Photo by Michael Wilson.

I’m thrilled to announce that on Tuesday, May 4^th, my album Shy and Mighty will be released by Nonesuch. S&M is a group of 10 works for two pianos, which I recorded with my friend David Kaplan last February. I’ve spent the past year working with the lovely people at Nonesuch to master it and make every­thing ship­shape, and I’m really pleased with the result. The liner booklet has an inter­view with me done by Ronen Givony, the impre­sario behind Wordless Music and Le Poisson Rouge, among other things, and photos by the great Michael Wilson. You’ll be able to get CD’s and down­loads starting the 4^th. Then on Monday, May 17^th, we’ll be having a record release concert at (where else?) le Poisson Rouge. Dave will be shipped in from Berlin, and an extra piano shipped in from Yamaha, and we’ll play through the entire thing. Come, have a Red Fish Ale, enjoy fresh tunes. 

Photo and snowball by Andy Goldsworthy.

Quick reminder: tomorrow, Sunday, March 14^th is the afore­men­tioned ACME show at Le Poisson Rouge. Doors open at 6:30 for a 7:30 show. John Luther Adams, but also loads of other things, like Kevin Volans.

Andy Goldswor­thy, only tangen­tially related, does things like suspend snow­balls from preëx­ist­ing saplings.

Just love reviews like this one, of Bang on a Can’s annual People’s Commis­sion­ing Fund concert. Its bland­ness surpasses that of even pure reportage; it is like the least offen­sive press release ever written. Makes me long for the days of Bernard Holland, who at least expressed opinions, no matter how they caused us to cough and sputter in indignation. 

I have a sneaking suspi­cion, however, that there is more than laziness at work here; I’m worried that it’s an official New York Times style guide­line, a misguided attempt at advocacy. Better not to scare anyone off, the thinking goes, or wantonly damage some poor musi­cian’s already delicate career. This type of “crit­i­cism” has the opposite effect, actually, which is to make every event sound utterly inter­change­able. These days, I can barely slog through a review of some­thing I’d actually be inter­ested in, because the quality of the writing is so madden­ingly noncommittal. 

I would rather be panned than be subjected to this non-treatment. 

I’ve got a show in two weeks that I’m pretty excited about. I’ll be joining the ACME quartet for a dual-composer-portrait of John Luther Adams and Kevin Volans at Le Poisson Rouge. I’ll be playing piano and celeste in The Farthest Place and In a Treeless Place. These ACME guys are really some­thing special, and I’m honored to work with them again; these are the folks who completely went to town on Senior at Carnegie last year. To the left, my brother in a place neither partic­u­larly far nor treeless, but at least snowy.

Wow, I’ve been a pretty delin­quent blogger of late. Moving to Brooklyn took up a big chunk of time and energy. Now I am nestled in a nice place on the border between Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy. I like to have that kind of dichotomy in my life. The Bösendor­fer is here as well, though I wouldn’t describe it as “nestling”. “Domi­nat­ing” is more accurate. Here too is a psyche­delic Previa that some­times shows up on my block.

There’s another NOW Ensemble shindig on Thursday at the Green­wich House Music School. They’re doing Night Jaunt and some other cool stuff includ­ing Steve Gorbos’s great piece Signals. More info here.

Just a quick note for those of you in and around Williamstown, MA: The I/O Fest is present­ing a concert tomorrow night called “after hours” at the ’62 Center, featur­ing pieces by Trevor Gureckis, Missy Mazzoli, Sarah Snider, and my own Night Jaunt. Performed by what I assume is the first NOW Ensemble cover band ever, made up of Williams College students.

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 pronun­ci­a­tion; 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.

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.

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&#8212 in the car, at home, on my iPhone, etc.&#8212 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&#8212 but I like the idea of creating an inten­tional link. It’s like taking photographs or writing post­cards, only a bit more ethereal.

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.