Upcoming in Philly, Boston, Phoenix, and NYC

- New music choir The Crossing offers three performances of Kile Smith’s Vespers, collaborating with Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. I don’t know a better contemporary piece for old instruments – for that alone the work is a remarkable achievement. But instrumentation aside, this is exceptionally beautiful music. January 7 and 8 in Philadelphia, January 9 in New York, details here.

- Eric Chasalow’s new horn concerto will be heard at the Southwest Horn Conference in Phoenix on January 14, and in Boston at a BMOP concert, January 27. Eric is perhaps best known as a master of the electronic medium, but his acoustic music is just as superb.

- There will be an evening of music by Hayes Biggs at Manhattan School, January 15. I earlier wrote about the Avalon Quartet’s recording of Hayes’s touching O Sapientia/Steal Away here. Update: more info about the concert here. Susan Narucki and Christopher Oldfather will offer a new song cycle.

- The seventh and final volume of George Crumb’s American Songbook will be premiered by Orchestra 2001 on January 28 and 29 in Philadelphia.

Miscellany encore

- A memorial service for recording engineer Curt Wittig will be held at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Washington, DC, on Saturday, November 5th at 11:00 am. Read about Curt here.

- counter)induction begins its season with music of Boulez, Feldman, Scelsi, Davidovsky, Webern, Babbitt, and Kyle Bartlett at the Tenri Cultural Institute in NYC, Sunday, October 30 at 8:00 pm. Saxophonist Matt Levy of the Prism Quartet is featured.

-The Crossing, coming off their participation in the James Dillon extravaganza at Miller Theater, has announced a project called The Gulf (between you and me), beginning with a workshop in Philadelphia with composer Chris Jonas and poet Pierre Joris, November 12, 2011, at 1:00 pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. More info here.

- Network for New Music opens its season at the World Cafe in Philadelphia on Sunday, November 6 at 7:30 pm. Music by Ingrid Arauco, Joseph Hallman, Louis Karchin, Thomas Kraines, Andrew Rudin, Arne Running, and Robert Schulz.

Congrats, Kile!

After 30 years, Kile Smith is retiring from the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music. It seemed like a good moment to listen again to Kile’s Vespers, the work he created for the Renaissance wind band Piffaro and Philadelphia’s The Crossing. In the piece, Kile draws gorgeous and endlessly varied harmonies out of a surprising limited array of pitches – the score doesn’t have a single accidental until the third movement. I know of no more successful piece for old instruments by a contemporary composer (I should know, I tried it myself.) My one quibble is that although it is intended as a Lutheran Vespers and the work is full of Lutheran chorale tunes, the pandiatonic idiom seems something that springs more from am English modal tradition, or even the diatonicism of Catholic chant, rather than the darker harmonic worlds of Schütz and Bach. No matter, the vocabulary serves the texts and the expressive intent beautifully.

By the way, Piffaro has fascinating video and more about their arsenal of instruments here.

Coming Attractions – 2011-2012

- Go here for a press release on the upcoming Miller Theater season, including a massive James Dillon 3-night extravaganza and Composer Portraits including John Zorn and George Lewis.

- the Orchestra 2001 website lists three programs for next year, with Boulez, Adams, Pärt, Andriessen, and a Crumb premiere – the seventh book in his remarkable American Songbook series.

- CityMusic Cleveland offers 24 free concerts next season.

- Network for New Music’s focus is on what they are calling Word Music, with big pieces by Lewis Spratlan and Matthew Greenbaum, and collaborations including one with The Crossing.

This Saturday, June 18, in Philly and NYC

- If you are in Philadelphia, you should consider taking your Saturday night date to the second in The Crossing’s Month of Moderns programs. Works by Kile Smith, Kamran Ince (a premiere) and Gabriel Jackson. Program notes here.

-And in New York the concert of choice is the program put on by the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society in collaboration with ICSM/League of Composers, featuring five U.S. or world premieres: Shulamit Ran, David Rakowski, Missy Mazzoli, Elliott Carter and Arthur Krieger. Program notes here.

Sunday Afternoon Miscellany

- go here for video on The Crossing, Donald Nally’s splendid new music choir here in Philly. They began their Month of Moderns today.

- first you say, ‘huh?” – but then you say, “of course.” You are reacting to news of The Cleveland Orchestras programs of Bruckner and John Adams at Lincoln Center next month.

- I will be heading up to NYC this week to hear Erwartung with Deborah Voigt and the NY Phil. Rachmaninoff Isle of the Dead and Shostakovich 1st also on the show. The Rachmaninoff and Schoenberg kind of go together; how will the Shostakovich fit?

 

New Music in Philadelphia calendar alert

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]

Heat Wave Miscellany

- new music in Philadelphia
When pointing out the Feldman and AACM festivals coming up in Philly, I should have also pointed out the Month of Moderns by Donald Nally’s choir The Crossing, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s performances of Henze’s Phaedra, featuring Tamara Mumford, whose performance in Queen of Spades I enjoyed so much earlier this season.(Thanks to David Patrick Stearns’s article in the Inquirer for the reminder.)

- recent listening:
The Great Chicago Concerts (Jazz Heritage).  Two very fine live 1946 performances by Ellington, including excerpts from Black, Brown & Beige (very different from the RCA Victor studio version), the Deep South Suite, a wonderfully strange take on Caravan, a rhapsodic Frankie and Johnny featuring a good bit of Ellington piano, and several loosely contructed tracks featuring, of all people, guest artist Django Reinhardt.

Chamber music of John Harbison (Naxos). Anchored by two piano trios, from 2003 and 1968, this incisively played album by the Amelia Piano Trio also features a number of miniatures: a set of charming Micro-Waltzes for piano, sets of solo viola pieces, the Gatsby Etudes based on music from Harbison’s opera, and more. There is an all-star viola quartet that includes Steven Tenenbom and Ida Kavafian, as well as  Anthea Kreston, the violinist from the Amelia, and the composer himself. The early Trio, written when the composer was only 30, shows that Harbison had a darn good command of an edgy high-modernist atonal idiom, something he subsequently largely set aside; yet the more familiar voice that emerged is still present.

recent reading:
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. A gentle, melancholy first-person narrative about a minor poet failing to complete the preface to a poetry anthology. The hyper-detailed observations of Baker’s first books have drifted away, but he is still a keen observer. There is also a good deal of rather cranky and doubtful technical stuff about rhyme and meter (you may be startled to learn that pentameter doesn’t exist), and tales of the great poets that show the narrator’s – and the author’s – love for the world of poetry and the larger world through poetry.

The Crossing preview

Go here for the first in a series of videos previewing upcoming performances by The Crossing, the fine choir led by Donald Nally. It features David Lang discussing text setting – this in connection with the new work he has composed for the group, called Statement to the Court on a text by Eugene Debs.