New Music reBlog: March 2010 Archives

« February 2010 | Main | April 2010 »

March 31, 2010

A Shaper of American Music, and Musicians - New York Times

A Shaper of American Music, and Musicians
New York Times
Standing from left, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Wallingford Riegger, William Schuman and Walter Piston. Seated, Douglas Moore and Roger Sessions. ...

Originally from lutoslawski OR xenakis OR boulez OR Dutilleux OR ligeti OR "elliott carter" OR stockhausen OR "steve reich" OR "tristan murail" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Q2 Stream Daníel Bjarnason set from LPR

WNYC and Q2 are now streaming the complete set from Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason. He performed at LPR on March 3 to celebrate his first disc, Processions, through the Bedroom Community label.

At the March 3 show, which you can listen to it in its entirety below or at the Q2 website, Bjarnason brought a 20 piece orchestra for their lush performance.

Originally from (Le) Poisson Rouge, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

Kronos Quartet, "Flugufrelsarinn"

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

Connections Chamber Music Series - SanDiego.com

Connections Chamber Music Series
SanDiego.com
The music in Different Trains was a new direction for Steve Reich. In his earliest works, the tape music masterpieces It's Gonna Rain and Come Out, ...

Cumberland Quintet presents April 6 chamber music performance - UC Daily News

UC Daily News

Cumberland Quintet presents April 6 chamber music performance
UC Daily News
Ligeti composed a wide variety of music, but is also best known for his compositions used in films, including "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Shining," and ...

Preview calendar: Clubs and concerts for April 1-7 - North County Times

Preview calendar: Clubs and concerts for April 1-7
North County Times
HAPA ---- Hawaiian music duo of Nathan Aweau and Barry Flanagan; 8 pm April 9; Sherwood Auditorium, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 700 Prospect St., ...

and more »

Moving the blog

I am moving this blog here

Originally from Thoughts on Music and Silence, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Violinist looks like a punker but plays like a virtuoso - Omaha World-Herald

Violinist looks like a punker but plays like a virtuoso
Omaha World-Herald
He opened with the rapid-fire passagework of Witold Lutoslawski's “Subito” and followed with John Cage's meditative, youthful “Nocturne” and Nathan ...

The Most Amazing Sound in the World...Ever

By Colin Holter
What do you know about composers' music when they declare their favorite sounds?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

AMC Awards over $170K in 2010 Live Music for Dance Grants

The American Music Center has made grants totaling $170,800 to 35 dance companies in New York City and New Jersey as part of the 2010 round of the Live Music for Dance Program which will engage more than 100 musicians and 25 composers.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Rude words and heavenly voices - Financial Times

Rude words and heavenly voices
Financial Times
... is one of the more curious developments in classical music these past 20 years, for he spent his early career as dogsbody to Stockhausen and Boulez. ...

and more »

Connections Chamber Music Series: American Roots and Rhythms - SanDiego.com

Connections Chamber Music Series: American Roots and Rhythms
SanDiego.com
The music in Different Trains was a new direction for Steve Reich. In his earliest works, the tape music masterpieces It's Gonna Rain and Come Out, ...

Composer Peter Eotvos makes modern opera "angelic" - Reuters

Composer Peter Eotvos makes modern opera "angelic"
Reuters
Q: You worked with Stockhausen for 40 years. Did you ever think he was from Sirius? A: "He told us this....but it is not important. ...

and more »

At 85, conductor and composer Pierre Boulez is a work in progress - Victoria Advocate

At 85, conductor and composer Pierre Boulez is a work in progress
Victoria Advocate
He built programs and seasons around themes that connected 18th and 19th century music with the 20th. He expanded his audience by holding avant-garde "rug" ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

Shostakovich?

Been there, done that ...

Now try it with candles.

With thanks (again) to blogger sans frontieres Antoine Leboyer. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Medieval chant group to perform at Brevard College - Asheville Citizen-Times

Medieval chant group to perform at Brevard College
Asheville Citizen-Times
Anonymous 4 has also branched out into the realm of contemporary music, and has premiered works by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Steve Reich and ...

and more »

Jazz led musician to monastery - Chicago Sun-Times

Jazz led musician to monastery
Chicago Sun-Times
He doesn't listen to a lot of modern music any more, but he still enjoys Steve Reich and Steve Coleman. In 1994, Funk and his childhood friend, Jon Elfner, ...

Contemporary composition in Baltimore goes DIY and leaves the concert hall behind - Baltimore City Paper

Baltimore City Paper

Contemporary composition in Baltimore goes DIY and leaves the concert hall behind
Baltimore City Paper
... curated by Sacawa, is now nearing the end of its third season of presenting music by 20th- and 21st-century composers ranging from Karlheinz Stockhausen ...

Contemporary composition in Baltimore goes DIY and leaves the concert hall behind - Baltimore City Paper

Baltimore City Paper

Contemporary composition in Baltimore goes DIY and leaves the concert hall behind
Baltimore City Paper
After the man at the table drops a final card--all black--the music stops. Silence for a few beats. As the musicians relax, saxophonist John Berndt asks, ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 31, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Angels in America - This is London

This is London

Angels in America
This is London
Tony Kushner's epic seven-hour play Angels in America already contains the seeds of an opera — or is it a musical? ...

and more »

How this 28-year-old Scot wrote some of best classical music of 21st century - Scotsman

How this 28-year-old Scot wrote some of best classical music of 21st century
Scotsman
Virga is being played in Paris in May by the Orchestra de Paris under legendary composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. "The fact that the RSNO are making a ...

and more »

March 30, 2010

Soft Healer – “Gentle One” - Stereogum (blog)

Stereogum (blog)

Soft Healer – “Gentle One”
Stereogum (blog)
... the Kraut-y propulsion throughout the songs I've heard keep me coming back to some smoky wood-paneled '70s bar, Stockhausen lurking in the background. ...

San Diego City, County High School Groups Eligible for Free Transportation to ... - MarketWatch (press release)

San Diego City, County High School Groups Eligible for Free Transportation to ...
MarketWatch (press release)
Maestro Pierre Boulez, a world-renowned composer, conductor and honorary director of the Paris-based Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic/Music ...

and more »

Staying Inside

By Frank J. Oteri
It is far more difficult to pay attention to music outdoors than it is indoors

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Arnie's Army

Reviewing the Chameleon Arts Ensemble.
Boston Globe, March 29, 2010.

Originally from Soho the Dog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Music from a war zone

Coverage elsewhere of the interruption of yesterday's Jerusalem Quartet concert at London's Wigmore Hall by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Not only should the Israelis be asking why such protests happen, they should also be asking why support for the protesters is increasing. Header image is the CD of Palestinian classical music recorded in Gaza in 2006 by Ad Vitam Records, a company that believes in solving problems by working together rather than by disrupting concerts or by targetted assassinations.

In my profile of Ad Vitam last year I quoted the company's credo that their recordings should "build bridges of expectations, hope and trust". 40% of the sales revenue from the Gaza CD goes directly to the musicians in Gaza whose livelihood is threatened by the current political situation there. Unlike the Jerusalem Quartet the Ensemble musical de Palestine does not have an exclusive recording contract with Harmonia Mundi nor did they receive support from the BBC via the BBC New Generation artist scheme. As Ad Vitam say about the Ensemble musical de Palestine:

The best way to get to know a new music is to trust those who play, not to make money. Those musicians seem to play to survive.

And yes, there are two sides to any argument.

My copy of the Gaza CD was bought online. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Move over Simón Bolívar: a new youth orchestra is on its way - The Guardian (blog)

Move over Simón Bolívar: a new youth orchestra is on its way
The Guardian (blog)
... wide range of music expected of an international orchestra, from classics such as Mozart and Haydn to contemporary music such as Karlheinz Stockhausen ...

and more »

An interview with Justin Wright of Expo 70 - KC Free Press

An interview with Justin Wright of Expo 70
KC Free Press
... you approach writing and performing music? You're dead on on influences. I have been very influenced by minimalist composers as well like Steve Reich, ...

Ligeti at Robinwood Concert House - Toledo Free Press

Toledo Free Press

Ligeti at Robinwood Concert House
Toledo Free Press
Although his main focus will be music, Ligeti said while in town he plans on stopping by Tony Packo's, which he pronounced with a soft “a” before ...

2 of 2 (in part)

Both of Sine Nomine’s performances of the Passion were wonderful, as good as the composer could have hoped, and better. The recording of the 21 March performance arrived, and fully vindicates the warm-fuzzy feelings.

I have been introduced (via e-mail) to a clarinet/percussion duo from Atlanta, DMC Duo (“DMC” stands for “devil may care”). Not surprisingly, they are open to new music (the devil you say?). And they will be touring in June, including a date here in Cambridge . . . so, yes, I’ve begun work on a 9-minute piece, Angular Whimsies (Heavy Paint Manipulation).

Last minute-ish, I have been engaged as a substitute tenor at First Church for this Sunday past (when we sang Casals’ O vos omnes) and next. For Easter, we are singing (almost all of) Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb . . . only the second time I’ve been part of a performance of it, and really a fun piece. Paul found it understandably difficult to find an organist to hire for next Sunday . . . so he will play at the console. It was easier to find a conductor to hire, and so the Britten will be conducted by Tim Harbold, director of Oure Pleasure Singers — the choir who will join together with Sine Nomine in a May program to sing the Vaughan Williams Mass for double choir. Paul has also suggested that I give Tim a complimentary copy of the Alleluia in D for women’s choir . . . which I do think I have ready to hand, and can bring along this Sunday morning.

The Opus 48 is a convenient narrative hinge, for I called the St Paul’s Cathedral administrator yestermorn, and what should I hear over the phone receiver while I was on hold, but the Alleluia in D (SATB version). Probably still the old, old recording, but hey, my music is still in there. The occasion for my call was that I heard recently from an old friend that they had sung my Nunc dimittis (from the 2006 Evening Service in D) not long ago; so, I was calling to research the precise date (14 March). So there is still the occasional ‘residual’ Henning performance at 138 Tremont Street.

Even as I have been composing this message, I have had incoming e-mail messages to finalize the next rehearsal of Lunar Glare (this Friday) for which I will need to ‘finish’ my clarinet part (in the sense of adding the needed cues). And if I can practice, well, that won’t be a bad thing, either, at all, at all. That piece we will play on 12 May.

It turns out that Heinrich Christensen at King’s Chapel will be out of town that week, so he cannot accompany me for a cl/org program on 18 May. I am still considering Plan B. Strike that: As soon as I typed the phrase Plan B, I realized I have been meaning to call Peter Bloom to check his availability for that Tuesday . . . and I suddenly had enough with the “meaning to.” I called; Peter is in.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

ECM and the art of piracy

As yet another EMI chief executive ends up on the editing room floor the major corporate labels continue to blame piracy for their problems. But illegal copying is an interesting gauge of demand. In many cities in Morocco 100% of the CDs on sale are pirated, and you won't find any copies of the latest offerings from teenage Chinese pianists or barely post-teenage celebrity conductors among them. But significantly there is an awful lot of counterfeit ECM product available. Which, as the CD inlay seen above shows, does bring a different kind of problem.

As books have been devoted to the graphic art of ECM it is worth dwelling for a moment on the graphic art of piracy. It must be assumed that the illegal copy of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan and Jan Garbarek's Ragas and Sagas seen above predated the availability of cheap image scanners as the pirated copy has new artwork replacing the ECM original seen below.

On the pirated version below, Herbert Maeder's typically atmospheric photo, presumably of one of Pakistan's many mountain ranges, has gone. Its replacement mimics the shadows in the foreground and peaks in the background using a fjord backed by mountains. A cheap copy or a flash of creative insight? Well ... saxophonist Jan Garbarek does come from Norway, and the CD was recorded in Rainbow Studios in Oslo, Norway in May 1990. And Norway is of course the country of fjords. The major corporate labels have a lot to learn from the pirates.

I have started a fighting fund which accepts PayPal donations in case the the following lands me in trouble with the RIAA. The pirated version of Ragas and Sagas was bought from the store seen below, the synchronistically named Bob's Music in the souk in Essaouira, Morocco. Yes I know piracy is bad. But give me five minutes in Bob's Music to five hours in the corporately bland HMV stores in the UK. If you want a kora from Mali or an oud from Morocco Bob's emporium of musical delights is the place to go, and I am quite happy to add his shop to my list of best record stores in the world. I should hasten to add that Bob's Music also has some very interesting non-pirated CDs, including Platinium Music transfers of classic 1970s recordings from sufi influenced Moroccan protest band Jil Jilala, more on them soon.

Piracy is not new. Back in 2005 I wrote about early music piracy.
Hear an excerpt from Sagas and Ragas here. Bob's Music is at 3, Rue Youssef Ben Tachafine, Essaouira, phone (212) 0668 252695, email bob_music2000 at hotmail.fr With thanks to non-aligned blogger Antoine Leboyer for the EMI story heads up. I was going to say the lower photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010 but I had better keep quiet on that subject. Do please do report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

At 85, conductor and composer Pierre Boulez is a work in progress - Victoria Advocate

At 85, conductor and composer Pierre Boulez is a work in progress
Victoria Advocate
But now Boulez is widely, warmly embraced. Having just turned 85 on Friday, he is no longer feared but feted as one of the great men of music, ...

Larghetto

Sound Clip: Larghetto Excerpt by Philip Mantione

Excerpt from a live performance at the Santa Fe Complex during the opening of a multimedia show called Occam’s Razor (2008). This piece is from a collaborative improvisation by Philip Mantione and Martin Back. It is performed on bent circuit devices with an amplified metronome.

Elektronische musik: a guide to krautrock - The Guardian (blog)

The Guardian (blog)

Elektronische musik: a guide to krautrock
The Guardian (blog)
Informed by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd, among others, the late 1960s and early 70s saw the ...

Music and merch. Bands over-think design. Fans want big loud logos.

If you think fans will buy obscure, under-branded and highly unique items, think again…

I just read another great interview from Rick Goetz (Musician Coaching). This interview was with John Mathiason from Cinder Block. Cinder Block handles merch for artists like Kid Rock, the Dixie Chicks, the Pixies and many others.

It’s probably safe to say that John knows what he’s talking about when he claims fans prefer big logos. Here’s a quote:

I discovered something early on in terms of how product development works, and it was really interesting. Bands would over-think designs and what they wanted to present to their fan base, and it would always be something cool and indie and something somebody in the band would wear. The problem was, nobody would ever buy it. It looked cool, and it would be something somebody in the band would wear, but the fans weren’t interested in it. They wanted something that had a big giant logo on it and is some sort of statement about, “I’m a member of this club.” If you’re walking in with some t-shirt that doesn’t say the band’s name on it and is hidden someplace, you’re not really expressing that. What always ends up selling is a band’s logo.

The entire post is informative and worthwhile reading for any artist.

Originally posted by Bruce Warila from Music Think Tank (primary) RSS, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

The Secret Life of Thelonious Monk - Atlantic Online

Atlantic Online

The Secret Life of Thelonious Monk
Atlantic Online
He also didn't like the way the jazz avant-garde took credit for harmonic developments he had been working on, and became the darlings of the media. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Two Modern Men - Chicago Reader

Two Modern Men
Chicago Reader
Was this avant-garde Haydn? If so, it also dictates that repeated sections all sound exactly the same, with no dynamic contrast whatsoever. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Avant-garde Big Ears descends on downtown - The Daily Beacon

Pitchfork Media

Avant-garde Big Ears descends on downtown
The Daily Beacon
Known for their masterful performances of modern classical music, the string quartet seemed out of their element in the mostly teenage room. ...
KnoEars serves as independent alternativeThe Daily Beacon

all 17 news articles »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Tatsuya Nakatani: The “Gong Show” Returns to Rogue Buddha, April 3rd - Jazz Police

Tatsuya Nakatani: The “Gong Show” Returns to Rogue Buddha, April 3rd
Jazz Police
---Eric Zinman, Improvisor Magazine In January 2009, Twin Cities' fans of avant garde percussion and experimental music were introduced to a master of both, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Yale School of Music Presents 'Penderecki Conducts Penderecki', 4/30 - Broadway World

Yale School of Music Presents 'Penderecki Conducts Penderecki', 4/30
Broadway World
He was an iconic figure of the 1960s avant-garde and remains a vibrantly vital voice in contemporary music. He has received numerous awards, including the ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

on-g'luk = un-luck, that is: malheur, twice ...

[march 30, 2010 | #356]

First things first ... :

1.

In the picture to the left there's my 3 fellow Diktat-ors hanging around backstage on saturday february 27th, in the kitchen upstairs at La Machinante in the rue de Rochebrune, in Montreuil, France. We are waiting for the start of that evening's performances and just finished the quick 'n' mean pasta that Rebus had cooked up for us. If you have a closer look at the picture you will notice the t-shirts that (right to left) Rebus, Jean and Rinus are wearing. These are the cassettee shirts that Jean bought for the band on a Bangkok street market during his christmas holidays in Thailand; we'll wear them as sort of a Diktat uniform during performances. (Click the kitchen photo for a pic of one of the t-shirts.)

It was two days after the PTR presentation. We had come to La Machinante in Montreuil to do the after performance for the second of three runs of Chilean theatre maker Nelson Estibill 's piece "Que de Passage". To the right you see La Machinante's Didier Calleja, all geared up for his role in Nelson's play. He reminded me of my favorite time traveling 11th century wizard, Catweazle.
(Clicking the image will lead you to l'Apparition, a short uTube of Didier in the kitchen, shot by Rebus that evening.)

Diktat did another good job that evening. We were happy with it, all were satisfied. After the performance we went out into the cour and hung around the bar for a while. We had a couple of drinks before stepping back into the main hall to pack our things. It was then, picking up his double bass that had been posed on the floor, that Jean noticed the crack in the instrument's neck.
He quickly released all four strings, but the damage had been done.
The bass's neck broke, completely, even before he had reached home.

It remains a mystery how this could have happened. Were it the intensity, the iron grip, the sound & the fury of Jean's slaloming amidst the sonic flow conjured, waggled and spilled by Diktat's cassetteurs? One would hope so, as there's hardly anything else that could at least partly justify the cruel demise of a fine 150 year old instrument. ( * ) It is not very likely though: upon examining the fractured neck, the instrument maker assured Jean that only a severe physical shock could have caused this.

2.

Jean's double bass went into repair. Fortunately - and somewhat to his own surprise - it was possible to heal the broken neck. At kind of a stiff price, as you may imagine. And it will take a while. But possible it was.
It therefore was with a bass borrowed from a friend, that a couple of weeks later, on friday march 12th, Jean joined me (piano), Jean-Jacques Duerinckx (baritone sax) and Dan Warburton (violin) for a concert in the Eglise Saint-Merry, in the 4th arrondissement, not far from the Centre Pompidou.
Here's a picture of us playing there that evening. You may click it to see larger.

We interpreted Richtige Dauern (Right Durations), the first piece from Aus den Sieben Tagen, Karlheinz Stockhausen's cycle of 'intuitive music' written in May 1968. ( ** ) Performing Richtige Dauern is something I had been wanting to do for quite a while already, at least since the writing, end 2007, of (the first part of) Electroacoustic improvisation as metalanguage and fixed point, which contains a section (10.3) with some observations on how Stockhausen's idea of a intuitive music relates to the practice of free improvisation. There could hardly have been a better occasion, a better place nor much better conditions to make that wish come true as on this evening of Erratum Musical at Saint-Merry's, curated by Rebus, and part of a series of events in the church called Les rendezvous contemporains de Saint-Merry. In hindsight I am convinced that even the very low temperature in the ancient stone building contributed positively to the quartet's concentrated and attentive performance.

Erratum Musical at Saint-Merry's opened with Jacqueline Mefano performing Noyade impressionniste and Memoire de la porte blanche, two pieces for piano solo by her husband, the French composer and conductor Paul Mefano. Next, Jacqueline accompanied mezzo soprano Cecile Zylberajch in Alban Berg's Sieben Fruehe Lieder (Seven Early Songs).

as a lot been written on "Aus den Sieben Tagen", and I in due time I surely will add some more. During the long hours we spent in the Bistro Beaubourg reflecting upon and - in a way - 'recovering' from Stockhausen, and for many of the days that followed, Jean kept on repeating how that evening's playing of 'Right Durations' had managed to overthrow most of his ideas on free improvisation.
So, yes, we would love to do more like this, and will start looking into possibilities to - one way or another - do all of "Aus den Sieben Tagen". Including, of course: "Goldstaub". A wonderful challenge.

Much contributed to making this "Erratum Musical" a memorable one, an evening, indeed, that we will not lightly forget... Jean-Jacques had come all the way from Brussels to join us in "Right Durations", by car, and spent the night at my house. When early saturday morning I stepped out to go and buy some bread, I first walked up to the place where he had parked his car, to drop a couple of coins in the parking meter.

Here is what I found:

It took police, a wrecker, a garage, four days and many hundreds of euros to heal.

Is it any wonder then that saturday evening, march 13th, at La Generale in the avenue Parmentier, as part of yet another, though very different, event curated by Rebus, one saw an agitated "A Table!" more nervous and more aggressive than usual, throwing around not only words and sounds, but also bottles, plates and good home-cooked food?

All past fast as lightning, but Rebus did manage to capture some of it.
He stitched it together in another of his famed uTubes:

We did clean up, afterwards.
So.
Nothing that a little meditation won't heal ...

notes __ ::
(*) Scene from the future "DIKTAT: the Movie":
"The band's performing at full speed and swooshingly takes even the most dangerous curves at full throttle. We see Jean Borde in frantic embrace with his bass, bending over, hitting it hard with his left heel, when suddenly, with the angelic and cardiac-arresting climax just in sight ... (close up and switch to slow motion) tznapppp ! ... the bass's neck breaks ..." [ ^ ]
(**) Kh. Stockhausen - "Richtige Dauern", from: Aus den sieben Tagen (1968), for circa 4 players : " Play a sound / Play it for so long / until you feel / that you should stop // Again play a sound / Play it for so long / until you feel / that you should stop // and so on // Stop / when you feel / that you should stop // But whether you play or stop: / keep listening to the others // At best play / when people are listening // Do not rehearse " [ ^ ]

tags: Diktat, Montreuil, double bass, Stockhausen, Saint-Merry, Paris, A Table!

Originally from HarSMedia (Feed and Podcast), ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

Visit montrealgazette.com/arts to read our expanded listings and send us your ... - Victoria Times Colonist

Visit montrealgazette.com/arts to read our expanded listings and send us your ...
Victoria Times Colonist
Casa del Popolo, 4873 St. Laurent Blvd. Tonight: Lukas Ligeti and KANTNAGANO, 8:30 pm, $10. Tomorrow: Magik Markers, Thrashed Genes, Induced Labour and ...

Snow Above Times Square

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 30, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Southern Theater Presents So Percussion, 4/29 & 4/30 - Talk Concerts World

The Southern Theater Presents So Percussion, 4/29 & 4/30
Talk Concerts World
Since its formation at the Yale School of Music, So Percussion has been creating music that is at turns raucous and touching, barbarous and heartfelt. ...

and more »

March 29, 2010

Angels in America, Barbican, London - Financial Times

Financial Times

Angels in America, Barbican, London
Financial Times
... is one of the more curious developments in classical music these past 20 years, for he spent his early career as dogsbody to Stockhausen and Boulez. ...

and more »

Ruth Mackenzie: 'There's no time to mess around' - The Guardian

The Guardian

Ruth Mackenzie: 'There's no time to mess around'
The Guardian
Her parents packed her off to join the Finchley Children's Music Group – a choir with a formidable reputation for contemporary music. ...

and more »

Sounds Heard: George Walker—Great American Orchestral Music, Vol. 2

By Frank J. Oteri
While George Walker has received scads of prestigious accolades, much of his output has not been readily available on commercial recordings—but his extraordinary music is starting to overcome this neglect.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

More on Shostakovich Bands

I recently wrote about the phenomenon of college and high-school marching bands playing Shostakovich. Nora Renka wrote in to say that the Phantom Regiment, a celebrated drum-and-bugle corps based in Rockford, Illinois, is probably responsible for the trend; they presented a routine based on Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as early as 1974 (see video above), and had great success with an all-Shostakovich show in 1996, tying for the Drum Corps International World Championship. Over the years, they’ve covered an impressive spread of repertory, from Wagner to Stravinsky and beyond. If I were running an education department at a major symphony orchestra, this is something I’d want to look into.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Unquiet Thoughts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Happy Geburtstag Helmut! - Sequenza21 (blog)

Happy Geburtstag Helmut!
Sequenza21 (blog)
From a short interview a couple years ago, here is the “Euro-formalist” speaking about what is truly important in his music: These aren't the words of the ...

NY Philharmonic Releases Concert Recordings from Alan Gilbert's Inaugural Season - Broadway World

NY Philharmonic Releases Concert Recordings from Alan Gilbert's Inaugural Season
Broadway World
The New York Philharmonic will release four individual concert recordings featuring works performed during Music Director Alan Gilbert's inaugural season. ...

Happy Geburtstag Helmut! - Sequenza21 (blog)

Sequenza21 (blog)

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Kleinhapl to Perform Gubadulina and Nystedt in Vienna March 31 - PlaybillArts

PlaybillArts

Kleinhapl to Perform Gubadulina and Nystedt in Vienna March 31
PlaybillArts
Her early interest in religious expression in music, coupled with what was deemed a 'modernistic' idiom, got her work banned from performance in the Soviet ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Monster Mash: Tokyo architects win Pritzker Prize; 'Glee' guests set; the ... - Los Angeles Times (blog)

Monster Mash: Tokyo architects win Pritzker Prize; 'Glee' guests set; the ...
Los Angeles Times (blog)
... which they were founded; music critic Mark Swed interviews conductor and composer Pierre Boulez; Paula Abdul denies rumors she'll be going to Broadway. ...

and more »

Real Mature

From Miss Mussel’s new favourite time-suck 9gag.com. Image created by the Belgian retouching firm Beefactory.

Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Model Status

BY Joelle Zigman
There should be more of a cultural awareness about the intrinsic educational quality of celebrity.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Sandro Marinoni & Stefano Roncarolo with Roberto Padovan - Cold Flowers

The Italian experimental collective Frames has been releasing a number of albums on the Clinical Archive netlabel, most of them featuring saxophonist Sandro Marinoni. This one titled Cold Flowers is one of the better efforts. The album also features bassist and percussionist Stefano Roncarolo and keyboardist Roberto Padovan. This is introspective jazz which is sometimes a bit cinematic as on the title track. A nice exception is the jaunty “Suburban Jive”. It’s another good improvisational excursion from a talented group of musicians.

Cold Flowers is available in 320kbps MP3.

Download

Originally posted by Marvin from Free Albums Galore, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

Cagebound

I was surfing channels on TV the other day. I stopped on the Animal Planet:

“…and left in their cages for years at a time, treated more like a plant than the beautiful parrot that they are, the bird slowly goes INSANE.”

This image has haunted me lately, not just because I have two parrots, each in their own cage who remind me regularly that they MUST come out and play or they’ll get cranky [or worse: INSANE].

I’m afraid I have friends who have become cagebound. Their only social outlet appears to be Facebook. Maybe that old scifi movie–where people had devolved into brains in amniotic fluid attached to supercomputers–will be our future. Who will need these old bodies anyway? No more brushing teeth, combing hair, taking baths, touching someone, seeing someone, loving someone, annoying someone. No need for sports, dating, church, school. Skip all that and just use Facebook.

And in the future, we can just use Facebook VII to communicate everything: when to go to bathroom, tell your friends every point you make in every game, your joys, your neuroses, your messages, your life.

Oh, pardon me, gotta go, someone just posted something on Facebook, I HAVE to read it.

Originally posted by Roger Bourland from rogerbourland.com, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

My first MET Live in HD

On Saturday, I went to see the Metropolitan Opera's production of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, presented Live in HD at Marcus Eastgate Cinemas in Madison. Eastgate is now Madison's second location for the Met broadcasts because the first, Point Cinemas, keeps selling out. This was my first experience with the wildly successful Live in HD series. I left with mixed feelings.

The performance itself was great. Simon Keenlyside is remarkable as the young Hamlet. I can't imagine any other singer maintaining the fine balance of subtle musicality and intense acting that Keenlyside does in this demanding role. It felt like a history making performance. Jennifer Larmore is thrilling as Gertrude, with James Morris serviceable as Claudius. Marlis Petersen as Ophelie was captivating in certain ways, but her voice had a softness that I found frustrating. Even in madness, it felt like she was never truly unhinged because her voice would not go to that visceral place.

I would agree with the general critical consensus that Thomas's opera is well worth dusting off. Despite the notorious mad scene and the violent emotions of the plot, the music mostly broods and wanders. Sometimes the wandering feels aimless and I wished for more flash and fury in the orchestra. Added to that, no melodies really stick, and at times it just sounded like a bundle of mid-nineteenth century operatic conventions. Still, the music does manage to heighten the drama, which, however removed from the original, is powerfully adapted. As the conductor Louis Langree said during intermission, it is a very French opera in that the words--the poetry of the French--almost play a more significant role than the music.

Regarding the production, the rugged, regal costumes, mostly in red wine hues, were excellent (even if predictably trench-coat heavy), but the sets seemed to me almost absurdly minimal, though I guess one could argue they added to the eerie emptiness of the piece's landscape. Either way, with the tightly framed cinematography of the Live in HD series, the sets don't matter all that much.

Which brings me to the Live in HD experience as a whole: it is not opera. It is a movie. This may seem obvious, and I know it has been said before, but I fear the distinction is slowly being forgotten. The live in HD opera experience does not in any way resemble the live in theater opera experience. First and foremost, the voices are filtered through recording devices: there is nothing that can recreate the experience of the unamplified voice. Second, the movie audience is practically never given the view that the audience in the theater has, which is to say a view of the whole stage, that beautiful framed box where acting singers create magic.

The way the operas are filmed more closely resembles TV soap operas, with predictable slow zoom-ins and lingering close-ups on facial reactions. More than once I was left hoping for Mr. Keenlyside to find a tissue offstage, so much time with his nostrils had I spent thanks to the Met film crew. Because the sets for Hamlet were intentionally sparse and the action character driven, this was tolerable. But the next Met broadcast of interest to me is the Robert Lepage Das Rheingold, where much of the impact of the production will surely depend on absorbing the full stage image. I can't imagine it will translate well, or accurately, to the movie screen.

One larger concern I left with was the long term effect of the close-up aesthetic of the series (a concern I've been told that set designer John Conklin has recently taken up). While the Met broadcasts are mostly attended by an audience even older than the live opera audience, there are the few young ones who will fall in love with the Met at the movies before they fall in love with real live opera, and they will be deeply frustrated in the auditorium when they cannot see every facial expression or hear every pianissimo. I've already heard it from the high school apprentices at Madison Opera, they just love the close-ups. This is fine if one can appreciate the two very different experiences, but there will eventually and may already be those who prefer their operas in the movie theater.

Which leads to the million dollar question: are the broadcasts taking away audiences from regional opera companies? From what I can discern, this is not the case. The Live in HD Series seems to appeal mostly to experienced opera goers looking to supplement their regular dose of the real deal, those who read about opera stars and Met productions in the New York Times and would like to be in the know. Plus in Madison at least, one can still get a ticket to an opera performance for as low as $16, compared to $24 at the movies. So it seems that right now the attendance situation is healthy, with 3D and HD happily coexisting, both fueling the other as far as awareness and enthusiasm is concerned.

But I would be more curious to learn if HD attendees are now donating to the Met, and if that means they are also cutting back on donations to their regional opera company. Again, nothing has led me to believe the latter is the case, but Renee Fleming was extremely convincing with her plea on Saturday. Caught up in the backstage excitement of it all, even I had a hard time resisting (the Met does a brilliant job of very prettily showing the nuts and bolts of their operation).

It sounds like I am complaining, and I probably shouldn't be. People are having a good time, the art form is gaining new recognition, and on a gut level, I enjoyed the broadcast because I got a taste of a rarely performed opera done very, very well. Would I change certain elements of the experience? Certainly. Do I think the broadcasts are harming local opera companies? No. But having now seen what all the hype is about, I can't help but feel some traces of concern.

As with all posts on CLASSICALIVE, any opinions expressed in this piece are my own and do not represent those of my employer.

Originally from classicalive, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)

Pierre Boulez a work in progress at 85 - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Pierre Boulez a work in progress at 85
Los Angeles Times
He built programs and seasons around themes that connected 18th and 19th century music with the 20th. He expanded his audience by holding avant-garde "rug" ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)

Works of modern composers that move you - Times Online

Works of modern composers that move you
Times Online
It was one of those occasions when the audacity and sensuous adventure of avant-garde music filled me with a mad joy. There seemed a spirit of generosity in ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

Mehldau crosses (music) party lines - San Diego Union Tribune

Mehldau crosses (music) party lines
San Diego Union Tribune
More recently, Mehldau, 39, was named to the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall, where he will succeed such contemporary classical ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

Big cities might envy MusicNOW - Cincinnati.com

Big cities might envy MusicNOW
Cincinnati.com
Tickets are still available for Wednesday night's performances by Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, and contemporary classical and pop music ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

Featured Column: Ich Bin Ein Longhair! - jambands.com

Featured Column: Ich Bin Ein Longhair!
jambands.com
In the same way that John Cage and the avant-garde liberated music to be (in Frank Zappa's conception) whatever the composer puts a frame around, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

No usual sounds for EMPAC crowd - Albany Times Union

No usual sounds for EMPAC crowd
Albany Times Union
TROY -- The avant garde is alive and well. Helmut Lachenmann came to town to prove it. ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

Cultural monitor - Polish Market

Cultural monitor
Polish Market
... Witold Lutosławski Studio in Warsaw between April 22-25. "New Tradition is an important festival for Polish culture. When the folk music stream was yet ...

Maurizio Pollini, piano - Culturekiosque

Culturekiosque

Maurizio Pollini, piano
Culturekiosque
... piano by Schoenberg, and of works by Berg, Webern, Manzoni, Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen are a testament to his great passion for music of the 20th century.

Maurizio Pollini, piano - Culturekiosque

Culturekiosque

Maurizio Pollini, piano
Culturekiosque
His repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary composers (including première performances of Manzoni, Nono and Sciarrino) and includes the complete ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

Purchase College Dance Corps Spring Concert - Westchester.com

Purchase College Dance Corps Spring Concert
Westchester.com
Luca Veggetti's premier of “Hibiki Hana Ma” is an interpretative work set to the electronic music of renowned Greek composer Iannis Xenakis. ...

Aaron Gervais

Originally from No Extra Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

Mobile Listening

Sprawling four-day shuffle:

1. Ravel, Malagueña from Rapsodie espagnole (Detroit Symphony, Paul Paray) [654/1172]
2. Ravel, ii. Très vif from the Sonata for violin & cello (members of the Nash Ensemble) [375/1172]
3. Martinů, Paraboli, H.367, i. The Parable of a Sculpture (Cz Phil, Karel Ančerl) [1028/1172]
4. Stravinsky, Abraham & Isaac, “And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering” (David Wilson-Johnson, London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen) [32/1172]
5. Prokofiev, Cinderella, Opus 87, Act II, № 28 Mazurka (Cleveland Orchestra, Ashkenazy) [110/1172]
6. Zappa, “Montana” (You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. II) [553/1172]
7. Ravel, i. Modéré from the Piano Trio in a minor (members of the Nash Ensemble) [629/1172]
8. Debussy, Six épigraphes antiques, № 1 Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d’été (Jean-Philippe Collard & Michel Béroff) [782/1172]
9. Stravinsky, Pas d’action (Vivace) from Orpheus (LSO, Robert Craft) [203/1172]
10. Shostakovich, Sonnet LXVI (Shakespeare) from Six Romances on Verses by English Poets, Opus 62, № 5 (Fyodor Kuznetsov, bass; Yuri Serov, piano) [793/1172]
11. Shostakovich, Prelude & fugue in a minor from the Opus 87 (Tatiana Nikolayeva) [376/1029]
12. de Victoria, O magnum misterium (Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly) [538/1172]
13. Talking Heads, “Houses in Motion” (Remain in Light) [344/1172]
14. Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps, i. Liturgie de cristal (Ensemble Incanto) [511/1172]
15. Stravinsky, Symphonies d'instruments à vent (Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Thierry Fischer) [914/1172]
16. Shostakovich, Symphony № 14, Opus 135, ii. “Malagueña” (Marina Shaguch, soprano; Prague Symphony; Maksim Dmitriyevich) [715/1172]
17. Nielsen, Sinfonia espansiva (Symphony № 3, Opus 27, FS 60), ii. Andante (SFSO, Blomstedt) [568/1172]
18. Beethoven, Symphony № 5 in c minor, Opus 67, iv. Allegro (Gewandhausorchester, Masur) [932/1172]
19. Shostakovich, String Quartet № 10 in A-flat, Opus 118, i. Allegro (Emerson String Quartet) [850/1172]
20. Shostakovich, String Quartet № 3 in F, Opus 73, ii. Moderato con moto (Emerson String Quartet) [764/1172]
21. Bartók, The Miraculous Mandarin: The girl sinks down. . . (LSO, Doráti) [1015/1172]
22. Bartók, String Quartet № 3, Sz.85 / BB93, i. Prima parte (Emerson String Quartet) [833/1172]
23. Frank Zappa & The Mothers, “Electric Aunt Jemima” (Uncle Meat) [274/1172]
24. Palestrina, Gloria from Missa Aeterna Christi munera (Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly) [961/1172]
25. Stravinsky, Gloria from the Mass (Westminster Cathedral Choir, City of London Sinfonia, James O’Donnell) [526/1172]
26. Genesis, “The Chamber of 32 Doors” (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) [978/1172]
27. Vaughan Williams, Symphony № 5, iv. Passacaglia: Moderato (London Philharmonic, Haitink) [439/1172]
28. Bartók, Piano Concerto № 3, Sz.119 / BB 127, ii. Adagio religioso (Géza Anda, Berlin Radio Symphony, Ferenc Fricsay) [377/1172]
29. Shostakovich, Symphony № 7 in C Leningrad, Opus 60, iii. Adagio (Prague Symphony, Maksim Dmitriyevich) [743/1172]
30. de Victoria, Sanctus from Missa O magnum misterium (Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly) [539/1172]
31. Genesis, “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” (Selling England by the Pound) [237/1172]
32. Genesis, “The Carpet Crawlers” (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) [194/1172]
33. Bartók, Piano Concerto № 2, Sz.95 / BB 101, i. Allegro (Géza Anda, Berlin Radio Symphony, Ferenc Fricsay) [357/1172]
34. Jethro Tull, “Bourrée” (Stand Up) [176/1172]
35. Stravinsky, The Flood: The Covenant of the Rainbow (London Sinfonietta &al., Oliver Knussen) [993/1172]
36. Genesis, “Heathaze” (Duke) [335/1172]

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 29, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2010

Péter Eötvös's distillation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning “gay ... - Times Online

Péter Eötvös's distillation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning “gay ...
Times Online
Eötvös made his name in the electronic avant-garde, but here he melds the worlds of Stockhausen and Berio into a rich, almost glutinous orchestral palette, ...

and more »

Invigorated by Challenges, an Eager Symphony Steps Up - New York Times

Invigorated by Challenges, an Eager Symphony Steps Up
New York Times
This season the big news in American classical music has been driven by Gustavo Dudamel at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Alan ...

and more »

Nosing around some more with ratios

Nosing around further, I noticed that there was no requirement to use the Bb at ratio 16/9 in chord number 38. 7/4 is much nicer, and gets more exposure to the true 7th. I keep the G at 40/27 glides to 3/2. To clarify the tones, I switched out the horns for sine waves.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Originally from Podcast Bumper Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Countries with Sexier Composers than Us

OK, kids, gather around, it's time for Uncle Kyle to continue your education in Serbian music. I've already told you about Ljubica Maric (1909-2003), who was the country's leading modernist composer of the early 20th century, and the only woman to occupy that position in her country's culture. Nor will I repeat what I said there about Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac (1856-1914), the country's leading musical patriarch and composer of traditional choral music.

Instead, I'm going to start with an unknown composer I'm totally fascinated by: Ksenija Zecevic (1956-2006). (That first name might be Xenia in English, and I'm sorry I lack the diacritical markings to get the last name right, but the C's are both pronounced CH.) She was a child prodigy on the piano and in composition as well, finishing her master's in music at age 21. There's quite a bit of stuff about her on YouTube, including an interview done with her when she was just 17. She was a brunette pianist then; later in life she invariably appears as a bleached blonde with bright red lipstick and well-emphasized cleavage. My friend Dragana met her once and tells me she was an incredible character who had no filter between her thoughts and her speech, and made her own career difficult by blurting out whatever came to her mind. (Composers who torpedo their own careers even more effectively than I do always intrigue me.) The music on her YouTube videos is a little New-Agey, and I gather that most of her music was for theater and film. The one recording I found in a Belgrade record store (where I bought four discs for about 1400 dinars, less than $21) is her Requiem for Nicola Tesla, the Serb who invented electricity before Thomas Edison, as the Serbs love reminding me. It's a four-movement work in Romantic style with some minimalist touches, and I offer you as mp3s the first and last movements. There's the occasional cursory web site about her, but little information, and she died at 50, apparently of heart problems. She looks like a real original.

In less colorful addition I offer you Lullabies for a Better World, Op. 113 for piano (1994) by Dejan Despic (b. 1930), who lives in Belgrade, and Silenzio (1996) for women's choir, alto flute, bass clarinet, and piano by Milan Mihajlovic (b. 1945), who teaches at the University of the Arts at Belgrade. In the latter I particularly like the way a Monteverdi quotation runs into a Rachmaninoff quotation about 2/3 of the way through. This week I'll be meeting Serbian patriarch Vladan Radovanovic - painter, poet, composer - who claims to have invented minimalism, and also be seeing my old friend Vladimir Tosic, my favorite of the Serbian postminimalists, so perhaps I'll have more offerings later. No younger composers yet, but I'm making inquiries. Freed from Turkish dominion in the 1830s, split off from the grab-bag Yugoslavia only a few years ago, Serbia has the feel of a young nation aggressively on the rise, and one that wants to take its place at the world table. The amount of academic activity concerning new music here is astonishing, and the publishers are still idealistic enough to insist that it gets into print, like America in the 1970s. Attention must be paid.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Renee Fleming rocks out

There has been a buzz for some time now about Renee Fleming's latest recording project -- covering a whole bunch of rock songs -- we're talking Death Cab for Cutie, Tears for Fears, Muse, Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, Jefferson Airplane, et al. The recording is due out in early June.

Seems like Fleming, whose affinity for jazz is already documented (in a smoky chest voice quite unlike her operatic sound), is perfectly comfortable getting all rock-y, too. A few tantalizing snippets of the disc, "Dark Hope," are included in an audio clip that accompanies a story about the soprano that appeared Sunday in The Observer. (My thanks to the on-top-of-it folks at Washington National Opera for bringing the story to my attention via Twitter.)

Originally from Clef Notes, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)

Tenny & Melby

JOHN MELBY
Concerto for Violin, English Horn and Computer-Synthesized Tape
Gregory Fulkerson, violin Thomas Stacy, English horn David Liptak, conductor

JAMES TENNEY
Saxony
David Mott, saxophone

James Tenney was born in 1934 in Silver City, New Mexico, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado, where he received his earliest musical training as a pianist and composer. He attended the University of Denver, the Juilliard School of Music, Bennington College (BA 1958) and the University of Illinois, where he received his Masters Degree in 1961 . His teachers have included Eduard Steuermann, Chou Wen-Chung, Lionel Nowak, Carl Ruggles, Lejaren Hiller, Kenneth Gaburo and Edgard Varese. In the early 1960's he was active in the field of electronic and computer music, working with Max Mathews at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the development of programs for computer sound generation and composition. Long active as a performer and theorist as well as a composer, Tenney was co-founder and conductor of the "Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble" in New York (1963-70), and has performed with the ensembles of Harry Partch ("The Bewitched" 1960), John Cage, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. He has composed some 70 works for a variety of media, and is the author of numerous articles on acoustics, computer music, musical form al'tj perception. He has received grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Fromm Foundation. He has taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, the California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California. Tenney is currently Professor of Music at York University in Toronto.

This recording marks the debut of his work on CRI

Notes on the Music

Saxony: a fine soft woolen fabric--Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

"The score of Saxony specifies a temporal sequence of 'available pitches' to be used by the player as the basis for improvisation. This improvisation may be quite free rhythmically, expressively, even stylistically, but it is completely controlled, harmonically, by the fact that pitches given are those of the first 32 harmonic partials of a low Eb. A cumulative tape-delay system is used to create both a rich vertical sonority and a complex polyphonic texture via canonic replications of the player's melodic imprOVisation. The piece was commissioned by the Ontario Arts Council and first performed by Don MacMillan in 1978." -James Tenney

David Matt is a saxophonist/composer known for his use of extended instrumental techniques through both his performances and his compositions. He frequently tours both the United States and Canada as a soloist on the baritone saxophone. Having taught at the Yale School of Music, where he received his advanced degrees, Mott now teaches performance and composition at York University in Toronto, Canada.

John Melby was born in 1941 in Whitehall, Wisconsin: he was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, which awarded him a Ph.D. in Composition in 1972. His composition teachers included Vincent Persichetti, Henry Weinberg, George Crumb, Peter Westergaard, J.K. Randall and Milton Babbitt. Melby's music, especially those works for computer-synthesized tape, both with and without live performers, has been performed widely. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, First Prize in the 1979 International Electroacoustic Music Awards in Bourges, France, and the Academy-Institute Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Melby is currenlly Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Melby's works may be heard on CRI recordings: SO 310, 91 Plus 5 for Brass Quintet and Computer performed by the Contemporary Brass Quintet, Roman Pawlowski, conductor and on SO 364, Two Stevens Songs, performed by Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano.

Notes on the Music
"My Concerto for Violin, English Horn and ComputerSynthesized Tape is one in an ongoing series of concerti for instruments and tape. Others in this series include concerti for violin, cello, viola, flute, piano and English horn. These compositions all share several points in common: they are all in one extended movement, each one has a cadenza designed to extend the development of the thematic material which has occurred earlier in the piece, and all of them are modelled to a certain extent on the late 19th century concerto, although the pitch and rhythmic materials as well as the timbral characteristics are certainly very much of the 20th century. This composition was written for Gregory Fulkerson underthe auspices of a Guggenheim Fellowship during 1983 and 1984. The tape part was realized on an IBM 4341 digital computer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, using the MUSlC360 language for digital sound synthesis. Digital/analog conversion took place at the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at the University.

The combination of live voices or instruments with tape has interested me for many years, beginning with my now withdrawn opera Quietus. written in 1968-70, and continuing through a large number of pieces, culminating with this concerto series. Such a combination (live-plus-tape) presents its own set of problems, different from those that a composer deals with in writing for soloist and orchestra. Most notable of these is the fact that at least up until the present, an .electronic accompaniment has been rhythmically inflexible, making it necessary for the soloist to follow it, rather than the other way around (as in a traditional concerto, for example). This problem has been solved by some composers by writing music in which it does not matter whether or not the performer and tape are together except at certain important structural points. In my music, since the soloist is, most of the time, structurally integrated with the tape, synchronization is of the utmost importance. Therefore, the tape part in one of my pieces is often much more precisely notated than may be usual. The degree of control necessary in making a tape of the sort that allows this to happen is one ofthe chief attractions that the computer holds for me, since I can specify durations and attack patterns very much more precisely than it would be possible to do in an analog studio. I am also fascinated by the way in which the computer can perform certain transformational procedures which fit very well into my basically Schenker-derived method of composition.

As a composer, Ihave a certain aversion to providing program notes about my pieces, a feeling which is shared by many, although certainly not all, of my colleagues. I feel that such notes often do more harm than good, since they sometimes predispose the listener to certain modes of listening which are inappropriate to the content of the work. Therefore, I would ask the listener, if possible, to disregard what I or anyone else may have to say about the piece and just listen, which, after all, is all that any composer can ask of his or her audience." -John Melby

Gregory Fulkerson, violin, has enjoyed a flourishing career as a recitalist and concerto soloist since winning the 1980 International American Music Competition at the Kennedy Center-the first violinist to win this competition. Fulkerson has toured extensively in the United States and abroad, appearing with, among others, the orchestras of Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Sacramento and Chattanooga. He has also performed with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and in 1986 he debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Ricardo Muti, in the premiere of Richard Wernick's Violin Concerto.

A pioneer of contemporary music for violin as wall as an eloquent exponent of the standard repertoire, Fulkerson has discovered and given the world premieres of concerti by Roy Harris and John Becker (the former has been recorded with the LOUisville Orchestra). He has recorded solo works of Copland, Ornstein, Glass and Wernick, as well as chamber pieces with the Marlboro Festival and the New York New Music Ensemble. He was Artist-in-Residence at the Festival of New American Music (1983) at California State University in Sacramento. and is a regularly featured guesl at the Grand Teton Festival. Presently on the faculty of Oberlin College, Fulkerson has been profiled in the Grove's Dictionary American Music Supplement.

This recording marks his debut on CRI.

Thomas Stacy, English horn, has been heard as a guest soloist with many orchestras, including the National Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra and in over 40 appearances with the New York Philharmonic, where he is resident English hornist. A native of Arkansas, Stacy graduated with distinction from the Eastman School of Music. He has demonstrated several oboe family members on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Composers such as Persichetti, Skrowaczewski. Noon, Hampton, Farberman, Roseman. Hodkinson. Caltabiano. Deak and Blake have written works especially for Stacy, manyof which he has recorded on the Spectrum. Desto and Grenadilla labels. This record presents his debut on CRI.

David Liptak, composer and pianist, is a member of the composition faculty of the University of Illinois. He studied at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Eugene Katz and Joseph Schwantnet, receiving his D.M.A. in composition in 1976. His compositions cover a wide range of instrumentation; his works are published by Dom Publishers and the American Composers Alliance. At Illinois, Liptak directs the Contemporary Chamber Players, a professional ensemble that performs new music from Illinois and elsewhere.

This record was made possible by a grant from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Four cash awards and a CRI recording are given annually to honor and encourage promising composers and to help them continue their creative work. James Tenney was a winner in 1982; John Melby was a winner in 1984.

Melby: Concerto tor Violin, English Horn and Computer-Synthesized Tape, (20'53"), American Composers Alliance
Produced and edited by John Melby Recorded by Rex Anderson Recorded at the Great Hall. Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, September 20, 1985.
Tenney: Saxony (23'40"), Smith Publicetions/Sonic Arts Editions
Produced and edited by James Tenney Recorded by Paul Hodge Recorded at The Music Gallery, Toronto, May 1984.
This is a composer-supervised recording.
Art Direction and Cover DeSign: Laura Williams
Director of Production: Rachel Siegel
Library of Congress No. 85-743332
Write for a Complete Listing of Recordings on CRI
Composers Recordings Incorporated 170 West 74th Street, New York, NY 10023
A Not-for-Proflt, Tax-Exempt Corporation
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
JOHN MELBY
91 PLUS 5 (1971) for Brass Quintet and Computer
Contemporary Brass Quintet
(Elin Frazier, Daniel Orlock, Edward Curenton, Robert Moore, Jonathan Dornblum) conducted by Roman Pawlowski

The two pieces on this record represent the two major ways in which computers are used to create music. The first, COMPUTER CANTATA, is one of the earliest attempts to use it to create a composition. The second, 91 PLUS 5, is a recent example of its use to turn a composition that exists on paper into audible sound...

JOHN MELBY was born in 19411n Whitehall,Wisconsin.He received hisDiplomaand Bachelorof Musicdegree from the Curtis Institute of Music, MA in composition from the Unie versityof Pennsylvania, and M.F.A. and Ph.D. in composie tion from Princeton University. His composition teachers n have been Henry Weinberg, George Crumb, Milton Babbitt, r Peter Westergaard, and J. K. Randall. He has done extenf sive work in the area of computer-performed music; his Forandrer: Seven Variations for Digital Computer (1969-70) was performed on the Tenth Anniversary Concerts of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York in 1970.

The composer writes about his music:

"91 PLUS 5 (the title refers to nothing more than the fact that the piece is scored for an electronic tape realized on an IBM 360/91 digital computer and five brass instruments) is a composition in nine sections which combine to form one continuous movement. The first through eighth sections form a large arch-form, with the first related to the eighth, the second to the seventh, etc. The ninth section serves as a 'coda.' Each pair of related sections emphasizes a different aspect of the basic rhythmic/pitch materials. In addition, the related sections correspond in terms of tempo relationships, 'timbral' considerations, etc.

"Composers who make use of digital computers in their pieces can be divided into two general categories: 1) those who use the computer as an aid to composition and 2) those for whom the computer serves as an incredibly flexible performing medium. My use of the computer falls into the latter class. In 91 PLUS 5 (and in all my other works for digital computer, either in combination with live performers or alone), the computer is programmed to produce a digital tape that contains a series of numbers which, when changed through the digital-to-analog conversion process, produce fluctuating voltages. These voltages, when recorded on an ordinary magnetic tape and amplified, produce musical sounds. Thus, while the computer is actively involved in the performance of the work, it is not involved in the compositional process. The great preCision inherent in computer performance makes it possible to produce effects (such as accurate rendering of passages in simultaneous different tempi) which are impossible, or at best very difficult to achieve, with live instrumentalists. In addition, the unlimited 'timbral' possibilities offer much room for experimentation. In the case of 91 PLUS 5, I have purposely limited myself to relatively simple sounds in the computer part; this is due to a desire to obtain sounds which contrast with the 'richness' of the harmonic spectra of the brasses.

"91 PLUS 5 was composed in late 1970 and early 1971. The computer tape was realized, using the MUSIC360 sound synthesis program written by Barry Vercoe, at the Princeton University Computer Center, with digital-to-analog conversion at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. The composition was first performed in April of 1972, by the performers on this record, at the National Conference of the American Society of University Composers in Baltimore, Maryland."

ROMAN PAWLOWSKI is both a conductor and a composer. At age 29, he has been gaining a reputation in the Philadelphia area as a rather versatile conductor. Thoroughly at home with the standard choral and orchestral literature, he is also a specialist in the avant-garde. Currently he is the chairman of the music department of a private school in the Philadelphia area.

The Contemporary Brass Quintet was originally formed in 1965. Since that time, the group has performed numerous Young Audience concerts and adult community concerts throughout the East Coast area. The members are all graduates of various weI/-known music schools. They have all performed in symphony orchestras and ballet and opera orchestras and are also free-lance recording artists.

COMPUTER CANTATA was originally released on the Heliodor label. It is re-released under CRI's ongoing policy of making available music of historic interest, with the assistance of the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.
Produced by Carter Harman
Cover photo by John Urban
Melby -MS:20 min.
LC#: 73-750250
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC MUSIC
This record contains fine examples of three different types of electronic music: "pure" synthesized sounds (Perera), natural $ounds modified by electronic processing (Johnson and Grippe). and sounds created by a computer (Melby), Both the Melby and Johnson pieces require that a live performer combine real time performance with that of the tape,

JOHN MELBY
TWO STEVENS SONGS (1975) for Soprano and Computer-Synthesized Tape
Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano
Tape part computed at the Digital Computing Laboratory, University of Illinois and converted at the Godfrey Winham Laboratory, Princeton University

JOHN MELBY (b. 1941 Whitehall, Wis.) received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music; he studied composition at the University of Pennsylvania (MA) with Henry Weinberg and George Crumb, and at Princeton University (M,F,A., Ph.D.), with Peter Westergaard, J.K. Randall, and Mil-. ton Babbitt. In addition to many pieces composed either for computer-synthesized tape alone or the combination of live performers with computer-generated sound, his output includes piano music, string quartets, songs, and music for various other chamber-music and orchestral combinations. In 1976 he was Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. His 91 PLUS 5 appears on CRI SD 310.

The composer writes:

"The poetry of Wallace Stevens lends itself particularly well to musical settings; one need only recall the many settings of what is probably his best-known poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (Allan Blank's setting is on CRI SD 250). The reason for the great degree of compatibilty between Stevens' poetry and music may have something to do with the ambiguity present in most of his poems, many of which can be interpreted in rather fundamentally different ways, all of which may be reasonable and equally valid approaches. This aspect of Stevens' work has attracted me for a number of years. The TWO STEVENS SONGS constitute the first in a projected series of compositions based on Stevens texts and written for various voice ranges. TWO STEVENS SONGS was written especially for Phyllis Bryn-Julson."

A POSTCARD FROM THE VOLCANO
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky
Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said became
A part of what it is ... Children
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,
Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,
A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

DOMINATION OF BLACK
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Tuming in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

AGP 156

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)

The string quartet, amplified, in Mission Viejo - OCRegister

The string quartet, amplified, in Mission Viejo
OCRegister
Saturday's program, dubbed "American Roots and Rhythms," brought together music by Steve Reich, John Adams, Michael Daugherty, Matthew Tommasini (all living ...

and more »

Now Thank We All Our God - find those commas!

I'm still working my way through this one. I've found a few errors in my note choices today. At one point the score calls for a D and a G, and I used the D at ratio of 10/9 instead of the 9/8 to go with the G at 3/2. Not so nice.

At one point in chords 35 - 39 I need a G to go with the D at 10/9 and the Bb at 16/9, and with a C 1/1 E 5/4. So I chose a G 40/27 that drifts up by a step in 72 EDO to a G at 3/2 when it needs to match the C1/1. See the chart for the details. This section is heard at the end of today's excerpt. Find those commas to solve the wolf problems.

Play it:

Subscribe here:

Originally from Podcast Bumper Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Salzburg - no point in looking back

It is reassuring to read the beleagured Salzburg Easter Festival's new boss Peter Alward explaining in the Guardian that the Festival's sponsors have remained "amazingly loyal". Elsewhere Bloomberg reports that "the annual 10-day Easter event is sponsored by Vontobel Holding AG, Audi AG, the Nippon Foundation and Vienna Insurance Group", while the Salzburg Easter Festival website confirms that the Nippon Foundation has made "annual contributions since 1996".

At least one of those loyal sponsors has an interesting history. The Nippon Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic organization doing praiseworthy work in education, social welfare and public health in Japan and many other countries. But that benevolence comes at a cost. Ryoichi Sasakawa who founded the Nippon Foundation in 1962 is seen in a US Army photo above. His obituary in the New York Times obituary in 1995 explains the context of the photo:

Mr. Sasakawa, a native of Osaka, was the last living member of a group accused after World War II of the most serious war crimes. After Japan's surrender in 1945, he was imprisoned for four years by the American occupation forces. But prosecutors failed to prove him guilty of helping finance and wage the war or of profiting from Japan's wartime occupation of Manchuria.

Mr. Sasakawa formed and led the Patriotic Masses Party in 1931 after being discharged from the former Japanese Imperial Army. He supported Japan's war on its Asian neighbors, and even formed his own private air force. In 1939 he flew one of his 20 bombers to Rome to pose for pictures with Mussolini [see photo below]. In 1942 he was elected to the lower house of Parliament.

In 1948 Mr. Sasakawa began expanding his fortune by operating dozens of motorboat race courses throughout Japan. He donated nearly $1.5 billion in proceeds from the legalized gambling operation to scores of people and organizations, and received prizes from the United Nations.

But Mr. Sasakawa's critics have suggested that his charities were part of an elaborate public relations campaign meant to divert attention from other activities. During the cold war, he became an anti-Communist campaigner and was accused of maintaining connections with organized crime groups often associated in Japan with ultranationalist causes.

Elsewhere there are reports of links between Ryoichi Sasakawa and the Unification Church (a.k.a. 'Moonies') and its founder Sun Myung Moon.

By comparison another of the Festival's loyal and longstanding major sponsors, independent Swiss private bank Vontobel, is a real pussycat. In January 2010 a Zurich court acquitted two former Vontobel senior executives accused of forging documents and mismanagement. In 2008 the private bank's shares plunged after reports connecting it with a tax evasion investigation, while back in 2001 three of Vontobel's senior executives were fired for 'not adequately executing their duties'.

The Karajan Foundation retains a 25% stake in the Easter Festival which has an annual budget of $8.1m, and the conductor's widow Eliette von Karajan reportedly inherited a tax sheltered estate worth $500m. Festival artistic director Simon Rattle joined the Berlin Philharmonic in 2002 on a reported salary of $750k, plus recording and guest conducting income. The Festival's resident orchestra the Berlin Philharmonic enjoys an annual budget of $38m, almost half of which comes from the public purse via the Berlin Senate. Top ticket prices for Rattle and the BPO's Götterdämmerung at this year's Salzburg Easter Festival are $684, with the cheapest going for a bargain basement $255.

As Peter Alward reminds us "we live in difficult economic times". Or as Eliette Karajan says about the Salzburg Easter Festival "there is no point in looking back and lamenting".

That is Benito Mussolini above with Ryoichi Sasakawa. Another famous Italian was less enamoured with Salzburg's politics.

Photos come via debito.org. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Tom Johnson Tribute At Wesleyan March 29-30-31 - California Chronicle

Tom Johnson Tribute At Wesleyan March 29-30-31
California Chronicle
Wesleyan music professor Neely Bruce will perform "Organ and Silence" and pianist Brian Parks will perform "Music for 88." (A fourth Johnson work, ...

Rehearsals

Just finished a great rehearsal with Sumi and Ben; it's always a delight working with performers like c)i, but this concert has reminded me again not only how much is 'left of the page,' but how often that's the fun stuff.

This work is from a set of etudes that I'm working on that are etudes both in the sense of the systematic study of technical performative elements of music, but also studies in compositional technics. My program note is here, but better still to come and here it! Sunday night at 8p!

Originally from counter)induction, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

O is for Ordinary

The radical music has often been focused on the extremes — of pitch, duration, amplitude, perception, attention, memory, from the micro, minimal and miniature to the macro, maximum, and epic — but it has also always been just as much about the familiar, the middle, the ordinary. When Stravinsky reduced his written-out dynamics to piano and forte in the Octet, he was at once pointing to older repertoire for which such a binary pair sufficed but also indicating that there was a lot more music to be found within those familiar confines. Or this: that sudden all-white-key-dominant-something-without-a-tonic-in-earshot-chord in Cage's Water Music. Or this: those wonderful and wonderfully disconcerting post-Boulangerie pieces of Glass: Music in Parallel Motion, Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Fifths... all the way through Another Look at Harmony.

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Landmark of the Avant-Garde

The great Robert Ashley turns 80 today...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Spring Recital Series continues April 30 - Hattiesburg American

Spring Recital Series continues April 30
Hattiesburg American
Additional works by Weiner and Lutoslawski pay tribute to the folk music of Central and Eastern Europe. All concerts are free and open to the public. ...

The Damage We Do

BELGRADE - Everyone here's been very nice to me, but my first lecture happened to fall on the 11th anniversary of the onset of the NATO (mostly American) aerial bombardment of Belgrade, which a few people mentioned. 3.24 is their 9.11 - except that the bombardment lasted 78 days. The city runs sirens at noon every year to commemorate the day. Professional people - authors, musicians, scholars - have told me stories of huddling in their basements, their knees giving way from fear, making their way to the grocery store through the rubble of buildings, having to forego cancer treatments because the hospitals could only handle emergencies. I don't know much about the politics behind the engagement, and almost don't want to - though Noam Chomsky considered the NATO attack unconscionable, and I tend to trust him more than anyone. But there's got to be some way to resolve international disagreements besides dropping bombs in crowded downtown areas, terrorizing civilian populations, and leaving wrecks like these behind, which I photographed down the street from the music school I'm lecturing at:

(Can't get the second image vertical, for some reason.) My theoretical complicity in this as a citizen (and Clinton-voter!) is painful to contemplate.

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases - Buffalo News

Buffalo News

Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
Buffalo News
She originally surfaced in 1996 as an engaging 20-year-old country music spitfire riding a feisty No. 1 hit, “Guys Do It All the Time,” and a ...

Audio Aesthetics a Bit Removed From the Standard Do-Re-Mi - New York Times

New York Times

Audio Aesthetics a Bit Removed From the Standard Do-Re-Mi
New York Times
Composers like Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley carried out many sonic investigations under the auspices of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

and more »

An ambivalent legacy - Edmonton Journal

An ambivalent legacy
Edmonton Journal
Hitler, in his turn, adored "Winnie," worshipped the music of Richard Wagner, and was unstinting in his support of the Bayreuth Festival. ...

and more »

Mehldau crosses (music) party lines - San Diego Union Tribune

Mehldau crosses (music) party lines
San Diego Union Tribune
Jazz, classical and rock don't intersect for Brad Mehldau so much as they co-exist as happy equals that provide him with ...

Masters of simplicity, generators of buzz | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/28/2010 - Philadelphia Inquirer

Masters of simplicity, generators of buzz | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/28/2010
Philadelphia Inquirer
Their tendency toward Raymond Carver and/or Steve Reich minimalism was not part of the original plan. "The simplicity in the beginning came from being not ...

and more »

It's clearly time to 'Face the Music' - San Diego Union Tribune

It's clearly time to 'Face the Music'
San Diego Union Tribune
5-6, 2011 (Schick conducting): Debussy, “Jeux”; Phil Kline, “A Dream and Its Opposite” (with Real Quiet); Iannis Xenakis, “Metastasis”; Debussy, ...

In praise of Samuel Barber, a Romantic in a 12-tone era | Philadelphia ... - Philadelphia Inquirer

In praise of Samuel Barber, a Romantic in a 12-tone era | Philadelphia ...
Philadelphia Inquirer
He was charged with writing "pretty" music, not intellectually challenging enough, too ear-friendly. Elliott Carter, the high priest of modernism, ...

and more »

Someone Will Take Care of Me (the album)

The songs from Thirteen Near-Death Experiences comprise CD 1 of Corey Dargel’s double-CD album Someone Will Take Care of Me, out on New Amsterdam Records May 25, 2010, distributed by Naxos of America. For more information, visit New Amsterdam Records.

SomeoneWillTakeCare-Cover

Originally posted by coreyneardeath from Thirteen Near-Death Experiences, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 28, 2010 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Elliott Carter: Music by Elliott Carter, Vol 8: 16 Compositions Soloists, BBC ... - Times Online

Elliott Carter: Music by Elliott Carter, Vol 8: 16 Compositions Soloists, BBC ...
Times Online
What better 101st birthday present than this double album gathering recent Carter works of all shapes and sizes, performed by his devotees? ...

Pierre Boulez a work in progress at 85 - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

Pierre Boulez a work in progress at 85
Los Angeles Times
The conductor and composer remains steps ahead of established music thinking, but some institutions are finally beginning to follow his path. Boulez is seen ...

and more »

Works of modern composers that move you - Times Online

Works of modern composers that move you
Times Online
And, indeed, they have become the classics of “serialism”, along with such works as Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître or Berio's music-theatre essay ...

March 27, 2010

Pierre Boulez, one last time - Los Angeles Times (blog)

Pierre Boulez, one last time
Los Angeles Times (blog)
Given his importance in helping further the new technology in music, he may have deserved in the first as well. There happens to be a Southern California ...

Magnetic Breeze

Sound Clip: Magnetic Breeze by Mike Rooke

Sounds from a magnet suspended in the wind.

Phantom of the opera

Led Zeppelin, Graham Nash, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Nick Drake (who drove there in a Ford Cortina) are among the rock musicians who have visited Marrakech. But the connections between the Moroccan city and Western art music are more tenuous. In 1986 work started on the Theatre Royal, an ambitious project designed to give Marrakech a world class venue for opera and theatre. My header photo, taken a few days ago, shows the impressive exterior of the new Theatre Royal with the fly tower in the background. Website travel-in-morocco.com explains:

The Marrakech Theatre Royal on Avenue de France is a marvel of architecture, with a 1200-seat open-air theatre and an 800-seat opera house. Inaugurated on 19 September 2001, the Theatre Royal is a creation sure to enhance the red city’s reputation as mediator and focal point for intellectuals the world over. It also constitutes a cultural and artistic centre in the heart of the Pearl of Southern Morocco, with shows, receptions, concerts and exhibitions being held there throughout the year.

All of which made me very keen to sample the prestigious new opera house. But, as with a previous visit two years ago, there did not seem to be any scheduled performances. So instead I managed to gain access behind the facade of the cultural and artistic centre to see the new performing spaces. These are configured as the two circles of a figure of eight with a shared movable stage linking them at the narrow point of the figure. Below is a photo of the 1200 seat open air theatre looking towards the stage area, behind which is the 800 seat opera house.

The open air theatre is clearly in use for performances. But walk through the curtains and it is a different story. Below is a photo I grabbed of the interior of the opera house which twenty-four years after construction started remains an empty concrete shell. There was no sign at all of building activity, which makes the assurances I was given that work would be completed in 2011 seem somewhat optimistic.

Is it just a case of Marrakech-not-so-express, or is the Arab world's love affair with Western art music over before it really started? Support for the latter view comes from reports that the land designated for Dubai's prestigous new opera house has been sold off and used as a car park. All of which simply confirms that in classical music there is no such thing as a free lunch.

All photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Vienna Philharmonic honors Pierre Boulez - San Diego Union Tribune

Vienna Philharmonic honors Pierre Boulez
San Diego Union Tribune
By AP / AP French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez listens to his music during his 85th birthday celebration in Vienna's Musikverein, Austria, ...

and more »

The Big Gigs: Our critics' music picks - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Big Gigs: Our critics' music picks
Minneapolis Star Tribune
If we're lucky, Allen, who parsed Ornette Coleman's avant garde "harmolodics" better than any other pianist, will also perform selections from her ambitious ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)

Brave new approach - Las Vegas Sun

Las Vegas Sun

Brave new approach
Las Vegas Sun
"I love contemporary classical music," he says. "It's aggressive. It has a hard edge, driving beat. I'm a major fan of Bach because his music is as ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Redefining classical music conventions - Financial Times

Redefining classical music conventions
Financial Times
London-based, Prokofiev is as literate in garage and hip-hop music as he is in contemporary classical – an eclecticism neatly summed up by the Concerto for ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

Zacharias leads Schumann, Beethoven, Bach - Detroit Free Press

Zacharias leads Schumann, Beethoven, Bach
Detroit Free Press
3 in E Major through an early 20th-Century masterpiece by Eugene Ysaÿe, variegated contemporary works by Kaija Saariaho, Elliott Carter and Esa-Pekka ...

and more »

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Emerson and Lake, and Lukas Ligeti are in the Critics ... - Plain Dealer

Plain Dealer

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Emerson and Lake, and Lukas Ligeti are in the Critics ...
Plain Dealer
"There really isn't any rule to music," Ligeti said to reporter John Petkovic. "Sometimes you fiddle around on a piano, sometimes you hear electronic sounds ...

and more »

Rebel Music

Anarchy in the O.C.? For one composer-in-the-making, it meant a whole lotta Beethoven.

Originally posted by By DANIEL FELSENFELD from The Score, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

Sir Harrison Birtwistle 75th Birthday Concert, Wigmore Hall, London - Financial Times

Sir Harrison Birtwistle 75th Birthday Concert, Wigmore Hall, London
Financial Times
It was not before time – the day itself was back in July and celebrations started with the BBC Proms in the summer – but chamber music has been a fruitful ...

and more »

Five new faces at the Edinburgh International Festival - Scotsman

Five new faces at the Edinburgh International Festival
Scotsman
Alejandro Carreño, Eduardo Salazar, Ismel Campos and Aimon Mata are also products of the much-praised Venezuelan music education programme, El Sistema, ...

and more »

Nash Ensemble/Friend - The Guardian

Nash Ensemble/Friend
The Guardian
There was also room for another premiere – not by Birtwistle, but by Elliott Carter. Poems of Louis Zukofsky, composed last year, are nine settings for ...

and more »

Edinburgh International Festival The Americas is giving jazz a rare spotlight ... - Scotsman

Edinburgh International Festival The Americas is giving jazz a rare spotlight ...
Scotsman
... music in the programme brochure, including a concert from the Kronos Quartet in repertoire indelibly associated with the group, Steve Reich's classic ...

and more »

Edinburgh International Festival A bold piece from an American favourite will ... - Scotsman

Edinburgh International Festival A bold piece from an American favourite will ...
Scotsman
"Mr Adams' music deserves no less." Indeed, of all the so-called American minimalists, he is arguably the most original. While Philip Glass and Steve Reich ...

and more »

Well, Damn If It Ain't Sort of Blue After All

Ba da da da dum (bum, bum - bum, bum):

In case you didn't get the onomatopoeia, that's the blue, or grayish-blue, Danube. It begins at Donaueschingen ("fount of the Danube") in Germany, and, unusually for a European river, flows eastward into the Black Sea. In the 1770s, Charles Burney sailed down it to document musical activity in eastern Europe. Me, I'm currently lecturing at the University of the Arts of Belgrade. Half of the students I've met are doing projects in American music (Gershwin, Weill, Glass). On the left, in front of her school, is my sponsor, Professor Dragana Stojanovic-Novicic, a Nancarrow/Ligeti/Carter expert:

The school is across the street from this park:

Beograd means "white city," and you can see why:

The National Museum is on the left here:

There's a wonderful fortress and park where the Sava and Danube rivers flow together. Because of its strategic position, the city of Belgrade has been involved in 115 wars over the centuries, and razed to the ground 44 times, which explains to me why the drivers (I've been driving here) are so nervous and aggressive:

I love the way Serbians transliterate foreign names into their own language as we used to do, so that tabloids write about Dzordza Klunija (George Clooney), Sandre Bulok, and Meril Strip. And it extends to scholarly publications about rock stars as well, as one can see in this biography of - can you guess the singer (name at the bottom, Dz being their letter for "J")?:

I've learned to say "Zelio bih casu viskija sa ledom, molim?" ("Can I get a whiskey on the rocks, please?"), and aside from that and a couple of legal Cuban cigars, what else do I need?

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 27, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2010

Cooking Timers, Golf Tethers, Windup Toys: It's All Rhythm - New York Times

New York Times

Cooking Timers, Golf Tethers, Windup Toys: It's All Rhythm
New York Times
The players' consummate skillfulness was immediately apparent in their opening volley: a crisp, kinetic account of the first section from Steve Reich's ...

Haiku no Shakuhachi

Last year I started a project of composing short sound haiku for shakuhachi. Each shakuhachi haiku is constructed as the traditional word variety with the 5 - 7 - 5 on (or syllabic events in the english versions) structure, but for me this translates into, for lack of a better term, volitional events (sound or silence). These can be notes / pitches, changes, as well as silences. IF a particular riff has a large amount of "muster", such as a muraiki, I might count that as two instead of one "event". Each "line" of poetry is a breath in my haiku.

One day I will have enough of these to put together a recording.

I like the fact that each phrase of the haiku are framed by silence.

Originally from Thoughts on Music and Silence, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

03/24/10 playlist

Ronnie Reshef ~ Thoughts and the Big City
Jody Redhage ~ Paint Box ~ comp. by Anna Clyne
Amy X Neuburg & the Cello Chixtet ~ The Gooseneck
Lisa Bielawa ~ A Collective Cleansing

Annie Gosfield ~ Freud
Kyle Gann ~ Satie's Dream
Danielle Schwob ~ Breathing Underwater
Polina Nazaykinskaya ~ Real April

Interview with composer Lukas Ligeti including the following selections from his Afrikan Machinery album:
Great Circle's Tune I
Great Circle's Tune II
Nightmare Logic
Stories of the Unknown

Adrian Knight ~ Unruhe

Originally from Music For Internets, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Boulez Remains

ighty-five today. That’s the ending of “Le Marteau sans maître,” from the DG recording.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Unquiet Thoughts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Just tuning up

L'orchestre by Moroccan artist Uayia, photographed by me at a recent public exhibition in Marrakech. Say good bye to Western art music here.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Four to Receive SUNY Honorary Degrees at UB - UB News Center

Four to Receive SUNY Honorary Degrees at UB
UB News Center
Composer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Reich will receive a SUNY honorary degree in music at UB on June 1. UB alumnus Robert Vince, a pioneering leader in ...

... Polar Bear - The Guardian

... Polar Bear
The Guardian
Polar Bear chuck their ragged, fuming jazz through psychedelic street-charged electronics, Brad eases his luscious, gallant jazz past Debussy, Steve Reich, ...

... Jerry Dammers - The Guardian

... Jerry Dammers
The Guardian
The enlightened, questing sensibility that in the first place contributed to the fresh kind of music and image that fans are now so desperate to revive is ...

and more »

Miscellany: The Levine Crisis, etc.

At Carnegie Hall’s Web site, Thomas Adès talks about his solo, big-room Carnegie début, which will take place Saturday night. Adès’s astonishing orchestral piece “Tevot” is now out on EMI Classics.

The same night, Columbia University will honor the great Pauline Oliveros.

Jeremy Eichler, of the Boston Globe, again addresses the impact of James Levine’s medical problems on the Boston Symphony.

In Macworld, Kirk McElhearn supplies handy tips for classical-music iTunes users. Speaking of MP3s, try Proper Discord’s Digital Audio Pepsi Challenge.

Why does the L.A. Opera “Ring” cost $32 million? Mike Boehm, of the L.A. Times, investigates. Short answer: theater is expensive.

Jorge Martín blogs in detail about readying his opera “Before Night Falls” for the Fort Worth Opera. The première takes place on May 29th, with Wes Mason in the role of Reinaldo Arenas.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Unquiet Thoughts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Classical Review: Squares, Circles, Labyrinths at Q Club, Birmingham - The Birmingham Post

Classical Review: Squares, Circles, Labyrinths at Q Club, Birmingham
The Birmingham Post
Stockhausen's Carre for four orchestras and vocal ensembles swung resonantly around the audience – but outstayed its welcome. ...

John Armitage Memorial Trust 10th Birthday Concert - musicOMH.com

musicOMH.com

John Armitage Memorial Trust 10th Birthday Concert
musicOMH.com
Richard Peat's Fiery the Angels and Hannah Kendall's Fundamental are both hugely accomplished works, the latter's Ligeti-esque choir stalked by squawking ...

So Percussion ensemble to perform at ECU - Ada Evening News

So Percussion ensemble to perform at ECU
Ada Evening News
... with composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang and Evan Ziporyn. So Percussion also has begun to produce original music, starting with a CD/DVD project, ...

Could Terry Riley's In C Be Accepted As Classical Music

Minimalism, as a musical style, has produced a clubby group of composers. Earlier this year some of them held the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music. In blog posts from their conference I learned of a new book about one particularly classic piece of minimalism: In C by Terry Riley.

This thin book, Terry Riley's In C by Robert Carl, is interesting mostly for the information about the composer's early life and the events surrounding the creation, performance and initial recording of his famous 1964 work. Carl's musical analysis and reviews of various recordings are less involving.

In C is a genuine classic piece of music of our time. By "our" I mean baby boomers. In those days when many of us encountered this style of music for the first time ("minimalism" wasn't the default term yet), it seemed like an endless open vista wherein anything might be possible.

In C was hugely important in my own personal development as a musician. You can no longer hear this in my current music but it was quite obvious back in my "first compositional period" (before I temporarily gave up writing in the early 90's).

In the 70's, when I was studying weird new music at CalArts, I used to come home at night exhausted from music by the likes of Stockhausen, Cage or Carter and relax by listening to the original Columbia recording of In C with the little electronic whoosh marking the split between side A and side B. Some evenings I listened to it all the way through twice or three times, all 40-some minutes of it.

Of course being a little stoned didn't hurt - but wasn't required. The music had a positive, heady power; so much energy. It carried me along. It was completely different from the dry new music which dominated my graduate education. More importantly I was totally amazed by two important qualities of In C: its structural simplicity and its social egalitarianism. I still am.

SIMPLE

In C is actually a kind of orchestra piece. Riley suggests about 35 players as the optimum number, although it has been done with many fewer or many more. In an interview he said that it might be played solo if the right player could be found. Good luck with that. It works well as a chamber piece for seven or eight very busy players.

With big ensembles In C challenges the notion that large symphonic works need huge over-notated scores filled with inaudible precision. The entire score fits on one letter size sheet of paper. A conventional orchestra score of similar length might have as many as 200 densely packed pages.

Obviously this seems more important to a person who has spent his entire career dealing with printed musical notation than it does to you. If such simplicity had become the norm rather than a single exception I might have had to find myself a different line of work.

Riley's composition allows only a few written notes to produce a highly complex texture every bit the equal of more precisely written pieces. It comes out differently every time - but it is never so different that you can't identify it immediately. This simplicity is a worthy and all-too-rare quality of contemporary music.

Originally the instructions on how to play that one small sheet of music were handed down verbally from musician to musician. Years later Riley added some text instructions codifying the performance practice - although he still seems pretty loose about the rules.

Here is the full orchestra score of In C. You can download a better looking pdf along with the instructions from Otherminds.

EGALITARIAN

The other important, mind-blowing idea which In C represented to me is its complete revolution in the social structure of the orchestra.

In a conventional orchestra the most-important person (i.e. the "conductor") dictates behavior from above. He stands alone, elevated on a podium. Meanwhile, down among the players, there is a formal pecking order. For example, the principal players, the ones who get the solos, are ranked higher than the garden variety section players. They get paid more too.

Of course this hierarchical arrangement is endemic throughout our society. Most people experience it constantly - at work, in school or in a family. Orchestra hierarchy bothered me a lot when I was a student. It still does, but not so much.

Riley has constructed In C so that the artistic responsibilities of the conductor - plus a large chunk of the composer's job as well - are distributed among all the players. His simple rules allow great freedom to be spread among many equal participants.

The performers stay together by listening to a steady pulse instead of by watching a conductor. This is not unlike playing with a metronome. Each player makes a continuous stream of artistic choices, unprecedented freedom for an orchestral musician. Riley stresses that all the players must listen carefully to properly fulfill their responsibilities. Their decisions matter to the final result.

Using only musical notes and musical structures In C eloquently speaks against the orchestral chain of command. It's my hope that performances of In C preserve and promote these laudable political and social principles.

These days In C has a certain dated sixties aura of utopian hippy anarchist communes about it. Cool, huh? There's no reason that feeling can't invade the world of classical music once in a while.

Terry Riley in 1978 - Portrait by Rob Jacobs

Very large ensemble performances of In C, which are often the very high profile ones as well, seem to lose this political message. The argument is made that some hierarchy must be introduced to avoid cacophony.

A recent celebration at Carnegie Hall celebrated the 45th anniversary of In C's composition with a large ensemble (about 70 players) which, according to the N.Y. Times, was led by a:

“flight pattern coordinator,” [who] used flash cards and hand signals to shape the sprawl.

Mark Swed, in his review of a performance by 124 musicians from CalArts (at Disney Concert Hall in 2006) wrote:

David Rosenboom, the violist on the historic first recording of the piece, conducted. ... Rosenboom more carefully molded it, indicating when sections should begin changing figures lest so large an orchestra seem chaotic. ... When the longest and most harmonically complex figure (No. 35) dominated, Rosenboom emphasized the brass, and the score sounded like the end of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" writ large and Postmodern.

In 2000 Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a performance by the San Francisco Symphony to which anyone could bring an instrument and join in. Sarah Cahill, in her review of the concert, wrote:

His actions were absolutely antithetical to the democratic concept of the piece.

Instead of using conductors or flight controllers or referees to control a too-large group, wouldn't it be simpler to find a solution which respects the essential "every player is equal" theme. You could tell all the players to limit their playing by a certain percentage. If the number of musicians is double the optimum number, tell them to play only half the time. Simple. Even simpler: if you insist on doing this piece with too many players, you should be prepared to accept chaos. What's wrong with a little chaos? Either way, the decision of who-plays-when remains an egalitarian one. Each member of the ensemble gets an equal say and the social statement of In C, the part I find meaningful, is preserved.

I fantasize that someday In C will be programmed on regular orchestra concerts. Yes, getting this piece into the standard repertory is a long ways off. If it happened, In C would change from a "minimalist classic" into an actual piece of classical music. That would provide strong evidence that classical music has some life left in it.

A chamber orchestra would be just the right size. Before the intermission the program could be, maybe, a Rossini overture and a Mozart concerto. And the second half would be a 35-minute performance of In C employing all the performers from the first half. Great concert! Of course, during In C the conductor should sit in the ensemble and play an instrument, provided he or she is capable. Otherwise tell the conductor to sit in the audience.

Now in 2009, with the history of minimalism nearing an inevitable end, conventions held, books published, courses taught, I can see how unique In C really is. Other orchestral music of recent decades has remained complex and hierarchical by comparison. No tradition of ultra-simplicity has appeared among other composers. Quite the opposite. Nothing about orchestra music - or music composition in general - challenges the structure of society. Quite the opposite.

By its very uniqueness and originality, In C deserves to be widely performed and discussed. It could easily be added to the classical canon. That revered list of works would benefit from adding this bright spot of sixties counterculture to the morass of 19th century romantic orchestral muck.

Here's an LA Weekly interview with Terry Riley.

Listen to WNYC's New Sounds show, interview with Terry Riley and David Harrington.

A print interview entitled "A Stoned Mozart?" with Terry Riley and David Harrington

You can read chapter one of Robert Carl's book here. For me, re-reading it made me want to relisten to the original recording of In C. I hadn't heard it in a very long time. But I couldn't find my LP from back in the Seventies. My friend Paul Bailey once told me that it wasn't a good performance. I scoffed. I ordered another LP via the Internet, an LP rather than a CD so I could hear the whoosh - the electronic sound which abruptly reminds you to turn the record over. I listened to it once. Paul was absolutely right - the performances sucks. You can listen to two recent chamber performances led by Paul here.

I performed In C many times, including at one particularly memorable I.C.A. concert in 1978 with the composer himself in the ensemble.

Other Mixed Meters attacks on the classics:

Everybody Loves Beethoven (Probably) - a classical composer name recognition poll
One Goldberg Equals Twelve Abbas - a scale to measure how interesting music is
A Fine Line Between Classical and Parody - Musical Offsets; Wanted & Unwanted Music; Glenn Gould on Petula Clark
Me and Mahler, Me and Iowa - How I outgrew Mahler's music
Combining Four Letter Words: Oboe + Blog - Dies Irae and Hip Hop
A New Rhapsody in Blue - yes, with actual improvisation
If Music Be The Food of Love - which musics are dead, which are just dying
David Ocker, Boy Music Critic - can't get enough Domenico Scarlatti
The Docker Award for Mainstream Avant Garde Music - BBC Orchestra plays Cage badly
Paradise, Pomp and Puppets - the LA Phil, Hungarian Radio Orch. and Berkeley Symphony perform music by Frank Zappa
Mingus Epitaph - how jazz became classical one night at Disney Hall
Sonata Heaven - about sculpting music out of the sounds all around you

Finally - I've added In C to the left-column list of David's Favorite Music, a long since forgotten and still incomplete feature of Mixed Meters. There are a number of my absolutely favorite composers who deserve to be included. Someday.

A Harvard Business School study looked at job satisfaction. Orchestra players came just below prison guards. Chamber musicians came in at number 1. What’s the difference? The presence of a conductor. Conductor Ben Zander quoted here.

In C Tags: In C. . . Terry Riley. . . Robert Carl. . . minimalism. . . orchestra music

Originally from Mixed Meters, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

Stefano Ferrian - Improvisations For NoSyncopated Guitars

Guitarist Stefano Ferrian has created an excellent collection of tracks in Improvisations For NoSyncopated Guitars. The nine tracks feature solos and duos on acoustic classical guitars. Ferrian plays all guitars on both solos and duos. While these improvisations can called modern, perhaps even avant-garde, they are quite accessible to the average listener and , for the most part, very tonal. I am reminded of the jazz/classical work of Ralph Towner in some of these efforts. Yet Ferrian has a very individualist sense on these acoustic explorations. Fascinating and imaginative, this album will delight you on each listening of which I assure you, will be many. Another great release from the Clinical Archive.

The album is available in 320kbps MP3.

Download

Originally posted by Marvin from Free Albums Galore, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

A Classical Composer in a Modern World - Wall Street Journal

A Classical Composer in a Modern World
Wall Street Journal
In an avant-garde age of Berio and Stockhausen, he did not seem to belong to his musical century. His romantic lyricism steeped in a tradition of Brahms, ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Classical Music/Opera Listings - New York Times

New York Times

Classical Music/Opera Listings
New York Times
(Tommasini) ★ HELMUT LACHENMANN COMPOSER PORTRAIT (Thursday) The German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann turns 75 in November, but the Miller Theater ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Japanese avant-garde, Tropicalismo, and North Korean ideology -- onscreen at SxSW - San Francisco Bay Guardian

Japanese avant-garde, Tropicalismo, and North Korean ideology -- onscreen at SxSW
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Just as Downtown 81 is worth watching for its live DNA footage, the Japanese avant-garde music documentary We don't care about music anyway... is worth a ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Christopher Froh on "Water Music" and "Parade"

Our April 26, 2010 concert at Herbst will have two unusual percussion pieces. SFCMP percussionist Chris Froh shares his thoughts on Tan Dun's "Water Music" and Guo Wenjing's "Parade".

Regular SFCMP concertgoers are familiar with massive percussion batteries occupying a significant chunk of the stage (and often stage set-up time!). Marimbas, xylophones, and tom-toms intermixed with gongs, cymbals, and various automotive parts are typical fare for many of our concerts. But these two works for percussion ensemble by Tan Dun and Guo Wenjing are anything but typical.

In Tan Dun’s “Water Music,” Dan Kennedy and I will be joined by guest artists Loren Mach and Ben Paysen for a romp through amplified water. Tan (famous for, among other things, his film score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) intricately notates dozens of inventive splashing techniques and other fabulous water-based sounds. Loren will be the soloist, leading the rest of us through this unique sound-world. The piece is a whole lot of fun to play and beautiful to watch unfold. I’ll be bringing my raincoat: by the end of the piece, the four of us will be soaked from head to toe!

Guo Wenjing adopts a very different approach in his “Parade” for percussion trio. Employing a tiny set-up of six small Chinese gongs placed on a table that the three players surround, the composer milks every last possible sound out of his minimal instrumentation. We’ll each use a dozen different sticks and mallets, finger and hand pressure to affect pitch changes, and lots of other tricks and surprises over the course of this fantastic piece. Because we all play on the same six instruments, there’s just as much choreography as there is music for us to rehearse. We’ll be projecting a live-feed, bird’s-eye view of the piece so that the audience will be able to see the flurry of activity on the table.

If you have kids who you’d like to expose to new music, both of these pieces are ideal. They’re fun, creative, and guaranteed to give you lots to talk about on the way home from the concert. We’re all looking forward to seeing you on April 26!

Originally from San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Interview with Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly [mp3]

Interview with Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly [mp3]
Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly talk to Jonathan Grimes about the Ergodos Festival MMX which takes place on 2-3 April 2010, new works, and optimism for new music in Ireland.
From Podcast: Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland: Monthly Podcast.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Interview with Raymond Deane [mp3]

Interview with Raymond Deane [mp3]
Raymond Deane talks to Jonathan Grimes about his upcoming portrait concert at the Purcell Room in London on 29 March 2010.
From Podcast: Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland: Monthly Podcast.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Crash Ensemble: Free State V [mp3]

Crash Ensemble: Free State V [mp3]
Interviews with Enda Bates, Ed Bennett and Grainne Mulvey, whose music features in the Crash Ensemble's Free State V concert on 5 March 2010.
From Podcast: Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland: Monthly Podcast.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

What's on - Montreal Gazette

What's on
Montreal Gazette
Casa del Popolo, 4873 St. Laurent Blvd. Tonight: Lukas Ligeti and KANTNAGANO, 8:30 pm, $10. Tomorrow: Magik Markers, Thrashed Genes, Induced Labour and ...

and more »

Curtain Call - Indianapolis Star

Curtain Call
Indianapolis Star
Music faculty at the University of Indianapolis will perform a free concert at 7:30 pm Monday in the DeHaan Fine Arts Center, 1400 E. Hanna Ave. ...

Resonant Frequency #68 - Pitchfork Media

Resonant Frequency #68
Pitchfork Media
... seem to carry on forever, and a small bit of a repeated "sh" becomes a Steve Reich-like exhibition of how speech can become music. ...

Minimal to the max - The Spokesman Review

Minimal to the max
The Spokesman Review
He was written off as a minimalist in the maximal world of complex music by such modern composers as Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. ...

Classical roundup: Schwarz back on the podium; Denk back in Seattle with Bach - Seattle Times

Classical roundup: Schwarz back on the podium; Denk back in Seattle with Bach
Seattle Times
Dausgaard Conducts Rachmaninoff and Sibelius: Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard returns to the Seattle Symphony for a program of Lutoslawski's Symphony No. ...

and more »

Orange County Performing Arts Center's 2010-11 Concert Series to showcase ... - Los Angeles Times (blog)

Orange County Performing Arts Center's 2010-11 Concert Series to showcase ...
Los Angeles Times (blog)
The group won the 2009 Grammy for chamber music performance for its recording of Elliott Carter quartets. The Mandelring Quartet is scheduled for Feb. 24. ...

Bedford Chamber Concerts Announces Upcoming Performance - Westchester.com

Bedford Chamber Concerts Announces Upcoming Performance
Westchester.com
... Boulez, Michael Tilson -Thomas, and Herbert Blomstedt. Past concert attendee praise - "The Bedford Chamber concerts are sensational. It is chamber music ...

Emil Richards and the Microtonal Blues Band

Originally from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Divided Lives - Chicago Reader

Divided Lives
Chicago Reader
(You can hear the resemblance between Davis's music and postminimalist works like Tehillim by Steve Reich, who was drawn to those musics too. ...

Attorney: Dennis Hopper is gravely ill - San Jose Mercury News

Attorney: Dennis Hopper is gravely ill
San Jose Mercury News
Jazz musician James Moody (85), conductor-composer Pierre Boulez (85), retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (80), actor-director Leonard Nimoy ...

and more »

A Man Grown Silent in the Praise of God

The Dessoff Choir's March 6 performance of my Transcendental Sonnets, based on poems by the Transcendentalist poet Jones Very and conducted by James Bagwell, is now up on my web site:

1. The Son
2. Enoch
3. Love
4. Faith
5. The Word

I thought it was the best ensemble performance I've had in my life. (It's the two-piano version, not the orchestral version.)

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

Classical Gas - Chicago Reader

Classical Gas
Chicago Reader
But how about a shot of Iancu Dumitrescu or Conlon Nancarrow or Merzbow, see how quickly they fly through the maze then? Are we really going to buy the idea ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 26, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2010

Fröst/Pöntinen at Wigmore Hall, London W1 - Times Online

Fröst/Pöntinen at Wigmore Hall, London W1
Times Online
His virtuosity lies in his exceptional dexterity and agility — revealed immediately in the intricate dance rhythms of Lutoslawski's 1954 Dance Preludes ...

Carnegie Hall Education Program LinkUP! Celebrates 25th Year Anniversary 5/25-27 - Broadway World

Carnegie Hall Education Program LinkUP! Celebrates 25th Year Anniversary 5/25-27
Broadway World
... and high-energy program includes music from Terry Riley's In C and Steve Reich's Clapping Music to Holst's The Planets and Shostakovich's The Nose. ...

Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall, London W1 - Times Online

Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall, London W1
Times Online
We also heard the outstanding Booth and the clarinettist Richard Hosford give the European premiere of Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky — nine of ...

and more »

A Classical Composer in a Modern World - Wall Street Journal

A Classical Composer in a Modern World
Wall Street Journal
In an avant-garde age of Berio and Stockhausen, he did not seem to belong to his musical century. His romantic lyricism steeped in a tradition of Brahms, ...

The Great Indoors

By Dan Visconti
The fact that remarkable music is at times created amid the most plebian and un-panoramic circumstances is one of the things that makes it even more remarkable.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

A few first-glance stand-outs from Spoleto 2010 - Charleston City Paper

A few first-glance stand-outs from Spoleto 2010
Charleston City Paper
On the more contemporary side is the American debut of Wolfgang Rihm's Prosperina. The opera has received a boatload of buzz in its native Germany, ...

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Music for Electronic & Older Instruments

various artists compilation - Music for Electronic & Older InstrumentsLP released during the 1960s*Thanks to Caitlyn for letting me use her photo of her cover. Go check out her blog for more music including her own compilations and mixes of the latest music and an awesome post of a rare 10" of early experimental electronic music by Herbert Brun.Speaking of early experimental electronic music,

Originally from A Closet of Curiosities, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

Concert Souvenir from the Austrian Cultural Forum

Photograph by Frederic Ohringer

What a nice hall and wonderful audience! Thank you all for coming out to hear Seda perform at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City on Tuesday.

We have just sent out an mp3 with excerpts from the performance to those who attended. Enjoy this concert souvenir from Seda!

For those of you who couldn’t make it, please contact us at info@sedaroeder.com and we would be more than happy to send you the file as well.

Originally posted by sedaroeder.com from Seda Röder, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Vail Valley's musical fortune - Vail Daily News

Vail Valley's musical fortune
Vail Daily News
The Chamber Music Series also takes place throughout the season of Bravo, including a world premiere by the award-winning Composer-in-Residence Joan Tower ...

and more »

Originally from "wolfgang rihm" OR "joan tower" OR "conlon nancarrow" OR "scelsi" OR "sciarrino" AND music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

Nash Ensemble hosts birthday celebrations for Birtwistle - This is London

Nash Ensemble hosts birthday celebrations for Birtwistle
This is London
Description: Lionel Friend conducts pieces by Harrison Birtwistle, plus the UK premiere of Elliott Carter's Poems Of Louis Zukofsky. ...

Return to Emotion

Of the Passion, a friend in Colorado asks:

What was it like, emotionally speaking, writing music to underscore this event?

Emotionally rich; finding the right ‘tone’ for the music was a process of reflecting on Good Friday devotions in years past. My setting was not going to be heart-on-sleeve dramatization; but I did think about the plainchant Passion setting which had been in use at St Paul’s for some 4-5 years prior . . . and while I appreciate the musical ‘detachment’ of singing the text of the Passion story to a plainchant Psalm-tone — and I was well content to utilize that musical method and dynamic in part of my own setting — the character of the traditional Psalm-tone we had been using is in major-ish mode, Lydian in bits as I recall, and one of my immediate thoughts was to compose my own Psalm-tone in the more ‘keening’ Phrygian mode.

It’s not a very technical thing to say about the composition, nor does it offer a clear answer to the emotional question, but in some ways the overarching determinative musical factor for my Passion, was musical memory of a different component of the traditional Good Friday service at St Paul’s: the plainchant Psalm-tone to which we would sing Psalm 22 for the stripping of the altar at the service’s end.

Emotionally, I did not need to micro-manage the narrative; that was an aspect which I simply knew I should find ready as I got to that measure in the score, you might say. Compositionally on the ‘granular’ scale, I felt that I would discover the right materials as I was embarked. Compositionally from the architectural angle, I felt directly ready for most of the task, as I knew that I wanted to start out with a Psalm-tone (whose ‘base form’ I composed almost in a breath), that I would drive toward a Nuhro-like method for the Crucifixion, and that in between I would employ ‘wrong-note-Monteverdi’ polyphony for select passages, in a manner I had well explored in the Nunc dimittis which I had composed for the 2006 Evening Service in D. With those ‘structural supports’ established, I expected that I could manage fairly improvisationally . . . and that if I just found the time to work, the work of composition would about perform itself.

As with many a piece I’ve written, I did some of the creative work on the bus ride to or from work, and if anything, in the case of the Passion, I found it even easier than usual to ‘zone in’ on the task. Most of the chant and organum and polyphony modules of the first part, I had in place from ‘commuter composing’, when I set the task aside in (I think) August. I was well ahead of schedule, and there was another composition or arrangement, or two, which wanted attention sooner. Even so, the Passion must have been ‘slow-cooking’ in the back of my mind.

When in January 2008 I was vacationing, visiting friends in Florida, the environment was perfect. My friends were most hospitable, and gave me plenty of space to do as I liked, and when I liked; the weather was clement – clement even for Daytona Beach at that season, and so, in comparison to Boston in January, perfectly paradisal; and my musical mind was, simply, ready to be focused entirely on the task of writing out the remainder of the Passion. Although in my thinking before the trip, I had budgeted on the first full day in Florida as non-work, recuperative time, in the event, my spirit was already refreshed, and before the first day was done, I had finished up the chant section entirely, and I was now waiting at the foot of the cross at Golgotha.

Again, I did not especially concentrate on the emotional aspect, that was a matter of memory, and musically, I knew what tools I had selected for that passage . . . it wasn’t nose-to-the-grindstone, nor was it unimpeded outflow: it was something in between, looking at the palette, and knowing when I had found the right color, and sometimes, the slightly additional effort of blending two paints together for the right hue.

“Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

When I got to this point, I had not really considered what I should do musically. The texture and the harmonies (or, the almost game-like means by which I arrived at the harmonies) just came to me at the time when I needed to write this passage . . . and yet, it feels to me as if all the piece before was written in order to arrive at this. The Burial, too, emerged as a kind of improvisation (months before, I had probably thought no more sophisticatedly than that, I would continue to do ‘something like’ the Crucifixion passage — but of course, if I had done simply that, it would have grown wearisome, I should think). So for me, in the writing, there was a special immediacy in my awareness of the task as I was fulfilling it, which I think has made something of an imprint on the music itself; and the music always feels fresh to me when I hear it, because I remember how it did not occur to me, until practically when I needed to set it to paper.

Originally from henningmusick, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

A Windfall of Musicians

Last August I wrote a little about Dorothy Crawford's very interesting book A Windfall of Musicians, Hitler's Emigres and Exiles in Southern California. (Now $27.90 at Amazon.) I was moved by her description of Arnold Schoenberg's life here in the paradise of sunny SoCal. That post is called Schoenberg In Hell.

I've long since finished the book and then her previous one, Evenings On and Off the Roof, which describes the first thirty years or so of the concert series now known to us as Monday Evening Concerts. MEC was once widely regarded as the single most important venue for new music anywhere in the US. The combination of some of Europe's greatest musicians with two local music enthusiasts, Peter Yates and Lawrence Morton, turned L.A. into the bloodiest cutting-edge music scene anywhere for many years.

Of course not much is directly left of that brilliance these days, so many decades later, beyond the general notion that the best conductors and the best composers and best music all come from somewhere else. But remembering these events should be essential to anyone currently active in new music in Los Angeles. Her two books are important links to our past and they go a long way towards illuminating aspects of the current scene.

Yesterday afternoon I learned by chance that Dorothy Crawford would be speaking that evening at the Los Angeles Central Library. They have an ongoing series called [aloud] where she would be in conversation with composer William Kraft, an essential part of the Los Angeles music community since 1955.

I made a video of the first few minutes of her talk sitting on stage with Bill. In it she very briefly describes the history of the German artistic emigration to California - beginning immediately with the name Hitler. She describes this as

the largest musical migration in Western music history to one place, at one time, for one reason.

Then she talks about her how she chose which musicians to include and how her two books relate to one another.

Other Mixed Meters references to William Kraft:
His Encounters Series
Bill Kraft's San Francisco Waltz Toon
Pictures of his backyard

Other Mixed Meters references to Monday Evening Concerts:
Good Riddance to Bad Acoustics
Mostly Californian
The Medallion (in which I write music instead of attending an MEC concert. Read the comments. Then read this.)

Windfall Tags: A Windfall of Musicians. . . Dorothy Lamb Crawford. . . Monday Evening Concerts. . . Los Angeles Composers

Originally from Mixed Meters, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

André Pissoir on rihilistic scifacts

I leads as she exists in a dream of Re-present.Those applied as its terms more reality have outward for that than performance reality is concede dreams. The dissipation of my|self what be of this of given old of by dream & ex-dreams matters is not that right but also more open. Into I expect to rather not be present then with in as to which distinct philosophers at times?

-André Pissoir on rihilistic scifacts

Originally from jaan & his Béton gestures, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Cheryl Cooney at Music Conference Alberta

Cheryl Cooney at Music Conference Alberta

From Podcast: Sounds New.

Originally posted by jeff from cacophonous.org, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Core of Metal: The Dillinger Escape Plan, 'Option Paralysis' - Express from The Washington Post (blog)

Lime Wire (blog)

Core of Metal: The Dillinger Escape Plan, 'Option Paralysis'
Express from The Washington Post (blog)
... zest every now and then, the kind of almost naive enthusiasm that keeps their music avant-garde and their performing style explosive, Puciato said. ...
Eye of the Tiger: Dillinger Escape Plan's newest release surpasses previous workmy.hsj.org

all 19 news articles »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Composer/Violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) Releases Woodbox Beats ... - All About Jazz

Composer/Violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) Releases Woodbox Beats ...
All About Jazz
Woodbox Beats & Balladry is an amalgam of what contemporary composers are doing and where contemporary classical music might be going, says DBR. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Duo's harmonies captivate audience - Washburn Review

Duo's harmonies captivate audience
Washburn Review
The Cavatina Duo's avant-garde approach to musical performance was impressive and entertaining. The distinctive combination of flute and guitar played with ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Musician Lukas Ligeti mixes and matches to capture sounds in his head - Plain Dealer

Plain Dealer

Musician Lukas Ligeti mixes and matches to capture sounds in his head
Plain Dealer
Except that Ligeti's process for creating music is hardly formulaic. He mixes and matches electronica, contemporary classical, jazz and African rhythms ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Was Country Music Ever Avant-Garde? - Knoxville Metro Pulse

Was Country Music Ever Avant-Garde?
Knoxville Metro Pulse
Were they avant-garde? They didn't think of themselves that way. They were just making music that had never been heard before.

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Remembering Herbie Hancock - San Jose Mercury News

Remembering Herbie Hancock
San Jose Mercury News
But with his attention to orchestration, impressionistic harmonic vocabulary and singular synthesis of funk, contemporary classical music and avant garde ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Chamber Music Society highlights Hoosier composers - Journal and Courier

Chamber Music Society highlights Hoosier composers
Journal and Courier
Always adventuresome and sometimes "avant garde," he has received much exposure, especially in America. Particularly pleasing was "The Sower" and an ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Ulrich Krieger: Bringing Metal Machine Music to Life - All About Jazz

All About Jazz

Ulrich Krieger: Bringing Metal Machine Music to Life
All About Jazz
I heard a common link between Metal Machine Music and orchestral music by Xenakis and other contemporary classical composers. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

Aboombong - Asynchronic 25 Mar 09:32 - Drowned In Sound

Aboombong - Asynchronic 25 Mar 09:32
Drowned In Sound
However the real achievement on this record, is not the fusion of avant-garde genres creating some pretentious Megazord - whereby Steve Reich, Sun Ra, ...

CALIFORNIAN: Arts & Entertainment listings for the week of March 25-31, 2010 - North County Times

CALIFORNIAN: Arts & Entertainment listings for the week of March 25-31, 2010
North County Times
Jenny Rivera ---- On the Mexican music scene since 1994, Jenni Rivera is known as the "Diva of Banda" and "The First Lady of Corrida" for her domination of ...

and more »

Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau - Santa Barbara Independent

Santa Barbara Independent

Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau
Santa Barbara Independent
This Disney Hall concert was also recorded, and could be coming to a music outlet or portal near us one day. If so, there would be at least an inspired ...

Remembering Herbie Hancock - San Jose Mercury News

Remembering Herbie Hancock
San Jose Mercury News
We read a lot of the same books and listened to a lot of the same music and got into each others lives. We were listening to Stockhausen and Cage and ...

Ulrich Krieger: Bringing Metal Machine Music to Life - All About Jazz

All About Jazz

Ulrich Krieger: Bringing Metal Machine Music to Life
All About Jazz
I heard a common link between Metal Machine Music and orchestral music by Xenakis and other contemporary classical composers. ...

Modern composers, Bach on Koh's program - Detroit Free Press

Modern composers, Bach on Koh's program
Detroit Free Press
2 ("Obsession"); Kaija Saariaho's "Nocturne" (in memory of Witold Lutoslawski); Elliott Carter's "Fantasy: Remembering Roger," and Esa-Pekka Salonen's ...

Portela Bridge

Sound Clip: Portela by Luis Antero

Recording from the old bridge of Portela, in the city of Coimbra.

More on Luis Antero

Originally posted by Margaret from Sound is Art, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

Just Listen

You’re gonna want the bad-ass speakers for this one. Most of you have probably already heard this, so if you have the disc, pop it on to avoid the soul shattering breaks in the video. Quite simply, this will change your life. Promise.

Originally posted by Miss Mussel from The Omniscient Mussel on Classical Music & Culture, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

Danish guest conductor arrives for a weekend of Northern European composers - Seattle Times

Danish guest conductor arrives for a weekend of Northern European composers
Seattle Times
Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard will lead the Seattle Symphony March 25-27 in a program of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius, as well as Lutoslawski's Symphony No ...

and more »

The Anticipation of Meaning

For reasons likely of interest to no one, I spent some time over the last week or so in Rome, rereading Gadamer's Truth and Method and the resonance between Sunday's concert and the following followed me around the city.

The anticipation of meaning that governs our understanding of a text is not a act of subjectivity, but proceeds from the commonality that binds us to the tradition. But this commonality is constantly being formed in our relation to tradition. Tradition is not simply a permanenet preconditions; rather, we produce it ourselves inasmuch as we understand, participate in the evolution of tradition, and hence further determine it ourselves.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Truth and Method, p. 293

Second, Revised edition

Continuum

It is easy for listeners, composers and performers to simply imagine the relation to the past as static, as simply given. But what we think of as the clear and stable fact of history is in fact delineated and maintained by our attention. Each act we take reshapes and reformulates (in however small an amount and discrete a method) the tradition in which we operate.

Kyle's meditation on collapsing cultures and crumbling empires, Rogerson’s elegy on human and cultural extinction and Honett’s fragmentation of material speak to time as the leveler of mountains, while Gilbert’s lament imagines an alternate history where the lost world is found again, Halka's trio connects the cultural to the individual, and my own work figures the interplay of the sculptor and the stone as the play between the composer and history.

As Ryan Streber's introductory essay in the program book will highlight, composition is a matter of technics, and thus of adoption the project of adoption is always a project of self discover, or, better, of auto-explication. The automatic, ineluctable discovery of commonality with the past, the unpacking of the forgotten givenness of one's capacity is the result of engagement with the past— what begins in an exploration of alterity becomes an emergence of ipseity. Adoption doesn't build a bridge to the past, it makes that past part of the now. The question here is not so much eternal as it is perpetual– tradition is opportunity and responsibility, and it is always old and new as once.

~douglas

Originally from counter)induction, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

Coming Up Next :: Friday 26 March

PERCUSSION

On our next program, two works that feature percussion:

Per Nørgård: A Light Hour, excerpts - sections III,IV
Percurama Percussion Ensemble
Da Capo 8.226100 (2009)

rew Byrne: White Bone Country
Stephen Gosling, piano; David Shively, percussion
New World Records 80696 (2009)

Originally posted by rchrd from Music From Other Minds, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)

The beat gets louder for world percussion - Toronto Star

The beat gets louder for world percussion
Toronto Star
Coming to Koerner Hall on April 29 is a program featuring American star composer Steve Reich, for example. Prior to that, Sunday afternoon offers a prime ...

Eartrip 5 out...

Just got back from a damp Sussex and discovered that David Grundy has just upped
Eartrip 5... worth a read, folks - a labour of love... download links are on the site...

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 25, 2010 at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2010

Winston Choi closes Hempy performance series at the SCA - HollandSentinel.com

Winston Choi closes Hempy performance series at the SCA
HollandSentinel.com
Choi's debut CD, the complete piano works of Elliott Carter was given five stars by BBC Music Magazine: “… sheer élan and pianistic devilment … ...

Evening of chamber music up next in Faculty Artist Series - University of Indianapolis

University of Indianapolis

Evening of chamber music up next in Faculty Artist Series
University of Indianapolis
Ariana Kim represents music of our own time with the gripping “Rhapsodic Musings” for solo violin by the venerable Elliott Carter, while music of Mozart ...

The party's over - The Dominion Post

The party's over
The Dominion Post
The theatre programme seemed vast and varied, the music somewhat restricted and the dance overall perhaps not quite the buzz we have known in other seasons, ...

Four to receive SUNY honorary degrees - University at Buffalo Reporter

University at Buffalo Reporter

Four to receive SUNY honorary degrees
University at Buffalo Reporter
Steve Reich, widely considered to be among the world's major living composers, will receive a SUNY honorary doctorate in music in a special ceremony to be ...

LIVE REVIEW: A roundup of recent concerts of music by Portland composers. - Willamette Week (blog)

LIVE REVIEW: A roundup of recent concerts of music by Portland composers.
Willamette Week (blog)
That Someday Lounge concert featured spirited performances of music by Terry Riley (the highlight), Steve Reich and, farther back in the 20th century, ...

A journey with Shearwater - Waterloo Record

A journey with Shearwater
Waterloo Record
The Besnard Lakes also make dreamy, languid music — though they like to do so with their amps cranked to punishing levels. Soaring harmonies, big guitar ...

and more »

Remembering Eleanor Hovda

Eleanor Hovda (1940-2010) was one of new music's treasures and it seemed that it was only a matter of time before everyone caught on, however she was also an intensely private person, so wider public recognition might be delayed, but it was certainly coming.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Thaler Violin Series Will Bring Jennifer Koh and Shai Wosner to Ithaca College - Ithaca College

Ithaca College

Thaler Violin Series Will Bring Jennifer Koh and Shai Wosner to Ithaca College
Ithaca College
The free concert will begin at 8:15 pm in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music. The program will included sonatas and sonatinas by Mozart and ...

Preview calendar: Clubs and concerts for March 25-31 - North County Times

Preview calendar: Clubs and concerts for March 25-31
North County Times
San Diego IndieFest VI: Metric, Far and the Nappy Roots ---- The three groups headline this outdoor concert festival with live music on six stages in North ...

and more »

Musician Lukas Ligeti mixes and matches to capture sounds in his head - Plain Dealer

Plain Dealer

Musician Lukas Ligeti mixes and matches to capture sounds in his head
Plain Dealer
But it's remarkable when you consider who his father is: Gyorgy Ligeti. The influential modern classical composer is widely known for his music appearing in ...

Ain't No Rocking This Collegiate Casbah?

By Colin Holter
Isn't a class on rock music supposed to be more than just a class?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

CD of the Week: Matthias Weckmann

s “Weine nicht” (“Weep not”); Konrad Junghänel conducting Cantus Cölln (Harmonia Mundi).

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Unquiet Thoughts, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Rolicking blues band set to hit town - Burlington Hawk Eye

Rolicking blues band set to hit town
Burlington Hawk Eye
... and music lecturer Julia Andrews will perform a two-piano recital at 7:30 pm Friday. They will perform works by Mozart, Witold Lutoslawski and Brahms. ...

Dramatic moments and discordant notes in Wagner soap opera - Irish Times

Dramatic moments and discordant notes in Wagner soap opera
Irish Times
Yet even Wagner's loudest critics have given the late festival director his due, in particular for hiring Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez for the ...

Night at the Museum

Reading a recent Los Angeles Times article about musical events taking place in museums, I was struck that this was still, in 2010, worthy of note. Museums have long been a tried-and-true location for musical performance: contemporary happenings in a gallery or more conventional concerts that happen to take place in a museum auditorium. Yes, the events described in the piece specifically involve visuals, but they seem to me a contemporary equivalent of the 1960s-era performances by Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman (“TV Cello”) or Steve Reich or Philip Glass, both of whom cut their teeth performing in New York art galleries, or countless other artists of that era. (Reich’s “Three Tales,” a later video triptych, is a work equally suitable for display in galleries and theaters.) I’ve always been curious, though, about what seems to me a less-explored aspect of museums’ musical presentation: the idea of curating concerts

Originally from The Classical Beat – Classical Music Forum – washingtonpost.com, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

$10 million Composer in Residence Program for the New York Phil

Baltimore Sun reposts big news on funding for Composer in Residence program, assuring a foundation and future for new music!

Originally from Green Bay Commission Club, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

Béla Bartók, "2 Portraits"

I. One Ideal
II. One Grotesque

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

Dave Merson Hess – Music from the film PRESENCE

Dave Merson Hess states his electronic soundtrack for Bryan Kramer’s independent science fiction film Presence is influenced heavily by Louis and Bebe Barron’s score for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. That immediately intrigued me since the classic movie’s soundtrack was my first introduction as a child to the sounds of the electronic music devices of the time.

I have not seen the film Presence However that did not reduce any pleasure I received from Hess’ down-tempo marvel of a film score. It holds up very well on its own. I could see this score easily enhancing a French futuristic film a la Godard yet complementing an Ridley Scott thriller. Hess mentions Glenn Branca, Ennio Morricone and Goblin as inspiration and I can see that. Maybe someday I can compare the soundtrack to the film but this album is getting a lot of plays on my ipod for just being itself.

The album is available through the link below from the Headphonica netlabel in 320kbps MP3. You can also download it from the Free Music Archive.

Download

Originally posted by Marvin from Free Albums Galore, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

Radiohead the Horse Set for Kentucky Derby - Spinner

Radiohead the Horse Set for Kentucky Derby
Spinner
Radiohead are one of the most successful avant garde rock bands in the world. Noew they have got a tribute in four-legged form; Radiohead is also the name ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Four Friends Reunite for Marin Symphony Premiere - San Francisco Classical Voice

Four Friends Reunite for Marin Symphony Premiere
San Francisco Classical Voice
It will be the focal point, in the words of Marin Symphony Music Director Alasdair Neale, for a remarkable program, opening with Samuel Barber's Essay for ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Daniel Bernard Roumain to Release New Album 'Woodbox Beats & Balladry' on 3/30 - Broadway World

Daniel Bernard Roumain to Release New Album 'Woodbox Beats & Balladry' on 3/30
Broadway World
"Woodbox Beats & Balladry is an amalgam of what contemporary composers are doing and where contemporary classical music might be going," says DBR. ...

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Yo-Yo Ma amazes auditorium - Indiana Daily Student

Indiana Daily Student

Yo-Yo Ma amazes auditorium
Indiana Daily Student
Perhaps the most famous contemporary classical musician, Yo-Yo Ma has released more than 75 albums and played to millions worldwide, engrossing audiences ...

and more »

Originally from "contemporary classical" | "avant garde" music - Google News, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on Mar 24, 2010 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Yo-Yo Ma: Ask Not What Your ‘Ax’ Can Do for You, but What You Can Do for Your Cyborg ‘Ax’

B asically, everything I’ve learned about Art has been from ‘finding my way inside’. [searching and growing through relationships with other