Friday, 6 Nov


Blindfolded and sitting onstage in total darkness, the composer of the last piece on the program started out the evening by playing a soprano saxophone (handed to him by an "anonymous helper") for the first time in his life, in John Cage's 1969 "Sound Anonymously Received."  Watching the performer blindly grope the instrument was suspenseful, almost painful, as he repeatedly heaved great breaths, blowing air through the instrument, which turned to discordant wailing sounds after a few seconds.  A few people in the audience laughed to see him struggling with the sax, while others waited tensely to see what he would produce from the instrument next.  His flush improvisation felt almost like a composed out piece, and served as a kind of foreshadowing for what was to be heard in his own composition later in the program.

Reiko Fueting's  2006 "red wall" for solo guitar followed.  Dan Lippel's expressive performance captured well the cold but lively atmosphere of the piece, and its unpredictable gestures and phrases seemed to be telling a story: though the language the music was speaking sounded unfamiliar, a narrative could be clearly felt. 

Carmel Raz took the stage next for Inhyun Kim's intense, perilous sounding "Seeds disperse in the air to come."  A violin solo at breakneck speed, the piece had a fiddle feel (if the barn were on fire), and brief were the breath-catching moments when the rhythm screamed to a halt for double stopped chords, before the quick pace resumed. 

The night finished with Matthew Hough's viscerally engaging "Irreverant Overtones," for solo bassoon.  Wailing, then grinding overtones preceded silent ghost notes, air being blown into the bassoon and its keys being pressed without any tones coming out.  The piece was a variable alternation between volatile overtones and ghost music sections, all the while so severely sparse as to make the audience self-conscious of their own noise.  Particularly unnerving to watch were bassoonist Annie Lyle's fingers moving rapidly through the toneless ghost sections, the clicking of her bassoon's keys creating sounds like water droplets.  The longest piece on the program, "Irreverant Overtones" hit the audience with all the physical drama of the Cage piece, times ten.


for more info on Music Equals, visit them at musicequals.org.

Saturday, 5 Sept


Tinged red and blue by colorful light-bulbs and sitting on the floor around the stage area, the audience at Music ='s benefit party were taken unawares as the performance began unannounced, with a French love song for two voices by medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut.  Jumping forward approximately 500 years, this was followed by a nimble bassoon solo from 1969 by American composer Vincent Persichetti. 
Moving ahead another 40 years, two works written this year were next on the program. 
Matthew Hough made his listeners "uncomfortable, but in a cool way" (according to one audience member) with his candid work for spoken word and alto flute, entitled "You Should All Be Shot."  The flutist, breathing into her instrument and clacking its keys, performed a silent piece while the composer read aloud five reminiscences culled from his time living in Harlem (the title of the piece was once shouted at him while walking along a street in the neighborhood).  The result was humorous, moving, and disturbing, the autobiographical element rendering the experience intensely personal.
Next up was a piece for violin and cello by David Utzinger. The two instruments' graceful musical lines engaged in intimate conversation, creating finely hued music in three movements.
The performance ended with an improvisation for three electric guitars, bassoon, and alto flute, aptly titled "Madness."


check out Music = New Sound at Cafe Orwell in Bushwick this Friday, Sept. 25th.  

Sun, 28 June


Playing as loud as humanly possible, Loadbang roared into their set with Silhouette by Matthew Hough, a piece that has been of late the group's signature opener.  A few seconds of this shocking cacophony, then an abrupt halt and split second of silence follow, after which the music returns, with a dramatic drop in volume, the baritone intoning a poem.  In a text-setting that is partly tongue-in-cheek, the baritone sings a brief and tranquil solo, extending words over several notes (as in the first syllable of the phrase "swatting flies").  The instruments return---equally tranquil and with a touch of melancholy---for the end of the poem, which takes a more serious turn in its final line, "...there was a garden, there exists one in each of us, a longing, still vibrating."  At this the voice falls silent and the instruments sustain sky-high notes, hovering so closely to each other that one feels the beating of sound waves against the ear.  

Next on the program was Story by John Cage, in which the text of a poem by Gertrude Stein is broken apart and repeated, spoken simultaneously by all four members of the group in a kind of rap.  This was followed by a free improvisation, a regular feature of Loadbang's performances.  Before their last piece, trumpeter Andy Kozar added "I should mention that Matt Hough, the composer of the first piece---who just walked in---is here," at which the audience laughed and clapped (Hough's piece was encored at the end of the concert).  Loadbang ended their set with an adept performance of the minimalist-esque "Waiting for the Man" by David Lang, based on the song by Lou Reed.

Sat, 16 May


Music =’s latest concert, “Talking Tree, Silent Book,” drew a sizable and excitable crowd to Bushwick’s Cafe Orwell on Saturday night.

Ya-Jhu Yang’s Silent Yet Talking had three sopranos singing three undulating, floating lines, at times moving independently of each other and at others lining up to move together.  There were moments when all three voices swirled upwards into an extended climax of surprisingly loud volume, which were followed by quieter, semi-spoken sections.  The piece ended with exhalations followed by all three singing simultaneously to form a chord.

Two cellists took the stage for Inhyun Kim’s the eye between light and heart.  Glissandos work to a climax at the high end of the fingerboard, and one of the cellists begins to yelp unexpectedly.  As the cellists’ fingers are scraping and caressing their cellos, they make similar sounds with their voices, squeaking, screaming, sighing.  Pretty sounds pop out of the turbulence, making the occasional shriek all the more delightfully jarring.

Performed by voice and percussion duo The Silent Book, Matthew Hough’s Apologies combined spoken word with the metallic reverberations of crotales; the result was a mixture of dark humor and gravitas.  The words spoken are parsed and rearranged apologies (for offensive outbursts) made by five public figures, and the two performers take turns speaking lines of these apologies separately, in unison, or simultaneously on different texts.  The crotales interludes are appealing in their delicacy, the vibrations of the discs hypnotizing; the glittering calm of their music serves to underline the error of the apologies.  The crotales are also used to emphasize certain words (fear, hate), and at one point are played with violin bows, creating tremulous waves of sound.  An extended and dramatic moment when both performers repeatedly strike a single note while speaking different texts simultaneously occurs toward the end, followed by free floating, quivering crotale gestures, which dissipate into the silent air.

The Silent Book finished up the program with an arrangement by Matthew Hough of Morton Feldman’s Only.  The crotales begin with a stream of notes, amidst whose reverberations the vox enters, the warmth of his voice creating a nice contrast to the shimmery crotales.  The phrases of the original piece are separated by more shimmers from the metal discs, and occasionally a vox note is picked up and extended by a bowed crotale.  The effect is that of an earnest, lonely voice, intimate within a vast space of star-like reverberations.

The full program:
Carolyn Chen, Pears (2007)
Ya-Jhu Yang, Silent Yet Talking (2009)
Inhyun Kim, the eye between light and heart (2009)
Matthew Hough, Apologies (2009)
Morton Feldman, Only (1947), arr. for voice and percussion by Matthew Hough (2009)