Posts by Nick Norton
Guest Post: Ludovico Einaudi To Play in Los Angeles This October
This October world-renowned Italian musician Ludovico Einaudi will be returning to California to once again wow audiences. The great composer has been on tour supporting his latest studio album Elements, which was released in October 2015. He will begin his Californian leg in San Francisco, then move on to Davis before finishing in Los Angeles at Royce Hall, UCLA on October 8.
In an interview with Never Enough Notes, Einaudi explained that the music in Elements came from a collection of ideas and themes. These included “creation myths, the periodic table, Euclid’s geometry, Kandinsky’s writings, the matter of sound and color, the stems of wild grass in a meadow, the shapes of a landscape.” Within the first week of its release it reached number 1 in the classical charts across the globe.
Einaudi has transcended classical music to become famous for his beautiful melodies. Einaudi was born in Turin Italy in 1955. He started composing when he was young and trained at the prestigious Conservatorio Verdi in Milan. His compositions are famous for having been used in films such as ‘Insidious’ and Shane Meadows’s ‘This is England’ film and subsequent television series.
Einaudi’s music is also well known to the public for its presence in many television adverts. Procter & Gamble (P&G) have used Einaudi’s music twice for their well received Olympic adverts ‘Thank You Mum’. The track used for this year’s games was Experience from Einaudi’s album In a Time Lapse. And it is not just used in adverts, Einaudi’s music has been used on Top Gear too as his music has a very filmic quality to it.
Reality television shows such as the X Factor recycle songs and sometimes have the unexpected effect of creating sales for the original artist. In 2014 Bob Dylan returned to number 1 in the charts after X Factor Winner Louisa Johnson covered his song in the finale. Shows such as X Factor are often used across entertainment platforms as focal points to some pop culture relevant games to increase revenues like the soon-to-be released X Factor Games so that the show can appeal to a whole new demographic. Music and musicians travel far in popular culture and it is very common for songs and brands to be recycled. So with such a diverse repertoire, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Einaudi’s work across new mediums in the future.
This year, Ludovico Einaudi has been supporting the protection of the Arctic. In June this year Einaudi performed an original piece titled Elegy for the Arctic. He performed the composition on a floating platform in the ocean in front of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard Norway. He was quoted as saying, “It is important we understand the importance of the Arctic, stop the process of destruction and protect it.”
This is a guest-contributed post from Norman Williams.
Dale Trumbore tells us How to Go On
Dale Trumbore is about to have a huge secular requiem premiered by Choral Arts Initiative. We thought that merited an interview about the work, and what she’s been up to since last time we talked to her. Given that the piece deals with death
Composer Dale Trumbore
So you’ve got a big piece being premiered by Choral Arts Initiative on July 16 and 17. Talk to me about that.
Yes! That piece, How to Go On, is a secular requiem for virtuosic a cappella chorus. It’s 35 minutes long with eight movements. The piece treats the chorus like an orchestra in many ways; texture is every bit as important as text here, and soloists constantly weave in and out of the greater blend of voices.
The text is by three contemporary writers I’ve worked with in the past: Barbara Crooker, Amy Fleury, and Laura Foley. Together, the seven poems—one text is set twice—address grieving over the loss of a loved one, confronting one’s own mortality, and learning to live with the painful uncertainty and beauty of everyday life.
On the same program, we’re doing five of my other choral pieces that tie in thematically. We’ll be recording the same program in early August for CAI’s debut commercial recording, also called How to Go On.
What attracted you to this secular requiem idea? Were you dealing with mortality in some way in your personal life, or noting a lack of pieces for comfort to those of us with non-Judeo-Christian spiritual lives? Or was this something CAI gave you the impetus for?
When Brandon Elliott [CAI’s Artistic Director] and I were discussing the possibility of my writing a larger piece for CAI, the secular requiem idea seemed like an obvious fit. I knew CAI could handle a technically challenging piece, and I’d been mulling over this idea in a vague way for a long time, something like six years. I’ve been struggling for a while with the idea that there might be no afterlife; I’m agnostic, and I find the thought of my own death and that of those I love absolutely terrifying. I’ve found that I have to consciously avoid thinking about it at all, because when I do, it’s almost paralyzing.
How to Go On is an attempt to make peace with that. If music can accomplish such a thing, then this is an effort to do exactly what you said: provide comfort for those grieving a loss, but without the lens of religion. Though obviously this piece doesn’t have all of the answers, I do think the secular poetry here deals with these questions beautifully, in a way that still feels spiritually fulfilling.
Have the poets heard the work yet?
They haven’t! That’s the one downside to working with collaborators who live far away. We can discuss everything else over email, but they can’t just pop over to rehearsals if they live in Vermont (Laura Foley), Pennsylvania (Barbara Crooker), or Louisiana (Amy Fleury). I’m looking forward to sharing the performance and album recordings with them very soon, though!
Choral Arts Initiative, led by Brandon Elliott
What’s your artistic relationship with CAI like?
I’ve been working with CAI and Brandon since 2014, when they commissioned a piece of mine called I am Music. This project happening now—a new, big piece to be recorded alongside some of my other choral works on CAI’s debut album—has been in the works almost as long as that commission.
I adore CAI. They only perform new music, and everything and everyone involved in the group operates at such a high level of professionalism and musicality. How to Go On can get very rhythmically complex and texturally dense, and CAI’s Choral Artists have really risen to the occasion. Their rehearsals are sounding spot-on to what I’d envisioned when I was writing the piece with this ensemble in mind a year ago.
I hope this isn’t touchy, but I imagine you’ve heard yourself described as a “choral composer.” I remember when we spoke a long time back you saying that you planned to make the bulk of your work about voice. Is this still something you embrace and/or pursue, or do you at times feel pigeonholed?
Not touchy at all. I’ve always been drawn to writing music with text, regardless of instrumentation; it’s what I naturally gravitate to if left to my own devices. That’s not to say that I don’t like writing straight-up chamber or orchestral music—I do—but I think I used to view that tendency toward composing music with words as a weakness or a crutch. Lately, I’ve been embracing that and the fact that I usually work with texts by living poets as something that sets my music apart.
You’ve been big on going to residencies – in fact a few of my own as a composer have followed seeing what you do. Could you talk about that a bit?
I love artist residencies; I’ve been to four now, with another planned next spring. At a residency, I’ve realized, I’m almost certain to experience two things: getting a tremendous amount of work done in a short time, and doubting everything about my work and my creative process. The latter is never pleasant to go through in the moment, but I’ve learned a lot about the way that I work and how I work best. Ultimately, that’s a wonderful thing, which may be why I keep going back.
What’s next after this? Finishing that record with Dr. Ian Malcolm, perhaps?
Ha—I was just talking to Dennis Tobenski on his new Music Publishing Podcast about how that project has been more or less a complete failure. I’m still hoping to do something else to fulfill that project and provide something beyond the two tracks we did release to the people who contributed to it. This has been a long process, but hopefully we’ll get some sense of closure on that project by the end of this year.
In the more immediate future, I’m about to start writing a piece for soprano & chamber ensemble. Soprano Gillian Hollis, who I made an album of art-songs with five years ago, will premiere it with a Chicago-based new music ensemble called CHAI Collaborative Ensemble. That’s going to be around 15-20 minutes, another big-ish piece. I’m eager to start that, but it’s going to have to wait until after How to Go On has gone on.
Full info on the premiere this weekend is up at choralartsinitiative.org/july-16–17–how-to-go-on.html. More about Dale is up at daletrumbore.com.
Welcome to the team, Steven!
The pianist and music critic Steven Niles just wrote to me to see if we’d like to publish a review of his (see: the next post that goes up). We got to talking, and he’ll be joining our team of writers. Rad! Here’s a bit from his bio:
Steven Niles received a Doctor of Musical Arts from USC in Piano Performance, mentoring under Daniel Pollack. He minored in Historical Musicology, Harpsichord performance, and conducting. He performs often, both locally and abroad, recently completing tours in China and Taiwan.
His repertoire includes Early Music, Romantic era classics, contemporary music, and jazz. He is on the faculty at LA City College and LA Mission College, teaching Piano, Music Appreciation, Music Theory, and Choir.
As a music commentator, Steven has written review pieces for AOL, LA Weekly, and Ventura County Reporter. He studied music criticism at USC with Daniel Cariaga and Alan Rich.
Welcome to the best dang new-music-in-LA site on the planet, buddy.
Lewis Pesacov and Elizabeth Cline on The Edge of Forever – with an exclusive stream!
The Edge of Forever is Lewis Pesacov and Elizabeth Cline’s opera for the end of the most recent cycle of the Mayan Long Count, though to hear them tell it the piece may have already existed for a few thousand years before they showed up. Performed by wild Up on the evening of December 21, 2012, the recording is finally making its way to the public via The Industry Records this week, with a release party on Friday, June 24, at 365 Mission. Better yet, you can hear the finale right here, in this post, today! We’ll let Lewis and Elizabeth explain. The track, and info on the show, are at the end.
The Edge of Forever is, as I understand it, only the third act of this opera, the first two acts of which happened in 830 CE. Being that time is cyclical, will those first two acts be taking place again in roughly 2,280 years?
Elizabeth: That would be interesting! I believe that the cyclical nature of time means that when one cycle ends another begins, not that it repeats itself. For the Maya, the most fundamental aspect of their belief structure is that time is without end or beginning; the end of one cycle simply allows for the dawn of the next. And this is exactly what happened on December 21, 2012.
I was under the impression the performance could only happen once, on that date. Are you considering this recording almost as a document of what happened that night, more than a piece of art on its own? Or have your views of the work changed since then?
Elizabeth: We wrote an opera for an exact moment in time and it was our intention that the opera would be performed in that exact moment – December 21, 2012 from 8:30-9:15pm PST. The scenes before that moment exist and the scenes after that moment exist, unwritten, and the story itself stretches infinitely far into the past and future. It was a conscious effort to be of and in the moment. The recording documents that moment but also serves as an archive for a work that will never be realized as a whole again. However, we will be performing the final aria from the opera live at our record release show on June 24th, an exception to the rule because this aria has been modified specifically for this concert event.
Lewis: The three middle scenes of the five on the album are live recordings from the one-time only performance. I would certainly consider these as the documentation of the original event. A few unfortunate technical difficulties made for the first and final scene unusable for an album so I decided to make studio recordings to complete the documentation. Although the studio recordings were not captured at that specific moment in time, they are still very much artifacts of the event. Moreover, this unintended outcome led to the opportunity to record the first scene in the studio, a creative turn on the original music in the decision to use just one voice, the luminous Abby Fischer, to play the role of all of the 4 scribes. This allowed us to represent the many in the one, which in turn helped us go deeper into the message of Non-duality already embedded in the story. So in a way, through accidents, we arrived at an even tighter version of the work.
Librettist Elizabeth Cline. Photo by Suzy Poling.
What attracted you both to this material? Was the interest in these Mayan culture already there, or was it spurred by the wide interest in their calendar leading up to 12/21/12? I know you are both interested in meditation, and it seems like some of the philosophy of TM and oneness made it into the work as well.
Elizabeth: As December 2012 drew near there was a huge upswell in interest in the Mayan calendar and the false “doomsday” prophesy that when the calendar ends so does the world. Even before this widespread public obsession we were fascinated by Mayan cosmology, having visited ancient Mayan temples in the Yucatan Peninsula, and started a deep dive into the ancient texts like the Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam. But really, what is more operatic than “the end” having been foretold in stone engravings since the 9th century? It is both historic and mythic which is very fertile ground for opera!
Our meditation practice and inquiry into the nature of self and consciousness is the biggest influence on our work together. Through studying and practicing meditation, I’m naturally drawn to thinking about time and perception verses presence and states of being, which like love are spaces outside of time where we connect to the infinite. This idea of connection and oneness is where this opera ends and where our next opera (in progress), Out There, begins.
It seems like, by taking native traditions and beliefs (and even instruments) and putting them into the western context of opera, you might be skirting on some questions of appropriation. I don’t mean that in at all an accusatory way, because obviously there’s such a richness of material here, but is that something that concerned you when approaching this project? How did you deal with those issues?
Elizabeth: This is such an important question to be writing and thinking about as it relates to who is telling what story in what context. In opera there is a long history of dominate cultures perpetuating their values and practices through operas that represent other cultures or intercultural exchange, we consciously tried to avoid that. The story and characters are completely unique but inspired by Mayan texts, folklore and engravings. However, New Age Philosophy, Indian philosophy, Transcendentalism, the multiverse, epic love stories, and our own experiences with meditation equally influenced the story.
Lewis: My decision to write for the primordial end-blown conch shell trumpet in the context of a more traditional Western opera ensemble stemmed from its ancient origins and deep elemental connection to the water and earth. Conch shell trumpets have been used as instruments since Neolithic times and are not only found in Mesoamerican cultures. They are found in almost every part of the world from Central Europe to India, Tibet, Korea, Japan, the Caribbean, Melanesian, and Polynesian cultures; The mythological Greek god Triton also blew a conch shell to calm the seas. The conch shell trumpet produces a beautifully pure tone, very close to a sine wave.
To balance this historic instrument the ensemble also consisted of 8 sine tone oscillators, each of which produces a single sine wave. Sinusoidal sound waves consist of a smooth, repeating oscillation of a single frequency. Unlike other sound waves, sine waves are self-identical at any moment in time, without fluctuating harmonic content, or an initial transient/final decay. In this way, sine waves seem to exist outside of time itself and are to me, a sonic representation of the infinite.
Composer Lewis Pesacov. Photo by Michael Leviton.
Lewis, in the liner notes you talk a bit about exploring ancient music and constructing an imagined future music, and of the ratio 13:20 informing a lot of your process. The vocal writing in the opening reminds me a lot of the Notre Dame School composers and music from the Ars Antiqua, who also had an obsession with ratios. Is that something you were actively seeking to channel?
Lewis: In contemplating the cyclical nature of time I kept coming back to this idea of the resultant blurring of the lines of the ancient and the future. I wasn’t interested in exploring ancient music per se, but more specifically, imagining my own creative interpretation of an ancient/future music. The music of the opening scene invokes a sacred song and is certainly influenced by the Western tradition of polyphonic vocal writing. The rhythmic structure uses an isorhythm with it’s talea and color based on the ratio of 13:20, respectively. Each of the 4 voices sing rounds of the isorhythm in some form of augmentation or diminution. Good ear Nick! But I do believe the isorhythm was an invention of the Ars Nova school, just after the Ars Antiqua… [Ed: Lewis is correct about this] That said, I did not intend to blatantly allude to Medieval music as much as to unfold out from their rarefied formal practices.
What was the back and forth like while working on the libretto and music? As a couple, do you try to draw a line between the project and your home life, or does working on it get into everything you do together?
Elizabeth: Creating opera with my husband is the ultimate expression of love – it is merging together to create something bigger than our two egos. I feel really lucky that our relationship has found this expression so naturally. We wrote the piece together and produced the live performance ourselves, so there were no boundaries, everything was The Edge of Forever all the time leading up to December 2012. Having a creative practice that is naturally woven into everyday life is something that artists do and certainly something Lewis does, so I followed his lead while writing with him. I wrote all the text, he started composing and wanted to cut half of my words, I fiercely guarded those words until I realized he was right, let go word by word, and he helped me shape a libretto that was so much more abstract, poetic and fit our deepest intentions for the piece.
We have an exclusive stream of the Finale. What can you tell us about it?
Elizabeth: In the final aria the scribes announce to our ancient astronomer that the time for realizing his destiny has arrived. In this scene he moves darkness to light – from a space of desire to a space of illumination where he can see the his true nature and that of the world. By the end of the aria he is released from his cave, a metaphor for his mind and thoughts, and in doing so he has attained freedom from the illusion of the self. He can now embrace the One.
Lewis: From a musical perspective, there’s a shift in the tonal content of the piece at the Finale. The music in the prior scenes consists of non-tempered microtonal inflections that create beating between the pitches, furthering an unresolved feeling of tension. However, in the finale, inspired by the image of the turning of the great cosmic clock, the ensemble locks into 5-limit just intonation. I intended the harmonies (consisting of pure, non-beating primary harmonics of the overtone series) to act as a metaphor for the moment in which the ancient astronomer merges with it all.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Lewis: Time is shaped by our own perceptions so it is deeply personal, but it is also something universal that defines us as humans. My hope is that The Edge of Forever creates conditions for the audience to reflect on the nature of time. That perhaps the past and the future are not the truth or even reality, but instead one can find the entirety of human experience in each moment.
For more information about The Edge of Forever record release party & concert on June 24, visit 356mission.tumblr.com/post/145921957755/the-edge-of-forever-a-chamber-opera-in-five-scenes
To purchase The Edge of Forever from The Industry Records, visit records.theindustryla.org/album/the-edge-of-forever
Autoduplicity talks ahead of Ablinger and Machaut
Tonight! Come one and all to Mor York Gallery at 8 for the next installment of Dog Star 12, Autoduplicity, a project of flutist Rachel Beetz and cellist Jennifer Bewerse. Amid their preparations (and moving New Classic LA headquarters to a new house – hence the down to the wire interview), Jennifer and Rachel had time to talk about their project.
How did this band get started? Was it a mutual interest in the works you explore, or did one of you invite the other?
Jennifer: Rachel and I had had the chance to play Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Crumb’s Vox Balaenae together, and I felt like we had great performance chemistry and similar working habits.
Rachel: Jen was interested in exploring performance without the cello and she invited me to join her.
Jennifer: We were both really interested in what would happen in that context. As an instrumentalist, you often identify yourself so strongly with your instrument. What would happen when we didn’t have that?
Rachel: Together, we negotiated a program for this exploration that was neither fully myself (long, dark, tiring) or Jen (bright, light, short). Working on the program together was so rewarding for both of us that the project stuck.
Jennifer: Right, we actually started very much as NOT a band – the title of the duo was the title of our first concert. But the collaboration makes a lot of sense for both of our artistic interests and has grown to include other concert projects.
The first time I saw you you put on a phenomenal performance with almost no playing of your instruments in the traditional sense. As “musicians,” how does your performance training translate into these works for your bodies/you as humans. Seems like acting and stagecraft would be big for you.
Rachel: A lot of people brought up terminology relating to theater when we were presenting our first concert. It was interesting, because we weren’t thinking about the program in those terms at all. A lot of people thought that because we no longer had instruments in our hands, it meant that we were using other types of tools of the stage, mostly involving theater, acting, and such. However, this was not the case AT ALL.
Jennifer: Our mode of working so far has been to look at very targeted questions or materials then explore them in our concerts. So, this concert was very specifically about our interest in a negative space – music without our instruments. The rest really emerged from that spot – issues of feminism, identity, physical relationships…
Rachel: All of the musical decisions for that first performance were made as if our bodies replaced the external instrument. In a way, we translated the practice of performing on an instrument to our bodies, employing the same modes of questioning and thought as an instrumentalist would.
Jennifer: Honestly, these terms were really tricky for us. When does a score (music) become a script (theater)? In some ways the differences between our performing Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls and Vinko Globokar’s ?Corporel are a matter of the composer/author’s preferred notation. But we’re also not interested in “tearing down the boundaries between the arts” or anything like that. This concert was very much in a grey area and that’s an interesting space to inhabit.
Does this week’s concert follow that exploration (body/music), or is it a new direction for you?
Rachel: This concert was one I was really interested in – combining Peter Ablinger’s Instrumente und Rauschen with music by Machaut. In a way, it’s a very simple juxtaposition, but as we dug into the music – moving from single tones, the “everything always” of white noise – we found beautiful paradoxes between the ideas of “simple” or “complex.” At its core, the concert is really about audibility.
Jennifer: So in relation to body/music, the answer is no and yes. No, because this is a very sonic concert – we play our instruments and all of the pieces explore sound. But also yes, because we’ve constructed the concert in a way that ended up shaping sound into a very tangible, physical, object. The sonic extremes – soft/loud, high/low, simple/complex – create a field of listening that situates the body in space.
What excites you about this material?
Rachel: The sound as object in connection to the body’s reaction to it as such is what excites me in this program.
Jennifer: I’m also really excited about the focus of the concert. We’ve worked really hard to construct a continuous listening experience where the pieces can come together and make a larger narrative. It feels like the performer’s version of composing, and it’s very satisfying.
What are your favorite ensembles/series/composers/whatever else in town to go see and hear?
Jennifer: Dog Star Orchestra! This concert is part of the Dog Star Orchestra Volume 12 Festival that’s happening between June 4th – 18th.
Rachel: The concerts are excellent and it’s a great way to see what’s happening in the experimental community around Los Angeles. You can see all of the concerts at www.dogstarorchestra.com.
Aperture Duo on WORK
This Friday night, June 3, Aperture Duo, the violin/viola duo project of Adrianne Pope and Linnea Powell takes the stage at Boston Court for the next installment of wild Up!’s WORK series. Thankfully, Linnea and Adrianne found time between rehearsals to answer a few questions about the show and the duo. Enjoy, and see you Friday!
So, tell me a bit about Friday.
Adrianne: Po Pow!!
Linnea: On Friday night Adrianne and I are featured on a double bill for wild Up’s WORK series. WORK concerts highlight the influences and passions of members of the band and we’re excited to bring our chamber music project Aperture Duo to the series. This concert is a huge honor for both of us and we took the opportunity to bring some friends along and play some larger ensemble pieces.
A: It’s going to be a raucous show: we’re playing duos by George Aperghis, W.A. Mozart, Nicholas Deyoe, and a world premiere by Chris Rountree with our good friend and collaborator, Jodie Landau. We’re finishing the concert with a Julia Wolfe piece for 5 singing, stomping violins. Prepping for this concert with Maiani da Silva, Mona Tian, and Nicole Sauder has been a total blast.
Aperture Duo: Adrianne Pope and Linnea Powell
What inspired you to start this duo? Were you friends before and wanted to do something together, or was it a specific body of work you wanted to explore and develop?
L: I moved to LA in 2013 and was pretty hungry for chamber music opportunities in town. A year later Adrianne showed up at a wild Up planning meeting and I basically accosted her to read through some duos.
A: I had no idea what I was getting into, but once we started reading Mozart, I was amazed at how well we clicked musically. Then we discovered a ton of similarities….both native surf-town-hippie-ville Californians, University of Michigan alums, amino acid fans, etc. We decided to set a goal for our reading rehearsals by preparing a full concert. We found a recently written duo by Clara Ianotta that we both loved and added it to the Mozart and Martinu.
L: I think we were both surprised at how well that first concert went. It’s a goal of every chamber musician to to be spontaneous and completely present on stage, and it definitely was the case for this show. We had so much fun performing and our audience loved it. After that we were hooked. Knowing that there was limited existing rep for violin and viola duo made it all the more enticing since we were both excited to commission new works.
We know each other through the new music scene, and I’ve of course seen you play with wild Up! and program works by local composers. So, imagine my surprise when a friend’s first comment after seeing Aperture Duo was about the Mozart – he said “that was the best Mozart K. 423 I’ve ever heard.” Is your interest in “the rep” similar to your interest in new music?
A: Absolutely. I love looking at a piece written today, then looking back at Mozart and realizing that badassery is timeless. Composers have always been and will always be breaking, rewriting, then breaking rules over and over again. Our focus is definitely on new music, but by performing music from multiple genres we become better interpreters and musicians. The styles inform each other.
L: It’s all there, no matter when a piece was written: form, contrast, phrasing, communication, sound-world, intent. Working with a composer on these concepts can make it easier because they can give us specific ideas, but we still do a lot of our own interpretation on every piece. And sometimes it’s really fun to say “they’re dead! let’s do what we want.”
Have you found any sticking points on the sort of genre-mixing you program? Or are you finding audiences to be as open minded as you are?
L: In general, the response to our programming has been super positive. With such closely related instruments, the common misconception is that all pieces programmed on a violin and viola duo concert will sound the same. We see this as a fun challenge, and we strive to program contrasting works.
A: We also put a lot of thought into the audience experience. We want our programs to hold the audience’s attention and we want them to actually feel things during our concerts…whether it’s bliss, curiosity, or total discomfort to the point of wanting to pull their hair out. We also like to ask the question of “what is beautiful?” This allows us to be creative with pushing the limits of our instruments’ sounds.
Who do you like to go hear in town?
L: There’s so much happening all the time! It’s super inspiring to see our friends in the new music scene putting themselves out there and programing shows with so much intent. We both try to see as many concerts as we can to support the thriving scene.
A: Besides local groups, I love to go to all kinds of different concerts…from Lila Downs to Andrew Bird to Patti Smith.
L: When my ears need a break I love seeing independent theater and dance.
What’s next for Aperture Duo?
A: This summer, we are excited to be in residence at Avaloch Farm, where we will work on rep for next season and workshop a commission with Noah Meites. In August, we’ll be performing at the Carlsbad Music Festival. We have lots of shows in the works for next season including an Aperture Duo and Friends concert with Richard Valitutto and some exciting commissions.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks Nick!
Tickets for this Friday’s concert are available at bostoncourt.com/events/278/wild-up. More info on Aperture Duo is at apertureduo.com.
Sounds EXCLUSIVE: Hannah Addario-Berry plays Eric Kenneth Malcolm Clark
Oh boy, this is exciting. The bay area’s Aerocade Music offered us an exclusive, early stream of LA composer/violinist Eric Kenneth Malcolm Clark‘s Ekpyrotic: Layerings IV, from cellist Hannah Addario-Berry‘s record Scordatura, which comes out on May 20.
The liner note for the piece reads:
Clark’s Layerings series calls for the soloist to record the same material multiple times, allowing natural divergences to cause an indeterminate overlapping of musical material. In Ekpyrotic, the cello is prepared with miniature clothespins on the strings, creating bell tones almost like a gamelan in timbre.
Scordatura is available for pre-order now.
People Inside Electronics interviews the Friction Quartet
This Saturday evening People Inside Electronics bring San Francisco’s Friction Quartet to LA for a program of works by Ian Dicke, Adam Cuthbert, Missy Mazzoli, Skrillex, Diplo, and PIE director Isaac Schankler. Tickets and more info are available at peopleinsideelectronics.com/friction-quartet.
Ahead of the show, Isaac has had a chance to sit down with the quartet’s cellist, Doug Machiz, for an interview.
How did Friction Quartet form? What’s the history of the group?
Kevin and I were working on Philip Glass’ third quartet at the Zephyr Chamber Music Festival in the Italian Alps. The experience was incredibly moving and Kevin and I really enjoyed working on this non-traditional classical music together. I had recently had my first experience playing contemporary classical music and I found that my background in improvised music made for a smooth transition into performing music that had not been performed before. I was deciding in real time what something should sound like and that was exhilarating.
I was studying at UT Austin and became close friends with the Miro and Aeolus Quartets. There was something special and family like about their dynamic. I spontaneously decided that I could devote my life to performing string quartets that had never been played before and also that I could have Kevin as my partner in this endeavor. I also knew from being at BU with Ari from JACK quartet that this could be a viable career option. So I asked Kevin if he wanted to do this and he said he has always wanted to do this. So we decided that if I ended up in SF that we would go for it. A year later I was accepted to SF Conservatory of Music and Friction was born. Otis joined half a year after our formation and Taija joined 2 1/2 years ago. Now we have that stable familial feeling that I loved about the Miro and Aeolus Quartets and we are deciding what new string quartets can sound like.
Can you tell us a little about the program you’ll be performing?
We will be performing some of our favorite works we have commissioned that also happen to be electro-acoustic. Ian Dicke’s Unmanned was one of the first pieces we commissioned and really became a flagship piece for us. Adam Cuthbert’s Universe Explosion exists because I met Adam at the Bang on a Can Festival and played his Universe Explosion for large chamber ensemble. I loved the piece so much and we collaboratively came up with the idea to have Adam arrange it for double quartet. Isaac Schankler’s Hagiography is one of our recent commissions and this will be the world premiere. It’s a stunning, ambitious work and we can’t wait to share it. We will close the program with two of my own arrangements of music by Skrillex.
Friction Quartet is known for championing new music — was that part of the quartet’s mission from the beginning? What made you want to focus on new music, and especially commissioning new music? There’s no shortage of string quartet music already out there, after all.
As I mentioned before, the quartet formed with the intention of specializing in new music. Old music is fantastic, but it can’t possibly address what is happening in our lives and what we are feeling the way new music can. We also believe in pushing the boundaries of what sound can do. We want to share new sound worlds with people and move them in ways they never thought possible. To quote the great Living Earth Show, we want to be a “megaphone for composers” who have important things to say about the world right now.
Initially we planned to only play music written after 1900 (we couldn’t possibly exclude our favorite 20th century giants). But over the years we decided to bring the old stuff into our repertoire because it’s too good not to. Also we don’t believe in excluding any music from our possible repertoire because we would just be missing out on potentially great music and new audiences. There is something to learn from and enjoy in music of all styles and time periods.
I’m curious about your pop covers. A lot of quartets have taken stabs at covering pop music, but it seems to me there’s something special about the way you approach it, both in terms of the music you chose to cover, and the care and creativity that go into your arrangements. How do you decide what songs to cover, and what’s your thought process in terms of how to arrange them?
I try to find a balance between songs that I like and songs that are going to resonate with new audiences. All of the songs I arrange fall somewhere on that spectrum. I’m on a mission to recruit new audiences simply because I don’t want anyone to miss out on how fucking awesome classical music can be. But the arrangements are also self-serving. I want to provide extremely fun repertoire for the quartet to play and I want a creative outlet for myself as a performer of music written by other people. I’ve dabbled in free improv, jazz, electronic compositions and playing in bands. These arrangements let me explore all of my musical interests in the context of my main project.
The most amazing and unintended consequence of making these arrangements is consistently getting huge crowds of young children to go absolutely ape shit. It’s like we’re the fucking Beatles all of a sudden when we play Michael Jackson’s Thriller (check out our documentary, Friction, by Meridian Hill Pictures). And this makes no sense because Michael Jackson’s career was all but over when these kids were born. I feel confident that a lot of these kids are going to find more ways to be creative through music because of our performances. I also think some of these kids will become fans of music when they otherwise may not have.
What’s next up for the Friction Quartet? Any upcoming projects you’re particularly excited about?
After our So-Cal tour we head to NYC for a performance of a favorite commission of ours, Juiced by Brendon Randall-Myers, at Roulette. We will also make our Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Kronos Quartet Workshop performing classic and new Kronos commissions. Then we head to Seattle to shoot a video, produced by Second Inversion, of In/Exchange for Steel Pan and Quartet by Andy Akiho with Andy himself on steel pan. We have residencies at Cornish College and Western Washington University. At WWU we are premiering a new string quartet concerto by Roger Briggs. After returning to SF we have an onslaught of various awesome projects that all happen before we head back east to Detroit in June for the Shouse Institute at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. I’m most excited about our SF Jazz debut in August with Fabian Almazan’s trio.
Tickets for the Friction Quartet show are available at peopleinsideelectronics.com/friction-quartet
The B Band interviews Invisible Anatomy
Invisible Anatomy
On Monday Night, the composer-performers of Invisible Anatomy are bringing their unique take on the new music experience to The Blue Whale in Little Tokyo, in a concert with the Ben Phelps’ new project, The B Band. Ben had a chance to sit down with two members of Invisible Anatomy, Dan Schlosberg and Brendon Randall-Myers, and interview them about the “slash” (composer / performer), and how that does or doesn’t fit into the modern classical music model. Here’s Ben with Dan and Brendon:
So you are all composers from Yale. Why start your own group? What does Invisible Anatomy do differently?
DS: IA grew out of the time we spent at Yale performing each other’s music. We found that, as time went by, we increasingly chose the music of other composer colleagues who were also performers to play our music in the new music concerts. The system at Yale was such that it required all instrumentalists to perform in those concerts, which can and does have huge benefits but also some drawbacks relating to the extent of certain players’ passion to play new work. We found that, when we worked with each other, everything just clicked. We instinctively knew how to inhabit each others’ music, so to speak, which made for thrilling performances and just overall an intense joy.
BRM: Many aspects of the group also grew out of a project of (member) Fay Wang’s through Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts in 2014. She was commissioned to write a piece after observing members of the microbiology department over the course of a year, and basically had free reign to make her own ensemble and hire whoever she wanted. That group ended up including almost all of the future members of IA, and she wrote this huge 30-minute piece that we performed wearing lab coats with props and lighting and projections. So that ended up kind of being a template for what a lot of what we’re doing now.
Do you feel like you have a “musical style” that unites you? Or is it something else?
BRM: I think our music all sounds really different, but we do all work with aspects of tonal harmony, and we all have performing backgrounds in music other than classical in addition to our classical training. We’re all interested in altered states and narrative, and making vivid and direct music. As a composer/performer ensemble, we’re fascinated by the weirdness and amazingness of performing bodies, and our first couple shows have dealt explicitly with the mind/body relationship.
When you design a program like Dissections, what ties it all together? Where does it start?
BRM: Dissections grew out of the idea of digging deeper into things, of examining and questioning and looking below the surface. Ha, honestly all these things start with a lot of late-night hangs over dinner and booze. We kind of just get together and throw ideas around until we start zeroing in on something that’s interesting to all of us, then flesh out the concept over the course of months of conversations, Skype sessions, and group emails. We’re checking in with each other at every step of the writing process and talking about ideas and writing/revising even through the rehearsal process (which was a little bit of a problem this time around). We also are incredibly lucky to collaborate with two amazing lighting designers – Solomon Weisbard and Daisy Long – and an awesome director in Dustin Wills – that help us tease out the arc of the show and make visual sense of it.
How long have you been working on this then?
BRM: Both Dissections and our first program Body Parts had 8-10 month gestation periods culminating in frantic 3-4 week periods of writing and rehearsing.
Seems like you have some ideas on what the composer’s job is today. How do you see yourself as “composers” fitting into classical music and modern American culture?
DS: It’s hard for me to say what the job of “composers” as a whole is. I am a firm believer in what Hans Eisler and Theodor Adorno called “railing against the cult of unobtrusiveness,” which is a fancy way of saying never giving people what they think they want, what they’ve been conditioned to want. I think part of an artist’s goal should be to bring people up short, to expose things that reach into the deepest parts of our psychosis, things that may be (very) uncomfortable to confront. After all, if we’re just following the norms laid out for us by society or, in this case, the music or new-music establishment, is that truly art?
BRM: Oh god, I have way too many thoughts on this, but I’ll try to stay focused.
As a composer, my job is to make people think about and feel something that’s unfamiliar and challenging, but also provide moments of beauty and catharsis. This is what music has always been to me – at its best it can create a space outside our routines where there’s a window between minds and worlds. I also view it at as my job to create music that I want to listen to, that’s interesting and meaningful to me, that reflects the world I live in, interacts with all the traditions I grew up with, and can speak to a lot of different people.
In terms of modern American culture, who knows. Now that Kanye West has collaborated with Caroline Shaw, all bets are pretty much off.
Invisible Anatomy joins The B Band monday night at The Blue Whale in Little Tokyo. $10.
Sounds: Nadia Shpachenko premieres Lewis Spartlan’s Bangladesh
LA pianist Nadia Shpachenko premiered Lewis Spartlan’s piece Bangladesh at PianoSpheres back in October, and just sent me the edited video. Check it out:
About the piece, Spartlan says:
The last episode of My Architect, Nathaniel Kahn’s film tribute to his father, the great architect Louis Kahn, takes place in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and features a brief interview with an elderly local figure, wherein he extols Kahn’s vision in creating the vast complex of buildings that constitute the National Assembly. He argues that Kahn’s work has given transformative hope and a sense of focus and purpose to his nation, otherwise an endless terrain of rice paddies. This piece is about Kahn’s National Assembly Buildings and their unique power.
There’s more about the piece in the video’s description, and on the composer’s website at lewisspratlan.com.