer, Hollis Taylor, Gregg Wramage, Charles Wuorinen and Chen Yi.   Glass’ A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close (see photo) is among the best-known of those commissions.

On Monday April 14, Levingston will emerge from his digs at the Chelsea Hotel (where he has lived long enough to have shared an elevator with Virgil Thompson) to perform a program called Points of Departure, a special solo concert at Zankel Hall that explores the unique artistic relationships between four of the most prominent composers of today and four of the most influential composers of the past. The concert includes world premieres of Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Wuorinen’s Heart Shadow (inspired by Salman Rushdie and Claude Debussy) and 2007 Grawemeyer Award-winner Sebastian Currier’s Departures and Arrivals (inspired by Scarlatti and Liszt), as well as the New York premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Brahmsliebewaltzer (inspired by Brahms). The program also includes  works of Brahms, Scarlatti, Debussy, Liszt and Pärt.  Program and ticket sales are here.
 

 Music by Lee Hoiby, performed by Andrew Garland and Lee Hoiby 

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550,000 views and counting. 

After Austrian born composer and conductor Peter Paul Fuchs died about a year ago in North Carolina our English home Pliable wrote two short tributes to him On An Overgrown Path with John McLaughlin Williams. Fuchs’ widow saw the tributes and supplied Bob with previously unpublished biographical material and photos.
 
To mark the first anniversary of Fuchs’ passing, Pliable published a new profile at On An Overgrown Path and on Wikipedia (which had no entry for him) using this material. 

And here’s some good news:  Scott Unrein has revived his Nonpop Music podcast and blog.  We alll know Brian Eno but how many of you knew there was a Roger Eno?

Elizabeth Brown and other cutting-edge stuff coming up at the Issue Project Room… All kinds of funny business going on at the Brooklyn Philharmonic, world premiere by Susan Oetgen coming up there… Philadelphia Biblical University pays tribute (5 April) to the late composer Harry Hewitt (no better link, I’m afraid)… 13 April–tribute to women composers from Musique a la Mode – some GREAT performers on this one… Alarm Will Sound has a call for scores for NYC-area composers. Huzzah! Deadline: 1 April, y’all… Okay, my conscience (and inbox) is clear.

The Keys to the Future festival, at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall, presents 3 consecutive nights of recent solo piano music – each concert features 4 pianists. The fundamental premise of this festival is that the contemporary scene is characterized by unprecedented diversity, and that that is a good thing. On these poly-stylistic programs, sometimes the only thing that two given pieces on one of our programs have in common is that they are notated and contemporary. I prefer this to a concert of works all in the same style – when a post-minimalist work follows an atonal modernist work on the same program, they tend to highlight characteristics in each other in interesting and unexpected ways. Audiences have really responded to this aspect of the shows.

A few words about a couple of the pieces on Evening 3 (Thursday, March 27 at 8PM). Bang on a Can alumnus Lisa Moore, virtuoso Tatjana Rankovich, Yukiko Tanaka and I will play works of Chick Corea, Kevin Puts, Ingram Marshall, John Adams, Arvo Pärt, Bruce Stark and Robert Muczynski.

Here are a few comments from composer Kevin Puts about his “Alternating Currents”, which will be played by Lisa Moore: “Writing piano music is a daunting task due to the enormous repertoire of great works pianists already have available to them. So in my preliminary improvisations for Alternating Current I allowed myself to gravitate toward the aspects of piano pieces I have studied since childhood: the motoric clarity of toccatas by Bach, the ennobling harmonic progressions of Beethoven’s slow movements, the terrifying neurosis of Ravel’s Scarbo. The title refers to the use of alternating meter which occurs in all three movements, and also to the flowing nature, which characterizes the entire work. The movement that will be performed by Lisa Moore is quick and Baroque. Like the other two movements, this movement ‘alternates’ in mode as well as meter, shifting between the key signatures of D and F.”

And a few words from composer Robert Muczynski about his “Desperate Measures (Paganini Variations)”, which Tatjana Rankovich will play: “It was 1992, and I was at a loss as to what direction to take for my next composition. Over the years I’d produced a considerable amount of solo piano music as well as sonatas and trios for instruments of all sorts of combinations. One evening I was enjoying a drink with a good friend and remarked ‘I know it may sound like a silly idea, but ever since I was a music student I had this notion of doing some piano variations on the Paganini “Caprice” – and now I think I’d like to have a crack at it; I must be desperate!’ That’s how the title (and pun) came about, Desperate Measures… It consists of the theme and twelve variations. My variations are not grand, etude-like, nor European-born (Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, etc.)… I think of them more as entertainments.”

Chick Corea’s “Children’s Songs” are lively and brief, little capsules like the Chopin Preludes; “China Gates” is probably familiar to many of you, but this is Lisa’s first time performing it, so I know she will bring her own special flair to it; Ingram Marshall’s “Authentic Presence” is profound and totally unique; and Bruce Stark’s “Fugue, Interlude and Finale” is a whirlwind tour de force, which is tailor-made for Tatjana’s take-no-prisoners style. Hope to see you there! For more complete info, please check www.keystothefuture.org.

Thanks!
Joseph Rubenstein
Artistic Director, Keys to the Future