Pittsburgh New Music Net

I feel fine! Yeah, I know I disappeared for a while after the IonSound Project. I was really tired, OK? And new music stuff tends to slow down a bit in December when presenters work more holiday fare into their programs anyway. But, good news! You can go to a holiday concert this weekend and hear new music. Oakland Girls Choir is performing in Pittsburgh on Friday and Saturday night and those programs will include the premiere of a new song cycle by Andy Kohn, composer, bassist with the Opera/Ballet Orchestra, and Professor of Music at WVU. Andy’s new work will feature Laura Knoop Very, soprano, and Raymond Very, tenor.

As a proud papa of an Oakland Girls Training Choir member, I know first hand what a treasure OGC is for our city, and it’s great that they are celebrating the season by unveiling a new composition by a Pittsburgh composer. Here’s more information about the concert.

On another subject, I just find out that a film I scored for Will Zavala is screening at the Melwood Screening Room this Tuesday night for this month’s Film Kitchen. It’s called Virgil Cantini: The Artist in Public and features lots of Cantini’s public art that you have probably seen around town without necessarily knowing who made it. Check it out if you can.

IonSound Project presents the first works from their Commissions for the Future project this Sunday night.

IonSound Project’s concert this Sunday would strike me as particularly significant even if I didn’t have a new piece on the program (but yes, it helps!). There are in fact, three new works on the concert, all by Pittsburgh composers: Christian Kriegeskotte, Nizan Leibovich, and myself. That in and of itself is important, since it illustrates once again that the Burgh is a center for the creation—not just the consumption—of art. But more important still is the reason why there are three new works on this concert, namely IonSound Project’s new Commissions for the Future program. IonSounders have been actively engaging members of the community to support commissions for new works and this is the first program to showcase the fruits of their efforts. It’s a great start to what we hope will grow into an ongoing partnership between a genuinely excellent new music ensemble and the local community.

As usual, the concert will be a treat to for the eyes and the ears. All the musical compositions reference visual art that will be projected on screen, and Rob Frankenberry’s transcription of  Pictures at an Exhibition will feature art by children from the Falk School. My piece is actually a collaboration with artist Ryan Day and his stunning digital animation is being presented for the first time as well. I hope you can come out and join us at Pitt’s Bellefield Hall Auditorium on Sunday night at 7. Tickets are $15 and $10 and you can learn more about the program here.

Bellefield Hall Auditorium
Tickets at the door only: $15 for general admission, $10 for students and seniors.

Sight meets sound in IonSound Project‘s second program of the season, “From the Mundane to the Macabre.”  Packed with world premieres, this concert represents the first installment of IonSound’s Commissions for the Future project—a fundraising initiative to finance new compositions.  The group will perform commissions by three Pittsburgh composers, Christian Kriegeskotte, Philip Thompson, and Nizan Leibovich. Each work on the program is inspired by, or created in collaboration with a visual art form as promised by this season’s theme:  “aMuse, a Season of Inspiration and Entertainment.”

The range of inspiration spans from 16th century woodcuts to a brand new video collaboration. Christian Kriegeskotte’s Dances of Death explores the sonic possibilities of unusual instrument pairings, and are inspired by the wonderful miniature illustrations of 16th century German painter and engraver Hans Holbein.  In stark contrast, Nizan Leibovich’s Schéhérazade – “…Elle vit apparaître le matin. Elle se tut discrètement” is inspired by the colorful and joyous papercut work by French painter and artist Henri Matisse.  The title roughly translates to:  “…She lived to see the morning appear. She discreetly fell silent”, and evokes the intrigue and mystery of the compelling tale of Arabian princess Scheherazade that has influenced artists and composers for centuries. The third world premiere on the program, Kecow hit tamen, is a multimedia collaboration by composer Philip Thompson and artist Ryan Day which explores one of the popular legends surrounding the origins of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina—namely that they are descended from the Hatteras (or Croatan) and Raleigh’s Lost Colony. Thompson, whose father is a member of the Lumbee Tribe, based his instrumental and electroacoustic music on the few remaining words of Carolina Algonquian language spoken by the Hatteras, while Day used common images from Lumbee art to create a multi-layered digital animation. Kecow hit tamen can mean either “What is this? or “What is your name?”

A visual collaboration between Rob Frankenberry’s new arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition  and a presentation of musically inspired artwork by students from the Falk School completes the program.   IonSound musicians will visit with the students in the preceding weeks to encourage them to create artwork that focuses on two main ideas–recreating their own versions of Hartmann’s existing artwork, the inspiration behind Pictures at an Exhibition and replicating the experience of viewing an exhibit through video.  Join us on Sunday, November 20th at 7:00 pm at Bellefield Hall Auditorium in Oakland for this exciting program!

Ever wondered what a thru-notated work by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE would be like?  Probably not.  Well, don’t worry about that, come anyway! The night will begin w/ “Volunteers Collective Revisited”.
The Volunteers Collective was (& might still be) an open context for improvisation that started in BalTimOre in 1989 & that became a context for exploring CircumSubstantial Playing in Pittsburgh & beyond from 1997-1998.
Experience footage from this long-term project w/ both old & new sounds!
Also Roger Dannenberg will perform using Patterns, an original visual  programming language for live coding — generating  music using software that is written on-the-fly. And, finally, the thru-notated skeleton of some Volunteers Collective CircumSubstantial Playing ”Reductionism (#6)” + “Interpretive Duncing” + “Artifacts” by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & featuring the considerable skills & sensitivities of Ben Opie, Roger Dannenberg, Ben Harris, Kenny Haney, Kerrith Livengood and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE.  8:00 at Garfield Artworks.

Host Skull, the duo of David Bernabo and Will Dyar, released a new composition on Chicago’s Contraphonic label. The piece, titled “Fourth River”, juxtaposes arrhythmic electronics with lush sections of classical guitar, vibraphone, and percussion. To flesh out the lineup, this instance of Host Skull also includes vibraphonist Jeff Berman, modular synth-ist Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl, and a trio of Ben Harris/Kerrith Livengood/Brandon Masterman. The composition comes as an MP3 along with an essay on Pittsburgh by Contraphonic label owner Ben Schulman and photography by CMU’s Alternative Photo Process class, led by professor Elizabeth Raymer Griffin.

The package can be purchased through Contraphonic here for the very reasonable price of $3.99.

Host Skull’s first official show will this Friday, April 29th at The Frame on Carnegie Mellon’s campus at Forbes and Margaret Morrison. Host Skull will be represented by David Bernabo and Jeff Berman.

Pittsburgh’s Fourth River is the sometimes mythologized, sometimes forgotten river that flows below the surface. More accurately, it is an aquifer that is given the name Wisconsin Glacial Flow. The visible manifestations of the river can be seen in the fountain at Point State Park and in some of the downtown drinking water. When the Fourth River is mentioned, grand notions of a flowing subterranean river come to mind. This is in direct contrast to what is actually is: sand, gravel, and a bit of water running through it.

Watch a video preview of the piece here.

Keeping it short and sweet because I’m heading up to Wisconsin today for the revolution for the premiere of my new song cycle. Free Wisconsin!

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!

Alia Musica Pittsburgh returns January 30th with their annual Winter Chamber Concert; featuring the best of this summer’s recital series, including pieces by composers near and far, such as Burkhardt Reiter, Steven Stucky, Francis Poulenc, and many others.  Come join us at James Laughlin Hall on the Chatham University campus (music building) at 7:00 PM.  Tickets are $12 at the door, $10 in advance (through the website www.alia-musica.org, or from an Alia Musica Pittsburgh member).

Short notice, but there’s a fascinating event happening next Friday (the 17th) at 1107 Greenfield Ave. — a festive holiday party/experimental music show. If you’re a fan of food, beer, the end of the semester, Christmas, creepy basements, apples, and awesome improvisatory music, or even just some of the aforementioned things, you don’t want to miss this one. Music starts at 8:00, party continues, all are invited to stay and partake. A modest donation ($3) to help defray refreshment costs is requested, beverages and food welcomed.

Music made fresh! Come out to CMU’s Kresge Theatre this Saturday at 5pm for the Contemporary Ensemble’s fall 2010 debut, featuring a lively program (see below!) and a variety of guest student conductors, in addition to music director Ronald Zollman.

Roberto Sancasto Calvo – E-Octet
Gavin Bryars – Creamer Etudes
Keun Oh, conductor
Benoit Mernier – Les Niais de Solophe
Maestro Ronald Zollman, conductor
Sofia Gubaidulina – Concordanza for Chamber Ensemble
Jan Pellant, conductor
Hans Werner Henze – Quattro Fantasie
Daniel Nesta Curtis, conductor

Gia Cacalano presents
THE SPACE UPSTAIRS

This Friday and Saturday, Gia Cacalano will premiere new pieces that combine choreography and improvisation in dance with music by vibraphonist Jeff Berman and (ahem) myself, David Bernabo.  The four dancers will do a few group pieces, some solos, and a very great duo.  We’ll be performing five pieces each night, and (if I can say so) it is turning out very nicely.  There is a nice article in this week’s Pittsburgh City Paper that discusses the motivations for the dance, so I’ll mention a few things about the music.  The first piece, which lasts roughly 30 minutes, combines electronic soundscapes, text, and freely improvised sections for vibraphone and amplified objects.  The electronic score was assembled from closed-circuit electronics that I recorded in 2004.  The text piece is a newer piece where each word is slowed down by 1% until the ending text is deep bass rumbling.  And of course, there is much more…

Hope to see you there.  Details below:

Friday, August 20 and Saturday, August 21, 2010
8PM, $12 students, $15 general admission
@ THE SPACE UPSTAIRS
214 N. Lexington St (above Construction Junction)
Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, PA
$15, $12 Students
More info: 4120758-3265

Gia Cacalano / Movement / Choreography / Concepts
Allie Greene / Movement
Jasmine Hearn / Movement
Beth Ratas / Movement
Jeff Berman / Vibraphone
David Bernabo / Electronics, Percussion