9/8: A new work for string sextet, electric bass, and 2 amplified percussionists by Nico Muhly serenades Isaac Mizrahi’s Spring 2009 Collection.
You can watch the whole show on Isaac’s site here.
Although the music used for runway shows is very carefully considered, I’m not sure it is standard practice to bring live performers into the mix. Nevertheless, Isaac Mizrahi showed guts and great taste when he commissioned a new piece from Nico Muhly for his 2009 spring collection show, held Monday at the Hammerstein Ballroom. In what was possibly the most fun Monday morning ever, we performed it live at the show with Nico conducting. Nadia hired a great group, including our favorite exceptionally tall percussionist from South Dakota, whom we call “Bigcountry.”
The show is titled “Swarm,” and the majority of our percussion efforts centered on creating miniature, ticky, insecty sounds directly into microphones turned way up. Nico’s use of tiny amplified percussion goes all the way back to his song cycle for The Elements of Style, during which we discovered The World’s Smallest Maraca, and then later we got especially creative on a live show and album, where I amplified frying eggs and sizzling butter.
For “Swarm,”, we made a swarm of cicadas (4:15) created with indian ankle bells and belly dancer jingles, as well as a little bit of rainforest out of Indonesian Angklung (6:00). I love those angklung and relish any opportunity to show the world… they are actually a diatonically tuned set of two octaves on a handmade bamboo rack.
Ankle bells, belly dancer jingles
Angklung
We used knitting needles on just about everything that needed to be struck, including wooden agogo bells (2:15), tin cans (11:45), and my magic froggy guiro (2:50), although in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that when I asked for the mics to be hot, I didn’t realize just how hot they could make them… what sounded like a cricket on our side of the house was more like a 400 pound mutant bullfrog under the speakers by the runway. Those poor girls in their crazy shoes, I’m glad we didn’t make anyone trip!
I’m in Detroit this weekend playing Drumming with some really cool people, including members of the percussion section of the Detroit Symphony. This is the second installment of “Strange Beautiful Music,” a 12 hour marathon of contemporary music founded by New Music Detroit last year. More info here.
7/20: Line C3’s forthcoming studio recording of Carl Schimmel’s Serving Size 4 Bunnies featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Our little secret (about the expressive capabilities of doggie squeaky toys in serious concert music) is out, everybody. We’ve known this for a while, but when NPR heard about it… look out.
What you are hearing from about 1:30 to 3:30 is my percussion group’s recently finished (and unreleased) recording of Serving Size 4 Bunnies. We are really excited to get this unexpected mini-preview, featured as part of a segment about the young composer Carl Schimmel on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
I think the story was really well done, specifically Carl’s comments about why he is writing this absurdist music. For us, we were just really excited about the piece because it is not only brilliantly crafted compositionally, but also fun to play and hilarious to watch. The only bit I was disappointed with was the actual choice of excerpts used… mostly of similar character. The rest of the piece has a great range of moods, and squeaky toy techniques to match.
We are looking into distribution options for this recording, along with the other one we just finished: Ryan Streber’s Cold Pastoral. If you are interested in either piece, email me and I can let you know when they become available.
Now to see if I can get listed in the union book under “squeaky toy”…
5/10, 5/14, and 5/17: The Metropolitan Opera is bringing back Tan Dun’s The First Emperor for a run of 3 performances only. I’ll be in the stone drum band once again, dressed as a chinese soldier. Check out my previous post, including a super-awesome picture of Tan Dun (and me?!) here, and get all the specifics for these three shows here.
On a totally unrelated side note: I finally got recordings from the DIA Center Fall Benefit performance of John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 3, which I wrote about here back in November. The performance was not open to the public but through the magic of digital audio recording robots, it can be experienced by clicking below:
Imaginary Landscape No. 3 for six percussionists, by John Cage.
Michael Caterizano, David Mancuso, Eric Poland, Chris Thompson, Joe Tompkins, Yuri Yamashita. Recorded live on November 12, 2007.
5/8: Composer Nico Muhly shares a bill with Phillip Bimstein on Merkin Hall’s New Sounds Live series. I play percussion and also close-mic breakfast…
Nico’s beautiful new album Mothertounge is about to be released on May 6th. Like his first album, it features collaborations with friends, most of whom he wrote for specifically. Although my involvement in the percussive sense is still unclear, one thing is for sure: I’ll be spending some time trying to figure out how to reproduce on-stage the sound of my shower, a fried egg, mr. coffee, and toast-buttering, which got me a sound design credit on the album. My dirty secret happens to be that, while I did record them all (with fancy bit rate, no less!), the real magic happened when Valgeir Sigurðsson got a hold of those files and used them in the title track “Mothertounge.” I’m super excited to be working with these great artists and looking forward to putting on this show… hope to see everyone there!
New Sounds Live: Nico Muhly & Phillip Bimstein
Thursday May 8, 2008 @ 8:00PM
Merkin Concert Hall
New York, NY
4/5: Performing March, Improvisation, and Canaries from Elliot Carter’s 8 Pieces for Four Timpani (1950/1966) for the American Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Tenri Cultural Institute.
4/23 Update: I just got live recordings from this concert, courtesy of the perpetually awesome Ryan Streber… here are some excerpts:
Excerpt from Canaries:
Excerpt from March:
Excerpt from Improvisation:
Saturday April 5, 8 pm
Tenri Cultural Institute
43A W 13th Street, NYC
Centennials
Carter and Messiaen
Elliott Carter: Selections from Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (1950/1966)
Carter: Figment I for solo cello (1994)
Carter: Figment IV for solo viola (2007)
Carter: Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux (1985)
Carter: Con Leggerezza Pensosa - Omaggio a Italo Calvino (1990)
Oliver Messiaen: Le Merle Noir (1952)
Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940)
2/28: Alarm Will Sound promotes its forthcoming release “a/rhythmia” with a concert at Zankel Hall. The program includes works by Ligeti, Nancarrow, the Shaggs, Mochipet, Aphex Twin, and Birtwhistle, plus John Adams’ newest work, Son of Chamber Symphony.
I’m so excited to play in Zankel Hall again with Alarm Will Sound, this time on a collection of their most rhythmically charged works, many soon to be released on their album “a/rhythmia.” It is so impressive the way this group continues to take ambitious ideas and turn them into reality. For example, I have to admit that the first time I heard the Shaggs, or Nancarrow piano rolls, or even Aphex Twin, part of my reaction was to imagine how fun it would be as a performer to play them live. But actually following through with that idea and figuring out how to make them work is an enormous undertaking.
Yet every time I join Alarm Will Sound as a guest I find out that they have been quietly following through with these type of ideas, and then I get to try them on for size. This time it is “Philosophy of the World,” one of the songs from the classic musical outsider-art group The Shaggs. They sort of defy explanation, but you can read about them here and here. I’m also getting to play two of their Nancarrow piano roll arrangements for the first time, and a new Aphex Twin transcription.
The other highlight of the program is Sir Harrison “funk dissonance” Birtwhistle’s Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum, which nicely toes the line between thorny contemporary music and parliament/funkadelic. I think it might be the most fun you can possibly have playing the marimba. For the record, this is not a picture of Harrison Birtwhistle, it is a picture of George Clinton. But, you know, they remind me of each other and also both make me happy.
More information here on the Carnegie Hall website.
Featuring Nico Muhly’s “Time After Time” for marimba, percussion and saxophone, which we recorded for Nico a couple years ago… more on that here. Also, this event got a nice mention in Allan Kozinn’s review of the Brooklyn Philharmonic that it followed.
The Youngbloods
Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 9:30 PM
BAM Cafe Part of the BAMcafe Live series
Free Event
12/7, 12/8, 12/9, 12/11: The New York Stage Debut of Elliott Carter’s only opera, “What Next?” at Miller Theatre. Jeffrey Milarsky conducts AXIOM, Mr. Carter turns 99.
If I had fully grasped my future as a percussionist, I think I might have considered taking more “shop” class in high school. Last month I learned all about transformers and low-voltage wiring in order to build a door buzzer for John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape #3. This month I was in and out of Home Depot and various sheet-metal stores with my tuning fork and a brass mallet, trying to find steel pipes of specific pitches. For the record: galvanized iron piping has clear fundamental pitch and a ringy, bell-like quality! On the other hand, rectangular steel piping has tons of overtones and quicker decay, more like an anvil. Also, I think the retail sheet-metal business in NYC might be on the outs. Or maybe the stores are just moving to queens? Either way, on most of these scavenger hunts I couldn’t avoid asking for assistance from the store, and the inevitable question always follows…
“What are you building?” they ask.
“Well, I’m not building anything I actually need to use this thing as a musical instrument…”
Blink.
“So what kind do you need”
“Um, whichever is loudest when you scrape it with a brass mallet.”
And so, from my little corner of the pit at Miller Theatre, this weekend I happily play metal pipes, a gigantic wood board (with a hammer), cowbells, and the world’s loudest washboard, as well as the more traditional snare drum, tambourine, glock, and cymbals. Eric Huebner is dealing well with the pipes, which are right up in his business, but I imagine his mind is occupied with all the notes in the world. Elliott Carter! This is a comic opera set in the aftermath of a car crash. Some think that the libretto, by Paul Griffiths, is meant to be more vague than that, but for this production there is no ambiguity intended: two cars full of totally insane people crash, absurdity ensues. If Elliott Carter scares you, give this one a shot: the score is charming, exciting, and at times hauntingly beautiful. Also, the man himself is planning to be at all four performances, the last falling on his 99th birthday. You’ll see, there is nothing at all to be scared of!
12/8 Update: Opening night was a big success, and I think there are still tickets available for the 3 additional performances. Here is a picture I took from the pit of Carter being received by his adoring public!
From the Miller Theatre Website:
Miller Theatre is proud to present the New York stage premiere of Elliott Carter’s only opera to date, What Next?. Directed by the renowned Christopher Alden, What Next? tells the story of six people who search for meaning and identity in the aftermath of their two cars crashing into each other. The final of the four performances falls on Carter’s 99th birthday. Join the celebration of this great American master and this great American masterpiece.
11/12/07: John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape #3 for 6 percussionists, at the DIA Center’s annual fall benefit.
April 2008 UPDATE: I finally have an audio recording of this performance, which I’ve posted to my chamber music excerpts page here, or just click below:
“Mr. Cage, these are nice people, but… some of them are gonna laugh. Is that alright?”
“Of course. I consider laughter preferable to tears.”
Most people know John Cage as either a pioneer of “chance” music or as the composer of 4′33″, and although these are some of his most important contributions to 20th century music on the whole, percussionists (myself included) are often introduced to his music via earlier works, written between 1939 and 1942. As early as 1939, Cage remarked that “Percussion music is revolution,” which is a statement he not only stood by until the end of his life, but also backed up by writing two sets of truly revolutionary pieces; the Constructions and the Imaginary Landscapes.
Percussionists owe so much to Cage; his contribution to our repertoire in the first half of the 20th century (along with a few other composers, like Varese) laid the foundation for both the great selection of percussion ensemble music we have now and also the acceptance of percussion into mixed chamber music.
Now I find myself with a great opportunity to show “our” John Cage to an audience of art-world patrons at the DIA Museum’s fall benefit dinner, who may know him first and foremost as a composer of the more esoteric later works written for the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. DIA has incidentally just announced a collaboration with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at their Beacon, NY location, hence the tie-in.
The true pleasure of putting this music together is that fun is its first priority (incidentally, fun is my first priority, too). In fact, Cage had an air of mischief to him that you can see in his handwriting, his face, and in the vague but somehow poetic performance instructions, which (without apology) assume we happen to have 3 variable speed turntables, an amplified radio aerial coil, an oscillator, 10 tin cans (of graduated pitch, of course), 2 balinese button-gongs, an electric door buzzer, and a marimbula just lying around. Well, I have a marimbula lying around now, because this piece offered me the excuse I needed to buy one. Thanks Mr. Cage!
Unfortunately, this performance is part of what I assume will be a appropriately expensive dinner for those supporting the DIA Institution, and not open to concertgoers. However, if my colleagues will allow it, I will do my best to get the best recording possible and put the whole thing right at the top of this post, and on the media:chamber page as well.
John Cage Imaginary Landscape #3
For Six Percussionists
Dated: February 1942, Chicago
Featuring: Michael (Cutlet) Caterizano, David Mancuso, Eric Poland, Chris Thompson, Joe Tompkins, and Yuri Yamashita.
Tickets not available, but do check back for a recording on this site.
8/25/07: New York Premier of George Crumb’s Winds of Destiny; Songs of Strife, Love, Mystery, and Exultation.
9/20 Update - I’ve put a couple excerpts from this performance up. You can find them here.
I’ll be joining the Locrian Chamber Players for a performance of George Crumb’s newest work, scored for soprano, piano, and percussion quartet. In typical Crumb style, the score is exquisitely crafted and has some brilliant and expressive visual tricks, such as the inversion of contrast in the movement pictured here.
This setting of American war folksongs inevitably evokes current events, although the composer has stated that protest against the Iraq war was not his specific intention. He is also well known for his powerful Vietnam War era composition Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land), which had a similar relationship with the struggles of its time.
Crumb has been playing with score construction for decades, and often they can stand alone as works of art or political statements, such as his Spiral Galaxy, pictured here.
Saturday, August 25 at 8 PM:
George CrumbThe Winds of Destiny Kevin Volans Asanga Aaron Paul Low Sonata in Five Movements
10th Floor Performance Space, Riverside Church More info here.
8/12/07: American Contemporary Music Ensemble present Louis Andriessen’s Workers’ Union, Volans String Quartet #1, and Riley’s In C in the Noguchi Museum Sculpture Garden.
For me, Workers’ Union completely defies the type of rational description you might expect to read in program notes or a composer’s biography. So instead of talking about the political message (there is one) or its place in the history of music (quite important), I’ll just say that a good performance gets me feeling a lot like I did when I was 14 and I watched drum corps on PBS. Hyped. There is something to be said for the experience of watching performers test their limits, and Workers’ Union invites the audience to that party. Scored with no specific instrumentation or pitches, it forces musicians to ask themselves how high and low they are willing to reach, and then makes them live with that decision for page after page. (btw - if you watch that drum corps link, make sure to let the whole video load and watch the last minute of the performance. Its amazing, especially when you consider it is 17-21 year olds…)
The other super-happy zen garden event I get to be a part of is a performance of Terry Riley’s In C. Upon seeing the single page of score next to the two pages of performance instructions, I came to a realization that quite a few performances of this piece I have previously been a part of or seen might have been misguided. Where the score is quite (sorry) minimal (53 short cells of musical material on one page with no instrumentation, dynamics, or number of repeats), the subsequent two pages of performance instructions clarify quite a bit. Perhaps these two pages of essential information tend to get lost because the simplicity of the actual score is so enticing. An entire concert on one page!
I chuckle nervously when I think of the first time I played the piece: the ensemble was conflicted about how long the it should last (I see now that the performance instructions claim the average to be 45 - 90 minutes), and in the performance one of us started to lag behind (to be fair, you might also say some of us were getting to far ahead; the performance instructions state that both should be avoided). Anyway, the one of us who was in charge of the concert started yelling from behind the piano “next pattern! switch patterns! come on!” His commands were ignored, but the effect was quite dramatic. I was somewhere in the middle, trying to mediate.
Anyway, I go into this performance feeling wiser, and excited about what the final product will be. I also look forward to hearing the Volans, which I have somehow missed despite a number of great performances by the ACME quartet.
The sculpture garden at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens is a great place for contemporary music, and this is the 2nd year ACME has been featured on its “Music in the garden” series. Definitely come early to see the museum - it is one of the best kept secrets in New York. The concert is free with admission.
Sunday, August 12, 2007 3:00 pm
The Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road at Vernon Blvd., Long Island City in Queens
Kevin Volans: String Quartet No. 1 “White Man Sleeps” (1986)
Louis Andriessen: Workers’ Union (1975)
Terry Riley: In C (1964)
Tickets: Concert is free with Museum admission.
For directions and more information, call 718.204.7088, or visit the museum’s listing page.
7/14 - 8/05: Twenty three days of orchestral music performed in beautiful places.
I’ve been Put In Trouble more than once for never having made it to Tanglewood during the summer, and thereby never having been able to fully understand one of the main inspirations from the musical histories of most of my close friends in New York and Boston. I’m looking forward to finally making amends this summer by visiting for a few days. But instead of heading north from what is quickly becoming the typical steamy, putrid, unbearable New York City of mid-to-late July, I’ll actually be heading south from what has become my own summer escape: unbelievably gorgeous northern Vermont, where I am about to spend my third year as the timpanist for the Vermont Mozart Festival.
The festival was founded in 1974 by longtime Juilliard professor Mel Kaplan and University of Vermont Music Department chair Bill Metcalfe. Mr. Kaplan now also runs a successful Vermont-based artist managment company (and still performs as the festivals principal oboist), and Mr. Metcalfe is a principal conductor of the festival. It draws more than 16,000 visitors annually to the area, and this year is looking to be the most well attended yet, as many of the concerts are already sold out. I’m also told that the venerable harpist Bridget Kibbey, with whom I have worked in New York from time to time (she’s quite good with all that thorny contemporary music as well), is one of this year’s soloists.
I find myself playing so much contemporary music in New York that I’ve come to really look forward to this chance to just be a timpanist on a range orchestral music over the course of several very musically satisfying weeks. The fact that Burlington (and surrounding area) is one of my favorite places on earth just sweetens the deal. If you happen to be anywhere near the area this summer: bring wine, bring food, its totally great I promise…
Below are the nine concerts I am involved in. Title links lead you to ticket information, more specifics, and a nice picture of old people relaxing in a meadow. Aww! (continue reading…)
6/13/07: Alarm Will Sound presents two concerts at the Musiekgebouw in Amsterdam as part of the Holland Festival.
I’ll be joining Alarm Will Sound on their trip to Amsterdam for the Holland Festival, June 13th. AWS will be presenting two concerts at the Muziekgebouw, a fantastic venue akin to Zankel Hall. The place has an amazing sound and the intimacy of a small theatre style recital hall without the space limitations. Perfect for a 20-piece new music band with a tendency toward theatrical staging and also absurdly complex electronics setups…
Case and point: Benedict Mason’s wonderful and slightly maddening Animals and the Origins of The Dance. A “parade of miniature concertos” (12 in all, with awesome titles such as “Disgraceful Bossa Nova with Lemurs”), the work is scored for 21 musicians, each with their own individual click track. Alarm Will Sound employs its resident percussionist and audio-tech genius Dennis DeSantis to forego the percussion parts for this piece and focus completely on the massive tech setup, which means I happily take over for him on slide whistles, acme sirens, rototoms (shh), marimbula, duck call, lion’s roar, and all the other stuff we hesitate to admit we make a living playing. Originally Mason envisioned having 10 or more conductors on the stage at once, each following blinking LEDs (I can’t decide whether this would be more or less chaotic than dealing with the clicktracks), but however its done the effect is magic - impossible ensemble playing humanly realized. (continue reading…)
ACME’s Tribute to Jacob Druckman at the gallery of the Tenri Cultural Institute.
“Jacob Druckman became the most important proclaimer of a new romanticism, and practiced what he proclaimed…[His] conjured-up images, the swirling lights and shadows in the orchestral pieces–they added up to a fresher (and yes, newer) romanticism…” - The Village Voice
I’ll be performing Reflections on the Nature of Water for solo marimba and Come Round for chamber ensemble on our hommage to this great composer. Also on the program is his String Quartet #2.
As John Adams’ four year post as the Composer’s Chair of Carnegie Hall comes to an end, his final weekend of concerts includes the 20-member new music band known as Alarm Will Sound. This will be my second time joining the group as a guest performer, and I’m also looking forward to performing with them again in June on their European tour.
The fact that the group’s performances are full of virtuosic ensemble playing is almost a side-note to what captivated me the most when I first heard about them: their taste in projects and repertoire. Almost everyone in the band does something other than their primary instrument, be it composition, arrangement, or electronic music, and this concert (their third feature in Zankel in less than a year), showcases all three. Titled Out of Our Heads, it features works composed or arranged by the members of the group; and the fact that the three-hour marathon concert only begins to explore their output of original projects illustrates the depth of their inspiration and creativity.
Perhaps the most well known of these projects is their acoustic arrangements of the music of electronic composer Aphex Twin, and this concert features five; Prep Gawrlek 3B, Cock / Ver 10, Jynweythek Ylow, 4, and Avril 14th. You can hear all 13 of their arrangements as well as 2 remixes by following this link to the iTunes store: Acoustica. (continue reading…)
Iannis Xenakis’ Rebonds, plus John Cage and George Crumb at the Tenri Cultural Institute.
Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 8:00 PM
Even for composers well-versed in the eccentricities of concert percussion in the context of orchestral or chamber music, writing unpitched multi-percussion music for solo performer is an entirely different beast. For example, the seemingly endless variety of new and unusual sounds can leave a composer intoxicated with timbre, focusing primarily on the surface, at the cost of structure and thematic material.
Iannis Xenakis‘ Rebonds, which I’m thrilled to be performing at the Tenri Cultural Institute for ACME this month, is the rare case of a multi-percussion solo piece that succeeds on both surface and structural levels. In fact, here Xenakis uses contrasting timbres as motivic material, much like the A and B themes of a sonata: they define the structure of the piece. Happily, this music isn’t content to just be a brilliant example of skillful and thoughtful composition, it also ROCKS.
Here’s an excerpt from one of my live performances of the b movement:
And speaking of rocking, the incredible mezzo-soprano Bo Chang will open the program with John Cage’s Aria, and the rest of ACME will perform Cage’s Quartet in Four Parts and George Crumb’s Voice of the Whale, complete with psychotropic lighting and party masks… (continue reading…)
You can watch the whole show on Isaac’s site here.
The show is titled “Swarm,” and the majority of our percussion efforts centered on creating miniature, ticky, insecty sounds directly into
microphones turned way up. Nico’s use of tiny amplified percussion goes all the way back to his song cycle for The Elements of Style, during which we discovered The World’s Smallest Maraca, and then later we got especially creative on a live show and album, where I amplified frying eggs and sizzling butter.
bells (2:15), tin cans (11:45), and my magic froggy guiro (2:50), although in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that when I asked for the mics to be hot, I didn’t realize just how hot they could make them… what sounded like a cricket on our side of the house was more like a 400 pound mutant bullfrog under the speakers by the runway. Those poor girls in their crazy shoes, I’m glad we didn’t make anyone trip!
