Pittsburgh New Music Net

With the Stillers safely tucked into preparations for next season and rumors swirling around whether Mike Tomlin will tap Noah Bendix-Balgley to be his next Offensive Coordinator, Pittsburghers have already forgotten that this Sunday there will be a festival of advertising with some sort of football game interspersed. And that’s just as well, since there are some fine concerts to attend this weekend. Mezzo-soprano and composer Eva Rainforth is going to give a recital of original art songs on Saturday, violinist Monique Mead’s Sunday afternoon recital will include Lutoslawski’s Subito, and Alia Musica Pittsburgh will present a program of new percussion works on Sunday evening. Don’t forget to bring the guacamole!

Here’s some more info…

Chatham University, James Laughlin Center for Music
Tickets 

Alia Musica’s winter program features music for percussion by living Pittsburgh composers. The program features the premieres of works by Michael Purdue and Scott Steele, in addition to works by Ivan Jiminez, Michael Culligan, Elliott Carter and Eric Satie.

Alia Musica composer (and a percussionist himself) Scott Steele’s “Music for three percussionists” will be premiered, along with a new composition, written especially for the occasion, by percussionist Mike Perdue. Perdue’s piece, Words, is based on the rhythm of spoken text and scored for a variable number of players and instruments. Exploring elements of improvisation and formal indeterminacy, the piece follows on the lead of his Meta-Concerto, premiered in 2011 to good reviews at the Manhattan School of Music (with the composer as percussion soloist).

Alia Musica regular percussionists, Elliot Beck and Marcus Kim, will be featured in their respective specialities, with Mr. Beck performing Elliott Carter’s Pieces for Four Timpani, and Mr. Kim presenting his own vibraphone arrangement of Eric Satie’s Gymnopedies. The program is completed by a version of Ivan Jimenez’s 10 Intermittent Lights Dancing, reworked for three percussionists, and a “Trio” by percussionist-composer Michael Culligan, featuring Pittsburgh percussionists Austin Allen, Maryalice Ryan, and David Zawodniak.

Featuring percussionists:

Austin Allen
Elliot Beck
Michael Culligan
Marcus Kim
Michael Purdue
Maryalice Ryan
Scott Steele
Daniel Zawodniak

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.

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.

You don’t have to wait for the weekend to hear new music as the Burgh’s newest new music group, the Trillium Ensemble, performs tonight (July 14) at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. The program includes music by Claude Debussy, Libby Larsen, Ernst Bloch, Jennifer Higdon, and Alia Musica composers Matthew Heap and Federico Garcia. Here’s more info.

Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Tickets

The Trillium Ensemble was inaugurated in 2010 by Pittsburgh performers Katie Palumbo (piano), Pamela Murchinson (flute), and Rachael Stutzman (Alia Musica’s principal clarinetist). Their July 14 concert at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium (on Pitt’s Campus) includes music by Claude Debussy, Libby Larsen, Ernst Bloch, Jennifer Higdon, and Alia Musica composers Matthew Heap and Federico Garcia.

As a special offer in partnership with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble present the program from this concert and get a $5 discount to a pnme concert!

You can hit a concert every night over this weekend, starting tonight with the PSO premiering Joan Tower’s new work Stroke. That concert is tonight and tomorrow night and features pianist and wolf conservationist (how often to you get to type that phrase?) Hélène Grimaud performing Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 23, K. 488, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. Go to the Friday night show if you can so that…

You can catch Alia Musica Pittburgh’s second spring concert at Saturdany night at 7 p.m. (Synod Hall). And that’s not all! If you order now (or even if you don’t) you can hear ELCO’s “Mixtape” concert Sunday night at the Brewhouse, and as you would hope, there will be lots of Duquesne Pilsner on hand as part of the festivities (and coffee for the under 21 set.)

Whew! Are you ready?

Synod Hall
Tickets: $15 at the door, $12 for students and seniors.
Admission is free of charge for children under 15
Discount tickets available online at www.alia-musica.org/tickets.html

Program
Lenny Young: Augury (wind quintet)
Kerrith Livengood: imaginary average (clarinet, vibraphone)
David Lidov: Kierkegaard’s Pantoum (soprano, synthetic drones, and 13 instruments)
Matthew Gillespie: Chiaroscuro (mixed ensemble)
Molly Joyce: Collage of Mischief (French horn, piano, violin, cello)
Mark Fromm: Six for seven (oboe, bassoon, trumpet, French horn, piano, cello, bass)