Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
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It was a big night yesterday for New Amsterdam Records. The New York based label was having a double release party at the sumptuous Dumbo venue: Gregory Spears‘s Requiem, and drawn only once, music by John Supko performed by Due East.
Scored for six voices (4 male, 2 female), harp, troubadour harp, recorders, baroque viola, chimes, and electric organ, Requiem draws from a variety of influences, from American and Danish (?) minimalism to baroque, and renaissance vocal music. It was incidentally receiving its concert premiere since the first performance in June of 2010 was part of an opera/dance collaboration with choreographer Christopher Williams for Williams’ dance production Hen’s Teeth.
Gregory Spears conducting his Requiem at Galapagos
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Posted by Steven Berryman »
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I’m always keen to hear concerts that attempt to fuse genres and London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten concert at the Purcell Room – as part of the London Jazz Festival – did just that. It brought together players from the ensemble with two jazz musicians – pianist Matthew Bourne and jazz percussionist Vladimir Tarasov. The programme is prefaced by an introduction to the concept of this Written/Unwritten event – “What happens when you give a group of musicians the chance to write their own music? … What happens if you put classical and non-classical musicians in a room together for several days and ask them to explore, create and produce music a concert at the Southbank Centre? Find out tonight …”
Matthew Bourne – Photo by Briony Campbell
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Posted by Steven Berryman »
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Violinist Aisha Orazbayeva’s debut album Outside released 31st October 2011 on the UK-based Nonclassical label is worth exploring. The 25-year old Kazakh born Aisha opens the recording with a fascinating recording of Sciarrino’s Six Capricci; not only are these played with a keen virtuosity and superb understanding but the composite recording produced through the sensitive and skilful juxtaposition of takes recorded in a variety of outside locations – including ‘bus stops, warehouses and car parks’ – adds a dimension that somehow makes these works utterly relevant and compelling. The Ravel sonata movement that followed the Capricci was an adventurous yet apt choice – particularly after the acoustic intrigue heard in the opening recordings on the disc. The movement was lyrically played by Aisha and her accompanist Matthew Schellhorn with a colourful tone and engaging sense of the structure.
Aisha Orazbayeva by Robert Beckinsale
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Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
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Alan Hovhaness would have been 100 this year, and for this occasion Delos is releasing American Mystic. Embracing his Armenian heritage, Hovhaness (1911-2000) studied a vast array of Eastern musical cultures, from Greece to Japan, South Korea to India, through a series of prestigious fellowships. The unique thing about this is that Hovhaness didn’t only limit his knowledge to the theory of the abovementioned musics, but he also learned how to play many instruments too (he was apparently quite proficient on the veena).
This new Delos CD is a beautiful collection of meditations, some intimate, some more monumental (it might sound antithetical but Hovhaness is that good). On the intimate side, one finds the delightful 4 Bagatelles, Op. 30, or his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 147 (only two movements are available: I and V). Performed impeccably by the Shanghai Quartet, the Bagatelles are evocative miniatures (3 min for the longest) reminiscent of Eastern folk themes or even lullabies. The two movements taken from the second string quartet composed in 1966 are somehow bolder and more spiritual albeit still modal in essence.
Shanghai Quartet: living the dream.
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Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
1 Comment »In “Sheet Music in Colour”, you explore the relationship between music and art/design. What motivated you to start this work?
Really it was a combination of two passions, music and design. Both play a large role in my life. It was while I was at college around the age of 16 when I first started to look into the idea of combining the two disciplines. I think the first thing I ever did was a storyboard illustration which took lyrics and transformed them into a story which was loosely based on the words.
When I was at university I moved into the idea of typography and music, looking into things such as concrete poetry and the work of the futurists. They took everyday sounds such as slamming doors, shuffling crowds, printing works and power stations, and made typographic compositions, breaking down the sounds into simple phonetics. These pieces were incredibly dynamic for their time and still are today. I think I was fascinated by this idea that words are just visual symbols which we decode through language.
Everything got interesting when I started to introduce colour, and in particular analogies between musical notes and colour, this led me to devise colour systems. I then moved onto the idea of recording sound in particular places, and using a chromatic tuner, transcribing the sounds that had been recorded, these could be sounds such as birds signing, a train passing, people walking etc. I was then able to take the colours associated with these notes and create designs from them. Kind of like a colour record of a particular moment in time, a modern landscape using sound visually. The whole aim of all of my work on visual music is purely experimental, some pieces have a method and some are purely visual and abstract, I’ve found this abstract approach by no means makes them less important if anything the abstract pieces are the most interesting, they chart raw creativity something that can’t be explained.
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Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
3 Comments »The third composer in this series that was part of Ensemble l’Itinéraire (along with Tristan Murail and Hugues Dufourt) is another French spectral composer: Gérard Grisey. Born in Belfort (about 34 miles west of the German border) Grisey studied at Trossingen Conservatory in Germany before moving to Paris to study at the Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen from 1968 to 1972. Other teachers include Henri Dutilleux, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis. Not bad on a resumé.
Gérard Grisey
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