Pittsburgh New Music Net

A night of various freak music at The Shadow Lounge with:

DOLORES BOYS [Brooklyn, NY | Psychic Mule]

“a DIY junction between industrial, goth rock and contemporary noise… the duo sustains the angst as the soundtrack to their horror scenario drifts from chaos to eerie calm.” – Deli Magazine

“The way the Dolores Boys straddle the nu-Goth and neo-Surf vibes is well done…the atmosphere of the music isn’t some foggy graveyard on a cold autumn night, its hot, claustrophic and urban. Unending daylight, blinding hot sun.” – Cassette Gods

HUNTED CREATURES [Dynamo Sound | 905 Tapes]

Cosmic psychedelia inspired by the Grateful Dead, Jan Hammer and Judas Priest.

8CYLINDER [Rhinoplex | Unmapped North]

Gameboy audio software and music.

“Early 8cylinder material was fast, aggressive breakcore ‘people would move to it; it’s not really dancing, it’s more of a freak-out kind of thing’ — but the most recent 8cylinder releases, on [Unmapped North], is more downtempo and cerebral. There are beats, but there’s also noise and sound sculpture.” – Pittsburgh City Paper

ONEWAYNESS [Erie, PA | Onomastic]

“Onewayness is the synth-drone guise of Erie, PA’s Adam Holquist, whose output has been steady growing via radioplay and mostly self-released work. His debut full-length is released on his own Onomastic label in an attractively yet simply printed CD-R. Holquist is resourceful, citing synths, field recordings, and live instrumentation among other things as sources; all of these show up on Blue Star. While wearing its influences pretty heavily on its sleeve, this is som.e interesting stuff that should bode well for what I imagine will be a bevy of future releases.” – Travis Bird/Foxy Digitalis

Garfield Artworks
Tickets at the door: $10, All ages.
Presented by the Consortium

With special guests Ben Opie and Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl

Who’s Who in Central & East Europe 1933 from Arnold Dreyblatt on Vimeo.

Arnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City, 1953) is an American media artist and composer. He has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. In 2007, Dreyblatt was elected to lifetime membership in the visual arts section at the German Academy of Art (Akademie der Künste, Berlin). He is currently Professor of Media Art at the Muthesius Academy of Art and Design in Kiel, Germany.

His early activities in music and performance included the albums Nodal Excitation, Propellers In Love and the opera project Who’s Who in Central and East Europe 1933. His artistic practice of the last 20 years has ranged from large staged multi-day performances (The Memory Projects, 1995-2001), involved installations (such as From the Archives, 1999; The Wunderblock, 2000; Turntable History, 2009) and wall works (such as Ephemeris Epigraphica, 2006 and Memory Lost, 2007). At the same time he has continued to develop his unique work in composition and music performance.

Dreyblatt’s visual artworks create complex textual and spatial visualizations for memory. These projects, which reflect on such themes as recollection and the archive, include permanent installations, digital room projections, dynamic textual objects and muti-layered lenticular text panels. He has exhibited and performed in galleries, museums and public spaces such as the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin; The Jewish Museum in New York; the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna and Gallery e/static in Turin.

Permanent public art works are on display at the HL Holocaust Center in Oslo and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. He has recieved numerous commissions and awards including the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in New York, and the Förderpreis of the Academy of Art (Akademie der Künste) in Berlin.

One of the second generation of New York minimal composers, Dreyblatt studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier and media art with Woody and Steina Vasulka.

Arnold Dreyblatt has charted his own unique course in composition and music performance. He has invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning. Often characterized as one of the more rock-oriented of American minimalists, Dreyblatt has cultivated a strong underground base of fans for his transcendental and ecstatic music with his Orchestra of Excited Strings. His music has been performed by the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Jim O’Rourke, Pellegrini String Quartet and the Crash Ensemble. He has recorded for such labels as Tzaddik, Hat Hut, Table of the Elements, and Cantaloupe.

The Music on the Edge series will conclude this year with a performance by NOW Ensemble on March 23rd in the Andy Warhol Museum at 8 p.m. The groundbreaking composer/performer collective will premiere Pittsburgh composers Patrick Burke and Emily Pinkerton’s Rounder Songs as well as a new work by Mark Dancigers. Also on the program are Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Pale as Centuries, Samson Kar-Fai Young’s Night Song, and Judd Greenstein’s Change Triology.

I couldn’t put it better than Jeffery Edlestein of the International Concert Review when he writes “The vibrant sound of NOW Ensemble… does something more than offer composers an alternative to the ubiquitous ‘Pierrot ensembles plus singer or percussion.’ It breathes the air of this planet: the musical air of indie rock, rap, jazz, pop, and minimalism variously synthesized by classically-trained composers and instrumentalists. Three of NOW’s founding members are composers, and a community of 35 like-minded others have responded to the opportunities NOW embodies: to defy specialization, reject alienation, and inspire deft musicians to convey a sense of private amusement that enlivens the music they perform.”

NOW takes a unique instrumentation of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, double bass, and piano and adds resident composers to produce a musical paradigm in which continuous collaboration between composers and the performers is taken as a given. NOW has worked with over 60 of today’s most exciting composers, including Nico Muhly, Timothy Andres, Missy Mazzoli, Judd Greenstein, Kathryn Alexander, Jason Treuting, Sean Friar, and Kirsten Volness. The ensemble brings a fresh sound and a new perspective to the classical tradition, infused with the musical influences that reflect the diverse backgrounds of its members. In addition to performances as such venues as  Miller Theater, the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Festival International Chihuahua, and The Music Gallery Toronto among many others, NOW have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and on WNYC. The Ensemble’s sophomore album Awake charted at #2 in Amazon’s Classical Music Charts. NOW’s collaboration with film maker Joshua Frankel Plan of the City was praised in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and New Yorker critic Alex Ross’s blog, where it was hailed as “gorgeous”, and viewed over 80,000 times on Vimeo.

Tickets are available through the Pitt Repertory Theatre Box Office by calling 412-624-play or visiting music.pitt.edu/tickets.
Tickets in advance: general admission is $15; students and seniors are $10. At the door: general admission is $20; students and seniors are $15.

See you at the Warhol!

Host Skull and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble launched Kickstarter Campaigns last week, so crowd, get out their and SOURCE!

The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble campaign is to fund their commission of a new piece by Ted Hearne, because, as they put it:

“Hearne’s compositions are socially engaging, exploring the complexity of contemporary experience with visceral power and raw emotional beauty. His Katrina Ballads, a modern-day oratorio with a primary source libretto, offers a searing portrayal of the media’s take on Hurricane Katrina. Katrina Ballads was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus International Composers Award from Music Center the Netherlands, and the recording, on New Amsterdam Records, was named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. It’s also the work that Ted submitted to win our own Harvey Gaul Competition.”

Host Skull (one of David Bernabo’s ongoing projects) has already completed the recording of their next album, Black Mark, and are looking for help in the final stages of production and distribution.

“Your support will help us complete the final production stages for Host Skull’s Black Mark. This includes mastering, vinyl pressing, and packaging. We are planning to produce a gatefold vinyl package, heavily decorated by Joe Mruk’s beautifully intricate illustrations.”

Check out these projects, kick, and start.

Bellefield Hall Auditorium
Free

IonSound Project, Pitt Department of Music Ensemble-in-Residence performs new music by Pitt’s Graduate Student Composers. The program will include works for solo piano by Matt Aelmore (Folding) and Ramteen Sazegari (Glitch), Aaron Brooks’sTunes, Half Dreamt/Lullaby/Mantra (violin and piano), and Jonghee Kang’s Re: (solo cello).

Hey there, Pittsburgh new music community! Just want to draw your attention to the two CMU composers concerts happening tonight (Feb, 22) and next Friday (March 1) at Soldiers and Sailors. Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic will present nine (count-em! 9!) new pieces by CMU student composers. A great way to feature their students and give them the invaluable experience of writing for orchestra. The concerts are free, so do try to get there if you can.

Soldiers and Sailors Hall
Free

Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic

Ronald Zollman, Music Director
Conductor(s) to be announced.

Soldiers and Sailors Hall
Free

Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic

Ronald Zollman, Music Director
Conductor(s) to be announced.

New music for the medieval lute? Not only that, but Dutch minimalist composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem has been recording for both hipster label Sacred Bones and experimental bastion Important Records. About his second collaboration with filmmaker/guitarist Jim Jarmusch, “The Mystery of Heaven,” the influential Pitchfork Media said, “Even when they reach peak noise… it’s more hypnotic than aggressive.” Dusted praised his 2010 solo album “Ex Partis” as “elegant, spare, haunting, beautiful and at the same time brimming with prickly attitude.” Van Wissem is also one-half of the duo Brethren of the Free Spirit (with James Blackshaw) and has collaborated with UK actress Tilda Swinton, guitarist Gary Lucas (of Captain Beefheart fame), Italian harsh-noise icon Maurizio Bianchi
and Japanese avant-guitarists Keiji Haino and Tetuzi Akiyama.

For his fourth appearance in Pittsburgh (he previously appeared at Wood Street Gallery, Garfield Artworks and a now-defunct Morningside coffeehouse), Van Wissem will perform with a program of videos by New York-based Diego Barrera.
He’ll be at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ Screening Room at 477 Melwood Ave. in Oakland on Monday, February 11 for an 8 p.m. show. Tickets are $8 advance, $10 door available at Sound Cat Records (Bloomfield) and Caliban Books (Oakland), and for more info call
Pittsburgh Filmmakers at 412-681-5449.

February 2, 2013 7:30 pm
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium (Frick Fine Arts Building, Oakland, 15260)
$10 adults / $5 children

pay cash at the door/for tickets in advance email trillium ensemble@gmail.com

Trillium Ensemble performs its season’s second concert at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium on Saturday, February 2, 2013.  Echoes features chamber music of Aram Khachaturian, a continuation of John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons, and George Crumb’s heartbreaking Eleven Echoes of Autumn.

This trio of flute, clarinet and piano, is pleased to welcome violinist Dawn Posey, as their guest.  Posey is an active teacher and performer, most notably in the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra and Associate Concertmaster of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.  Trillium Ensemble strives to make classical music fun and accessible to audiences of all ages.  Founded in 2010, Trillium has performed in venues throughout the Pittsburgh region, and commissioned works by a number of young professional composers in the area.

Various trio instrumentations form most of the concert program. However, all four musicians come together in Eleven Echoes of Autumn which explores the timbral possibilities of the instruments.  A pioneer in pushing the boundaries of music, Crumb often asks instruments to be played in unusual ways.  For instance, the pianist is frequently standing, reaching into her instrument to produce percussive and sometimes haunting sounds.  This piece also features flutist Deidre Huckabay on both the alto flute and as principal whistler!  Echoes is bound to please with its thought-provoking program.

Program:
Bohuslav Martinu, Madrigal Sonata
John Adams, Gnarly Buttons
Aram Khachaturian Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano
Federico Garcia, Long Stories Short
George Crumb, Eleven Echoes of Autumn

Trillium Ensemble
Deidre Huckabay, flute
Rachael Stutzman, clarinet
Katie Palumbo, piano
with special guest, Dawn Posey, violin