sound expanse

I hadn't realized just how long it had been since I last posted until I looked a moment ago. The blog has been dormant while some other things, especially work, took over. I have a big backlog of concerts, CDs, books, videos, and more to write about, and it will be coming, steadily I hope, over the next several months. In the meantime, there are a number of upcoming events for the summer that I want to point out. As always, feel free to let me know what I've missed. And if you make it to any of them, I would love to hear about it.

Spitalfields Festival
London

A Chris Newman Portrait
Michael Finnissy, piano
Chris Newman, vocals
Kürbis Ensemble

An Aldo Clementi Portrait
Aldo Clementi
ELISION Ensemble

Tide Trilogy
James Weeks: Tide Trilogy
Rytis Mažulis: Schisma
Anton Lukoszevieze, cello
Andrew Sparling, clarinet
Christopher Redgate, oboe d'amore
Paul Archbold, live electronics

Inside/Outside
Sheffield, UK
Bank St Arts
June 23rd
the great outdoors... near and far... echoing spaces... bat sonar...rambling... doppler... reflection... civic architecture... bus routes... everyday commerce... street song... bring ( ears ) and shoes......))...)..)).)))..)))))) )) )) )) ))
Featuring music by Michael PARSONS, John LELY, Alvin LUCIER, Ross PARFITT, Stephen CHASE and more.

music we'd like to hear
London
three concerts on three wednesdays curated by three composers

June 30th Clemens Merkel, violin
Wolff, Trunk, Parkinson, Lely

July 7th, music from the wulf
Winter, Kudirka, Susam, Schultz, Steenberge, Clark

July 14th, piano works
Cage, Shepherd, Patterson

Incidental Music
Gallerie Mark Müller
Zürich
July 5-8
Works by John Lely, Stefan Thut, Jason Brogan, James Saunders, Adam Overton, Sam Sfirri and G. Douglas Barrett

BR Symphonie Orchester
Munich
July 9th
*live broadcast
Barrett, Hölszky, Lim

Soundwaves Festival
Brighton, UK
July 16-18

Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt
Darmstadt, Germany
July 17-31

I'm making use of the unexpected free wi-fi at Logan Airport to check in for a moment on the way to London for Terrain, an ELISION concert at Kings Place. Following that is the MaerzMusik festival in Berlin. Hugely looking forward to all of it. More soon!

The coming weeks are especially rich with concerts. Here's what I know so far:

Wednesday, January 27th
Basel
Gare du Nord
For the first time in Europe:
Ben Johnston: The Demon Lover's Doubles for trumpet and microtonal piano
Paul Huebner, trumpet - Clemens Hund-Goeschel, piano

Wednesday, January 27th
New York City
The Gershwin Hotel
The ai ensemble presents a night of solo and chamber works of Feldman & Lucier.

Friday, January 29
Berlin
Ultraschall
Tristan Murail: Contes cruels (2007)
Seth Josel, E-Gitarre - Wiek Hijman, E-Gitarre
Mathias Spahlinger: akt, eine treppe herabsteigend (1997/98)
Carl Rosman, Bassklarinette - Michael Svoboda, Posaune
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Johannes Kalitzke, Leitung

Saturday, January 30
Berlin
Ultraschall
Clara Maïda: Shel(l)ter (2009), Zyklus für Ensemble und Elektronik
Ensemble L'Itinéraire, Jean Deroyer, Leitung

January 28, 29, 30
Montréal
Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal
alt:neu--Quatuor Bozzini plays Kagel, Brand, Walshe

Friday, February 5th
New York City
The Morgan Library and Museum
JACK Plays the complete Xenakis quartets

Saturday, February 6
Los Angeles
The Wulf
Music by Larry Polansky

Sunday, February 6th
Amsterdam
Muziekgebouw aan't IJ
Stockhausen + Kagel Retrospektive
MusikFabrik

Monday, February 8th
London
King's Place
Invisibility--ELISION ensemble (see the previous post and associated links)

Tuesday, February 9th-Wednesday, February 10th
New York City
Diapason Gallery
Over the course of the night that separates the 9th from the 10th of February, composer-musicians Jason Brogan, Sam Sfirri and Taylan Susam will take vigil in the relaxed, sympathetic setting of Diapason Gallery and incant the daybreak, performing pieces of their own composition and those by Wandelweiser composers such as Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro.

Saturday, February 13th
Düsseldorf
KaiserWellen, Lichtstraße 52
Performances and readings from Craig Shepard's Zu Fuss
Sandra Schimag, speaker - Antoine Beuger, flute - Jürg Frey, clarinet - Marcus Kaiser, cello - Tobias Liebezeit, percussion
In the 2005 sound project On Foot, Craig Shepard walked 250 miles across Switzerland. Every day he composed a new piece, wrote it down and performed it on the pocket trumpet at 6 p.m. All concerts took place out-of-doors in public spaces such as squares, harbors, intersections, sidewalks, and mountain-tops. The performance features pieces and readings from the book.

February 26, 27, 28
Austin
New Music Co-op at Ceremony Hall (with Greg Stuart and Michael Pisaro as guests)
Works by Pisaro, Keller, Malfatti, Weller, Hennies, Bridges, Fariss, Wolff

***

Let me know if I've missed something, and I'm likely to add it to the list. I've only included events between now and the end of February--the line has to be drawn somewhere. I have more information about most of these events, but didn't want to make the post overly long. Just send me a note if you have trouble finding any information that you need.

A number of days have gone by since my last post, and I've been hoping to write something substantial. But as it happens, some much-needed work has been keeping me very busy. If you'd like to read something like, say, an interview with a young and fascinating composer, complete with a score and sound excerpt, you could do no better than the inaugural post of Tim Rutherford-Johnson's 10 for '10 series on The Rambler. Included in that post is an interview with Evan Johnson, a complete score, and a sound excerpt from Apostrophe 2 (pressing down on my sternum), that will be performed by ELISION on February 8th at King's Place in London. Oh, and if you can make it to that concert, do. (See my earlier post for background or the rambler's recent plug for the relevant info.)

ELISION's November 20th performance of Richard Barrett's Opening of the Mouth is currently available on BBC's Hear and Now. It's the final broadcast of Huddersfield 2009, available through Saturday. Scroll directly to the 16:30 mark to start listening to the material about the piece. Following an interview with Barrett, the performance starts at 19:54.

Graham McKenzie, the director of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, has made the point that he does not like to assign themes to festivals, but prefers to watch patterns emerge during the event itself. For me, one of major patterns I saw on all sorts of levels was community and dialogue--from the institutional level--between organizations like the festival and the university--to the interactions between musicians--improvisers in particular--onstage. So much is made possible when independent, forward-thinking people work together within the context of an event.

Alvin Curran has been exploring various ways of involving local communities in his pieces, from the Maritime Rites installations and performances to the community bands of Oh the Brass on the Grass, Alas. His piece, OH MAN OH MANKIND OH YEAH was called "A Community Sing," which included the Huddersfield Choral Society, the University Choir, instrumentalists from the university, and vocalise, "the Festival's new vocal group for young people." Curran writes,

The work is about singing, transforming ponderous mass into weightless matter, singing invisibly together, singing in reckless conflict and sweet harmony, singing with you... so join in at the end if you like!

The performances were all quite strong, but the kids stole the show. They were having so much fun up there on stage, and they were totally engaged in their various noisemaking activities.

Curran, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, is also a member of Musica Elettronica Viva, which has been in existence since 1966. As they themselves put it,

Part myth, part reality, part dream, Musica Elettronica Viva in its 23rd year continues to resist retirement and greatly enjoys its one gig a year.

In the name of the collectivity, the group abandoned both written scores and leadership and replaced them with improvisation and critical listening. Rehearsals and concerts were begun at the appropriate time by a kind of spontaneous combustion and continued until total exhaustion set in.

In a totally enjoyable conversation and Q&A session after their performance, the friendship of these three Americans expatriates in Rome was obvious. Rzewski responded at some length to one question, and Teitelbaum then said, "I completely disagree with Frederic." In their performance, they were at many times so remarkably in sync that I might have thought it was a piece that had been composed and rehearsed. But learning more about the background of the group and the (in)frequency of their performances made it clear that it wasn't. These are long-standing friendships that play out in music as well as in life. They made the point in the conversation afterwards that they have used fewer and fewer instructions as they have continued to work together.

Quite similarly (though to a very different effect), on the day of fORCH's performance, Richard Barrett said in an interview with Graham McKenzie that over the last few years,

the amount of notated material has gradually gone down until for today's performance there's very little left... this collective of people has developed its own musical personality and become its own composer, so to speak.

Barrett wrote in the program notes that "The framework ... is intended not to enclose improvisatory spontaneity, but to create a point of departure for it." The players, who that night included Phil Minton and Ute Wassermann (voices), FURT (Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer, electronics), Anne La Berge (flute, electronics), John Butcher (saxophones), Aleks Kolkowski (viola, musical saw), and Rhodri Davies (harp), are overwhelmingly creative in the sounds they find and explore in their instruments. FURT plays an interesting role, sewing together, splitting apart, amplifying, distorting, and otherwise manipulating the sounds produced by the rest of the group. Their performance at the hcmf and the material I have heard on their myspace page are like nothing else. I'll hold off on writing more about the individual members' other involvements for some future entries. What they are doing is too interesting to squeeze into an already-long post.

Another partnership is crucial to all of the events that I've written about in these last five posts, as well as the many others that I did not cover, and that is the partnership between the University of Huddersfield (including CeReNeM) and the hcmf. The mutual benefit is substantial. That is not just for the obvious practical reasons of venues for the festival, exposure for the university, etc. All of that would be trivial if it were not for the fact that both the festival and the faculty and students involved with new music have a similar and complementary orientation towards... (It's dangerous to try to codify this too much, but I'll make a first stab) ... highly creative work that lies well outside of the mainstream. The students and faculty that I've had a chance to get to know have a huge diversity of interests and approaches, but they have quite a lot to say to one other. It was great to see that in the three masterclasses I attended, the nine pieces were remarkably different from one another, but Liza Lim, Jonathan Harvey, and Rebecca Saunders had really insightful things to say to the students about each of them. The programming of the whole festival was similarly vibrant, free of aesthetic branding, and rich with opportunities for thought and discussion. What more can I say? If it continues to be this strong, and on this schedule, I'll be missing many more Thanksgivings. Something really special is happening in Huddersfield.