Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, New York

All Around the Town

Lots of neat stuff happening this week and beyond. 

Pulse, the composers federation that includes our amigo Darcy James Argue will close out its 2006-2007 “season” with a new music project called Sihr Halal, Music of Praise and Celebration.  The concert is Saturday, May 5th 2007 at 8:30 PM at Roulette located at 20 Greene Street in SoHo (tickets are $15 at the door, $10 students/seniors). The project is funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections program.

Sihr Halal features the premiere of six compositions by the composers of Pulse—Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, and Yumiko Sunami.  You can get a taste of what’s in store by going over to the Pulse blog where you’ll find audio excerpts from all of the pieces available online (recorded during rehearsal) along with commentary from the composers.

Another friend of the family, Jenny Lin, is doing an all Valentin Silvestrov program, including Der Bote, Epitaph, Post Scriptum & Drama Sunday, May 6, 2007, 5:00 PM 31 Little West 12th Street New York, New York 10014  Info here or call 212.463.8630.   

Young-Ah Tak, the amazing pianist who blew the joint away with her performance of Judith Lang Zaimont’s Wizards (2003) at last year’s Sequenza21 concert is playing the piece again (along with works by people named Haydn, Debussy, and Schumann) at the Yamaha Piano Salon, 639 Fifth Ave., 34th Street (entrance on 54th Street between Madison and Fifth).  The concert starts at 7:30 and admission is free.  If you want to catch a real comer while she’s still making her bones, this is a great chance.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

An Italian in San Francisco

Italy has produced great pianists like Busoni, Michelangeli, and Pollini.  Its current pianist in the running for that distinction, Marino Formenti, even hails from Pollini’s hometown, Milan, where he was born in October 1965. Formenti has been dubbed ” a Glenn Gould for the 21st century ” by The LA TIMES’ Mark Swed, which probably refers to his Gould-like obsessive-compulsive absorption in the music he performs, as well as the widely divergent composers he programs.  These traits were certainly center stage in the last of 3 San Francisco Piano Trips programs — the first consisted of Kurtag and 17 other composers — he gave at the De Young Museum’s Koret Auditorium in Golden Gate Park. Would that the museum were beautiful, to say nothing of site specific. Instead its bland forbidding facade sits shopping mall generic — one half expects to see a banner saying “SALE” on it — and its interior has a funny model home smell as if nobody ever lived there or would want to.

Fortunately the Koret is another story entirely. It’s a commodious 269 capacity steeply raked theater, with seats that flip up snugly when you or your neighbor needs to get by. And even better news is that Formenti’s program there, Nothing Is Real — Music for The Present and The Future — was theatrical and worked.

Formenti entered as if from a trap door stage left, clad head to toe in avant garde black, then sat down at the Hamburg Steinway to play Matthias Pintscher’s Monumento — In Memoriam Arthur Rimbaud (1990). The 36 year-old German has apparently been embraced by both the musical right and left, and judged from the evidence of this piece alone, it’s not hard to see why. Here’s a sensitive artist who’s fashioned a work with a wide, though never showy, dynamic range, with beautiful, expressive harmonies, and a firm and probably uncalculated sense of space and line. Formenti’s performance was pellucid and powerful. Next came Music for Piano and Amplified Vessels (1991 ), by the American, Alvin Lucier ( 1931 — ), which sounded like a short, spare lament. This was followed by 2 offerings by Helmut Lachenmann (1935 –), Wiegenmusik (1963), and Guero (1970), which were far more extreme, but less interesting than the previous pieces, yet just as well played. Formenti made a strong case for Hommage a Ligeti, for two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart (1985), by Austrian Georg Friedrich Haas (1953-), which he played, arms outstretched, between 2 grands, as both hands went up and down the keyboard incrementally. Ligeti has rarely been a charrming composer, and Haas’ “hommage” lacked that quality in spades. But what it did have going for it was an obsessive focus on conjoined and opposed sonorities, though Glass has explored these things more fully and more interestingly in Music in Similar Motion (1969), and the seminal, rarely heard Music with Changing Parts (1970). Quarte-tones give Arabic music much of its expressive power, and some Western composers who’ve used them, like Alex North, in parts of his film scores like CLEOPATRA (1963), and UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984), have done so with wit and point.

The 3 succeeding pieces by Galina Ustwolskaya (1919 –), Sonatas # 5 (1986), and 6 (1988), and Perduto in una Citta D’Acque  (Lost in a City of Water) ” (1991), by the newly famous Salvatore Sciarrino (1947 –) , were colorful, and Ustwolskaya’s # 5 even seemed to quote Bartok’s 1936  Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. Formenti also played Cage’s 1958 Music Walk, and his setting and resetting of radios of vastly different sizes, makes, and hues, was amusing, and focussed the ear on sounds we wouldn’t normally give full attention to. Sciarrino was represented again by Notturno Crudele No. 2 (Cruel Nocturne) (2000) , a stylisitc and coloristic tour de force, and Lucier, once more, by Nothing Is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) (2000), which was lyric quiet personified. It also brought into very sharp focus the sometimes ahistorical nature of the school stemming from Cage, where everything, as in American life as a whole, has to be now, or next, while the European pieces Formenti played here showed how our neighbors across the pond are as preoccupied as ever with the weight of their histories.

Formenti, who looks like an Italian character actor, has a strong presence, formidable technique — both conventional and extended — and some pieces required him to use his fists, the flat of his hand, or his forearms. His fierce devotion to whatever enters his musical orbit impressed big time. Musicians, and especially pianists, with this breadth, and passion are rare. His audience here listened hard, and responded with grateful applause.

by Michael McDonagh
Contemporary Classical

Dudamel and the LA Phil on radio

On Sunday, April 27, KUSC will broadcast (and stream on the internet) the program with Dudamel conducting the L.A. Philharmonic.  It was an exciting performance, and I hope that comes across when broadcast.  For those of you in the center of the known universe the broadcast will begin at 7:00 pm.  For those of us in more adventurous climes, it begins at 4.  The program is Dances of Galanta by Kodaly, the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto with Bronfman, and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.  That’s on KUSC, with links for PC, Mac, and iTunes. 

And do try to see and hear the Viola/Salonen conception of Tristan, despite the exorbitant prices being charged by Fisher Hall.  If you can only see a single act, the visuals in the third act are a powerful addition to the music, those of the first act occasionally distract from the plot, and those of the second act, beautiful as they are, seem to lack the focus of the other two.  But the whole thing in one evening is the most powerful.  A new Tristan has been brought on, and he’s getting excellent reviews. [JerryZ]

by JerryZ
Chamber Music, Click Picks, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

NEW Mexico comes to NYC

In my Click Pick #16 I introduced you to the young Mexican contemporary scene. I just recived a note from one of the musicians profiled, flutist/composer Wilfrido Terrazas, that I’ll pass along:

Friday, May 4, 2007 at 7PM
Wilfrido Terrazas, flutist
New Mexican Works for Flute

Free Admission

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY

This concert, organized in collaboration with ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), is part of a project during which the flutist has collaborated with some of Mexico’s most daring and original composers in pieces that explore novel ways of writing for his instrument. The concert will feature new works by Mauricio Rodríguez, Víctor Adán, Ignacio Baca Lobera, Hiram Navarrete and Juan José Bárcenas, and is made possible by a grant from Mexico’s FONCA.
Founded in 2001, the International Contemporary Ensemble is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble comprised of thirty young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. This concert is part of ICE’s Young Composers Mini-Festival, which that will take place at different venues throughout New York from April 30th to May 4th.

See? It all comes together… You’re practically old friends now, so turn out and give Willy a warm welcome.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Lost and Found

Harry Somers

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Canadian Music Centre 12306

Any one considering an opera suitable for young people may want to consider Harry Somers’ A Midwinter Night’s Dream. The story takes place in very-north America, near the Artic circle, and tells the story of a bored young man who slips into a dream, thinking he is dead. The libretto, by Tim Wynne-Jones, shows a fusion of cultures, combining folklore and present-day ideas (like Star Wars and Miami Vice).

The score is atmospheric. Using a piano and percussion, along with a children’s chorus, the textures move the text (and I assume the action) to the foreground. The musical language is at times complex and “modern,” but also playful and perfectly suited for young singers and listeners.

Ben Goldberg Quintet

The door, the hat, the chair, the fact

Cryptogramophone 126

The juxtaposition of relatively standard jazz numbers with abstract songs suits the Ben Goldberg Quintet: they are either a jazz combo or a new music ensemble (why not both). The opening work, Petals, is a compact prologue featuring Ben Goldberg for the first twenty seconds. Song and Dance is a bouncing ensemble piece complete with solos and catchy riffs.

Carla Kihlstedt intones the words of Ben Goldberg’s teacher, Steve Lacy, in Facts, accompanying herself on the violin, and later joined by the rest, in a seductive melody. The following track, Blinks, a composition by Steve Lacy, displays a delicate, pointillism that grows into an all out brawl.

Roumi Petrova

Enchanted Rhythms

Cello music from Bulgaria

Kalin Ivanov, cello

Elena Antimova, piano

MSR 1156

Homesickness can do wonders for the creative mind. Roumi Petrova (b. 1970) expresses her love and longing for Bulgaria in Enchanted Rhythms. The musical language isn’t unique, but it does capture what, I suspect, is a Bulgarian sound. The rhythms are energetic; the melodies are real Bulgarian songs or made to sound that way. The opening Passacaglia on a Traditional Bulgarian Melody “pays tribute to the Bulgarian community in New York City.” Two cello sonatas and a five movement suite are also included, all remaining faithful to Petrova’s vision of creating strong Bulgarian music.

by Daniel Gilliam
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #27

…Will just have to wait… Since, in just a little over a week, this nearly-lifelong Northwesterner will have left Seattle and be stumbling around our new home:

Yep, Houston, Texas! My wife has an incredibly sweet job waiting at the Houston Chronicle, and I’m happy to play Mister tag-along. As to music, I’ve done the “virtual” scope-out of the big and small institutions, ensembles, and universities. You all know me, though; I’ll be poking around in the cracks, looking for the really interesting folk.

As to its out-of-the-way “podunkiness”, I might have to remind a few of you that while you were distracted elsewhere, Houston somehow sneaked up to become the country’s fourth-largest city. And it’s not finished growing by a long shot… Whether that means more nights at the opera, I seriously doubt — after all, already over 40% of those millions are Latino, over 20% African-American, and it’s home to one of the largest Vietnamese concentrations in the country. Whatever your stereotype of the city, the Bush-buddies and their poof-haired wives are the real minority now, and shrinking every day. Whatever form the musical scene takes, there’s a feeling that some very dynamic, 21st-century stuff can grow along with the city.

The wonder-that-is-the-web means I’ll still be hanging around through the whole move, and when I’m settled the click-picks will undoubtably pick up where they clicked off. Bien viaje to me! I’ve got to go run all my old coats to the Goodwill and buy a bunch of new light shirts…

by Steve Layton
ACO, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Music Events, New York

Minimalist Friday

It’s minimalist week in the Center of the Universe, highlighted on Friday night by the John Adams 60th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall.  Adams will be conducting the American Composers Orchestra in performances of My Father Knew Charles Ives, The Wound-Dresser (with bass-baritone Eric Owens) and the Violin Concerto, with Leila Josefowicz doing the honors. 

Meanwhile, also on Friday, in a nearby universe, Michael Riesman, Music Director of the Philip Glass Ensemble and concert pianist, will be performing the world premiere of his marvelous new transcription for solo piano of Glass’ score to the 1931 classic horror film, Dracula.  The gothic walls of the Orensanz Foundation for the Arts provide a perfect backdrop to Reisman performance, which will done live to film.  Tickets are $20 ($25 at the door).

On a more somber note, there will be a public memorial service for composer and pianist Andrew Hill, who died last Friday, at Trinity Church (89 Broadway at Wall Street) this Friday, April 27, at 2:00 pm.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Mystery of pioneering black conductor

Rudolph Dunbar (right), who died in 1988, was the first black musician to conduct the Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestras, he wrote a best selling book on the clarinet, was an acclaimed jazz musician, and a contemporary composer. Yet today he isn’t even mentioned in the standard music reference books, and is only remembered as a black activist – why? Read about the mystery of Rudolph Dunbar over On An Overgrown Path.  

Photo – University of Massachusetts 

by Pliable
Contemporary Classical

Monday Miscellany

Starting Wednesday night, the ICE is going to be all over town like it’s no one else’s business. Among the considerable damage they’re rendering is our own Evan Johnson’s piece Supplement for clarinet and electronics. Gareth Davis will be doing the honors at Rosenberg+Kaufman Fine Art this Friday.

The folks at Linked Musicians have been recognized as an “Official Honouree” by the “Webby” awards. Membership to Linked Musicians, which is free, enables you to find jobs, bands, and just generally link up with others dedicated to live music.  And they tell me a Webby is a big deal.  So — good going!

You theremin nuts will want to click here: WNPR’s presenting “Passion: The Theremin” tonight at 7 and 8pm.

Lastly: I turned in my dissertation proposal last Friday. Entitled “Strategies of Fragmentation in the Music of György Kurtág,” I’m sure this won’t be the last you’ll hear of it.  Wa, ha, ha!!!

And, yes, I’m posting this on Sunday: tomorrow morning I wake up at 6 a.m. to prep my final lecture this semester on Ligeti.

That is all.

by David Salvage