Pittsburgh New Music Net

This concert is getting a lot of buzz for a lot of good reasons. Here’s David Bernabo’s preview, and here’s a City Paper interview with Ben Opie.

Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
Tickets: $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).

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

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).

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.

The Consortium presents two great avantgarde concerts on Penn Avenue!

Wed May 25 8 pm $7 all ages welcome
Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Avenue

From Phila/NYC, seen here previously a couple times as member of Peeesseye. on Family Vineyard Records.

improvisational duo
CHRIS FORSYTH & PARANOID CAT

http://www.thechrisforsyth.com/

http://www.myspace.com/cforsyth

with special guests Ben Opie & Matt Wellins

Guitarist Chris Forsyth is known for hypnotic compositions that assimilate minimalism and psychedelia with art rock, folk, and blues influences. He has performed all over Europe and the US, having toured with such like-minded artists as Träd Gräs och Stenar, Steve Gunn, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ignatz, and Es and is a founding member (with Jaime Fennelly and Fritz Welch) of junk folk expressionists Peeesseye, and a member of the elusive experimental group Phantom Limb & Bison. Other notable collaborators include Koen Holtkamp, Meg Baird, Nate Wooley, and choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and RoseAnne Spradlin. Paranoid Cat, Forsyth’s next solo LP, features contributions from members of Peeesseye, Mountains, D. Charles Speer & the Helix, and others, and will be released in March 2011 on Family Vineyard. Drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin, organist Don Bruno, and pianist Hans Chew, aka The Paranoid Cat Band, will be backing Forsyth up on a series of shows following the release. Other recent releases include a contribution to the new Imaginational Anthem 4: New Possibilities compilation LP/CD/DL on Tompkins Square, the Dirty Pool LP (Ultramarine) with organist Shawn Edward Hansen, and Peeesseye’s newest studio LP Pestilence & Joy (Evolving Ear). Forsyth is the caretaker of Evolving Ear and lives in the City of Philadelphia.

“It’s enough to signal Forsyth’s arrival as an erudite and farsighted guitar stylist, mapping a path that’s hip and scholarly in equal measure.” – Daniel Spicer, The Wire Magazine

“A destructible charm teetering on violence and elegance” – Eric Weddle, Signal to Noise Magazine

——–

Saturday May 28 8 pm all ages welcome $10 adv/$15 door
Modern Formations Gallery, 4919 Penn Avenue, Garfield
Advance tickets at Paul’s CDs, Caliban Books, Dave’s Music Mine, Exchange Sq Hill, Exchange Downtown,
and from the members of Berman/Bernabo/SoySos.

World music-jazz duo on ObliqSound Records
ABLAYE Cissoko (on kora, from Senegal)
& VOELKER GOETZE (on trumpet, from Germany)

http://www.myspace.com/cissokogoetze

with special guests Dave Bernabo / Jeff Berman / Soy Sos (aka Herman Pearl)

This duo has a podcast on WYEP’s website which Rosemary Welsch hosted:

http://podcasts.wyep.org/WORLD113.MP3

The mutual admiration society that is Volker Goetze and Ablaye Cissoko owes itself to a serendipitous meeting that took place in 2001 at the African-European Jazz Orchestra rehearsals in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where they’d been invited to open for Senegalese legend Youssou N’Dour. Despite any cultural barriers that separated them, the German-born trumpeter and the Senegalese kora player and singer discovered they had much in common, both musically and personally. Their commonalities can be heard on Sira, which is an album that reaffirms the maxim that music is the universal language. The album released on October 2008 on ObliqSound. “He comes from the griot tradition. My grandfathers were highly respected spiritual leaders,” says Goetze. “I learn from him and he learns from me. Our music is very much created in the moment, but we understand each other on a much deeper level.”

It was their willingness to absorb new ideas that attracted them to each other. Although Cissoko is wellversed in the traditional music of West Africa, passed along from generation to generation, he has always been a seeker, keeping his ears open for new experiences. Despite his ties to West African traditional music, Cissoko is also a huge fan of jazz, and worked with pianist/composer Randy Weston and others prior to the project with Goetze. “My early influences,” he says, “come from Keith Jarrett, French saxophonist François Jeanneau, Asian and Senegalese music and, of course, Mandingue music, the music of my ancestors.”

His immersion in jazz, and Goetze’s fascination with African music, made them natural candidates for collaboration. “I was fortunate to have experienced some of the greatest innovators of jazz live in concert,” says Goetze, “like Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Wayne Shorter, the Gil Evans Big Band and Joe Henderson. They touched and moved me. That is what I am looking for in music, which is one reason I had to go to Africa. I also am a huge fan of Youssou N’Dour.”

Goetze, who has collaborated with some of the most important figures of the contemporary music scene, including Naná Vasconcelos, Craig Handy and Lenny Pickett, sees similarities between Cissoko’s griot tradition and that of jazz: “[Griot music] is not written; it changes with the epoch and the performance, which is similar to jazz and improvisation.”

“It is our differences that become real strength,” adds Cissoko, who has released two previous solo albums, 2000′s Diam and 2006′s Le Griot Rouge, prior to the duo album Sira. “I adapt myself to the context. I have in myself this ancient tradition of communication. It’s like the branches of a baobab tree, which can touch those of another tree. I’m one of these branches. Volker and I are two musicians of the same generation with different sensibilities, who become one indivisible entity by speaking with our instruments.”

Host Skull, the duo of David Bernabo and Will Dyar, released a new composition on Chicago’s Contraphonic label. The piece, titled “Fourth River”, juxtaposes arrhythmic electronics with lush sections of classical guitar, vibraphone, and percussion. To flesh out the lineup, this instance of Host Skull also includes vibraphonist Jeff Berman, modular synth-ist Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl, and a trio of Ben Harris/Kerrith Livengood/Brandon Masterman. The composition comes as an MP3 along with an essay on Pittsburgh by Contraphonic label owner Ben Schulman and photography by CMU’s Alternative Photo Process class, led by professor Elizabeth Raymer Griffin.

The package can be purchased through Contraphonic here for the very reasonable price of $3.99.

Host Skull’s first official show will this Friday, April 29th at The Frame on Carnegie Mellon’s campus at Forbes and Margaret Morrison. Host Skull will be represented by David Bernabo and Jeff Berman.

Pittsburgh’s Fourth River is the sometimes mythologized, sometimes forgotten river that flows below the surface. More accurately, it is an aquifer that is given the name Wisconsin Glacial Flow. The visible manifestations of the river can be seen in the fountain at Point State Park and in some of the downtown drinking water. When the Fourth River is mentioned, grand notions of a flowing subterranean river come to mind. This is in direct contrast to what is actually is: sand, gravel, and a bit of water running through it.

Watch a video preview of the piece here.

Two upcoming experimental and new music concerts at Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Avenue. All ages welcome.

Mon Apr 25 8 pm $10

KAGEL NACHT

http://kagelnacht.blogspot.com/

with Antithesis (CAPA’s new music ensemble)

Kagel Nacht is a performance event featuring new interpretations of works by the seminal avant-garde composer Mauricio Kagel. Interwoven into a melange of inter-connected and overlapping pieces, this show highlights the most absurd and engaging of Kagel’s prolific output. From the disconnected political ramblings of Der Tribune, to the meticulous puppetry/theater of Repetoire, to the squealing and scratching of Acustica, Kagel Nacht connects to listeners in a way rarely found in the classical music world.

Despite being one of the most radical and revolutionary 20th century European avant-garde composers, Mauricio Kagel’s music has remained relatively obscure, especially here in the US. In an attempt to change this, two musicians from New York City have spent the last 3 years researching Kagel’s massive body of work, seeking out rare scores, recordings, and videos of his bizarre, often hysterically theatrical compositions. Joining them will be a stacked deck of musicians from Brooklyn’s artistic multiverse, performers deeply situated in the theater, performance art, classical, and experimental music worlds. They will be performing a very diverse selection from Kagel’s grand oeuvre, including “classical” works (Music For Rennaissance Instruments), electro-acoustic compositions (Acustica), absurdist ballet (Kontra->Danse), radio plays (Der Tribun), and some of his most daring and hilarious works of “instrumental theater” (Staatstheater, Con Voce).

With interpretations ranging from strict to fully recontextualized, Kagel Nacht breaths new life into these important and underperformed works by joining them into one, multi-stage, panoramic, evening-length event that brings a new meaning to “musical theater.” Kagel Nacht is currently touring the North-East, performing for universities as well as underground venues, art spaces, and other communities, giving people access to the world of classical and avant-garde music through the universal appeal of Kagel’s profound and absurd compositions. In order to limit costs and emissions, they are traveling on a school bus turned tour bus that runs on waste vegetable oil.

Kagel Nacht will feature the musical and theatrical artistry of Rick Burkhardt – orator, accordion; Stephen Cooper – producer, glockenspiel, guitar ; Sam Kulik – trombone;
Jordan Mclean – trumpet, conductor, arranger ; Jason Mears – clarinet, saxophone ; Roberta Michel – flute, piccolo ; Geoff Nosach – lighting, set design ; Sam Sowyrda – producer, conductor, percussion ; Dennis Sullivan – percussion.

Sat Apr 30 8 pm $7

WILL McEVOY’S MUTASM

http://www.myspace.com/willmcevoysmutasm

with Bernabo & Fleming, and Satyr/Elfheim

Improvising chamber-jazz sextet from Brooklyn featuring
Will McEvoy – bass and composition; Cody Brown – drums ;
Dustin Carlson – guitar ; Brad Henkel – trumpet ; Nathaniel Morgan – alto saxophone; Patrick Breiner – tenor saxophone (Madison, Wisconsin).

As a performer McEvoy has played in many settings from contemporary jazz and classical orchestras to improvised duets with dancers. In New York City, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Lincoln Center, and numerous house parties, artist lofts and small clubs. What sets McEvoy apart from other bassists of his generation is his focus on solo repertoire and performance practice, with particular influence from Dadaism, Surrealism, and modernist composition. His current projects include Mutasm, a revolving cast that performs extended works, duets with dancer Hadar Ahuvia, the New York Jazz Band, and other freelancing performances.

Your new music weekend starts tonight (Thursday) when avant jazz improvisors Eugene Chadborune and Tatsuya Nakatani play Garfield Artworks at 8 p.m. That show also includes local luminaries Daryl Fleming and Michael Johnsen.

Saturday night offers IonSound Project performing at Bellefield Hall in a concert that includes Currier, Kriegeskotte, and Sutherland. Can you not go to hear a piece called Overture to a Zombie Apocalypse? I bet you can’t.

Here are the details.

Garfield Artworks
4931 Penn Avenue
Admission is $10, all ages welcome.

Free improvising avantjazz/folk hero Eugene Chadbourne makes a long awaited return from his home base in Greensboro, N.C. to play in duo with his touring partner, percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani from Philadelphia. Local artists Darryl Fleming (on guitar, with guest accompanist) and Michael Johnsen (electronics) open the show.

So is this a great weekend for new music in Pittsburgh or a terrible weekend? I think it depends on whether you can bilocate and/or have plenty of time. Here’s the rundown.

Starting tonight (Thursday) and running through March 5, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will perform Joan Tower’s Tambor and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1945, not 1911. Go figure.).

On Saturday, March 5, the PSO will read works by student composers from CMU, Duquesne, Pitt, and WVU. This is a great program that really gives our up and coming composers a truly unique experience, so bravo to the PSO and all this year’s composers who had their music selected.

The evening of March 5 brings Ravish Momin and Tarana back to town after a very well received concert at the Warhol this summer. Or you can take in entelechron—Roger Zahab, Rob Frankenberry, and David Russell—at the Andy Warhol Museum performing music of John Cage. See what I mean about bilocating?

The Cage program at the Warhol is the first of three Music on the Edge Programs in 15 days, so as they say in the action movies, buckle up! MOTE continues its highly compressed season on March 13 with New York’s counter)induction and finishes off with the entirely unique Newband playing music by Harry Partch, Dean Drummond, and Mathew Rosenblum on the Harry Partch Instruments.

Check out the events calendar for more details.