Pittsburgh New Music Net

Cliff Colnot

Tonight, Cliff Colnot and other outstanding guest conductors will lead Alia Music Pittsburgh in works by Jimenez, Garcia, Heap, Gillespie, and Livengood. It’s at Synod hall at 8. Full details here. And if you’re near New York City tonight, Talujon Percussion is celebrating an evening of premieres, including Eric Moe’s Danger: Giant Frogs, which, ya know, be prepared! Here’s the skinny on that concert.

Wednesday October 19 is a triple threat New Music/avant-garde jazz night for three great reasons:

1) It’s the first appearance in Pittsburgh in over a decade for
NYC-based multi-reedist Ned Rothenberg. Over the past three decades, Rothenberg has worked with the likes of Fred Frith, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, and Elliott Sharp. Now he’s on tour with the Mivos Quartet, a string ensemble specializing in contemporary composition. The five musicians will perform his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings which was released on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records in 2010: http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=7267
For information on Rothenberg, check:

http://www.nedrothenberg.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Rothenberg

2) Local saxophonist Ben Opie will open the evening with
his own ensemble. It was Opie who organized the entire
visit of legendary MacArthur Genius Grant-winning composer
and saxophonist Anthony Braxton to Pittsburgh in 2008. In addition to recording a double CD with Opie, playing with his Septet at the Manchester Craftsman Guild, with CAPA High School’s Antithesis Ensemble and with the birds at the Aviary, Braxton conducted a group of local musicians (“The Three Rivers Tri-Centric Ensemble”) in one of his compositions. The results were recorded, and will be released on October 19 as a limited edition (300 copies) vinyl LP on stalwart local experimental label SSS Records (as catalog # SSS-60). This concert is the release party – you’ll definitely want to pick it up.

3) This concert is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s
award-winning college radio station, WPTS-FM. Although the station has been known for many years for bringing great
indie bands to campus (ranging from the Silver Jews to
Of Montreal), this is the first time it has stood solidly behind
an avant-garde jazz/New Music event. Here’s hoping they
do so regularly in the future.

Here are the event details:
Ned Rothenberg & Mivos Quartet
Ben Opie Ensemble
Anthony Braxton LP release
Wednesday October 19 8 pm all ages welcome
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, University of Pittsburgh
$15 at the door. $10 advance at Paul’s CDs, Caliban
Books, William Pitt Union Box Office, Dave’s Music
Mine, and The Exchange (Squirrel Hill, Downtown).

Please note that the Cliff Colnot’s Lecture at Pitt is on September 28 at 1 p.m., not September 30. Good help is hard to find. Here is the full and correct information from the Pitt Music Department Web site.

http://www.music.pitt.edu/events/lecture-conductor-cliff-colnot110830

Pitt’s Music Building, Room 132

CORRECTION: THIS LECTURE IS ON SEPTEMBER 28, not September 30 as originally posted.

New music conductor extraordinaire Cliff Colnot will give a lecture for Pitt’s Department of Music in conjunction with the Alia Music Conductor’s Festival (also on September 30th the concert is on September 30, not the lecture). In the past decade Cliff Colnot has emerged as a distinguished conductor and a musician of uncommon range. One of few musicians to have studied orchestral repertory with Daniel Barenboim, Colnot has served as assistant conductor for Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Workshops for young musicians from Israel, Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries. Colnot has also worked extensively with Pierre Boulez and has served as assistant conductor to Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He regularly conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he recently recorded Richard Wernick’s The Name of the Game for Bridge Records, and he collaborates regularly with the internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. Colnot has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW series since its inception and is principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an orchestra he has conducted since 1994. Colnot also conducts Contempo at the University of Chicago, the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, and orchestras at Indiana University. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony.

Over the years he has devoted to the performance of new music with many ensembles around the world, Maestro Colnot has collected a series of notation guidelines for scores to be the most efficient and faithful vehicle for the realization of the composer’s vision. In this lecture he will share these guidelines and the experiences behind them, touching also on orchestration and rehearsal practices that conductors, performers, and composers will benefit from.

Find out more…

Synod Hall
Tickets

Alia Musica’s September 30 Conductors Festival will feature renowned contemporary music conductor Cliff Colnot and other guest conductors leading the ensemble. The works and composers are as follows:

Ivan Jimenez: Burning the Deep Red Sea — fl, ob, cl, bsn, pno, vib, harp, vl, cello — conducted by  Cliff Colnot

Federico Garcia: Pluribus — chamber orchestra — conducted by Jose Sanchez

Matthew Heap: Unraveling Conversations — fl, ob, cl, bsn, horn, tpt, tbn, stg quintet — conducted by Jordan Smith

Matthew Gillespie: Chiaroscuro — fl, cl, ob, bsn, tpt, pno, perc, stg quartet — conducted by Nicholas L. Baker

Kerrith Livengood : Song of the 144,000 — ob, cl, bsn, tpt, harp, pno, perc, vl, cello— conducted by Alexandra Arrieche

Mark Fromm: Harmonices Mundi — speaker, fl, ob, cl, bsn, harp, gtr, pno, vib, stg quartet — conducted by Cliff Colnot

Cliff Colnot will also give a lecture at Pitt at 1 p.m. on that same day, September 30. His talk is free and open to the public. Colnot regularly conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he recently recorded Richard Wernick’s The Name of the Game for Bridge Records, and he collaborates regularly with the internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. Among many other appointments, Colnot has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW series since its inception and is principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago since 1994. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony.

IonSound Project will give a CD release concert at WQED’s Hillman Room today at 2:30 p.m. The group’s first release is a compilation of the music of Jeremy Beck, a composer whose music has been consistently well received here over the years.

As you would expect, the program will include music by Jeremy Beck with works by Erik Satie and Jonathan Kolm as well.  Come out and celebrate with IonSound!

Admission: $15 General Admission; $10 students and seniors; Free age 15 and under.

Nice preview in the Post-Gazette of tonight’s Music on the Edge opener with Slee Sinfonietta. And don’t forget that Microscopic Opera begins four shows tonight which include Lee Hoiby’s much admired Bon Apetit and Tobias Picker’s realization of Fantastic Mr. Fox. All this and more in 5-4-3-…

The Voltage Spooks

The last days of summer are slipping away, we’ve recovered from the annual new music gorge with PNME, and  the harvest moon is in the sky. All of which means there is tons of great new music coming our way. And it really starts tonight with a show at the The Shop in Bloomfield that features The Voltage Spooks, Michael Johnson and Matt Wellins, and Host Skull. Check out the full post on this show with lots of good content courtesy of Edgar Um. And as they say in Informercial Land, that’s not all!

The weekend is jampacked with Music on the Edge, IonSound Project CD release, and two new productions from Microscopic Opera. Gonna be good.

Brillobox

Host Skull “Totally Fatalist” from David Bernabo on Vimeo.

Pittsburgh and Sante Fe’s HOST SKULL will release their debut album, TOTALLY FATALIST, on Chicago’s Antephonic label. This also happens to be a rare (and the first) performance from Host Skull where the core band is playing at the same time, in the same room.

The Host Skull lineup looks to be David Bernabo, Will Dyar, Chris Cannon, Brandon Masterman, Pj Roduta, and Erik Cirelli.

Raw Blow and a special Jeff Berman/Sue Powers duo will open the show!

Heinz Hall
Tickets

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra introduces 2011–12 Composer of the Year Steven Stucky with a performance of Dreamwaltzes. The program also includes Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.