Composer, soprano, and Parlour Tapes+ co-founder Jenna Lyle (photo credit: parlourtapes.com)

Despite their, perhaps, quirky ambition to release music on cassette tapes (as well as digital media), “we decided we wanted this to be more than just a tape label,” said Ellen McSweeney, one of Tham’s business partners. Already they have two releases planned for later this year, a web magazine in the works, and a plethora of ideas for events. “There are different ways of building community around contemporary music,” said McSweeney. Each member of the label, in addition to being a musician, comes from a different background and offers something different to the group. McSweeney, for instance, is a writer, and Tham is an arts administrator. Both were late-comers onto the Parlour project, which began as an idea in the mind of their third collaborator Kyle Vegter, on “one of those days when you just say, ‘[Screw] it, I’m going to the MCA.’”

After spending the day at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, observing and reflecting, he rode the bus home wearing an orange vest. “And I was thinking that there needs to be an exporter of what Chicago is doing,” said Vegter. “If a thing happens in New York, the whole world knows about it. If something happens in Chicago, then, maybe, Chicago knows about it.”

It’s unfortunate that Chicago new music has managed to avoid the limelight — surprising in a city where the symphony orchestra holds both international respect and a prominence in the community. Every summer, the stadium-sized Millennium Park fills to the concrete walls with all kinds of people flocking to hear world-class classical music for free. The Grant Park Music Festival (which begins next month) represents the sort of commitment to the arts that civic pride should be based on. Yet the millions of dollars spent on the Festival have only recently started to give credence to the rich new music scene that thrives here.

What Thursday night proved is that you don’t need to spend a million dollars to give your audience a good show. The Parlour Tapes team spent weeks hyping the event, sending email updates and releasing mysterious videos on their Tumblr to tell the story of the mystery: David Skidmore, a member of Third Coast Percussion, had (fake) died mysteriously during a filming of a YouTube instructional video on how to play the tambourine. (Many of the videos, Tham told me, were edited on iMovie a day before the event.) Once the party got started, there was an open bar and hors d’oeuvres accompanied by clues whispered into guest’s ears, such as “Be careful what you eat,” and, “If you continue to steal a cookie from a mouse, the mouse will freak out on you.” Less in keeping with the theme (but no less ridiculous and fun) were the five professional poets volunteering to spend the night seated at classic typewriters composing personalized Dadaist poetry for a mere $5.

Percussionist and confessed (fake) murderer Doug Perkins (photo credit: Ben Johansen)

And let’s not forget the music performances, all of which occurred delightfully out of their element. Tim Munro of eighth blackbird played his flute whilst being hoisted offstage by the MC. Percussionist Doug Perkins, of Perkins/Meehan Duo, prefaced his solo performance with a tongue-in-cheek demonstration on how to play the snare drum. The Spektral Quartet’s performance of Thomas Adès’s “Tango Mortale” (which I’ve heard live now at least six times) felt completely at home against the backdrop of a shoddy red curtain that was likely tacked up just for the occasion.

It was impressive how funny a group of untrained comedians can be when they share a common interest. Jenna Lyle, the fourth co-founder of Parlour Tapes, spent most of the evening burlesquing the audience and redirecting their attention to whatever video clue came next. Her energetic sense of humor is exemplary of the potential this label has for making an impression on the music world. The only people they have to impress now are the many people who aren’t yet in on the joke.

In the end, Skidmore’s (fake) murderer turned out to be none other than fellow percussionist Perkins, who had lashed out in a fit of professional jealousy. In a dramatic, 11th hour “confession,” Perkins claimed it was all a big misunderstanding over those instructional videos. He thought a little mouse poison on the tambourine would only make Skidmore sick (not kill him), enabling Perkins to take his place in the video shoot.

Composers and Parlour Tapes+ co-founders Kyle Vegter and Andrew Tham (photo credit: parlourtapes.com)

This was, after all, a fundraising event. The event’s proceeds have yet to be announced, but it’s almost certain that the four members of Parlour Tapes will have to exercise a different kind of creativity if they hope to attract the attention of Chicago’s big-dollar donors. If nothing else, last night was a rare joy shared by a coterie of the culturally engaged. The moments of spontaneity were deftly orchestrated and the food was surprisingly good. It was, cards on the table, just the kind of party Jay Gatsby might have thrown.

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Sam Zelitch is a writer and a performer out of Chicago, Ill. Follow him on Twitter: @smellitch.

W4 New Music collective with guest composers (photo credit: w4newmusic.com)

W4 New Music, a composer collective consisting of Molly Herron, Matt Frey, Tim Hansen, and Ruben Naeff, presented a unique program that placed baroque instruments in a modern concert setting, challenging the composers to write for instruments that are no longer commonly used, except by early music specialists. New Music for Old Instruments was the first of a pair of concerts. The other, titled New Music for New Instruments, will explore how modern composers interact with newly created instruments.

First on the program was the premiere of recent Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw’s [avec sous-titres en anglais] for soprano, cornetto, and bass viola da gamba. The piece began with a humming voice, out of which grew the sounds of the cornetto. The timbral quality of the voice and cornetto created wonderful sonorities that continued as the arpeggiating viola da gamba entered. [avec sous-titres en anglais] is built on beautiful harmonies and an excellent use of the period instruments, striking a perfect balance between sound and timbre among the trio.

Composer Timothy Andres (photo credit: Jonathan Waiter)

Timothy Andres’ Talking About Dancing followed. It was one of two works performed that was not a premiere. The piece, written for harpsichord, baroque violin, and bass viola da gamba, was very fun to listen to. The interaction and play between the instruments was great, and the use of the baroque instruments reflected a distinctly modern twist on an old sound.

A larger ensemble piece, Pyramus and Thisbe by Doug Balliet, was next on the program. Written for soprano, contralto, narrator, recorder, cornetto, baroque violin, baroque viola, and bass viola da gamba, the piece had the largest ensemble of the night. Balliet’s work is the sixth in a series of rap cantatas written by the composer based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The libretto, written by Balliet, is light-hearted yet dark, and it had the audience laughing one minute and in tears (at least I was) the next, as it recounts the tragic tale of Pyramus and Thisbe. The witty poetry combined with the instrumental support proved successful, and Pyramus and Thisbe was one of the most interesting pieces on the program.

Composer Molly Herron (photo credit: mollyherron.com)

After a short pause, harpsichord, baroque violin, tenor viola da gamba, and bass viola da gamba took to the stage to premiere W4 New Music member Molly Herron’s Neon Helix. The rhythmically driven piece utilized beautiful sonorities, varying between sparse and dense sections that ultimately found a good balance between the two. Neon Helix had a spiraling quality, each instrument turning back on itself and then heading in a new direction, all around some present yet invisible axis. Herron’s music marked a unique take on the limitations of the old instruments, showcasing a wonderful consideration of counterpoint and the sound-in-time.

What You Resist by Matt Frey, another member of W4 New Music, received its premiere after Herron’s piece. Another large ensemble work, What You Resist is written for contralto, recorder, harpsichord, baroque violin, tenor viola da gamba, and bass viola da gamba. Through the use of these instruments, Frey found a balance between a sound that is both delicate and powerful, creating a passionate piece that resonated strongly with listeners. The chordal string section within the piece was particularly effective.

Composer Tristan Perich (photo credit: © d. yee / Cantaloupe Music)

The final piece was Tristan Perich’s Dual Synthesis for harpsichord and 4-channel 1-bit electronics, the second work on the concert that was not a premiere. The piece was very enchanting, the sonic texture between the harpsichord and electronics blending perfectly, inhibiting the listener from telling where one ends and the other begins. The hypnotic movement and static harmonies of the opening eventually gave way to a dramatic harmonic shift, where one could feel the entire audience give a collective sigh of wonder. As the piece moved forward, it slowly returned to where it began. Dual Synthesis was a difficult test for the harpsichordist, and Karl Larson showed a tremendous amount of precision and skill while performing it.

New Music for Old Instruments was a fascinating display of the interaction between modern composers and baroque instruments. Each conversation was unique, and each composer approached writing for the instruments in a completely different way. The next concert in the pair, New Music for New Instruments, will likely be as interesting and varied, if not more so. Leading up to the concert, there will be a series of informal previews, consisting of performances and Q&A sessions with the instrument creators. The first preview for New Music for New Instruments will take place on July 7, 2013, at 2:00 PM at the Invisible Dog Gallery.

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Sam Reising is studying music composition at New York University. Follow him on Twitter: @samreising.

“Big Farm is a place where serious counterpoint can meet burlesque, earnestness meet abandon; a place where they can kick it or take it to tea, reflect, attack, mourn, dance, pray, or mock with ease or determination, joy or fervor, using any and all means necessary. This world is a big farm – lots of different crops, changing weather, livestock, and a duck pond for good measure.”

Big Farm

Big Farm is Grammy winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist vocalist-lyricist Rinde Eckert; electric bassist Mark Haanstra; Grammy winner and pioneering composer/guitarist Steven Mackey; and celebrated percussionist Jason Treuting (So Percussion). Thanks to our friends at New Amsterdam Records, we are able to offer an exclusive album preview on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN! The eponymous debut album will be out on May 28, and this preview will stream until May 27, midnight EST.

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Pianist Conrad Tao performs the music of Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Meredith Monk, and himself at (le) poisson rouge.
Tuesday, May 21 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $15 advance, $20 day of show
(le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY
..:: Website

Mivos Quartet

Mivos Quartet – Photo by Ralf Puder/Nana Fran

Mivos joins a stellar cast of musicians in this 10-day exhibit of Elliott Sharp’s Foliage. Tuesday night they offer their own interpretation of Sharp’s epic graphic score piece, with video by Janene Higgins.
Tuesday, May 21 at 8 PM
Tickets $10
REVERSE 21 Frost St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY
..:: Website

Iktus Percussion: The Interactive Ideal | Ear Heart Music

Iktus Percussion, with guest artists Denise Filion and Julia Den Boer, explore the interaction of both electronic, acoustic, and instrumental theater of the Darmstadt era via a constellation of works for piano, percussion, and electronics. In his 1960 Kontakte, Karlheinz Stockhausen takes the analog electronic world as his primary palette, spreading colors on an acoustic canvas of piano and percussion sound. Luigi Nono’s 1976 Sofferte Onde Serene for piano and electronics turns inward, focusing less on exploration of sound and more on cultivation of dialogue. Nono involves us in an intimate, and at times beguiling, conversation between piano and the pre-recorded improvisations of Maurizio Pollini. Finally, Mauricio Kagel challenges conventional western musical tradition in his 1977 work, Dressur. Scored for over 50 wooden instruments and non-instruments, Kagel combines the visual and auditory to draw his audience into a whirlwind of absurdist and unorthodox musical theater. This piece may (or may not) contain partial nudity.
Tuesday, May 21 at 8 PM
Tickets $15, $10 members/students/seniors
Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY
..:: Website

INTAR Evening of Experimental Guitar

As one of four concerts in INTAR Theater’s Spring Music Series, INTAR EXPERIMENTAL GUITAR NIGHT features some of NYC’s leading avant-guitarists in various musical settings. Brandon Seabrook brings his Seabrook Power Plant band and his hard-edged guitar/banjo attack to the INTAR stage. NYC Alternative Guitar Festival founder/guitarist/composer Joel Harrison (Nels Cline, Norah Jones, Uri Caine, Dewey Redman), guitarist/composer Cristian Amigo (Elliot Sharp, Eve Beglarian, Wadada Leo Smith), and drummer/composer Andrew Drury (Jason Kao Hwang, Steve Swell Trio) team up for their first improvised collaboration in a bass-less trio that is sure to reimagine world/roots music. Guitarist Tor Snyder (Bob Moses, Kenwood Denard, John Medeski) brings his singular, from-another-planet sound that he channels through a Moog guitar. It will be a night of far-searching music and energy as the musicians look to both epitomize and transcend the nature of the guitar.
Tuesday, May 21 at 8 PM
$10 suggested donation
INTAR Theater, 500 W. 52nd Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY
..:: Website

Earth to Ear Presents Insect Music

The evening will kick off with a presentation by Dan Mozgai, one of the foremost experts on cicada sounds and behavior. It will be followed by the world premiere of Richard Robinson’s Song of the Cicada, a 30-minute experimental documentary inspired by Rothenberg’s Bug Music and drawing parallels between the cicada’s life underground and the ordeal of former political prisoner Tim Blunk. Robert Krulwich, the founder of RadioLab, will then lead a panel discussion featuring Richard Robinson, Tim Blunk, David Rothenberg, and Umru Rothenberg to discuss the movie and ask questions. The evening will culminate with a music performance, Bug Music, featuring Pauline Oliveros (accordion), David Rothenberg (clarinets and laptop) Timothy Hill (overtone singing) and Garth Stevenson (double bass), playing off the sounds of cicadas and other insects.
Wednesday, May 22 at 7:30 PM
$15 suggested donation
Judson Church, located at 55 Washington Square South, New York, NY
..:: Website

Crossings: New York – Pittsburgh | Random Access Music and Alia Musica

Kate Dillingham

RAM (Random Access Music) composers’ collective unites with the Pittsburgh-based collective Alia Musica to present cellist Kate Dillingham and pianist Amir Khosrowpour in a program that includes six new works and five world premieres.
Friday, May 24 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
Benzaquen Hall, DiMenna Center, 450 W. 37th Street, New York, NY
..:: Website

Morphing Me | MADArt Creative

The Flamboyán Theater, CSV Cultural Center will be transformed into an interactive environment, centered with a fluorescent water installation ‐ Glow. Based on the installation, resident choreographer Lauren Camp creates a dance piece with 6 dancers with music performed by the modern trombone collective Guidonian Hand and composed by Jeremy Howard Beck. Colombian artist Leo Castaneda will exhibit his illusionistic abstract paintings, and work with Artistic Director Santino Lo to design the moving environment. The performance will conclude with an after-party featuring Paris-based post- modern jazz trio The Kandinsky Effect.
Saturday, May 25 at 7 PM
Tickets $15 Advance Tickets & $20 Day of Event
Flamboyán Theater, CSV Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY
..:: Website

Instruments Unbound: Soloists with Electronics, Found Sounds, and Video

Four indie-classical composer/performers show the expanded capabilities of the contemporary soloist, using live processing of their instruments, electronics, found sounds and video art/projections. Sets by Florent Ghys, Lesley Flanigan, Angelica Negron, and Jennifer Stock.
Saturday, May 25 at 8 PM
Tickets: $10 advance / $12 day of show
92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street
..:: Website

New York and Denmark | TRANSIT’s DoubleBill Festival

TRANSIT’s DoubleBill series highlights emerging composers from New York as well as another city. This format allows our audiences to hear the latest offerings from composers in a cultural hotspot. This concert features music by Ryan Carter, Sean Friar, Ryan Brown, Carsten Bo Eriksen, Ejnar Kanding, and Rasmus Zwicki.
Saturday, May 25 at 8 PM
Tickets $12, $10 for students. Cash only at the door.
Actors Fund Art Center, 160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY
..:: Website

New York and Australia | TRANSIT’s DoubleBill Festival

TRANSIT’s DoubleBill series highlights emerging composers from New York as well as another city. This format allows our audiences to hear the latest offerings from composers in a cultural hotspot. This concert features music by Pat Muchmore, Matthew Welch, Angélica Negrón, Tim Hansen, William Gardiner, and Julian Day.
Sunday, May 26 at 8 PM
Tickets $12, $10 for students. Cash only at the door.
The DiMenna Center 450 West 37th Street, New York, NY
..:: Website

The Hunger will ultimately be an evening-length piece concerning itself with the topic of the Great Famine in Ireland in the 19th century. I’m not interested in this story for some nationalist reason, but because it is a profound and human focus for looking at the question of laissez faire economics (the free market) versus the responsibility of governance. That was the ideological battle at the heart of government in London (at that time Ireland was part of the British Empire, then the wealthiest entity in the world, possessing 40% of the world’s wealth). The famine was definitely an avoidable disaster. The free market does not always behave morally, as we know. And this is a kind of catastrophic instance of the impact of not interfering with its workings until too late. The second part of the piece will involve interviews with economists (in a great kind of babble of verbal sound) which will be interleaved with the more personal voices of Asenath Nicholson’s first-hand accounts and that of sean-nós song which basically is a signifier of the sufferer in this context. I concentrate on this story because it irrevocably changed Ireland, and it is something I know on an emotional level. I wanted to also explore it on an intellectual and artistic level.

Donnacha Dennehy – Photo by Sophie Dennehy

Grá agus Bás (Love and Death) will be performed this week at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. I imagine you following in the footsteps of past composer/ethnomusicologists such as Bartók, who sought to incorporate Magyar folk elements into notated classical music while keeping it distinct from the dominant German school. Do you see yourself in a similar role, trying to adapt a traditional Irish form to “high art,” thus distinguishing your work from American post-minimalism?

There are definite post-minimalist tendencies in my work. I am not worried about that at all, and the desire to incorporate sean-nós elements within my music is not some conscious attempt to distinguish me from my American friends. There are other things that I do such as a concentration in using the overtone series in my harmonies/textures, an elastic treatment of harmonic rhythm where pairs contract and expand against each other etc. which keep my music fresh enough for me without my feeling a kind of compulsion to incorporate Irish elements. But in some works I do feel compelled to use this material as a source. I am not trying to proselytize or anything. It just resonates for me and suggests so many possibilities when I’m working, not only emotionally and sonically, but also on a structural level. I really am using them for my own ends, and I invest these sources with all sorts of properties that are only implicit in them initially. It’s a kind of inter-cultural collision within my own being. I was raised in a very urban environment in Dublin, very much part of a kind of Anglo-American popular culture. Yet I also felt different from that, and I suppose that I want my music to be honest to who I am.

Harmonics and other spectral effects abound in Grá agus Bás. Are any of these elements left to the discretion of the performers? Do these phenomena point to aspects of this world, or do they seek to transcend it?

In a way I touched upon this in my answer to the last question. I am endlessly fascinated with the construction of harmonies using overtones, or taken from ideas about the overtone series. Almost all of these overtone-derived elements are explicitly notated. For Grá agus Bás, I analysed loads of unaccompanied sean nós songs (sung for me by Iarla O’Lionáird) with a very precise pitch-detection software called Melodyne, which could show me all the microtonal variations. Most of these could very easily be construed within a spectral context and that became a meeting point for the way the solo voice interacted with the harmony/timbre of the instrumental writing.

I think that all art is about transcending the limits of the world, especially the limit imposed upon us by death.

Crash Ensemble – Photo by Ros Kavanagh

Iarla O’Lionáird’s voice has a texture that resonates remarkably well among strings and even electronics. Certain phrases of his even reminded me of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. What did you learn from him about the import and scope of sean-nós songs?

I learned an awful lot from Iarla. He was incredibly generous with his time and talent. My interaction with him has left an indelible mark on my voice as a composer. Sean-nós probably sounds much more “foreign” to American ears than what would generally be known as Irish music (our dance music and ballads). Some scholars even suggest strong North African influences on Irish sean nós (argued showing evidence from old trade routes). Hence the possibility of your making a connection with Sufi music. I love Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan by the way. So that may also play a role on some unconscious level!

That the Night Come is a lush collection of settings of Yeats poems, sung with ethereal grace by Dawn Upshaw. What made you decide upon a female voice for his texts? Are you perhaps finally reconciling him with Maud Gonne?!

Ha! Someone knows their Yeats! Dawn had been put in touch with me by Bob Hurwitz (of Nonesuch). He played her Grá agus Bás and she became interested in my music. So we decided to do something together. I was initially debating using Irish language poems but then became more and more convinced that I wanted to do something with Yeats. I had set Yeats before, and always with female voices. I really don’t know the reason why. Yeats was profoundly influenced and shaped by the women he knew in his life, from Maud Gonne to Lady Gregory (with whom he founded the Abbey Theatre) to Georgina his wife (with whom he produced books and books of automatic writing). So maybe I sensed a very strong female presence in his poems or something. Who knows? I don’t. But Dawn is stunning in her interpretation of these texts.

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Rob Wendt is a pianist/composer/music educator living in Astoria, NY. You can follow him on twitter: @RobWendt.

Composer John Corigliano (photo credit: johncorigliano.com)

Hearing Corigliano’s masterpiece played by a 100-piece orchestra, one realized what John Williams lacks, despite all his financial success. Whereas Williams strives to give us a boisterous, catchy tune we can leave the theater humming, Corigliano writes music that is generated by, and reveals, his characters’ inner lives. The film begins, in fact, with a character’s thoughts. We see William Hurt in an isolation chamber as the camera slowly backs into the observation room, where Bob Balaban (Hurt’s lab assistant) drinks coffee and takes notes from arcane machines. It is also Balaban’s voice we hear narrating the scene, along with some unsettling lab sound effects and, subtlest of all, Corigliano’s music. In classic Sci-Fi fashion, Hurt’s character is a doctor performing his own experiment on himself, inducing hallucination through drugs and isolation. Both the original novel and screenplay were written by Paddy Chayevsky, author of Network, as a deadpan satire on the 60s drug movement. The music here is light, just a few slow notes on piano, some strings, dissonance from the woodwind section, and some pitch-bending brass. It’s as if little sonic glimpses of Hurt’s hallucination are breaking through.

Watching a movie with a live orchestra offers more insight into the collaboration that goes on between director and composer. As the story goes, Russell approached Corigliano after hearing a performance of the composer’s Clarinet Concerto. Russell had come to the concert specifically to hear Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, but was so impressed with Corigliano’s piece that he offered him Altered States, which would be his first film score. The composer, who was present at the Chicago concert, was happy to accept. “I learned a lot about writing orchestral music from film music,” Corigliano told the Fulcrum Point audience, during an interview before the performance. But the real trouble with writing for film, he learned, is the time crunch. “I knew they wanted it in two in a half months. Writing this would take me two and a half years.”

To expedite the writing process, he created a series of sonority symbols that could be reused. He also borrowed material from his previous work and worked quickly to capture new ideas as they revealed themselves. The idea for the love theme came to him by the swimming pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel. As a love theme, it may sound like pretty standard film orchestra fare, perhaps with a few touches of French expressionism. On the other hand, close listening proves that it tells the story of the complicated private relationship between the characters, one that is destined for doom. This is the power of Corigliano’s style of film composition: it tells us so much more than we can see.

Considering the demands on his creativity, and the weight of Corigliano’s talent, it should surprise no one that his latest film score, for The Red Violin in 1998, was only his third. In Hollywood, as Joseph Heller once observed, art is the same thing as money. Someone like John Williams, master of the feel-good orchestral composition, will get steady work until he decides to retire. An artist like Corigliano simply can’t waste time appealing to emotion. He’s only got so much time left to figure out exactly who he is and what he sounds like. ”Your personal style is what you’re not aware of,” Corigliano said. “The decisions you don’t think of are your personality.”

Altered States, John Corigliano (RCA, 1990) | Get it on Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK

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Sam Zelitch is a writer and a performer out of Chicago, Ill. Follow him on Twitter: @smellitch.

Dan Visconti

Viconti’s music on Lonesome Roads covers a range of styles, but it remains distinctly American. In some instances this American-ness is overt—blues, bluegrass, and ragtime all make an appearance—and in others it is less obvious, such as the influence of cross-country road trips or de Soto’s 16th century explorations of the East Coast. Comparisons to Copland and Ives are easy; there are sweeping, achingly beautiful open chords of Drift of Rainbows, and while Fractured Jams, “Jugband Jamboree” is chaotic and dissonant, it is also layered with music that might be more suited for a hoedown. Yet for the variety of influences and stylistic approaches, the album remains remarkably coherent given this underpinning.

It is not often that composers have the pleasure of multiple recordings of their music, so to be able to hear another take on Black Bend (here as string quartet plus bass), was a special treat. Here, the members of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin take what I can only describe as a more measured, lonesome approach to this blues piece. While the Aeolus Quartet seemed to emphasize the more frenetic, ecstatic moments, opting for a foot-stomping interpretation, this rendition seems to linger just a fraction longer with each element of the music, opting instead for a, well, bluesier result. Both interpretations work well, which is all to Visconti’s credit. I find it difficult choosing between them.

An entirely different work stylistically is Fractured Jams. This set of four pieces is perhaps the most jarring, dissonant music on the disc, and they seem to stand out from the many overtly beautiful works on Lonesome Roads. At first take, it would be easy to think these pieces to be simply postmodernism redux, but even “eleven” (yes, that’s a Nigel Tufnel reference), with its emphasis on sound, noise, and virtuosity, never loses a sense of playfulness. This is not bombastic music for its own sake, but music that unabashedly exuberant. The fourth piece, “kaleidoscope rag,” may be intentionally disjunct and scattered, but it never loses the sense of being a ragtime. It is this groundedness that makes Visconti’s music so effective; even his more far flung explorations, which are musically fascinating, never abandon the listener.

Then there are pieces such as Drift of Rainbows, which are unapologetic in their beauty. Incorporating electronic delay and blow-organs, Visconti creates a lush, slowly moving landscape of slowly shifting chords. Even within the short span of five minutes, he manages to evoke the spaciousness of the American West. The opening of the piece Lonesome Roads, makes wonderful use of the resonance of the piano, setting the tone for this cross-country journey through the following six movements.

Overall, this is  fine CD, with fantastic performances by the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin and other guests from the Berlin Philharmonic. This is a wonderful introduction to Visconti’s work, and I look forward to hearing more in the future.

Dan Visconti, Lonesome Roads (Bridge Records 9386, December 2012) | Buy on Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

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R. Andrew Lee is an avid performer of minimalist and postminimalist piano music and records for Irritable Hedgehog Music. Follow him on twitter: @andyleedma.

Pianist Eve Egoyan (photo credit: David Rokeby)

The repertory Egoyan chose is a testament to her confidence as a performer. Susam’s three Nocturnes were extremely similar in character and language: each featured a single voice that slowly descended from the highest register of the piano to the lowest, none of them ever creeping above the softest dynamic. Their homogenous character as a group defies the daily movement we experience toward and away from nighttime, as if night simply were, unchanging and unrelenting in its night-ness.

Piers Hellawell’s Piani, Latebre contains three movements, each of which combined two predetermined paradigmatic techniques at the piano which included the flourish, the tremolo, and the melody-with-accompaniment texture of stride piano. The most endearing quality of Hellawell’s work was the various textures he created through the juxtaposition of the chosen techniques—particularly through the use of contrasting meters—which Egoyan executed with stunning clarity.

Vivier’s Shiraz was a work of astounding virtuosity. The title is a reference the Iranian city, which the composer calls “A pearl of a city, a diamond vigorously cut,” in his program note. He set out to write a work that was sculpted out of the movement of the pianist’s hands, and they moved plenty during this performance.  The virtuosic passages were like a caffeinated version of Prokofiev’s Toccata Op. 11, with fully-voiced harmonies in both hands quickly moving in contrary motion at the keyboard. Formally, the work resembled Vivier’s description of a cut diamond: the virtuosic passages were contrasted by a group of very soft sections built on several dyads with little transition to speak of between the two.

Finnissy’s Skryabin in itself shared the vigorously cut formal structure of Vivier’s work. Two textures—one virtuosic and aggressive, the other soft and melodic—alternated throughout the work, the virtuosic passages becoming less dramatic and the melodic sections more dramatic with each iteration. By the end of the work, the music found itself in a middle ground between the two that was intriguing, but did not quite live up to the promise established by the conversation between them.

Composer Ann Southam (photo credit: canadianwomen.org)

Southam’s Returnings II was by far the standout work in this recital.  Like all of Southam’s works bearing the name “Returning,” it features a consistently pulsed drone made of a perfect fifth, which provides a soft and subtle musical landscape for the entire work.  Alternating dissonant and consonant harmonies weaved in and out of that landscape in a way that made each duplicitous: both dissonances and consonances provided feelings of serenity and anxiety at different moments. On the album, the work is a touchingly beautiful thing; performed live, the effect was truly extraordinary. It seduces, deceives, and then reassures you with the faintest of whispers.

One can easily tell the type of music that attracts Egoyan through her programming. The recital featured not only flashy and virtuosic passages (for which she is overly qualified), but also soft and delicate melodic lines, which were each placed with the utmost care and attention. Egoyan is truly an astounding performer, and the album of Southam’s music that this evening celebrated is a perfect demonstration of that.

5, Ann Southam, Eve Egoyan (piano) (Centrediscs, 2013) | Buy it on Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK
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Justin Rito is a composer, pianist, runner, Detroit Tigers fan, and microbrew lover currently living in London, Ontario. Follow him on Twitter @justinrito.

The program will feature South American songs (“Odeon” by Nazareth, “Pra que discutir com Madame” by Haroldo Barbosa, “Carinhoso” by Pixinguinha); American popular song (“I’m Going to Make You Beautiful” by Maltby and Shire, “Just Like a Man” by Vernon Duke); and vocal music by Spanish, Russian, and German composers, ranging from Montsalvatge to Kurt Weill.

Monday, May 13 at 7:30 PM
Tickets: $25
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 West 37th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues
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Music for Guitar and Organ

The first half of the program will include solos and duos for acoustic guitar and portative organ (a miniature pipe organ), including the Concerto for Lute in F Major by Karl Ignaz Augustin Kohaut the Austrian lutenist and composer of Czech descent who is considered one of the last important composers for Baroque lute. The second half of the concert will offer new works and transcriptions featuring the weightier combination of electric guitar and organ. Performers: Mak Grgic, acoustic and electric guitar, and Paul Vasile, organ.
Tuesday, May 14 at 8 PM
Tickets $25, $20 Students/Seniors
Park Avenue Christian Church, 1010 Park Avenue at 85th Street, New York, NY
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Original Music Workshop (OMW) presents Strings and Borders

Cornelius Dufallo – Photo by Jill Steinberg

Featuring experimental violinists Dr. Johannes Rosenberg (Australia), Cornelius Dufallo (US) and Mari Kimura (japan). The concert will begin with brief solo performances by Dufallo and Kimura, followed by a trio improvisation featuring them and Rosenberg. Rosenberg will also perform an approximately 40-minute set accompanied by video of his Great Fences of Australia project.

Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 PM
Free but reservations must be made via email at rsvp@o-m-w.org.
The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR, 44 Charlton Street, Manhattan
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Julio Estrada

Julio Estrada

The music of Julio Estrada is featured as part of Miller Theatre’s Composer Portraits series.
Thursday, May 16 at 8 PM
Tickets $25 – $30
Miller Theatre, 2960 Broadway (at 116th Street), New York, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Periapsis Music and Dance

Artistic Director of Dance Leigh Schanfein is joined by guest choreographers Sarah Mettin (Mettin Movement), Lorena Egan (LorenaEganDance), and Yesid Lopez. Each choreographer will display his or her unique styles of movement, setting music by Artistic Director of Music Jonathan Howard Katz, Mary Kouyoumdjian, James Holt, Frederic Rzewski, and others.
Thursday, May 16 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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C4 & Friends

C4 joins with MATA and Contemporaneous in an evening of new music presented by Galapagos Art Space featuring C4 on Brent Michael Davids’ The Un-Covered Wagon, Hee oo oom ha by Toby Twining and Contemporaneous on Bryce Dessner’s O Shut Your Eyes Against the Wind, and Big Dig by Ryan Brown.

Thursday, May 16 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street (Dumbo), Brooklyn
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Cadillac Moon Ensemble & Circles and Lines at Tenri

As part of a yearlong collaborative project, Cadillac Moon Ensemble presents an evening of pieces from composer collective Circles and Lines. Music by Eric Lemmon, Dylan Glatthorn, Angélica Negrón, Conrad Winslow, Noam Faingold.

Friday, May 17 at 5 PM
Tickets are: $15 general; $10 students and seniors
Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, Manhattan
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Crash Ensemble at Carnegie Hall

Crash Ensemble (photo credit: Sophie Dennehy)

Donnacha Dennehy’s haunting, lyrical That the Night Come anchors this concert that features Crash Ensemble, an Irish group that plays “with the energy and spirit of a rock group” (The New York Times), and soprano Dawn Upshaw, who has a special ability to bring an emotional immediacy and timelessness to new music.

Win two tickets by entering this sweepstakes (ends at midnight EST on May 13)!

Friday, May 17 at 6 PM
Tickets from $36 – $50
Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall
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Queens New Music Festival | Face The Music

Music by Steve Reich, Tristan Perich, San Francisco-based composer Dan Becker, and David Crowell. The program also includes the world premiere of Crossing by twelve-year-old, Russian-born composer Sofia Belimova. Ms. Belimova, who is enrolled in the Special Music School at the Kaufman Music Center, was named an Emerging Composer by the 2012 Tribeca Young Composer Competition.

Friday, May 17 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Two Sides Sounding

New music ensemble TWO SIDES SOUNDING presents BROOKLYN QUEENS EXPRESSWAY, a concert featuring vocalists Daniel Neer and Eleanor Taylor and pianist Mila Henry in works that explore life in Brooklyn and Queens through snapshots of New Yorkers’ everyday modes of transportation. The program includes the premiere of BQE, an urban cantata by composer Robinson McClellan and lyricist Daniel Neer. Also featured are two world premieres inspired by the recent destruction to the Queens and Brooklyn coastline by the effects of Hurricane Sandy; Chandler Carter’s “Far Rockaway” and Patricia Burgess’ “Red Hook”, set to poems by Daniel Neer. Tom Cipullo’s “G is for Grimy: An Ode to the G Train” (with special guests mezzo-soprano Hayden DeWitt and tenor Brandon Snook), Eric Moe’s “Rapid Transit” and Gabriel Kahane’s “Coney Island Avenue” round out the program.
Saturday, May 18 at 1 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Washington Square Winds celebrate National Chamber Music Month

As part of National Chamber Music Month, WSW will be performing a program of works composed within the past 100 years. The concert will be held at LIC Bar in its beautiful backyard area.
Sunday, May 19 at 1:30 PM
LIC Bar, 45-58 Vernon Blvd
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Queens New Music Festival | Thomas Piercy

A concert of new music by contemporary Japanese composers based on their thoughts about NYC and works by non-Japanese composers influenced/inspired by Japan (“Nihon no shiten” – “Japanese perspective”). This concert will be visually backed by projections of photos of New York City by photographer Christina Boers and photos of Tokyo by Thomas Piercy. Many of the pieces have been composed for and premiered by Thomas Piercy. Some of the pieces include the combination of Western classical instruments with traditional Japanese instruments (shakuhachi and hichiriki).
Saturday, May 18 at 3 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Hans Tammen & The Third Eye Orchestra

Hans Tammen uses Earle Brown’s open form composition idea as a starting point to create a large multimovement piece for string and wind quartets, keyboards, rhythm section, voice and live sound processing. The composer has gathered a dream-team of some of the most virtuosic instrumentalists to ever elude labels or boundaries for the premiere of his new work PIKAIA, which combines composed material with extemporization to create a score whose modus operandi is constant change on every level. All About Jazz called the music “nothing short of breathtaking”, and “a masterpiece of musical evocation”.
Saturday, May 18 at 5 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Kate Dillingham & Amir Khosrowpour

The Random Access Music composers’ collective presents Kate Dillingham and Amir Khosrowpour. Dillingham (Vc.) and Khosrowpour (Pno) will perform 6 new works—5 world premieres—by the composers of RAM and the Pittsburgh-based collective, Alia Musica, in this collaboration of artists from multiple locales. Included on the program will be works by B. Allen Schulz, David Fetherolf, Gilbert Galindo, Wang Jie, Kerrith Levingood, and Federico Garcia.

Saturday, May 18 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Season Finale: Sibelius, Debussy, Mauer

Violinist Airi Yoshioka and the New York Repertory Orchestra perform Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, Nocturnes by Debussy, and give the premiere of Illuminations of the Night by Peri Mauer.
Saturday, May 18 at 8 PM
FREE ($10 suggested donation)
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 West 46th St. (between 6th & 7th Ave.) New York, NY
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I am Looking for a Sun | Tempus Continuum

Tempus Continuum Ensemble

The Tempus Continuum Ensemble will be premiering new works by emerging New York composers Anne H. Goldberg, Kevin Baldwin, and Alex Burtzos.
Saturday, May 18 at 8 PM
Tickets $8 to $10
The Cell, 338 West 23rd Street, New York, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Kim-Castillo-Evol Trio

Violinist Karen Kim, composer Patrick Castillo, and poet Keno Evol present a program of contemporary solo violin music with the added dimensions of electronics and spoken word. The program revisits an experimental salon evening presented at The Third Place Gallery in Minneapolis on the occasion of the John Cage centenary—a meditation on Cage’s legacy, featuring a spoken word remix of Cage’s “The Future of Music: Credo” and the world premiere of Music for the Third Place: an aleatoric work for violin and electronics comprising pre-composed fragments, found sounds, field recordings, synthesizers, and live audio processing systems. Alongside these, the program incorporates music for solo violin by Jörg Widmann, John Harbison, and a newly commissioned work by Craig Woodward.
Sunday, May 19 at 1 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Why Am I Hearing Rock in my Classical Music? | Face The Music

In Face the Music’s program, jazz and rock meet contemporary classical music in Andy Didorenko’s Concerto for Two Violins, featuring two of Face the Music’s longtime violin virtuosi; hip-hop violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain’s La La La La for chamber orchestra; and Face the Music’s own Ethan Cohn’s Lionfish for jazz combo. The concert will also include two classic works by Bang on a Can rock stars: Michael Gordon’s Yo Shakespeare and Julia Wolfe’s Lick.
Sunday, May 19 at 2:30 PM
Tickets $15 (all ticket sales benefit P.S. 142)
P.S. 142, 100 Attorney St., New York, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Duo Sonidos

In the first half of this program, Duo Sonidos presents two commissioned scores: Volaverunt: Homage to Francisco Goya by the Spanish-Cuban composer Eduardo Morales-Caso, and the New York premiere of Jardin Bajo La Luna (Moonlight Garden) Suite by Spanish composer David Del Puerto. The program also includes the New York premiere of Tre Divertimenti by Catalan composer, Salvador Brotons. In the second half of the program, guitarist Adam Levin presents several new solo works dedicated to him from four generations of Spanish composers, which are also featured on his newest Naxos release, 21st Century Spanish Works for Guitar, Volume 1. The works presented on this program explore the diversity of Spanish repertoire written for solo guitar over the last five years. Selections include the US premiere of Two New Suggestions by Salvador Brotons, and the New York premieres of Handeliana by Ricardo Llorca, Caprichos No.8: Abstractions of Albeniz by Leonardo Balada, and Nostos: Suite for Guitar by Octavio Vazquez.
Sunday, May 19 at 3 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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Queens New Music Festival | Mantra Percussion

Mantra Percussion presents selections of their 3Nights portrait concerts (Music at First in Brooklyn Heights) of music by Paula Matthussen, Daniel Wohl, and Zs.

Sunday, May 19 at 6:30 PM
Tickets $20
The Secret Theatre Main Stage, 4402 23rd Street, Long Island City, NY
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How did Parlour Tapes+ get started and what are your ambitions?

Andrew: Parlour Tapes+ began with a discussion between Jenna and Kyle about the current state of Chicago’s new music scene. There’s an abundance of intriguing ensembles and composers here who have not been properly recorded. The idea of giving them a recording home has been on the tip of many tongues, but no one has pursued it. So Jenna and Kyle decided to pursue that and Ellen and I joined in.

Our first goal is to export what’s going on here in Chicago to the rest of the world. There’s a lot of buzz about what musical artists are doing here; we want to give the world clear evidence of this. Our broader ambition is to contribute to the perception of contemporary classical music in an interesting way and to pique new curiosity among the uninitiated.

Kyle: Also, we couldn’t be doing this without our caring and daring partner, High Concept Laboratories. They’re helping with administrative and promotional support, event production consultation, and so much more.

Jenna Lyle, Kyle Vegter, Andrew Tham, and Ellen McSweeney of Parlour Tapes+ (photo credit: Parlour Tapes+)

What’s up with “The Guilty Party,” your upcoming launch event?

Jenna: Our objective is to introduce Parlour Tapes+ to Chicago and to raise funds for our first two releases. The event reflects our personalities and how we run Parlour Tapes+. It will be extremely fun, community-driven, full of surreal humor. We’ll talk about  boundaries, inquire about why they exist, and encourage our community to push them as far as possible. Anyone with the faintest interest in art music by living composers and the people who perform it should definitely attend.

The party will begin with an announcement that our beloved Dave Skidmore, of Third Coast Percussion, has been (fake) murdered and it is up to the attendees to solve the mystery of his death. We’ll also have mugshot photo booths; musical eulogies/performances by Spektral Quartet, Tim Munro, Doug Perkins, Katherine Young, Alejandro Acierto, and Mabel Kwan; a shadow puppet performance by Manual Cinema; murder-themed tapas and cocktails; and a silent auction.

Throughout the night, attendees will survey (fake) evidence, watch a video of the (fake) murder, and uncover clues, before submitting their own hypotheses about how the murder happened. At the end of the night, someone will win a delightfully appropriate prize for solving the mystery.

What are your plans for recording and releasing music?

Kyle: We have two releases in the pipeline now. One is a fairly traditional project with Spektral Quartet playing pieces by all Chicago composers. We’re letting each piece dictate the space in which we record it. So far we’ve worked in a dingy rehearsal studio, a massive and beautiful cathedral, and a spaceship-like state-of-the-art performance hall. We will release this in digital form via Bandcamp and also on limited edition cassette tape. Why on earth would we release new contemporary music on cassette? We think this format has something to offer aesthetically that other formats don’t. We want to explore that and not just dismiss tapes as obsolete.

The other project is a compilation called the *AND project. Ten of our favorite Chicago composers/ ensembles/ performers/ sound makers to collaborate with an entity outside Chicago to produce about 5 minutes of audio. So far on the docket we’ve got work by Ryan Ingebritsen; Todd Reynolds; Tim Munro; a collaboration between Katherine Young, Jenna Lyle, and Joann Cho; Third Coast Percussion; Alex Temple; Alejandro Acierto; Dan Dehaan; Doug Perkins; Mabel Kwan; and, oh yeah, me.

You also refer to yourselves as a “media collective.” What does that entail?

Ellen: We’re working on two media projects now. One is a quarterly web magazine, and the other is a comedic video series. The media collective aims to address a void we see in the current musical landscape. The writing surrounding new music is often dry, technical, or just too insular. We want our magazine to stimulate and challenge people in our field in a funny, sexy, entertaining, and interdisciplinary way that will also appeal to non-specialists. I am editing the first issue, and then I’ll pass the torch to Andrew, who will edit the next one.

The video series is an awesome hybrid of composer interview and sketch(y) comedy. It places composers, performers and other luminaries in an interview setting in which Jenna attempts to plumb their psychological depths using a variety of inquiry tactics, occasionally sitting too close to them when she talks. The first one is with Lee Hyla, who is wonderfully insightful.

Tell us about the longer range plans, say over the next five years?

Jenna: This early in our existence, the long term is pretty murky. We all share rotating responsibilities and ownership of our output and we’re constantly learning from each other. It’s a nice vibe that we have, and it seems to be working thus far. If things go well,  I hope we’ll be pressing LPs in five years (provided anyone still cares about LPs then) and functioning as a strong entity that nurtures the voices around us and generates some really badass conversation surrounding and inspired by them.

Andrew: I’d like to see us reviewed on Pitchfork. I don’t even care if it’s like a 2.0.

Kyle: GRAMMIES, like plural/multiple GRAMMIES. So many GRAMMIES they let us spell it however we want.

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Arlene and Larry Dunn are pure amateurs of contemporary music. Visit their blog at Acornometrics and follow them on Twitter: @ICEfansArleneLD.