Sequenza21

Dispatch from the Used Book Cafe

Tonight’s joint performance at the Used Book Café by Hilary Hahn and Chris Thile was an essay in the satisfactions of virtuosity. Any concert-goer who can no longer thrill to the sound of lightning-fast fingers should go his or her way and leave the rest of us to our fun. For sure technique is not all. And for sure the steps to acquiring a technique that can thrill are becoming more brutal and inhuman to mount by the year. And, also for sure, much that is essential to extraordinary music making is often lost on the climb. Some may even grumble that Hahn and Thile fly only so high as they do because they travel light.

But tonight, sitting through solo and duet renditions of Bach, Tartini, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, and others, one happily forgot the old complaints about virtuosity and sat back contentedly in the rush of arpeggios, trills, tremolos, and scales. One smiled at the clear joy Hahn and Thile took in collaborating with a fellow musical athlete of the first caliber, someone who could play along tight no matter how blazing the tempos dared. This isn’t to say the country whiz kid winging his way through the classics and the conservatory prodigy tentatively testing the waters of folk music always made for an effortless couple: Thile’s Bach got pretty runny, and Hahn’s bluegrass was a little green. But the super-abundance of talent on display more than made up for the moments of musical awkwardness. Hahn and Thile charmed and dazzled through the evening, and we all cheered. Both artists have new CDs out, and let’s hope they both sell lots and lots of them.

P.S. On a more somber note, Tower Records is officially breathing its last. I’m not up for a eulogy tonight (lectures yet to prep); but the “Going Out of Business” signs in the windows of the grand store by Lincoln Center are making me feel a little bummed.

October 10, 2006October 10, 2006 by David Toub

ACO, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

The Year of Brad Lubman

Brad Lubman has been involved in the new music scene for nearly two decades but this looks like his breakthrough season. Conductor/composer Lubman makes his guest conductor debut at the helm of the American Composers Orchestra Friday evening at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, when the ACO kicks off its 30th season with its first Orchestra Underground Composers OutFront! concert.

In addition to leading the orchestra in music from Michael Gatonska, Evan Ziporyn, Michael Gandolfi, Susie Ibarra, Charles Ives and our own wunderkind Corey Dargel, Lubman will conduct the world premiere of his own Fuzzy Logic, for woodwinds, brass, percussion, synthesizer, piano, and amplified cello and video. Lauren Radnofsky is amplified cello soloist and Boom Design Group creates the visual designs.

The program will be repeated at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 15 at 7:30pm.

If you miss those shows, Lubman’s new music group Electric Fuzz will be gigging Friday, October 20, starting at 7 pm, at Joe’s Pub Electric Fuzz was formed in 2006 by performers and composers who played together as members of the Musica Nova Ensemble at the Eastman School of Music. The group is currently collaborating with Boom Design Group, a team of virtuoso visual artists and web designers, who draw on their own performance backgrounds to produce improvised and interactive video installations.

The Joe’s Pub event will feature the premiere of a new Lubman work named for Electric Fuzz; plus Jumping to Conclusions, a quartet with electronics; and several pieces for violin, cello and synth that Lubman has co-composed with ensemble member Lauren Radnofsky. Music by David Lang and Pierre Boulez rounds-out the event.

Lubman has enjoyed a busy and multi-faceted career, but is probably best known among new music insiders as a gifted utility infielder who can deliver a superior performance from any world-class orchestra or ensemble on a moment’s notice, a talent honed by having been Assistant Conductor to the mercurial and (in my view) inexplicable Oliver Knussen at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1989-94.

This is his well-deserved chance to bat cleanup.

October 10, 2006October 10, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Boston, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

The Callithumpians are Abloom Again

The Callithumpian Consort is at work again at 8:30 pm tomorrow night at NEC’s Jordan Hall in a slightly premature celebration of the 80th anniversary of Earle Brown’s birth (it’s actually December 26).

They’ll be playing Brown’s Sign Sounds, a rarely heard masterpiece of open form from that resides somewhere on the frontier between serialism and improvisation. They will perform the piece several times, and have assured us that no two performances will be alike.

And they’ll also be continuing their exploration of Alvin Lucier with his Ever Present, for saxophone, flute, piano, and sine waves (which they describe it as “infinitely slow expansion of the music between your ears”) and John Luther Adams’s songbirdsongs, a JLA masterwork from the 1970s.

The Callithumpian Consort has just recorded the complete songbirdsongs under the direction of the composer. Watch for the CD release.

And don’t miss Evan Johnson’s review of the latest Earle Brown recording on the CD Review page.

October 9, 2006October 9, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Housekeeping

RSS Feeds and Such

I’m told that some of you are having problems with the comments drifting across the page in Internet Explorer. I use IE 7, the latest version, and they scroll perfectly for me. If you’re using an earlier version of IE, you might want to download and install IE 7 to see if that helps. If not, let me know.

Also, some of you are getting mixed signals from the RSS feeds–some of which come from the old Blogger setup and some from the WordPress pages. Here’s a directory of all the feeds from the site:

WordPress Blogs

Front Page https://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/feed/
Composers Forum https://www.sequenza21.com/forum/?feed=rss2
CD Reviews https://www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/?feed=rss2
Calendar https://www.sequenza21.com/calendar/?feed=rss2
Charles Griffin https://www.sequenza21.com/latvia/?feed=rss2

Blogger Blogs

October 8, 2006October 8, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Just Intonation

Do the Just Thing

Dear Jerry-

Thanks for your kind words earlier this year about the Ben Johnston String Quartet release on New World Records. I am the producer of that disc, and also the 2nd violinist in the Kepler Quartet (so, not an unbiased perspective…)

I am writing you and your readership with a plea, an invitation (however you wish to frame it) to become a part of bringing this great composer’s legacy into broad daylight. We recently received a Copland grant towards finishing the recorded cycle of Ben’s 10 string quartets, but still need to raise significant dollars to make it happen.

Mr. Johnston just turned 80, is in reasonable health, and has just moved to Wisconsin for family reasons-which means that his expertise is now wonderfully available to us. We have have a talented, committed ensemble, schooled in the challenges of Just Intonation, and a stable, supportive label behind the project.

All the pieces are in place to finish this project except for getting past the aforementioned monetary hump.

Wouldn’t it be a healthy scenario if we could get a grassroots, Howard Dean-like campaign going, and include as many individuals as possible from the new music online community, at modest contributions, in support of this truly great, and largely-overlooked composer late in his career?

Could be worth a small investment for the Karma alone, not to mention the accessibility of this ground-breaking music…

We’re going to attempt it, because we know it’s the right thing to do, not the commercial thing to do—anyone out there with us?

For details, please see

http://www.keplerquartet.com/fundraising/

May we all have each other’s support when we need it!

Eric Segnitz
Kepler Quartet

ericsegnitz@yahoo.com

October 8, 2006October 8, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Photographs

Who’s Got the Last Laugh Now?

October 7, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Composers, Contemporary Classical

It’s a Blog!

We have a terrific new blog to unveil this morning. It’s called From the Faraway Nearby: An American Composer in Latvia and is written by Charles Griffin, a native New Yorker who is now living in Liepaja, a small industrial city in the western region of Latvia, on the Baltic Sea. Fascinating insights into a musical world that is far different from the one most of us know.

Elsewhere, the classical pretentiousness thread goes on forever on the Composers Forum page. Leonard Slatkin weighs in with some new fodder over at Drew McManus’ Adaptistration, which is where the conversation began.

Did I mentioned that Steve Reich is Composer of the Month in the S21 shop?

October 6, 2006October 6, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Uncategorized

Steve’s click picks #1

Jerry was nice enough to ask if I’d maybe post here once a week, each time sharing a few links to sites where I’ve encountered composers and performers offering excellent work to listen to online. Forgive the length, but once the pleasantries are out of the way in this post, the rest will be to-the-point.

Why me? Besides being a composer lo these past 30-something years, and having a life-long receptivity to music from across the temporal and cultural spectrum, since I first got online in the mid-90s I’ve actively pursued new work that composers and performers have been kind (and forward-thinking) enough to put up on the web for all to hear. Some will be “names” most people know from their CD store or radio, but many aren’t. Here I am out in the wilds of Seattle, but the beauty of the web is that we don’t have to let geography, your CD store and the gods of the mysterious Land of Marketing boss us around so much anymore.

Waiting for the “imprint” of some label or publisher before you deign to listen, especially dealing with the living, is such a waste of your own all-too-precious initiative. A multitude of excellent musicians are hard at work around the world, right now; tricks of place, time or circumstance keep many of them off your radar, but I can help rectify that a little if you give these links a chance. You only have to bring open ears attached to an open mind.

One request: don’t ask me to mention or “review” your music, site or link. By the time I give a recommendation here, my reviewing is done; if I’m telling you about it, that means I’ve listened to what’s there and truly enjoyed what I heard. Not that you have to agree with my opinion, by any means! But if you never take the time to listen, you’ve passed up the chance to decide anyway.

Rozalie Hirs (Netherlands)

(From the main page, choose “New Composition” and then “MP3” and “Multimusic”.) Though Rozalie has cracked her 40s (b.1965) and seems busy enough on her side of the Atlantic, she doesn’t get much exposure on our side. It’s a shame; pick any of these to hear and you’ll find beautifully poised work, full of play and color.

Erel Paz (Israel)

(The main page has a direct link to MP3s and scores.) Erel’s a little younger (b. 1974) than Rozalie, but keeps up a bit more dialog with the Romantic and Classic. But not strictly “formula”; there’s an idiosyncrasy that I find pretty appealing.

Matt Ingalls (US, CA)

Follow the “sound” link on the main page, and you’ll find a veritable cornucopia of listening! Matt (b.1970) is one of those Bay-Area powerhouses that seems to pop up all over the new-music scene. A phenomenal clarinetist as well as composer and improvisor, you’ll find plenty to hear from him in all of these roles.

OK, that oughtta hold ya for a week or so… Enjoy.

October 6, 2006October 13, 2006 by Steve Layton

Concerts, Music Events, Signings

Lay Around the Shack ’til the Mail Train Comes Back

Chris Thile, the best bluegrass mandolin player alive except for maybe Mike Marshall and Sam Bush is having a joint CD release party with some girl fiddle player named Hillary Hahn next Tuesday night starting at 7 pm at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, NYC 10012 (212-334-3324).

What makes this an unusual CD release event is that tickets are being sold to the public for $15 with the proceeds going to charity, specifically Housing Works which does a lot of good things.

The kids have a lot in common; both were child prodigies. They will performing both classical and bluegrass music which seems about right since that’s what they do. I’m hoping they’ll play a couple of things together. Love to hear Hillary cut loose on “Billy in the Low Ground” or “Black Mountain Rag.”

Master Salvage and I are planning to go and I expect that other great bluegrass fiddle player, Frank J. Oteri, will probably be in attendance, too.

And, who wants to go to the American Modern Ensemble Midtown Sound concert at Tenri on October 14 and review it for S21? I can get you a pair of free tickets.

October 5, 2006October 5, 2006 by Jerry Bowles

Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

What Makes Your Bigmouth So Large?

The Elastic Arts Room (formerly Project One), whose artistic and managing director is S21 home Christopher Zimmermann, is teaming up with the super cool composer/performer collective counter)induction and the Chris Lightcap Quintet (Tony Malaby, Mark Turner, Craig Taborn, Chris Lightcap, and Gerald Cleaver), to present Bigmouths on Monday, October 16th at 9 pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York.

Bigmouths explores the nature of improvisation and aleatoric music-making. Counter)induction will give world premiere performances of new works by Douglas Boyce and Chris Lightcap and will perform works by Earle Brown and Vinko Globokar. Chris Lightcap’s quintet will then use Lightcap’s compositions as departure points for their improvisations.

Elastic Arts Room is a new organization that fosters conversations and collaborations between artists in different genres or disciplines.

“Through a discussion with the performers and audience and an innovative blog-based pre-concert discussion forum, this unique collaboration will explore the cultural and philosophical ramifications of these approaches to music-making and will explore the concept of the ‘work’ within pluralism,” Chris says.

Other business:

Classicaldomain.org has an interview with composer David Schiff about his song cycle All About Love, which will be a highlight of the Metropolis Ensemble concert on Thursday, October 19, at 8 pm at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts.

Here’s one of those Ligeti Meets Rocky stories that will knock you out.

And, of course, the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra.

October 3, 2006October 3, 2006 by Jerry Bowles