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The Bang on a Can All-Stars presented the seventh concert of the quickly growing Ecstatic Music Festival, billed as the “nexus of New York City’s indie classical scene,” on Thursday, March 14, 2013. In an unusual twist, the foyer of Merkin Concert Hall in the Kaufman Center was scattered with signs urging the concert-goers to use their cellphones… to download a copy of Dan Deacon’s app, which is used at many of his shows to involve the audience in the performance. The concert offered “hot-off-the-stove music” with a common thread: composing around some form of prepared field recordings. Most of the pieces were premieres made possible by the annual Bang on a Can People’s Commissioning Fund, a project that helps to “fund a partnership between artists and the audience.”
Bang on a Can All-Stars – Photo by David Andrako
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Posted by Daniel Garrick »
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Last October, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN featured a video of the freshly deployed new music ensemble Hotel Elefant as they were preparing a work of composer Michael Gordon for their upcoming concert titled Dia De Los Muertos. Their Concert II was to focus on the theme “remembrance,” featuring new works by notable young composers as well as two compositions by Gordon. Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy prevented concert from occurring on its originally planned date. Undaunted, Hotel Elefant eventually presented concert on Saturday, January 12, 2013.
Contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant (photo credit: hotelelfant.org)
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French twentieth-century organ composer Maurice Duruflé and contemporary American composer Gregory Spears seem like an odd pair. But on November 14, 2012, works of the two composers were on exhibition, showcasing two modern settings of the requiem at the French-gothic inspired Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City. In this case, both composers were inspired by something ancient while sustaining their own ability to creatively innovate. As I entered the church, the sanctuary was half filled with darkness. The other half was lit by candles flickering against the stone window frames and stained glass that lined the nave. The whole setting seemed to be an appropriate (yet completely unplanned) meditation, in light of the devastating damage by Hurricane Sandy that had ripped through the New York region just a couple of weeks before.
Organist David Enlow (photo credit: davidenlow.com)
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Posted by Daniel Garrick »
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Chamber music is hard. It’s hard to play and even harder to write. Both composer and performer are extremely exposed and it can be at times difficult to communicate between the two. Fortunately, for Dr. Colin Eatock, this process appears to be native and fluent in his recording of Chamber Music. Hailing from Toronto, music writer, critic and composer Eatock, has put forth an exhibition of chamber works that represent a wide range of instrumentation. From voice and harpsichord to brass and piano, he jumps right in and isn’t afraid to show off his compositional chops.
The album begins with the haunting two movement work Ashes of Soldiers (a piece broken into two parts, performed without break). The first part, an instrumental prelude where pianist Peter Longworth and clarinetist Peter Stoll work well to paint Eatock’s conception of a devastatingly fresh battlefield. A minimal (almost ghostly) accompaniment, works delightfully well with the explicit story telling from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Eatock does a brilliant job of building long lines and communicating Whitman’s text in the next movement with soprano Melanie Conly, whose crystal-clear diction and distinctive voice seem to be a perfect fit for Mr. Eatock’s vocal writing.
Anita Krause
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