Pittsburgh New Music Net

Hello PMNM Readers,

Tomorrow, Tuesday March 30th, Antithesis, CAPA High School’s new music ensemble, will be performing with well-known local saxophonist Ben Opie as well as with Lukas Ligeti, an experimental percussionist/composer from New York City.  Rumor is (well, the concert flyers say) that Lukas Ligeti will be performing on the Marimba Lumina.

The concert is at Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Avenue, and is at 7:30 PM.  Tickets are $10 general admission/$5 student, and the concert is open to all ages.

Hope to see you there!

Please do take a look at the very full events calendar with all the great music happening in the next few days. Your weekend starts tonight with The Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble, continues with Alia Musica Pittsburgh on Friday night, then Michael Boyd and the Bay Players Experimental Music Collective on Saturday. And can I say how exciting it is the CAPA’s own new music group Antithesis is joining Lukas Ligeti and Ben Opie next Tuesday at Garfield Artworks? Yes I can. It’s very exciting. I didn’t even mention that Paul Lansky will be in town next week…

What I’m most excited about though, is how many different people have been posting to the blog. This is what PNMNet is all about, so keep it coming and don’t forget to send me a note if you run into any issues.

Saturday, March 27, 2010 @ 8:00 pm, Mellon Board Room, Chatham University – Free Admission: The Bay Players Experimental Music Collective (www.bayplayers.com) performs new works and performance installations by Mike Boyd (Pittsburgh), Stephen F. Lilly and Steve Wanna (Washington, D.C.), and Kristian Twombly (Twin Cities). The event features a world premiere performance installation as well as soprano Stacey Mastrian performing John Cage’s 20th-century classic “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs.”

Hi to all new music lovers and PNMN readers!

I’m writing to remind everybody of the Alia Musica concert this Friday. We’re back at Synod Hall, where two years ago we had our first large-ensemble concerts.

This time we also bring some pieces for 10+ performers. On Friday we are premiering works by Kerrith Livengood, Matt Heap, and Nathan Hall. They are really different from each other, and each of them is a feature in its own right: some (a lot, actually) extended technique in a rhythmic atmosphere in Kerrith’s twelve ball bearings; some serial extravaganza (but seriously—serially—happy sounding) in Matt’s Unravelling Conversations; and some passionate string writing (a string quintet accompanies two clarinets and bass drum) in Nathan’s On the Troposphere.

We are also happy to present a brand new arrangement from Pittsburgh’s own Rob Frankenberry—you may have enjoyed previous arrangements of his played by IonSound. Rob took Busoni’s masterful Four Etudes on Native American Themes (for piano) and found a new expression for them in flutes, clarients, horn, bassoon, piano, violin and cello.

It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’ll be in touch for the second concert, April 8th, but for now I hope to see you on Friday!

Synod Hall, Friday 26th, 8pm. $15/$12 at the door.

Buy tickets online at a discount from our website (full details here)

-Federico Garcia, from Alia Musica Pittsburgh

On Monday, May 17th, Antithesis, CAPA High School’s new music ensemble, will present its annual concert.  The concert is at 7pm in CAPA’s Cabaret Theater (where Dowe’s used to be).

The program will include a variety of works, many of which are student compositions.  The works on the program are very diverse, ranging from fully-composed works to chance music to theremin improv with spoken voice.

On Tuesday, March 30th, come see CAPA High School’s new music ensemble, Antithesis, perform alongside percussionist/composer Lukas Ligeti and Ben Opie (saxophonist of Opek and Thoth Trio) at Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave.  The concert begins at 7:30 pm and admission is $10, open to all ages.  Hope to see you there!

Synod Hall

Ticket info

Mark Fromm: Harmonices Mundi

Ivan Jimenez: Luces incandescentes…

Jong Hee Kang: 4:30am, Prague

Federico Garcia: Endecaphony

Matthew Gillespie: Ineffable dissolutions

Synod Hall

Ticket info

G. F. Handel:  Royal Fireworks (arr)

Kerrith Livengood: twelve ball bearings

Matthew Heap: Unravelling conversations

Nathan Hall: On the troposphere

Rob Frankenberry: Indianisches Tagebuch (Busoni)

Carnegie Music Hall
$5 for general admission and can be purchased in advance online at music.cmu.edu. College students w/valid ID receive FREE admission!

Carnegie Mellon’s Wind Ensemble presents a lively program featuring two world premieres: Professor Marilyn Taft Thomas’ Snapshots of a Great City (transcription by director Denis Colwell), and Scatterbrain by composition student Alex Weston (BFA ’11). Other contemporary works will include Ticheli’s Blue Shades, Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Whitacre’s October, and High Flight, a high energy piece commissioned by the U.S. Air Force Band. The concert begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 24 in Oakland’s Carnegie Music Hall.

Tickets are $5 for general admission and can be purchased in advance online at http://music.cmu.edu. College students w/valid ID receive FREE admission!

This Saturday, March 13, marks the last occasion to see the very unique HiTEC, an ensemble of Pittsburgh musicians and performers utilizing instruction pieces, chance, improvisation, theatrics, and a giant spinning Wheel-of-Fortune. Intrigued? Well, you should be and you probably come to this event, because it is literally your last chance to see the act. Extensive detail below…

HiTEC (Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative),
the experimental orchestra founded by
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
will present its last ‘UNCERT’ (Uncertainty Concert), Saturday, March 13, 2010,
8PM (doors open 7:30PM), at the Kresge Recital Hall
in the CFA (Center for Fine Arts) at CMU (Carnegie Mellon University)
- $6.00 suggested donation, free to CMU students. (more…)