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 Crumb The 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.