Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York

The Issue is Money

Over the past couple of years, ISSUE Project Room has become one of the hot spots for contemporary music in the city and earned a well-deserved reputation for presenting new and artistically challenging work. It has outgrown its funky silo on the Gowanus Canal and has just launched a $350,000 capital campaign with the goal of expanding its programs and moving to a larger, more centrally-located home.

As often happens, though, a great opportunity has come along and the group needs to raise a bundle of cash by July 24 to take advantage of it.  ISSUE is one of two finalists for the right to move into a new, rent free space in one of the most beautiful buildings in downtown Brooklyn.  But, says founder and artistic director Suzanne Fiol, it must demonstrate the financial capability to develop the space if it is to secure the lease.

An anonymous donor has made a $25,000, one -for- two matching grant to be met by August 10, which means that for every dollar the group raises between now and then, it will get an an additional 50 cents.  It has already raised $10,000 and Fiol says her goal is to raise another $25,000 this week.

“The reason of the urgency is that we’re meeting with the property’s developers on July 24,” Fiol says. ‘It is crucial to our success that we have this money in hand in time for this meeting. Nothing could better help ISSUE in making its case to the property’s developers than to be able to walk into the meeting saying we have met the match.  Successfully closing this first phase of the campaign before the deadline will inspire large  donors, corporations and foundations.”

Here’s how to give:

To make a donation on line, go to http://www.nyfa.org and click “For Donors.” Be  sure to earmark your donation for the Issue Project Room.  To make a donation by check, make your check payable to the New York Foundation for the Arts . Write ISSUE Project Room in the memo line, and mail your check to: ISSUE Project Room 232 Third Street, Brooklyn N.Y. 11215.  ISSUE Project Room is under the fiscal sponsorship of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and all donations are tax deductible.

If you want to know more about ISSUE or have ideas about how to help, you can contact Fiol at 718-812-1129, or write to
suzanne@issueprojectroom.org.

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Violin

Marvin Does Hovhaness

Marvin Rosen’s Classical Discoveries program is a  special one this week involving, as it does, several members of the S21 community.  Marvin’s doing the first radio broadcast of OgreOgress’s world premiere recording of Alan Hovhaness’s Janabar, a 37-minute Sinfonia Concertante for Piano, Trumpet, Violin & Strings.  The recording features Christina Fong on violin, Paul Hersey on piano, and Michael Bowman on trumpet, with the Slovak Philharmonic, conducted by Rastislav Stur.

The piece is scheduled for Wednesday, July 18th during the 10am EST hour. The program, from Princeton, NJ, can be heard locally on 103.3 FM  or online.  Lots of details about the new recording here.

Also scheduled is the one hour Symphony No. 6, for chorus and orchestra by the Latvian composer, Imants Kalniņš in a recording produced by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra. That piece will air beginning at around 8:00 am EST.
 
Marvin is also doing a series of special summer programs of avant-garde music titled Classical Discoveries goes Avant-Garde, which is devoted to more modern works than one normally hears on his Wednesday morning Classical Discoveries program.  Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde can be heard every Friday from 11:00 am until 3:00 pm on WPRB.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Happy Birthday to the Blog

Blogging as a substitute for productive behavior has just turned 10 years old, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.  To which we say a hearty “Mazeltov” and welcome into the S21 fold composer Judith Shatin who is spending a Semester at Sea and sharing her adventures with us.  We’re also delighted to welcome back Alan Thiesen, who has returned after spending a “brutal” year in post-doctoral studies. 

Our amigo Marco Antonio Mazzini reports that his Musical Marathon for clarinetists competition is closed for new entries.  You can now listen to the submissions (all different versions of a piece called Convalecencia) and vote for your favorite. Go hither and do thusly.  

The energetic Marco Antonio has just launched a new clarinet series on YouTube called Try This at Home. It’s not modern music…but nonetheless good fun.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Is This the End of New Music?

I wasn’t able to make the premiere screening on July 4 but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about a new documentary film called The End of New Music, which follows Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, and Missy Mazzoli, the founders of Free Speech Zone, as they tour the East Coast with the groups Newspeak and NOW Ensemble, playing concerts in unlikely venues like clubs and bars and bringing new music to audiences that might not otherwise be exposed to it.  The film, directed by Stephen S. Taylor, takes a verite approach to the tour, combined with interviews and various performance footage.  You can watch video samples or buy a copy at American Beat Productions.  You can also read Steve Smith’s terrific Times review there. 

Anybody seen the film?  (I know you have, Judd.)

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Secret Ingredient Nominations

ARTSaha! 2007 LogoANALOG arts ensemble has just announced its instant composition contest, Iron Composer Omaha.

Five finalists will be selected to compete. At noon on September 11, we’ll unveil the instrumentation that they’ll be writing for and a secret ingredient. We’ve announced that the ingredient ‘could be any kind of musical raw material, such as a chord progression or a found object’. 

If you were playing the role of the Chairman, what secret ingredient would you choose?

by Jodru
Contemporary Classical

Guerillaz

I’ve just finished a new piece called Elevator Music, which is intended to be performed by two people in an elevator or a similar enclosed, public space.  It consists of a set of 5 rhythmic cells which are played by slapping or knocking on the walls of the elevator.  The idea here is in the tradition of a sort of guerilla performance practice where music is brought into unexpected places, unannounced.

ElevatorMusicThumbnail

The premiere is up for grabs–let me know if you perform it somewhere.  Obviously, I can’t be held responsible for arrests or other legal action, and the point isn’t to be obnoxious, but rather unexpectedly interesting.  Have fun!

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Sex, Existentialism and the Modern Spectralist

Bernard Holland has a funny piece in today’s Times about setting out to listen to Marc-André Dalvavie’s new CD and getting mugged instead by an roving gang of French musical poseurs.  A couple of choice bon mots: 

So breathless were the revelations contained in this essay, called “Space, Line, Color,” it seemed for a moment the music could wait. Expounding on hearing, space and your stereo system, it reads: “while right/left movement can be recreated, front/back movement is replaced by a sensation of sound advancing or receding.” So it’s true that sound is softer when it is farther away than when it is in front of you. That will be useful the next time I come across a marching band going down the street.

Here is another verbal space walk: “Hence some of” Mr. Dalbavie’s “works do not limit their musical space to the concert platform, but extend to the entire hall,” he writes. “The defocalisation thus achieved calls into question the spatial hierarchy resulting from any frontal presentation of the music.”

I sure wish Gabrieli had thought about that 450 years ago; imagine the antiphonal music he could have written, with sound flying from every direction at people standing in the middle of his church.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Improv

Steve’s click picks #32

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Let’s go a little further east, via a couple netlabels (online labels that offer freely downloadable, full-length MP3 “CD”s, usually with accompanying notes and cover artwork) 

Nexsound (Ukraine) 

logoThey’ll tell you: Nexsound has been dedicated to the unusual and experimental music, both acoustic and electronic, that could be of any style and trend released on CDs and MP3 files. The term that describes music released by Nexsound best is probably “environmental music”, and it is often like “indocile ambient”. Nexsound music envelops you, listening to it feels like immersing into the very special atmosphere that this music creates, and thus it is intended rather for private listening. We pay the very special attention to the package of CDs released, so they look and feel very nice.

From the year of 2003 we’re also responsible for organizing concerts in Ukraine. From May, 2005 Nexsound hosts international festival for electronic music and visual arts – Detali Zvuku. Founded in 2000 by Andrey Kiritchenko in 2000 in Kharkiv city, Ukraine, Nexsound is currently being operated by Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra) as well.

Besides traditional “for-sale” CDs, there’s a whole section of MP3-only releases; for the modern classical folks I’d especially recommend To Escape, To Breathe, To Keep Silence, by the young composer Alla Zagaykevych.

Musica Excentrica (Moscow) logo

Like they say: Musica Excentrica is a netlabel, based in Moscow, Russia, producing selected avantgarde post-music in non-entertainment genres (acoustic as well as electronic). In general, we are making music distribution in the internet as online label.

Mainly electro and improv, this label also carries a compilation of pieces composed as tributes to the memory of Iannis Xenakis, as well as Polina Voronova’s Luxurious, awarded an “Honorary Mention” in the digital music category at the Prix Ars Electronica / International Competition for CyberArts 2007.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Sam Solomon in Lenox

On July 3, the very excellent percussionist, Sam Solomon, presented a Boston University Tangelwood Institute (BUTI) faculty recital at Trinity Church in Lenox (Ma). His program included pieces by Nico Muhly, Eric Hewitt, Michael Early, David T. Little, Marcos Balter, and Judd Greenstein, two of them–Hewitt and Early–first performances. Due to the circumstances, the place was packed with attentive and enthusiatic teenagers, although that doesn’t mean that such a demographic wouldn’t necessarily show up to such a performance somewhere else, given how exciting and entertaining this one was.

Every one of the pieces was thoughtfully made and impressively and interestingly executed, and every one was snappy and enjoyable to listen to, and, I suppose, to watch, although my own sight lines weren’t all that good. Anyone of them, by itself, would have impressed me a fair amount. I found myself thinking, though, that, just as just about every piece for harp, flute, and one or two strings seems to suggest that Debussy figured out almost everything that could be done with the combination and did it a while ago, and therefore just about every piece ends up sounding a little like the Debussy sonata, every piece for percussion has a similar kind of strategy and intention. Each had its point, including the peppy beginning of the Muhly, the slightly random, water dripping in the sink, first section of the Early, and the general spashiness of the Balter. David T. Little’s Three Sams concentrated first on pitches in (—)I Am (a very engaging line with unexpected and enjoyable twists and turns, then on non pitched elements, especially cymbals and drums in the dark and angry Son of (—), and then combined them in the slow and mournful Wicked Uncle (—), with the pitched elements suggesting the ghosts of half remembered half recognizable hymns and patriotic songs. Judd Greenstein’s biblically titled We Shall Be Turned, was perhaps the most memorable for being the quietest and most meditative of the pieces, starting with a simple pattern and returning to it again as the starting point for each of its increasingly longer and most complex discourses.

Sam Solomon’s performance was elegant, eloquent, and full of pazazz. He played each of the pieces as though it was the most important thing in the world. It was wonderful to hear. The recital, at just about a hour without an intermission, was exactly the right length.

by Rodney Lister