Pittsburgh New Music Net

Host Skull and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble launched Kickstarter Campaigns last week, so crowd, get out their and SOURCE!

The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble campaign is to fund their commission of a new piece by Ted Hearne, because, as they put it:

“Hearne’s compositions are socially engaging, exploring the complexity of contemporary experience with visceral power and raw emotional beauty. His Katrina Ballads, a modern-day oratorio with a primary source libretto, offers a searing portrayal of the media’s take on Hurricane Katrina. Katrina Ballads was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus International Composers Award from Music Center the Netherlands, and the recording, on New Amsterdam Records, was named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. It’s also the work that Ted submitted to win our own Harvey Gaul Competition.”

Host Skull (one of David Bernabo’s ongoing projects) has already completed the recording of their next album, Black Mark, and are looking for help in the final stages of production and distribution.

“Your support will help us complete the final production stages for Host Skull’s Black Mark. This includes mastering, vinyl pressing, and packaging. We are planning to produce a gatefold vinyl package, heavily decorated by Joe Mruk’s beautifully intricate illustrations.”

Check out these projects, kick, and start.

Google, Bakery Square
Free, RSVP by February 15

Join PNME Artistic Director Kevin Noe, violinist Nathalie Shaw, and flutist Lindsey Goodman for this special performance at the intersection of virtuosity and technology. This is a unique opportunity to experience live music, delicious refreshments, and good times with your friends from PNME in one of the City’s most amazing buildings, Google’s Pittsburgh headquarters.

Space is limited. RSVP using the linked formby noon on Friday, February 15, 2013. A reservation is required! You will be unable to enter the building without one.

Program:

• Steve Ricks – Beyond the Zero for violin and electronics
• Russell Pinkston – Lizamander for flute and electronics
• Randall Woolf - Quicksilver for flute and violin

Molly Joyce is a young up-and-coming Pittsburgh-borned-and-raised composer. She’s studying composition at Julliard since 2011, and her music is getting a lot of attention around the country… ensembles, blogs, audiences, etc. Her piece Dollhouse was selected as one of the 5 finalists in the PNME/Alia Musica 2012-13 Competition, so it’s part of the program in Alia Musica’s concert Friday (Kresge Hall, 7:30, $15/12).

I had a nice talk with her last Friday. We had ‘skyped her in’ for one of the rehearsals, so we thought, why not have a conversation about things? Here’s some of it, check it out:

Kresge Theatre
Tickets

ALIA MUSICA Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble announce a concert of music by Pittsburgh-related composers Molly Joyce, David Liptak, David Stock, Sean Neukom, and James Ogburn. The concert will be held on Friday November 16, 7:30pm at Carnegie Mellon University’s Kresge Theatre.

In a joint, two-phase production supported in part by The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation, the two organizations invited submissions from composers anywhere who could demonstrate a connection to Pittsburgh. Out of nearly 50 eligible scores, directors Kevin Noe and Federico Garcia selected five of the pieces to be featured as finalists in the first phase of the competition—the Finalists Concert, where the Alia Musica ensemble will perform the five compositions.

The program includes two world premieres, by Sean Neukom and David Stock, and Pittsburgh premieres by David Liptak and Molly Joyce.  The program features ensembles between 5 and 15 performers.

After the concert, a winner will be chosen by the artistic directors and other staff members from Alia Musica and the PNME. The composer of the winning piece will be commissioned for a new piece for the PNME, to be premiered in their upcoming season in phase 2 of the joint competition. Input from the audience will be also be recognized through an Audience Choice Award.

The concert will be followed by a reception at a local restaurant to be announced, where audience members are invited to join the musicians and the five composers, all of whom will be present.

The finalists

David Liptak, composition faculty at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, wrote Passing of Memory in 2003 for Steven Stucky (the 2011-12 PSO Composer in Residence) and Ensemble X, who premiered it in Ithaca in the same year. Scored for woodwinds, trumpet, piano, two percussionists, and string quintet, the piece has also been performed and recorded by Brad Lubman and Eastman’s Musica Nova.

Pittsburgh-native Molly Joyce is a composition student at Julliard since 2011. Already featured by Alia Musica in the Spring of 2011, her recent piece Dollhouse, for chamber orchestra, is the result of a commission from up-and-coming ensemble Contemporaneous.  Joyce’s piece has added to the increasing attention her music is drawing among specialized media, including blogs I Care if you Listen and Prufock’s Dilemma, which featured the work in September 2012.

James Ogburn’s Centric was one of the 11 world premieres in Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s inaugural 2007 concert. One of the earliest pieces still in the ensemble’s repertory, it is scored for woodwinds, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello. Mr. Ogburn has acted as head of the Composition Department at Bangkok University in Thailand since 2010.

Pittsburgh’s legendary David Stock will have his new quintet Five Four-Letter Words premiered by the Alia Musica Chamber Players in the Finalists Concert. Scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion, the five-movement piece is a musical realization of five particularly suggestive words: Step, Wisp, Chip, Heat, and Spin.

Sean Neukom is the founder of Symbiotic Collusion, the pioneering arts-and-music business associated, among others, with the Freya String Quartet. At 7.1, to be premiered in the Finalists Concert, stemmed from an original composition for string quartet—most recently performed by Freya in the Hear/Now Festival in 2012—now re-imagined and re-scored for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, marimba, violin and double-bass. The fast-paced piece is elevated by contemplative passages, where part of the ensemble is called to sustain a minor second in four crystal glasses.

Alia Musica/PNME Commission Competition Finalists’ Concert

Kresge Theater, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

Friday November 16, 2012, 7:30pm

Tickets at the door: $15 ($12 for students/seniors).

Discount advance purchase: $10 available at www.alia-musica.org

Sean Neukom - At 7.1 (premiere)

David Stock - Five Four-letter Words (premiere)

David Liptak - Passing of Memory

- intermission -

James Ogburn - Centric

Molly Joyce - Dollhouse

- reception to follow with the finalist composers

Performance by Alia Musica Pittsburgh, conducted by Federico Garcia

Details, tickets, and directions at www.alia-musica.org

July flees away, and along with it, the 2012 Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble season. PNME’s final concert, “To the Earth,” will feature Rzewski’s work by the same title with Cage’s 4’33″ and Crumb’s Idyll for the Misbegotten, all anchored by Messiaen’s classic Quartet for the End of Time. the last concert is tonight in just a few hours.

The end of the PNME season doesn’t mark the end of an exciting summer of new music in the Burgh though, as Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra presents “The Looking Glass,” a concert including music by Philip Glass alongside transcriptions of jazz, pop, and New Wave music. ELCO’s energetic summer of music making is yet another sign of how vital the Burgh’s new music scene is. The concert takes place on Sunday night at the Union Project at 7 pm.

A reminder to all Pittsburgh-related composers: this Friday is the deadline for submission to the Call for Scores and Commission Competition with Alia Musica and the PNME, a new opportunity for Pittsburgh-related composers that offers both a performance of an existing work and a commission for a new piece.

Composers are invited to submit:

1 piece
for 5–15 performers,
7–15′ in length,
by July 15, 2012.

There is no entry fee. 5-6 finalists will be performed by Alia Musica in the Fall of 2012,
and out of that concert a winning composer is selected for a $4,000 commission by the PNME, for premiere in the Summer of 2013.

Submission is by email: a score and an mp3 of any available recordings (no MIDI). Full guidelines here

Nice job by the trad media highlighting some of the innovative music happening this weekend. Andy Druckenbrod previews Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble in the Post-Gazette as does Mark Kanny in the Trib. But in all the (justified) hoopla about the new PNME season, don’t miss out on Relative Positions which is featured in the City Paper this week. Relative Positions is an interdisciplinary event that includes a new piece by the Burgh’s own David Gerard Matthews with ELCO performing.

Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble’s 2012 Season starts tonight! As promised, here is an interview with PNME flutist Lindsey Goodman and violinist Nathalie Shaw. They talk about their big solo pieces on this weekend’s opening concert—Nathalie will play a work by Maderna called Pièce pour Ivry and Lindsey will give the professional premiere of Joseph Schwantner’s Taking Charge—and they demonstrate their page turning techniques for Randall Woolf’s Quicksilver. You won’t want to miss that. And what else… Oh Yeah! Fashion!

New music fans have a lot to choose from this weekend as Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble gets underway, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh launches a new summer season that includes new mini-music dramas with each performance, and ELCO premieres a new work by David Gerard Matthews, On the Origin of the World, with Shanna Simmons Dance—part of Relative Positions at the Union Project.

And what am I doing to celebrate July Fourth you ask? Why interviewing THEEEEEEE One and Only Lindsey Goodman about the upcoming pnme season, of course. Look for lots of good insights from Lindsey is this space soon.

City Theatre
Tickets

“A Quartet for the End of Time”
PNME explores the violent relationship between humankind and the earth we inhabit.

To the Earth
Frederic Rzewski

Quartet for the End of Time
Olivier Messiaen

4’33″
John Cage

Idyll for the Misbegotten
George Crumb