Posts Tagged 'Bowerbird'

Lachenmann and Xavier Le Roy

Published September 15, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

An intriguing program presented by Bowerbird here in Philly this weekend: Xavier Le Roy is a choreographer interested in the relationship between not just music and movement, but specifically musical performance and movement. For this program he works with music by Lachenmann, performed by members of Klangforum Wien. The music alone, played by an important ensemble, makes this of interest.

New Music in Philadelphia calendar alert

Published June 1, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

For your convenience, here is a summary by date of the astonishing array of new music coming up in Philly (I have omitted a couple of pre- and post-concert events) AS = American Sublime; MoM = The Crossing‘s Month of Moderns; AACM = Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

Friday, June 3, 8:00 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater

Saturday, June 4, 8:00 pm Marilyn Nonken plays Feldman’s Triadic Memories. Rodeph Shalom. [AS]

Saturday, June 4, 7:30 pm Prism Saxophone Quartet premieres works by David Rakowski, Matthew Levy, Cara Haxo, Perry Goldstein, Lisa Bielawa. First Unitarian Church.

Saturday, June 4, 8:00 pm Ars Nova Workshop AACM/Great Black Music: solo performance by Wadada Leo Smith. Philadelphia Art Alliance.

Saturday, June 5, 2:00 to 6:00 pm ”Finding Feldman” panel with Bunita Marcus, Kyle Gann, Marilyn Nonken, Tom Chiu. Crane Arts Building [AS]

Sunday, June 5, 4:00 pm The Crossing sings works by Gabriel Jackson, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. David Lang, Ingram Marshall, and Mark Winges. Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. [MoM]

Sunday, June 5, 7:00 pm JACK Quartet plays Feldman, Brown, Cage, Webern. Crane Arts Building. [AS]

Sunday June 5, 8:00 pm Ars Nova Workshop AACM/Great Black Music: Henry Threadgill’s Zooid.

Sunday, June 5, 2:30 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater

Wednesday, June 8, 8:00 pm Gordon Beeferman plays Feldman’s Palais de Mari. Biello Martin Studio. [AS]

Wednesday, June 8, 7:30 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater.

Friday, June 10, 7:15 pm Joan La Barbera performs Feldman’s Three Voices. Philadelphia Museum of Art [AS]

Friday, June 3, 8:00 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater.

Saturday, June 11, 3:00 pm Williams/Golove perform Feldman’s Patterns in a Chromatic Field. Fleisher Art Memorial [AS]

Saturday, June 11, 8:00 pm Either/OR performs Feldman’s Crippled Symmetry. Fleisher Art Memorial. [AS]

Sunday, June 12, 2:00 pm FLUX Quartet performs Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2. Philadelphia Cathedral. [AS]

Friday, June 10, 8:00 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater.

Saturday, June 11, 8:00 pm Ars Nova Workshop AACM/Great Black Music: chamber music of Roscoe Mitchell, S.E.M. Ensemble, Thomas Buckner, Joseph Kubera, Roscoe Mitchell-Evan Parker Duo. German Society of Pennsylvania.

Sunday, June 12, 2:30 pm Opera Company of Philadelphia performs Henze’s Phaedra. Perelman Theater

Monday, June 13, 8:00 pm Mike Reed-Jeff Parker Duo. 10:00 pm The Collide Quartet performs Henry Threadgill’s Background. The Maas Building.

Saturday, June 18, 8:00 pm The Crossing performs music by Kile Smith, Kamran Ince, and Gabriel Jackson. Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. [MoM]

Sunday, June 26, 4:00 pm The Crossing, performs music by Ēriks Ešenvalds, Maija Einfelde, Gabriel Jackson, Tarik O’Regan. Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill [MoM]

Joan La Barbera workshop

Published June 1, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

Bowerbird, as part of the American Sublime festival, is offering a workshop with singer Joan La Barbera. Information here.

American Sublime

Published May 17, 2011 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

A seriously important festival of Morton Feldman’s late music here in Philly, June 4 through the 12. Curated by Bowerbird and called “American Sublime” (quite elegant website), the programs include pieces like Triadic Memories. Crippled Symmetry, and the six-hour-long String Quartet #2. Performers include heavy-hitters like Marilyn Nonken, the Jack Quartet, Joan LaBarbara, and more. This is an uncommon series of events, presenting important music that is new to the area. Read the article that inspired the title of the festival here.

Thursday night datebook

Published September 23, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , ,

Events: very soon, soon, and not so soon:

-Bowerbird presents Eliane Radigue’s complete Naldjorlak cycle at Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 North American Street in Philadelphia, 8 pm, Friday, September 24.

-Orchestra 2001 offers two works by Osvaldo Golijov, plus Enoch Arden by Richard Strauss, with Marina Sirtis as narrator; September 24 at Trinity Center, September 26 at Swarthmore College.

- Oboe goddess Peggy Pearson plays the Boston premiere of Stephen Jaffe’s Chamber Concerto “Singing Figures” at the first Winsor Music concert of the season. Sunday, October 3 at St. Paul’s Church, Brookline, 7:00 PM. (Check out the fine recording of the piece on Bridge.)

UPDATE: I just received an e-mail reporting that the October 3 Winsor Music  concert is cancelled, due to “an injury to a performer. She will be OK, but could not manage this week’s schedule of rehearsals. We regret any inconvenience caused by this cancellation.”

- Mimi Stillman’s Dolce Suono Ensemble premieres a new Richard Danielpour trio on October 22 at Trinity Center in Philadelphia. Read here (scroll down) about the group’s Mahler/Schoenberg project, coming next spring, and including commissioned works by Steven Stucky, Steven Mackey, Fang Man, David Ludwig, and Stratis Minakakis.

-21st Century Consort offers Barber, Copland, Jon Deak, Jordan Kuspa, and Mark Kuss at its season opener, October 23, Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC.

Now Presenting

Published September 16, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Seemed like time for a new link category, so there is now a list of presenting organizations in the right hand column.

James Primosch, composer

When honoring him with its Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters noted that "A rare economy of means and a strain of religious mysticism distinguish the music of James Primosch... Through articulate, transparent textures, he creates a wide range of musical emotion." Andrew Porter stated in The New Yorker that Primosch "scores with a sure, light hand" and critics for the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Dallas Morning News have characterized his music as "impressive", "striking", "grandly romantic", "stunning" and "very approachable".

Primosch’s compositional voice encompasses a broad range of expressive types. His music can be intensely lyrical, as in the song cycle Holy the Firm or dazzlingly angular as in Secret Geometry for piano and electronic sound. His affection for jazz is reflected in works like the Piano Quintet, while his work as a church musician informs the many pieces in his catalog based on sacred songs or religious texts.

His music has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Lydian, Cavani, Cassatt, Ying, and Miami string quartets, the 21st Century Consort, the New York New Music Ensemble, Network for New Music, Dawn Upshaw, Lisa Saffer, Janice Felty, and Lambert Orkis. Twelve of his compositions have been recorded for Albany, Azica, Bard, Bridge, CRI, Centaur, Innova, and New World labels, with new discs of vocal and choral works planned.

David Patrick Stearns on “Songs for Adam”

If there's anything out there like Primosch's Songs of Adam, I haven't heard it - though the music wears its singularity lightly, with no need to express itself radically. It has a confidence of expression that comes of Primosch's having written a steady stream of song cycles since the late 1990s. Composers are still drawing legitimate inspiration from poets of the increasingly distant past, such as Walt Whitman, but Primosch pushes both himself and thus his listeners onto new ground with Susan Stewart's verse, which are called songs in their printed version because they suggest music, especially in the first poem, in which Adam is stuttering his way into existence.

Both poet and composer share an ability to contemplate how basic elements of existence might feel for the first time, and the duo know how to capture that in their respectively cultivated vocabularies, with an emotional rightness that never becomes too analytical.

In fact, Primosch enters the Korngold zone when describing Adam's intoxication with the word. Though words are set dramatically and in ways that are well written for the voice, the best moments are in the masterly orchestration, which gives an extra percussive spark to moments of discovery and unflinchingly confronts the agony of Adam's expulsion from Eden.

The pale strings capture his disappointment in the real world in an overall dramatic arc that's almost epic, going from the unimaginable (the beauty of Eden) to the unthinkable (the world's first children, Abel and Cain, and the world's first fratricide).
-Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2, 2010

Current Projects:

Working with audio wizard George Blood on editing recordings of "Holy the Firm", "From a Book of Hours", "Four Sacred Songs", and "Dark the Star" for eventual CD release. The performers are Susan Narucki, William Sharp, and the 21st Century Consort, directed by Christopher Kendall.

Two composition projects:
- a set of short piano pieces, commissioned by a consortium of pianists (currently 12) from across the United States.
- a cycle of songs for soprano and orchestra. Susan Stewart, whose poetry I have set in three previous pieces, has written new poems specifically for this project, to be called "A Sibyl".

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 8 other followers

Links

Archives

Blog Stats

  • 16,823 hits
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.