Pittsburgh New Music Net

Sot there is a lot going on this weekend, and by this weekend I mean starting with two concerts Thursday night: The PSO, IonSound Project, and the Warhol have teamed up to present a concert of music curated by Mason Bates, including two of his own pieces. Meanwhile, back at Duquesne (and how often do you get to write that phrase?), NOW Ensemble is going to perform music by student composers from Duquesne and Pitt at PNC Recital Hall (8 pm and free). Friday through Sunday the PSO will perform Bates’ B-Sides. Saturday Night, MOTE present NOW at the Warhol and the program will include a the premiere of Rounder Songs by our own Patrick Burke and Emily Pinkerton. Soooooo… It’s going to be good! Oh yeah, and if you mention that you’re an IonSound supporter at the Warhol, the tickets are only $10 bucks for the Thursday night show. Check out the Events Calendar thusly ———>

Need to blow off a little election night steam? There are some excellent new music concerts happening that will take your mind of polls and electoral college tallies, at least for a little while. And just think! Tomorrow it will be safe to turn on your TV again without fear  getting blasted by political ads!

First off, Eliseo Rael will lead the Duquesne Percussion Ensemble in a program of new works featuring Dana Wilson’s award winning piece “Primal Worlds”. Also on the concert is music of Pittsburgh based composer Eric Moe, Jack Stamp, and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s 2004-2005 composer of the year Christopher Rouse.

Tuesday November 6, 2012, 8pm
Admission: Free

MOE “I Have Only One Itching Desire”
WHITACRE “Lux Aurumque”
ROUSE “Ku-Ka-Ilimoku”
STAMP “Vociferation”
WILSON “Primal Worlds”

Another concert takes place at WVU celebrating the music of George Crumb. The concert will be held at the WVU Creative Arts Center, Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A) and is free and open to the public.

Performers include Crumb’s daughter, Ann Crumb, a soprano, along with Patrick Mason, baritone, and members of Orchestra 2001 of Philadelphia, including: Director James Freeman; Marcantonio Barone, piano; and percussionists
William Kerrigan, David Nelson, Brenda Weckerly and Greg Giannascoli.

The concert features songs from Crumb’s “Voices from the Heartland” (American Songbook VII, 2010), including “A Cycle of Hymns, Spirituals, Folksongs, and American Indian Chants.”

Songs include “Softly and Tenderly,” “Ghost Dance” (Pawnee Tribal Chant), “Lord, Let Me Fly!” “The Kanawha River at Dusk” (An Appalachian Nocturne), “Glory Be to the New-Born King” (A Christmas Spiritual), “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens” and “On top of Old Smoky” (The War of the Sexes), “Beulah Land,” “Old Blue,” and “Song of the Earth” (Navajo Tribal Chants).

See the full details for the concert here.

That’s right, Friday may be one of your last opportunities to hear new music before the rapture, so you can be glad that a recital at Duquesne by flutist Deidre Hukcabay and pianist Katie Palumbo will include pieces by our own Federico Garcia, a premiere by Robert Morris (Eastman composer, not the University) and works by James Romig. A good way to say farewell to this cruel world to be sure.

And if you are one of the unlucky ones left behind, don’t miss Pittsburgh-based Freya String Quartet performing a new piece by Sean Neukom. FSQ is a versatile group that moves easily from the classical repertoire to contemporary music to providing the lush accompaniments on Joy Ike’s Rumors album, and it’s great to see them taking root here in the Burgh.

Check out PNMNet End Times Calendar for more info.

Update: And don’t forget the Tuple bassoon duo tonight (that’s right, I said bassoon duo) at the Kiva Han on Craig and Forbes in Oakland. All the info is at Manny’s post.

The Pappert Center (Room 322), The Mary Pappert School of Music

Duquesne University
600 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA  15282

$10 donation/free to Duquesne students

Join us for our spring concert, filled with upbeat music by young composers to usher in the new season.  We are proud to premiere Infatuation, a lively piece we commissioned by New York composer/improviser David Crowell (Philip Glass Ensemble).  In addition, we will perform works by myself, Scott Steele, Christian Phillips, and others.  Special guest, Duquesne’s Triano Quintet, will perform Ligeti’s Bagatelles.

h/t Patrick Burke

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.

Bask in that warm, post-championship afterglow with a recital by flutist Lindsey Goodman, pianist Robert Frankenberry, and vocalist Eva Rainforth as they perform chamber music featuring lots of Pittsburgh composers, today at Duquesne University. It’s a free concert at 3 p.m. in PNC Recital Hall and more details are here. Lindsey, a dedicated follower of Troysus, is encouraging people to bring their Terrible Towels, so how can you go wrong?

Lots of great concerts coming up in quick succession, starting off on Saturday with Winter Void, a slate of abstract, noise-based acts including local favorites Edgar Um and Tusk Lord. On Sunday, Ben Opie and friends bring the avant-jazz for the release of his CD of duets with Anthony Braxton. And for the hat trick, Lindsey J. Goodman, Rob Frankenberry, and Eva Rainforth will give a recital of music by living composers at Duquesne’s PNC Recital Hall on Monday afternoon. Have I got your attention yet? Events Calendar. Now. Go.

PNC Bank Recital Hall
Admission is free.

Flutist Lindsey Goodman, pianist Robert Frankenberry, and vocalist Eva Rainforth will perform chamber music by living American composers during a Common Hour recital at Duquesne University. Goodman and Frankenberry will play and sing the world premiere of a new work by Gilda Lyons and play the American premiere of Eli Tamar’s Vicious Circles. Eva Rainforth will join to sing Jeff Nytch’s From the Soul of Silence, and Pittsburgh composers Amy Williams and Roger Zahab will also be featured.

Eli Tamar Vicious Circles (American premiere)
Amy Williams First Lines
Roger Zahab … some measures for living …
Gilda Lyons (world premiere)
Joseph Schwantner Black Anemones
Jeffrey Nytch From the Soul of Silence

So between Cikada performing Eivind Buene’s Possible Cities/Essential Landscapes in October, and Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble’s multimedia production Invisible Patterns (tonight at PNC Recital Hall), I feel like the cosmos is telling me it’s time to read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the novel that inspired both Buene’s composition and Duquesne’s production. Or at least Duquesne director Patrick “The Cosmos” Burke is telling me to read it. Either one.

In any case, new music groups at both Duquesne and CMU will present programs this week. Duquesne goes tonight (Thursday at 8 p.m.) and CMU is on Saturday at 5. You can find the details, as always, on the Events Calendar.

PNC Recital Hall
$10 Suggested Donation

Patrick Burke and David Cutler, directors.

The Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble will perform its fall concert, entitled Invisible Patterns, based in part on the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and Eight Patterns for Eight Instruments by Tom Johnson.  This multimedia event will include brief readings from the novel, a lot of live music, and video by Duquesne grad student Ryan Leber.  Besides the Tom Johnson work, we’ll be performing pattern-filled pieces by young composers Nico Muhly and Mason Bates, works by American icons Joan Tower and Ned Rorem, and a new version of a medieval rondeau by Guilluame de Machaut, arranged by Duquesne student Chris Jarvis.

Calvino’s novel consists of a fictional conversation between Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo, in which Marco describes the cities of the Kahn’s empire to him.  Each chapter is a description of a different city— some are mundane, some are fantastical, but each description reveals something about human nature, as patterns begin to emerge.  The book is hypnotic, like an incantation–like music– and each excerpt describes in some way the music that follows.