Contemporary Classical

Guilty Pleasures

We’re having an ice storm in the Center of the Universe this morning.  Good day to be old and vested although it’s not really the thrill you think it’s going to be.  Especially the old part.

The last time Master Salvage and I took a meeting in the S21 Starbucks HQ the subject of guilty pleasures came up.  You know what I mean, Steve and Eydie, Karen Carpenter, Alvin and the Chipmunks.  But, applied to non-pop music.  David confessed that there were parts of certain Michael Nyman pieces that sound pretty darn good.  I owned up to an affection for Hovhaness.  Now, it’s your turn.  What’s your guilty pleasure.

I sure hope nobody says Philip Glass.  I’m listening right now to a new recording of Music with Changing Parts (Orange Mountain)  by the brilliant English group Icebreaker.  No need to be embarassed about liking this one; it’s as good as it gets.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

“Wilson’s Ivory-bill”

WilsonsIvoryBill.jpgTimes have been good for my old composition teacher Lee Hyla. After many years on the composition faculty at Boston’s New England Conservatory, he has been hired into an endowed chair at Northwestern University, where he will take up residence in the coming academic year. His impending departure has precipitated a flurry of activity in Boston, including a lengthy and glowing profile in the Boston Globe in mid January and a farewell retrospective concert at New England Conservatory a few days ago. And in November, John Zorn’s Tzadik label released his latest CD “Wilson’s Ivory-bill.” Samples of three of the four works on the CD are available at http://www.leehyla.com/, if you’d like a taste of what I’m talking about here. (more…)

by Galen H. Brown
Awards, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Grammy

And the Winners (We Care About) Are

  • Classical Vocal Performance: “Rilke Songs,” Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Peter Serkin), track from Lieberson: Rilke Songs, The Six Realms, Horn Concerto.
  • Classical Contemporary Composition: “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears,” Osvaldo Golijov (Robert Spano).
  • Opera Recording: “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears,” Robert Spano, conductor, Kelley O’Connor and Dawn Upshaw; Valerie Gross and Sid McLauchlan, producers (Women of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra).
  • Producer of the Year, Classical: Elaine Martone.
  • Classical Album: “Mahler: Symphony No. 7,” Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor, Andreas Neubronner, producer (San Francisco Symphony).
    Classical Crossover Album: “Simple Gifts,” Bryn Terfel (London Voices; London Symphony Orchestra).
  • Engineered Album, Classical: “Elgar: Enigma Variations; Britten: the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Four Sea Interludes,” Michael Bishop, engineer (Paavo Jarvi and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra).
    Orchestral Performance: “Mahler: Symphony No. 7,” Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony).
  • Choral Performance: “Part: Da Pacem,” Paul Hillier, conductor (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir).
  • Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance(with Orchestra): “Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques (Exotic Birds),” John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Angelin Chang (Cleveland Chamber Symphony).
  • Instrumental Soloist Performance(without Orchestra): “Chopin: Nocturnes,” Maurizio Pollini.
  • Chamber Music Performance: “Intimate Voices,” Emerson String Quartet
  • Small Ensemble Performance: “Padilla: Sun of Justice,” Peter Rutenberg, conductor (Los Angeles Chamber Singers’ Cappella).
by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Hugo Wolf for the masses — what’s elitist about that?

Found on the Web:

” … I think the thing about classical music being a class-signifier is more to do with the fact that our society has lost the notion that there are great works of culture that people should … might be excited to discover and there’s a common pool of artistic excitement that in a democracy you should offer to everyone.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t broaden the repertoire, but essentially if you live in a western democracy you have a certain historical — well, things have got to where they are now because of the culture, and I think you’d want to look at what that culture has produced. I don’t think it is particularly restrictive. I’d feel awkward at a pop concert, but if I were to go, I’d try to find out about it.

“I think it’s also partly living in a culture that doesn’t have the idea that in order to enjoy something a lot, you might have to put something into it to get anything out. Maybe that’s television culture — it’s a passive culture. It sounds very old-fashioned, and maybe patronising, but the culture of working-class education at the end of the nineteenth century was incredible, because people had this sense of a culture of self-education, and I suppose that is what we’ve all lost.

“I think we’re all drawn towards the commodiification that television represents: an endless consumption of things. Shopping is the easiest thing in the world to do. Most people’s major cultural experience, where they exercise discrimination, where they look at things in terms of color, and shape, is through shopping. Maybe other things always seem a bit strange in comparison with shopping …”

by Richard Buell
Contemporary Classical

These are the days, my friends.

Nice burble of activity going on here. Way to keep the fires burning, people.

Robert Zimmerman’s learning how to take the heat over in the Composers Forum. Click on comments: some heavyweights are weighing in.

A charming post from Jeffrey Biegel, who’s performing Lowell Liebermann in Germany. I wonder what all the Kool Kats in Deutschland think about our Lowell.

Anthony Cornicello digs the five-octave marimba; Naxos’s hawking some Virgil Thomson; Jay Batzner’s uncovered a copy of the long suppressed video of Einstein on the Beach. Huzzah! Makes me long for a Lego Lohengrin. (Paging Robert Wilson!)

And just below Steve Layton has the real deal from South of the Border.  I wonder if having CD reviews on the home page constitues illegal immigration.  

(Boo!  Hiss!)  Tough crowd.

And Gottschalk has top billing in CD Reviews.

Gottschalk???

I’ve got some serious dissertating to do over the weekend. Aren’t you glad it’s a long one, too? When I told my ear training class they had off because of Abraham Lincoln, one orange-haired genius said: “We should shoot all the Presidents!”

Jerry’s back next week. Poor guy’s in San Diego.

by David Salvage
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #16

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:

“New” Mexico via Myspace

NEW Mexico If your idea of contemporary Mexican art music is still Chavez and Revueltas, you’re so far out of date that it’s not even funny! I can’t catch you up on composers from the 50’s through the 90’s; Google will have to help you out there. Some names to explore might be Manuel Enríquez, Mario Lavista, Federico Ibarra-Groth, Marcela Rodríguez, Hilda Paredes, Hebert Vázquez, Germán Romero, Gabriela Ortíz Torres, Juan Felipe Waller, Julio Estrada, Mauricio Beltránand. (Feeling out of the loop already? Then get busy…)

Those are all fine and respected composers, surely, but where I want to take you is to an even newer fringe of younger Mexican composers and performers, experimental and electronic musicians and improvisers, who happened to have set up a loose confederation on Myspace.com. We’re talking the NEW new, musicians whose influence lists always include Ferneyhough, Lachenmann and Murail right along with my generation’s heros like Xenakis, Ligeti and Feldman; where Zorn and Merzbow are placed as equals with any of those previous names; and where electronic and digital means are are taken for granted as stock-in-trade, right along with all the traditional instruments.

Many will have links on their Myspace page to more “official” websites; but the Myspace pages will give you an easy central location with plenty to listen to for starters, lots of information (Spanish helps but isn’t absolutely essential), and a good sense of the interconnection involved. I don’t need to tell you much more; this is Myspace after all, so you don’t need to just listen but can actually meet and talk with each and any of them! So what are you waiting for?.. say hello to our southern neighbors.

Iván Naranjo: Composer, his 2002 string quartet Uno, played by the Arditti, was just released on a new Mode CD.

Wilfrido Terrazas: Flautist and composer, seems to be a large part of the “glue” bringing these groups of musicians together.

Isaac de la Concha: Composer, improviser, teacher, with no less than three (!!) Myspace pages, one devoted to each aspect.

Alexander Bruck Santos: Violist with a fondness for everything from Feldman to free improv.

Adnán Márquez-Borbon: Saxophonist and improviser.

With a number of other musicians (who you’ll find listed in their personnel of the pages), this posse does duty in one or more of the following experimental ensembles:

Generación Espontánea

Ensamble Áspero

ArtoEnsamble

Colectivo Kaoss

Circling the periphery, but still connected and quite worth checking out, are these composers:

Arístides Llaneza

Juan José Bárcenas

Pablo Rubio Vargas

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

(“Achoo! I think I have a cold today. Better call in sick. And read Sequenza21!”)

Sometimes you don’t need to travel far to be where the hot stuff’s happening. We’ve got fresh action on a lot of fronts here at the ole dump.

First stop: Composers Forum. Robert Zimmerman, a new voice here whose presence advances our already unstoppable progress through Dixie, finds the whole “I’ll be understood after I’m dead”-thing a bit ridiculous. But he knows a few famous folks these days who don’t. I think I’m going to go leave a comment . . .

Back now. Moving on.

Next: Lawrence Dillon has a reflection or two on Ned Rorem’s Our Town. And some interesting dirt on the John Williams.

Next: the inimitable Elodie Lauten problematizes the notion of calling oneself a composer. Uh-oh.

Next: things are getting a bit slow for Jay Batzner. But he has some spoils from the battlefront nonetheless.

Next: take a stop in CD Reviews and read about a sexy new thang featuring some Babbitt and Rakowski. Yowza! Then go see what happens when you look up “Hayes Biggs” in Grove.

And – as if this weren’t enough – Jacob Sudol finds a particularly well-established contemporary German composer to be no lach-ing matter. Hardy, har, har . . .

Phew.

There’s only one course of action left for the reasonable person: drop everything and call in sick. You have some catching up to do.

by David Salvage