Month: September 2010

Thursday night miscellany

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-info on the Philly version of the Bang on a Can marathon here. Lots of great stuff, laudibly diverse programming - though not as diverse as the press releases might make you think. Fact is, the early iterations of the NYC version even included Babbitt and Davidovsky -  since excluded; and midtown work has, in general, never been welcome. But, again, there is much here to enjoy, and I applaud the Philly-centric inclusion of Uri Caine and the Sun Ra Arkestra. How about more Philly composers - and genuine stylistic diversity - next time?

-Anthony Tommasini on great moments in Sondheim.

-current (and upcoming) playlist:

(Iverson on Jasmine, and on Hank Jones)

Greeting Seasons

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Season announcements for various new music ensembles are pouring over the virtual transom. Here are just a very few samples - use the links for more complete info, and seek out what is available in your own town:

Collage New Music of Boston is featuring Fred Lerdahl all season with five pieces across the three concert season. Works by Hartke, Mazzoli, Boykin, Liptak, and Harbison’s Louise Gluck cycle The Seven Ages are additional highlights.

Here in Philly, Network for New Music is having an Asian season, with music from or inspired by Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea. Featured composers include Chou Wen-Chung, Dai Fujikura, Takemitsu (with video by Gene Coleman), and Shih-Hui Chen.

Also in Philadelphia, Orchestra 2001 makes its own contribution to the Asian focus with works by Tan Dun and May T-Chi Chen, along with premieres by Jay Reise and Gerald Levinson and music by Golijov and Dutilleux.

The Dallas-based Voices of Change is offering music by Moravec, Lutoslawski, Xi Wang, Poul Ruders, and Chen Yi.

In San Francisco, Earplay revives a 1959 work by Seymour Shifrin, as well as playing music by Saariaho, Harvey, Lori Dobbins, and Michael Finnissy.

Alarm Will Sound is touring with a multimedia program called 1969 - Beatles arrangements, Bernstein, Berio, Stockhausen  - inspired by a planned joint concert by Stockhausen and the Beatles that never took place. The program comes to Zankel Hall on March 10.

The Composer Portraits at Columbia University’s Miller Theater this season will feature Matthias Pintscher, Fred Lerdahl, Pierre Boulez, Julia Wolfe, Mario Davidovsky, Chaya Czernowin, and Joan Tower.

Da Capo Chamber Players celebrate their 40th anniversary with programs that include premieres by George Tsontakis and Keith Fitch.

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society is not a new music ensemble, but it deserves mention here, for their many concerts will include a rich array of new music and 20th century classics, including works by Ingrid Arauco, Curt Cacioppo, Crumb, Lawrence Dillon, David Finko, Hindemith, Daniel Kellogg, Jan Krzywicki, Lowell Liebermann, David Ludwig, Webern, Messiaen, and Richard Wernick.

I am sitting, you are watching

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I once attended a performance at West Chester University of Alvin Lucier’s classic “I am Sitting in a Room”. A performer read the text that is the basis of the piece, and that reading was recorded. The recording was played back, with the playback repeatedly re-recorded, each re-recording losing some fidelity to the original, but gaining the acoustic characteristics of the room in which the piece was performed. Now on YouTube you can watch a sort of video transcription of the piece by composer Patrick Liddell:

Friday morning miscellany

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Go here to see video of Sonny Rollins receiving the MacDowell Medal at the MacDowell Colony.

Go here for “Take the Repeat” - podcasts from Network for New Music - one on the Diabelli Project and another featuring an interview with Bernard Rands. A new video from composer Melissa Dunphy is also at Network’s site.

Some are not recent, but there are interesting interviews with pianist Alan Feinberg, and composers such as Betsy Jolas, Paul Lansky, and Pierre Boulez, here.

Path to Jonathan Harvey

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On an Overgrown Path is offering an interview with Jonathan Harvey, one of the most important composers in the UK, and one of the most important composers anywhere using electronic media. There are various points of access to the interview, some of which include an airing of  Harvey’s Speakings for chorus and orchestra. Harvey’s music is deeply spiritual, even visionary, and integrates technology uncommonly well.

New York Chronic(le)

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My beach reading book this summer has been Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City. I’m not quite sure how I feel about the book. (Apparently the NY Times was not sure either, in the sense that the book got a rave in the Sunday Book Review, but a pan from the daily critic.) Set in Manhattan, the book has lovely writing and plenty of wit - sometimes clever, sometimes just silly  (instead of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, there are references to the non-existent books Obstinate Dust by Ralph Warden Meeker, and Immaculate Rust by Sterling Wilson Hobo) - but I felt little emotional connection with the characters, partly because it was hard to see why those characters emotionally connected with each other. (The threads binding together the characters are equally implausible in another New York novel, this by Colum McCann, but I cared about them in a way that I do not in Lethem’s book.) Why should  former child TV star Chase Insteadman befriend  crazily free-associating former rock critic Perkus Tooth, with a political radical turned establishment man, and a prolific ghostwriter thrown into the mix as well? I suppose the commonality is that the first three of those characters are no longer what they once were, more so than the average aging human, and a ghostwriter is, by definition, not who she seems to be. But Tooth is mostly just obnoxious, and it is hard to see why Chase forms a relationship with him. All this stuff about people and things not being what they seem is fuel for the pot-driven (and eventually justified) paranoia that pervades the book. I was reminded of Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow, V, and The Crying of Lot 49 are all books about conspiracies, the secrets of which are all just out of reach.