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:
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=7267For 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).
Tonight, Cliff Colnot and other outstanding guest conductors will lead Alia Music Pittsburgh in works by Jimenez, Garcia, Heap, Gillespie, and Livengood. It’s at Synod hall at 8. Full details here. And if you’re near New York City tonight, Talujon Percussion is celebrating an evening of premieres, including Eric Moe’s Danger: Giant Frogs, which, ya know, be prepared! Here’s the skinny on that concert.
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).
Please note that the Cliff Colnot’s Lecture at Pitt is on September 28 at 1 p.m., not September 30. Good help is hard to find. Here is the full and correct information from the Pitt Music Department Web site.
CORRECTION: THIS LECTURE IS ON SEPTEMBER 28, not September 30 as originally posted.
New music conductor extraordinaire Cliff Colnot will give a lecture for Pitt’s Department of Music in conjunction with the Alia Music Conductor’s Festival (also on September 30th the concert is on September 30, not the lecture). In the past decade Cliff Colnot has emerged as a distinguished conductor and a musician of uncommon range. One of few musicians to have studied orchestral repertory with Daniel Barenboim, Colnot has served as assistant conductor for Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Workshops for young musicians from Israel, Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries. Colnot has also worked extensively with Pierre Boulez and has served as assistant conductor to Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He regularly conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he recently recorded Richard Wernick’s The Name of the Game for Bridge Records, and he collaborates regularly with the internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. Colnot has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW series since its inception and is principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an orchestra he has conducted since 1994. Colnot also conducts Contempo at the University of Chicago, the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, and orchestras at Indiana University. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony.
Over the years he has devoted to the performance of new music with many ensembles around the world, Maestro Colnot has collected a series of notation guidelines for scores to be the most efficient and faithful vehicle for the realization of the composer’s vision. In this lecture he will share these guidelines and the experiences behind them, touching also on orchestration and rehearsal practices that conductors, performers, and composers will benefit from.
IonSound Project performs Nathan Currier’s A Kafka Cantata, Christian Kriegeskotte’s Triangulum, and Gracie Sutherland’s Overture to a Zombie Apocalypse.
IonSound Project, Pitt’s Ensemble-in-Residence, will perform new music by Pitt graduate composers Aaron Brooks, Charles Corey, Charles Lwanga, Sookyung Sul, and Jeremy Woodruff.
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.
Must see TeeVee! Jess Hohman videotaped an extensive interview with Roger Zahab at Pitt’s Music building, in anticipation of entelechron’s all-Cage concert at The Andy Warhol Museum on March 5. The interview happened over two days, and on the first, the fire alarms went off and everyone had to clear out of the building. But it was an unusually nice day, so Jess and Roger continued the interview outside while the rest of us milled around wondering what to do next. Jess worked some of the outdoor sounds in throughout the video, and I suspect Cage would have enjoyed this very much.
Pianist Donna Amato, new music champion on the faculty of both CMU and Pitt, performed Geir Tveitt’s Piano Concerto No. 4, Northern Lights, with Musica Nova in Scottsdale on October 17. Musica Nova produced a very nice video of the performance as well. Check it aht.
