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!

No, they aren’t super heroes. The League of the Unsound Sound (LotUS for short) is actually a newly formed contemporary ensemble dedicated to exploring experimental music in all its variations. LotUS core members include musicians, composers, and improvisers; many of whom are also founding members of well-known contemporary groups such as Alarm Will Sound, ICE, and So Percussion. Having come together to form LotUS under the musical direction of co-curators David Smooke and Ken Ueno, this small but talented ensemble splashed onto the new music scene last year in D.C. and Baltimore earning such reviews as “absolutely riveting” and “spectacular performance” from the Washington Post.

LotUS isn’t afraid to take chances, preferring to challenge their audience to open their ears to new sounds. In addition to premiering many new compositions, LotUS also specializes in free improvisation. These improvisations are created without previously conceived parameters and involve explorations of the remote possibilities for performance on each instrument represented. Tim Feeney makes a single drum sing and speak, while David Smooke creates sustained harmonies and slides on a toy piano, and Ken Ueno uses vocal techniques from around the world to create an impossibly inhuman range of sound. When asked what the audience could expect of their debut concert in October 2010, co-director David Smooke replied, “ 1) the music would be experimental; 2) I guaranteed that audience members would hear something they had never heard before; and 3) that to me as an individual audience member the two previous characteristics are selling points.”

In addition to free improvisation, the League’s Pittsburgh concert will feature Two Hands for viola and percussion by LotUS co-director Ken Ueno, Sofia Gubaidulina’s masterful trio Quasi Hoquetus, and two world premieres: Pittsburgh composer Mathew Rosenblum’s Two Harmonies for viola, percussion and piano, and LotUS co-director David Smooke’s Topographies: transit/dis(solve) for bassoon and piano.

Music on the Edge and the Andy Warhol Museum are proud to co-present such an exciting ensemble, and hope that you will join us for the show at 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 14 in the Warhol Museum Theater. Tickets may be purchased in advance from ProArtsTickets. Tickets in advance are $15 for general admission and $10 for non-Pitt students and seniors. Call 412-394-3353 or visit www.proartstickets.org. At the door, general admission is $20 and admission for students and seniors is $15.

It’s gonna be a great two days of music and insight into one of the true masters of the late 20th century. And don’t miss the fantastic preview by Mike Shanley in the City Paper that gives us a window into Jan and Amy Williams’ personal interactions with Feldman.

Do you love Morton Feldman? Well then, make your way to the Wood Street Galleries in early November for some top-rate performances and to the University of Pittsburgh for a day-long Symposium  comprising scholars from around the country and musicians who worked closely with Feldman. If you don’t like Morton Feldman, come anyway, and we’ll tell you why you should!

The works of Morton Feldman (1926-1987) occupy a central place in the American experimental tradition, not just within the music world. Feldman was very often inspired by non-musical sources, including Persian rugs, abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, and texts of Samuel Beckett, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara. Kyle Gann remarked that, “in the current Babel of musical styles, Feldman is almost the only composer whose music appeals across stylistic boundaries, among minimalists, postserialists, 12-tone holdouts, electronic composers, academics, Downtowners, MAX programmers, DJ artists, and other miscellaneous wastrels.” Why does this music have such a broad appeal? This is one of the questions that will be explored during the symposium. The first session will include scholars whose research places Feldman within a larger historical context. The second session will call upon performers and composers who worked intimately with Feldman in the 1970s and 1980s.  The symposium will be framed by two concerts presenting two late chamber pieces, Patterns in a Chromatic Field and Crippled Symmetry.

View the complete symposium schedule here.

This celebration of Feldman’s musical legacy comes to Pittsburgh via another legacy—the one passed from percussionist Jan Williams to his daughter, composer/pianist Amy Williams. Jan Williams premiered many of Feldman’s works, while Amy Williams is a widely performed and commissioned composer and one half of the critically acclaimed Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo. The father/daughter duo first performed Crippled Symmetry in Buffalo in April 2011 and Amy Williams, a member of the composition and theory faculty at Pitt, is the driving force behind the two-day exploration of Feldman’s work. Jan and Amy Williams will be joined be Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble flutist Lindsey Goodman and cellist Jonathan Golove.

In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of Feldman’s inspiration, the two concerts will take place at Wood Street Galleries rather than a traditional concert venue, and feature readings by Jan Beatty, poet and host of WYEP’s Prosody, and Lynn Emmanuel, poet and Professor of English at Pitt.

Come out to the Galleries on Thursday November 3rd at 8 p.m. to hear Jonathon Golove (cello) and Amy Williams (piano) perform Patterns in a Chromatic Field (1981). Before this 80-minute work, New York School poetry will be read aloud by Jan Beatty, poet and host of WYEP’s radio show, Prosody.

Join us once more on Friday, November 4th at 8 p.m. to take in a performance of Crippled Symmetry (1983) by Lindsey Goodman (flute), Amy Williams (piano) and Jan Williams (percussion). Before this 90-minute work, New York School poetry will be read aloud by Lynn Emanuel, poet and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

For tickets, visit www.proartstickets.org or call 412-394-3353. Those attending both concerts can take advantage of a special Festival package rate:

• $20 for general admission and $15 for students and seniors for both nights when purchased in advance through ProArtsTickets
• $30 and $20 for both nights at the door.
• Individual concerts: $15 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors when ordered in advance through ProArtsTickets.
• Individual concerts at the door: $20 for general admission and $15 for students and seniors.
• Pitt students: free with valid ID.

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.

Bellefield Hall Auditorium
Tickets will be available through ProArtsTickets

Music on the Edge kicks off its 2011–12 season with University of Buffalo’s Slee Sinfonietta, professional chamber orchestra in residence at UB and the flagship ensemble of the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music. Slee Sinfonietta will perform Donald Erb’s Sunlit Peaks and Dark Valleys, David Felder’s Another Face, Andrew Rindfleisch’s What Vibes!, and Mathew Rosenblum’s Ancient Eyes.

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!

MOTE Madness continues on Sunday night at the Warhol with New York’s counter)induction. Eric Moe’s Dead Cat Bounce and music by Douglas Boyce, Gorecki, and Kyle Bartlett are all on the program. Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead this weekend. Already? I know!

If you do show up to the Warhol at the end of the show on Sunday, no worries. Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society presents Trio Cavatina on Monday night and that Naumburg prize-winning group is playing an intriguing program featuring women composers past and present.

To the Events Calendar!

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.