Contemporary Classical

The best of times, the worst of times

“But I do believe the people who are the most immortal are the composers. The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is. And I’d like to compose.”– Joshua Bell, from a CNN story on his win of the Avery Fisher Prize

April 7th, 2011: Gerald called. Says if I don’t do Tchaik in Berlin this November I can kiss my contract goodbye. Sigh. My cello sonata needs the time. I just got the draft back from Yo-Yo who has reservations about the dead butterflies. But that’s the sound I want!! He’d do it, but I can tell he’d rather not . . . And Manny still can’t get the hang of bowing piano strings. I’ve showed him ten million times, but . . . Anyway so I have to put the entire thing back under the knife. Also heard from Sony. They want to hear “exosphere” before agreeing to record. Fair enough, but you try to find twelve accordion players who are available the same afternoon for a session! Ugh. And Edgar’s in town next week and wants to have dinner at Saint Georges. I guess I can spare the money. He’s a pal, and, who knows? Maybe I can get him to commission that bass and percussion piece I’ve been thinking about . . . Oh and the rehearsal with Hillary? Disaster. Ask her to play double-stop trills, no problem. But write one measly microtone, and forget it: we spent twenty minutes on one single note, and I’m still not sure she has it. At least the fifth annual S21 concert at Carnegie was awesome. Wish those guys would show me some love . . .

by David Salvage
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Getting a Clue

For those of you who may not be familiar with it, there is a seminal document called The Cluetrain Manifesto that defines a new style of communication in an age in which everyone and everything is electronically connected.  Its premise, to which I subscribe, is that the internet is fundamentally different from mass media like television because it allows lots of people to have “human to human” conversations (with all the complexity and difficulty that implies) rather than being force fed a one-sided party line or mass marketing message. 

There can be negative aspects to this ubiquetous connectedness.  Some people hide behind the mask of anonymity on the internet to say and do cruel and destructive things.  But, in the best case scenario, the web allows us to talk to each other and–under the right conditions of respect, transparency, and honesty–to learn and even grow into a community where people can disagree without being disagreeable.  I believe Sequenza21 is one of those rare communities and that makes me proud.

The first of the Manifesto’s 95 theses is this:  “Markets are conversations.”  In other words, if people are talking seriously about your product, or your Whitney concert, that is a positive thing from both a human and commercial point of view.

Just an old hippie (and professional marketer’s) point of view.

p.s.  We need a new conversation started over on the Composer Forum page.  If you don’t have a user name or password to post something let me know and I’ll fix you up.

Lots of terrific new reviews over on the CD Review page.

I listen to the fantastic Counterstream radio (see toilet seat icon) while I work and yesterday heard a terrific piece by Ezra Sims and it occurred to me that somebody ought to voluteer to write a regular column here every week or every other week called something like “Underrated,” which would focus on composers we don’t hear much about. 

by Jerry Bowles
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, New York

All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance

Kevin Gallagher, guitarist and founder of Electric Kompany, writes: 

I noticed in your Jacob TV piece that there was hardly any mention of the fact that Electric Kompany is doing a world premiere of White Flag (for rock quartet and tape) based on sounds from the Iraq war starring the voices of Bill O’Reilly and George W Bush at the Whitney Museum at Altria on Friday, May 4 at 8pm.
Needless to say, I was pretty upset that they aren’t stressing this piece to the press. It’s rare enough to have a world premiere for rock quartet at the Whitney, never mind to have it tied to the biggest news story for the past 5 years.
I don’t know if the Whitney is scared of it (possible), but I want people to know what we’re about to do. It’s a good piece and we’re going to play the hell out of it. If you could please make sure people know about the premier, I would be very appreciative. Thank you for your help.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #24

(I think I’m going to switch to mid-week from here on; people seem to like it.) 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:

Tom Rojo Poller (b. 1978 — Germany)

Tom Rojo PollerBorn in Osnabrück, Poller began his composition studies in 1996 at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, continuing with Prof. Walter Zimmermann at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK). After an exchange year at the Royal College of Music London in 2003, he received his diploma and returned to Berlin where he’s just finished his postgraduate work. Since 1999 he’s also been studying German Literature, Philosophy and Musicology at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. Last year, as participant of the Global-Interplay-project, he attended conferences in Accra, Ghana.

Tom is especially interested in the temporal aspect of music (including polyrhythmical/polymetrical music); music theater — or more generally, various forms of musical representation; the relation between music and language; the philosophy of music (especially music and the emotions, music and understanding). His music is deeply rooted in the western European musical tradition, but is greatly influenced by its lesser known aspects (e.g. medieval and renaissance music, rhetorical aspects of baroque music).

His website shows off all of these interests; his music page there is especially generous about providing quality listening to his already-amazing pieces (the recordings and performances are generally top-notch). This is someone to keep an eye on in the coming years.

………………….

Tristan Fuentes (b. 1951 — Mexico), Joe Holmquist (b. 1951 — US)

The official word is:

Tristan FuentesTristan Fuentes, born 1951 in Mexico City, is the son of a school teacher and barrister. His first ensemble experience was “Cherub Choir” as a five-year-old, and piano studies followed at age six. In the fifth grade he had the opportunity to join the class band. It was denied that he play trumpet but firmly suggested that he play drums. At age fifteen he organized his first combo and started playing professionally.

As a university student he pursued a dual track of classical music and rock & roll. In his mid-twenties he studied percussion, music theory, and composition at the New England Conservatory and suffered under the tutelage of Gunther Schuller. Upon his liberation with a Master of Music degree, he set upon a diverse life of people, places, languages, and art objects. His main compositional influences have been Terry Riley, John Cage, and Frederic Rzewski. His works are primarily for small instrumental ensembles, often including exotic percussion.

Fuentes describes his music as “liberated minimalism”. As a theory and composition student he was trained in the tradition of Paul Hindemith and the later serialists, while outside of class he was listening to and playing rock, jazz, and minimalist music. His works are characterized by catchy melodies and strong rhythms. Harmonically the music is tonal, with dissonance as the main device for creating tension between compositional elements.

Or…

Joe HolmquistJoe Holmquist was born in 1951 in Benson, Minnesota, a medium-sized community out in the west-central part of the state (in this case, medium-sized means 3,000 souls). There wasn’t much along the line of organized activities for kids, so it was common to participate in music organizations both at school and at church. “…At the time, I didn’t think I was learning anything in particular from those music activities, but I was!…”

His first ensemble experience was “Cherub Choir” as a five-year-old, and piano studies followed at age six. In the fifth grade he had the opportunity to join the class band. It was denied that he play trumpet but firmly suggested that he play drums. At age fifteen he organized his first combo and started playing professionally.

As a university student he pursued a dual track of classical music and rock & roll. In his mid-twenties he studied percussion, music theory, and composition at the New England Conservatory and suffered under the tutelage of Gunther Schuller. Upon his liberation with a Master of Music degree, he set upon a diverse life of people, places, languages, and art objects. His main compositional influences have been Terry Riley, John Cage, and Frederic Rzewski. His works are primarily for small instrumental ensembles, often including exotic percussion.

Holmquist describes his music as “liberated minimalism”. As a theory and composition student he was trained in the tradition of Paul Hindemith and the later serialists, while outside of class he was listening to and playing rock, jazz, and minimalist music. His works are characterized by catchy melodies and strong rhythms. Harmonically the music is tonal, with dissonance as the main device for creating tension between compositional elements.

Hmmm… The truth is what we will, right? And the truth is that Joe’s site, besides highlighting his excellence as a percussionist, kindly hosts a wealth of Tristan Fuentes pieces in MP3. Bright, propulsive and non-cheesily tuneful, They’re well worth getting to know.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

What the heck is TAFTO?

I’m so glad you asked!  TAFTO is Drew McManus’s “Take a Friend to the Orchestra” month–a month dedicated to bringing new fans into the fold.  As always, Drew is marking TAFTO with a series of essays by hot, industry-savvy writers — how-to guides, analysis of the contemporary situation, and so on.  The first two essays went up yesterday and today, and you should check them out.

Both of my fans (hi mom!) will want to know that my own contribution will be going up on April 12th, and the rest of you will want to know that you can see a list of the other contributors (including the likes of Frank Oteri and Leonard Slatkin) and other timely TAFTO information right here.  Why, I’m reading it right now!

Seriously, this is good stuff and if you’re interested in discussions about the future of the classical music industry these essays will be worth reading.

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York

I Want My JacobTV

Contrary to speculation that the mystery man in Friday’s photo is a Guantanamo detainee or a middle school crossing guard, the fashion-forward gentleman in question is, in fact, the Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, aka JacobTV, whose work (it says here in the press release) “…has had a huge impact on the European music scene in the past decade, but he is far less known in the U.S.”  It could happen.    

The Whitney Museum of American Art, that well-known new music venue, is concluding its Spring 2007 Whitney Live series with Grab It!, a three-day festival dedicated to JacobTV, Wednesday to Friday, May 2-4, 2007 at the Whitney at Altria in mid-town Manhattan.  The festival is the first large-scale examination of his work on this side of the pond, featuring some of his signature pieces as well as recent compositions and premieres, video, instrumental work, and a new evening-length dance piece set to his boombox music.  He will also unveil a major CD/DVD anthology of his work on the Dutch label Basta, which includes orchestral music, boombox works, chamber music and video. 

That would explain the “three pounds” of CDs I got from the Whitney which, by the way, are still up for grabs although, frankly, judging from the catty comments, you folks are not taking this opportunity nearly seriously enough.

Among the participants and performers in the festival are PRISM Quartet, Miro Dance Theatre,  New Century Quartet,  Frank J. Oteri,  Kevin Gallagher, Electric Kompany, Margaret Lancaster, Dorothy Lawson, Meehan/Perkins Duo, and Kathleen Supové 

The back story is that Limor Tomer, who curates the “Whitney Live” events,  heard JacobTV’s music when the Prism sax quartet did a whole evening of his work at Symphony Space last year (Prism performs on the May 2 concert, then again twice in Philadelphia a few days later).  She went wild over the music and decided to take the risk of programming three nights of his work, although no one here is really familiar with it.  She hired the terrific new music publicist and all-round hottie Aleba Gartner to promote the show and, of course, we all know about my character flaws in the area of pretty gals.

Speaking of which, Aleba is also promoting the June in Buffalo Festival June 4-10 this year.  This is one of the top festivals in America and it gets surprisingly little coverage although we always try to do our part.  Anybody live in the Buffalo area who would like to “audit” the festival, do a little deep immersion, and keep a daily Sequenza 21 diary of the event?  Something can be arranged.

Other stuff:  I was having a Rome withdrawal attack last night and tuned into Showtime’s new Tudors mini-series.  Pretty good, actually, but my favorite part is when a scruffy young man turns up at the cathedral with a letter from the Bishop of Canterbury introducing him as Thomas Tallis, a bright prospect who plays the organ, flute, sings and “composes a bit.”

And, finally, if I haven’t said so already, I think Steve Layton does a fantastic job week after week with his Click Picks.  Thanks much, Steve.  You’re a big part of our little success.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Ziporyn and Friends at The Stone

New York, NY, March 29, 2007.  I’ve been a fan of Evan Ziporyn’s music since six or seven years ago when I first heard his work in a concert of piano music at Dartmouth College. (I think it must have been “Pondok,” in a recital by the fabulous Sarah Cahill, but I can’t seem to find evidence to support that conclusion. Sarah, if you’re out there. . .) Ziporyn is a fixture at Bang On A Can, and a member of the Bang On A Can All Stars where he plays a mean clarinet; he’s also a member of the music faculty at MIT and the founder of Gamelan Galak Tika. Last Thursday, Ziporyn teamed up with cello-percussion duo Odd Appetite (Ha Yang Kim and Nathan Davis) and bassist Robert Black (another Bang On A Can All Stars member) for two sets at The Stone, John Zorn’s Alphabet City new music dive.

Ziporyn opened the set with “Partial Truths” for solo bass clarinet, from his 2001 album “This is Not a Clarinet,” which weaves together percussive sounding tongued notes, cycles of leaping figures that outline lovely contrapuntal lines, melodies sung through the instrument in harmony with the clarinet sounds themselves, and a variety of other extended techniques that pushed at the far edges of the acoustic properties of the instrument. The fullness and richness of the texture was remarkable given the limitations of a single, ordinarily monophonic instrument.

The atmosphere was very relaxed and informal as the remaining three members of the quarter took their places for the remainder of the concert, and Ziporyn explained that while some of the pieces they were about to play had titles, they were really just working titles and so we weren’t going to be told what they were. But they were all good.

The first piece with the quarter, for example, started with a devastatingly beautiful texture of rich descending lines and then slowly went haywire. The consonant harmonies of the beginning slowly went dissonant, and the notes themselves were played with harsh extended techniques. This was to be a common structural feature of the remaining works—clean, organized music that gradually broke down in fascinating and simultaneously beautiful and ugly ways. Talking with Nathan Davis afterward learned that about 30% of the concert was improvised, and most of that improvisation took place in the parts where things “get weird.” I also learned that while the first piece for the quartet was through-composed the performers were instructed to add harmonics and other effects to dirty-up the sound. The cello and bass would essentially play with deliberately sloppy technique in order to introduce the kinds of artifacts that one ordinarily avoids. Ziporyn’s clarinet would make the kinds of shrieks and howls that I remember making by mistake when I was first learning the saxophone in elementary school. But in this context those “ugly” sounds simply added to the character and to the beauty of the music. Other pieces switched seamlessly from one time signature to another, in the same effortlessly disorienting way that the best Philip Glass music does, and layering different time signatures over each other. Following the music by counting becomes impossible, but once you let go you drift above the grid carried by the chaotic beauty of the sounds.

And all that remains is to note that the performers themselves were uniformly excellent. All four have impeccable technique, and Davis and Kim are both skilled composers themselves which presumably enhanced the level of the improvisational components of the evening. I suspect all four will be heard on this summer’s Bang On A Can Marathon, so mark your calendars.

by Galen H. Brown
Contemporary Classical

Do You Know This Man?

If you know this gentleman or his work and have some original thoughts about same,

and you want to write (for real, now) a decent sized post about said mystery person and work,

and you are not Frank J. Oteri or Samuel Vriezen,

leave your reasons for wanting to write said post below with your mailing address (or if you’re squemish about the internets, send me an e-mail.

Winner will get in the mail about three pounds of CDs of said person’s work.

by Jerry Bowles
Boston, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Me and My Toy Piano

In 1973 my mother bought me my first toy piano at Harvey’s Department Store in Nashville.  This is not quite the heartwarming tale of a little tyke that it might at first seem to be, since I was at the time a student at New England Conservatory, and she was getting it for me so I could play the Cage Suite for Toy Piano in a concert in Jordan Hall.  It turned out that, completely inadvertently (only operating according to her generosity), she had got me the Steinway of toy pianos, a Schoenhut.  I’ve continued to play the Cage over the years, and last summer my toy piano more or less just fell apart. 
As I thought about buying a new one, it occurred to me that I should do an inaugural concert on it.  I began to ask people to write pieces for me, and mostly they agreed to do.  

The concert is on Sunday, April 8 at 8:00pm in the Marshall Room in the Music Building at Boston University (855 Commonwealth Avenue). 

The concert includes–in addition to the Cage–pre-existing pieces by Kyle Gann, Eve Beglarian, Richard Whalley, and Dai Fujikura (for toy piano and violin pizzicato–the violinist will be Peter Zazofsky).  There are new pieces, which will be having their first performances, by Lyle Davidson, Pozzi Escot, Stephen Feigenbaum, Michael Finnissy, Philip Grange, John Heiss, Derek Hurst (with electronic sounds–i.e. on my boombox), Matthew McConnell, Matthew Mendez, Nico Muhly, Ketty Nez (for toy piano and piano–Ketty will be the pianist), Dave Smith, Jeremy Woodruff, William Zuckerman, and me (for clavichord and toy piano–the clavichord player will be Peter Sykes).  (I’m pretty sure that’s everybody.) The pieces are all really good and all really different from each other. 

I hope you can come to this (what can only be described as an) unusual concert.

by Rodney Lister