Derek Johnson, guitar
Program:
Michael Fiday: Slapback
Steve Reich: Electric Counterpoint
Scott Johnson: Gone
Louis Andriessen (arr. by Derek Johnson): Hout
Organist Christopher Houlihan is about to begin a small tour performing the 6 symphonies for solo organ by Louis Vierne. Labelled Vierne 2012, the tour is covering only major cities like New York, Denver, Chicago, LA, Montreal and Dallas. The NY show (the kick-off date) is a two-part program that will be performed at 3 PM and 7:30 PM on Saturday, June 2, and you can purchase tickets for it here or on the link below
Christopher had time to stop and talk to another guy named Christopher.
CM: Can you talk about Louis Vierne and why you have such a strong connection to his music?
CH: Vierne was a French organist and composer, born nearly blind, and lived an incredibly tragic life. Both personally and professionally his life was one horrible event after another: three failed relationships, the deaths of his family members and mentors, breaking his leg, his worsening eye sight… the list goes on and on. But he transcended these events to write some tremendous music (not just for the organ, even). His music is incredibly personal, and I think that’s what has always attracted me to it. One can sense Vierne’s suffering (he often “wears his heart on his sleeve,” which I suppose I do in my own life as well, I admit), but he also has a great deal of humor, romance, and triumphant joy in his music. All put together, I can’t think of anything more I’d want from a musical experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Violinist-composer Cornelius “Neil” Dufallo is performing a solo concert at New York’s well-renowned Bargemusic on May 31st at 8 PM. This will be Neil’s first solo concert in the US since announcing his departure from ETHEL earlier this month.
The concert is the fourth installation of his “Journaling” series, and is also the official CD release party for his upcoming CD of the same title.
The concert will feature works by Dufallo himself, as well as music by JacobTV, Patrick Derivaz and many others.
Neil was interviewed by The Glass last month and talked about the series and this show in particular:
“I began the concert series ‘Journaling’ in 2009 to document my work with extraordinary living composers while also creating a repertoire of twenty-first century violin music. I collaborated with each of the represented composers between 1996 and the present, through my work in the Flux Quartet, Ne(x)tworks, and Ethel. With the exception of two collaborative pieces (by Corey Dargel and Patrick Derivaz) all of the pieces have been composed for either solo violin or violin + laptop computer. The next concert, ‘Journaling (Part Four)’ is coming up May 31 at Bargemusic. The composers for that show are JacobTV, Kinan Azmeh, Svjetlana Bukvich, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Brantley, and Patrick Derivaz.”
The pieces promise to be as diverse as they are exciting and colorful. Read the rest of this entry »
Thought I’d share this krautrock classic from 1969.
Can were formed in ’68 in West Cologne, Germany and were one of the first of the krautrock groups.
Word has it that this was edited down from 6 hours!
Love the drums on this more than anything!
The avant-cabaret specialist Amy X Neuburg, who I interviewed back in December to preview her gig at Roulette for her last NY appearance is back in NYC this week, this time at another popular spot in the city for new music, The Stone, on Wednesday, May 30th at 8 PM. Amy had time to have another chat to talk about this show!
CM: Can you talk about the new material in the program? You also have a new setup?
AXN: My new looping setup allows me to create multiple sets of layered voice, each on its own channel, so that I can treat each channel differently, mix or crossfade channels, give each its own set of rules, and place it anywhere in the stereo field. (In contrast my previous looper had one mono output, with one set of loops audible at a time. You could switch between different chunks of layered sound, but you could not play them simultaneously.) So my first new piece for this current setup was a sound-art piece in quad, in which each of four speakers had its own channel of loops that altered slowly over time. I’ve adapted this piece for stereo sound. Read the rest of this entry »
Chicago-based composer Nomi Epstein is a prominent new music artist that has had pieces being featured quite frequently in the last few months at local festivals (Sextet and Music for Four Strings were just performed at Roulette and The Flea Theater, respectively), and this coming June, two more will be coming: A piece for Wild Rumpus to be performed in San Francisco on June 8th, and piano and soprano at Symphony Space in NY on June 16th.
Nomi has been very active as both a musician and a curator, having done this with her own series a.pe.ri.od.ic and just recently the 3-day event for his 75th birthday A John Cage Festival, which she had some time to discuss with us. Read the rest of this entry »
No music in this one, but still one of her greatest efforts and a great example of her visionary style.
Herb Ritts must have been watching this one.
John Cage, of all people, is in this as an actor (Look for him at 5:50)! The silence is perfect for him!
Anderson & Roe (Photo courtesy of Brent Cline)
When Words Fade CD release party
Anderson & Roe
May 22, 2012
Galapagos Art Space
DUMBO, NY
Music With a View 2012
Bonjour featuring Florent Ghys and Ashley Bathgate
Fay Wang
Joo Won Park
May 26, 2012
The Flea Theater
Tribeca, NY
A very active week for me, which is unheard of these days, but I guess I need to catch up with myself.
I have to say that the two nights in question couldn’t be more different in content from one another, but both were equally fulfilling for me as far as musicianship (especially when musicians work together) and passion. Anderson & Roe offered mostly traditional classics but with a very edgy performance and a fresh new presentation in a club setting replacing a concert hall, whereas the 2nd show was one of a yearly series titled Music With a View (curated by the great pianist Kathleen Supove) and offered brand new works by living composer/performers with great elements of deep melody flanked by experimentalism.
The first evening was the CD release party for a CD that actually came out back in November of 2011, but by the time Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe came out and began pumping the opening strains of their own arrangement of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, it no longer mattered, and to be honest, it no longer mattered to me that this was a pop song–it was still a great sound that their duality on the piano created, and this really seemed to transcend crossover trappings. The entire program had them taking turns between pieces speaking to the audience and relaying an energy and attitude that is never really allowed in the concert hall. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Abel’s The Dream Gallery. Its sound is one thing, its direction is another.
This isn’t easy for me, so, I’ll just list the good things vs. the not-so-good things.
First what is good about The Dream Gallery:
A very gorgeous sounding orchestra (courtesy of Sharon Lavery and the LaBrea Sinfonietta), given to seven art songs in a cycle designed as microcosms of seven different communities in California.
The soloists are all quite gifted and deliver what was asked of them as the characters of these songs.
What is not good about the album:
I absolutely don’t think that this work should have been recorded as a song cycle. Mark Abel does do very good work as a composer, but for me, this cycle, with the lush musical language and the theatrical-style singing sounds way too close to a Broadway sound, and it suggests that it would work better if it had been staged as either a musical or some sort of stage concert a la “Les Miserables”. I think if he were to re-stage it that way, I would have a better grasp of it.
It’s subject matter, California, unfortunately is lost on me as well, as I have never been to California, so the stories don’t give me a chance to be reeled in.
What do you think? Perhaps it wouldn’t be lost on you.
