Pittsburgh New Music Net

Tonight and tomorrow night at Heinz Hall.

Heinz Hall

Tickets

The PSO’s principal bassoonist Nancy Goeres will premiere a new concert by Alan Fletcher (former head of CMU’s School of Music). In a program that also includes Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin, Wagner’s Prelude to Lohengrin, and Ravel’s La Valse.

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.

Pappert Center for Performance and Innovation, Room 322, Duquesne University
FREE

Join flutist Deidre Huckabay and pianist Katie Palumbo for an evening of contemporary music for flute and piano at Duquesne University’s Pappert Center for Performance and Innovation, Room 322.

Vynes by Eastman professor Robert Morris (world premiere)
Transparencies and Oiseau Miro by James Romig
5, 6, 4, 3, and Fantasia for Piano on a Theme by Bach by Federico Garcia
Sonata in D Major by Sergei Prokofiev

Hebron Presbyterian Church
$10 suggested donation

Music in the Country at Hebron Presbyterian Church presents the Freya String Quartet in concert on October 31st, 2010 at 3 pm. Join the FSQ for an enchanting afternoon of chamber music, including Beethoven’s witty String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, the world premiere of Sean Neukom’s At 7.0, and the youthful exuberance of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 3 in D Major. Admission is free and open to the public. $10 suggested donation at the door. A concert not to be missed! For more information call 412-371-2307 or visit

Jem Finer explains the score for Shortplayer.

There are not many people in the world who can be considered punk legends and masters of algorithmic composition, but Jem Finer is definitely one of them. One of the founders of legendary Celtic Punk band The Pogues, Finer is also the composer of Longplayer, a process composition for singing bowls that will play for 1,000 years before repeating.

On Friday, October 1, Pittsburgh will become the only city between London and San Francisco to host a Longplayer listening post. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Justin Hopper and the artistic vision of Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh’s Longplayer listening post will be be active, at Wood Street Galleries, through December 31.

Wood Street Galleries will inaugurate the listening post with a concert featuring the premiere of Shortplayer, a composition that uses a similar process as Longplayer, but with a one hour duration. Shortplayer will be performed by Finer and Roger Dannenberg on trumpets, Mark Fromm, Ben Opie, and Brandon Masterman on Reeds, Lou Stellute on tenor sax, and Roger Day on Tuba. Dave Bernabo played a major role in organizing the ensemble.

Jem Finer was kind enough to talk with me at Wood St. about Longplayer, Shortplayer, and some of the significant connections he sees between his process oriented compositions and his work with The Pogues. It’s fascinating to hear him describe his thoughts about each of these projects, and I know you’ll enjoy what he has to say.

Carnegie Music Hall

Tickets: $5 for adults, $4 for seniors,
free for Carnegie Mellon students with ID

The Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble will perform a concert featuring the premiere of Christian Kriegeskotte’s new work Tycho’s Machine. The program will also include Kathryn Salfelder’s 2007 work Cathedrals, Leonardo Ballada’s Cumbres, and Vincent Persichetti’s Divertimento for Band.

About Tycho’s Machine Kriegeskotte says,

The work is inspired by the movement of the planets through the Zodiac as demonstrated by one of the fabulous wonders of mechanico-scientific art we have inherited from the Renaissance; the Armillary Sphere. While astronomical instruments of this nature have existed for millennia (let us not deny credit to the Astrolabe and the wondrous Antikythera Mechanism), it is the fabulous splendor and esotericism of Renaissance pseudo-alchemical scientific investigation that I am most influenced by.

The title, “Tycho’s Machine” is in reference to one of the Armillary Sphere’s creators, the 16th century astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe. Indeed, growing up I knew the device by its more common moniker, the Brahe Sphere. While the Brahe Sphere is mechanical, I am also implying that the motion of the planets across the ecliptic plane and how we perceive their motion is no less than a form of great cosmic clockwork, finely tuned and ever advancing as we hurdle through space. In my piece, which I am considering a sort of static theme and variations, I present the listener with twelve sonorities (based upon instrumentation and articulation more so than harmonic structure) that each represent a sign in the Zodiac. As we travel through the Zodiac, unique musical events fade in and out representing the planets passing through each sign. These events are ultimately dominated by a constant eighth-note pulse throughout, representing the mechanism itself as it ticks and booms behind the scenes. It is this constant pulse I am considering a sort of abstract “theme” and each of the planets and signs are the variations.

Wood Street Galleries

$10/$8 students

Wood Street Galleries is proud to present the world premiere of “Shortplayer,” a new composition by renowned artist and composer Jem Finer. “Shortplayer” will be performed by Finer leading a group of Pittsburgh’s finest musicians at 9:30 p.m. Friday, October 1 at Wood Street Galleries, immediately following the Downtown Gallery Crawl. (“Shortplayer” concert admission is $10/$8 students.) The performance marks the Pittsburgh launch of Finer’s acclaimed artwork Longplayer, a 1,000-year-long composition that has played continuously since 1999, and which arrives in Pittsburgh as part of Wood Street Galleries’ sound-installation show, Audio Space (Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2010).

The installation of Longplayer at Wood Street Galleries marks another first, as Pittsburgh joins a remarkable list of sites with Longplayer listening posts including the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, and the Bibliotecha in Alexandria, Egypt. The Wood Street Galleries installation will be the first listening post anywhere between San Francisco and London.

About Longplayer

Created with London-based arts organization Artangel to mark the turn of the millennium, Longplayer is Finer’s response to the difficulty of representing and understanding time on a grander scale. At its core, Longplayer is a mathematically self-generating score—not random, but a set of principles that allow the score to continually create itself in a way that is aesthetically beautiful and musically unique. For 10 years, Longplayer has played through a computer system replicating the sound of Tibetan singing bowls; in 2009, it was performed live for the first time, for 24 hours on real singing bowls. It is not a computer-generated piece: As the hour-long segment “Shortplayer” goes to prove, it can be performed on any instruments, at any stage.

But more importantly, Longplayer is a set of concepts and questions: How to compose in a way immune to changes in the cultural perception of music, changes in technology, and changes in geography and politics? With the listening post and the performance of “Shortplayer,” Finer poses these questions to Pittsburgh’s audiences for the first time.

Jem Finer and the Musicians

Artist and composer Jem Finer is considered a unique voice in exploring issues combining science, technology, and philosophy such as “deep time” through sound installation, autonomous technology, and astronomical sculpture. He has been artist-in-residence at Oxford University’s department of Astrophysics and in 2005 won the PRS Foundation New Music Award for “Score for a Hole in the Ground.” As co-founder and co-writer with famed Irish-punk band The Pogues, Finer has helped create some of the most popular and influential British pop music of the past 25 years.

The musicians gathered to perform “Shortplayer” are some of Pittsburgh’s best-known avant-garde players. Music director David Bernabo has organized the group of horn players including Ben Opie (reeds), Roger Dannenberg (trumpet), Lou Stellute (saxophone), Mark Fromm (reeds), Brandon Masterman (reeds), and Roger Day (tuba).

Most Wanted Fine Art (www.most-wantedfineart.com)
5015 Penn Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Tickets $15, $10 students

Brooklyn based MIVOS quartet, described as an “excellent ensemble” (Time Out New York), presents a program of musical extremes.  In an evening of continuous music, a serene landscape of works by Guillaume de Machaut and György Kurtag will be punctuated by the brutal neo-romanticism of Wolfgang Rihm and young American composer Ashley Wang.  Lushly orchestrated works by East-Coast new music fixtures Missy Mazzoli and Anna Clyne will complete the spectrum.  Missy Mazzoli’s band Victoire played at Most Wanted Fine Arts this past august with a full set of her compositions. Her string quartet Death Valley Junction will be a Pittsburgh premiere. Of her compositions, Mazzoli says, “like most of my music, these pieces are really about transporting the listener to a dreamy and unfamiliar but very specific place.”

MIVOS is:
Olivia De Prato, Joshua Modney, violins
Victoir Lowrie, viola
Isabel Castellvi, cello

Program details:
Wolfgang Rihm: String Quartet #4
Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame
Gyorgy Kurtag: 12 Mikroludien
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Anna Clyne: Roulette
Ashley Wang: Retrogradable Dilution
Missy Mazzoli: Death Valley Junction

This Thursday and Friday, dancer Gia Cacalano will premiere new pieces that combine choreography and improvisation in dance with music by vibraphonist Jeff Berman and David Bernabo. The performances take place at The Space Upstairs (214 N. Lexington St, above Construction Junction) and you can see a preview of the show in this week’s City Paper. Find out more about the show here.

And don’t forget that Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s summer recital series continues this weekend as well when clarinetist Rachael Stutzman performs music by Bernstein, Copland, and a premiere by Federico Garcia. The concert takes place at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Friday at 7:30 and you can find out more about the show from the AMP homepage.

Lots of great new music coming up as we head into the fall and I’ll be updating the main events calendar in the near future.