19 December 2009

So here is Anthony Tommasini's review of Thursday night's CONTACT! concert. I notice he forgot to italicize the concert title, in brazen neglect of the NY Phil's style guidelines. He also forgot to mention how charming Magnus Lindberg's Finnish accent is, which was a major highlight of the evening! Lindberg takes mellifluous liberties with English pronounciation; his words elide in the most disarming combinations, yet they remain strangely intelligible. When he was interviewing Marc-André Dalbavie, there was almost a charming accent critical mass.

Dalbavie's Melodia was also my favorite piece on the bill. It began as a measured series of seemingly unconnected gestures, which gradually morphed into longer ideas, based on pentatonic Gregorian chant. Each gesture was incredibly “perfect”, in that inimitable way of French composers; fresh harmonies, beautifully inventive orchestration, just the right number of repetitions. It couldn't have made a more stark contrast to the piece that followed (and I'm using the term “piece” in its loosest sense here), Arthur Kampela's Macunaíma. Everyone always brings up Ives when there's a piece with lots of activity, marching band music, funny quotes, grinding dissonance, etc. Oh, he's a “Brazilian Charles Ives”. Actually, Macunaíma was more of a “party piece”, like Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge, though without any of the interest provided by having an audible process (or, you know, any coherent structure whatsoever). It provided exactly the sensation when you throw a party, and it reaches a certain point in the evening, and you wish everyone would leave your house so you can go to bed, but you get this sinking feeling that they actually have another few hours left in them. Just like that.

Nonetheless, It was kind of fun to see the NY Phil let loose for awhile (I almost forgot I was watching the NY Phil) because the first half of the program didn't really afford them the chance. Glenn Dicterow looked downright skittish during Arlene Sierra's Game of Attrition; I doubt if he ever had to work so hard simply to hold his section together during the entire Maazel era. It gave the proceedings that all-too-familiar air of a student new-music concert, where everyone's half-learned their part in dress rehearsal. Symphony Space's unforgiving acoustic did them no favors here; the violins sounded as if they were playing in the next room. Lei Liang's Verge faired better; he'd arranged his string orchestra as a series of stereophonic quartets, Bartók-style. This helped with sound distribution a great deal, though the opening would have sounded beautiful with a little reverb.

It's too bad about the acoustics, because Symphony Space is a nice-sized venue for this sort of concert, and it's informal and comfortable. They even served up a cough syrup-like booze potion afterwards. These guys are really working hard, I thought. As well they should. And though the concert was a mixed success, it's gratifying to see the Philharmonic taking risks that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago.

11 December 2009

Apparently it is the season of new orchestral music. Tonight I'm returning to my old stomping grounds, New Haven, to hear what the second-year MM students have come up with for the annual New Music New Haven vs. Philharmonia smackdown. Expectations are running high. You can listen to the live stream here.

Friday Thursday night, the New York Philharmonic inaugurates its new music series, CONTACT! (yes, you have to write it that way). And it's conveniently at SymphonySpace, right in my neighborhood. I haven't heard any of the composers on the program except for Dalbavie. All the more reason to check it out. I'll probably write little reactions to both of these concerts; stay peeled/keep your eyes tuned.

The cap it all off, I'm in the final throes of writing an orchestra piece, the last one for a little while (I hope. Writing for orchestra is slow and exhausting). This particular piece is a concerto for violinist/violist Owen Dalby and the Albany Symphony, so, top-notch all around. It will be premièred in March.

3 December 2009

I've been on extended Thanksgiving holiday in Houston for the past week. We confirmed what I had always suspected, which is that Peking duck should replace turkey as the fowl of choice. Not only is it incomparably more delicious, but the remnants are much more fun. I rendered extra fat out of the leftover skin scraps and made a rich stock out of the carcasses, in which I cooked some spätzle. I bet the Pekinese never saw that coming.

A couple days ago D. and I drove to Austin to hear the UT Contemporary Ensemble play Some Connecticut Gospel. I was a little nervous going in, because I couldn't hear the dress rehearsal; it was a total blind date. My fears were quickly assuaged when I saw that my old flutist friend from Yale, François Minaux, was playing. He nailed that solo near the end with incredible élan (I've been told it is a Bitch), matched by the other players. This is the first time I've had the piece conducted, and I think it's a good idea; Damon Talley held the middle hocketing section together more precisely than I've ever heard it.

We caught my friend Mingzhe Wang yesterday playing a short and sweet clarinet concert back in Houston, including a new piece written for him by Marcus Maroney, which had an œ ligature in the title (Chamœleon). I remembered Marcus from his intermittent but very entertaining blog, and also from his days as a teaching assistant at Yale (the girls thought he was adorable)! I found out that he also has a knack for choosing the right notes. It's funny to think about, because it's not really something composers discuss, but it all comes down to choosing the right notes. And these were they. The piece itself was pretty spastic, and reminded me a bit of André Previn (of all things. Though he can't be bothered with the notes, just the spastic.) It was great to hear Ming, I don't get to hear him play too often now that he lives in Tennessee. He is as natural and nimble a musician as you will ever find. All in all, I concur with this insightful statement from ratemyprofessors.com:

He is very passionate about what he teaches and is sometimes funny. he is a really nice person and definately not bad to look at.

I did a little experiment over the past week, to try and cultivate an association between a particular place or experience and a piece of music. I downloaded Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion, to which I then proceeded to listen nonstop— in the car, at home, on my iPhone, etc.— just intentionally overdosed on it. Now I'm going to wait a few months before I listen again, the idea being that I will have created an associative memory. I already have many accidental ones, and I'm sure anyone who listens to music regularly does as well— but I like the idea of creating an intentional link. It's like taking photographs or writing postcards, only a bit more ethereal.

24 November 2009

In anticipation of my third and last move this year, I was doing some thinking about my worldly possessions. I came to the conclusion that I own and love many vessels: bottles, flasks, beakers, boxes (wooden, metal, and paper), cups, satchels, etc. that serve no purpose other than to contain other objects and substances. Unfortunately none yet of the oceangoing variety.

I had a similar realization a few summers ago, when I had a job organizing the toolchests of the Yale recording studio: the majority of them were filled with things that served as attachments, that is, something you can use to attach one thing to another. Recording engineers are obsessed with finding clever and elegant ways to do this. The primary situation is mounting microphones, which sounds simple until you ask a recording engineer to do it.

Objects are more meaningful when we can sort and group them, and use them in conjunction with each other.

Image by the wonderful iconwerk.de via Flickr.

21 November 2009

The Food Issue of the New Yorker arrived a few days ago, and while my appetite is diminished, my capacity for reading about food (and watching Top Chef) is not. I've felt a secret kinship with Calvin Trillin ever since I learned we share the same favorite dish, spaghetti carbonara. This week he writes about poutine, a dish which has always struck me as ostentatiously vile (though I would probably try the foie-gras poutine). What made me smile, though, was the following anecdote:

Cautiously, I tasted the Afghan's poutine, which was the basice fries-curds-and-gravy dish without embellishments. My response was similar to the response I'd had some years ago when the composer Ezra Laderman, despite knowing full well that few euphonious sounds had ever been coaxed out of a shofar, wrote a fanfare for shofars that I heard played at the dedication of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale: “surprisingly inoffensive.”

18 November 2009

For the past week or so I've been blogging (professionally!) for the Metropolis Ensemble by way of introducing the four young(ish) composers on their upcoming concert, REVERB. Should be a pretty fresh show. I'm especially excited to see Erin Gee's Mouthpiece X, because, seriously, can one person actually make all those noises?

Read the blog entries here.

4 November 2009

Saw Colin Currie and St. Louis Symphony do Tan Dun's Water Concerto at Carnegie tonight. Tan Dun's not a composer I've paid much attention to, which I guess is strange, considering he represents pretty much the epitome of success in my profession.

The Concerto owes a big debt to Cage's Water Walk— both are pieces that you really have to watch in order to experience, involving people looking quite serious while doing hilarious stuff. I also thought there was a bit of Harpo Marx in there, like one of those musical “interludes” in the movies that feel like they last for half an hour (come to think of it, this piece actually did last half an hour). The entire thing was organized like a Vaudeville— no innate logic other than a general progression of spectacle, and the more ridiculous, the better— but generally entertaining nonetheless. And there were some timbres in there I can truly say I'd never heard before. I'm trying really hard right now to convince myself I liked the piece. And yet...

I think what I'm trying to say is, I see almost no kinship between what I do and what Tan does, even though we're in this miniscule world of “composers”. That can only be a good thing for both of us.

27 October 2009

I was reading in Jonathan Cott's Conversations with Glenn Gould on the subway the other day, and was intrigued by Gould's description of a studio technique devised for his recording of Scriabin's 5th sonata. The opening of the piece is a long trill from the bottom to the top of the keyboard, pianissimo to fortissimo, during which the engineers adjusted the source from far to near. Esentially, they created an audio “zoom lens”, using four ranks of mics placed at intervals starting from the furthest edge of the room on up to the inside of the treble register of the piano.

Using the studio as an artistic tool is old news, but not for classical production, and certainly not for a solo piano recording. I had no idea Gould's recordings were manipulated to this extent— but it makes me want to try a “mic zoom” myself. Too bad I only own two mics.

Anyway, here is the aformentioned passage. The effect is pretty subtle but totally gripping:

Glenn Gould: Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 5, opening

15 October 2009

A moment of silence for the passing of The Rest is Noise (har har).

Reading Alex's blog was my introduction to thinking about and discussing music as a vital, current thing. This personal essay from 2004 (when I was a freshman in college), while not a work of bloggage, encapsulates many of the reasons to be thankful there is an Alex Ross. Even now, re-reading that article feels like having a friend pat me on the back and say “Everything's going to turn out OK”. Also, critical facilities aside, the guy is one hell of a prose stylist. I'm looking forward to following his new, officially-sanctioned Unquiet Thoughts.

Brief concert plug: I saw the dress rehearsal for the new Bryan Senti/MacArthur Dance Project Ballet at Brooklyn Lyceum last night. There are two more performances; go. It is ambitious and sensorily delightful.

6 October 2009

Here's another cover I did last weekend:

Massive Attack/Timothy Andres: Hymn of the Big Wheel

photo courtesy of The Big Picture.

5 October 2009

I met Lucinda Childs today! The Joyce Theater screened a great documentary about her, after which she appeared in the flesh for Das Obligatie Q und A. There was a brief segment in the film on a dance called Katema, which reminded me of a ferry called Katama my family used to ride to Martha's Vineyard when I was a little boy. Unlike the double-ended Islander (yes, I was a bit of a ferry connoisseur), the Katama is single-ended, so every time it ports it has to do a little flip turn. And, fancy that, Katema was exactly that: a sort of brisk walking back-and-forth dance, interrupted by little turns at each change of direction. Childs actually lives on the Vineyard, so I asked her if it was a reference; she said “No” and reminded me of the spelling difference, and then got in her limo. No matter.

Also, a new show added to the calendar, coming up in two short weeks: The NOW Ensemble visits Baltimore, MD, with The Night Jaunt in tow. I'm especially excited to hear Steve Gorbos's new piece, Signals.

photo courtesy of Flickr user jmknapp.

1 October 2009

For the past several weeks and into the somewhat indeterminate future I have been cohabiting with a Bösendorfer. This living arrangement has been going smoothly and I have been racking my brains trying to figure out how to prolong it. In the meantime, I've been making some “home recordings” and having fun juicing them up in Logic. Here is a cover I did of one of my favorite Brian Eno songs, Everything Merges with the Night:

Brian Eno/Timothy Andres: Everything Merges with the Night

One unique thing about Bösendorfers is that they are single-strung, rather than loop strung (like Steinways et al.) meaning that when you break a string you don't lose an entire note. It's true, I just checked! Apparently they also hold tune better. Thanks, Bösendorfer web site.

29 September 2009

22 September 2009

John Adams just accepted my friend request on Facebook. There is a delicate art to figuring out if it's really John Adams. (On MySpace, where nobody is who they say they are, it would be another story.) Here are some pros: he lists “Steve Riech” under favorite music (no official impostor from Boosey & Hawkes would let that slide). Actually that's the only pro. Many more cons: his photos are all headshots of himself, dating back to the 80's. I think it's time he brought back the horn-rimmed spectacles, though I am biased in that regard. The “about me” section is just his program bio, with “I” replacing every instance of “John Adams”. This makes for a rather hilariously self-aggrandizing profile beginning “I am one of America's most admired and respected composers”. Really John. Do tell.

In other news, I am now a New Yorker/freelancer/bum. I stay at home all day and do things on my own computer, which is nice! Here is something I recently worked on; hire them for your next Rosh Hashana gathering. I am applying for grants; I am procrastinating on writing a violin concerto by composing iPhone ringtones in Logic (for fun, sadly, not profit); I am consuming endless quantities of WNYC programming, which is incomparably better than WNPR (hearing Faith Middleton's voice makes me want to get out my knife sharpener). I think I saw Ursula Oppens at the midtown Fairway last week; I couldn't see what she was buying (Nancarrow, in bulk?) but she looked befuddled.

7 September 2009

Playlist in celebration of John Cage's birthday, two days late.

2 September 2009

Thought for the day: shouldn't performers have broader musical taste than composers, not the other way around, as so often seems to be the case?

11 August 2009

The first electronic music about electronic music? I will never grow tired of this video:

4 August 2009

Look, NPR has a feature on friend Jacob Cooper's slow-mo popera, Timberbrit! And it's produced by friend (and harpist) Claire Happel. If you haven't heard Timberbrit yet you should probably take my advice and check it out— it's pretty out there (also, pretty).

4 August 2009

One of the most fun things to happen up at Banglewood was that I asked cellist/New Music Superstar Nick Photinos to play Fast Flows the River with me. And he said yes!

Here is a photo (by the talented designer Liz Plahn):

Look, that brick wall is all palimpsesty.

There is also a video up on YouTube, complete with unfortunate sound quality, but here is a link anyway.

3 August 2009

I'll let you in on a shameful secret: I don't care for/actively dislike most Contemporary Music. For this reason I'm kind of stunned by how much I liked Saturday's Bang on a Can Marathon, which, I'm embarrassed to say, was the first I've attended. (This was actually more like a mini-marathon; only six hours or so. I think the NYC ones are longer, and the ones I used to produce at Yale went until dawn.) Here is the whiteboard backstage. You can see that David Lang made everything a little late, but they managed to get back on schedule. Right on.

22 July 2009

Happily ensconced up here in North Adams, MA at the Bang on a Can festival. They keep us busy here; not a lot of time to “blog”. Here is last night's 3-hour rehearsal of Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians:

That's Brian Calhoon on the left. At one point I get up from my piano and join him on the top line of the marimba. I love how Reich treats pianists (the most finicky of musicians) as nothing more than auxiliary percussionists (some of the most down-to-earth). Props for putting us in our place, Steve. The performance, and my grand marimba début, are coming up on Saturday. (Side note: we were trying to explain to an Aussie percussionist the meaning of the expression “props”, and decided it is to prop someone up with a stage prop, like a teapot or something.)

A couple days ago I played Derek Johnson's solo piano piece Infinity Plunge in front of some apocalyptic Anselm Kiefer landscapes. The piece is a pretty stunning showcase of both compositional and pianistic virtuosity, and has a wonderful dramatic sweep over the course of 3 and a half movements (which are all linked by related gestures, motives, and tempi). You can listen here. (I'm not posting it directly on here because it's a really big file. And I noticed in my Google logs a few people connecting on dialup. Is that actually true?)

Right now I'm off to rehearse Antheil's Ballet Mechanique. This festival is all about testing the stamina of massed pianists; the Ballet is almost more taxing in the few instances I'm not playing, but frantically counting the rests until the next time I come in. Funny how that works.

26 June 2009

Transformer di Roboter covers Michael Jackson's Stranger in Moscow. Make sure to turn your speakers all the way up:

23 June 2009

Synesthesia via Kitsune Noir. Beautiful and strange.

21 June 2009

Moving, again, in about a week. I wonder when this will stop becoming a yearly ritual (slash feat of strength) for me. First to Washington, CT, to dump the contents of my apartment on my parents for a month (thanks, parents!) and then moving all that to NYC in August.

Moving involves lots of interesting chores. For instance, finding creative ways to use up the varied contents of the pantry and refrigerator:

6 June 2009

For the past 13 years or so I've had these reels of 1/2-inch tape sitting in the top of my closet. They were made by the legendary engineer David Hancock, the last recordings he made before his death (of Parkinson's disease). I must have been about 11 when these tapes were made, and had been studying piano with his wife, Eleanor, for a couple of years.

Gene and Jason at the Fred Plaut studio rolled out their reel-to-reel machine the other day and helped me transfer them to digital files:

Motion blur. That tape is going by at 30 inches per second!

Here is 11-year-old me playing Prokofiev's third piano sonata (approximately six and a half years before I learned what the marking p stood for):

Here is a little about the microphones David apparently used to record this.

Here are the Fred Plaut's microphones, all in a pile:

$40,000 worth of microphone. And a razor blade!

3 June 2009

The original cartoon that predicated this piece got lost a couple years ago, so I decided to re-draw it from my memory. I think this one is better because there is an added dog/sheep.

1 June 2009

I've been doing headshots for a bunch of musician friends over the past few months. It's a pretty enjoyable way to spend time, and mutually beneficial as well. My subjects always start out kind of awkwardly smiling into the camera for a few seconds, then turning away, self-conscious, and I like the process of getting them to gradually forget about the camera and act as though we're just hanging out. Here are some of my favorites so far (click to zoom):

 

31 May 2009

20 May 2009

This is an informative feature on my favorite hot sauce, Sriracha (which is apparently everyone else's favorite hot sauce, too). Earlier today I put together a pretty basic sausage/peppers/onions grinder and garnished it with some quick Japanese-style pickles and a squirt of Sriracha. I pronounced it “good”;.

18 May 2009

Lens is a new photo blog from the New York Times. I wasted a good half hour on here this morning when I should have been writing for this, designing this, or reducing that.

PS. New audio excerpts are up for Bathtub Shrine and Senior; take a listen.

16 May 2009

Just got back from Los Angeles and Baltimore, where I experienced life as a touring musician for the past week. The Big Gig with the LA Philharmonic went splendidly; I wish I could post a recording of Nightjar up here because John and the Green Umbrella crew made it sound so good, but alas, the unions (or at least their lawyers) would demand my head. Not only were the musicians consummate professionals, as I had expected, but they really cared about making Payton's and my music sound like real music. When I asked percussionist James Babor if he could try a different ratchet sound for the opening, there was immediately a multiplicity of different ratchets seemingly conjured from midair, everything from Toy to Industrial.

John, Payton and I did a little Q&A with Helane Anderson, an artistic administrator at the LA Phil, which you can listen to here. There was also a bunch of press about the event: a preview article in the LA Times, and a review from Mark Swed (“strangely Darwinian” as my friend Andrew points out).

To cap the week, I was supposed to share a concert with fellow composer-pianist Tudor Dominik at Strathmore down in Bethesda, MD. Only, about two weeks before the show, Dom injured his hand (skateboarding? that was the rumor) and couldn't play, doctor's orders. So I filled out my program with a little Rzewski and Ives, in addition to the Marshall, Andres, and Steve Gorbos (who was in attendance with his entourage!). The venue was a nice contrast from the huge, sleek Disney Hall— a large 19th-century living room of a converted mansion, which couldn't have held more than 100 seats. I actually prefer playing in such intimate spaces; strangely, I'm able to concentrate better, even though the front row is nearly sitting in my lap. The lovely producer of the series, Georgina, greeted me how, henceforth, everyone should greet me post-concert— with a bottle of water in one hand, and a glass of booze in the other.

5 May 2009

Hannah Collins, one of my frequentest and most loyal of collaborators, asked me to wright her a piano-less cello piece about a month ago. So I went and wrote her a piece with Hammond organ. Ha! Sure showed her. Thanks to prodigious acquirer of outdated musical equipment Jack Vees, I got to play a real live Hammond B3 last week rather than a MIDI imitation. The piece is called Fast Flows the River and here is what it sounds like (You can hear the noise of the motor making the enormous speakers slowly rotate):

Fast Flows the River. Hannah Collins, 'cello; Timothy Andres, Hammond B3

4 May 2009

29 April 2009

Snuck into the second half of Rufus Wainwright's New Haven show a few days ago. Just him alone on stage, singing and playing the piano/guitar, but still I was entranced. I don't think I've ever seen someone more comfortable with the role of “performer”. Perhaps he is a little chatty for my tastes, but it seemed to make the girls swoon (somebody please explain this phenomenon to me).

I especially like this new song, “Zebulon”, about a would-be conquest from middle school; instead of going into a nice chorus where you'd expect, it just sits on a repeated, unresolved chord for awhile and starts a new verse. Good for him for not trying to resolve said chord in the end.

17 April 2009

31 March 2009

29 March 2009

Sam doesn't have a website or even a MySpace (!) so there's no way I can point you to a recording; Sam, get yourself a domain. You'll have to do better than www.samadams.com, though.

NEWS FLASH/UPDATE: Sam actually does have a website.

27 March 2009

25 March 2009

Back to op. 111. This piece totally undermines the simplistic idea of Prokofiev as the “happy Soviet”, the self-portrait he so obligingly paints in the fifth symphony. It out-Shostakoviches Dmitri. The first movement is a kind of slowed-down tarantella in e-flat minor, one of the darkest (and most difficult) keys. The middle movement is a sprawling militaristic mess that I can't make head of tail of. And the last movement starts out as a sunny, jaunty rondo with more marching soldiers, but in the end, which Alex writes about— I don't want to spoil it, but it's wonderfully tragic and creepy. The last chord is a trademark Prokofiev cackle, but in this case it just makes you shudder.

I'll write about the seventh symphony some other time. That piece is like the Russian great-grandmother I never knew.

24 March 2009

We got reviewed! Anthony Tommasini has nice things to say about the New York Youth Symphony, ACME Quartet, and Senior.

13 March 2009

Kind of a big week for website redesigns… at least among sites I frequent. Pitchfork's was long-overdue— it hadn't changed a bit since I started reading it as a freshman in college. The new website is clean, lovely and much richer (though admittedly the bar set by the old one was pretty low; it didn't even have a working search function). However, the aesthetic cleanliness brings with it a much more corporate feeling (I'll leave the implications for others to debate). I also think the grid structure feels overly complex; it's hard to tell which information is most important at first glance, even though it's all presented quite clearly.

Also, Facebook— I feel as though for all the attention it gets, nobody talks about why Facebook is such a fantastic platform, which is that they are totally obsessed with design. Like Apple, the Facebook designers aren't afraid to make sweeping changes for the better, even if it means getting some bad press and vocal complaints (remember when they launched the news feeds?). The new page layout is an incremental change, but the grid feels more natural and organized now. The font size for wall posts went up a notch, making communications a bit easier to read and creating a nice hierarchy of information. And I like the new rounded corners on profile pictures (round rects are everywhere).

OK, back to part-making (new piece for the Yale Symphony. Working title: Bathtub Shrine.)

10 March 2009

I spent last Sunday in Flushing listening to the ACME quartet and NY Youth Symphony play Senior for the first time; with two weeks to go until Carnegie I think we're in very good shape. The quartet already sounds fantastic— can't say I'm surprised, what with such illustrious membership. The orchestra members need perhaps a little more time for the music to “settle”. Ryan took my advice and mercilessly cut back the string sections (which are otherwise HUGE) and the piece sounded appropriately buoyant and nimble, really like slightly beefed-up chamber music in some parts.

I'm really excited for what's sure to be a memorable concert. The orchestra is also playing Carlos Chavez's Sinfonia India (which is apparently about... Incas? Aztecs?) and Brahms 1, both of which I overheard in rehearsal and already sound quite persuasive.

2 March 2009

This morning I immersed myself in early period John Adams, listening to the two versions of Shaker Loops back-to-back and watching an old documentary about Harmonium.

It’s funny to look back to the early 80’s and see what an institution Adams had already become. The filmmakers tried desperately to romanticize him and his music, and he seemed to handle it well, posing for the camera in picturesque situations, composing in his impeccable mountain cabin or gazing thoughtfully over the San Francisco bay. Pretty banal stuff, though Adams did have some interesting things to say, including his own handy definition of Minimalism: “A vast reiteration of smaller units to create a larger architecture”. He plays some licks from Nixon in China on his wonderful old clavinova to demonstrate this. It was also fun to see the 1980’s choristers struggle with Harmonium’s hemiola rhythms, which sound so staid now, precisely because Adams and others have reiterated those gestures to the point of cliché.

The piece itself, though, is still resoundingly successful. The epic crescendo/accelerando into “Wild Nights” must have sounded incredibly daring in 1982, and it still never fails to move me. Though it strikes me as a subversion of the poem, not to mention a manipulation of the audience, to emphasize the line “were I with thee” as much as Adams does by repeating it dal niente in the final section. It makes the ending sadder and more poignant, but is it true to the meaning of the text? I suppose that’s why so many composers set Emily Dickinson, because she can’t very well complain.

Though the original septet version used a quasi-aleatoric system of looped phrases and cues, Shaker Loops is always heard today in its later through-composed scoring. (I love looking at weird, unknown versions of familiar pieces, seeing how composers thought differently about their own music as it continued to evolve.) That said, in the way it sounds, the original version resembles the written-out version closely. The entire middle of the piece, including the entire second and most of the third movements, has no indeterminate notation whatsoever. It’s as if Adams started composing using the idea of loops, then as he became more involved with the music he was writing, abandoned the idea in favor of increased control. I suppose this was a learning experience for him, because he was progressing closer toward the type of music he has become known for. There are a few details that are lost with a massed string texture, however; for example, the trills in the second movement become more of a textural effect, whereas the solo strings articulate them as florid ornamental lines. Contrary to Adams’s own statements, I think the main advantage of the written-out version is not increased compositional control, but increased confidence on the players’ part, simply because the notation is more traditional. This results in tighter and more controlled performances, even without a conductor (but with plenty of head-banging).

26 February 2009

This is an experiment:

17 February 2009

Last week's Shy and Mighty-fest went swimmingly. The recording session was a marathon, but Dave and I got some really good takes. Right now I'm in the process of auditioning them and deciding where to make the splices. Above, Dave impersonating Alfred Brendel in my entrance hall.

1 February 2009

Back in New Haven after a fantastic few days in Miami, where New World Symphony did right by Some Connecticut Gospel. I'll post a recording soon; I can't say enough good things. NWS is a “training orchestra” founded by MTT (is that his MC name?) for players around my age to go and gain some professional experience while they plan their futures— a nice stage in-between school and career. They are in the process of getting their own Frank Gehry hall (everyone's doing it. I've commissioned a garden shed for the backyard, just need to get the zoning cleared up). I got to meet some cool older-kid composers, including David T. Little (looking very clean-cut here) and Jeff Myers. Romanian-born Miami-based composer Daniel Manoiu rounded out a wildly diverse but very satisfying concert of Ives-inspired music.

Here are some NWS musicians doing their thing:

Left to right: Catherine Miller, Anne Lanzilotti, Ignacio Gallego, Jory Herman

Some Royal Terns (Thanks to my tern-expert brother Guthrie for the identification):

26 January 2009

Just returned from a weekend in Boston, where I witnessed a spirited evening of new-ish music courtesy of Dinosaur Annex, and had a revelatory Chinese meal courtesy of the Peach Farm. I also took lots of photographs for a class I'm starting, and was eagerly importing them when my Aperture library decided to collapse in a heap of corruption. And of course I'd already erased my camera, but hadn't backed up, so I lost them all. I was especially sorry because there was one of a tub of eels.

In the excitement over the actual content of New York Phil's season announcement, I missed that they also unveiled a totally new identity! This makes me indescribably happy. Their old logo and graphics were so generic I actually had to remind myself what they looked like— oh, right:

A swoosh. A musical staff, sure, but still trite, corporate, and completely bland, not to mention poorly executed.

The new logo is the polar opposite. The roles of the graphic and the type are reversed; now, the letterforms themselves create a sense of motion and excitement, and the red line is the anchor (like a baton! I get it). The typography is certainly unconventional (it reminds me of a circular saw blade) but I think that's kind of what the Phil needs right now— an antidote to years of staid, uninspired administration. (Take a look at some beautiful logo treatments at Pentagram's blog.)

20 January 2009

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I could really imagine being friends with him.

Also (and I'm really grateful for this level of transparency): the inaugural lunch menu. Mmm, a brace!

10 January 2009

Fig. 1: Dave contemplates my choice of Stone Serif.

Happy new year, rabbit rabbit, everyone. I just tore apart the most delicious döner sandwich here in Berlin, where the inimitable David Kaplan and I are re-tackling Shy and Mighty. We've been holing up at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule (whose logo actually did fool me into thinking it was a bad steakhouse) where I derive pleasure from playing long stretches of repeated minor chords while our neighbors practice Bach and Chopin.

The closest I've found to contemporary music here was watching the Philharmonic (with Mehta) rehearse Carter's Three Illusions. Who knew that even the Berlin Philharmonic struggles to keep Carter's unpredictable hockets from spinning off into oblivion? They had less trouble with Strauss and Beethoven (backing up Murray Perahia, who played with impeccable limpidness. No, really, that's actually how he played!). I just wanted a behind-the-scenes tour of their recording setup; there were something like 40 microphones hanging over the stage, which were controlled by a tech wielding a boom-box-sized remote.

I love the Berlin subway system. Somehow the lack of turnstiles makes it seem that much easier to hop on and off (passengers are instead subjected to random ticket inspections on board). There are LED displays at many stations that tell you how many minutes until the next two trains (though the older, flip-card ones are more beautiful, if not as useful). I (often) wonder if anyone at MTA reads this blog.

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