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HOCKET Interviews Composers, round 2: Emily Cooley

HOCKET

HOCKET

On November 21, HOCKET will be presenting a FREE concert of new commissions at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, CA (concert information available at www.HOCKET.org). Leading up to the performance, HOCKET will be interviewing the four commissioned composers of this concert and discussing their newly written works. Here is HOCKET’s interview with Emily Cooley where they discuss her piece Phoria.

Tell us about Phoria.

It’s a single-movement piece that is about seven minutes long and commissioned by you guys, HOCKET, who are great friends and colleagues of mine. It contains a little nugget of musical material that has appeared in several of my recent pieces. You can hear it most clearly at the end of the piece, when it’s repeated over and over by Sarah on the piano 1 part. The whole piece basically grew out of that singsong-y, music-box-like melody. But the way it appears in the piece, I ended up putting everything else first – every variation on that little idea occurs before the original idea, which is only heard towards the end. So in a sense, the events of the piece reveal what the piece is actually about.

“Phoria” is when two eyes are unable to look at the same object. How is this represented in your piece?

That’s the technical definition of the word, and it plays out in my piece in the sense that the two players are often doing slightly different things. The musical material they play is related, but in an unbalanced, off-kilter way; during the fast music in the middle of the piece, they’re literally playing in two different keys. But beyond the word “phoria” as a noun, I was also thinking of it as a suffix – as in the words “euphoria” and “dysphoria.” To me, different moments in my piece embody each of those words. There is some joy, but also some deep unease. And at the end of the piece, maybe some sadness at the fact that joy is often inhibited by unease. A lot of my work has to do with language and identity, and with trying to musically express some of the emotions surrounding those things.

How does writing for piano-four hands differ from writing for solo piano or any other chamber ensemble at that?

This was my first piece for piano-four hands, and actually my first piece in a while that involves piano at all. I had been writing mostly for strings, so it was fun to dive back into keyboard writing. Obviously there are some technical challenges, in the sense that the keyboard can get pretty crowded with four hands on it. You guys helped me work through some of that by finding really ingenious ways to avoid hand collisions in what I had written – so I was very lucky in this collaboration.

We spent time together in residence at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute workshopping and putting this piece together. Can you talk about our collaborative process and how it affected the piece.

I loved our time together at Avaloch – what a perfect working environment! It allowed us to workshop and experiment with the really fine details of the piece. I remember us doing a ton of work with pedaling – not the first element of the music a listener might notice, but in four-hands writing and in this piece I think it was really critical. You guys had so many useful things to suggest and contribute, and I loved that all of us in the room were both composers and pianists (although I’m a very bad pianist).

You, Alex Weiser, and Ryan Harper are three of the five composers of Kettle Corn New Music. How do these colleagues inspire your music and is there a unifying element to the music you guys compose?

I don’t think there’s one unifying element to our music, although I know we all have some common influences. I think we all produce very distinct music from one another. The great thing about Kettle Corn New Music is that although we’re primarily a presenting organization, we’re also all composers and we have certain common perspectives. As the youngest in the group, I feel as though I’ve literally come of age, musically, with the other members of Kettle Corn by my side. Alex and I have been trading music and giving each other feedback for almost 7 years now. It’s incredibly rewarding. We have such vastly different musical tastes and sensibilities, and yet we’re able to help each other too.

Interview: Nadia Shpachenko on her Piano Spheres debut

Dr. Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman is associate professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona. Photo by Tom Zasadzonski.

Dr. Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman is associate professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona. Photo by Tom Zasadzonski.


Tomorrow (Tuesday) night, pianist Nadia Shpachenko has her Piano Spheres Satellite Series debut at REDCAT. Tickets are available at redcat.org/event/piano-spheres-nadia-shpachenko. We reviewed Nadia’s last album here a few months back, and are stoked both for this concert and the fact that she had a minute to answer some questions about the program via email. Here’s Nadia.

So tell me about your Satellite Series show.

Tomorrow I will be performing a recital that features music written for me by six very talented composers with whom I worked closely on the interpretation of the works. It is an incredibly personal program that I can’t wait to share with LA audiences! The second half of the program will present the world premieres of two architecture-inspired works commissioned by Piano Spheres. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan’s Bangladesh conveys the transformative hope of Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Buildings in Dhaka. Annie Gosfield, whom the New Yorker called “The Carl Nielsen of Second Avenue,” wrote The Dybbuk on Second Avenue for this recital. Annie’s piece reflects the changing mix of influences in one theater in the Lower East Side’s “Jewish Rialto” over the years: from Yiddish theater to burlesque, from Chekhov to William Burroughs. These are the first two works of a project I am completing, to commission and record works inspired by architectural settings. In 2016 I will premiere four more new works by Amy Beth Kirsten, Hannah Lash, James Matheson, and Harold Meltzer at the Piano Spheres series at Boston Court, all illuminating particular architectural phenomena. The first half of the program  will include works written for my albumWoman at the New Piano by Tom Flaherty, James Matheson, Adam Schoenberg, and Peter Yates. I like to humorously call that program Music for a New B’ak’tun, that is music for a newly transformed world, the new 5,125 year cycle according to the Mayan Calendar, which began in 2013 when all those works were written. I will note that the pieces all touch on the themes of transformation, of resonances across time, of cycles of rebirth. Cretic Variations by James Matheson emphasizes lengthy resonances, how momentary events persist, shape new events, and how our memory of the past is revised by events of the now. Whereas Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Etudes take us through a variety of worlds, from placid to energetic, Peter Yates’ Finger Songs take us on a journey through time, playing on our sentiments with flashes and resonances of musics past. Whereas Tom Flaherty’s Airdancing (for which the wonderful Genevieve Feiwen Lee will join me on toy piano) and Adam’s Picture Etudes introduce novel combinations of sound sources, Peter’s Finger Songs feature novel combinations of musical forms and genres. A number of the pieces feature descent into true musical chaos, and emergence into the new – whether momentous, as in the thunder and dawn of Cretic Variations, or thrilling, as in whoops and swirls of Airdancing. I am very excited to perform this program tomorrow!

Here is a sneak peak into the first half repertoire:

Had you selected the In Full Sail piece to begin with, or does the theme really encompass the whole program?

In Full Sail to me means sailing towards my dreams, taking chances and going for it all the way. In Full Sail is also the title of a piece Harold Meltzer is writing for my architecture-inspired program. In Full Sail won’t be premiered until May 2016, but Harold was the first composer I approached for the project and the first one to come up with a title. And thoughIn Full Sail is a critic’s description in particular of the Frank Gehry building to which Harold is responding, the title seems to describe well the theme of the first concert that will feature works from this project (but will also feature works fromWoman at the New Piano), given its wide meaning.

What’s it like being a Satellite Series artist? I’ve heard there’s a bit of mentoring and support from the long-term Piano Spheres mainstays.

I am honored and excited to join Piano Spheres as a Satellite Artist! Vicki Ray has been a wonderful mentor, giving me great advice about programming and career building and I am looking forward to presenting a composition workshop with Vicki this afternoon at Boston Court, together with composers Lewis Spratlan (who just got into town from Massachusetts) and Adam Schoenberg. Vicki’s sparkly personality and infectious energy definitely have a way of rubbing off on me, and all the other Piano Spheres pianists and staff have been very supportive, making my Piano Spheres experience superb!

We’re lucky in LA to have a lot of fantastic pianists. Who else in town inspires you?

I agree, the Los Angeles new music (and older music) scene is thriving! When I go to concerts of new music, I see enthusiastic people of all ages in the audience. There is great appreciation in LA for all things avant-garde, outside the box, with too many wonderful new music ensembles and solo artists to list. Since my twin boys were born 5 years ago, my concert going experience slowed down a bit for a few years, but last year I was able to attend many incredible, inspiring concerts featuring adventurous, innovative music, much of which was actually written by local composers. Since I can’t list everyone who inspires me in town, I would like to focus on the Piano Spheres pianists, who inspire me beyond words. I was fortunate to be able to attend most Piano Spheres concerts last season (and of course the fantastic season opener with Gloria Cheng and Thomas Adès in September). Each of the principal artists, Gloria Cheng, Vicki Ray, Mark Robson and Susan Svrček, presented cohesive, exciting, beautifully-themed programs that featured their exceptional pianism and great imagination in interpreting new works. I was also very impressed by the inaugural Satellite Series last season and still remember vividly Nic Gerpe’s powerful Crumb performance and Aron Kallay’s unforgettable program, which included a piece for speaking pianist and electronics by Vykintas Baltakas, for which Aron recited a text in Lithuanian! I also frequently collaborate with the adventurous pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee, with whom I recorded two works for my album (Airdancing by Tom Flaherty and Bounce by Adam Schoenberg), and who will be airdancing with me on Tuesdayat REDCAT. I would just like to mention one more pianist who to this day continues to inspire me, my wonderful teacher John Perry, with whom I completed my graduate studies during the late 1990s through mid 2000s. Perry is turning eighty in February and has not slowed down a bit with his teaching and performances, which are moving, powerful and deeply felt. And he just presented a recital at Carnegie Hall to celebrate his 80th birthday!

What’s next after this show?

I have a very exciting season planned, with numerous premieres and exciting collaborations! I will be focusing on two brand new solo programs this season, which I will touring and recording in the near future. One of the programs, which I will start calling The Poetry of Places once it starts presenting only the architecture-inspired works in one recital, will feature six new compositions written for my project mentioned above (two of which I will be premiering). I will be performing these works more than a dozen times this season in California, New York, and Baltimore. For this project I will also be recording Andrew Norman’s Frank’s House for two pianists and two percussionists. Andrew and I were classmates at USC and I am thrilled to collaborate with him on this project! My other program, which I like to call Quotations and Homages will feature new and very recent musical homages by Matthew Elgart, Daniel Felsenfeld, Tom Flaherty, Vera Ivanova, James Matheson, Missy Mazzoli, Nick Norton (you!) and Peter Yates, five of which I will be premiering at Spectrum in New York on December 13. I am also very excited about my upcoming collaborations with Los Angeles Philharmonic’s violinist Vijay Gupta, with whom I will be performing a few local concerts in January, and with Kathleen Supové, with whom I will be performing concerts in three states in December, January and February, including the premiere of Jack Van Zandt’s Regular Division of the Plane for two pianos and a piece selected from ACFLA’s call for scores.

Anything else to add?

For this concert I had the privilege of choosing a beautiful Steinway & Sons concert grand that will be delivered to REDCAT tomorrow! I became a Steinway Artist last February and this was the first time since becoming a Steinway Artist that I had the opportunity to choose an instrument for a specific performance, an instrument that I felt would be a great match for the program on Tuesday. Adam Borecki beautifully filmed the Steinway Selection process, during which I discussed the differences between the instruments and performed short sections from some of the pieces on each piano. You can watch the clip, which was just finished this morning, here:

Sounds: Fell Runner: Song of the Sun

Following last week’s release of Daniel Corral’s Diamond Pulses (awesome review/interview by Alicia Byer here), I’ve been going through the Orenda Records catalog and came across this band of Cal Arts grads called Fell Runner. And I fell in love.

As per their biography, their music began as a study of the application of West African rhythms to western song forms. The resulting music is all over the place in the most coherent way possible, and I think I’m gonna be listening to this one for a while.

Sounds: Brian Ferneyhough: Terrain, performed by Mark Menzies and WasteLAnd

We did a rather large post about the difficulties of performing music by Brian Ferneyhough just before this WasteLAnd concert back in February. While that post covered soprano Stephanie Aston’s part in Ferneyhough’s Etudes Transcendantales, the difficulty and intensity is much the same for anyone attempting this music. And let me tell you, violinist Mark Menzies SHREDDED on Terrain, Ferneyhough’s violin concerto.

The other reason for posting this today? Menzies joins wild Up for another performance of Terrain this Sunday at UCLA. The show, titled FILIGREE, also has music by Gerard Pesson, George Lewis, William Byrd, Nico Muhly, Arnolt Schlick and Whitney Houston, with two World Premieres by Chris Kallmyer and Andrew McIntosh.

The FREE concert is an early one, starting at 4pm at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. Full details are on the facebook event page at facebook.com/events/664460340325127.

Matt Cook of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet on Holding the Lion’s Paw

Andrew McIntosh came up to me at a concert last week to invite me to hear the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet premiere his new piece, I Hold The Lion’s Paw, at Zipper Hall this Friday, April 10. I’ve loved LAPQ’s recordings, and immediately thought, “wait a second, why haven’t we done anything with them on New Classic LA?” Andrew introduced me to percussionist/LAPQ member Matt Cook, and here we are.

The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Fill us in on the show at Zipper this weekend.

On Friday, April 10th, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet will play a new piece from Andrew McIntosh called “I Hold The Lion’s Paw.”  We are thrilled to premiere this in Zipper Hall because we can take advantage of the size and acoustics of such an incredible space.  We will have four stations set up around the audience to spread melodies in the air and move our sound around the hall. The goal is to create a concert experience that is tailored more towards our audiences’ ears rather than their eyes.

The other pieces on the concert will remain on stage and represent a more traditional chamber music concert experience. These pieces have been written for us by Los Angeles based composers Nick Deyoe, Joseph Pereira, and Shaun Naidoo.  For audiences that have never attended a percussion concert, they will be amazed by the virtuosity of percussionists as well as the diverse sonic possibilities of the art form.

With the music you choose to program and record, it’s obvious that space is important to you. Your records on Sono Luminus are recorded in 7.1 surround sound. Did the decision to record like that come from within the group, or from the recording team? Do you feel that the recordings work equally well on a stereo setup like most listeners have?

As opposed to a string quartet or those with piano, the percussion performance model is very fluid and always changing. We often have strict space constraints because of the large size of our instruments like timpani and marimbas.  Equally as often, we have high flexibility in space based on the kind of repertoire we choose and the smaller  instruments we could use to create it.

At each show, we try to use the space provided to give an audience the deepest experience possible. We tailor each piece and our instrument choices to do just that.

When we perform in a small space, we give an intimate experience of hand held instruments and use items that can fit on one small table. These concerts often explore rhythm or the nuance of softer sounds. When in a large hall, we choose music that can push the limits of the louder dynamic spectrum.

We are excited to perform this show in Zipper because the hall is sensitive enough capture subtle details with clarity and it is large enough to let us push the louder moments.

The spatial aesthetic of our albums began when we started our recording partnership with Sono Luminus.  Most of what they record is in 7.1 Surround Sound and designed to appeal to both the audiophile community and traditional lovers of classical music.

Their recording sessions typically use one tower of microphones in the center of the room with seven microphones pointing in every direction.  During the session, we place our instruments in four stations surrounding the microphones so they can capture the actual spatial sound image. This presents challenges when trying to execute tight rhythmic passages over a great distance, but it pays off when we are able to listen to a piece and feel like you’re sitting in the middle of the ensemble.

When our albums are released, they come with two discs – one stereo CD, and one BluRay surround sound disc.  To me, the stereo version still captures the beautiful details of the composition, our playing, and a large dynamic spectrum.  The stereo version is also how 95% of our listeners can hear the album (iTunes, Spotify, and mp3s, etc).  Having said that, sitting in the middle of a BluRay surround sound album with the production quality that Sono Luminus offers is an extremely rare and rewarding experience.

You have, in not a huge amount of time, put out an impressive number of records, nabbed a GRAMMY nomination, and managed to keep a very busy schedule of performances and events. You’re still in touch with our local scene here, though. Without being too blunt about it, what’s your secret?

We appreciate the kind thoughts and we feel fortunate that our work has been received so  well up to now.  With the individual realities of our family lifestyles, SoCal living proximity, and our creative work with other projects, it is not possible for us to be a “full-time” ensemble at the moment. We are also passionate educators so this makes presenting long tours challenging.

Dealing with our limited schedules, we have chosen to create most of our work by collaborating with composers who are associated with Southern California in some way. The Los Angeles art music community in 2015 is equally as diverse and exciting as anywhere in the world.  Although we do work with composers all over the world, since our ensemble’s birth we have made it our mission to highlight the music of Southern California. In doing so, we hope to extend the long tradition of new music on the West Coast by contributing what is happening right now.

Our relationships with these artists help propel our artistry and career as an ensemble. We work together to create an audience, a sound world, and relationships with music venues.

Percussion quartet is a genre that more and more composers are writing in. Is the medium becoming today’s equivalent of the string quartet in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? If so, why do you think that is?

Percussion repertoire is expanding rapidly… we love this! There are several reasons for this recent explosion of content.

75 years ago, composer John Cage challenged the expectations of classical music listeners and used percussionists to experiment in a variety of musical contexts.  He set the trend for many composers today to be ambitious in that way. He also established the trend for many percussionists to volunteer to experiment for composers and push the limits of what they could achieve behind an orchestra.

The large collection of instruments many of us have and the hundreds of sounds we can create is attractive to many composers. These sounds often can not be appreciated from behind a larger ensemble, so percussion quartet is a great outlet to explore them. For example, crumbling paper or bowing a cymbal is a kind of sound that requires very few other events to be happening in that moment so they can be heard.

Lastly, the pedagogy over the last 65 years has evolved and created an incredible vehicle for producing creative, talented, and ambitious students. These students create professional ensembles or become teachers to an even more evolved group of young students. A few decades ago, percussion training was limited to orchestral applications or drumset. Now, percussion ensemble playing is at least 50% of the education most modern percussionists receive.

With more and more pieces in the medium, and – I assume – more and more submissions as your reputation grows, what makes a piece stand out as something you want to play? What gets you excited?

Pieces can stand out to us for a variety of reasons.  It could be as simple as coming across a piece that fits a theme of an upcoming event – such as music for percussion and electronics, or music to be performed outside.

New pieces that get us  excited can vary as well.  We often get excited by “new classical” pieces that cross genres and invite interest from wide audiences.  We are equally as interested in meditative pieces that focus on subtle shifts in sound evolving over time.

In terms of choosing our repertoire, it is a fluid process. We always welcome new works and any composer to send us ideas.  With the limited touring schedule, it sometimes has to coincide with practicality of other pieces on the concert and what instruments are available with the time given.

What’s on the horizon for LAPQ?

After our show on April 10th, we head up to Fresno in May for the California Day of Percussion. We’ll adjudicate young ensembles, give masterclasses, and perform a show for hundreds of high school and collegiate percussionists.

LAPQ recently received our 501c3 non-profit status, so we are excited to be developing the long term growth of our group! We are in the process of solidifying our Board of Directors, fundraising, and long term planning over the next few months.

We are also preparing to record our third album with Sono Luminus. As part of this, we are talking to various composers and finding the right mix of artists to collaborate with to make the album special.  Part of this will be fundraising for a large scale commission, which we are very excited about!

Tickets to see LAPQ this Friday at Zipper Hall are available from $5 – $20 at the door. Full details are up on the facebook event page at facebook.com/events/875741825819987. More info and recordings are up on LAPQ’s site, lapercussionquartet.com.

The Industry announces First Take 2015 composers, details

LA opera powerhouse The Industry just announced the list of composers who have been selected for their 2015 First Take event. The afternoon opera-thon gives first readings to new pieces and, if I’m not mistaken, one is usually chosen for The Industry to produce. 2015’s will be at the new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 21 at 1 pm, with wild Up serving as house orchestra.

The composers are:

Anne LeBaron

Andrew McIntosh

Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Nomi Epstein

Jenny Olivia Johnson

Paul Pinto

A more detailed post about the project is up at http://theindustryla.org/projects/project_firsttake15.php

The Industry is also holding open auditions for singers interested in First Take and Hopscotch. Interested singers should submit their resume, headshots, and performance sample web links to auditions@TheIndustryLA.org.

Interview: Richard Valitutto on NAKHT

If you live in Los Angeles and are into new music, chances are high that you’ve crossed paths with pianist Richard Valitutto. Pianist is an understatement, though. His website lists him simply but accurately as “musician,” and he often appears as melodica-player, composer, curator, and more. To get a taste, here’s a live recording of his premiere performance of Ryan Pratt’s On Expansion.

Next week is a big one for him, as he’s got his first full-blown solo recital on PianoSpheres’ new Satellite series, at REDCAT on Tuesday at 8:30. Here’s Richard:

Let’s start with NAKHT. What’s the concert all about?

NAKHT is a major step forward in my exploration of the genre of the piano nocturne.  I’ve been imagining and devising programs either largely based on or entirely comprised of nocturnes for the last couple years, and this is my first major solo recital in the process.  I guess it’s something that could be called a ‘nocturnes project,’ but I don’t want to get too nerdy about it. I wanted this particular program to be mostly 20th/21st century music, being that it is presented by Piano Spheres, and I wanted to create a program that definitely included certain pieces, particularly the Sciarrino Due Notturni crudeli and the Skryabin Poème-Nocturne.  They’ve been on my wish-list for a while now!

Richard_Valitutto_BW_HeadshotAlso, several months ago I was hanging out with Nicholas Deyoe having some whiskey (as we do) and we were discussing my nocturne fetish as well as his feeling of closure to his Lullaby series, to which the only other large-scale solo piano work he’s written belongs, Lullaby 2.  He said he would love to write another bigger piano piece, and contributing to the nocturne idea would be cool because he’d been thinking particularly about various ways to subvert the idea of a “nocturne” piece, drawing a lot of inspiration from Benjamin Britten’s incredible guitar solo Nocturnal (after John Dowland).  So it was then I knew exactly who I wanted to commission as a part of the Piano Spheres Satellite Series.

The program basically developed from these various repertoires and ideas; I think it’s a good representation of my interest in pieces that delve into the complex and volatile relationships between the night and the human psyche.

What attracted you to programming around nocturnes in the first place?

Mostly the music itself, of course: these are some of my favorite pieces of late.  But it’s also the fact that I came to realize I had never really heard of a solo piano program (or series of them, for that matter!) comprised mostly or entirely of nocturnes.  There are often all-sonatas programs; and I’ve heard many all-prelude, all-dances, even all-etudes (which, in fact, is exactly what Piano Spheres Satellite artist Steven Vanhauwaert will be doing on June 2, 2015)!

Like many people, some of my favorite pieces very early on were Chopin nocturnes.  They’re some of the most gloriously melodic pieces we pianists have, and the figurations are so pianistic that it’s like swimming with the hands through maple syrup.  On a conceptual level, though, the young me loved the idea of a piece somehow specifically being for night-time – something we don’t get a whole lot of in Western Classical Music.  Also, the budding linguist in me loved my understanding etymology of the name itself.  But in the last couple of years, I began to notice that not only are there some absolutely wonderful, overlooked gems in the major nocturne oeuvres of Chopin and Fauré, but many composers – often composers unfamiliar to me – will have in their catalogs a nocturne I never knew existed, and many of them just wrote a single one!  It became a game, every time I saw a composer’s solo piano catalog I would look to see if they had a nocturne, and many do!  It’s alluring: the idea that there was this body of pieces out there – simultaneously limited in scope and largely unknown – that all share the same title, presumably alluding to a similar affect or tradition.

But at the same time, the genre doesn’t really have a set form or tradition, unless you count the original notion of John Field and Chopin of a solo piano aria quasi bel canto, which frankly, a lot of people simply aren’t interested in writing anymore, at all.  So what does it then mean for a solo piano piece to be a “nocturne” especially in this century?  That’s what I’m trying to find out, mostly by experiencing the music itself.

This might be a big one: when we met we had both just moved to LA, and you were a new student at Cal Arts, and mentioned that you’d heard this guy was starting this orchestra you might help out with. That’s turned into one of the country’s most-acclaimed new music ensembles, and your own notoriety as a performer has grown in parallel, from new student in town to playing at Disney and Carnegie Hall and getting written up by Swed. Could you give us an idea of what that ride has been like for you? And have you thought of your career so far as an artistic narrative, or are you more focused on the project in front of you?

Yeah, that is a big one!  Downright cosmic, actually.  It’s hard for me to answer that, mostly because that part of all of us that always wants to as humble as possible is currently shoe-gazing and scuffing his toes saying, “Pshaw…”  But really, you put it better than I could: I’m just focused on the projects in front of me.  It’s certainly exciting to notice the attention and opportunity, not to mention the critical acclaim, of course.  But we’re all just people trying to say and do something interesting, from the biggest arts organizations to the smallest independent arts venture or show.  During my last year at CalArts and into my first year out of school, I had two rules for myself: The first was, if you can do it, say yes.  The second was, even if you have no idea what’s going on, have as much fun as possible.  They’ve gotten me pretty far, I’d say, and I’ve certainly done a lot of things that have been really fun (although recently, a couple more rules had to be implemented to temper this unilaterally over-zealous approach)!  Most importantly, I truly believe that we’re all students of the world for life, and I try to keep a beginner’s mind throughout it all.  The general rule in nature is, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying”.  And I think that we’re all called to be constantly bettering ourselves physically, spiritually, emotionally, and artistically so that we may then be a benefit to our community and the world around us simply through our existence and representing our set of values through the things we do for ourselves and others.

Can you share any stories from Gnarwhallaby’s Carnegie Hall concert? I heard a thing about you breaking pianos, which I was actually kind of proud of…

Well, the piano-breaking thing is something I was confused by, more than anything, although in retrospect, it does feel pretty badass.  What happened was, our rehearsals were in these recording/rehearsal studios way out in Midtown West, and there were a number of Yamaha grands located in multiple studios.  In the course of our few days of rehearsals of Nicholas Deyoe’s Lullaby 4 for the premiere in Zankel Hall, there were no less than three instruments that simply… gave out, I guess is the best way to put it.  Like, they were rendered completely unplayable.  By me.  It had something to do with at a certain point during our rehearsal, the action got jammed and then most of the keyboard just simply didn’t work.  At first I thought it was a fluke, but then it happened twice more, and I realized that I must have hands (and forearms) that an ordinary piano simply can’t handle.  And just to be clear, this piece had no extended techniques at all – so it’s not like I wasn’t playing the instrument “the right way,” or whatever.

As for other stories, perhaps a better question is, should they be shared!  Of course there are stories, but what is appropriate in this context I wonder…?

What excites you about making music here in LA in 2014?

I’m just gonna come out and say it:  Los Angeles right now is the most fulfilling and exciting musical environment I could have hoped for, and it’s only looking to get better!  What I totally admire about my colleagues and our city is the prolific diversity of style and context as well as the profound commitment to truly interesting and unique modes of art-making. It’s like nowhere else.  And most importantly, the level of support within the various artistic community I’ve been privileged to be a part simply feels like family, a home.

What music have you been digging recently?

Andrew McIntosh’s new album Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure is just off the chain beautiful.  And speaking of Nicholas Deyoe, I feel like I hear a new piece of his every other month (including the one I’m going to premiere at REDCAT!) and it’s always an experience to which I look forward, both as performer and auditor.  Most recently, it’s been exciting for me to discover the composer Ramón Lazkano, whose recent CD Laboratorio de Tizas with Ensemble Recherche has been getting a lot of car play.

Anything else to add?

If you’d like to know more about the program and particularly the new pieces to be premiered, Piano Spheres will be presenting an open forum discussion with Nicholas Deyoe and me facilitated by Mark Robson at the Boston Court Theater in Pasadena the day before the concert [Monday] from 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.  This event is free and open to the public.

It’s not on the Boston Court website, but it’s definitely happening!  Here’s the link to the Piano Spheres webpage about the event: http://pianospheres.org/satellite-series-workshops/

The calendar is live! So use it to go to Andrew McIntosh’s CD release party tonight.

I’ve been working on getting a better event calendar together to this site for quite a while, and am extremely pleased to say that the new one is live. If you’re on a computer, look to the right. If you’re on a phone, scroll down. Or simply click Calendar on the site’s menu to check it out.

If you’re reading this post today, you’ll see an event called Gnarwhallion listed. That’s Gnarwhallaby’s concert celebration of Andrew McIntosh’s new record, Hyenas In The Temples of Pleasure. It came out today, and we’ll have a feature on it out soon. You can beat us to it by going and grabbing your own copy at tonight’s show.

I’m still working out the most efficient way to take calendar submissions. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you post a Facebook event to our forum page, we’ll make sure it gets listed.

Tonight at Monk Space: a Mark Robson harpsichord premiere, Ligeti, Cowell, and old music

Tuesdays at Monk Space, the series run by Aron Kallay and Jason Heath in K-town, has a really cool mix of old and new happening tonight at 8. The first half of the program features Ensemble Hotteterre performing music by Couperin, Telemann and Phillidor on period instruments. The second is a Mark Robson solo harpsichord show, with pieces by Henry Cowell, Alexander Tcherepnin, Maurice Ohana, György Ligeti, and a premiere from Robson himself, along with selections from Froberger, Rossi, Scarlatti, and Giovanni de Macque for flavor.

Full info on the show is available at http://tuesdaysatmonkspace.org/shows/oldmusic-newmusic.