'Terrible Twos'

A new work of mine and eight other premieres, duets by living composers, will be performed at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 18 at William Paterson University’s New Music Series, on a program titled “Terrible Twos.” The music was commissioned by Composers Concordance, a group of longstanding currently led by Gene Pritsker and Dan Cooper that regularly performs commissions and performs works by its members. This concert is the first event of Composers Concordance 2017-18 season.

            The program is mostly duets, split between performers Gene Pritsker and Greg Baker, electric guitars; Keve Wilson, oboe, and Kathleen Supové, piano; and Peter Jarvis, multi-percussion and Michiyo Suzuki, clarinet/ bass clarinet. They’ll be performing work by Randall Woolf, Gene Pritsker, Peter Jarvis, Greg Baker, David Saperstein, Dan Cooper, John Clark, and myself. The concert finale will be “a large semi-aleatoric piece” that will include all three duos performing as a sextet. 

My contribution will be in the clarinet and percussion duets, along with new pieces by John and Peter. The title of mine is “Lunatic,” as it was started before the recent total eclipse that captured the attention of all of North America. The event seemed to underscore what feels like a surreal time in American life and culture, one where we’re wrestling with a kind of national psychological complex related to who we were and who we are as a country and a species. The overlay of that superficial fixation onto the underlying forces of creation, symbolized by the eclipse, reveals a colorful, dark landscape of anxiety.

            Admission is free. The concert is in Shea Center for the Performing Arts, William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. I hope everyone can come and support both the Composers Concordance and the university’s New Music Series. Both deserve high praise for their relentless efforts to promote new music in high quality performances.

            --C.     
September 15, 2017

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Forests and ICE

ICE, photo taken from the group's website

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) performs “How Forests Think,” 7:30 p.m. Monday, August 14 at Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center. 

The program – part of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart summer festival – takes it’s name from a work for 10 musicians by composer Liza Lim. (Perhaps coincidentally, this is also the title of an interesting book about interconnected rhythms of life experienced by Amazon forest natives.) In addition to Lim’s music, the program includes Pauline Oliveros’s “Earth Ears,” and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aequilibria.” The ensemble will be conducted by Baldur Brönnimann and musician Wu Wei will perform on the sheng, a Chinese mouth-blown reed organ.

The thread of the program, obviously, is the connection between music and nature, something that is very much on my mind as I prepare for the course, Music and the Natural World, that I teach each Fall for freshman at The College of New Jersey. The topic runs deep and crosses all lines of human investigation, including biological and physical sciences, philosophy, religion, politics, the visual arts, dance, psychology and sociology. 

The reason for this blurring of lines is the root of music is deep in prehistory – it prefigures and shapes many aspects of human activity that reason would typically try to parse into separate channels for analysis. Music doesn't parse. Any part of it interconnects to any other part. (Try defining harmony, for instance, without talking about pitch, time and esthetic impressions.) Music organizes  people like . On the one hand it lifts individuality and makes us conscious of time; on the other, it submerges our individual identities into the pool of the communal response, which holds all of the past, present and future in one bowl.

Those realizations are apparent with very little investigation – just an open set of ears and a heart tuned to an old song. Lim's composition uses for its model the life of the forest itself, the activity, growth and structures that define it. We hear forest sounds as music – is that because an ancestral association of good emotions with the sound of the forest? Or are we anthropomorphizing those sounds, turning them into human-style communication, reflecting our humanness back onto the non-human forest? Or is it because our understanding of music emanates from there, so we are ourselves manifestations of the forest? (Answer: yes. Mark this spot on the map in your brain: this is the approximate place where words stop, while the landscape of music keeps right on going.)

ICE is one of the best new music groups around, so you’re pretty much guaranteed a memorable and probably definitive performance. You can read and watch clips from my 2013 interview with founder and former artistic director Claire Chase on TheStreet’s website [The video link in the article isn't working. Use this one to watch the video.] Tickets to "How Forests Think" are $30 and are available through the Mostly Mozart website (www.lincolncenter.org/mostlymozart) or by calling CenterCharge at 212-721-6500.

--C.
August 8, 2017
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Composers Concordance Festival 2012

Just a reminder that the Composers Concordance Festival 2012, a series of five concerts, is under way. The collective emphasizes composers' involvement in the performances, so each concert should offer a direct view into creative minds. It's also billed as "the most eclectic contemporary music festival of the season" so stylistic variety should be expected. The group is directed by Joseph Pehrson, Pat Hardish, Gene Pritsker, Dan Cooper and Milica Paranosic. (Paranosic is absent from the photo above.)

Tonight's event, 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 29 at DROM, 85 Avenue A, New York, is the Third Annual Composers Play Composers Marathon. The list of composers participating:

Yael Acher, Cristian Amigo, Loop B, Dan Barrett, Eve Beglarian, Svjetlana Bukvich-Nichols, Peter Breiner, Luis Andrei Cobo, Valerie Coleman, Dan Cooper, Jed Distler, Patrick Grant, Franz Hackl, Sara Holtzschue, Peter Jarvis, Jonathan Kane, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew M. Lee, Peri Mauer, Daniel Palkowski, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, David Saperstein, Larry Simon, David Soldier, Rubens Salles, Eleonor Sandresky, Ezequiel Viñao and Michael Wolff.

That list is cut-and-pasted from the Composers Concordance website, where you can find out more information.

Upcoming events are "New Blues" featuring the International Street Cannibals Ensemble, 9 p.m. Jan. 31, at 62 Avenue C; "Electronics" 8 p.m. Feb. 3 at Gallery MC, 549 W. 52 St.; and "Ensemble," 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6 at William Paterson University and directed by Peter Jarvis. I'll be writing about this last event for my Sunday column in the Asbury Park Press.

Check the Composers Concordance website for more info! Here's a clip from the website, featuring Dan Cooper's 'Unsubscribe' for piano four hands, played by Taka Kigawa and Dimitri Dover at Chelsea Art Museum in 2010.



--C.
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WPU New Music Concert

Attended the William Paterson New Music Series concert last night to hear Peter Jarvis play the premiere of my piece, Charms and Chasms. The program was a tribute to the late genius composer and theorist Milton Babbitt who died last month. Works by David Saperstein, George Perle, Arthur Krieger, Tobias Picker and David Sanford were played, along with a couple of short pieces by Babbitt.

The music represented a wide range of approaches, representing not Babbitt's style but the scope of his interests and legacy. All of it was of an extremely high quality, from the brutish Krieger piece, Strike Zone, for drum set and computer, commissioned and performed by Peter, to the quiet lyricism of the piano solo by Picker, played by Carl Patrick Bolleia. Peter was also involved in the two Babbitt pieces, Homily for solo snare drum, which he commissioned and has performed many times, and the delightful 15-second celeste solo, Composition for One Instrument and Ben, which I hope to write more about at some point. I as understand it, Peter had learned of the existence of this score, which had existed only in manuscript, almost by accident and was instrumental in getting it copied, published and performed.

The biggest applause was for Peter's composition, Drumming for Milton, a work for drum kit augmented by temple blocks, premiered by longtime New Jersey Percussion Ensemble member Paul Carroll. A blend of Babbitt-esque rhythmic counterpoint and Keith Moon-style tom work, Drumming just smokes and Carroll did a great job with it.

I'm honored to have had my own piece in the mix. Peter also commissioned this work, performed it himself and did a terrific job, catching the air of ritual and the blend of percussiveness and lyricism I was looking for. I just loved seeing all that metal swinging around in the stage lights during the livelier sections. If a recording or video turns up, I will surely post it.

--C.
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Locrian Chamber Players

Just got a postcard today announcing the Locrian Chamber Players upcoming recital, 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27. My friend, composer David Macdonald is one of the directors of
this New York new music ensemble. The group performs a few times a year at Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Ave., New York City (north of W.120th St. and one block west of Broadway). The concert is free.

On the program will be work by British composer Gavin Bryars, Japanese composer Somei Satoh, Austrian composer Kurt Schwertsik, and Americans Suzanne Farrin (pictured) and ensemble member Jonathan Faiman.

Members of the Locrian for this performance are violinists Cal Wiersma and Curtis Macomber, violist Dan Panner, cellist Peter Seidenberg, bassist Troy Rinker, percussionist Eric Poland, pianist Faiman and harpist Anna Remersman.

Directions and more information are available on the Locrian Chamber Players website.

--C.

Pictures 2009 at Montclair Museum

The New Jersey Arts Collective is presenting its annual "Pictures" concert, a mix of student and professional work by New Jersey composers inspired by visual art. The concert will be held 2 p.m. this Sunday, April 26, at the Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Ave., Montclair. The visual art that inspired the music, Elsie Driggs' "Queensborough Bridge, 1927," will be on display. A pre-concert panel discussion will be held at 1:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/63667.

The music will be performed by Exit 9 Percussion Group and will include "SPAN," by NJ Arts Collective Director Darren Gage, and four works by students Thomas Oltarzewski, Christopher Demetriou, Ian Vogler and Daniel Konstantinovsky. The four were selected as part of NJ Arts Collective's annual composition contest.

--C.