Pittsburgh New Music Net

Carnegie Music Hall
Tickets

The Hagen Quartet will perform Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 along with works by Beethoven and Grieg.

Carnegie Music Hall

Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society presents the Emerson String Quartet performing music by Ives, Janacek, Barber, and Shostokovich. The program features the following works:

Ives – String Quartet No. 1, A Revival Service

Janacek- String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters

Barber – Adagio (from String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11)

Shostokovich – String Quartet No. 9, Op. 117

Among the many gifts Eugene and Natalie Phillips have given to the world of music (pristine performances, inspired teaching, masterful compositions) not least is 50% of the Orion String Quartet in the form of sons Danny and Todd. Tonight, the Orion will perform Eugene’s composition A Tribute for Two when they open the season for the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society at Carnegie Music Hall. A reminder that all Chamber Music Society concerts are starting at 7:30 this season, and if you visit Union Grill (on Craig St.) after the concert, a portion of the proceeds from your purchase will be donated to the Society, so bonus!

Carnegie Music Hall

Tickets

The Orion String Quartet will perform Eugen Phillips’ A Tribute for Two (dedicated to the memory of Irving Faigen and Robert Holloway) as part of the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society’s 2009–10 kickoff. Also on the program are Mozart’s Quartet in G major, K. 387, and Dvorak’s Quintet in G major, Op. 77 with bassist Timothy Cobb.

A very full schedule for new music fans this Saturday, May 30. Here’s the run down.

At 3:30, you can hear the amazing Rob Frankenberry on Vermont Public Radio in a broadcast of Daron Hagen and Paul Muldoon’s  Shining Brow. Find out info about VPR’s live Web stream here. (And Happy Birthday, Rob!)

At 8 p.m. the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society presents the Biava Quartet in the final concert of their Pittsburgh Commissions project. The Biava will perform Albert Glinsky’s Allegheny Quartet which he previewed for us below. The concert takes place at the New Hazlett Theater. Tickets are available at ProArts and at the door.

And finally, at 10 p.m. (or sometime after the hockey game) Pittsburgh native Mikebee will be DJ-ing at the Brillo Box in a show aptly titled 

“Shame on Yr Crocheted Jellyfish”

a jumparound anything-goes dance party with new and old sounds by

Mikebee (Amoeba Music: San Francisco, CA)

Depth One (412DNB, Fuzz, Hype: Pgh, PA)

Edgar Um (Hijack, Italo-Disco-boogie Unltd.: Pgh, PA)

21+

Cover is $3.

(HT Edgar Um)

As my kids’ Pokemon videos say, “Gotta catch ‘em all!”

More about Mikebee after the jump

Continue Reading “And the Winner for Best Promotional Image is…”

The Biava Quartet will premiere Albert Glinsky’s new PCMS-commissioned work on Saturday May 30 at the New Hazlett Theater. Below, Albert provides us with some insight into the inspiration for his Allegheny Quartet. (Cross-posted from the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society Blog.)

When the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society commissioned me to write a string quartet in honor of the 250th Anniversary of Pittsburgh, I decided to take the City as the actual subject of my quartet. My idea was to tell its history in music—to capture the spirit of Pittsburgh from its early days as a frontier to the west, through the struggles of its immigrant population in building the steel industry, to the pride of the shining modern metropolis of today.

For inspiration, I began by visiting such sites as the Fort Pitt Museum (dedicated to the French and Indian War), and the Bost Museum in Homestead which houses information on Pittsburgh’s steel heritage. I followed this with research on indigenous tunes and folk music associated with the City’s past. In all, I ended up incorporating eleven tunes from various ethnic groups, nationalities, and specific historical events into my Allegheny Quartet. Taken as a whole, the work is designed to provide the listener with a journey through the evolution of the City.

Movement I: The Land at Diondega

The title refers to the early Native American term for the land where the Allegheny and Monongehela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River. The movement begins with a traditional Iroquois “Dream Song,” intoned on the solo viola, evoking a Native American chanting alone to the trees in the virgin forest land that would be Pittsburgh. During the course of the movement, French troops begin to gather, represented by a traditional French song from 1755, “La Courte Paille.” The movement continues with the introduction of English soldiers through the period song, “The Little Turtle Dove.” The ensuing battle among these parties (and their associated melodies in the development section of this ‘sonata form’ movement), representing the French and Indian War, ends with the British melody emerging from the contrapuntal “struggle” of the tunes. The raising of the British flag over Fort Duquesne (soon after to be named Fort Pitt), was in November 1758, the very anniversary this piece was commissioned to commemorate.

Movement II: Magarac’s Dream

The title refers to “Joe Magarac,” the Eastern European immigrant’s equivalent of the American folk hero, John Henry. Magarac was a mythical figure about whom many stories of heroism were spun. In particular, Magarac was said to have performed feats of extraordinary strength in the Pittsburgh steel mills, and he was a symbolic hero of many steelworkers. The reality of the immigrant’s dream of prosperity, however, usually was one of poverty and despair with horrific working conditions and meager earnings. The title of the movement, then, has a double-edged meaning: it is the “dream” of the men who came to America to become new Magaracs, but at the same time, the shattering of that dream. The principal melody of the second movement, intoned first by the viola, is a beautiful song written by Andrew Kovaly, a Slovakian immigrant who worked in the Pittsburgh steel mills. “I Lie in the American Land” was penned in 1899 to comfort the wife of one of Kovaly’s steel mill friends, who, newly arrived in America with her children at the behest of her husband, learned that he had just been killed in the mills. The second movement is a spiraling elegy of free variations on this tune:

 
Ah, my God, what’s in America?
Very many people are going over there.
I will also go, for I am still young;
God, the Lord, grant me good luck there.

I’ll return if I don’t get killed
But you wait for news from me
Put everything in order,
Mount a raven-black horse,
And come to me, dear soul of mine.

But when she came to McKeesport,
She did not find her husband alive;
Only his blood did she find
And over it she bitterly cried.

“Ah my husband, what did you do,
Orphaned these children of ours?”
“To these orphans of mine, my wife, say
That I lie in America,
Tell them, wife of mine, not to wait for me,
For I lie in the American land.”

The Eastern European folk inflections in the music are an attempt to evoke the spirit of those whose lives were consumed by the steel mills. After the impassioned central section which builds to a climax in the high register, the music floats downward and falls into a traditional Greek tune, “The Immigrant’s Heartbreak,” a song akin to “I Lie in the American Land,” set as a little Greek dance. This tune winds down and we hear a final reprise of “I Lie in the American Land.” In the coda, the major key statement of a motive from the melody represents an element of hope, and the final consonant/dissonant chord that ends the movement is an affirmation of bitter pride.

Movement III: Men of Steel

For this scherzo movement I listened to recordings of actual Pittsburgh steel mill sounds and attempted to “translate” them into music. There are whistles, rumbling effects, sirens, and the sounds of crashing metal fragments. We find ourselves in the belly of a relentless industrial monster which, at times, opens up to reveal the various ethnic groups slaving inside it, only to swallow them up again. Out of the churning machine four tunes emerge, each representing the people of the steel or coal industries in Pittsburgh. The 19th century African American song, “Coal Diggin’ Blues,” heard in the unison cello and viola represents a sort of chanting “chain gang.” This tune moves immediately into the Slovakian song, “Aja Lejber Man,” (I’m a Labor Man), another melody associated with the mills. The setting suggests an Eastern European folk band with a violin, an accordion, and a pizzicato double bass. The two tunes then mingle in counterpoint, but are soon absorbed by the sounds of the mill machines. Two other tunes then emerge from the furnace. First, the machine noises morph into “Two Cent Coal,” a song set to a traditional Irish melody written about a coal workers’ incident in Pittsburgh in 1876, cast here in a jig-like setting. This is followed by “The Homestead Strike,” a famous protest song about the1892 incident in which Andrew Carnegie locked out striking steelworkers—a conflict which escalated into a deadly riot. The Homestead tune and “Two Cent Coal” then combine, but eventually disappear back into the steel mill with the machine triumphant all the way to the coda.

Movement IV: River City Mecca

The movement begins with a chorale-like setting of the 20th-century folksong, “Where the Old Allegheny and Monongehela Flow,” and continues with upbeat variations on the song, “Pittsburgh Town,” a tune sometimes attributed to Woodie Guthrie. A short interlude is followed by a minimalist-like section which builds and builds as we approach the modern city of Pittsburgh (the “Emerald City” in the distance) on Interstate 279. At a climactic moment, we break through a sonic wall, and the original Native American tune of the first movement is heard. A sense of déjà vu comes with an extended canon in which 8 of the tunes we’ve heard previously in the quartet overlap in counterpoint (The Dream Song, Coal Diggin’ Blues, Aja Lejber Man, and I Lie in the American Land play simultaneously, and then morph gradually into a counterpoint of The Homestead Strike, Two Cent Coal, Where the Old Allegheny and Monongehela Flow, and Pittsburgh Town). As the strains of each ethnic group bubble to the surface from their place in the foundations of the City, a triumphant coda emerges, and the movement ends in a musical evocation of a shining, modern city.

The Biava Quartet will perform on Saturday, May 30 at 8 p.m. at the New Hazlett Theater. Tickets are available through ProArts and at the door.

Mark Fromm and the Mobius Saxophone Quartet will premiere his new PCMS-commissioned work this Sunday at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. Below, Mark provides us with some insight into the inspiration for Steel, Slag, and Silicon. (Cross-posted at Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society.)

When I received this commission for Pittsburgh’s 250th birthday, I really wanted to use the city as inspiration for piece, and for the piece to be dedicated to the city. I initially thought of using the city’s myriad bridges as a source of inspiration (especially the numbered street bridges across the Allegheny: 6th, 7th, 9th, 16th, 31st, 40th, and 62nd). But as I read more about Pittsburgh’s history, I decided to go with a program that reflects different eras over the course of the city’s development.

The first movement, *Steel*, represents the rise of the steel industry vital to the city’s early prosperity. With the decline of the steel and manufacturing industries across Northeastern and Midwestern cities, Pittsburgh ended up in the heart of the “rust belt,” characterized by declining populations and loss of blue-collar jobs. The second movement represents this period of downturn; *Slag *is a by-product of steel consisting of the unwanted impurities. (Slag has actually played an important role in the shaping of Pittsburgh’s landscape; many ravines have been filled in and leveled off with it, and areas such as the Century III Mall and the Summerset neighborhood by Frick Park are built atop slag heaps, as slag makes a sturdy building foundation.) The third movement, Silicon, represents Pittsburgh’s revitalization and turn towards electronics, computers, and robotics as major contributors to the local economy; Pittsburgh now attracts people from all over the world with its reputation for leading technological advancements.

Fromm and the Mobius Quartet perform on Sunday, April 5 at 3 p.m. in Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. Tickets are available through ProArts and at the door.

On Friday, April 3, 7 p.m. WQED will broadcast their concert recording of Imani Winds’ February performance for Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society. The concert includes works by Santamaria, Husa, Schifrin, Ligeti, Coleman, and Piazzolla. If you missed the Imani Winds live when they were in Pittsburgh, you’ll want to tune in. And don’t forget that PNMNet has an extensive interview with Imani bassoonist and Pittsburgh native Monica Ellis a few posts down.

Witnessing a performance by Amy Williams and Helena Bugallo brings to mind science fiction-y terms like “shared consciousness” or “mind meld”.  They’re that tight. You can see the duo in action on Sunday afternoon when they premiere Williams’ Crossings for Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society’s Bridges Fine-tuned series. Williams is one of four composers PCMS commissioned to celebrate Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary. Along with music by Kurtag, Nancarrow, and Stravinsky, the duo will also include works by Machaut, Frescobaldi, Purcell, and J.S. Bach, which is nice; concerts should include old music every once in a while.

The Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo performs on Sunday March 8 at 3 p.m. in Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. Tickets are available through ProArts and at the door.

(Also, don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight!)

REMINDER: VOX CANCELED
This has been posted and e-mailed to a number of outlets, but if you missed it, there’s no Vox concert for Music on the Edge tonight.

Deadline to Buy New Music Day-pass is March 3
If you’ve been thinking about purchasing a New Music Day-pass to hear the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo and IonSound Project on March 8, you’ll need to do so by March 3.  More details here (opens pdf).