I CARE IF YOU LISTEN

Announcing our partnership with the Huffington Post

As of today, the Huffington Post started reposting selected articles from I Care if You Listen. The first one is an opinion post—and one of our top articles—written by R. Andrew Lee, Performers as Co-Composers.

R. Andrew Lee's opinion post is the first article to be reblogged by the Huffington Post.

This in an important step for I Care if You Listen and I have to thank our readers for their support and loyalty, all the contributors for their amazing work, and all the composers/performers/ensembles/concert halls/performing spaces/PRs and record labels for being so kind and professional.

Stay tuned, there is a lot more to come.

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Thomas Deneuville, the founder and editor of I Care if You Listen, is a French-born composer living in NY. Find him on Twitter: @tonalfreak

Hanging out with Florent Ghys | Hang #5

Fifth installment in our Hang video series: Florent Ghys.

Florent Ghys is a composer and upright bass player from Bordeaux, France. He studied ethno-musicology with a focus on Arabic contemporary music in Université de Bordeaux 3, and classical contrabass in Paris with Thierry Barbé. He is currently a graduate student at New York University, studying composition with Julia Wolfe.

WNYC’s John Schaefer recently said about Florent Ghys that he “creates a kind of post-minimalist chamber music using unusual phasing and overdubbing.”  Florent received us in his Bed-Stuy apartment in Brooklyn and performed Nappe Brodée.

Florent’s new ensemble Bonjour is having its debut concert on May 26, as part of Kathleen Supove’s Music with a View at the Flea Theater in Tribeca. And it’s free. And you should go.

Embedding is cool. Crediting is really cool.

Video + Editing + Translation: Thomas Deneuville
Opening animation: Daniel Thompson at DTWebart (http://www.dtwebart.com)

© 2012 I Care if You Listen

Thresholds – the healing power of music

Saturday night at St. Paul the Apostle on Manhattan’s west side, the Schola Cantorum on Hudson (SCH) brought the audience their season’s final concert, Thresholds, based on the theme of healing.  As artistic director and founder Dr. Deborah Simpkin King states in the program, this “theme was chosen in honor and commemoration of those lost, and those left suddenly and unexpectedly behind, by the terrorist attacks of ten years ago… it was our feeling that our national grieving had only barely gotten underway when war engulfed national attention, thereby short-circuiting the healing process.”  To restore this process, the ensemble performed works based on texts that highlight the transitory nature of life’s events, and of life itself, from a wide range of cultures: pre-Colombian New World, medieval Europe, and the Himalayas.

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Solid Performance of New Compositions by Prism Saxophone Quartet

Prism Saxophone Quartet gave a solid performance of new works by Curtis Institute students and faculty in NYC at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church on May 10th. The church seemed the ideal setting to display the quartet’s sound, with gorgeous sonorities, jarring dissonances, and stratospheric intensities filling the room. Prism Quartet is one of those rare groups that can flawlessly perform new pieces one after the other with a tremendous sense of ensemble cohesion.

Prism Quartet

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Erdem Helvacioğlu, Eleven Short Stories

Let’s play a word association game. If I say, “prepared piano,” many of you might think “John Cage.” Yes, John Cage was a pioneer for prepared piano, and yes, Sonatas and Interludes becomes an almost inevitable comparison when discussing any prepared piano composition, but I only mention Cage because I don’t want you to think about him. (I realize, of course, that’s like saying, “Don’t think of a honey badger.”)

The problem with comparing Eleven Short Stories to Cage is that while the basic instrument is the same(ish), the end results are anything but. If you listen to this album with Cage as your expectation, you will be confused at best and incorrectly disappointed at worst. Cage’s prepared piano is exotic, percussive, and somewhat esoteric. It is high art in the best sense. Erdem Helvacioğlu’s prepared piano is electronic, quasi-minimalistic, and highly accessible. This is more a pop album, also in the best sense.

Erdem Helvacıoğlu

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The Sinking of the Titanic: Gavin Bryars Ensemble @ Barbican

Just over one hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic. The tragedy was immortalized with emotional intensity and delicate musical sensitivity in The Sinking of the Titanic, written by British composer Gavin Bryars, and performed by him and his Ensemble at the Barbican on April 15. Bryars is recognised as a diverse musician and composer, his roots as a jazz bassist never far from the surface of this Titanic work. The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) was originally released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975 and is the composer’s first major work. Along with Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), this work sold over a quarter of a million copies when re-released in more recent performances. The Gavin Bryars Ensemble was founded in 1981 and continues to perform across the world.

Gaving Bryars and his ensemble performing "The Sinking of the Titanic" at Barbican Centre - Photograph by Mark Allan

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