So in case this slipped past you in the holiday rush, new music events made an impressive showing in Andy Druckenbrod’s top 10 classical concerts of the year list: Music on the Edge (Newband), Opera Theater of Pittsburgh (Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice), Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetit), and the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival (music of Solomon Rosowsky). Check out the full article for Andy’s explanations.
So it was a great year for New Music in Pittsburgh, and as those of you who follow this blog regularly know, that was only the tip of the iceberg. And 2012? Staritn’ off with a bang. check out the repopulated events calendar and you’ll see what I mean.
And speaking of starting off with a bang, don’t miss Dave Bernabo’s very thorough interview with League of the Unsound Sound co-founders David Smooke and Ken Ueno. LotUS comes to the Warhol next Saturday night.
Update: and I almost forgot this profile of new music performer extraordinaire Rob Frankenberry. Let’s have a virtual show of hands for how many of us have had our music played beautifully by Rob! Yeah!
VIA is a huge multi-date, multi-venue festival of new media for sound and visual artists with workshops/installations. There’s so much stuff going on and so many different artists and presenters, I’m just going to send you here.
Of particular interest to composers might be this event featuring David Borden,
“the creative force behind the world’s first synthesizer ensemble, Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. (1969), and founder of Cornell’s Digital Music Department, will perform with emerging artists Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin), Laurel Halo, James Ferraro (Skaters), and Samuel Godin. This event marks the international live premier for the ensemble since recording FRKWYS Vol. 7 as part of the Brooklyn label RVNG Intl.’s FRKWYS series, which pairs contemporary artists with those who have preceded them in sound or approach.
“CMU Professor of Music & Computer Science, Roger Dannenberg, will provide an introduction followed by a short lecture from Borden, “The Moog Synthesizer Lecture: The Man I Knew and the Machine I Learned”, revealing inside stories on the development of the Moog Synthesizer and its creator, Bob Moog.”
It’s happening Thursday night, October 6 at CMU’s Kresge Theater.
Music on the Edge wraps up its season this Saturday night with the totally unique Newband performing on instruments invented by the legendary Just Intonation composer Harry Partch. The concert is at the New Hazlett and includes music by Partch himself, Dean Drummond, and a new work by Mathew Rosenblum titled Yonah’s Dream. Details are here, and you can read the PG’s extensive preview of the concert here. See you at the New Hazlett!
Plenty of great sounds to take in this weekend. On Friday night, you can start downtown at 6 p.m. where CAPA’s Antithesis will play Satie, Reich, and Cage along with members’ compositions. After that, swing up to Garfield Artworks to hear Norwegian group Vertex perform on a bill that also includes Radic Sun’til (tribal electronic postrock ensemble) and Dreamweapon (local electronic artist).
On Friday, July 16, 2010, On Fillmore will bring their unique style of music to the Warhol Museum. I’m not exactly sure what to call it: extremely slow jazz, soundtrack music, haunting music. Since I’m hardly a writer, I won’t need to worry about inventing a term for what they do. But it would be wise for you to check it out.
The duo of percussionist Glenn Kotche (Wilco, Loose Fur) and bassist Darin Gray (Grand Ulena, Jim O’Rourke) have concocted an incredible sound world on their latest record, Extended Vacation, which is full of creeping vibraphone and bass lines, homemade percussion, and man-made bird calls. While on the record marching bands and dirty percussion blast against the somber vibe/bass lines, the duo will strip it down to pitched and unpitched percussion and upright bass. Pieces from all three of their records will be performed.
On Fillmore @ The Warhol Museum July 16, 2010 8pm-10pm Tickets $12, call 412.237.8300 for more information
I had the pleasure to interview Darin Gray and the audio artifact is below.
On the compositional process, juxtaposed rhythms, and the live set up
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On guest Dede Sampaio and his bird calls
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On homemade instruments and implements
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On soundtracks and recent musical interests
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Glenn Kotche (drummer for Wilco) and Darin Gray, formed On Fillmore in the Summer of 2000, after performing together with Jim O’Rourke at the Melt Down Festival in London. As a dynamic bass and percussion duo they create atmospheric, original music that incorporates field recordings. They visit the intimate Warhol Theater on a tour supporting their 4th full-length album, Extended Vacation, which covers new territory for the experimental pair. Rachel Grimes, of indie chamber group Rachels, will open with a pastoral solo piano set.
Drummer/composer Ravish Momin and Trio Tarana will be playing on the Warhol’s Sound Series on Friday, June 25 in a show that will also feature local artist DJ J. Malls. I got a chance to Skype with Ravish a few days ago and we had a free-wheeling discussion about his musical vision, the positive influence or Pittsburgh and the Warhol, and the challenges of creating innovative music in an ever more conservative industry. As always, I include the full audio below and recommend that, but here are some highlights to pique your curiosity.
Probably the biggest understatement one could make about the sound of Trio Tarana is that it reflects diverse influences. There is clearly strong influence of Indian classical music, of jazz, electronic elements, and rock. And, partly because of the instrumentation (drums, violin and cello), Trio Tarana sounds as much like a chamber music ensemble as a jazz combo. Yet, for all that diversity of influences, the music forms a seamless whole. To Ravish Momin, this develops as an organic and intuitive process which he describes as, “Taking all these influences that were latent inside me and having them come out.”
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Ravish’s official bio starts with his love for poetry, then how he completed a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU, and finally about studying classical Indian percussion. He speaks fondly of Pittsburgh and his time at CMU as the place where his passion for music was nurtured.
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Talking about the current configuration of Trio Tarana, Ravish get’s very excited about the band’s integration of technology and why it makes sense to him.
“We’re living in this electronic age, we’re talking on Skype, we have our iPhones, we’re texting—we’re doing all of this electronic stuff, but somehow when we go to music all of a sudden it has be three guys with acoustic instruments, and we leave everything behind, all of this technology, and for me it was like, ‘Wow, why can’t I find a way to bring in all this technology in and organic way that’s not being done?’”
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One of the most compelling aspects of Trio Tarana is that no matter how far afield the players move from each other, one can always sense how it all fits into a groove, even when that groove is based on a complex, asymmetrical time signature. The idea of groove-driven jazz is very significant to Ravish, and he speaks with a lot of energy about its importance to his music.
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One of the biggest problems facing truly innovative musicians is that music industry is wary of anything that cannot be categorized and packaged simply. While this is a source of frustration for Ravish, he had positive things to say about the role the Warhol and Pittsburgh play in helping develop and audience for cutting-edge music.
“Places like the Warhol Museum are very few and far between in the United States.”
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Ravish Momin and Trio Tarana play at the Warhol at 8; doors are at 7:30. Check out the Warhol Web site for more information about the show and about tickets.
Listen to the full interview.
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UPDATE: There’s lot’s of good audio and video on on Ravish Momin’s Web site, but I thought this clip summed up nicely a lot of the things we were talking about in the interview.
The Warhol welcomes percussionist and composer Ravish Momin’s Trio Tarana, including Skye Steele (violin) and Greg Heffernan (cello and electronics). The trio’s latest release on Clean Fed Records, features a unique, genre-blending mix of live electronics, jazz and classical music (including Indian and Middle-eastern scales) with inspirations ranging from Flying Lotus to Penderecki to Sun Ra. Momin began his career performing with progressive jazz musicians from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), whose initial membership included the likes of Anthony Braxton and Lester Bowie. More recently his trio has been sharing festival stages with likes of Akron/Family, Xiu Xiu and Sufjan Stevens. Pittsburgh-based jazz aficionado DJ J. Malls opens the show.
On the Saturday morning that Snowmageddon unleashed its fury on the region I had the pleasure of video chatting with flutist extraordinaire Lindsey J. Goodman about her upcoming Music on the Edge recital at the Warhol. Well known to local new music audiences for her exquisite performances with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Lindsey will share a recital with Anthony Coleman on February 27. She’ll perform three pieces for flute and electroacoustics—by Mathew Rosenblum, Jacob Ter Veldhuis and Russell Pinkston—and the world premiere of a solo flute piece by Grant Cooper. In the following audio interview, Lindsey talks about the different pieces on the program, her love for electroacoustic elements, and what she looks for when she’s thinking about tackling a new piece. She also gives a little preview on the upcoming PNME season.
As always, I encourage you to listen to the whole interview.
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And here are some excerpts from the full interview. First of all, I asked Lindsey to describe what was on her program.
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When I asked Lindsey about how her affinity for electroacoustic elements developed, her thoughts ranged from being able to perform “chamber music for one person” to how this genre is particularly relevant to our technological society.
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Russell Pinkston’s Lizamander is for flute and MaxMSP and Lindsey discussed both the intense satisfaction and the risks of working with live signal processing.
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Finally, Lindesy gave us a preview of the upcoming PNME season as well as some her new projects which include concerto performances and (maybe, possibly) recording projects.
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