 Gavett and Schubert channel Stockhausen Sun, 21 JuneAppearing from afar, singers Jeffrey Gavett and Megan Schubert entered the outdoor pavilion in Sakura Park with solemn faces and matching black, vaguely-religious outfits. Participating in the Make Music New York! festival, the two sat cross-legged and facing each other to perform "Am Himmel wandre Ich..." ("In the sky I am walking..."), a partially theatrical work for two unaccompanied voices by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Beyond the skilled use of voices in song and other various sounds, the performance featured Native American poetry, the strewing of flower petals, and a brief period of rapturous dancing (passionately performed by Gavett). The chirping birds, as well as the rain that began to pour halfway through the concert, felt as if they were part of the piece's orchestration. At the end of the performance, the two singers---still singing---got up and walked off through the rain, and could be heard continuing to sing a block after they disappeared from sight.
 Asami Tamura playing toy piano Fri, 29 May
Playing a grand piano-shaped toy piano, Asami Tamura opened her concert Friday night with an impassioned and raucous performance of Invention No. 1 by J.S. Bach. Intriguing about the performance was the disconnect between the extremely precise nature of the piece and the equally imprecise nature of the instrument, inside which the hammers (controlled by the keys) often and easily strike more than one metal bar by accident. There followed a Suite for Toy Piano by John Cage---"I think you will find them similar" Tamura said of the Cage and Bach pieces---Kreisler's gloomy Liebesleid ("Feel melancholy about it!"), and a work by Yoshinao Nakata, also on a sad theme, "The Departing Spring." After a blazing performance of Mozart's athletic "Rondo all turca," the latter half of which was played from memory when a gust of wind blew down Tamura's music, the audience was asked to leave the Cafe due to a small fire in the basement of the building. Tamura reportedly finished out her concert later that night after a team of firemen deemed the Cafe safe. Sun, 31 May
Eric km Clark's exPAT: Deprivation Music No. 4, performed by electric guitar quartet Dither and 8 other electric guitarists, filled the World Financial Center's Winter Garden with a sound like a pipe organ being played at full volume. The guitarists were each wearing headphones piping out white noise (hence the "deprivation"), such that no player could hear the other. The result was an impressive, undulating wash of patterns, and the children present at the marathon either danced excitedly, or plugged up their ears as they were rushed from the audience.
 Matthew Hough and Ian Antonio play Hough's 'Apologies' Sat, 16 MayMusic =’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)
 Friday, 1 May
Wet Ink:
(Alvin Lucier) amplified triangle, struck repeatedly, loud and at the same time every audience noise felt just as amplified. each strike at the metal creating several tones, higher and lower notes swinging back and forth---shimmer, sharp, percussionist Ian Antonio standing very still, eyes downcast. as sound gets louder, gets more painful, crawling inside the ear; shards of sound glittering many different colors as piece progresses. (Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra - 1988)
(Sam Pluta) drum kit loud, sporadic; scrapings, whining, gurgling from the rest of the ensemble. weeping, wailing, pounding creates various grotesque shapes, these punctuated by periodic, relatively static moments: eerie, lonely. such a moment ends the piece, where all is breathy, fuzzy as electric guitar notes ring through clear and pure. (Standing Waves - 2009)
(Chiyoko Szlavnics) two violins slowly swoon upwards with sine tones, while accordion sustains. brief pause during which accordion lets out great sigh as its air is pressed out of it. swooning resumes. (Triptych for AS (for my mother) - 2006)
(Jeff Snyder) composer-made instruments (bass manta, resophonic manta, treble and tenor contravielles, birl) have warm, fuzzy sound. piece sounds as if from distant past or distant future. two singers (one also playing tenor contravielle) sing in quasi-medieval, quasi-country duet three texts by Paracelsus (these two also members of Snyder's band), sharing syllables throughout the second text. bass manta gestures as if accompanying a recitative in the last section, and birl sounds like mystic bird. (Concerning the Nature of Things - 2009)
(Mathias Spahlinger) high, thin notes from bass clarinet, trombone, cello and piano. pianist plucks inside his instrument. texture sparse, piece is cold, tense; an unexpected outburst when all play together, busily moving until: abrupt halt on same note--> note becomes rhythmic, repeated at low volume, suspense created. release. (gegen unendlich ['infinite regress'] - 1995)
 Friday, 24 April
Composer Matthew Welch walks into the room, playing repetitive, minimalistic sounding musical figures on the bagpipes, his music complemented by choreographer Rachel Bernsen's precise movements, tracing geometrical shapes in the air with her limbs.
Thus, "Singular Simple Present" (aka "Traversing Mad-hatten" sans dancer) served as a short prelude to the main event of the night, the premiere of Welch's Jorge Luis Borges-inspired opera, second in a series of short operas with librettos drawn from the Argentine writer.
Lasting about thirty minutes, Borges and The Other #2 is an opera for Welch's ensemble Blarvuster and two male voices, Older Borges and Younger Borges, the two being the same man, meeting each other on a riverside bench.
The opening is upbeat and jig-like, abruptly halting before the beginning of Scene 1, in which the younger and older Borges confront each other, the older proving his reality to the younger. The music is fluid, mysterious, the flute commenting with short melodies periodically over the current of sound coming from the rest of the ensemble (viola, vibraphone, electric guitars, bass guitar, drums). There is a brief pause, in which the sound floats in the air, and then the music resumes as the voices join. Particularly nice was the pulsating bed of reverberation resulting from the vibraphone and electronic guitar tones' sympathetic vibrations inside the open piano, through which the instruments moved in gentle, continuous motion. The upbeat jig returns at the end of this scene, and at the end of each of the scenes, jerking the listener out of the fantasy of Borges and into a visceral reality.
Like a strong light coming through a dark glass, the music of Scene 2 was somber but motion-heavy, the constancy of the sound rendering the music somewhat hypnotizing, while Borges' older and younger selves reminisce/foretell.
Scene 3 is upbeat again, with a minor feel, and impressive swells in volume come from the ensemble before each entrance of the voices. Here, at the end of the piece, the older Borges suggests "we meet again tomorrow, on this same bench that exists in two times and two places."
 Friday, 17 April
Would you like a cookie with that new music?
The first annual New Music Bake Sale, an unusual combination of baked goods and music performances, drew a large crowd of composers, performers, and new music enthusiasts Friday night.
Held in the dining hall of First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights, several groups set up tables displaying their concert schedules, CDs and Frankenberry-inspired baked goods, to be perused in between performances. Starting off the festivities, Loadbang's performance of Matthew Hough's "Silhouette," a blast of sound followed by quiescent suspense, literally jolted the audience to attention (one audience member admitted to having inadvertently screamed as the piece exploded into existence).
The raucous styling of Newspeak---an experimental ensemble with rock-rebellious overtones---was featured later on in the evening, followed up by the electric guitar quartet Dither, whose set engulfed the audience in increasingly louder and louder interweaving guitar threads.
 Thursday, 2 April
Glad to be home (if only briefly), Asobi Seksu thoroughly gratified an audience apparently athirst for their music at a sold-out Bowery Ballroom on Thursday night.
A giant wave of sound continually breaking against the ears, Asobi Seksu's music came on bright and visceral, and an involved light show complemented the band's energized stage presence. The mixture of distortion-walls from the guitar and timbral nuance from the keys/lead vox was made complete by a solid and rocking rhythm section.
The last song of the very full set grew to ear-splitting intensity, the lead singer abandoning her keyboard to play the drums at one point during the extended chaotic outro. Eager for more, the audience called the band back for a two-song encore. The first encore was perhaps the calmest song of the entire set; chaos was reestablished by the end of the second and final song.
Asobi Seksu return to NYC April 16 at Irving Plaza.
 Monday, 30 March
"Wow, Monday night and there's, like, people listening!" Sharon Van Etten was shyly pleased by the healthy turnout for her solo set Monday night at Cake Shop. Drawing the crowd into her quiet, intimate music with a warm voice, rich guitar sound, and solemn face, Van Etten played a full set (including an encore) of pretty, semi-depressing songs.
"My Dad really wanted to be here tonight, but he's doing his taxes. He's really stressed out. He asked me to play this song," called "Have You Seen," Van Etten's lips barely moving as she sang the twisting, floating melody.
Singing in a low voice, Van Etten's eyes glanced up at the ceiling periodically during "I Am Giving Up on You," which featured hypnotic guitar-picking.
Other highlights included a cover of "Save Me a Place" by Fleetwood Mac, and the dark "For You," from her new album.
"I'm Sharon, and you can talk to me. I'm approachable."
 Tuesday, 24 March
Passing around a hat full of little slips of paper bearing the names of various contemporary composers, pianist Jenny Q Chai
had her audience determine the order of pieces for her concert at The
Stone on Tuesday night. Works by eleven composers (three of whom
were in attendance) comprised the program, and the music ranged from
pointillistic sparsity to full and raging clusters. Highlights
included:
"Intimate Rejection" by Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang; after
reaching inside to pluck some lower strings, Chai moved to the
keyboard, as two differing thoughts occurred simultaneously, at times seeming
to intertwine, at others seemingly unaware of each other.
"Kreutzer Sonata" by Frederic Rzewski; Chai spoke into a microphone an excerpt from Tolstoy's novella Kreuzter Sonata
(the inner monologue of a man as he kills his wife) while
simultaneously playing a frenetic piano part that acted as a sort of
accompaniment to the thoughts of the "protagonist." Chai's
performance was both chilling and humorous.
"Brooklyn - Oct. 5.
1941" by Annie Gosfield; Chai removed the piano's music stand for this
piece, so as to be able to reach inside and swipe/hit the strings with
a baseball when the score called for it. The loud, raucous music
and Chai's powerful playing permeated the entire shaking instrument
with clusters of sound in compelling, visceral rhythms, particularly
when Chai donned a pink baseball glove on her left hand to strike the
low end of the keyboard.
"I
decided to send you home to a nice sleep" was Chai's preface to her
first of two encores, Robert Schumann's "A Child Falling Asleep."
Her second encore was Debussy's "Etude for Eight Fingers" (no thumbs
allowed!), through which she shredded mightily.
For those interested, here's a list of pieces, in the order performed:
"Étude No. 1, Désordre" by György Ligeti
"Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs/Nowth Upon Nacht" by John Cage
Piano Pieces, Op. 11 (second movement) by Arnold Schönberg
Piano Piece VIII by Karlheinz Stockhausen
"L'empire des illumnièrs (Hommage a René Magritte) by Nils Vigeland
"Intimate Rejection" by Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang
"Kreutzer Sonata" by Frederic Rzewski
"Image de Moreau" by Louis Andriessen
"Brooklyn - Oct. 5. 1941" by Annie Gosfield
"Leaps of Faith" by Vanessa Lang
"La Fee Verte" by Ryan Francis
Encore #1: "A Child Falling Asleep" by Robert Schumann
Encore #2: "Etude for Eight Fingers" by Claude Debussy
 Monday, 16 Mar
Darkly theatrical and orchestral, replete with danceable beats, Atarah Valentine's music felt caged within the walls of the relatively sober Joe's Pub on Monday night. Not to be deterred, though, the audience--many of whom had stood in line outside the venue well before the show's start time--was vocally enthusiastic if not bodily so.
The music, sounding at times like a Martin Gore/Matthew Bellamy blend, nonetheless arrived at a genuinely "Atarah" sound, particularly when perceived via his vivid stage presence and protagonist-from-a-Tim-Burton-film look. Rounding out nicely both the musical and visual element, Atarah was joined by a cellist and two live mixers/controllerists, one of whom also played trumpet and a six-string bass.
The set included the urgent "End It All," with its rising vocal lines in the chorus, and the dance-anthem "The Night Is Young," which Atarah introduced as "one of our songs that you don't have to be on anti-depressants to enjoy." The set ended with the orchestral "Without You," featuring live trumpet. The band was applauded back onstage for an encore, and Atarah warned the audience, "as a punishment, you get this." The mellow song started off with unaccompanied vox and slowly built in intensity and volume before falling back again at the end.
Catch Atarah Valentine at The Annex on April 8th.
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