News
Concert you should go to: Piano Spheres next Tuesday
On Tuesday, January 31, at 8 pm, Kathleen Supové is playing an all LA premiere program with Piano Spheres down at Zipper Hall at Colburn. GO. Three of the five works have video with them. Supové is a monster player. The thing that excites me most about it, however, is getting to hear Carolyn Yarnell’s piece The Same Sky. I know absolutely nothing about Carolyn Yarnell, but Kyle Gann called the piece “one of the most fantastic keyboard works anyone’s written in the last 20 years,” and he’s absolutely right. Click here to read his blog entry about the piece, among other things. I’ve shown this recording to a lot of friends, and they all seem to be similarly blown away. Even the ones with no interest in classical music as such.
Here’s a recording:
And here’s the poster for the show:
Out West Arts’ review of Nicholas Deyoe record release party
Our friends over at Out West Arts were able to make it to the populist records/Nicholas Deyoe CD release party in Echo Park on Monday, and have posted an awesome review of it, with video and such, here:
http://outwestarts.blogspot.com/2012/01/window-dressing.html
Meanwhile, we’ll have an interview up with the label founders sometime in the next couple of weeks. This is an exciting time to be a musician in LA.
Video: wild Up covering Andrew Bird
Here’s a video from wild Up’s show last night at The Armory Center for the Arts:
Nicholas Deyoe record release party is tomorrow afternoon
Slightly late notice, but Nicholas Deyoe‘s record with throbbing eyes, which features Red Fish Blue Fish, The Formalist Quartet, Stephanie Aston, and Brendan Nguyen, is coming out this Tuesday, January 17th. It will be the first release from Populist Records, a new label based in Echo Park, owned and operated by Andrew McIntosh and Andrew Tholl.
The release party will be held on Monday at Machine Project from 1 to 4 pm, and Mr. Tholl mentioned to me that, in addition to performances and Eagle Rock Brewing’s Populist IPA (which is delicious), there would be cupcakes. As such, I highly recommend going, and am again saddened by the prohibitive 9 to 5 lifestyle that I’ve adopted as of late.
I’ll have a review of the record up here soon. But why wait for me to review it when you could go hear it yourself, live, with cupcakes? Complete details are on populistrecords.com.
Happy 2012!
For 2012, I’ve resolved to interview a bunch of people and write a bunch of features about concerts, record releases, and so forth. It’s been an awesome first few months running the blog. Thanks for reading and being a part of the new music scene in LA.
Have a good, safe, etc., NYE.
#Armada finish their first piece
#Armada, an international group of composers writing music collaboratively via Twitter, just completed and released the score to their first piece. I’m attached to it, because the project was my idea, but it features another composer from LA who has been interviewed here on the site, Dale Trumbore. This first piece, which is for solo piano, will also be performed in LA early in the new year, although details about that are forthcoming.
Basically, whoever starts the piece writes one bar, then tags someone on Twitter to write the next bar, and so forth, until someone decides to use their tag to insert a final double bar line. The tags get crazy. Here’s an example:
@DennisTobenski g mel min {RH: scale->A6toBb3, 8th/(8th)3lets/16th/(16th)5lets| LH: seq of 5ths & 4ths end on G3/D3, all (1/4)3lets} #armada
— Joe (@joetang) November 4, 2011
This piece started way back in July, and 29 composers participated. The score and a MIDI version are available at #Armada’s site, hashtagarmada.com. Check it out!
wild Up are fundraising to release a limited edition vinyl
Well that headline more or less says it all. Wild Up are releasing a record on vinyl and for download called The Salt of the Earth. It will have Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110A, on it, as well as Rzewski’s Les Moutons de Panurge.
You should help, because these guys are incredible musicians who put on incredible shows, and are really working hard to build a community for this kind of music- our kind of music- outside of the confines of a traditional concert hall situation.
The album art is below. Here’s a link to their blog entry about the record, and here’s one to their Kickstarter page, where you can make a donation.
It’s Better In The Wind film screening tonight
While it’s not exactly musical (musical updates are on the way, including a massive four-in-one review of lots of local action), LA-based photographer Scott Toepfer is screening a short film he made about his project It’s Better In The Wind at The Mandrake in Culver City tonight at 9. Scott is also one of the bassists in the band Honest Iago, also based out of LA.
The soundtrack has a few new cuts by Chuck Ragan, of Hot Water Music fame, which are generally awesome. There’s no cover, and inasmuch as we’re trying to build a new music scene, getting to know the other arts around town is pretty important too.
Vicki Ray plays an all premiere program with Piano Spheres on Tuesday
I love it when a flyer actually contains all of the information that you might want to know about a given concert. Who’s playing, what the program is, the location, the date and time, how much tickets are, and where to get them. That’s it! You’d be amazed at how many fail to include this seemingly necessary information. Having spent some time working in concert marketing, I’ve discovered that people aren’t going to call or go to your website. They will, however, loudly complain about being uninformed. Put all of the info on the flyer, in the email, the facebook event invitation…basically, make it so that the person reading it doesn’t have to do anything else to find out what’s going on.
Having completed that minor rant, I’d like to share a superb example I received this morning, and encourage you to check out this concert. Amazing players, cool programs, friendly people, all of that good stuff. I might go just to thank them for making my job easy by sending such a well-designed and informative flyer. And on that note, here’s ALL of the info for the show (click to make it bigger/higher resolution):
Guitar Foundation of America Regional Symposium is in LA this weekend
Looking for something to do this Saturday? Aside from the previously mentioned debut concert from Gnarwhallaby, the Guitar Foundation of America’s second Los Angeles Regional Symposium is being held downtown. I went to one of the symposiums a couple of years ago, and it was killer. Loads of concerts, cool presentations, modern repertoire, friendly people, nice swag (got my first and only capo for free there).
In addition to the festival guitar orchestra, the Mobius Trio will be presenting Garrett Shatzer‘s The Transition, which you can listen to here:
Garrett’s a buddy, and it’s a cool piece. Again, this was apparently a stupid weekend for me not to be in Los Angeles. Take advantage of all of that is going on if you can!