Archive for March, 2009

Richard Haynes: Listen, my secret fetish

31 March 2009 at 6:26 pm · Filed under Concerts, Music ·Tagged , , , ,

As well as your monthly fix of new music on a shoestring, this is an essential addition to your April diary:

*

Listen, My Secret Fetish
Richard Haynes
Australia

SHUNT Vaults
13 & 14 April, 8pm

‘Listen, My Secret Fetish’ is a collection of tantalizing sound pieces for clarinet each created by a different composer and performed by Richard Haynes.

Each work corresponds to a different fetish, but of course these remain secret until you see the show.

Breath Control, by David Young, employs constant circular breathing and dramatic performative elements.

Interference, by Richard Barrett, is an oracular piece for voice, bass drum and contrabass clarinet, controlled by an incomprehensible external force.

the sadness of detail, by Chris Dench, is full of intricate melodies that evoke a wild, animalistic atmosphere.

Press Release, by David Lang, is a masculine, driving work for bass clarinet that doesn’t let up until its final minute of glassy brilliance.
Part of Triple Bill with Carla Esperanza Tommsini and Harminder Singh Judge

Tickets for Triple Bill: £15, £10

Booking: www.sohotheatre.com  020 7478 0100

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New Music on a Shoestring: April

31 March 2009 at 6:19 pm · Filed under Concerts, New music on a shoestring

Here’s some background to NMoaS.

The main event this month for cheap new music bunnies is the fuseleeds Festival in Leeds. Many more details about this event, which runs from 25 April to 2 May are available here; performers include Icebreaker, Phil Minton, Mary Dullea, David Gedge, Exaudi, Labyrinth and more. Many events are free or very cheap: see the full programme for more details.

Other than that, there’s still plenty else going on – read on …

3 April

New Noise, Artrix, Bromsgrove, 8pm [details]

Birtwistle: Pulse Sampler; John Lely: Desk Bells; Skempton: Random Girl; Adrian Lee: Peace for Vayu; Simon Holt: Sphinx; David Lang: The Anvil Chorus; Cage: Ryoanji; Holt: Banshee

£3.50–£11.50

7 April

Philharmonia Orchestra: Music of Today, Festival Hall, 6pm [details]

Hans Abrahamsen: Schnee – Part I; Märchenbilder

Free

20 April

The Mercury Quartet, Michael Oliva (electronics), Rosie Coad (soprano), Carla Ress (alto flute), Royal College of Music, 7.30pm [details- sorry, the RCM don't give unique URLs for individual events]

Tristram Cary: I am here; Xenakis: Orient–Occident; Stockhausen: Solo; Murail: Allégories

Free (tickets required)

23 April

Sarah Watts, Heather Roche (bass clarinets), The Space, London, 7:30pm [details]

To include works by Elspeth Brooke, Stuart Russell, George Nicholson, Mark Hewitt, Stefan Heuke, Burkhardt Soll and Liza Lim.

Tickets are £6–7 (£5 concs.) so slightly outside the NMoaS rules, but this looks like a great concert so worth making an exception for.

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Download of the week: Stockhausen: Cosmic Pulses and Havona

23 March 2009 at 6:27 pm · Filed under Download of the week ·Tagged

Stockhausen

Cosmic Pulses (Klang – 13th Hour); Havona (Klang – 14th Hour)

Gérard Pape, sound projection; Nicolas Isherwood, voice

Recorded from Radio France. Get it here.

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Selling music through words

23 March 2009 at 5:44 pm · Filed under Music

Writing about music is hard, and I’m not sure many people go about it in the right way. I don’t think I do either, most of the time. Unless I’m in the (padded, soundless) anechoic chamber of analysis I’m rarely completely happy with how I’ve described musical events, processes or periods of time.

But I’ve come to two tentative conclusions, so far.

One: verbs. Music is temporal and active. When you hear a sound your eardrums vibrate, you are physically changed; with another sound they vibrate again, differently: music is happening to you. This physical enactment, in more-or-less discrete portions of time, is not common among the arts and, as the central conduit of expression and meaning, is unique to music. Adjectives, the preserve of most music writing, are almost useless in this respect.

Two: nouns. You don’t have to read much writing on the visual arts – a few sentences advertising the latest exhibition at the Tate will do it – to notice the presence of concrete nouns in such writing.

Using a variety of materials including rubber, glass and gold, Horn’s work has an immense beauty and sensuality to it.

The exhibition explores ideas that interest the artist about mutability and place. Her round, colourful cast-glass sculptures seem to have a liquid surface to them, and many of her photographs analyse the nature of water.

Those nouns, telling us what the art is made of, have tremendous power. We all know what glass, gold and rubber look like, feel like, smell like. Just reading those words we have an idea (it may be completely wrong, it doesn’t matter) of what those sculptures look like. Our imagination is fired: and that is the most valuable thing any writing about the arts can do, particularly if you are trying to sell the idea of a particular concert or exhibition to someone. If you can implant that idea of the work (again, it doesn’t need to be accurate, just delineated enough to concretise itself in the mind of the reader), then you’ve got the hook and you’ve sold the ticket: the reader now has a need to compare their imagining of the work with the real thing, a need that can only be met by attending in person.

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Paul Whitty: thirty-nine pages

23 March 2009 at 5:37 pm · Filed under CD, Music, Reviews ·Tagged , , ,

My review of this (recommended) CD is now online:

For thirty-nine pages Paul Whitty has treated each individual page of the Henle Urtext edition of Franck’s A major Violin Sonata, arranging them into 38 short movements (two treat two pages each, and one treats all 39 pages together). Some of his interventions are more oblique than others (there are very few exact quotations) but, even if it’s rarely possible to hear the original source material, it is often possible to infer traces of nineteenth-century rhetoric through Whitty’s bleached re-readings.

Continue reading here.

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Feldman: For Christian Wolff reviewed

19 March 2009 at 8:41 pm · Filed under CD, Music, Reviews ·Tagged ,

My latest contribution to Musical Pointers is online:

Morton Feldman: For Christian Wolff
California Ear Unit: Dorothy Stone, flute; Vicki Ray, piano, celesta

BRIDGE 9279A/C (Three Hours, Three Discs)

Every CD of late, long Feldman represents a tremendous luxury. To have the time, the silence and the comfortable surroundings to listen closely and carefully for several hours to a single piece of music is not something everyone can afford these days.

A full afternoon in the company of Feldman is not, however, a luxury like a trip to the spa. It is hard work, frequently tedious, and exhausting without even the endorphin compensation of running a marathon. The luxury comes from the transgressive indulgence in something that runs so spectacularly contrary to the social, political and commercial demands of contemporary art.

Read more here.

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James Avery, RIP

13 March 2009 at 11:48 am · Filed under Musician Deathwatch ·Tagged , ,

It was several days ago that I heard the very sad news that James Avery, conductor, pianist and founder of Ensemble SurPlus, has died. I only had a passing acquaintance with him as a writer, but by all accounts he was a unique champion of new music. I’ve still not seen any English-language obituaries (shame), but here’s one in the Badische Zeitung.

Avery can be heard most recently on Mathias Spahlinger’s farben der fruhe (Neos).

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Henri Pousseur, 1929–2009

9 March 2009 at 10:06 am · Filed under Musician Deathwatch ·Tagged

RIP Henri Pousseur

Streaming audio of Pousseur’s music available here and here.

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New Music on a Shoestring: March 2009

2 March 2009 at 6:37 pm · Filed under Concerts, New music on a shoestring

Lots to mention here, so straight into it:

5 March

Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, 6.30pm [details]

Knussen: Cantata; Carter: ASKO Concerto

Free

on the same night:

Barry Truax, Phipps Concert Hall, University of Huddersfield, 7.30pm [details, PDF]

Electroacoustic music by Truax, with a pre-concert talk by the composer.

Free

6 March

RAM Composition Department, Azalea, Royal Academy of Music, London, 6pm [details]

Andriessen: Workers’ Union

Free

on the same night:

Sarah Nicolls, Phipps Concert Hall, University of Huddersfield, 7.30pm [details, PDF]

Works for piano and electronics by Mark Bowden, Federico Reuben and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.

Free

7 March

MANTIS Festival, Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, University of Manchester, 1pm [details]

The 11th MANTIS Festival of electroacoustic music kicks off with works by Manchester Uni postgraduate composers.

£4/2

Following this, at the same venue, 7.30pm [details]

More from MANTIS, featuring works by Barry Truax, Thomas Bjelkeborn, David Berezan and Ricardo Climent

£4/2, or £5/3 for the two concerts together

8 March

Final MANTIS concert, Nexus Art Café, Manchester M1 1JW , 7pm [details]

A night of experimental electronics, laptop improvisation and visuals from BNUNC, Mark Pilkington and Bling this Story.

Free

10 March

Britten Sinfonia, West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge CB3 9DP, 1pm [details]

Concert includes John Woolrich’s Quiddities and a new work from Pawel Mykietyn.

£3

12 March

Richard Craig, St.Paul’s Hall, University of Huddersfield, 7.30pm [details, PDF]

Concert to include: Sciarrino: Fra i testi dedicati alle nubi, Bernhard Lang: Schrift 1.2, John Croft: ne L’aura che trema, Margaret Haley: Tau 1 Gruis, Marco De Boni: Per Flauto Solo, Ferneyhough: Unity Capsule

£6 (3/2 concs.) This one’s a little more than the £5 Shoestring limit, but it’s such a tasty looking programme I figure you can find that extra pound if you’re in the area.

13 March

Ossian Ensemble, Royal College of Music, London, 7.30pm [details]

Programme includes: Crumb: Vox Balanae, Richard Barrett: Codex I, Stockhausen: Dr K Sextett, Grisey: Talea.

Probably my pick of the month this; not to be missed. (Barrett’s Codex I features on the recently re-issued negatives CD by ELISION, to be reviewed here soon.)

Free

15 March

New Music Morning, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge CB3 0AQ, 12pm [details]

Works for radio reception and transmission by Cage and others.

Free

17 March

RAM Composition Department, Royal Academy of Music, London, 6pm [details]

Works by Colin Matthews and a new piece by Richard Bullen.

Free

19 March

RWCMD Millennium Ensemble, National Temple of Peace and Health, Cardiff CF10 3AP, 7.30pm [details]

Concert features Harvey: Soleil Noir/Chitra, Harvey: Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, Stockhausen: Refrain, Chris Petrie: Sinfonia Concertante

£5/3

20 March

Vaganza, Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, University of Manchester, 1.10pm [details]

Works by John McCabe and new works by student composers.

Free

later in the day:

Vaganza, Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, University of Manchester, 1.10pm [details]

More McCabe.

21 March

Manchester University Wind Orchestra, Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, University of Manchester, 1.10pm [details]

John McCabe: Cloudcatcher Fells, McCabe: Canyons, Joseph Horovitz: Bacchus on Blue Ridge, Martin Ellerby: Paris Sketches, Ellerby: New World Dances, Ellerby: Dreamscapes

£3–8

23 March

Rarescale, All Saints Church, Oakleigh Park, London, 6:15pm

Michael Kamon: Roominating, Ian Wilson: Spilliaert’s Beach, Brendan Colbert: of two minds

£5

I’m taking this information on trust: the rarescale website is horrible and keeps crashing my Firefox, and I can’t find details anywhere else.

26 March

Jack Quartet, St.Paul’s Hall, University of Huddersfield, 7.30pm [details, PDF]
Xenakis: Tetora, Richard Glover: Inversions in Retrograde, Aaron Cassidy: String Quartet, Timothy McCormack: Ecceity, Xenakis: ST/4

Again, this is also £6 (£2/3 for concs.) but my qualifier for the Richard Craig concert above applies here too, perhaps more so.

29 March

COMA, Chapel of the Ascension, University of Chichester, 3.30pm [details]

Concert includes pieces by Jennifer Walshe, Robert Ashley, Philip Cashian and Alexander Campkin.

Free

3 April

New Noise, Artrix, Bromsgrove, B60 1PQ, 8pm [details]

Concert includes pieces by Birtwistle, John Lely, Howard Skempton, David Lang and Simon Holt.

£3.50–11

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Fidelio Trio reviewed

1 March 2009 at 12:24 am · Filed under Concerts, Music, Reviews ·Tagged , , ,

Apologies to my readers if it seems that all I’m posting at the moment are reviews or links to reviews. At the moment it feels like that’s all I’m writing …

Anyway, my review of the Fidelio Trio at King’s Place last week is now online:

On previous occasions, I’ve been a little disturbed by the Fidelio Trio’s programming judgment. They’re fine, ambitious players who I hope to hear for many years, but I’m not sure they always choose the best pieces for themselves. Tonight, however, there was only one real dud: the piano, electronics and video components of Fujikura’s moromoro were poorly characterised in isolation and dreary as a whole.

Sciarrino’s Trio [no.1] got things off to a much more sparkling start as its opening flood of notes rushed us into a skittering, unstable terrain littered with ball bearings and tripwires – an exciting place to run around in, but very hard to keep one’s footing. With so much of the momentum dependent on the chase of complex timbres and figurations from one instrument to the next it was a shame that balance problems obscured the cello.

Read more here.

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